Von Meier develops new framework for understanding challenges of integrating renewables into the grid
“When you are integrating renewables, until now, when people asked the question, ‘Can we have 100 percent renewables?' usually that was taken to mean, ‘Is there enough resource to fill all 8,760 hours of the year? And, if not, how much storage do we need?’” explained von Meier, the Co-Director of Electric Grid Research at UC Berkeley’s California Institute for Energy and Environment. “That level of analysis is no longer where the most difficult problems are.”
Speaking at last month’s UCLA Smart Grid Thought Leadership Forum, von Meier described “a conceptual map to situate these different problems” along “time and distance scales” that trace the new transmission system environment created by the increasing amounts of power that today’s grid operators are getting from renewables.