Alternatives to Electricity for Transmission, Storage, and Integration of Diverse Renewable Energy Resources

摘要

ONE OF HUMANITY'S GRAND CHALLENGES is to convert the world's energy production from 85% fossil fuel to 100% renewable energy (RE) sources, quickly, prudently, and profitably. Not completing this task will have synergistic consequences of large-scale fossil fuel combustion which include: rapid climate change, accelerating sea level rise, ocean acidification, species extinctions, and violent human conflicts. It has been demonstrated the world can run on wind, water, and solar power (WWS). The wind present in the 12 Great Plains states, if harvested through the use of wind turbines located on only 50% of the aggregate land area, could supply the annual energy demand for the entire USA, or roughly 10,000 terawatt-hours, or 100 quadrillion btu. Unfortunately, the existing electric transmission export capacity there, is an insignificant percentage of the resource's potential. Any large new electric generation and transmission systems dedicated to wind energy in the Great Plains States will not only be costly to build but difficult to site; because FERC has no authority for permitting interstate electric lines. It may suffer the same low capacity factor (CF) as the current wind plants, and provide no affordable "firming" (weekly-to-annual scale) energy storage, thus taxing the "system balancing" ability of the electricity grid.