The governments of some countries with developed economies in Europe, some US states, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. have embarked on an ambitious race to reach the climate goal called Net Zero, or what we recently called the Great Green Leap. It is about decarbonizing their economies by reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero. The main way to achieve this goal – a cornerstone of climate policies such as the Green New Deal or the European Green Deal – is to build and install as many solar panels and wind turbines as possible in an effort to stop the production of electricity and heat. energy from fossil fuels and their replacement by renewable energy sources, aka “green”.

Konstantin CranganuPhoto: Hotnews

Over the past three years, I have analyzed in several articles the “agonies associated with activity” during the transition to 100% color energies, as well as the various “medicines” that are or have been applied, which I have called magical thinking exercises. This time I won’t touch on the intermittent weather-dependent nature of wind and solar power, their specific power orders of magnitude lower than fossil fuels, the amount of minerals required for new construction and power lines, or their own CO2 emissions.

Both “stars” of renewable energy sources — solar and wind — fundamentally suffer from intermittency: structural (the sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t blow all the time) and local insufficiency controlled by weather fluctuations, altitude, latitude, etc. Therefore, wind and solar installations constantly need another source of energy (backup source) to replace them during the non-production period: fossil fuel generators, nuclear power plants, batteries or any other form of energy storage that can be used instantly when the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining so that the national flags of the grids do not fall and the lights are always on .

Governments that have embraced the idea of ​​total or near-total elimination of fossil or nuclear energy as a backup source mostly leave the option to store unused wind or solar energy generation. Politicians simply assumed one or another form of storage should exist or are available to order. But until now, their considerations about the required storage capacity, how they work, and how much they will cost (installation, operation, maintenance, etc.) have been inadequate.

Backup energy storage for a predominantly wind/solar generating system is a complex equation that is extremely difficult to solve. As I recently presented in an article The trilemma of the energy transition – sustainability, affordability, security, at the moment “there is no pilot project anywhere in the world that would operate for a satisfactory period of time, say 5-10 years, where an economy of any size could run only on sources that do not emit carbon dioxide (wind, solar, hydro) and without the use of fossil fuel sources. There is not even a single pilot project that provides only the electricity necessary for the economy (approximately 25-35% of the final energy consumption).”

However, governments participating in the Great Green Leap continue their exercises in magical and low-resolution thinking (is cited Jordan Peterson): Without real data on how a nationwide data storage system is performing and how much it will cost over an indefinite period of time, governments are going blindly. Barring a miracle, the stark truth will remain relevant for some time to come regarding any climate policy: not only is there not a single working solar/wind/storage pilot project anywhere in the world, but none are even being built or planned. Instead, politicians and the Green Church of Climateism dream of having an entire US state (California, New York) or an entire country become a guinea pig for their crazy ideas.

The operation of the electric grid requires the existence of a balanced balance between demand and supply of energy, almost every minute. Unlike fossil-fueled power plants, wind and solar generators suffer from interruptions: the sun produces nothing at night or when it’s covered by clouds, and the wind produces very little during unusual periods.

Therefore, no single solar or wind installation, regardless of its nominal capacity, will be able to feed the national energy grid by itself. If coal, oil or gas plants are abandoned (either voluntarily or due to pressure from Net Zero policies), the possibility of nuclear power remains, if it also passes the political test. In addition, new nuclear facilities are difficult, if not impossible, to approve and build due to regulatory hurdles.

Therefore, to obtain the regime full backup For intermittent green energy, the only solution left is energy storage in some form. For this, it will be necessary to build solar and wind power plants, the capacity of which will be equal to the average annual energy demand. Sometimes there will be periods of surplus, sometimes periods of deficit production. If surpluses can be stored, this energy can be mined to compensate for periods of scarcity.

A large-scale (regional, state, national) renewable energy storage system requires a plan with three main elements:

– Capacity required for a full backup

– Cost of storage

– Technical feasibility of the considered storage systems

Among the possible ways of accumulating excess “green” energy, I will consider the most common today: Li-ion batteries. Other types of batteries proposed by Form Energy and ESS Inc., both based on the “reverse rust” process, are still too “immature” to be considered a true replacement for current lithium batteries. We have discussed additional forms of storage (“green” hydrogen and pumping or transporting water from downstream to upstream in other articles).

How much memory is needed?

If we consider the worst possible scenario – a wind and solar “drought” that lasts for several days in a row in the middle of winter, when production from intermittent sources is almost zero – then we can answer simply. For example, if a solar/wind “drought” spans 5 consecutive days with zero generation, then the required storage capacity is 120 MWh (5 days x 24 hours) for every 1 MW of average consumer demand.

If our planning is year-round, the storage capacity depends on the production history of the existing wind and solar sources during the year, including the number of days with excess energy production as well as the number of days with insufficient production. Models created for different countries show that 500 to over 1,000 MWh of storage is required annually for 1 MW of average demand.

A calculation based on a solar “drought” scenario of several days was published in January 2022 and then immediately applied to New York State.

The question to be answered was this: How much solar capacity must be installed and stored to provide 1,000 MW for five days without sun, followed by two days of sun, and then another five days without sun?

The answer was that to provide 1,000 MW in the above scenario using only solar power and storage batteries would require 10,500 MW of solar panels and 120,000 MWh of storage capacity.

In the case of Germany and California, respectively, the green energy storage capacity was calculated in 2018 and included the need for backup energy for the entire year. The author collected official data and found that the average daily demand for electricity in Germany in 2016 was about 50,000 MW, and in California in 2017 – about 35,000 MW. After which, assuming that all the electricity consumed by Germany and California was produced by solar panels and wind turbines, with their structural intermittency, each side would need about 25,000 GWh of storage capacity. This equates to approximately 714 MWh of storage per average MW used in California (29.75 days of average use) or 500 MWh of storage per average MW used in Germany (21.83 days of average use).

In the case of another US state, New York, with an estimated storage requirement of 10,000 to 12,000 GWh for a grid based primarily on renewable energy, plans to buy about 6 GW of grid storage mean about 24 GWh . That is, approximately 0.2% of the required amount. Of course, if New York State goes ahead with its plans to triple demand on the energy system by electrifying all cars and heating homes, 24 GW will account for less than 0.1% of storage needs.

The annual storage capacity needed by the United States (the 48 continental states) was calculated by another researcher this year using 2019-2020 wind and solar generation data. According to calculations, the annual demand for “green” energy storage is approximately 233,000 GWh.

233,000 GWh of energy storage is a huge number. But before the GWh from the batteries can be stored and used, they must be filled with an amount of green energy equal to (or greater than) 233,000 GWh. To put things in perspective, consider the Topaz solar farm in California, one of the largest in the world. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro