All about Utility-Scale Battery Storage in Canada
(Originally published in 2020. Updated April 2024)
As Canada looks to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, diversification of our energy sources to include more renewable forms of energy is becoming increasingly important. One such technology that is becoming increasingly widespread, among both Canada and the world, is the use of utility-scale battery storage.
With the demand for electricity growing, there is a need for more energy at peak-demand times while also not increasing the amount of harm we cause our natural environment by pollution and emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Battery storage lets us store energy developed at one time for use later at another time. This increases the efficiency of our grid and mitigates the downsides of renewables such as solar and wind.
Alberta has 11 current battery storage facilities in operation, with several more in the early stages of development – read about them here.
What is Utility-Scale Battery Storage?
Utility or Grid-Scale Battery Storage is essentially what it sounds like: the use of industrial power batteries to store energy that can be accessed when needed.
Picture the battery that’s in your cellphone. When you plug your phone into an outlet, the electric current then prompts a chemical reaction in the battery, converting the electrical energy into chemical potential energy. When you use your phone, the chemicals in the battery undo the reaction, transforming the stored chemical energy into electricity that powers your phone.
Large scale battery storage works in much the same way, transforming electrical energy (on a much larger scale) to other forms of energy, which can be contained within the battery until it is needed.
The power storage industry is booming, with more projects coming online globally. The largest (as of spring 2024) is set to be Calpine’s Nova Power Bank in California, an enormous power bank of Lithium-ion batteries which will have a capacity of 680-megawatt in total when the second phase is completed in 2025. This amount of storage will be able to power about 680,000 homes for up to four hours when charged.
Types of Energy Storage Systems
Not all batteries use chemical energy to store energy. There are a variety of ways grid power batteries harness potential energy.
Pumped Hydraulic Storage:
Water is pumped to an elevated reservoir, where it is stored as potential energy.
When the electricity is needed, the water is allowed to move down to a reservoir of lower elevation, turning a generator in the process, releasing the energy.
Electrical ⇾ Potential ⇾ Kinetic ⇾ Electrical
Advanced Battery Energy Storage:
This is— quite literally— a giant battery. This is the most likely your best option for home energy storage (unless you have a waterfall in your backyard). The chemical solutions most used are lead-acid, lithium-ion or the newer saltwater batteries.
Electrical ⇾ Chemical ⇾ Electrical
Compressed Air Energy Storage:
Compressed air underground is heated as natural gas combusts in a separate chamber. This heated air then rises to drive a generator. This model of heating air separately from the combustion (the diabatic method) generates triples the electricity yield per natural gas input, leading to 40-60% reduction in CO2, and is more efficient by 42-55%.
Electrical ⇾ Thermal Energy ⇾ Kinetic ⇾ Electrical
Flywheel Energy Storage:
Electrical energy drives a wheel spinning in a low-friction chamber. When energy is needed the speed of the wheel is reduced and increases as it is being charged.
Electrical ⇾ Kinetic ⇾ Electrical
Thermal Energy Storage:
A thermal storage material, like water or graphite, is heated to high temperatures of up to 1700 degrees Celsius, and stored in a way to minimize heat loss, such as in an insulated chamber or underground. When it’s time to access the reserve energy, this heat can be used directly for space heating or water heating, or even be used to generate steam which can power a turbine to generate electricity.
Electrical -> Thermal -> Kinetic -> Electrical
The Pros and Cons of Grid Energy Storage
Advantages
Renewables
Electrical energy storage is good for the overall efficiency of energy production and consumption, but it’s especially a boon for the development of renewable energy.
Forms of renewable energy that are intermittent and reliant on weather conditions become more reliable, such as wind and solar, as excess energy can be stored for times when it isn’t as readily available.
It’s also able to act as a reserve for utility demand. During off-peak hours, power plants could store large amounts of energy to be released during periods of high demand.
Affordability
Having reserved power in the form of battery storage can also protect consumers and vital industries from power outages, reducing the need for electricity generators to have peak generation capacity. Instead, off-peak generation will be able to provide surplus energy for when demand reaches peak levels, without the need for additional generation.
Grid-connected storage systems that are supplied by a wide variety of energy sources can integrate all the surplus electricity into one unit, allowing for a significant amount of reserve energy to be distributed as needed.
Disadvantages
Energy Loss
Battery technology is far from perfect. The transformation of energy is never 100% efficient, meaning that with each transformation, some energy is lost.
Thinking back to the example of a phone battery, you might notice in times of extensive use, your phone might heat up significantly. This heat is thermal energy lost by the battery, unable to be converted to electricity that your phone uses.
Another energy storage problem to face is the fact that the capacity to store energy — particularly in chemical cells— degrade over time as the chemicals increasingly become non-reactive. This is similar to how old phones are unable to hold a charge as they did when they were new.
However, this loss of electricity is minimal compared to the benefits it can provide for a power-grid.
Potential Risk
While the outlook for battery storage is very positive and it seems to prove an invaluable technology at decarbonizing our energy-grid, risks to the nature – and sometimes the people – around them have made some skeptical of their installation in certain areas, including some in our backyard.
An analysis of the large-scale battery storage operations in the U.S. found that 2% of these storage sites had a major safety-related event, causing damage to between 1-2% of the total capacity. Most of these incidents happened within 1 to 2 years of installation.
Different forms of batteries have different risks associated with them, but since electrochemical batteries have become the primary form of battery storage, and lithium-ion batteries are the most widely used chemical battery at this time, it makes sense to focus on the potential negatives of these batteries.
Chemical battery storage sites in Arizona, California, and Australia have caught fire, and since these incidents are chemical fires, the outcome can be much more costly, with many uncertainties happening between the amount of damage a fire can cause to the site, the difficulty of putting these chemical fires out safely, and any impacts that might cause when battery chemicals are released or ignited.
Similar types of risk exist for chemical leakage, as well as any pollution that can happen because of construction, including noise and dust pollution.
However, as new battery storage facilities come online, these previous incidents have become models of what to avoid.
Today, battery storage sites are designed with more considerations regarding these incidents, including in-depth detection systems, regular safety evaluations, and Emergency Response Plans that help first responders safely deal with the emergency.
As other forms of energy storage are studied, we might see a move away from Lithium-ion batteries in these large-scale projects in the future. However, with anything that is at the cutting edge of science and technology, it pays to make careful considerations.
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