Political Quotes

“today I am being joined by my colleagues Senator Bingaman and Senator Collins on the introduction of the Storage Technology for Renewable and Green Energy Act of 2011 or the STORAGE 2011 Act. The purpose of the bill is to promote the deployment of energy storage technologies to make the electric grid operate more efficiently and help manage intermittent renewable energy generation from wind, solar, and other sources that vary with the time of day and the weather. Traditionally, peak demand has been met by building more generation and transmission facilities, many of which sit idle much of the time. The Electric Power Research Institute's White Paper on storage technology observed that 25 percent of the equipment and capacity of the U.S. electric distribution system and 10 percent of the generation and transmission system is needed less than 400 hours a year. Peak generation is also often met with the least efficient, most costly power plants. Energy storage systems offer an alternative to simply building more generation and transmission to meet peak demand because they allow the current system to meet peak demands by storing less expensive off-peak power, from the most cost-efficient plants, for use during peak demand. The growth of renewable energy from wind and solar and other intermittent renewable sources, like wave and tidal energy, raises yet another challenge for the electric grid that storage can help address.…”