“People often ask, is storage a good or bad solution for intermittent renewable energy?” Benson said. “That question turns out to be way too simplistic. It’s neither good nor bad. Although grid-scale storage of wind power might not be cost effective compared to buying power from the grid, it is energetically affordable, even with the wind industry growing at a double-digit pace.”
“The solar industry needs to continue to reduce the amount of energy it needs to build photovoltaic modules before it can afford as much storage as wind can today.”
The study was co-authored by Charles Barnhart, a postdoctoral scholar at GCEP. Funding for the research was provided by GCEP.
Check the following link to read/download the Full Study – “Can We Afford Storage? A Dynamic Net Energy Analysis of Renewable Electricity Generation Supported by Energy Storage”:
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/EE/C3EE42125B#!divAbstract
Source: By Mark Shwartz, Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University.
