Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition
Noah Kittnera,b, Felix Lillb,c and Daniel M. Kammen*a,b,d
a Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
b Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
c Center for Digital Technology and Management, TU Munich, Munich, Germany
d Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Samuel Carrara holds a Master Degree cum laude in Mechanical Engineering (Major: Energy and Mechanical Plants) and a PhD in Energy and Environmental Technologies, both from the University of Bergamo.
After working as an engineer in the gas turbine field, he is now junior researcher at FEEM. His main research interests include renewable energies, sustainable development, energy policies, climate and energy economics, advanced energy systems.
Isa Ferrall is a MS/Ph.D. student in the Energy and Resources Group and Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in the impact of renewable energy on rural electrification, global development, and the domestic energy sector. Previously, Isa gained experience on both the technical and applied sides of renewable energy. She researched innovative energy materials at Duke University as a National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge Scholar and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as a Department of Energy Intern. She also has analyzed system data for Off-Grid Electric, a solar home system company operating in east Africa. Isa graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University in 2015 with distinction in Mechanical Engineering and a Certificate in Energy and the Environment.
Keywords: off-grid energy; village power; decentralized energy, energy services, energy innovation.
Overview:
Two critically important and interlinked challenges face the global community in the 21st century: the persistence of widespread energy poverty and the resulting lost economic opportunity; and intensifying human-driven climate disruption. These crises are inexorably linked through the energy technology systems that have so far provided the vast majority of our energy: biomass and fossil fuels. Both the energy service crisis and the climate crisis have become increasingly serious over the past decades, even though we have seen greater clarity over the individual and social costs that each has brought to humanity.
The Sustainable Energy Imperative:
The correlation between access to electricity and a wide range of social goods is overwhelming. However, access to improved energy services alone does not provide a surefire pathway to economic opportunity and an improved quality of life. In Figure 2 we show the correlations that exist between electricity access across nations and a variety of measures of quality of life, such as the Human Development Index (a measure of well-being based in equal thirds on gross national income, life expectancy, and educational attainment). Other indicators studied include gender equality in educational opportunity, and the percentage of students who reach educational milestones. All of these indices improve significantly and roughly linearly with access to electricity. At the same time, the percentage of people below the poverty line, and childhood mortality, both decline with increasing energy access1.
Figure 1: A village micro-grid energy and telecommunications system in the Crocker Highlands of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The system serves a community of two hundred, and provides household energy services, telecoms and satellite (dish shown), water pumping for fish ponds (seen at center) and for refrigeration. The supply includes micro-hydro and solar generation (one small panel shown here, others are distributed on building rooftops). Photo credit: Daniel M. Kammen.
Figure 2: The Human Development Index (HDI) and various additional metrics of quality of life plotted against the percentage of the population with electricity access. Each data point is country level data a specific point in time. For additional data, see Alston, Gershenson, and Kammen, 20151.
Today the gap between global population and those with electricity access stands at roughly 1.3 billion, with energy services for the unelectrified coming largely from kerosene and traditional biomass, including dung and agricultural residues. This ‘access gap’ has persisted as grid expansion programmes and population have grown.
Grid expansion has roughly kept pace with the increase in the global population. About 1.4 billion people in 2013 are completely off-grid, and many ostensibly connected people in the developing world experience significant outages that range from 20–200+ days a year. The majority of these off-grid residents are in rural and underserved peri-urban areas. Current forecasts are that this number will remain roughly unchanged until 2030, which would relegate a significant portion of the population and the economies of many of the neediest countries on earth to fragile, underproductive lives with less options than they could otherwise have. Traditional grid extension will be slowest to reach these communities. Unless the advances in both energy and information systems that have occurred over the past decade are more widely adopted, there will be little if any chance to alter this trend.
Advances in off-grid systems
Recently we have seen an emergence of off-grid electricity systems that do not require the same supporting networks as the traditional forms of centralized power generation. These technological innovations are as much based on information systems as they are directly about energy technology. While traditional electricity grids can gradually pay off (amortize) the costs of expensive generation, transmission and distribution capital equipment across many customers and across many decades, a new business model is needed to rapidly bring energy services to the rural and urban poor. Mini-grids and products for individual user end-use such as solar home systems have benefitted from dramatic price reductions and performance advances in solid state electronics, cellular communications technologies, electronic banking, and in the dramatic decrease in solar energy costs2. This mix of technological and market innovation has contributed to a vibrant new energy services sector that in many nations has outpaced traditional grid expansion.
