The energy crisis has become the big talking point of the last half year. It occupies the front pages of the media and the agenda of political parties. Everyone fixes their postures. Yesterday it was the turn of Pablo Casado, leader of the Popular Party. He did it in a plain and traditional tone today viralized on social networks. After explaining that he also “likes” solar energy, added: “The day before yesterday at eight in the afternoon was the peak of electricity consumption. And at eight in the afternoon there was no possibility that the solar would emit. Because it was night”.
Instant success.
The reaction. The apparent simplicity of his account has caused all kinds of sarcastic and acid comments. The headlines of the media pick up part of the public reaction. “Total cachondeo in Twitter with the explanation of Casado”, explains Public. “Married gets involved and everyone is laughing,” adds Sport. “They also gave him the EGB”, Rufián ironically, in a dart replicated by other means. “You imagine this boy representing Spain in a summit of something”, sentenced the comedian Quique Peinado in one of the most shared tweets.
The context. Casado issued these words during a party act in Castilla-La Mancha, a net energy-emitting community. In isolation, his statements could have two interpretations: either Casado highlighted the limitations of renewable energies and the need to maintain the status quo in terms of electricity generation … Or Casado pointed to the need to invest more in energy storage systems. solar, a great bet for the future but, for the moment, a minority in the Spanish energy mix. Here the quote full:
Here on the left they don’t like nuclear power and they don’t like coal and they don’t like gas and they don’t like hydro and they don’t like wind power now, and they complain that the mills damage the landscape. Sure, they just like solar. And me. But it is that the day before yesterday at eight in the afternoon was the peak of electricity consumption. And at eight o’clock in the afternoon, I don’t know if you were around here, but there was no possibility that the solar would emit. Basically, because it was night. Therefore, it is a matter of logic.
There is something. It is evident that Casado pointed more towards the first interpretation, that of criticizing alternative energies championed by the left. Hence the reaction of a part of the public sphere, accelerated by the pedestrian nature of his example. Nothing but a slip you don’t deserve to pay attention to? Not at all. Casado pointed to a problem that, today, solar does have: its storage technology is still precarious. On Saturday at 20:00 solar thermal / photovoltaic was not covering even 1% of the demand in Spain. The same remembered.
It doesn’t cover everything. The REE graphs show a clear winter pattern: solar covers up to 25% of Spanish energy consumption during the central hours of the day, but only during the central hours of the day. Its weight in the pool it is perceived from sunrise to a few hours after sunset. Wind power compensates part of its production during the evening (it covers more than 40% from 9:00 p.m. onwards) … But also nuclear (20% in hours without sun) and gas (30% depending on the day). In other words, Spain needs sources that compensate for solar.
The storage. It is something that we have known for a long time and it is not surprising. If solar is to be decisive in the long term, it needs new storage technologies. Today there are large lithium batteries for self-consumption that do allow the energy generated during the day to be stored and reused throughout the rest of the day. It works, yes, at the household level (and they are quite expensive: the largest models are around € 7,000). But the energy needs of a family differ greatly from the great national energy theater.
The ideas. There are several projects that seek to solve this stumbling block. One of them is to make batteries larger and with more storage and charging capacity, super batteries capable of covering up to 100GW of demand. They operate from the theoretical plane, and the forecasts give them a relevant role from 2050 onwards. Their problem is material: they require a lot of lithium and cobalt, two highly demanded materials that we are consuming at high speed (at this rate, we will have swallowed 10% of the former by 2050).
Another option is thermal storage, explained in detail in this article. It has various ways of action, from latent heat to sensible heat. An example is the thermosolar or concentration plants, mirror macro plants that absorb solar radiation during the day and transfer it to a storage system to use it at discretion when necessary. The most famous, for its impressive installation and large tower, is located in Seville and has been operating for more than ten years with considerable success. The largest is in Mojave, United States, and already supplies 140,000 homes.
Plus. Companies like Photon Energy are already developing gigantic storage projects in Australia, with up to 3.6GW / h, while various reports point to 1,000GW / h of storage three decades from now. The government itself has an Energy Storage Strategy, going from the current 8GW (adding all sources and technologies, not just solar) to 20GW (increasing, above all, by renewables). In other words, it is a deficiency in the process of being fixed. In a context of technological acceleration and plummeting costs, the future of solar as the main source is quite encouraging.
The controversy. But the future. Casado was referring to a problem (solar only generates 10% of daily demand) to shore up other sources, such as nuclear, whose long-term investment is more onerous for the country. If the line of argument is debatable from an energy policy point of view for the next twenty or thirty years, the fact that has raised the controversy not so much. Solar today faces a barrier in large-scale storage. One in the process of solution, yes.
Image: Flickr