Hydrogen and a New Paradigm for Electricity Storage

Abstract

A new paradigm is needed for electricity storage in the renewables energy market. Today, what passes for “grid storage” are technologies that provide, at most, eight to 12 hours of discharge. If we are to successfully go to 100% renewables and to wean electricity generation from fossil fuels, we need storage to have up to 592 hours (88,800MWh/150MW from Tables 2 and 3 column 3) of discharge time to back up the modeled wind farm that is intermittent. Sometimes the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine for long periods of time. Long discharge time gives us reliability.