Renewable sources of energy have extended considerably in past few years, mainly wind as well as solar energy. One of the major issue with wind & solar energy sources is the requirement of storing and then releasing the electrical energy created. Thus, vanadium redox flow batteries is a promising technology for storage that is expected to upsurge the demand for vanadium.
Furthermore, wind energy is a significant example of extended renewable energy sources. Production of wind energy across the globe has augmented almost eight times since past decade. Subsequently setting fresh records in the year 2014, the wind power business had seen one more record-breaking phase in 2015, with almost 22% annual growth of market as well as passing around 60 GW mark for the very 1st time in an year. As per the Global Wind Energy Counsel (GWEC), sufficiency growth is anticipated to register the growth at double-digit rates as well as will get double the capacity of 2015 by the end of 2020.
Some of the biggest trends that will drive the growth in upcoming period:
Declining Costs:
The prices of both wind as well as solar technology has been decreasing radically since past few years, also advanced financing as well as government subsidies are generating situations for renewable energy sources to be economical in several countries.
Fluctuating Climatic conditions
The longstanding objectives embraced by almost 186 countries congregated at the Conference of UN Climate Change held in Paris in the year 2015, is an effective appeal for a 100% emissions free power sector by the end of 2050 aiding renewable energy expansion like wind & solar.
Steadiness of the United States
Previously, the US signed into regulation for a long-term extension as well as phase-out of the PTC (Production Tax Credit) that has been the key support of federal policy mechanism for wind energy in the United States. Thus, the United States wind business at present panels on its time-consuming policy constancy along with potential consequences of this go far further than the markets of US.
For instance, BP plc. (British multinational company) in their BP Energy Outlook 2035, Observes Europe ruling the control, by the renewable energy accounting at around 32% of their electricity generation by 2035. At the same time, company also realizes that China is viewing the major absolute upsurge in renewables, as it utilizes sources other than coal.
Furthermore, advent of utility-scale battery storage for energy has already started taking place as well as it is expected to grow bigger in the upcoming years. Thus, lithium-ion batteries has acquired the maximum share of energy storage market, however technological developments in flow batteries that enables in bringing down the prices and increase their safety & ecological outline are expected to boost utility-scale installations as well as distributions. On the other hand, lithium-ion batteries as compared to VRB (vanadium redox flow batteries) are fire-resistant, environmental friendly, have got probable life expectancy that is more than 10,000 cycles & uphold about 90% of their capability within the spell of 20 years thus lessening the entire price of ownership.
VRB is an ideal source for more constrained solar as well as wind farms which struggles to trade their electricity at the time when the production is at peak however getting additional means for storage are not cost-effective. The other major advantage of VRB against lithium-ion batteries include an extended constant discharge run time (that ranges around 6-10 hours v/s 2-5 hours). However, key shortcoming for VRB is their comparatively lower round-trip efficacy (measured via power-out over power-in) of approximately 70% as compared to around 85% with lithium batteries.
Moreover, a Japan based Hokkaido Electric Power Company’s 15-megawatt/60-megawatt-hour VRB from the Sumitomo [Electric Industries, Ltd.] commenced operation recently. In addition, being located near to the country’s prime solar power plants, it will probably be utilized for the regulation of frequency as well.
Static energy storage constantly shows strong development in the number of projects provided, the entire energy storage deployed as well as the extent of utility-scale storage arrangements. Additionally, these trends will likely continue as storage gradually becomes a grid management asset and will constantly observe records been broken for the capacity of biggest stationary energy storage plants.
Thus, it is clear that existing utility-scale battery storage deployment is in its primary infancy. On the other hand, battery storage technology appears inching nearer to a sweet spot owing to rising demand of storage from renewable energy as well as speedy progresses in technology that pushes down the costs.
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