As communities, companies, and even entire Midwestern utility companies move to supply 100% of electricity needs from renewable energy, the question presents itself: is this even possible? The answer, it turns out, is yes—and it’s made possible by the technical capabilities of advanced energy technologies (and especially storage).
This is UCS, so let’s talk about how to get the hard stuff done. To replace conventional generation with renewables, eventually all the services from fossil-fuel power plants have to be supplied by adding wind, solar, smart consumer appliances and electric vehicles, and storage.
As renewable energy is added by businesses and utilities, here are 5 great building blocks for a future that is 100% renewable energy.
1. Solar is capable of so much more than energy
The utility industry has begun to recognize that new technologies available can provide the reliability functions they need. The adoption of digital controls on solar and wind systems, particularly the inverters, make reliability functions available and useful already, without storage.
The fastest changing parts of the power grid and thus the tool box of solutions are coming from solar—which has present deployments averaging over 10,000 MW per year—and the sudden return of interest and capital to utility-scale energy storage.
The California grid operator has taken the challenge posed by UCS to demonstrate that the solar farms being built today are capable of providing a range of “essential services.” See this summary of a field test where a solar farm demonstrated faster and more accurate performance than other generator types. Wind turbines have also demonstrated these capabilities.
2. Storage is becoming part of the power plant
New energy storage deployments demonstrate just how quickly we can overcome the limit that the sunset creates for solar. The trajectory of energy storage substituting for conventional generation can be traced from actual practices. Beyond the early or largest examples of non-battery energy storage recently illustrated in the New York Times, going forward, there is widespread and dramatic potential for the use of battery storage by businesses and hybrid power plants.
Battery storage added at a power plant, both conventional and renewables, can take on duties that were met by old generators. First seen in remote locations, battery storage paired with generation began in isolated grids in places like Hawaii and Chile where ancillary services from very small generator fleets were unavailable or constraining the grid operations. This helped establish the technical and commercial foundation for expansion to larger grids in the United States.
Recent energy storage deployments now demonstrate a turning point. Present state-of-the-art technology adoption includes manufacturer General Electric (GE) adding energy storage to improve the performance of its line of peaking plants.
Recent Comments