Full Title: Renewable Electricity Generation and Storage Technologies
Author(s): NREL
Publisher(s): NREL
Publication Date: January 1, 2016
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The United States has diverse and abundant renewable resources, including biomass, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar, and wind resources. These renewable resources are geographically constrained but widespread—most are distributed across all or most of the contiguous states. Within these broad resource types, a variety of commercially-available renewable electricity generation technologies have been deployed in the United States and other countries, including stand-alone biopower, co-fired biopower (in coal plants), hydrothermal geothermal, hydropower, distributed PV, utility-scale PV, CSP, onshore wind, and fixed-bottom offshore wind. Today, these resources contribute about 10% of total U.S. electricity supply. Renewable generation sources have varying degrees of variability and uncertainty, and the output characteristics of the associated technologies vary substantially. These characteristics must be considered in grid planning and operations to ensure a real-time balance of electricity supply and demand over various timescales as renewable technologies provide greater levels of electricity to the grid.