Invited Paper EN-MoA6
Electrochemical Energy Storage for Renewable Integration and Grid Applications: Status, Challenges and Opportunities

Monday, October 31, 2011, 3:40 pm, Room 104

Growing concerns over the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels and their resource constrains, along with the increasing world energy consumption, have spurred great interests in renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar. However, the power from these intermittent sources is constantly varied, making quite challenging for its use and dispatch through the aging electrical grid. One effective way to smooth out the intermittency is to employ electrical energy storage (EES). As such EES has been widely considered as a key enabler of the future grid or smart grid that is expected to integrate a significant level of renewable, while providing electricity or “fuel” to hybrid and electrical vehicles. Among the potential technologies are electrochemical energy storage technologies or batteries that are capable of storing a large quantity of electricity and releasing it according to demands. There remain significant challenges however for the current technologies to meet the performance and cost matrices for broad market penetration. This paper offers an overview on varied technologies, in particular batteries, and discusses the status, challenges and research needs.