How to Obtain a 100% Reliable Grid with Clean, Renewable Wind, Water, and Solar Providing 100% of all Raw Energy for All Purposes
Abstract
The greatest concern facing the large-scale integration of wind, water, and solar (WWS) into a power grid is the high cost of avoiding load loss caused by WWS variability and uncertainty. This talk discusses the recent development of a new grid integration model to address this issue. The model finds low-cost, no-load-loss, non-unique solutions to this problem upon electrification of all U.S. energy sectors (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) while accounting for wind and solar time-series data from a 3-D global weather model that simulates extreme events and competition among wind turbines for available kinetic energy. Solutions are obtained by prioritizing storage for heat (in soil and water); cold (in ice and water); and electricity (in phase-change materials, pumped hydro, hydropower, and hydrogen); and using demand response. No natural gas, biofuels, or stationary batteries are needed. The resulting 2050-2055 U.S. electricity social cost for a full system is much less than for fossil fuels. These results hold for many conditions, suggesting that low-cost, stable 100% WWS systems should work many places worldwide. The paper this talk is based on was published in PNAS, 112, 15,060-15,065, 2015, doi:10.1073/pnas.1510028112.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.U51A..03J
- Keywords:
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- 1627 Coupled models of the climate system;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1699 General or miscellaneous;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 6339 System design;
- POLICY SCIENCESDE: 6344 System operation and management;
- POLICY SCIENCES