From STANFORD UNIVERSITY and the “pie in the sky dreams” department comes this study
Stanford engineers develop a new method of keeping the lights on if the world turns to 100% clean, renewable energy
Researchers propose three separate ways to avoid blackouts if the world transitions all its energy to electricity or direct heat and provides the energy with 100 percent wind, water and sunlight. The solutions reduce energy requirements, health damage and climate damage.
BY TAYLOR KUBOTA
Renewable energy solutions are often hindered by the inconsistencies of power produced by wind, water and sunlight and the continuously fluctuating demand for energy. New research by Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and Aalborg University in Denmark finds several solutions to making clean, renewable energy reliable enough to power at least 139 countries.
Stanford’s Mark Z. Jacobson says a new study shows that it is possible to transition the entire world to 100 percent clean, renewable energy with a stable electric grid at low cost. (Image credit: Getty Images)
In their paper, published as a manuscript this week in Renewable Energy, the researchers propose three different methods of providing consistent power among all energy sectors – transportation; heating and cooling; industry; and agriculture, forestry and fishing – in 20 world regions encompassing 139 countries after all sectors have been converted to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. Jacobson and colleagues previously developed roadmaps for transitioning 139 countries to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2050 with 80 percent of that transition completed by 2030. The present study examines ways to keep the grid stable with these roadmaps.
“Based on these results, I can more confidently state that there is no technical or economic barrier to transitioning the entire world to 100 percent clean, renewable energy with a stable electric grid at low cost,” said Jacobson, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “This solution would go a long way toward eliminating global warming and the 4 million to 7 million air pollution–related deaths that occur worldwide each year, while also providing energy security.”
The paper builds on a previous 2015 study by Jacobson and colleagues that examined the ability of the grid to stay stable in the 48 contiguous United States. That study only included one scenario for how to achieve the goals. Some criticized that paper for relying too heavily on adding turbines to existing hydroelectric dams – which the group suggested in order to increase peak electricity production without changing the number or size of the dams. The previous paper was also criticized for relying too much on storing excess energy in water, ice and underground rocks. The solutions in the current paper address these criticisms by suggesting several different solutions for stabilizing energy produced with 100 percent clean, renewable sources, including solutions with no added hydropower turbines and no storage in water, ice or rocks.
“Our main result is that there are multiple solutions to the problem,” said Jacobson. “This is important because the greatest barrier to the large-scale implementation of clean renewable energy is people’s perception that it’s too hard to keep the lights on with random wind and solar output.”
Supply and demand
At the heart of this study is the need to match energy supplied by wind, water and solar power and storage with what the researchers predict demand to be in 2050. To do this, they grouped 139 countries – for which they created energy roadmaps in a previous study – into 20 regions based on geographic proximity and some geopolitical concerns. Unlike the previous 139-country study, which matched energy supply with annual-average demand, the present study matches supply and demand in 30-second increments for 5 years (2050-2054) to account for the variability in wind and solar power as well as the variability in demand over hours and seasons.
For the study, the researchers relied on two computational modeling programs. The first program predicted global weather patterns from 2050 to 2054. From this, they further predicted the amount of energy that could be produced from weather-related energy sources like onshore and offshore wind turbines, solar photovoltaics on rooftops and in power plants, concentrated solar power plants and solar thermal plants over time. These types of energy sources are variable and don’t necessarily produce energy when demand is highest.
The group then combined data from the first model with a second model that incorporated energy produced by more stable sources of electricity, like geothermal power plants, tidal and wave devices, and hydroelectric power plants, and of heat, like geothermal reservoirs. The second model also included ways of storing energy when there was excess, such as in electricity, heat, cold and hydrogen storage. Further, the model included predictions of energy demand over time.
With the two models, the group was able to predict both how much energy could be produced through more variable sources of energy, and how well other sources could balance out the fluctuating energy to meet demands.
Avoiding blackouts
Scenarios based on the modeling data avoided blackouts at low cost in all 20 world regions for all five years examined and under three different storage scenarios. One scenario includes heat pumps – which are used in place of combustion-based heaters and coolers – but no hot or cold energy storage; two add no hydropower turbines to existing hydropower dams; and one has no battery storage. The fact that no blackouts occurred under three different scenarios suggests that many possible solutions to grid stability with 100 percent wind, water and solar power are possible, a conclusion that contradicts previous claims that the grid cannot stay stable with such high penetrations of just renewables.
