Battery applications for renewable energy integration, power system services and hybrid power plants

Over the past five years, the cost of producing electricity from renewable energies such as solar and wind power has fallen sharply. Records were recently broken for solar projects at $30/MWh in the United Arab Emirates and $28/MWh for wind power in Morocco. In many countries, these energies are more competitive than fossil fuels at a time of low oil prices. This trend will be reinforced in the future by the continuing fall in the price of solar panels. Yet these energies are by their very nature intermittent and complex to predict. Their massive integration into power systems, where demand is fatal and difficult to maneuver, is beginning to pose technical constraints in terms of frequency stability, managing their rapid variability and optimizing the operating plan of power generation units. These technical constraints have been resolved by the use of batteries, of which the Li-ion family has made significant breakthroughs in terms of energy efficiency, service life and compactness. The rapid fall in the price of Li-ion batteries has opened the way to numerous industrial applications that will help further the integration of intermittent renewable energies and the decarbonization of the energy mix.