Renewable Energy: How Much Storage Will It Take To Get There?

It’s both important and fun to look down the road and see where the migration to renewable energy is taking us.  What will it take to get to 80% penetration of wind and solar?  How much storage is necessary?  What other factors need to be taken into consideration?

Here’s an article in GreenTechMedia called Mind the Storage Gap: How Much Flexibility Do We Need for a High-Renewables Grid? that addresses all this.  Not to give anything away, but this is the reason that clean energy can’t miss. The technology associated with all this stuff: the generation, the storage–even the transmission–is coming down fast.  And, as the author points out, all this optimism is based on extremely conservative assumptions.  He notes: If renewable generation and battery storage prices continue to fall in line with forecasts, meeting demand in each hour of a year with 80 percent of electricity coming from wind and solar could cost as little as $70 per megawatt-hour — even when accounting for required short-term reserves, flexibility and backup generation.

As I wrote on Facebook earlier today re: a video that suggests that change in our energy policy will be hard but worthwhile: “Change in the U.S. will be hard politically, but that’s about it. Clean energy means huge job growth and enormous savings on the costs of healthcare and the repair bills associated with environmental degradation.  It also means much better relationships with the rest of the people on this planet, almost all of whom see this period in human history as the make/break point for our civilization.”