The deployment of batteries alongside solar panels will add to the overall cost of the energy system, a leading UK academic has claimed.
Storage will enable many households and businesses with solar panels to go off-grid, and in doing so detract from a naturally complimentary relationship between wind and solar generation.
“When you combine wind and solar, the resulting storage challenge is a lot less than it is if we were to do it for each of the two on their own,” said Keith Maclean, chair of the UK Energy Recearch Centre (UKERC).
Outlining the findings of energy system modelling conducted by UKERC in conjunction with Sheffield University, he explained: “There’s a very strong anti-correlation between when you need to store solar and when you need to store wind, so they’re acting in that sense in a complimentary manner.
“If we continue with some of the offers that people are putting out now to go off-grid using PV and batteries – what are we actually doing?”, Maclean asked delegates at the Utility Week Energy Summit in London.
“It may make sense to the individual, but if we’re removing that solar which is making the system balancing costs lower because of the anti-correlation with wind, we’re just going to push up the whole-system costs and other people are going to have to pay them.”
According to the research, a hypothetical energy system which relied entirely upon wind and solar for generation would require around 15,000 GWh of annual storage capacity to operate smoothly.
MacLean also raised concerns about the ability of batteries, demand-side response and interconnectors to provide sufficient flexibility in a decarbonised energy system.
He urged the government and industry to speed up the development of green fuels such as hydrogen and bio-synthetic natural gas as a solution to the problem of long-term energy storage and the challenge of meeting heat demand.