How BatNav helps the clean energy transition

So how can disrupting engineering services with automated, customized documents help the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate change? That’s a good question. Here’s how.

Solar and wind are renewable, but also variable. Currently, solar and wind are about 5 % of total electricity generation. But according to IRENA¹ and IEA², by 2050 that could be between 50 % to 90 %. How do we ensure energy security and reliability when the sun isn’t shining, and the wind isn’t blowing? Energy storage.

Energy storage is the missing link in the energy transition. And we need huge amounts of it to deal with daily, weekly and seasonal variability of solar and wind. The demand for energy storage will grow rapidly as renewables grow, and we need to make sure the supply of energy storage keeps up.

OK, but how does BatNav help?

Energy storage technologies are rapidly emerging and evolving, and technically complex. We have commercially available utility-scale Li-ion batteries, but they are still expensive and do not provide long duration storage. These batteries perform best in fast response to grid frequency deviations. But as a long duration storage method, they won’t be the only solution.

There are many emerging alternatives. Flow batteries are commercially available, and sodium-sulfur batteries too. Other technologies include thermal storage, high density pumped hydro systems, closed loop hydrogen storage, stacking concrete blocks like a skyscraper. There are so many amazing ideas and companies developing new technologies. And we need all of them to meet the demand of renewables.

The problem is that people need to buy these technologies. And these decisions have a lot of risk.

Energy storage is expensive. That’s one of the reasons that it is controversial. Decision makers in government and business are required to make buying decisions on an asset worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What if the technology is right for the application? What if the technology doesn’t perform as expected? What if the technology doesn’t last long enough to return on investment? These are the risks faced by decision makers.

BatNav is a scalable platform for expertise. Using machine learning and cloud computing, we scale expertise in energy storage to meet the rapidly growing demand. Decision makers in businesses can access that information on-demand, anywhere, anytime. With the rapid growth of renewables, we need to help decision makers de-risk their projects so the clean energy transition can continue. That’s how BatNav helps the clean energy transition.

 Sources:

1 – IRENA (2018), Global Energy Transformation: A roadmap to 2050, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi.

2 – https://www.iea.org/news/pathway-to-critical-and-formidable-goal-of-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-is-narrow-but-brings-huge-benefits-according-to-iea-special-report