Welcome to episode 278 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hislop. Batteries, it is said, are the heart of the energy transition. An example of their importance is how they help integrate cheap but variable wind and solar into power grids. In the United States, Arizona, California, and Texas have led the way, in part because they had plenty of available land for large projects.
This is increasingly not the case. Developers now have to cleverly fit more storage into a smaller footprint. I came across an article, energy storage and energy density and EPC's view, And in this episode, I'll be talking to one of its authors, Josh Tucker of EPC, Burns and McDonnell. So welcome to the interview, Josh.
Hi, Markham. Thanks for having me.
Well, quite often in this podcast, we deal with these kind of issues at the 35,000 foot level. But it's always good to get to talk to experts who are working on the ground, who are dealing with, you know, issues like, you know, we don't have enough land or we have to, we have to put more batteries into the what we do have. And so these are the kind of operational, issues that, sort of plague the adoption of any new technology. And, you're on the pointy end of the stick. So maybe what we maybe we should, start talking, in this episode about just the general idea of integrating storage into power grids and the role of batteries.
Maybe you could just give us a brief overview.
Yeah. So, you know, I think to to kinda add to what you're saying, right, the the this is a new industry. So anytime you have a new industry, there's there's always challenges and, trying to figure out, how to integrate, these batteries into, the grid, how to accommodate safety features, and then creating standards and regulations and requirements around that. So that's been always a challenge with the battery energy storage market today, and it still continues as technology continues to evolve. Right?
And so the it's no secret that energy storage is is going to be a key role in in the grid. Right? As you've mentioned, renewables will continue to increase as decarbonization mandates will continue to occur, not only here in in the North America, you know, in in Canada and United States, but globally as well. Energy storage has to play a key role in making sure that our grid is reliable. And so the the really the role of of energy storage is to make sure that, you know, that the grid will become to adjust for the peaks and valleys from renewables, whether the sun stops shine and wind stops blowing, and picking up that frequency re response.
Right. And I I wanna talk about that because I've done a number of interviews about power grids lately. And I if there's one thing that I can take away from those interviews, it's that wind and solar are not drop in replacements for thermal coal or or gas. And when you get to a, you know, small amounts of wind and solar, are relatively easy for the system operator to accommodate. But once you get above a certain percentage, and I don't know what that is, maybe it's 5%, 8%, 10%, but once you get to a certain level, you have to change the way the grid operates to some extent.
You have to add things like storage, ban demand response, market reform, all sorts of things. And is that something that folks in your industry talk about, is how to modify the existing grids, how to how to modernize it perhaps, and and to accommodate storage?
Yeah. I think, I think the grid will continue to be modernized. The way the grid is today is drastically different than it just was, you know, 7, 8 years ago, and it will continue to change. And so storage is one avenue. Alright?
There's other avenues for grid modernization, and, we have a whole transmission distribution team that just focuses on that. So there's multiple avenues to do that, but energy storage will be a key player in making sure that the the grid is reliable and the modernization of the grid moving forward.
Now for I run into opponents of, wind and solar all the time, and one of their, you know, arguments against it is, okay. So fine. You're gonna put some batteries on a on a grid to to help with that. But, you know, you only get you only get 1 hour of storage or you've only get 2 hours or 4 hours of storage, and that's not enough. But my understanding is that batteries play a bigger role than just storing cheap wind and solar when it's when it's available.
I mean, it it helps with frequency regulation. It helps with all sorts of things. Is that the case?
Yeah. Yeah. There's multiple ways to to dispatch a battery and how the battery can operate on the grid. You mentioned frequency response, peak shifting, you know, there's there's all sorts of different ways to really smooth out, disturbances to, again, shift, peaks and valleys. Right?
So, again, you know, solar for instance, you have, you know, the peak where you have over generation during the day when you have peak solar and and and load is low. And then sunsets, people come home from work. Right? You have the then load generation and high load. And, really, you know, batteries can perform that that peak shifting capability, but it does more.
