Renewable Energy World’s Editor on Energy Storage

Here’s a video featuring Renewable Energy World’s editor, Jennifer Runyon, discussing energy storage and the different roles it plays.  She describes how, at one time, storage is a generation asset (providing power at peak moments and coping with the variability of solar and wind), a transmission asset (smoothing out the “wave form” that defines our alternating current and reducing the overall amount of transmission that is required), and a load asset, enabling people to put some PV on their roof, and providing for all their power needs with renewable energy.

This sounds terrific on paper.  Isn’t it great that one single entity provides all these benefits?  (There are others as well that she doesn’t mention.)  Sure, but then we need to ask:  Who should pay for it?  That’s when the answers start to get harder to find.