Wind Farms Can Provide Clean Energy Surplus
The wind energy industry has seen a lot of growth over the past decade, and has become a dominant force in the renewable energy industry, up against traditional heavyweights like solar. Public support for wind is growing with each year, and leading wind companies like Vestas are developing more efficient and taller turbines. 
Now, a new study by Stanford University researchers has shown that wind energy can create three days of uninterrupted power for storage on top of what is immediately consumed, enough to get through even the worst lull in weather.
“Whenever you build a new technology, you have to invest a large amount of energy up front,” said Michael Dale, a research associate at Stanford, referring to the development and manufacturing costs of any new technology.”Studies show that wind turbines and solar photovoltaic installations now produce more energy than they consume. The question is, how much additional grid-scale storage can the wind and solar industries afford and still remain net energy providers to the electrical grid?”
In a report for the journal Energy & Environmental Science, Dale and his colleagues from Stanford detail their research which has shown that the wind industry can provide more than three days of uninterrupted power.
“We looked at the additional burden that would be placed on the solar and wind industries by concurrently building out batteries and other storage technologies,” said Dale, the lead author of the study. “Our analysis shows that today’s wind industry, even with a large amount of grid-scale storage, is energetically sustainable.
The Stanford team considered a variety of storage technologies to work in conjunction with wind energy, including batteries and geologic systems such as pumped hydroelectric storage.
“Wind technologies generate far more energy than they consume,” Dale said. “Our study showed that wind actually produces enough surplus electricity to support up to 72 hours of either battery or geologic storage. This suggests that the industry could deploy enough storage to cope with three-day lulls in wind, common to many weather systems, and still provide net electricity to society.”
Surprisingly, at least from this author’s perspective, onshore wind farms were the favourites in this scenario, over offshore wind:
“We found that onshore wind backed by three days of geologic storage can support annual growth rates of 100 percent – in other words, double in size each year – and still maintain an energy surplus.”
“These results are very encouraging,” said study co-author Sally Benson, a professor of energy resources engineering and director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford. “They show that you could create a sustainable energy system that grows and maintains itself by combining wind and storage together. This depends on the growth rate of the industry, because the faster you grow, the more energy you need to build new turbines and batteries.”
Sadly, the same could not be said for the solar industry, which was also evaluated in the report. According to the Stanford researchers, the solar industry can only afford approximately 24 hours of energy storage, “because it takes more energy to manufacture solar panels than wind turbines.” According to Dale, “the solar industry can also achieve sustainable storage capacity” but only “by reducing the amount of energy that goes into making solar photovoltaics.”
“Our analysis showed that, from an energetic perspective, most photovoltaic technologies can only afford up to 24 hours of storage with an equal mix of battery and pumped hydropower,” Dale said. “This suggests that solar photovoltaic systems could be deployed with enough storage to supply electricity at night, and the industry could still operate at a net energy surplus.”
Benson added that one of the biggest differences between solar and wind is the return on investment: “Within a few months, a wind turbine generates enough electricity to pay back all of the energy it took to build it,” she said. “But some photovoltaics have an energy payback time of almost two years. To sustainably support grid-scale storage will require continued reductions in the amount of fossil fuel used to manufacture photovoltaic cells.”
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
CleanTechnica Holiday Wish Book
Our Latest EVObsession Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
I find such exercies in energy accounting rather puzzling. They started out in fossil fuels: this makes sense because these are a scarce resource, and the net energy from digging them up, processing, and getting them to the end consumer is a useful metric. But the energy tapped by wind and solar is free and for practical purposes unlimited. What does it matter how much solar energy goes into making a solar cell? The bean-counters are right: the one really important number is cost per kwh (LCOE), plus the additional system costs for reliability (backup despatchable capacity).
Yes, it’s whether or not people can make money from storage that determines if it will be built, not energy accounting. If this sort of energy accounting determined what happened in the real world no one would ever sell double A batteries.
While a interesting mental game. And when we get to 70-90% renewable then it might start to have so meaning. Of course by the the cost of wind, PV, and storage will have dropped and the study will have to be at least updated to have any meaning. Of if the added in the heath cost saving of displacing coal, then it would be we need to install much faster.
“The wind energy industry has seen a lot of growth over the past decade,
and has become a dominant force in the renewable energy industry, up
against traditional heavyweights like solar.”
??????
Wind energy has always been bigger as solar, it is only lately that solar is approaching the market share of wind. Maybe you meant hydro in stead of solar?
Clean Energy has been underperforming the market, but its stock promises large upside which makes it a good buy for now on dips.
http://bit.ly/1ivgtoU