Water Heaters as Energy Storage as a Major Potential Grid

Water geyser is the second largest single user of energy in the home. While we all enjoy a soothing hot shower, rising energy costs—along with their adverse environmental impact—make it a good time to take a closer look at the various options now available.

How Energy Storage Works

One can describe the electricity grid as a complicated system where the demand for power supply and the supply itself must be equal at every time. There is a need for constant adjustment of the supply for predictable changes in demand, like the unplanned changes from storm and equipment overloads, as well as the daily human activity patterns. Energy storage has an important role in helping to create a reliable and flexible grid system and balancing of the storage. For instance, when the supply is more than the demand, the excess supply generated can be used to power storage equipment. Nevertheless, when the demand is greater than supply, the storage facilities can give off their stored energy to the grid. 

The pumping of water back to hydroelectric dams has been useful for many decades as a form of storage. This storage helps in absorbing the surplus capacity from the grid and returns the capacity to the grid when required.

 

The benefits of energy storage

Due to some renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind, which have variable outputs,  the use of storage technologies has more potential for smoothing out the electricity supply from these sources and ensuring that the supply of generation matches the demand. Because of its rapid response, energy storage is valued more. Most storage technologies can start discharging power to the grid speedily whereas sources of fossil fuel have the tendency of taking a longer time to ramp up. This rapid response is very crucial in ensuring the stability of the grid in events of unexpected increases due to demand. Energy storage is also important if you are far from the electric grid. For instance, when lights are turned on in your home, the source of the power is from the grid; however, if you went for camping and turned on a flashlight, the stored energy in the batteries of the touch is what you depend on. In the same way, homes that are far from the transmission grid are more prone to disturbance or disruption when compared to homes in large metropolitan areas. Microgrids and Islands, which are disconnected from the large electric grid system, rely on this energy stored to ensure the stability of power, the same way you depend on the batteries in your touch during camping.

The future of energy storage

As new ways of energy storage technologies are studied and tested, some challenges will surely slow down the commercialization of these technologies. When policies aren’t placed on the monetary value of the benefit of storage, energy storage can be expensive. Without an operational need, it will be difficult for energy storage to be cost effective currently. Moreover, energy storage does not have a strong record of accomplishment of large commercial-scale projects, making it difficult to deploy new projects. There is an exception to this, which is the use of pumped hydro.

Author’s Bio

Alison Wood in this article explains how water heaters as a form of energy storage are beneficial. She also explained how energy storage works and the future of the energy storage.