| | October 20199Just as cell phones circumvented the need to construct landline infrastructure, so too the future of solar will leapfrog present energy delivery and storage systems. The future of power management is controlled by a home-applong distances. Just as cell phones circumvented the need to construct landline infrastructure, so the future of solar will leapfrog present energy delivery and storage systems. Consumer and Business Trends Point Toward Solar's SustainabilityConsumer and business sentiment are trending toward sustainable, renewable forms of energy. According to a recent survey by Edison Electric Institute, 70 percent agreed that we should produce 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. More than 80 cities and 150 private companies--including Google, Ikea, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nike, and GM--have committed to 100 percent renewables.Beyond that, the EPA estimates that more than one pound of carbon dioxide is produced for every kilowatt hour of power produced by a power plant. For every home that goes solar, 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide are saved per year per home. Less carbon dioxide equals less heat trapped in our atmosphere.Energy Is Becoming Much Easier to Store Thanks to skyrocketing consumer demand for electric cars, the automotive industry has focused its attention on research and development in battery chemistries, making the reliability and storage power of batteries much more favorable than a decade ago. Consequentially, storage costs have fallen by 80 percent since 2010and are expected to continue to decrease. This has driven favorable economics for stationary storage, which allows organizations to have backup power or be completely off-the-electrical-grid and self-managed. With low cost storage, not only does solar electricity become 24 hours base load power, but the manner in which the electrical grid buys, sells, and balances power dramatically changes.Storage installations are expected to more than double between 2019 and 2020and continue on a substantial growth-trend as prices decrease, efficiencies increase, and additional states realize the economic sense of deployment.The Future of Power Management Is Controlled By A Phone-App Though a few will still exist, large centralized coal power plants with backup gas peaking plants, all linked by thousands of miles of power lines and million-dollar substations, are disappearing. Driven by the steep decline in the prices of storage and power, as well as the proliferation of electric vehicles, the future of power is this: Many smaller homes and businesses will power the grid and balance the local power markets. In fact, a large industry is emerging in virtual power plants. Case in point: Sonnen recently won deployment of a virtual power plant in Utah of 12.6 megawatts. This shift represents an exciting move from economies of scale in the form of big power plants to economies of density in the form of technology-enabled local networks, which solve a variety of existing inefficiencies. Unlike their large-scale power plant counterparts, virtual power plants provide localized reactive and voltage support, frequency regulation stabilization and restoration, and dispatch flexibility.Moreover, aged infrastructure must be replaced, which is costly. As a result, this technology-enabled segment is expected to grow at 29 percent through 2023. In other words, the future of power looks much more like an app that controls your Nest than your monthly power bill. ECJonathan Doochin
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