Reports on the topic “Energy Transition” often omit important facts, an example of what I mean, a quote:
“But these can, besides gas-fired power plants, also be electricity storage such as large batteries that absorb electricity when sun and wind are currently producing more than Germany consumes – so that it is flexibly available when needed.”
The technically grounded answer read:
No, at present and for the foreseeable future this will not work with electricity storage!
To justify this, three sentences are enough:
We have on average about just under 60 GW of electricity demand; multiplied by 1 day of 24 hours yields:
About 1.4 TWh = 1400 GWh = 1400000 kWh of necessary storage capacity for only ONE day of bridging.
That is the battery capacity of about 200 million Tesla Model 3s.
Battery energy storage systems are enormously important, but for now more about “stabilization” and for loads such as peak feed-in — not related to the “energy quantity”.
In short: Batteries are for the time being not a substitute for the portion of the power-plant capacity that must remain conventional.
Natural gas power plants are therefore important, as they have about three times fewer emissions than coal-fired power plants.
And economically as well as technically suited to very low utilizations, thus to the priority for “renewables” in the grid
