A Perspective on 100% Renewable Power Grids
With growing calls for 100% renewable electricity systems (and ongoing and sometimes contentious debate over technical and economic feasibility), we thought it would be useful to take a step back and review what we know (and particularly what we don’t know) about achieving this goal.
Published in the journal Joule, “The Challenges of Achieving a 100% Renewable Electricity System in the United States” summarizes the two fundamental techno-economic issues, which we call the “Balance Challenge” and the “Inverter Challenge.” The first involves economically maintaining a balance of supply and demand, particularly with the seasonal mismatch of variable renewable resources and electricity demand patterns. The second considers the potential shift to inverter-based resources from the synchronous machines we’ve relied on for frequency, voltage control, and system strength.
While we have growing confidence that reliable, 100% renewable power grids are technically feasible, many unanswered engineering questions remain on the specific details of how to achieve them economically—and whether 100% should be the optimal target, given the need to rapidly decarbonize the electricity system. We hope this article can act as a starting point for those wanting a deeper understanding of these issues.
Vice President - Energy Supply - Reliability, EPRI
3 年Love the curve! Personally, I am not sure on the diurnal mismatch being partially solved, admittedly it is currently only a more significant problem in high penetration markets during extremes (e.g. August CA 2020) but as penetrations increase toward 100% will this still just be an issue on marginal days? With the significant increase in storage this year for California we may get some hints this summer. Regardless CA manages the daily ramp with imports which may not be available if other regions push towards higher renewable penetrations and with in state gas generation. In Oahu the ramp is managed with old oil fired units and the night time with the last remaining coal plant. I think these edge regions will provide some real world learnings on the feasibility of managing diurnal mismatch with increasing renewable grids.
Energy market professional | Power, RE, Fuel| Energy Market modeling
3 年exactly, and this (the seasonal problem) could be where hydrogen play a bigger role. https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/indias-hydrogen-plan-percolates.html