The U.K. Parliament’s Energy and Climate Change Committee has called on the nation’s government to incentivise innovative energy storage and demand side response (DSR) technologies.
“There is an incredible opportunity for the UK to become a world leader in these disruptive technologies,” said the Committee’s Chair, Angus MacNeil MP. ” Yet our current energy security subsidies favour dirty diesel generation over smart new clean tech solutions.”
In what is the Committee’s final report, it states energy storage would help secure electricity supplies, provide a degree of stability to the nation’s power market and help rein in wholesale electricity prices.
The report recommends Government ” move quickly” on addressing regulatory barriers faced by storage and that it makes public commitment to making the UK a world-leader in this regard. The major barriers are perceived as being ownership of storage assets and the lack of a clear regulatory and legislative governing framework.
Mr MacNeil says £7bn per annum of savings to consumers could be achieved if current regulatory barriers to storage were removed.
The Committee has also called for an end to double-charging, where storage facilities are charged for consuming the electricity they store and supply back to the grid, and the final consumer of that electricity is also charged.
” The Government should also consider a possible subsidy framework for energy storage to accelerate deployment given the importance of storage to unlocking the full potential of renewable energy,” the Committee states.
Additionally, the Committee says capacity market rules and regulations in relation to storage need to be reviewed, including perhaps increasing the contract length and dealing with restrictions relating to stacking of revenues for storage projects.
The report, The Energy Revolution And Future Challenges For UK Energy And Climate Change Policy, can be viewed in full here (PDF).
According to independent consultancy firm Eunomia, energy storage installed capacity in the UK stood at 24MW at the beginning of this year; with most of that being demonstration projects. The company forecasts that under current policy settings, the total installed capacity will exceed 1.6 GW in 2020 – with much of that being behind-the-meter.
In related news, the first commercial Tesla Powerpack project in the European Union is currently being installed in Somerset, UK.
