Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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AKE: Arbeitskreis Energie

AKE 9: Renewable Energy - Solar Energy

AKE 9.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 12:30–12:45, DÜL

Volatility of solar-wind power — •Hans Lustfeld — Peter Grünberg Institut (PGI-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany

Solar-wind power presents an alternative to conventional power generation. Its advantage is the CO2 free power generation making it superior not only to coal and oil power plants but to gas power plants as well. Its main disadvantage is its volatility. According to the estimates of H.-W. Sinn suppressing the volatility requires storage plants with an electric capacity, several orders of magnitude larger than the present available capacity in Germany[1]. This result leads to the conclusion that solar-wind power can be used only together with conventional power plants in the background - removing the principal attraction of solar-wind power.

I think that the estimates presented in [1] are too strict. To show this I shall discuss the storage requirements as a function of solar-wind power, I shall point out the importance of smart meters and present calculations for two cases: i) all electric power generation in Germany is obtained from solar-wind power alone, ii) in addition all energy for transport, warm water, space heating and partly for process heating is obtained exclusively from solar-wind power as well.

[1]H.-W. Sinn, European Economic Review 99, 130 (2017)