National Research Council announced its energy storage research program

Integrating renewable energy technologies, including wind and solar, into Canada’s electricity infrastructure can be accelerated by overcoming technical and cost barriers to grid-scale energy storage. While participating at the Renewable Energy Storage Summit, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) announced its Energy Storage for Grid Security and Modernization research program.

“This large-scale, multi-year, collaborative approach will deploy a critical mass of expertise in targeted areas to help resolve the reliability and affordability challenges of integrating new technologies into a modernized electricity grid,” said Andy Reynolds, General Manager of the Energy, Mining and Environment portfolio at the National Research Council of Canada. “This will help grow Canada’s renewable energy sector and create new markets for enabling technology and material suppliers, including the mining industry.”

Canada’s electricity grid will require significant maintenance and upgrades over the next 20 years, which could raise energy costs for consumers. Energy storage helps manage variable daily and seasonal energy generation and consumption levels and make more efficient use of existing transmission and distribution assets (for example: transmission lines, power stations, circuit breakers, etc.). It also provides opportunities for peak shaving (reducing consumption demands during peak hours) and arbitrage (purchasing electricity and storing it when prices are low, and then selling it when prices are high). By distributing energy storage technologies close to consumers, multiple economic benefits can be provided by a single installation which will reduce costs for end-users.