Energy-Storage
The Arithmetic of Decarburization - Part 8: The Gigawatt Gambit: Managing Fluctuations, Storage, and the Electric Vehicle Fleet
·972 words·5 mins
The Integration Challenge # Previous installments established that Austria could, in principle, generate 165 TWh of renewable electricity annually—enough for full decarbonization. But generating enough energy on average is not the same as having enough energy at every moment.
The fundamental challenge of high-renewable systems is temporal mismatch: supply and demand rarely align perfectly, and the gap must be bridged by storage, demand flexibility, or interconnections.
The Arithmetic of Decarburization - Part 6: Sunshine Squared: Scaling Solar Power from Rooftops to Deserts
·760 words·4 mins
Solar PV: From Niche to Mainstream # Photovoltaic technology has undergone a remarkable transformation. Costs have fallen by over 90% since 2010, making solar the cheapest source of new electricity generation in most of the world.
In Austria, solar PV represents the largest untapped renewable resource—estimated at 57 TWh/year RTP versus current generation of only 5 TWh/year. That means we are currently exploiting only 8.8% of our solar potential.