Overall, the researchers found that the cost per unit of energy – including the cost in terms of health, climate and energy – in every scenario was about one quarter what it would be if the world continues on its current energy path. This is largely due to eliminating the health and climate costs of fossil fuels. Also, by reducing water vapor, the wind turbines included in the roadmaps would offset about 3 percent of global warming to date.
Although the cost of producing a unit of energy is similar in the roadmap scenarios and the non-intervention scenario, the researchers found that the roadmaps roughly cut in half the amount of energy needed in the system. So, consumers would actually pay less. The vast amount of these energy savings come from avoiding the energy needed to mine, transport and refine fossil fuels, converting from combustion to direct electricity, and using heat pumps instead of conventional heaters and air conditioners.
“One of the biggest challenges facing energy systems based entirely on clean, zero-emission wind, water and solar power is to match supply and demand with near-perfect reliability at reasonable cost,” said Mark Delucchi, co-author of the paper and a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Our work shows that this can be accomplished, in almost all countries of the world, with established technologies.”
Working together
Jacobson and his colleagues said that a remaining challenge of implementing their roadmaps is that they require coordination across political boundaries.
“Ideally, you’d have cooperation in deciding where you’re going to put the wind farms, where you’re going to put the solar panels, where you’re going to put the battery storage,” said Jacobson. “The whole system is most efficient when it is planned ahead of time as opposed to done one piece at a time.”
In light of this geopolitical complication, they are also working on smaller roadmaps to help individual towns, many of which have already committed to achieving 100 percent renewable energy.
Additional co-authors of this paper are Mary A. Cameron of Stanford and Brian V. Mathiesen of Aalborg University in Denmark.
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As usual, there is no mention of the energy requirements to mine the materials and construct the windmills, solar installations, and dams. Without that, the whole exercise is meaningless
I have several objections (again) to his proposal.
1-It is based on a false assumption, that XXX # of countries can even vaguely install this kind of thing, never mind afford the cost. Nor does he even consider whether or not some of them want it.
2-While solar/PVC on a private lot, if backed up by storage batteries and wind turbines, is practical on an individual private basis, IF all generating conditions are met, it is NOT practical on an industrial scale. Period. The cost to take a common house in the northern US off the grid is around $25,000 to start. There is NO guarantee that it will work, and it demands constant attention, like any other child.
3 – I see nothing in his proposal that acknowledges or gives even a slight nod to weather conditions, which have a direct affect on this kind of thing, e.g., Tornado Alley with its history of destruction. (Wanna see some turbines burning in a derecho?)
4 – a – Wind turbines are destructive of wildlife, period. They endanger more birds necessary to a balanced, healthy ecosystem than this boondoggle-brained blithering blowhard can even conceive of.
4 – b – Solar collecting platforms are no known to kill off migratory birds. Wind turbines kill off raptors. This isn’t just about songbirds or a few turkey buzzards. This is about critters that are vital to an ecosystem.
5 – It’s as plain as pancakes with no butter or syrup that this peabrained pompous perfessor does not have a clue about anything outside his office or his dwelling. He takes for granted what other people have done to provide high yield, low cost energy platforms for the rest of us. His lack of consideration is glaringly obvious. I want to see him fork over the total expense of building this system, out of his own pocket, and then get the reaction when he gets his utility bill.
He’s a twit.
Your estimate is exceedingly low. $25,000 would not buy you a battery bank let alone panels, inverters, labor, wiring, disconnect means, lightning arrestors, combiner boxes to run your household in the same manner, unless, you live an entirely different life style.
Start with your consumption. Winter will be the constraint due to the tilt of the earth versus it’s orbit (diurnallity of the sun striking us). Look at TSI (Total Solar Insolation) using PVWatts. Do all de-rates for equipment aging — particularly the battery but panels as well. Now look up at the cost of equipment.
You will find a system, that, guarantees the amount of energy to run the typical American household costs well over $140,000 — unless you forgo air conditioning, electric cooking, electric water heating…
Now, the time value of money comes into play. What you will find, is, it is much easier to use fossil fuels and pay a penalty tax for carbon absorption sink —- eg. planting trees. And it will be much cleaner when all exogenous variables are added to the entire chain of events.
That said, I love solar. But, it is and always will be a very limited application. Ditto for wind.
Fact of the matter is trees are solar panels, and, carbon sinks too! They have billions of years of evolutionary edge in engineering, even with that, they shut down in the winter due to tilt of the earth.
