From ESS News
Bright blue skies, spring-like temperatures – perfect weather for solar power. There’s only one thing you can’t miss: the opportunity to put the electricity to good use – even if the grid can’t absorb it. That is why Sungrow invited more than 300 participants from more than 20 European countries to Munich last week for its “ESS Experience Day.” The theme of the partner event: the next stage of the European energy transition.
Without energy storage, the energy transition will not continue. That is, roughly, how the panel discussion at the event can be summarized. Europe has come a long way, emphasized the experts on the podium. Last year, the continent achieved cumulative photovoltaic generation capacity of 338 GW, according to trade body SolarPower Europe.
“But without storage, the electricity cannot be used sensibly,” warned Starry Ge, analyst at market research company Rho Motion. In Great Britain, for example, half of the renewable electricity generated is already wasted, due to grid bottlenecks. That inefficiency ultimately drives up electricity prices. Europe has done a lot to expand renewables; now grids and energy storage must follow suit.
To continue reading, please visit our ESS News website.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Renewable is not limited to solar, hydro is very sustainable and stable energy source
First create significantly more renewable energy than you need. During peaks store a certain amount on batteries, pumped gravity storage and the rest produce green hydrogen. The estimated cost of hydrogen will be $1/kg. Store enough hydrogen to provide electricity for peak demand using turbines or fuel cells. The left over hydrogen to be sold for hybrid fuel cell/battery mobility, cars, heavy trucks, aerospace, fertilizers, steel and concrete production, and e-fuels to replace all fossil fuels. The next step you can eliminate all grid problems in the world by providing hydrogen to households to run everything, electricity and gasheat . It would cost $24/month.
The next goal of the Smart Grid has to be reliability, efficiency, stability and robustness.
Fossil fuel led propaganda paints renewables as impractical because of the erratic nature of supply. But it ignores the same problem in demand. The ‘duck curve’ (*1) is the problem with ‘always on’ generation. Most of the time, we have too much power (costing $$$$$) with fossil fueled plants that are kept operating to prevent the long startup costs. (*2) It takes up to 12 hours to start up a natural gas power generator. Fuel burned during this phase is waste. This has led to ‘spinning reserve’ and overcapacity of generation to keep the grid up and stable. Fine as long as NG was cheap as a byproduct of oil exploration. Not so now. We need to adapt to the high cost of fossil fuels with energy storage TOO.
Battery storage is perfect for grid stability (can react in microseconds to power fluctuations) and provide ‘active power’ to compensate for electrical motor phase effects.
Hydro has the most flexible delivery as it can increase or decrease power generation within a few minutes.
Nuclear has the problem that to be cost competitive, it can only deliver fixed power output, the bottom of the duck curve.
Reconductoring can increase the grid capacity at low cost and with increased reliablity (temperature monitoring) than adding transmission lines (*3).
(*1) https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_article_width/public/CAISO_DuckCurve_720_469_80.jpg?itok=-RdWPrjW
(*2) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956
Note. The prevalence of the lower startup times is lower in Canada because of older stations.
(*3) https://spectrum.ieee.org/grid-enhancing-technologies