Global energy storage demand for a 100% renewable electricity supply

By Guido Pleßmann, M. Erdmann, M. Hlusiak, Christian Breyer. 2014

289 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This study demonstrates – based on a dynamical simulation of a global, decentralized 100% renewable electricity supply scenario – that a global climate-neutral electricity supply based on the volatile energy sources photovoltaics (PV), wind energy (onshore) and concentrated solar power (CSP) is feasible at decent cost. A central ingredient of this study is a sophisticated model for the hourly electric load demand in >160 countries. To guarantee matching of load demand in each hour, the volatile primary energy sources are complemented by three electricity storage options: batteries, high-temperature thermal energy storage coupled with steam turbine, and renewable power methane (generated via the Power to Gas process) which is reconverted to electricity in gas turbines. The study determines – on a global grid with 1°x1° resolution – the required power plant and storage capacities as well as the hourly dispatch for a 100% renewable electricity supply under the constraint of minimized total system cost (LCOE). Aggregating the results on a national level results in an levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) range of 80-200 EUR/MWh (on a projected cost basis for the year 2020) in this very decentralized approach. As a global average, 142 EUR/MWh are found. Due to the restricted number of technologies considered here, this represents an upper limit for the electricity cost in a fully renewable electricity supply.

Subfields: Control and Systems Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3242fddea7ad34d8b886532531ee54e87b6012c1

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Citations in the corpus

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’ (2017, background): “Most studies were simulated with an hourly resolution and many modelled the transmission grid, with examples covering the globe [14,15], North-East Asia [16], the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) [17], Europe and its neighbours [18], Europe [19–23], South-East Europe [24], the America”
Potential of Power-to-Methane in the EU energy transition to a low carbon system using cost optimization (2018, background): “Some differences of the present study with respect to the previous references are: system boundaries, most of these studies [29,40,97,106,110,112] focus only on”
How to meet EU GHG emission reduction targets? A model based decarbonization pathway for Europe's electricity supply system until 2050 (2017, methodology): “This model, elesplan-m, builds on a series of models developed at the Reiner Lemoine Institut (RLI) [13, 14, 15].”
Biological methanation of CO2 in a novel biofilm plug-flow reactor: A high rate and low parasitic energy process (2017, background): “…to resolve many of the current inadequacies of existing power back up technologies, such as storage capacity, cost and geographical limitations [5] and support renewable energy developments in terms of minimizing power curtailment and facilitating wider deployment of renewable energy…”
Techno-Economic Assessment of Power-to-Liquids (PtL) Fuels Production and Global Trading Based on Hybrid PV-Wind Power Plants (2016, background): “The estimate on an annual FLh basis can be surprisingly accurate if applied carefully [12, 13].”
European electricity sector decarbonization under different levels of foresight (2019, background): “With possibilities of flexibly dispatching the batteries of electric vehicles [59,60], the flexibility of power to heat systems [61], further power-to-gas options [62,63] could possibly reduce necessary storage capacity significantly.”
On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research (2022, background): “charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage [40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.”
Techno-Economic Modeling and Analysis of Redox Flow Battery Systems (2016, background): “Introduction As the contribution of renewable energy sources to power grids increases, so too does the need for energy storage [1, 2].”