The falling price of renewable energy has been dominating the headlines, but more dramatic change is happening behind the scenes, where battery storage is disrupting the way utilities provide power.
The change is driven not just by cheap renewables and cheap batteries, but by the electronics that link them together, said Mark Ahlstrom, the president of the non-profit Energy Systems Integration Group.
“Unlike all the old spinning generators that were electromechanically coupled to the grid, these are using power electronics, computers, state-of-the-art technologies that scale really well, as we’ve seen with other industries,” said Ahlstrom, who also serves as vice president for renewable energy policy at NextEra Energy. “And it really is the digital revolution finally hitting the power industry.
“We saw it coming a little bit with wind and solar and what we’re really doing with storage is going to push it over the edge in a big way.”
Read more: Forbes