Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumA dynamic net energy analysis of renewable electricity generation firmed by energy storage
Wind and solar-PV electricity are growing at fantastic rates. Both technologies ar aided by the addition of storage, for example batteries, onto the grid. However, building storage technologies increases the material and energetic cost of delivering wind and solar-PV electricity. This paper explores how much storage both the wind and solar-PV industries can 'afford' given their current electricity generation.
Abstract:
Global wind power and photovoltaic (PV) installed capacities are growing at very high rates (20% per year and 60% per year, respectively). These technologies require large, up-front energetic investments. Conceptually, as these industries grow, some proportion of their electrical output is re-invested to support manufacture and deployment of new generation capacity. As variable and intermittent, renewable generation capacity increases grid penetration, electrical energy storage will become an ever more important load-balancing technology. These storage technologies are currently expensive and energy intensive to deploy. We explore the impact on net energy production when wind and PV must pay the energetic cost of storage deployment. We present the net energy trajectory of these two industries (wind and PV), disaggregated into eight distinct technologieswind: on-shore and off-shore; PV: single-crystal (sc-), multi-crystalline (mc-), amorphous (a-) and ribbon silicon (Si), cadmium telluride (CdTe), and copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS). The results show that both on-shore and off-shore wind can support the deployment of a very large amount of storage, over 300 hours of geologic storage in the case of on-shore wind. On the other hand, solar PV, which is already energetically expensive compared to wind power, can only afford about 24 hours of storage before the industry operates at an energy deficit. The analysis highlights the societal benefits of electricity generationstorage combinations with low energetic costs.
Full PDF: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2014/ee/c3ee42125b
nationalize the fed
(2,169 posts)Linde AG (LIN) will begin making hydrogen from surplus wind power at a 17 million-euro ($23 million) plant in Germany that will be the biggest of its kind when done next year.
Linde today laid the first stone for the plant that will start production in Mainz in 2015, the Munich-based company said in a statement. The facility will be able to convert as much as 6 megawatts of power, mostly from nearby wind farms, into hydrogen using technology from Siemens AG, Linde said. The hydrogen can be stored and will help protect supplies, it said...
more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-15/linde-to-make-hydrogen-from-surplus-wind-power-at-german-plant.html
FogerRox
(13,211 posts)or from a tech standpoint. wind is just starting to show thats its mature within the marketplace, but obviously has more room to grow technology wise. MRI style magnets and composite blades may soon boost output by 300-400%.