Energy Storage to Electrify Transportation from Renewables
If, for example we want to build an energy infrastructure to keep a billion of cars in motion using a renewable infrastructure, what would be the required energy storage capacity expressed in equivalent car batteries?
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To estimate the energy storage capacity required to keep one billion cars in motion using a renewable energy infrastructure, we can break this down into a few steps and assumptions.
Step-by-step approach:
- Average Energy Storage per Car Battery:
- Let’s assume an average electric vehicle (EV) battery capacity of about 60 kWh. This is typical for mid-range EVs like the Tesla Model 3 or the Nissan Leaf. Some EVs have larger or smaller batteries, but 60 kWh is a reasonable middle-ground.
- Energy Demand for One Billion Cars:
- If each car has a 60 kWh battery, one billion cars would represent a total of:
- Renewable Infrastructure Considerations:
- The capacity mentioned above assumes that we need to store enough energy to fully charge all the cars simultaneously, which might be an extreme case, since not all cars will require full charging at the same time.
- However, energy storage in the grid typically needs to account for variability in renewable energy production (e.g., solar and wind fluctuations) and peaks in energy demand. If we want to build storage that can manage such fluctuations and ensure smooth, reliable access to power, we might need significantly more storage capacity than the raw 60 TWh for cars alone. A multiplier of 2x–5x could be used to handle renewable intermittency and grid stability.
- Energy Storage in Equivalent Car Batteries:
- To express the energy storage required in terms of car batteries, we’ll divide the total energy storage by the capacity of one car battery.
Additional Factors to Consider:
- Energy Efficiency: Not all of this energy would go directly into driving the cars. Some losses occur during charging, discharging, and the conversion processes. A typical round-trip efficiency of lithium-ion batteries is about 85–90%, so slightly more storage would be needed to account for these losses.
- Infrastructure Needs: Besides the sheer battery capacity, you would need a sophisticated grid to manage charging, store excess renewable energy, and distribute power during periods of low renewable generation.
Conclusion:
In an idealized scenario, where we only consider the energy storage needed to keep one billion cars charged, you would need a total storage capacity equivalent to about one billion car batteries of 60 kWh each, or 60 TWh. For a robust renewable energy infrastructure, you may need to plan for several times more storage capacity to handle fluctuations in renewable energy supply.