The need for the renewable energy resources and the transportation technologies rising as alternative to the fossil fuels to struggle against the climate change, help to improve the energy storage systsems and to reduce cost.

THE DEMAND FOR ENERGY,

one of the most important and indispensable needs of human life, grows regularly every year parallel to the welfare, technology and population. As the demand for energy grows, the decreasing reserves of fossil fuel providing the largest share of our current energy supply and the harmful effects of carbon release encouraged the rapid rise of alternative energy sources.

Since the power cannot be stored in the grid and at low cost, the fossil fuels emerged as the dominant factor in the power generation, encouraged also by the energy technologies. In recent years, the progress in the renewable energy technologies and the costs lowering rapidly parallel to the growing production scale, triggered the transformation course in the energy industry.

Since the power production from wind and solar is naturally volatile and interrupted, the frequency ups and downs and tensions on the transmission system are observed. This situation causes risks and the resulting effects raise as the main obstacle before getting more benefits from these sources. And the power storage allows to remove the related harmful effects by arranging the output power of the sources like wind and solar possessing varying power production capacities and the system frequency and to install these sources as base load power plants.

The ability to meet the growing global energy demand and the need for renewable energy sources and the transportation technologies offering alternatives to the fossil fuels to struggle against the climate change, encourage the development of the energy storage systems and reducing the cost. We can classify the energy storage systems essentially into 3 categories as electric, chemical and mechanic. Considering various notions such as capacity, performance, cost and technology, the feasible lithium-ion batteries for houses, grids and electric vehicles arise as the leading solutions in our days.

In 2000, the demand for global lithium was 70,000 tons and only 5 per cent of it resulted from batteries. In 2016, the global demand for lithium was 190,000 tons of LCE and 41 per cent of it resulted from batteries including transportation and power storage. In 2025, 70 per cent of the total lithium demand is supposed to result from batteries.

The lithium-ion batteries were chosen because of their high electrochemical potential and the lithium being the lightest metal on the periodical table. It’s very important mainly for the electric cars to have light batteries.

The quantity of lithium necessary for each electric vehicle is 63 kg. The number of vehicles being over 1,2 billion worldwide is anticipated to rise to 2 billion by 2035.

The limited reserves of lithium is one of the main question marks in the transition from fossil fuels to the electric cars.

On the other hand, the lithium-ion battery costs drop sharply despite the rising demand. The lithium-ion battery cost being $1000/kWh in 2010 fell up to $273/kWh in 2016. Tesla predicts that this decrease will continue up to $100/kWh by 2025. The battery demand for electric cars is calculated to be 700 GWh/year by 2030.

The essential determinant on the lithiumion battery demand for the year 2021 and its aftermath will result from the investments in grid storage. And the main problems rising before the grid storage investments can be stated as the costs remaining still high, the absence of appropriate business models and arrangements.

The battery technology costs expected to continue to drop parallel to the wind and solar power costs in the next 10 years and the rising digitalization in the industry will radically change the power industry. This change also hints important structural changes in the natural gas and oil industry too.

If the new technologies, under development separately from lithium-ion batteries, prove their efficiency in terms of performance and cost, the grid storage systems and the electric cars market are expected to grow aggressively.

Together with power generation and storage systems based on the renewable resources, the distribution, production and micro networks are anticipated to spread in the upcoming years.

The power storage technologies will be a real game changer if they prove themselves in terms of performance and cost effectiveness. Several countries and companies continue uninterruptedly their preparations and works in this regard.

In Turkey, the installed wind power reached to 7.000 Mw approximately and the installed solar power is close to 5.000 Mw. As Turkey continues to increase the capacity of installed power relying on renewable sources in the years ahead, it should clear the way of the grid storage investments in order to manage this increase without affecting the system and for the sake of a healthy additional capacity allocation.

Turkey will take important steps in storage systems in 2018. The solar power tender planned to be organized this year, will be a big step enabling the renewable energystorage integration in Turkey and pushing the country among the nations leading in the power grid battery production. Furthermore, the project of the Ministry of Transportation encouraging the adoption of electric cars and Turkey’s choice of electric version apparently for the first domestic car to be manufactured, are very important and good news. All these steps will pave the way to turn Turkey into R&D and production base of Europe for the battery technologies.

In Turkey, several companies continuing their own efforts in R&D for the development of lithium-ion battery, made a remarkable progress in their works. Therefore, encouraging these works and the market creation for the production investments will be very important. On the other hand, the issues debated by all countries are about the grid storage system investments, how to finance the charging infrastructure for electric cars and the transmission and distribution investments helping to meet the additional power demand. Another important issue needing to be addressed is about the regulation and the legal arrangements.