"There's no question that it would be better to have more and better storage and a sensible long-term strategy for the grid will have much more storage than today," said coauthor David Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard John and Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. "But you don't have to wait for that before deploying more variable renewables."
The parametric study conducted by Keith and SEAS graduate student Hossein Safaei asked: In order to drastically reduce planet-warming carbon emissions from electricity generation, what amount of "bulk electricity storage" -- technologies that can store electricity for hours at a time, such as pumped hydroelectric facilities or flow batteries -- is economically efficient?
Since the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine at the time that energy is needed, many assume that bulk storage technologies are essential in order for wind turbines and solar farms to contribute a larger share of the nation's electricity demand.
But storage "is not the only strategy to achieve a low-carbon electricity grid," according to Safaei. "Low capital cost in addition to good emissions performance make gas turbines cost-effective carbon mitigation candidates. Moreover, dispatchable zero-carbon generation technologies such as hydropower, nuclear, and biomass can be deployed instead of, or in conjunction with, the intermittent renewables."
Read more at Greening the Electric Grid with Gas Turbines
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