Scaling up renewables the way to beat the unreliability!

Often, the solution is simple. Even as we go chasing complex ways to solve a problem, the simple and often direct method lies ignored. So also with renewable energy where the challenge has been that of intermittency and unreliability of supply. Storage has been the oft quoted solution, and not without its own set of challenges.

Now consider what research from University of Delaware suggests: By 2030, scaled-up green power could meet the demands of a large grid 99.9 percent of the time. Simple, right? Intermittency and unreliability comes in when you dont have enough. So what best than to boost supply through a diverse range of sources?

A mix of offshore and onshore wind, along with contributions from solar power, could provide reliable power flow during all but a handful of days.

Moreover, researchers found that scaling up renewable generation capacity to seemingly excessive levels -- more than three times the needed load, in some instances -- proved more cost-effective than scaling up storage capacity, due to the high systems costs associated with storage technology.

Inefficiency is something that troubles thermal plants.  Power plants burn three times the amount of fuel energy needed to produce their energy output. Over-generation of renewable power would be cost effective even if all excess energy were simply dumped, according to the study. If that excess energy were harnessed -- to offset the costs of heating fuels, for example -- costs could be lowered even further.

If reliability has long haunted renewable sector, the answer lies in spread! By extending enough wind turbines and solar panels over a wide enough area, it is possible to achieve approximate reliability by shifting power from active to passive regions.

Coming to baseload power and using fossil fuel backed plants as backup, the University of Delaware study found a large enough system of renewable energy generators could feasibly fill its own reliability gaps. In our 99.9 percent scenario, they found that, in four years, only five times would you need to bring fossil-fuel plants back online to ensure power supply.