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Over the last year, the US has seen an unprecedented number of power outages that left millions without power and helpless to extreme weather conditions. Regardless of where the blame falls, solar + battery storage is the best option for homeowners who do not want to fall victim to blackouts.
By offsetting capital and operational costs through routine day-to-day bill savings, solar–battery systems can provide back-up power during outages without imposing additional expenses on households. Back-up viability refers to a household's ability to maintain affordable back-up power using solar PV, battery storage or both during grid outages.
If a home has solar panels installed without a battery backup, the solar system is turned off during a blackout in order to prevent possible injuries to grid workers. However, if the home has a battery installed, the solar system can continue to charge the battery while that battery is sending power to the home.
California's high temperatures have consistently resulted in more power consumption than what the grid can support, forcing residents to work through rolling blackouts. When residential solar panels are coupled with batteries for energy storage, homeowners can keep their homes powered in a blackout.
An isolated zero-carbon microgrid is powered exclusively by renewable energy sources. It utilizes energy storage technologies, such as long-duration batteries or hydrogen storage, to mitigate intermittency and ensure a reliable power supply, allowing it to meet demand even under conditions of low production or high variability.
The development challenges of achieving zero-carbon microgrids can be summarized as follows: Compared to the cost of renewable power generation investment, the investment cost of energy storage is much higher. It is hard to build a zero-carbon microgrid in an economical way without cheap energy storage.
Stability analysis and control techniques should be studied especially for the zero-carbon microgrid with grid-forming and grid-following converters. Large-scale low-price energy storage and the corresponding control techniques for feasibility, flexibility, and stability enhancement of the zero-carbon microgrids should be developed.
As discussed earlier, large-scale low-price energy storage plays an important role in achieving zero-carbon microgrids, including improving system feasibility, flexibility, and stability. However, such a kind of technology is still missing. Table 2 lists the power ranges and capital costs of PHES, CAES, HES, TES, LABES, and LIBES.
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