Latest analysis from Mark Jacobson’s energy group at Stanford shows what we’ve come to understand, that a renewable grid is possible, that could actually be more reliable than current service.
One new wrinkle is the understanding of battery storage. We know that a plethora of new battery technologies for energy storage are in development, with prices now dropping as rapidly as solar PV dropped in the past decade. Jacobson’s team produced their results without assuming more than 4 hour battery storage, through a process of linking batteries in sequence, or “concatenating” end-to-end to create more long term storage when necessary. Given that longer term batteries seem inevitable, it gives more confidence that engineers in different systems will have multiple options for maintaining service.
A study led by Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson has demonstrated that the US energy system running on wind, water and solar, coupled with storage…
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