IEA's new publication calls for pumped hydro storage and thermal storage

[txlibdem]

Solar thermal electricity (STE) allows shifting the production of solar electricity to peak or mid-peak hours in the evening, or spreading it to base-load hours round the clock, through the use of thermal storage. Fuel back-up and hybridisation with other resources help make it reliable and dispatchable on demand, and offer cheaper options for including solar energy in the electricity mix.

STE today is based on concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies, which can be used where the sun is very bright and the skies clear. Long-range transmission lines can transport clean STE from favourable areas (e.g. North Africa) to other large consuming areas (e.g. Europe). As such, STE complements PV rather than competing with it. Today, large-scale PV plants emerge, though one important advantage of PV is that is can be built close to consumers (e.g. on building roofs).

STE lends towards utility-scale plants, but small-scale STE may find niche markets in isolated or weak grids. Firm and flexible STE capacities enable more variable renewable energy (i.e. wind power and solar PV) in the electricity mix on grids. While very high penetration of PV requires large-scale investment in electricity storage, such as pumped-hydro plants, high penetration of STE does not.

source: http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=14997
NOTE: the link at that page gives incorrect URL for the IEA's paper: http://www.iea.org/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=2443

I agree with this paper except in it's final conclusion: that solar can only provide 30% of world energy needs. It has been proven time and again that enough sun falls on the Earth in 90 minutes to meet our entire energy needs for an entire year. So how does that boil down to a limitation of 30%???

It's worth the read but beware the hidden prejudices and agendas against solar power.

[Bob Wallace]

1. 30% might be a reasonable upper limit...

Wind, geothermal, hydro, tidal, biomass/gas and wave also have roles to play. The wider we cast our net the more reliable the grid will be and the less storage we will need.

If thermal solar with storage turns out to be as cheap as some think then we're likely to up that 30%, but price has yet to be demonstrated. Cheap storage (something significantly cheaper than pump-up) could also raise the practical limit for solar.

[txlibdem]

2. Ah, the old "we don't need very much energy storage" canard

I see you've been taking notes from a friend.

Your post must be presuming we'll only be using this energy when the skies are blue and the warm breezes blow... and butterflies and honey bees flit and flutter in your garden. Ridiculous thinking. Following the same logic, one could take a photograph of the traffic patterns on some random day and assume that they can follow that in their daily commute for the year? I think we both know what will happen were you to be so simple-minded as to do that. We both know you're not simple minded at all. Quite the contrary.

All one must do is take a look at the US Government wind and solar charts to see --irrefutably-- that we need MORE energy storage and not less. Energy storage is not your enemy. The only industry that will be diminished by adequate amounts of renewable energy storage is the natural gas industry and their fantastically profitable natural gas peak power plants.

[Bob Wallace]

3. No canard...

A misreading on your part. Your complaint has nothing to do with anything I wrote.

It will be cheapest to use energy as it is made, for the most part. Storage is an additional cost added to the cost of generation. Unless solar gets significantly cheaper than wind it will make no sense to store solar power for nighttime use when the wind is providing.

[txlibdem]

5. Seemed like a familiar canard here on DU - "very little energy storage"

Here's your direct quote, "The wider we cast our net the more reliable the grid will be and the less storage we will need."

The problem with your argument is that energy storage for wind will be needed at night when the wind is available and solar will need equal amounts of storage for days when there is little or no wind.

The only people who are better served by cutting renewable energy storage will be the natural gas industry. It will not be good for the grid, nor the electricity consumers.

[Bob Wallace]

7. I'm not familiar with your favorite "ducks" here...

The fact of the matter is, the wider an area from which you harvest free energy, the less storage you need.

Tides are cyclic. But the cycles occur at different times as one moves along the coast. By tying multiple tidal turbines over the US Pacific coast into a single grid the variability largely disappears.

The same holds for wind farms and solar arrays. Weather systems move over large areas meaning that some turbines will be enjoying strong winds now and that wind will be arriving at other wind farms later. Clouds move shading only some arrays at a time, then moving on to shade others.

Storage is an "added" cost to a renewable grid. It does not add power, it time-shifts power. The more we can avoid storage the better. We save money. Consumers are better served by minimizing storage.

Natural gas, I assume is going to go away for purely economic reasons. Utility scale battery storage is becoming competitive with natural gas peakers. We should see low priced, high cycle, sodium-ion batteries being manufactured in the next few months. They've already been tested by independent labs and right now a factory is being established.

Natural gas is artificially cheap at the moment. The discovery of fracking shale for gas led to a "gold rush" mentality and far too many wells were punched for existing demand. This led to a surplus of NG and a price collapse. We're working our way through the surplus and we've built a number of new uses which will dry up the surplus and move the price of NG higher. The future markets, as of a few days ago, are expecting a 40% increase in the price of NG in the next four years.

We don't need storage yet. We've got a lot of dispatchable supply on the grid. Most of our hydro, most natural gas and roughly half of coal can be curtailed when fuel-free sources provide. In general we have enough capacity already. We only run short during peak-peak times which is a very small portion of the year. Gas peaker plants run only about 10% of the time.

We'll need more storage later when wind and solar grow to the point where they are 25% - 35% of our supply. And if we bring a few million EVs to the grid those percentages will rise. EVs will be able to charge off peaks, allowing more renewable installation without storage.

Storage, seems to me, is going to make a larger presence on the grid over the near years as a replacement for gas peakers. Batteries are much more responsive than gas turbines. As the price of utility scale batteries falls they will be used for grid smoothing and frequency control rather than NG turbines. Then as the price of batteries further falls we'll start seeing people using them to warehouse cheap power and sell it for higher prices. By the time we are ready to get gas off our grid we should have a mature storage industry in place.

That's how I line up my ducks....

[txlibdem]

8. The mallards are flying today, apparently

I see where the failure of your logic rests. You are envisioning a national energy mix based on a one-day cycle, tides in this instance, then extrapolating that to all renewable energy sources --ones with far more variability in that one day but also far more variability at different times of the year.

Perhaps it would help if you stated exactly, percentage-wise, how much energy storage you believe America needs.

[caraher]

4. Where is the 30% claim?

The summary in the evwind.es web site predicts an actual contribution from solar of 1/3 of global energy use after 2060. That doesn't mean one couldn't in principle use more solar, just that they expect this will be the level seen as feasible 40 years from now.

I guess I'm not seeing the "prejudices and agendas against solar power" here...

[txlibdem]

6. I read it more as an upper limit... and it's 50 years from now: 2060

The summary states 25% by 2050, 40 years from now (actually 38 but who's counting).

The tone of the paper seemed, in my opinion, to be putting an upper limit on solar PV and Solar Thermal's potential contribution to total world energy needs. Perhaps it's just a perception.