 | Special Letter The solution is solar and storage By Benjamin Brown, Joey Haber, Ian Miller & Adama Toure FiReStarter 2025 Company Skip Technology ______ Those with knowledge of the energy sector have been aware for decades of the need for better energy storage solutions. In recent years, it has broken into the mainstream and become a key consideration across a range of industries and in government energy policy. In 2015, Simon Hackett wrote in these pages about the need for long-duration energy storage and the incredible potential of the market. In the 10 years since that article, the case for LDES has only grown stronger. Solar installations have been growing orders of magnitude faster than predicted, and new markets in data centers and developing countries are emerging to drive demand ever higher. Meanwhile, our solutions have barely evolved. The only thing holding solar power back from solving the planet's energy needs is the lack of a viable LDES solution to pair with it. (See SNS Global Report Energy Storage: The Key to Global Solar and LDES Is Ready for Prime Time.) Dispersed microgrids operating off of solar and LDES have the potential to turn the tide of the energy crisis in humanity's favor. (See SNS Global Report Plan A: Global Solar Now.) Cheap, clean energy is the key to a brighter future and solar power, paired with LDES, is the future of energy. As folks with a front-row seat to developing LDES technology, we believe that the problems and opportunities run even deeper than that: it is rapidly becoming clear that solar microgrids with energy storage are the only resource that can be deployed quickly enough to match growing grid demand and the only solution to slowly morphing the legacy continent-scale grid into a resilient network of interconnected communities. Here are our thoughts on why the case for solar and energy storage is growing to the point of inevitable choice.
|
