Abstract
As variable renewable energy penetration increases beyond 80%, clean power systems will require long-duration energy storage or flexible, low-carbon generation. Here, we provide a detailed techno-economic evaluation and uncertainty analysis of applicable technologies and identify challenges and opportunities to support electric grid planning. We show that for a 120-h storage duration rating, hydrogen systems with geologic storage and natural gas with carbon capture are the least-cost low-carbon technologies for both current and future capital costs. These results are robust to uncertainty for the future capital cost scenario, but adiabatic compressed air and pumped thermal storage could be the least-cost technologies in the current capital cost scenario under uncertainty. Finally, we present a new storage system using heavy-duty vehicle fuel cells that could reduce the levelized cost of energy by 13%–20% compared with the best previously considered storage technology and, thus, could help enable very high (>80%) renewable energy grids.
Original language | American English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2077-2101 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | Joule |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 18 Aug 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 Elsevier Inc.
NREL Publication Number
- NREL/JA-5400-75999
Keywords
- carbon capture and sequestration
- compressed air
- heavy-duty vehicle fuel cells
- hydrogen storage
- levelized cost of energy
- lithium-ion batteries
- long-duration energy storage
- pumped hydro
- techno-economic analysis
- vanadium flow batteries