Can excess solar and wind energy be curtailed?

Excess solar and wind energy can be curtailed due to no available storage. 100% reliability results if the solar and wind power supply system can meet all the electricity demand in every hour of the simulation.

How can solar and wind power meet global electricity demand?

With solar and wind capacities sized such that total annual generation meets total annual demand, seasonal and daily complementarities of these resources make them capable of meeting three-quarters of hourly electricity demand in larger countries.

Are solar-wind systems reliable if they lack energy storage?

Specifically, our results across countries indicate that the reliability of solar-wind systems that lack energy storage increases by 7.2% for every factor of 10 increase in land area; this relationship further suggests the improvement in system reliability that might be expected by expanding transmission systems within large countries.

What is a cost-optimized “all-renewables” scenario?

For example, the recently published Net-Zero America report includes a cost-optimized “all-renewables” scenario which decarbonizes U.S. electricity without nuclear or CCS: by 2050, ~81.6% of primary energy in the E + RE + scenario is from solar and wind 29.

How can we increase demand for solar and wind energy?

Increasing the share of demand that can be met by solar and wind generation will require either “overbuilding” (i.e., excess annual generation), the introduction of large-scale energy storage, and/or aggregating resources across multinational regions (Supplementary Data 6).

Are solar and wind energy cost-optimized?

In each case, focusing on the U.S., these studies find that the share of non-emitting (or carbon neutral) electricity contributed by solar and wind in cost-optimized systems is typically ~80%, with the residual demand for non-emitting generation met by firmer renewables such as biomass, hydroelectricity, and geothermal 29, 44, 45.