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+--- Thread: Researchers took key weakness of renewable energy & made it a superpower (design) (/thread-16990.html)
Researchers took key weakness of renewable energy & made it a superpower (design) - C C - Dec 11, 2024
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2024/12/researchers-took-the-key-weakness-of-renewable-energy-and-made-it-a-superpower/
EXCERPTS: Skeptics of renewable energy development often point out that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. True enough, but when the sun isn’t shining in one place, the wind is often blowing there, or somewhere else that’s not too far away.
These patterns open up the possibility of complementarity: using different renewable energy sources to balance each other out across time and space. “We want the best alignment of energy supply with demand which will improve efficiency and reliability of the energy system overall,” says study team member Liying Qiu, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[...] In the new study, Qiu and her colleagues used high-resolution meteorological data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a high-resolution energy system model that they developed in order to determine the most cost-effective places to build solar and wind farms in three regions of the country: California, Texas, and New England.
The study is the first to make use of both weather and electricity demand data at a resolution of a few kilometers. “This approach enables more precise siting of renewable installations to find the best match with time-varying energy demand and reduces overall system costs,” Qiu says.
[...] The model suggests that in New England, wind power facilities should be located not necessarily in the windiest places overall, but in places that are reliably windy at night, when solar power is unavailable. In Texas, wind power facilities should be sited in the western part of the state, which is windiest in the morning, as well as along the Gulf Coast, where it is windiest in the afternoon... (MORE - missing details)