The comparison between the utility model of central-station energy systems and this new wave of distributed energy providers is instructive. Traditional dynamo generators and arc lighting perform best at large scale, and they became the mainstay of large-scale electric utilities. The classic utility model of a one-way flow of energy from power plant to consumers is now rapidly changing. The combination of low-cost solar, micro-hydro, and other generation technologies coupled with the electronics needed to manage small-scale power and to communicate to control devices and to remote billing systems has changed village energy. High-performance, low-cost photovoltaic generation, paired with advanced batteries and controllers, provide scalable systems across much larger power ranges than central generation, from megawatts down to fractions of a watt3.
The rapid and continuing improvements in end-use efficiency for solid state lighting, direct current televisions, refrigeration, fans, and information and communication technology (ICT, as seen in Figure 1) have resulted in a ‘super-efficiency trend’. This progress has enabled decentralized power and appliance systems to compete with conventional equipment for basic household needs. These rapid technological advances in supporting clean energy both on- and off-grid are furthermore predicted to continue. This process has been particularly important at the individual device and household (solar home system) level, and for the emerging world of village mini-grids3.
Diverse Technology Options to Provide Energy Services for the Unelectrified:
With these technological cornerstones, aid organizations, governments, academia, and the private sector are developing and supporting a wide range of approaches to serve the needs of the poor, including pico-lighting devices (often very small 1 – 2 watt solar panels charging lithium-ion batteries which in turn power low-cost/high efficiency light emitting diode lights), solar home systems (SHS), and community-scale micro- and mini-grids. Decentralized systems are clearly not complete substitutes for a reliable grid connection, but they represent an important level of access until a reliable grid is available and feasible. They provide an important platform from which to develop more distributed energy services. By overcoming access barriers often through market-based structures, these systems provide entirely new ways to bring energy services to the poor and formerly un-connected people.
Meeting peoples’ basic lighting and communication needs is an important first step on the ‘modern electricity service ladder’ 4. Eliminating kerosene lighting from a household improves household health and safety while providing significantly higher quality and quantities of light. Fuel based lighting is a $20 billion industry in Africa alone, and tremendous opportunities exist to both reduce energy costs for the poor, and to improve the quality of service. Charging a rural or village cell phone can cost $5 – 10/kWh at a pay-for-service charging station, but less than $0.50 cents/kWh via an off-grid product or on a mini-grid.
This investment frees income and also tends to lead to higher rates of utilization for mobile phones and other small devices. Overall, the first few watts of power mediated through efficient end-uses lead to benefits in household health, education, and poverty reduction. Beyond basic needs there can be a wide range of important and highly-valued services from decentralized power (e.g., television, refrigeration, fans, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, motor-driven applications) depending on the power level and its quality along with demand-side efficiency.
Experience with the ‘off-grid’ poor confirms the exceptional value derived from the first increment of energy service—equivalent to 0.2–1 Wh/day for mobile phone charging or the first 100 lumen-hours of light. Given the cost and service level that fuel-based lighting and fee-based mobile phone charging provide as a baseline, simply shifting this expenditure to a range of modern energy technology solutions could provide a much better service, or significant cost savings over the lifetime of a lighting product (typically 3–5 years).
Mirroring the early development of electric utilities, improvements in underlying technology systems for decentralized power are also being combined with new business models, institutional and regulatory support, and integrated information technology systems5, 6. Historically, the non-technical barriers to adoption have been impediments to widespread adoption of off-grid electricity, and in some cases they still are. A lack of appropriate investment capital also hampers the establishment and expansion of private sector initiatives. Furthermore, complex and often perverse policy environments impair entry for clean technologies and entrench incumbent systems. Subsidies for liquid lighting fuels can reduce the incentive to adopt electric lighting. In addition, the prevalence of imperfect or inaccurate information about quality can lead to market spoiling4 and is also manifested by a lack of consumer understanding and awareness of alternatives to incumbent lighting technology.
Testing laboratories that rate the quality of the lighting products and disseminate the results are an invaluable step in increasing the quality and competitiveness of new entrants into the off-grid and mini-grid energy services space. The Lighting Global (https://www.lightingglobal.org) programme5 is one example of an effort that began as an industry watchdog, but has now become an important platform that provides market insights, steers quality assurance frameworks for modern, off-grid lighting devices and systems, and promotes sustainability through a partnership with industry.
An Action Agenda for Energy Access:
The diversity of new energy service products available, and the rapidly increasing demand for information and communication services, water, health and entertainment in villages worldwide has built a very large demand for reliable and low-cost energy7. Combining this demand with the drive for clean energy brings two important objectives that were for many years seen as in direct competition with alignment around the suite of new clean energy products that can power village energy services.
