Grid-connected intermittent renewables are the last to be stored

Donald T. Swift-Hook

Renewable Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 9, 1967-1969

Abstract: When hydroelectric power systems became widespread, associated developments for energy storage, using pumped water, soon followed. Many other methods of storage have since been considered. Today's interest in other renewables, notably wind energy has led to assertions that, because it is intermittent, wind can make no contribution to the firm power on a power system (i.e., it has no capacity credit) but that storage can make it viable. Here we show that such assertions about intermittent renewables like wind are false – they can and do make contributions to firm power and storage has no special contribution to make for them. However, their main contribution is to fuel saving and storage is counter-productive for that because the losses in the storage and regeneration round-trip would represent a waste of fuel that had already been saved. More importantly, the energy being stored comes from those generators that were the last ones brought on line to supply the extra energy that is being stored, which would be the first to be shut down if the storage stopped, e.g., because the store was full or had broken down. These will be (marginally) the most expensive generation on line, the (marginally) cheapest generation always having being used first. Renewables have no fuel costs, so their (marginal) cost is zero, which must always make them (marginally) the cheapest power on the system, whenever they are available. So they will always be the last to be shut down or stored. When storage is installed, grid-connected intermittent renewables like wind energy will never be stored unless nothing else is available.

Keywords: Power system storage; Intermittent renewables; Fuel saving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:35:y:2010:i:9:p:1967-1969

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2010.01.025

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