Yes, and fast — but a reprise first.

California’s “duck curve” in January’s column exposes the misfit between nukes and renewables. The duck curve shows how increasing solar output would replace midday fossil generation until solar output bumped into (in our case) non-dispatchable nuclear output, which can’t be turned off lest the grid destabilize. Examine noon (12 on the horizontal axis) in Figure 1. In 2012 (blue line), non-renewables generated 22,000 MW (megawatts) in California. With expanding solar output, 2013-2016 (red to light blue lines), fossil output drops to just above 15,000 MW — the dashed line, with non-dispatchable power below. By 2020 solar could potentially replace all but 12,000 MW of traditional California power.

Maintaining grid reliability, however, would require curtailing all the solar energy that could fill the green belly of the duck. That’s happening, and that’s not good. California curtailed 15% of its utility solar output on some days during March 2021.

Curtailment may arrive earlier in Illinois’ renewable rollout because of our 11 inflexible nuclear reactors. If California is facing significant curtailments of renewables with only 22% solar and wind, and with just two nuclear reactors (9% of California’s megawatts), how is Illinois to achieve 40% wind and solar when it has 11 reactors generating 58% of Illinois’ electricity?

December’s column examined the collapse of coal-fired electricity in Illinois. Substantially reduced total energy consumption from sustained increases in energy efficiency, cheaper gas and wind power — and heavily subsidized nukes — drove costly coal-fired plants into bankruptcy. The ongoing collapse has the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warning of electricity reliability problems in central Illinois as early as 2024.

There is an urgent need to quickly increase both energy storage and wind and solar farms. By adding lots of storage to the mix, we could reliably fill NERC’s projected shortfalls in energy supplies with long-duration energy storage (LDS), which stores enough energy to be released for 12 hours or more and is the chief means to turn wind and solar into steadily available power. Until recently, only “pumped hydro” — where water is pumped uphill and then released to drive a turbine — provided large-scale LDS. California has lots of it (3,500 megawatts); flatland Illinois has none.

Fortunately, companies are now selling commercially competitive, flatland-suitable LDS products (https://www.energy-storage.news/). New technologies have advantages over short-duration (4 hours or less) lithium batteries. They are non-flammable, use cheap, readily sourced, non-toxic materials, don’t need air conditioning or degrade over time (as lithium does), have lower life-cycle costs and last more than twice as long as lithium batteries. All have the ability to store large quantities of renewable energy when overly abundant and then release it to the grid when needed.

That green belly of the duck? LDS can store all of that once curtailed solar overproduction and then shift it into the 5-11 p.m. energy peak, the duck’s “red head” in Figure 1. LDS allows wind or solar farms to start time-shifting energy in but one second, which is much more responsive and efficient than outdated conventional electricity production. It’s superduck fast.

Next month, we turn to other tricks in a fast-flying duck’s aviation kit.

References

Burnett, Michael. 2016 (Jun 1). Energy Storage and the California Duck Curve. Stanford University; http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/burnett2/

Lazar, Jim. 2016 (Feb). Teaching the “Duck” to Fly. Second Edition. Regulatory Assistance Project; http://www.raponline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rap-lazar-teachingtheduck2-2016-feb-2.pdf

Sioshansi, Fereidoon. 2021 (Sep 30). Solar curtailment: You ain’t seen nothing yet. Renew Economy; https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-curtailment-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/

MacKinsey & Company. 2021 (Nov). Net-zero power: Long duration energy storage for a renewable grid. LDES Council Report; https://www.ldescouncil.com/publication

Walton, Robert. 2021 (Dec 20). Extreme weather, plant retirements challenge US grid amid a looming Midwest capacity shortfall: NERC. Utility Dive; https://www.utilitydive.com/news/extreme-weather-plant-retirements-challenge-us-grid-amid-a-looming-midwest/611766/