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20 | 20TH - 26TH MAY 2016 | UTILITY WEEK Operations & Assets Analysis T he time is now for investment." This is the view of Joe Warren, chief execu- tive of Powervault, one of the many energy storage companies thriving on the crest of a wave of activity in the nascent sector. Aer being talked of for years as a sig- nificant technology for the future of the elec- tricity system, we are now at a point where energy storage – at all scales from domestic up to industrial and grid – has arrived. Major international brands – such as Nissan and Tesla – are getting involved, along with Eon and British start-ups Moixa and Powervault. In addition to rapidly declining technol- ogy costs (lithium ion batteries typically cost around $200/kWh today compared with $3,000/kWh in 1990), a key driving force behind this surge in development is the imminent arrival of smart metering and the promise of time-of-use tariffs. David Holmes, managing director of the Quarry Battery Company, estimates that Britain could cut the cost of decarbonising its electricity supply by £3.5 billion a year with grid-scale electricity storage to balance intermittent renewables. If technology costs continue to fall and investment continues to stream into energy storage, the National Infrastructure Commission has said that 15,000MW of energy storage could feasibly be deployed in the UK by 2030, kick-starting this momentous energy system transition. Among the most notable recent energy storage announcements is the news that the leading manufacturer and seller of elec- tric vehicles (EVs) Nissan – it has sold more than 200,000 sold since 2010 – has turned its attention to storage. The Japanese company has partnered with power management firm Eaton (see box, below) to develop the xStorage device, which reuses old EV batteries for domestic energy storage. Nissan also has plans to turn its EVs into "mobile storage", whereby vehi- cles help to balance the grid (see "Using EVs to offer backup storage to the grid", right). Nissan joins Tesla as an automotive big hitter revealing aspirations in the energy storage market. Tesla unveiled its Power- wall storage device last year and says it had orders for 38,000 devices in the first week Closer to home, Powervault has unveiled the second generation of its household storage device in preparation for the smart Battery storage on the cusp Battery technology has advanced to the point where commercial systems are hitting the market and electric vehicles themselves could double as grid storage devices. Mathew Beech reports. Some of the latest storage solutions on offer: 1. Nissan xStorage Japanese car manufacturer Nissan has teamed up with power manage- ment company Eaton to launch its xStorage battery storage unit, which will also form a central part of its vehicle-to-grid (V2G) solution (see box, right). The 4.2kWh unit will cost consum- ers £3,200 and it is being touted Source: Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, May 2016 " as the most affordable domestic energy storage solution on the market. Nissan and Eaton expect to sell 100,000 xStorage units in the next five years. 2. Powervault Domestic energy storage company Powervault recently launched the second generation of its energy storage system (see main copy, above). The systems are equipped with an emergency power socket to keep essential equipment running in the event of a blackout. 3. Tesla Tesla founder Elon Musk sparked wider interest in the energy storage sector when he revealed last year his company was launching the Powerwall battery storage device. It comes in 7kWh and 10kWh forms and the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are designed to collect and store excess energy from roof- mounted solar panels. 4. Moixa Moixa is in the midst of a £1.5 mil- lion pilot project for Decc in which it will install and test 250 energy storage units to demonstrate how storage can benefit customers and networks. At the end of last year, it also launched the Maslow GridShare platform so residential energy stor- age can be aggregated, allowing network operators to more easily balance supply and demand. ELECTRIC CAR REGISTRATIONS (UK) 2014-16 7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 2.0% 1.8% 1.6% 1.4% 1.2% 1.0% 0.8% 0.6% 0.4% 0.2% 0.0% Installed capacity, GW Feb 14 Mar 14 Apr 14 May 14 Jun 14 Jul 14 Aug 14 Sep 14 Oct 14 Nov 14 Dec 14 Jan 15 Feb 15 Mar 15 Apr 15 May 15 Jun 15 Jul 15 Aug 15 Sep 15 Oct 15 Nov 15 Dec 15 Jan 16 Feb 16 Electric car registrations Percentage total registrations