The amount of, the the the fastness that a a battery energy storage system can respond to some sort of frequency disturbance is way faster than any combustion turbine. Right? You're talking seconds to get up to full load, and depending on how big your side is, which for say a 100 megawatt site. Right? You can get a 100 megawatts on the grid in seconds.
And so the ability to account for disturbances with these battery energy storage systems is is a vital role. One one major role that that plays, with the grid.
Yeah. And and it it seems like, grid operators, like batteries. They provide a lot a lot of advantages. And the is it the case and maybe this might be out of your purview, so don't be afraid to say it if if it is. But is it the case that the energy provided by batteries at at key times, at peak load, is more, a higher value than just, you know, storing whatever the like, if it stores 5¢, kilowatt, electricity, when it puts it back into the grid, that electricity has more value than 5¢ a kilowatt hour.
Is that the case?
Yeah so you know, obviously people are here to make money or else we couldn't do these projects right and so there's an economic analysis that you have to do with every single project. You know I don't necessarily specialize in that, but I can understand that know, in order for you to make money, you you basically charge the battery when when power is less expensive and then you discharge when when power is more expensive. That's how you make your profit. That's how you make energy storage systems work. Now what is important with these energy storage systems is really the efficiencies that they have.
So as you do a a cycle of that battery, you're going to have losses. And so your what we call round trip efficiencies are a big factor in your life cycle analysis, your economic analysis you know for for your project. In addition, you know, you also have, you know, aux power consumption when, you know, the when it's not running, right, when you're not making money. Those all those things have to be taken in consideration for a full, analysis of your system and an economic analysis, for the full life of the energy storage system. That's really one reason why batteries, specifically lithium ion batteries, have played such a prevalent role in energy storage is because, one, it's a lower cost option from a capital cost standpoint, and 2, it is it's round trip efficiencies are usually much higher than, you know, some of those non lithium solutions out there.
I I do think there's other energy storage solutions out there that make sense that are being deployed and I think you'll continue to see that in that market and that non lithium market will continue to grow. But I do think the lithium market is is here and it will also continue to grow and be probably the the major energy storage type system, today.
Let's talk about some of those batteries. I note in your article that, energy density increases in the same footprint anyway by about 10 to 12% over the last year. My understanding from other interviews is that energy density of lithium ion was going up an average of 7% a year. But in your field, in the in the bat in the best, which is the, battery, electricity storage systems, Is 10 to 12% increases, more common?
Yeah. Because when I when we look at those numbers, like you said, I'm looking at the whole system as a whole. Now there's little increases you're seeing like the cells for instance. Right? They they were a 2 80 amp hour cell, what prismatic was, we'll say, the dominant lithium ion cell in the market today.
They're making those same cells in that same footprint at 3 14 amp hours today. So you're getting energy density in the cell level, but you're also starting to see, increased density at the module or pack level, you know, how many cells you can put in a module. And then you're putting them in an an enclosure. A lot of times it's a ISO container type size enclosure, and really what we've seen is they've taken any sort of wasted space in those enclosures and removed them and made these as efficient as possible. And then the last thing that really a lot of these battery OEMs integrators are doing is, designing their enclosure from a spacing standpoint to really maximize the spacing between enclosure to enclosure, designing modules specifically for that, and really just trying to take as much advantage as they can.
I think the challenge moving forward is that there's not a whole lot of room to really take advantage of those those solutions. The the market with lithium ion has really, it's probably at close to its peak from an energy density standpoint both at the cell level and both at the enclosure level. And so, you know, we'll see some different technologies moving forward, maybe larger cells potentially to try to again cut down on any sort of space between cell to cell within that module, but that's to be seen. But I don't think we're gonna start seeing those increases in energy densities that we've seen to date moving forward.
