CHALLENGE
Renewable Energy Storage and Distribution
$1 MILLION (Prize amount to be confirmed. Announcement expected for next year)
In developing countries such as in Africa, rural areas are not always connected to the national or regional electric grid. As there is a huge potential for solar energy production, photovoltaics are established to supply electricity for operating critical infrastructures with battery systems and diesel generators installed for redundancy. These systems have the potential for further utilization. As a first step, overproduction of solar energy is offered to households due to simple control rules observing battery levels.
Electrical grid energy storage is used to manage the flow of electricity within a power grid. For large-scale load levelling on an interconnected electrical system, electric energy producers send low value off-peak excess electricity over the electricity transmission grid to temporary energy storage sites that become energy producers when electricity demand is greater. This reduces the cost of peak demand electricity by making off-peak energy available for use during peak demand without having to provide excess generation capacity that would not be used most of the day. Why is energy storage so important? Energy storage fundamentally improves the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity. Energy storage helps during emergencies like power outages from storms, equipment failures, accidents or even terrorist attacks. But the game-changing nature of energy storage is its ability to balance power supply and demand instantaneously – within miliseconds – which makes power networks more resilient, efficient and cleaner than ever before.
