Can Electricity Storage Bail Out Renewable Energy?
In large, populous nations, the complete reliance on these renewables would require what we are still missing: either mass-scale, long-term (days to weeks) electricity storage that would back up intermittent electricity generation, or extensive grids of high-voltage lines to transmit electricity across time zones and from sunny and windy regions to
... See moreVaclav Smil • How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
We need very large (multi-gigawatt-hour) storage for big cities and megacities, but so far the only viable option to serve them is pumped hydro storage (PHS): it uses cheaper nighttime electricity to pump water from a low-lying reservoir to high-lying storage, and its discharge provides instantly available generation.[76] With renewably generated e
... See moreVaclav Smil • How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
It would be a lot easier to expand our use of solar and wind energy if we had better ways to store the large quantities of electricity we’d need to cover gaps in the flow of that energy.
Vaclav Smil • Numbers Don't Lie
To achieve clean energy targets, many jurisdictions will have to overbuild renewables, increasing curtailment, or wasting of renewable energy. LDES could reduce or eliminate curtailment, allowing renewables to produce at full capacity whenever the weather is aligned.
David Roberts • There's real long-duration energy storage now. Can it find a market?
Pumped hydro is the biggest form of grid-scale electricity storage in the world. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much. The 10 largest facilities in the United States can store less than an hour…
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