| An attempt at a serious answer now that it looks like you fixed the units in your post. One key part is recognizing that “energy TRANSITION” accounts inherently that we are not talking about the design of the final end state 50-100 years from now, as doing so is not useful to the conversation as there are too many unknowns that far ahead. Better to recognize that you do not need 1:1 mapping of energy storage to power usage requirements in this “toy” example as fulfilled by li-ion production. In practice: - Solar and wind generation compliment each other structurally (sunnier when less windy, windier at night, seasonally too) meaning that in practice you only need a fraction of power capacity per amount of solar and wind generation. The best summary I’ve come across for this is some of Tony Seba’s/RethinkX’s work on “super power”[1] - it is always sunny or windy somewhere. More renewables increase the incentive for deeper and longer distance grid interconnections, meaning continental differences in generation can be “smoothed out” - li-ion energy storage is great for same day fluctuations(storage measured in hours), less so for longer. Other energy storage tech platforms have different economic properties leading to more sensible deployments (the other end of the spectrum is making hydrogen gas via electrolyzer to then convert back via fuel cell - best for storage measured in months) - You also need to factor in the nuclear and hydroelectric sources existing 50 years from now, as well as the natural gas to bridge the variability until then. Could go on but there is lots out there discussing the involvement and feasibility of having a very renewables heavy grid. The key thing is that we need to build as much of all renewables, in as many places as possible ASAP. Penetration of both solar and wind as we can already see can operate well on grids with virtually 0 energy storage. Worst case you can always curtail production. Curtailed production represents someone’s energy storage opportunity. [1] summary/intro - but read source material https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/01/16/solar-wind-storage-su... |
For the steel making part of this, the idea is to replace coal with hydrogen gas in the iron to steel process, so making hydrogen gas of the electricity is the actual wanted output and not just a way to store energy.