Investment cost of wind power storage for 2 hours

The statistic of wind energy in the US is presently based on annual average capacity factors, and construction cost (CAPEX). This approach suffers from one major downfall, as it does not include any parameter describing the variability of the wind energy generation.

It is common practice to take as the total installed capacity of a wind energy facility the sum of the rated powers of all the turbines. Other design parameters such as hub height, and relative position of every turbine in arrays, and influence of the orography, are typically neglected in computing the total installed capacity.

If we want all the energy of the grid wind and solar photovoltaics only, without any fully dispatchable combustion fuels power plants, then we do need massive energy storage 6. Renewable energy on demand from hydropower, which in Australia is presently 8%, but it is projected to reduce below 3% by 2030 48, can help, but this is not enough.

To match a given demand, supply from other resources must then compensate for the still intermittent and unpredictable total wind energy supply. In case of the further expanded capacity of wind energy also in excess of the grid demand, energy storage will have to accept the extra wind energy or supply the wind energy in defect of the demand.

From Table 1, the capacity factors are 0.32 to 0.38 on average, depending on the year, and strongly variable between different wind farms, from 0.15 to 0.50. The CaPEX of 7 given as the cost per unit nominal power, should be replaced by the cost per unit actual power.

A proper study of wind energy supply needs high-frequency data of every wind energy facility connected to the same grid, as well as their sum. To match a given demand, supply from other resources must then compensate for the still intermittent and unpredictable total wind energy supply.