To enable and expand this process, a range of design principles emerge that can form a roadmap to clean energy economies:
References & Further Reading:
This event is open to all colleges and universities in California. Participation promotes an interest in energy conservation, energy efficiency and green building and solar technologies. The Energy & Technology Center and Community Solar are proud to sponsor this event.
“The Tiny House Competition – Build Small and Win Big” is a new competition in the Sacramento region, challenging collegiate teams to design and build net-zero, tiny solar houses. The event is anticipated to be held in the fall of 2016 and is spearheaded by SMUD’s Energy & Technology Center and Community Solar®program.
The Competition
This event is modeled after the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. An educator or other school administrator will mentor each team. During the two years leading up to the event, students will design and build the energy-efficient houses. A stipend between $3,000 — $6,000 will be provided.
Awards
During the week of competition, students will exhibit their houses to the public, judges and the media. The ten categories of the decathlon include architectural design, livability, communication, affordability, energy efficiency and balance, appliance load, technology/electrical and mechanical systems, transportation, sustainability and documentation. On the last day, teams will be awarded trophies and monetary prizes.
Deadline to apply
The deadline to apply for the 2015 competition has passed.
Workshop date
A Tiny House Workshop is scheduled for November 14 & 15, 2014
Contacts
Suzette Bienvenue, Energy & Technology Center
Suzette.Bienvenue@smud.org
Brent Sloan, Community Solar
Brent.Sloan@smud.org
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Nkiruka Avila is a graduate student in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated with Summa cum Laude honors in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. She has worked in various sectors of the energy industry, from engineering design and production to end-use distribution and marketing. Her current research interests include renewable energy integration, sustainable energy development and rural electrification.
Tony served as manager of Phase I of the EcoBlock project, which ended in 2018.
The EcoBlick is an urban sustainability experiment in Oakland, CA. The project brings together a multi-disciplinary team of urban designers, engineers, social scientists, and policy experts from UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University, as well as local grassroots organizations, non-profits, local utilities PG&E & EBMUD, the City of Oakland and the State of California.
The goal is to EcoBlock demonstrate integrated solutions that dramatically reduce home and neighborhood GHG emissions, dramatically cut water consumption, recycle wastewater, enable organic urban food systems, and promote investment in jobs, renewables and green infrastructure.
Tony received his undergraduate education at Columbia University and Paris-IV Sorbonne in History and Anthropology. He pursued graduate work in medieval Middle Eastern history at the Sorbonne, the American University of Cairo and Columbia, researching the economic history and administration of the irrigation systems in the agricultural lands between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers during the late Sassanid (5th-7th CE) and Abbasid (8th-11th CE) empires.
Tony holds an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and worked in corporate finance in the City of London for JP Morgan, Barclays and ING Barings before transferring to Bryan Garnier in Paris. Thereafter, he established his own Investment Fund specializing in alternative assets. In 2013, he transitioned from Finance to Sustainability with a particular interest in the convergence of economics and the environment. He was a Research Affiliate at the Presidio Graduate School during the 2014 academic year.
Timothy E. Lipman is an energy and environmental technology, economics, and policy researcher and lecturer with the University of California — Berkeley. He is serving as Co-Director for the campus’ Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC), based at the Institute of Transportation Studies, and also as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Pacific Region Clean Energy Application Center (PCEAC). Tim’s research focuses on electric-drive vehicles, fuel cell technology, combined heat and power systems, biofuels, renewable energy, and electricity and hydrogen energy systems infrastructure.
Lipman received his Ph.D. degree in Environmental Policy Analysis with the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis (1999). He also has received an M.S. degree in the technology track of the Graduate Group in Transportation Technology and Policy, also at UC Davis (1998), and a B.A. from Stanford University (1990). His Ph.D. dissertation titled “Zero-Emission Vehicle Scenario Cost Analysis Using A Fuzzy Set-Based Framework” received the University of California Transportation Center’s ‘Charlie Wootan’ Ph.D. dissertation award for 1999. He is also a 2005 Climate Change Fellow with the Woods Institute at Stanford University, and he also received a 2004 Institute of Transportation Engineers service award, a 1998 NSF IGERT teaching fellowship, a 1997 University of California Transportation Center Dissertation Grant, a 1996 ENO Foundation Fellowship, a 1995 University of California Transportation Center Dissertation Grant, and a 1994 Chevron Foundation Fellowship. A native of Golden, Colorado, he graduated Cum Laude from Colorado Academy in 1986.
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