Danfoss and Pennsylvania State University at Philadelphia conducted a workshop last week to explore the impact of energy storage on U.S. resilience and the United Nations net-zero carbon buildings program. The workshop was designed to launch preparations for the next Danfoss EnVisioneering Symposium, tentatively scheduled to be held in Washington in May 2018. The symposium will offer briefings by research professionals and industry leaders along with roundtable discussion on electrical power resilience with a focus on building-power integration.

According to Danfoss, the symposium supports the company’s initiatives to strengthen the industry dialogue on energy sustainability and support the UN Economic Commission for Europe efforts toward global adoption of its Framework Guidelines for Energy Efficiency Standards in Buildings.

The company says resilience has emerged as a critical issue for sustainability strategy and energy storage is expected to play a vital role in addressing the resilience challenge, along with grid modernization, distributed energy generation, and improvements in building energy efficiency. A group of 20 private sector and academic thought leaders assembled for the workshop session at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which included four formal presentations:

• Market Transformation: Grid, Building and Energy Storage Systems Integration led by Kevin Wright, co-founder and president of ProtoGen Energy

• Ice Battery Energy Storage led by Mike Hopkins, CEO of Ice Energy

• Thermal Mass Energy Storage led by Vince Cushing, chairman and chief technology officer of QCoefficient; and William Hederman, senior fellow with Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania

• Flywheel Energy Storage led by Eric Murray, president and CEO of Temporal Power

The discussion underscored important linkages between technology, preparedness, and economic growth, as well as the innovation required for resilience needs to be tailored as well to strengthen productivity and competitiveness even while cutting emissions and supporting a stable and secure infrastructure platform. Such a complex strategic agenda means a multiple-use approach to energy storage. The discussion also examined using energy storage as an enabling technology across the generation-grid-building spectrum for long-, mid-, and short-term advantages in shifting to fossil-free generation.

“Advances in building systems, macro-grid, micro-grid, and distributed electric generation technologies cannot create paths to electrical power resilience or a net-zero carbon society without deployment of multiple energy storage technologies,” said Lisa Tryson, director of corporate communications and public relations at Danfoss. “Finely tailored applications are critical to the management of tomorrow’s power generation regime, even while playing a role in electricity cost containment for both grid managers and customers. And whether one looks to immediate challenges, mid-term goals, or long-term aspirations, energy storage technology is today under-utilized.”