Younicos co-founder Clemens Triebel is urging policymakers to take storage systems more seriously if Germany is to reach its 80% renewable energy target.
The success of expanding the use of renewable solar and wind energy depends on matching it with sufficient storage capacity from the start, he said.
Germany’s current energy policy aim stipulates that 80% of electricity consumption must be covered by renewable energies by 2050.
Triebel, believes this cannot work without storage, and is calling on energy policymakers to take the goals they set themselves seriously and get the energy system into a state, in which it is able to handle large amounts of renewable energy in the future.
Triebel says the current German system is still discriminating against energy storage in favour of conventional power plants.
According to Triebel the energy transition is being unnecessarily slowed down and made more expensive by clinging to an outdated way of thinking: “We still produce power according to a 19th century paradigm which holds that energy is best produced by large generators that rotate constantly.
“If we contiue to cling to this notion, the grid will continue to be taken up by coal, gas and nuclear energy blocking space for solar and wind energy more and more frequently.”
“The necessary storage capacities will not just appear overnight. We have to start developing them today. Parallel to this, we have to drive the development of new storage technologies forward in order to be equipped for the huge amounts of renewable energy that will be generated in future.”
The Younicos Chief Visionary Officer will explain this thesis in greater depth in his keynote at the trade fair and conference, Energy Storage Europe in Düsseldorf from 15 to 17 March.
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