What is it about?
Wind and solar-PV electricity are growing at fantastic rates. Both technologies ar aided by the addition of storage, for example batteries, onto the grid. However, building storage technologies increases the material and energetic cost of delivering wind and solar-PV electricity. This paper explores how much storage both the wind and solar-PV industries can 'afford' given their current electricity generation.
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Why is it important?
This analysis is important because governments are currently setting mandates on grid-scale energy storage. Our analysis highlights the benefits of some storage technologies over others, which may help better focus policy.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Can we afford storage? A dynamic net energy analysis of renewable electricity generation supported by energy storage, Energy & Environmental Science, January 2014, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c3ee42125b.
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Resources
The Energy Balance of the PV Industry
In this presentation, the lead author explains what is net energy, why it is important and the framework used for the analysis. It is applied to the PV industry to see whether the building of new PV systems is currently consuming more energy than is produced by currently operating systems.
Fueling the energy transition
In this presentation, the lead author outlines the main findings from the current paper.
Contributors
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