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There is an important omission here: battery technology. I'm not talking about tesla power walls - although they would go some way to smoothing the troughs for

There is an important omission here: battery technology. I'm not talking about tesla power walls - although they would go some way to smoothing the troughs for solar. I'm talking about the 7.2 megawatt-hour sodium-sulfur battery systems that islands like Reunion adopt, or Japan's 34-MW, 245-MWh wind energy stabiliser. Installing local generation systems and removing the burden on the national grid systems which lose so much energy to transmission will also have an impact that I think is not calculated here in the visualisation graph.... it can make up to 6-9% of a difference! This figure can be up to 20% in undeveloped countries. ...but I have not read the paper - maybe those effects are mentioned there

philipkglass 9y ago
Energy storage is part of the model by default. If you play with it here: https://google.github.io/energystrategies https://google.github.io/energystrategies Click "Explore Future Assumptions" and you can toggle storage on and off. As expected, you can't rely solely on solar and wind when the storage toggle is off.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > Energy storage is part of the model by default. Not quite. You can end up with a model where there's excessive power during some parts of the day and not enough power during other parts; energy storage would allow using the peaks to fill in the troughs.
  - jaggederest 9y ago
    If you go to the advanced page, it includes storage as a part of the calculations when optimizing for cost. It usually doesn't play a very large part (I was only able to get it up to ~$2/mWh) but it certainly counts.
kilroy123 9y ago
I'm starting to think it's a waste of time even pursuing battery storage on a large scale. Sometimes going low-tech is the better and cheaper way. This tech looks _way_ more promising and it's already in use now: Molten salt storage https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating... I have no idea the costs, but I'm sure if ramped up it could be cheaper.
- zebrafish 9y ago
  Heliostat molten salt looks to be so promising for so many different applications. There is a looming water crisis that I think heliostat molten salt could help alleviate by using it for desalination.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  I never had any faith in national grid scale batteries powering everything over night. If this is good as it sounds it looks like the future to me, being so much less limited by rare resources.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
> I'm not talking about tesla power walls - although they would go some way to smoothing the troughs for solar. Tesla has some of the largest utility scale battery storage systems in the world deployed: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-powerpack-uses-2017-7/#tesla-was-selected-by-energy-company-southern-california-edison-to-build-a-20-megawatt-battery-system-that-can-power-2500-households-a-day-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-powerpack-uses-2017-7/#...

philipkglass 9y ago

Energy storage is part of the model by default. If you play with it here: https://google.github.io/energystrategies https://google.github.io/energystrategies Click "Explore Future Assumptions" and you can toggle storage on and off. As expected, you can't rely solely on solar and wind when the storage toggle is off.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
> Energy storage is part of the model by default. Not quite. You can end up with a model where there's excessive power during some parts of the day and not enough power during other parts; energy storage would allow using the peaks to fill in the troughs.
- jaggederest 9y ago
  If you go to the advanced page, it includes storage as a part of the calculations when optimizing for cost. It usually doesn't play a very large part (I was only able to get it up to ~$2/mWh) but it certainly counts.

kilroy123 9y ago

I'm starting to think it's a waste of time even pursuing battery storage on a large scale. Sometimes going low-tech is the better and cheaper way. This tech looks _way_ more promising and it's already in use now: Molten salt storage https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating... I have no idea the costs, but I'm sure if ramped up it could be cheaper.

zebrafish 9y ago
Heliostat molten salt looks to be so promising for so many different applications. There is a looming water crisis that I think heliostat molten salt could help alleviate by using it for desalination.
graphitezepp 9y ago
I never had any faith in national grid scale batteries powering everything over night. If this is good as it sounds it looks like the future to me, being so much less limited by rare resources.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

> I'm not talking about tesla power walls - although they would go some way to smoothing the troughs for solar. Tesla has some of the largest utility scale battery storage systems in the world deployed: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-powerpack-uses-2017-7/#tesla-was-selected-by-energy-company-southern-california-edison-to-build-a-20-megawatt-battery-system-that-can-power-2500-households-a-day-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-powerpack-uses-2017-7/#...