One of the, as you can imagine at this stage of the the build out of the grid and the shift to the electrification of our our economies, I get the into the odd conversation with folks who still are pretty skeptical, you know, they they favor the old style, the fossil fuels. And, one of the things I always ask them, especially the oil and gas guys, I said, look, you have these clever petroleum engineers who who engineer solutions to problems that are a mile or 2 below the surface of the Earth. They're incredibly complex problems, but they engineer solutions. Why would you think the battery engineers aren't just as clever? Because clearly they are, and it looks like that in the last, I don't know how many years, Josh, but it sounds like battery engineers are grappling with these kinds of technical issues and coming up with clever solutions all the time to make them better and better and raise the energy density and make them more efficient.
Yeah. I mean, let's let's be honest. I mean, the the energy storage market is is a newer market. Right? And so there are challenges that we need to make sure that we're we're we're overcoming and and, operational aspects that we make sure we're designing around and thinking about to make sure that we are reliable as we go and increase renewables, increase energy storage onto the grid.
And so we will continue to see, you know, just requirements and standards to adjust to where the technology is today to make sure that we are, again, having a reliable grid. And so, yeah, I think we can get there, and I think it will there will be a series of challenges as we, we move more and more fossil from our grid, that base load power that we're so traditionally used to having, and replacing it with, you know, renewables which can be intermittent and then sprinkling the energy storage in there to, again, create that reliable grid. And so, can we get there? Yes. Is it gonna be a challenge?
Sure. But it's no different than how we've had different challenges throughout our entire, you know, energy, you know, life cycle within not only, you know, again, not in the United States, North America, Canada, but also globally. And and so we'll continue to adapt and change.
Yeah. I would agree with that. I think that reflects what I'm being told by experts that I interview. One last question about about batteries. I have interviewed some folks who were in the sodium ion batteries, zinc ion, iron ion. There seems to be a tremendous amount of innovation has gone on now for a while in the battery space. Solid state would be another one. What role will new chemistries, and new, other advances in battery technology play into grid storage?
Yeah. I would think to date in energy storage, you know, really it was NMC, NCA, and LFP chemistries is really ones that dominate the same ones that dominated, you know, the EV market and if you really think about energy storage, it really just followed the EV market. EV market will always be will always sell more batteries than EV market. Right? EV is is driving per se.
Right? They're driving the technology of lithium ion batteries and really energy storage is just piggybacking on those advancements that that they make in the EV space. So moving forward I think you know the EV will continue to try to innovate, and they'll look at different ways to cut costs, longer durations, all those things. Right? So sodium ion really comes into play because it's actually a less costly type of technology to manufacture.
And so, so that's why, you know, that that's why there's a demand to look into that technology and in fact, they are deploying sodium ion, lithium ion batteries. The challenge with sodium ion is it just has more, we'll say, mechanical stresses associated with it as you cycle the battery. And so you need to make sure that you're accounting for that, so you can have the longevity of the battery that you currently do with, current lithium ion. If you wanna talk, you know, solid state, you know, solid state is definitely the, we'll say, top tier type chemistry. It it is a more energy dense, potentially safer battery.
The the the the concern with solid state is that it is very hard to manufacture. It's it's pure lithium on the anode. You got a solid electrolyte, how those play with each other and, you know, you almost have to down to the microscopic level to to make sure that there's no imperfections, so your tolerance levels are very low. So to scale that up in a manufacturing level to to bring down your cost is really what's gonna be very difficult for solid state. And so you have lots of different battery suppliers looking into it, and we'll see what happens.
You know, people do think it could be something of the future. I think, obviously, they could figure it out, scale it up, and get cost down, then, yes, we definitely we would would replace lithium ion batteries. But that's that's a big if and and win really as well.
Sure. Well, let's talk about, you know, projects. And particularly in in the big cities, the large dense urban areas, where you have just everything's packed in, the way it is. And so you have less space to to work. And now instead of have in since you have less space, you're going up. What are the challenges with doing vertical batteries battery installations?
Yeah. So we are we're seeing higher demands for for larger projects in urban areas. You know, again, urban areas consume a lot of electricity, and so you really wanna put your, sources, right, generation sources, you know, close to those areas. And so due to the of space in urban areas, right, you there's only you have to become more energy dense. And so there's multiple ways that I that is that is being looked at.
