The Transition to Renewables Requires Energy Storage
The big problem with renewables used to be cost, but that is no longer the case. Now, in most of the world, wind and/or solar are the cheapest new construction, when measured by the levelized cost of electricity, a metric of the average cost of energy of a facility over its lifetime.
Those are US averages, and of course there are large regional differences. But the big problem now is dispatchability. With renewables, the energy comes when it comes. Rivers run, day and night, and hydro also overproduces during seasonal events like rains or spring thaw. The sun only shines in the day, and less in the winter. Wind blows when the wind blow.
Recent events in Texas have really driven this home. Texas is a unique case with their own grid, and wind, solar, and fossil fuel resources only matched in the Arabian Peninsula. Right now, there is a ton of wind generation in Texas, but it keeps underproducing when they need it most — during demand surges. This is actually a more-or-less a daily occurrence in the summer. The wind blows mostly at night in Texas, when demand is not high in the summer. Here’s the last month of Texas wind generation data:
Only during one week did wind generation overperform the ERCOT Summer Plan during peak demand times. So wind is very cheap, and only getting cheaper. But we need to store the energy when the wind blows so it can be used when people want to use it.
