Desalination, a New Energy Storage Market?

A boom in desalination could create new opportunities for energy storage as developers seek to maximize output from assets powered by wind or solar.

“As soon as solar-plus-storage can compete with (traditional) generation prices, there will be a huge market,” said Thomas Hillig, managing director of Dr. Thomas Hillig Energy Consulting, a consultancy focused on off-grid energy markets.

It’s important to have high utilization, because the desalination equipment is very capital-intensive. 

Currently the market for energy storage attached to desalination plants is still in its infancy because of the cost of batteries. With most desalination projects, “You pretty much have the choice of where to put them,” Hillig noted.

In such cases, developers will naturally tend to choose locations where energy is cheap and plentiful. Thus, for the vast majority of desalination plants today, solar-plus-storage is still “not feasible. It’s a nice concept; a market of the future,” he said. 

But the picture is changing as demand for desalination grows and solar-plus-storage becomes more competitive. Currently, desalination serves around 1 percent of the global population, or almost 746 million people.

Desalination is commonly used on islands where the main conventional fuel, diesel, is very expensive and solar or wind can easily compete on cost, noted Hillig.

But even in areas where fossil fuels are commonplace, there could be powerful incentives to use renewable energy for desalination.

Because desalination is often needed in desert environments that are already ecologically stressed, environmental friendliness is another potentially significant factor in choosing to use renewable energy for desalination.

Concentrated solar power with thermal storage, for example, is a good match for desert regions with high desalination needs, and can potentially provide round-the-clock power.

Hillig said island resorts might become early adopters of solar-plus-storage-powered desalination plants, since they often face high traditional generation costs combined with a significant demand for fresh water and a desire to be seen as environmentally friendly.  

Source: gtm