One way is building based solutions. Building based solutions have been around for a while. They're they are more energy dense than the traditional, you know, we'll say purpose built enclosures that's being deployed. But there's also challenges you got to, you know, fire concerns are always a a concern with with batteries and how we, design building based systems to, address those concerns is one challenge. Right?
Putting in a a a lot of batteries in a small space, you know, how do you get all those batteries in and out of the building. Right? So from a transportation, offloading, setting, you know, construct the be very costly to build in the city. And then and then with the demands going so much higher, we're talking, you know, upwards of potentially 250 megawatt gigawatt hour facilities in the city, maybe the only way is to go vertical. Then you're talking multistory buildings and again, you know, how do you construct that design around, all those things I mentioned before.
The other way is is really maybe taking, again, those purpose built enclosures, those ISO container type, sizes of battery, storage systems and then going vertical with those and then you start looking at stacking those. So then you gotta look at, you know, different considerations from a structural standpoint, you know, getting back cables in and out, different challenges there. So, you know, they're no different than what we'd look at a normal job, which is it's different, right, as you would look at from a, seismic and wind and, that. It's just making sure that, that your design's accounting for all the site parameters, and it gets more difficult. And then also you always when you do these designs, a lot of times you have to account for augmentation.
And so making sure you have space, making sure you have a plan for augmentation is also key in when you're looking at these sites.
One question I have for you is when you when we talk about large cities and and you know dense urban areas, I think of LA. Now LA is not as dense as New York, but nevertheless, it's it's a it's a big sprawling city. And one of the problems that California has had is the rapid increase in rooftop solar. And, you know, they've had to curtail a lot of solar production. And that situation screams out for a storage solution, at least in in part.
Is it possible that the kind of, best that we're talking about at the grid level could also be built in such a way that it could work with virtual power plants, where you are aggregating a lot of many many different say rooftop solar, production generation, and and and then go from the battery in into the grid. What's your take on that?
Yeah. I I do I've had heard of many people kinda discuss that as as a potential moving forward in the future. I think there's a lot to be thought about when you start implementing those. I'll give you a few examples. Right?
Before we ever go do a project, we have to do a full interconnect. We gotta do modeling. We gotta understand the impacts that it has on the grid, you know, in addition to what I talked about the economic analysis and everything else. So being able to regulate that and manage that, I think is be something that, that will have to be figured out moving forward. But, yeah, I think that's a possibility.
We've heard a lot about that, but when that can be implemented, how it makes sense, how you can make sure that it's safe and secure, and how you can rely on that, type of system, is is I think yet to be determined.
Yeah. Fair enough. But I and I think we often underplay the challenges that some of these new technologies play and the importance of taking the time to get it right so that we're not, you know, putting up storage facilities that that catch fire and and then you, you know, burn half a city, before you get it under control or something like that. You know, it's just as an example. One of the issues that is of interest to me is safety, and you deal with this in your article, and I'll tell you why.
We have a client in Germany called Accure, a c c u r e, and they have a cloud based battery monitoring system. So I've had to do interviews with, with a couple of their scientists about how those work and monitoring the health of the battery so that they catch imperfections before you have a thermal runaway and start a fire, I think is the basis of their business, really. And I'm wondering the extent to which battery monitoring is integrated into, into the projects that that you work on?
So every single battery, that gets deployed on our projects has a battery management system. That battery system is listed to u l 1973, so it's a series of tests they have to pass in order to have a 1973, UL listed system. And it really is for the the protection of the batteries, and making sure you cannot operate those batteries in a certain way to, you know, basically cause thermal runaway. But in addition to that, you know, I'm not a a a battery expert. I don't manufacture batteries or anything else like that, but just from my knowledge of being in the industry, you know, a lot of those battery management systems will look at voltage, they will look at temperature, and then there's any sort of irregularly irregularities, they will basically shut that system off.
