Recent International Energy Agency (IEA) studies demonstrate that it is possible to cost-effectively achieve firm power with PV and wind when it’s paired with optimal amounts of battery storage (BESS) and overbuilding (aka implicit storage). The firm power cost-effectiveness of these variable renewable (VRE) resources can be further enhanced with optimal PV/wind blending and by including a small fraction of dispatchable thermal generation operated with clean (albeit expensive) GHG-free e-fuels in the generation mix.
The IEA results also suggest that, almost anywhere on the planet, cost-effective firm VRE solutions could be achieved locally without requiring major transmission build-up over large distances (to both capture high VRE resource regions and mitigate their variability.) This article, systematically quantifies this assertion for the continental US (CONUS) by analyzing how the cost of firm PV/wind generation evolves as a function of the renewable generating footprint from a single point to a subcontinental scale. Results indicate that self-contained localized 100% renewable solutions can be viable for footprints of less than 50,000 km2 (i.e., the size of a small US state).