GEは、エネルギー貯蔵システムに関する戦略がここ数年フラフラしたこともあって、大型に限らずバッテリーの開発や設置に関しては後手に回っていた。
今年になってから、かなり真剣に力を入れ出してきた。
下記は、今週開催されている「 Energy Storage North America」で説明のあった、GEのエネルギー貯蔵に関する戦略である。2016年１年間に65MWhのエネルギー貯蔵装置を設置予定であるとのこと。
まあ、AES Energyは、SCE(Southern California Edison)の１カ所の変電所に100MW(400MWh)のバッテリーを設置することが決まっているから、そんなには驚かないけど。GEのことだから、安くなったとはいえ高いんだろうね。
- Now, as we look at 2016, in one year, we're going to put in about 65 megawatt-hours of grid-ready storage systems
- Why was it possible for us to do all this so quickly? It's because even though we are a startup within GE, we have access to so much infrastructure that already exists on the grid.
- This is the infrastructure we need for scaling up. It's easy, I think, relatively speaking, to put one project in the ground, or three, or five. Scale is not about putting one, three, or five projects in the ground; it is about delivering reliably and consistently the services that our customers need. We cannot afford to let them down.
- Scaling is not about just the product, It is about fitting into the ecosystem of the grid where this product lives.
- It is about doing the grid integration study, and the modeling, that tells us where to position the product. Where is the right place, how big should it be, where can we relieve the congestion?
- Should it be a centralized storage at the generation point, or should we build a substation?
- That's the first piece of an offer, and it's all software, and it's online, and it's all data-analyzed. We bring that.
- The second is, how do you make sure that your new product plays well with all the other players on the grid? This is about control systems. For us, in GE, we were just able to leverage controls that we have on all the gas turbines, the terawatts of generation assets we have out there already.
- We have all these gigawatts of solar that have already been deployed all over the world. -What about adding some storage? These are opportunities that are about augmenting what's already on the grid. We would be integrating our superior products with microgrids, with gas engines, with wind.
