Abstract—This work looks at the impact of assumptions made regarding efficiency of storage systems used with variable energy resources and how this applies to a solar PV installation. To find the optimal storage system to work with the cyclic solar output, a linear optimization model is implemented using OSeMOSYS. With 100% efficient, free storage, with no capacity restrictions, it is possible to get down to almost 5 GW of required solar installed capacity, but it requires 1.1 TWh of 100% efficient storage. Existing pumped hydro storage facilities have efficiencies between 70 and 80%, which increase these numbers to 7 GW and 1.2 TWh. With a storage model based on the worlds largest pumped hydro facility between 20 and 25 GW of installed solar capacity are required plus between 15 and 30 GWh of storage capacity to meet the 1 GW load. The capital infrastructure required to allow a solar installation to meet that of a baseload plant is therefore around an order of magnitude larger than what is commonly assumed. A shift away from fossil fuels to renewable/variable energy resources will require more infrastructure than indicated by simply considering the capacity factor of the energy source.
Index Terms—Solar energy, storage, renewable energy, efficiency, climate change.
Taco Niet is with the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Burnaby, BC, Canada (e-mail: tniet@bcit.ca).
Lawrence Pitt, Andrew Rowe, and Peter Wild are with the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems (IESVic) at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
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Cite:Taco Niet, Lawrence Pitt, Andrew Rowe, and Peter Wild, "Storage and the Shift to Low Carbon Energy," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 26-31, 2016.
