GRA
Well-known member
I was kind of wondering if someone was confusing TWh with TW (generating capacity) and PWh (electricity usage), but was pushed for time and couldn't confirm, so glad someone did it. The U.S. generates a bit over 4 PWh/year of electricity from a bit over 1TW of generating capacity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States
That being said, the low capacity factor of VRE compared to the typical fossil-fueled plant means that generating capacity would have to increase by about 2.5 times for U.S. electricity to go completely renewable, plus all the new power transmission lines to get those renewables to the public, combined with cheap storage which doesn't yet exist (except in a few places where PHES will work). Smil and others have done the calcs, and IIRR it would take an expansion of land use for energy extraction. generation, transmission etc. at current RE power densities from about 0.5% of total U.S. land area to about 50.0% to go fully renewable (for all primary energy IIRC, not just electricity), which simply isn't realistic. Some improvements will take place in power density with PV and maybe some of the other RE techs (probably not wind), but nowhere near enough. Smil lists four major essential commodities for a modern world for which there is simply no viable renewably-produced option at the necessary mass scale at this time: cement, coke (for iron/steel production), ammonia (artificial fertilizer via Haber/Bosch process) and one other I forget.
On a more realistic level and talking about electricity, here's some room for optimism:
That being said, the low capacity factor of VRE compared to the typical fossil-fueled plant means that generating capacity would have to increase by about 2.5 times for U.S. electricity to go completely renewable, plus all the new power transmission lines to get those renewables to the public, combined with cheap storage which doesn't yet exist (except in a few places where PHES will work). Smil and others have done the calcs, and IIRR it would take an expansion of land use for energy extraction. generation, transmission etc. at current RE power densities from about 0.5% of total U.S. land area to about 50.0% to go fully renewable (for all primary energy IIRC, not just electricity), which simply isn't realistic. Some improvements will take place in power density with PV and maybe some of the other RE techs (probably not wind), but nowhere near enough. Smil lists four major essential commodities for a modern world for which there is simply no viable renewably-produced option at the necessary mass scale at this time: cement, coke (for iron/steel production), ammonia (artificial fertilizer via Haber/Bosch process) and one other I forget.
On a more realistic level and talking about electricity, here's some room for optimism:
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/01/20190110-icl.htmlICL model predicts lithium-ion batteries most competitive for storage applications by 2030
Of course, a forecast is just that, and it ignores all the things ( such as resource limitations driving costs up) that can interfere with it coming true.Researchers at Imperial College London (ICL) developed a model to determine the lifetime costs (i.e., levelized cost)—as opposed to the investment cost—of 9 electricity storage technologies for 12 different applications between 2015 and 2050. The model predicts lithium-ion batteries to be the cheapest technology in the coming decades. An open-access paper on their work is published in the journal Joule.
The model, which incorporates data from more than 30 peer-reviewed studies, shows that at present, the cheapest energy storage mechanism is pumped-storage hydroelectricity, where water is pumped to a higher elevation with spare energy, then released to harvest the energy when needed.
However, as time progresses, pumped-storage hydroelectricity costs do not decrease, whereas lithium-ion battery costs come down, making them the cheapest option for most applications from 2030.
- Personally, I was always quite skeptical toward lithium-ion storage for stationary applications, but when it comes to the levelized cost of storage—investment, operation and charging cost, technology lifetime, efficiency and performance degradation—lithium-ion combines decreasing cost with sufficient performance to dominate the majority of power system applications. I would have expected others to outperform in certain applications.
—first author Oliver Schmidt
Schmidt adds that the model doesn’t say anything about whether lithium-ion batteries are the best-suited technology for stationary storage, but because it has such a head start in the market, it is best poised to be the cheapest option in the immediate future. The researchers can’t predict how new materials or advances will impact the market, but they hope their model, which is available open access to test a variety of technology cost and performance assumptions, can help industry and policymakers make informed investment decisions today.