A study published in January in the Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment predicts that the combination of battery storage with renewable energy will make fossil fuels increasingly obsolete. The driving forces of this disruption include the "decline in retail renewable electricity prices," along with plummeting costs of batteries, in which technological efficiencies are improving exponentially.
Fossil fuels are the most widely used source of energy because of base load power, which means they provide energy at all times, night and day. In contrast, renewables have faced the 'intermittency' challenge—the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow.
But authors Jemma Green and Peter Newman of Curtin University in Australia show that as storage gets cheaper, renewables will become more competitive with fossil fuels on costs and reliability. By 2050, these irresistible technological and market forces could make oil, gas and coal seem too costly and cumbersome, leading renewables to account for "100 percent of global energy demand." [...]
In three years, he said, it will "begin to transform" the electricity infrastructure of major cities. "Solar storage is pitched to become so cheap it will make relying on natural gas peaker plants pointless…It will lead to rapid adoption of solar by businesses, local governments, and households—not because people are environmentally conscious, but simply because it will make more economic sense." [...]
The next stage in this process will come when these solar households start buying lithium-ion battery systems. The combined price of solar storage, say Green and Newman, could guide us toward grid parity—equal to or less than the price of purchasing electricity from the national grid. When this happens, solar storage "will flood the market, increasing supply and creating a lower market price for electricity," Mayor said. [...]
Another issue is whether the solar storage disruption will survive growing hostility from the fossil fuel industries, and the governments protecting them. The Trump administration, for instance, has openly declared war on clean energy. I asked Mayor whether this will throw a giant spanner in the works of the "new electricity ecosystem".
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