This brings up a very important point that is often glossed over...

  1. 6,398 Posts.
    lightbulb Created with Sketch. 9
    This brings up a very important point that is often glossed over in these discussions: storage is also good for conventional electricity generation. Consider: in a grid without any storage, the maximum invariant baseload generation you can have is equal to the *minimum* expected demand. Any more than that, and you're generating more than you're using, and risking serious damage to the grid and/or consumers' appliances. This is why the wholesale price of electricity occasionally goes negative: the baseload suppliers are actually paying people to dump the excess power they can't help but generate. Everything above that minimum level HAS to be provided by some sort of peaking power, whether slow or fast - and peaking generation is, in general, much more expensive than baseload.

    Add storage to the mix, though, and all that changes. Instead of being dumped, that excess power during low demand periods can be used to recharge the batteries. The more storage you have available, the more you flatten out the demand curve, and so the more invariant baseload supply you can afford to use. Add solar PV to the mix, and you flatten the demand curve even further (by reducing the daytime peak).

    In other words, renewables, storage and baseload can be synergistic, and shouldn't be considered in isolation from each other. If nuclear can be developed economically (and accepted by the public) then it should be used. So should solar. So should wind. But the real critical element to bring them all together is storage. So, to claim as the linked paper does that storage is only relevant to renewables (and hence artificially bring down their EROI relative to coal, nuclear and gas) is a furphy.
 
arrow-down-2 Created with Sketch. arrow-down-2 Created with Sketch.