SP Global forecasts that more of the solar battery storage projects will be completed in the next two years in the US and the world. There are some 160 utility solar with battery storage projects with planned completions in 2022 and 2023. There are projects with 4.5 GW of storage capacity in 2022 and 6.9 GW in 2023. There plans to complete more than 18 GW of storage and 35.5 GW of solar and Three-quarters of the storage capacity could come online by 2024.
Solar Energy Forecast
BNEF forecasts 200GW-300GW solar installations for the each of the next five years. There is global factory capacity to produce 400 GW per year of solar panels.
SOURCES – SP global, BNEF, Infolink, PV Magazinew
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
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The growth was fueled by subsidies that are largely going away or being tapered. The cost has stabilized as the balance of system stuff (inverters and so on) and installation aren't really going down (and likely even going up like the cost of all raw materials currently). The debt fueled consumption spree is also nearing its end. This time the can is so full of depleted uranium that trying to kick the can another decade will result in broken toes (hyperinflation and destruction of several major world currencies is not unreasonable), not kicking the can means a major crash in housing and stocks and maybe even a depression, but at least prevents currency collapse.
Transmission lines have limited capacity, especially long distance. Solar intermittency requires oversized transmission when the sun happens to shine that will later be underutilized.
Mining BTC is already the electrical equivalent of flaring gas so I guess it has some kind of symmetry to it; but I don't see what value it provides. Long term it's fairly obvious that bitcoin must return to zero. It's not only outdated tech, but a bad example of a solution looking for a problem (block-chain and crypto generally).
Sadly, they are not breaking out the difference between bulk storage (which has various limitations on charge/discharge power) and frequency management storage (which is generally realtime or mostly on-demand source/sink).
If solar will become ever more important, would it not be strategically important to have solar cell production in the West as well rather than just in China? And if so, are there any measures taken to ensure this?
The estimate is probably a gross under estimation.
Look at the curve 2017-2022. It's a nice "exponential", but the projection is for linear growth in the years 2023-2030, it's more or less piecewise linear. Why would the development falter?
Just PG&E is wanting to put in 1.6 GWh of storage in the next 18 months in California. I suspect if you throw SCE in there they have about a equivalent plan to do the same in their regions. So that national figure of 4.5 and 6.9 sounds way too low if everyone is working to furiously add storage.
https://www.newsdata.com/california_energy_markets/regional_roundup/california-battery-storage-surges-with-new-projects-and-contracts/article_4be00236-805a-11ec-947a-fbec7376369d.html
Indeed. If you have and need current, use it! However, with power beaming you may want to sell at certain times. Even make H as a last resort when prices are low. Storage may perhaps be divided into operational for normal balancing, and emergency for, well, emergencies, but that can be more expensive, H perhaps. If you don't use the BTC hardware most of the time, it is expensive. If you do, it is not a balancer.
I'm always suspicious of growth charts that show a fast exponential right up to the present – and then flatten to a shallow linear growth or a much slower exponential. Could it be that the chart maker is scared of appearing too optimistic, because projecting the exponential or at least projecting a reasonably well-fitting S-curve makes a prediction that seems 'crazy' a few years out? Are there clients/advertisers who will object if Bloomberg shows too optimistic a future for solar, and by implication a poorer future for coal or gas or other sources?
Or use the power on site to do something colocated. Something like BTC mining.
Oil/gas companies are already mining BTC with flare gas.
Yes I read it as GWhr. Sounds like a big number but it isn't. 4.5GWhr = replacing Diablo Canyon nuclear plant power production for a bit over 2 hours. This is useful to smooth out the grid and nice for home use but not viable to transition the grid to solar.
So, no problem!
Each solar or wind plant that has intermittently *more* power than locally used at the time needs transmission or conduction away or storage to maximize profit, something needed to avoid losing money. Power beaming, transmission, allows the projects to be where they collect the most, not where they can reach customers with conduction lines or have to store.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60983.pdf
Transmission lines already exist. To connect the various regional grids would not require long lines. We could also shift solar power from North to South during the summer months.
“ There are projects with 4.5 GW of storage capacity in 2022 and 6.9 GW in 2023.”
I’m guessing that’s probably a mistake. It’s probably GWh rather than GW.
You don't need a lot of storage until variable renewables (solar and wind) are a significant fraction of the total power supply. Natural gas peaker plants and hydroelectric can be turned up and down quickly. Nuclear and coal have large boilers, and it takes a lot of energy to warm them up. So they are slow to ramp up, and they prefer not to turn them off a lot and waste the heated water. We are now at the point in some areas, like California, that have so much solar installed they need batteries to manage the variations.
No thats correct. To be precise: 70 GWh of storage in 2025, 228 GW of installations in 2022.
The 70 GWh is even less than 20 minutes, as the total installed PV by 2025 will be around 2TW.
But a solar + storage project doesn't have the same battery capacity as solar capacity. That is because only a few kwhs of the energy generated require to be 'time shifted'.
The other thing proposed is long distance power lines. Getting the power to where it is needed is better than storage separately at each location. Power lines are fixed in position, however, and cost more as they get longer. For switchable solution:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8074936B2/en
https://newatlas.com/energy/us-navy-beams-1-6-kw-power-kilometer-microwaves/
Like “4.5 GW of capacity”. Should that be GWh?
I don’t understand. 200 GW of solar power, backed by 70 GWh of storage? The batteries would only last 20 minutes. Not overnight.
Should some of the “GW” be “GWh” in this article? The units mistakes are very confusing.