Underutilized and Overlooked
Charles Yeung is ESPX Chief Marketing Officer and Head of External Affairs. Todd Strauss is ESPX Chief Product Officer and Head of Analytics. David Owens is ESPX Global Member of the Board of Directors.
As large data center loads increasingly connect to the grid and the electric power sector struggles to build enough resources fast enough to power these enormous loads, existing battery energy storage is an underutilized resource with greater potential to meet these challenges. The available capacity of a battery Energy Storage Resource (ESR) fluctuates as the ESR operates, charging and discharging.
How much remaining stored energy is available at any moment — known as State of Charge (SoC) — is not transparent to grid operators and planners. Achieving greater visibility into SoC is an overlooked means to unlock greater capacity and reliability for the grid at lower cost.
The amount of ESR, primarily electrochemical-based battery technology to store electricity, is projected to be 65 GW of installed nameplate capacity on the North American grid by 2026. ESR is able to be installed quickly and modularly to increase grid capacity, enable time-shifting of low-cost renewable energy from hours of excess supply to hours of shortfall, and is increasingly the preferred resource for Ancillary Services to support grid reliability due to ESR’s quick response and low opportunity cost.