And so a lot of times, your battery management system can, will detect a thermal runaway before anything else, Right? Before your smoke detectors or any sort of fire protection type alarm system device. In addition to that, there is a potential that it could detect it before it goes in the thermal runaway and and and take it off, offline. So I do believe the battery suppliers are trying to get better at predicting, a thermal runaway event before it happens. And I think we'll again continue to probably see improvements as, you know, these battery manufacturers, design you know, have further and further research and improve their products.
One question I have for you, Josh, is we're seeing, in the last few years in particular, the effects of climate change. We're seeing, whatever extreme whatever weather events we're getting, whether they be wildfires, whether they be drought, whether they be storms and floods, they seem to be more much more severe, and I wonder the extent to which, when you're planning systems, you take climate change into into consideration?
That's a challenging question to be honest. I mean, mean, a lot of times we will look at design conditions, we will look at history of areas, and we'll work with our clients to just determine, you know, what we need to design around. So as you mentioned, you know, when when there's maybe 1, we'll have to look at seismic, we'll have to look at temperature. Right? All those design conditions are established upfront in our projects, and then ultimately, our goal as as an engineering company, right, is to make sure that what's being installed can meet those design conditions.
So, yes, that is challenging because, you know, the design conditions, do do change over time, but to look at the complete history of a climate in a certain area, you know, is is something that we we do and then we, again, come to an agreement usually with our clients on what we should design around.
Yeah. Fair enough. Well, let's wrap up the interview this way, Josh. If you could look out 2 years, maybe 5 years out into the future, at the trends you're already seeing within the industry, what kind of trends, should, my listeners be looking for?
You mean like with the the energy storage in particular?
Yes. For at the grid level.
I I think you're gonna see larger and larger projects. You know, I I I think just a couple years ago, you know, 100 megawatt, 250 megawatt, you know, 2 hour, 4 hour systems were very large projects, and I think you're just going to see that as being more the average type projects and you're gonna see even more larger projects upwards of 750 megawatts. So I think the the projects are gonna get larger. Again, as the increase in renewables, the decrease in fossil also basically gives you an increase in storage. And so, the the other thing that you're you're eventually gonna see and I don't know when this happens if that's 5 years, but, you know, you look at California and it used to be, you know, 2 hour, now it's 4 hour.
You look at Texas, it used to be 1 hour, now it's it's 2 hours. So your durations are going to get longer. And so we talked a little bit about non lithium, right, and and longer duration kinda fits more of that non lithium port portfolio, but you could also see improvements in the lithium ion space to account for those longer durations. You saw it when, you know, the 2 hour went to 4 hour, and now you see a lot of battery suppliers have a a 2 hour design and a 4 hour design because there's efficiencies you can have in the battery and thermal management system as you go into that longer duration. So not only can you see improvements in the lithium ion size, you go longer duration, you're probably gonna see non lithium solutions maybe be more prevalent or maybe more viable option as well.
The, my impression, Josh, from watching California and Texas in particular, from afar, is that, you know, the the grid outages that they had that were highly publicized and and really, stressful for, citizens in those in those states. The response by grid operators was part of it anyway was was to install storage, And that seems to have made a significant difference at ERCOT in Texas and Casio in, in, California. And, can we expect that the, you know, increased adoption of batteries, the kind we've been talking about today, will lead to more and more stability and flexibility that, you know, were were a problem a couple years ago, but it seemed to be less of a problem today. What's your take on that?
It it definitely seems that way. I mean, just a few examples we've had in the last year or 2 in California and Texas, storage has played a major role in making sure that the grid, you know, did not become unstable. Right? There's you you can go online and look at the, you know, when they had the heat wave in California and how much of a role storage played during that, you know, during that time. And so storage is playing a major role in that and I think will continue.
As I mentioned earlier, right, I think we're gonna see more and more storage systems come into play and so I think, it will definitely again, that's the reason why, it has become such a technology of choice for the grid and the grid stabilization is because its ability to, you know, stabilize the grid. It's fast response. It we can and then the the projects, like I said, are getting larger so you got more megawatts and megawatt hours, longer durations to account for those, longer disturbances whether whether, it's just high loads or, you know, whatever the case may be. So, yes. To answer your question, it will play a major role moving forward, and I think we've already seen it today.
