Of all currently known technologies, hydrogen has the greatest potential for seasonal energy storage. Scientists at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) come to this conclusion in a recently published paper entitled “The value of seasonal energy storage technologies for the integration of wind and solar power”.
“Seasonal energy storage can facilitate the deployment of high and ultra-high shares of wind and solar power,” said Omar Guerra, an engineer at NREL and lead author of the paper. Guerra and his co-authors used a model to analyze both the estimated costs and value of storage technologies, taking competitiveness into account. They evaluated 80 scenarios, including hydrogen, pumped storage power plants and compressed air.
In their analysis, they assumed that 84 percent of the electrical grid in the western United States is powered by renewable sources. The study included the cost of seasonal storage based on electricity capacity and energy capacity. The researchers also take into account, among other things, the costs of building new peak-load power plants to cover electricity demand as well as the avoided network costs. They then determined the profitability of the storage technologies in a cost-benefit analysis.
The analysis focused on two economic assessment time frames: the near future in 2025 to 2045 and the distant future 2050 to 2070. In the near future, the researchers expect pumped water and compressed air storage to be cost competitive.
For the period 2050 to 2070, it is predicted that hydrogen can be used as a cost-efficient storage method with enough energy for two weeks. Additionally, “hydrogen can also be used in other sectors, such as transportation and agriculture, which could create additional revenue streams.” The NREL model does not take these into account, but notes that these revenues “could be critical to the cost-effectiveness of seasonal storage.”
The researchers did not consider batteries as a storage method because they believe the technology for seasonal storage applications is “not yet sufficiently mature.”
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
Deep link:
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2020/answer-to-energy-storage-problem-could-be-hydrogen.html
Photos:
The answer to the energy storage problem could be hydrogen / © Dennis Schroeder, NREL
