4 ms·

4 hour storage will deplete quickly. You can't get away from base load generation unless you want periods without power

• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  NREL disagrees, and states that battery storage is sufficient to hit 80% renewables penetration. Seasonal storage remains to be solved for. > The main scenarios modelled show how very low-carbon and high renewable energy grids can be enabled, in the range of 80% by 2050. However, to get to 100% decarbonisation scenarios, it’s very likely variable renewable energy (VRE) paired with diurnal storage will not be enough. Seasonal storage — with durations of days, or even weeks or months — from technologies like hydrogen could help push the grid to fully carbon-free, especially if they can become cost-competitive. You could also just burn fossil gas for that last bit if direct air carbon capture gets cheap enough to use the atmosphere as the battery, pulling the carbon from combustion back underground in stable state when clean energy is available and cheap (and is why Climeworks' Orca installation runs in Iceland on clean geothermal power). Enough sunlight falls on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year, so we can kick the can on the last, hardest part until we get there. https://www.energy-storage.news/nrel-rapid-growth-of-energy-storage-to-enable-high-shares-of-renewable-energy-on-us-grid/ https://www.energy-storage.news/nrel-rapid-growth-of-energy-... https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81779.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81779.pdf (TLDR We can safely kill coal today with limited impact)
  • specialist 3y ago
    Yes and: Advanced geothermal is now proven goodness. It'll handily fill any gaps between PV and wind.