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Solar panels and wind turbines are great, so long as the sun shines and the wind blows. But what if they do not? Well, then we store the energy. But how? In this video I explain how high the risk of a cold, dark, and windless period is — the “cold Dunkelflaute”, and what energy storage we need for intermittent renewables.

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The figure I show at 1 minute 49 seconds is from this report: https://www.irena.org/publications/2021/Jun/Renewable-Power-Costs-in-2020

The estimate from the German Weather Service that I mention at 2 minutes 46 seconds is here: https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2018/20180306_pressemitteilung_klima_pk_news.html

The figure I show at 2 minutes 53 seconds is from this paper: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/20/6508

The paper about the reliability of solar and wind which I discuss at about 3 minutes is this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z

The paper I mention at 4 mins 40 seconds is this: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/20/6508

The data for installed storage capacity I show at 6 mins 10 seconds is from here: https://sandia.gov/ess-ssl/gesdb/public/statistics.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128198926/thermal-mechanical-and-hybrid-chemical-energy-storage-systems

The paper with the estimates for carbon dioxide emissions from storage is here:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es505027p

The estimate for the carbon footprint of lithium-ion batteries is from here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/02/16/estimating-the-carbon-footprint-of-utility-scale-battery-storage/?sh=3fde25017adb

And the Swedish report that I mention at 16 mins is here: https://www.ivl.se/download/18.14d7b12e16e3c5c36271070/1574923989017/C444.pdf

Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video http://jordibusque.com/

00:00 Intro
00:31 The Dunkelflaute Problem
07:07 Energy Storage Options
14:04 Carbon Footprint of Energy Storage
16:59 What Do We Learn From This?
17:32 Sponsor Message

#science #environment #climatechange
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