Coal, oil and natural gas are biological batteries, which, pollute, but, have much greater energy density. It is much cheaper to use renewables which have been under design and improvement for billions of years, that, to hubristically believe we can engineer past the environment that lead to our creation.
Wonder if this Mark Z. Jacobson dude knows that Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project is sponsored by ExxonMobil and Schlumberger?
….. and have been since December 2002!
Long Term Lurker
Following comment at start by “The Dismal Science”, in particular about renewable levels.
I’m a skeptic / lukewarmer; not a specialist but did physics, maths to PhD level, and the very idea of high ECS has never even passed the sniff test. However, I find many people on skeptical blogs talk a lot of dogmatic rah-rah about renewables.
Certainly the proposition of 100% renewables next week is aspirational.
Electricity systems need much infrastructure that mostly runs at only a fraction of capacity. The issues of ‘backup’ and ‘storage’ don’t suddenly appear once renewables (solar and wind) enter consideration.
I spent over a year modelling 50% into the Australian NEM (East Coast electricity market), and more time in Northern Australia looking at renewables integration there.
What I learnt in broad terms is that the first 10% or even 20% is good, and then it gets more complicated. Essentially you start incurring costs from the need to have additional ’backup’; but because the cost of electricity from solar and wind is becoming so cheap, it becomes worth expending resources on enabling higher levels.
Again very broadly, it appears that this incremental evolutionary approach can keep going up to about 80%. And then pushing the last 20% of fossil fuels out is hard.
I say the horse has bolted, and we should be thinking about renewables incrementally increasing their presence up to 50% type levels. And by the time that happens the technological (and economic) landscape will likely have changed in ways we can only guess at from here.
I would agree, but I might place the the upper “severe pain” threshold a bit lower, at 50% renewable penetration. And, as you have observed, the problem gets vastly worse as you move toward 100%. Anything is possible, as long as we don’t care about expenses or rates. Unfortunately those things DO matter, they matter quite a bit.
A huge part of the costs of any system is the amount of infrastructure that must be built, but is underutilized. All electrical systems have some fraction of that, but those that can minimize that capital investment are much cheaper. Unfortunately renewables demand a tremendously huge fraction of underutilized capital investment. their answer for every problem is “more”. More power lines. More backup plants. More storage. What fools people is this – the intermittentency of renewables, up to 10-15% or market penetration, is already baked in the cake and can be covered (with some clever management) by the existing grid. So the first 10 to 15% is easy peasy. Beyond that you begin to need to invest more capital into backup systems, and the underutilized capital begins to grow rapidly.
Really what you are discussing is a hard switch, versus a soft switch. A soft switch (over 30 to 50 years) is likely to cost vastly less. Unfortunately, most advocates for renewables want a hard switch – they want it now.
I say we are in agreement. I concede that over 50% is difficult from where we sit now.
We agree on the issue of infrastructure utilisation as key to the economics.
You are correct that I advocate a soft switch, which is consistent with expecting ECS to turn out low.
Regularly I see news of ‘start ups’ doing interesting things, such as this hydrogen project I saw this morning: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-12/hydrogen-power-plant-port-lincoln/9422022
Now, any given start up has a low probability of making the big time, but when you multiply a large number of these efforts with the individual low probs. it is seen that some will work out — we just have no way of knowing which ones until they happen. I think this is a key aspect of the “incremental evolution” to higher levels of renewable penetration, as opposed to trying to jam through solutions.
The other comment I make is that individual circumstances in different parts of the country / world will lead to different developments; there is unlikely to be a one size fits all ‘battery’ solution.
Hah – sounds like we both have very similar life experience! We are in violent agreement!
My observation about hard switch renewable advocates – the more enthusiastic they are, generally, the less they know about energy markets, and the less receptive they are to explanations on how those markets actually work.
There is a reason I post as “the dismal science”.
you should post here more often Francis – it might help.
I will add something – it is not just the incremental effort of lots of little renewable ideas adding (eventually) to something big. All technology is developing and evolving. Why are we undergoing a massive switch over from coal to natural gas? Fracking made gas a lot more available and cheaper, but improvements on plant design made such plants vastly cheaper to operate. Natural gas is the cheapest form of power right now, handily beating coal and nuclear, solar and wind. But Nu-scale just got NRC approval for their first modular reactor, which could drop nuke prices below even natural gas. It is a race to the bottom, and anyone pretending to know who will eventually win is just wish casting.