In Finland solar produces no power three months of the year. The months before and after that are marginal. To add joy, there are windstill periods of days, sometimes more than a week, in winter.
To add insult to injury, there isn't enough transmission capability to import all the renewable energy we would need to solely rely on renewables. There isn't enough hydro either so rely on that to take up the slack.
So, grid storage really is the hidden cost of both solar and wind, and multiple weeks of total grid output storage is needed for energy security if relying on renewables.
To reinterate, I really want to learn more about real long term storage. Anybody know where I can find solid info on that?
Yes, but it's 280 pages. Which parts in particular address long term storage?
Searching for "storage" gives very few hits. This was perhaps the most pertinent hit:
"IT IS GENERALLY NOT ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE TO
store electricity in bulk. The widespread
deployment of new storage technologies and/
or high penetrations of electric vehicles may
someday change this, but these developments
are unlikely before 2030."
along with this:
"Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is the
only other storage technology [other than pumped hydro]
that has achieved
long-term utility-scale operation.
...
Only two utility-scale CAES facilities have
been constructed worldwide: a 290 MW facility
with two hours of storage in Huntorf, Germany,
that entered commercial operations in 1978 and
a 110 MW facility with 26 hours of storage in
McIntosh, Alabama, that entered commercial
operations in 1991."
In Finland solar produces no power three months of the year. The months before and after that are marginal. To add joy, there are windstill periods of days, sometimes more than a week, in winter.
To add insult to injury, there isn't enough transmission capability to import all the renewable energy we would need to solely rely on renewables. There isn't enough hydro either so rely on that to take up the slack.
So, grid storage really is the hidden cost of both solar and wind, and multiple weeks of total grid output storage is needed for energy security if relying on renewables.
To reinterate, I really want to learn more about real long term storage. Anybody know where I can find solid info on that?