A bit later than I anticipated, a follow-up on previous post where I presented a simple model that gave the opportunity to learn about the mechanisms that determine an increase of intermittent energy sources (solar and wind). It confirmed that, when increasing in capacity, the production lows don’t grow much, but the production highs will steeply increase. Which is, mathematical speaking, rather logical. In practice this means that the need for backup will not decrease much with increasing capacity, but that at the same time measures need to be taken to top off those ever growing peaks.
That led to the next question: is it possible, at least theoretically, to save the surplus electricity from production highs and use it later when there is not enough electricity at production lows? I adapted the model to a scenario that when more solar and wind energy is produced than consumed, then the excess energy will be stored and when less solar and wind energy is produced than consumed, the system would try to retrieve this from storage.
Trust, yet verify 