Fuel cell demonstrates 10,000 hours (equiv to 300,000 miles)

[kristopher]

17. She didn't provide evidence because there is no evidence.

The claim is nothing more than decades old 'conventional wisdom' with little to no actual detailed analysis behind it.

Q&A: Can renewables alone (with storage) power the grid?
Posted on 01/11/2013 by Dan Ferber


Conventional wisdom among many utilities and analysts says that renewable energy is expensive and unreliable because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine when electricity demand is highest, and because grid-scale storage is expensive and not ready for prime time.

As a result, many in the electric power industry believe that to power entire regional electrical grids, we must continue to rely on fossil fuels for much of our baseload power.

Last month, Willett Kempton, a renewable energy expert at the University of Delaware, reported a detailed analysis turning conventional wisdom on its head.

Writing in the Journal of Power Sources, a peer-reviewed journal, Kempton and his colleagues reported for the first time that by 2030 the grid could be powered almost entirely using a mix of wind (both on- and off-shore), solar and grid-scale energy storage, and that this grid would be both affordable and reliable.

This conclusion came from extensive computer modeling that analyzed four years of hour-to hour data on weather and electricity consumption by the PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization for a 13-state swath of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

Midwest Energy News caught up with Kempton to ask him what it will take to move to a grid powered almost entirely by renewables....

Rest of interview here: http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/01/11/qa-can-renewables-alone-witih-storage-power-the-grid/

Open Access Study:

Journal of Power Sources

Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time

Abstract
We model many combinations of renewable electricity sources (inland wind, offshore wind, and photovoltaics) with electrochemical storage (batteries and fuel cells), incorporated into a large grid system (72 GW). The purpose is twofold: 1) although a single renewable generator at one site produces intermittent power, we seek combinations of diverse renewables at diverse sites, with storage, that are not intermittent and satisfy need a given fraction of hours. And 2) we seek minimal cost, calculating true cost of electricity without subsidies and with inclusion of external costs. Our model evaluated over 28 billion combinations of renewables and storage, each tested over 35,040 h (four years) of load and weather data. We find that the least cost solutions yield seemingly-excessive generation capacity—at times, almost three times the electricity needed to meet electrical load. This is because diverse renewable generation and the excess capacity together meet electric load with less storage, lowering total system cost. At 2030 technology costs and with excess electricity displacing natural gas, we find that the electric system can be powered 90%–99.9% of hours entirely on renewable electricity, at costs comparable to today's—but only if we optimize the mix of generation and storage technologies.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775312014759


...The purpose is twofold:
1) although a single renewable generator at one site produces intermittent power, we seek combinations of diverse renewables at diverse sites, with storage, that are not intermittent and satisfy need a given fraction of hours.

And 2) we seek minimal cost, calculating true cost of electricity without subsidies and with inclusion of external costs.

Our model evaluated over 28 billion combinations of renewables and storage, ...

...each tested over 35,040 h (four years) of load and weather data.

We find that the least cost solutions yield seemingly-excessive generation capacity—at times, almost three times the electricity needed to meet electrical load.

This is because diverse renewable generation and the excess capacity together meet electric load with less storage, lowering total system cost.

At 2030 technology costs and with excess electricity displacing natural gas, we find that the electric system can be powered 90%–99.9% of hours entirely on renewable electricity, at costs comparable to today's—but only if we optimize the mix of generation and storage technologies.