Wind Power
Centralized Generation: includes
nuclear and fossil fuel power plants.
Central Concentrating
Solar Power
Thermal Energy
Storage
Transmission lines: connect both
conventional generation and
renewable power.
Substation
Electricity is converted to lower
voltage at the substation.
Thermal Power
Generation
Distribution lines carry lower-
voltage electricity to the load.
Load
Distributed generation is any source
of electricity that is at or near the
point of load. It can be connected to
the utility’s distribution lines, or just
provide power to a stand-alone load.
Figure 4. A scenario of renewable energy
integrated with storage as baseload power.
Devonie Mccamey and raymond David at Nrel for
publication and graphic support.
Pumped hydro storage
(PHs) is a well-known,
highly efficient, long-term
and large-scale energy
storage method. …
However, PHs development
requires suitable
geological conditions, large
Advances in CSP technology under the
SunShot Initiative may drive up thermal power
conversion efficiency to possibly more than
50 percent, making the electric energy storage efficiency potentially competitive with
conventional CAES. Meanwhile, the SunShot
Initiative should bring down TES costs significantly. By incorporating essentially free electric storage inherent in a CSP plant’s TES into
the renewable power generation system, TES
will increase the wind and PV penetration into
the grid, and make renewable baseload power
possible. In conclusion, TES can be one of several electricity storage methods that can address
the variability of renewable energy generation,
thus allowing renewables to achieve large-scale
grid penetration. ST
investment and extensive
environmental assessment.
26 May 2012 SOLAR TODAY solartoday.org
Copyright © 2012 by the American Solar Energy Society Inc. All rights reserved.
