Congratulations on finishing the first module – Integration of Renewable Energy into the Electricity Grid where you learned the benefits and challenges of integrating renewable energy resources into the power grid and the emerging technologies that will be used in spearheading this change.

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Welcome to the second module of the course – Flexibility Through Energy Storage and Demand Side Management! In this module, you will discover how energy storage technologies may mitigate some of the challenges posed by the integration of renewable energy into the electricity grid.

Mankind has used some form of energy storage right from ancient times. Over time, the energy storage technologies have vastly improved – from burning a simple piece of wood when needed to mechanical flywheels storing kinetic energy to state-of-the-art batteries. Energy storage devices have improved in efficiency and ease of use. With the worldwide adoption of fossil fuels for energy generation, energy storage has largely been a secondary system owing to a steady production of energy.

However, now that the focus of energy generation is slowly shifting to renewables, the interest in advancing energy storage technologies has been rekindled in recent decades. This module will cater to this topic by discussing the following aspects:

• Why is energy storage necessary now?
• What are some energy storage technologies in use today?
• What is demand flexibility and how can energy storage be used for this purpose?
• How do you integrate multiple storage technologies to work together?

This module will be concluded with two lectures by eminent people from the industry.

For the penultimate lecture of this module, Senja Boom from Stedin talks about the emerging technology of Power-to-X-to-Power and a practical application and use in the Netherlands.

For the final lecture of this module, Joel Bosrup, the Founder and CEO of Wintersol, talks about the novel Battery-Hydrogen Hybrid Energy Storage system – its working, operation, and benefits over a conventional battery backup system.

Let’s start!