A final question occurs to me, Josh, and I hear this all the time from a particular politician in Alberta, who makes the claim, and I won't mention, their name, to protect the guilty. But the this idea that you have to if you have a a megawatt of generating capacity that's come from wind or solar, that has to be paired with a megawatt of of either gas fired, generation or a battery storage. And that does not seem right to me. Based on the interviews I have done, and even this interview, it does not seem that that's plausible. What would be your take on, you know, like if you had a gigawatt of of solar, how much, if you could answer this question, how much storage would you need, for that generating capacity?
Yeah. I can't say that I specifically have done any any research in that that area. What what I can say is that, you know, as we go through the decarbonization process, right, I think we need to make sure that we're thinking ahead and being proactive and making sure that we're putting in the systems in place to again that we have those the stable grids because we we are losing base load power as you lose coal and and gas. Right? But there's ways to account for that and making sure you're planning for that and making sure that you're you're supplementing that in ways that that you can have that stable grid moving forward.
So, and then and then we all know that everything's being we we live in an electrified world, so load's gonna continue to increase. And so we not only do we have to account for, you know, less fossil fuels on our grid, but we also have to account for increasing loads. So again, being proactive in multiple areas. We started this talking about grid modernization. Right?
There's there's ways to do that on the transmission side. There's also ways to do that on the generation side. So making sure we're using, you know, all of the technologies at hand to plan accordingly and being proactive to make sure that as the grid changes, you know, we we are, putting forth a a stable grid moving forward as well.
Yeah. That that makes perfect sense to me, and I think that's very consistent with what I've what I've heard, over the the course of, of my previous interviews. So, Josh, this has been very insightful. I mean, it's, you know, as an energy nerd, I I I don't understand. I don't know.
I don't have a, familiarity with all the technical points that you raised. But I think that my takeaway from this is that, utilities and engineering companies and and battery manufacturers, you know, are addressing the issues that come along with a changing grid with variable, power generation, as you mentioned. And and we'll we'll solve some of these, you know, all of these problems eventually, with a little few hiccups along the way, I'm sure. But this gives me, some hope that we're going to, you know, have a cleaner, better, flex more flexible, low cost grid, going forward. So look, I we really appreciate this information.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Again, thanks for having me. This is, really fun to talk to you about this. You know, I've been in the power industry for 17 years and just seeing how much it changed in in that time has been incredible. And, you know, I think it's exciting times to be in this industry because again, it's changing so quickly and it takes a lot of different people, with a lot of different experiences to make sure that we're successful in moving forward in in implementing these changes.
You know, that's really funny. I we keep we keep coming up with more things to talk about here. But I often remark that the Canadian power grids, because we really have 10 provincial grids is what we have. They are not integrated like the way they are down in the U. S.
But, we are almost victims of our own success. We have these mainly hydro and nuclear dominated grids. That are very stable, very low cost, very reliable. And we don't think in terms of revolutionizing or transforming those grids with new technologies. But down in the U. S, it's much much different, and I think that your comment, just now reflects that, the the the pace of change.
Yeah, again I do think it's exciting times because of all the changes, but let's be real, it's challenge. Right? And so you you gotta make sure that you're thinking about it the right way when you're you're moving forward in there. And so, it's something that you don't wanna, you know, you wanna make sure you're playing around accordingly. Right?
And making sure that you you have the people out there that can overcome these challenges because it is a transformation and it's not easy and that's why sometimes it takes a little bit because, change makes people feel uncomfortable sometimes and and you need to make sure that you're overcoming what the concerns are. And so it moving forward, right, having innovation, having different things, regulation standards to make sure we're doing it right is is will be will be important and it will get people to feel more comfortable around those changes, when that happens.
Well, Josh, I can honor I I know 100 of engineers in in my time, and I can tell you I've never met one that didn't like a challenge. So I have no I have no doubt that clever engineers are gonna figure this out. Thank you very much for this.
Yeah. Again, thank you and I appreciate it.