Electrical Connection Spring 2015

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a l c o n
Hawaii will see mainstream adoption of
the technology as early as 2018. Australian
conditions are actually very similar – our
energy prices are some of the highest in
the world – so it’s not unreasonable to
assume Australia will be operating on a
similar time frame,” John says.
“That will shock many people because
there seems to be a pervading view that
energy storage is still five to 10 years away,
but that’s just not the case. I joined the solar
industry in 2008 when there were 22MW
of installed solar in Australia now there’s
4GW. So rapid change is something we’ve
seen before in the industry and I think the
conditions are similar for energy storage as
they were for solar.”
As is often the case with rapidly
developing technologies, Australian
standards – that were written around lead
acid batteries – are going to have to play
some pretty serious catch up. To this end,
Standards Australia recently announced
that it is forming a working group to
update the standards in relation to energy
storage. The ESC will be part of that process
and sit on the committee.
“We want long term, safe, reliable,
high quality energy storage solutions for
Australia. We don’t want to see systems
that are half baked come into the market
and cause injury or damage. It would
be really bad for an industry like energy
storage so making sure that what we do
at this early stage is world’s best practice is
what we should be aspiring to.
“We also need to engage in a positive way
with utilities. We need to understand the
technical issues that they face and how the
application of energy storage can help them
deliver against their mandate. We don’t want
to set up a situation where it’s us or them,
where the utilities block out energy storage
because they’re fearful that it’s actually
taking market share away from them. So
engaging in a positive way with the utilities
and the regulators is really important for our
industry and that’s the other primary focus
of our work at the moment.”
Such is the opportunity presented
by power storage technology, Electrical
Connectionwill continue to investigate the
storage sector and profile any advances to
the technology on offer.
> Energy Storage Council
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