What’s the point of building a solar farm when the grid is already flooded when the sun is shining?
Batteries, yes, but also, the sun is non-binary! Additional solar/wind capacity won’t generate power in still conditions at night, but slower winds and overcast weather and low evening sun all will, and depending on the relative price of solar (increasingly cheap) it may be optimal to oversize solar such that you have absurd overcapacity at summer noon, but require less (relatively expensive) storage (paraphrasing Tony Seba)
Yes, at conferences I’ve been to the discussion is increasingly not “How will we afford all the long term energy storage?” so much as “how much of a role will there be for long term energy storage?”
Personally I’m fairly confident that we’ll eventually need at least 4-16 hrs energy storage in most places, and more in some grids, but I suspect that many places will be able to muddle and kludge their way through most multi-day storage needs with a bunch of other partial solutions that generate power or shift demand.
Batteries, yes, but also, the sun is non-binary! Additional solar/wind capacity won’t generate power in still conditions at night, but slower winds and overcast weather and low evening sun all will, and depending on the relative price of solar (increasingly cheap) it may be optimal to oversize solar such that you have absurd overcapacity at summer noon, but require less (relatively expensive) storage (paraphrasing Tony Seba)
Yes, at conferences I’ve been to the discussion is increasingly not “How will we afford all the long term energy storage?” so much as “how much of a role will there be for long term energy storage?”
Personally I’m fairly confident that we’ll eventually need at least 4-16 hrs energy storage in most places, and more in some grids, but I suspect that many places will be able to muddle and kludge their way through most multi-day storage needs with a bunch of other partial solutions that generate power or shift demand.