We talked about what storage can do on the system, and storage costs have come down dramatically about the same amount as roughly as solar PV. This graph for the US, for example, but the data applicable worldwide show a 70 percent drop in just three years for utility-scale storage. Storage has a lot of promise for the system, can do a lot, and its costs are dropping very quickly. Again, some data from the US, but we do see this happening worldwide as well. Is that a large percentage of large US PV projects that are proposed, that are underway, that are in line to get in the system have storage. These systems are not just solar PV, they're solar PV plus storage. About a quarter of large US PV projects have storage. It's labeled hybrid there, but that's almost all storage, and most of that is based on batteries. To summarize batteries, batteries are a type of storage. There are others such as EVs, we'll talk about in just a minute. Batteries can provide many benefits to the grid, including using grid integration of variable renewables. Batteries can be big utility-scale, small household scale, anywhere in between. There's a lot of points on the electricity grid system that batteries can be deployed. Battery costs have dropped significantly and will continue to do so. There are many battery technologies, what are sometimes called chemistries, but lithium-ion is emerging as the dominant one. The future of batteries is bright. But it's unclear exactly, but it's going to look like what's called a value proposition for batteries is still under development. Batteries are good. They can do lots of things on the grid, but are they best at any one thing? That's still being discussed. Finally, the future of batteries depends in part on what are called the market rules. We'll talk about those in a few minutes for storage because electricity systems were designed for supply and demand, and batteries are either both or neither, depending on how you look at it. This is just being sorted out. We then talked about electric vehicles as an enabling technology. What's the connection of electric vehicles to renewables? Well, first of all, EVs can shift cars and trucks, which runs from oil now to electricity, which is a huge potential new market for renewable electricity. Furthermore, EVs, electric vehicles can act as distributed storage. We talked about what batteries can do. Well, an EV is essentially a battery, a mobile one that moves around. If we can connect the two and design the system to make optimal use of the electric vehicles, that can act as a way to ease grid integration of variable renewables. Depending on how EVs are charged, meaning plugged in, they can either aggravate or help solve renewable energy grid integration challenge. The EV fleet is growing about 60 percent per year. Global average now is about four percent of new vehicle sales, light-duty vehicle sales. The cars and trucks are electric, but that number is growing year by year. There are almost daily announcements of huge investments in electric vehicles with very high momentum now. In the US, the largest vehicle manufacturer, GM, General Motors, as said, it will sell only zero-emission vehicles, which could be fuel sales, but are probably going to be mostly electric vehicles by 2035. Ford is investing $22 billion in electric vehicles on the R&D side. China plans to phase out gas-burning cars. There's a lot of private sector investment in electric vehicles. A critical piece of the EV/RE puzzle of how electric vehicles or renewable energy fit together as smart charging. Here's a quote, "Just as future transport must be increasingly electrified, future power systems must make maximum use of variable renewable energy sources. Smart charging minimizes the load impact from electric vehicles and unlocks the flexibility to use more solar and wind power." What a smart charging would look like? Well, there's a lot of studies. Let me just do an example study here from IRENA. The scenario was 50 percent penetration of electric vehicles. Half the cars are electric. If they just plugged in whenever people come home and want to, that'll mean an increase in peak load, which can be challenging for wind and solar PV to me. But if smart charging is implemented, if those vehicles are plugged in and charged at certain times, maybe discharged at other times, it cuts that peak load impact almost in half. Other studies show comparable results, some more dramatic. This study for a region of countries in Northern Europe showed uncontrolled charging is a 20 percent increase in peak load, while controlled or smart charging is a seven percent decrease in peak load. But these are studies we don't know. This technology of smart charging is still at the demonstration phase. Here's an example of a demonstration project by a utility company in the US, they've a Fermata, where they are heavy electric vehicle, do operate it via a smart charger and they're seeing how it affects the grid. We don't know how this is going to pan out but it's a really interesting question for which demonstration projects are underway to better understand how EVs can support renewable electricity. Take a break there and come back and talk about hydrogen.
