Whether electricity grids powered by 100%

[100% renewable energy grid]

Whether electricity grids powered by 100% renewable energy are visions or fantasies of the future is a long-standing debate. With 52 million users in Korea with a demand of 100 GW or more, it is difficult to answer easily. It is technically complex and economically/policy-wise.

What’s interesting is that there are a number of projects in Saudi Arabia that will determine the direction of this debate through recent demonstrations.

West of Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea coast has no natural coast or infrastructure. It is a pure and clean sea, so if developed well, it has the potential to become a luxury resort complex. Across the sea, there are already many luxury resorts on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. The Saudi government is developing luxury resorts in the region and building several standalone power grids that are only operated by 100% renewable energy.

Recently, China’s SunGrow was chosen as the supplier of a project to supply electricity to the resort city with thousands of rooms by combining 165 MW of solar power with 760 MW of ESS. The PCS used here has the ability to inject inertia into the system and is a system that supplies electricity 24 hours a day with 4.5 times of ESS.

It can work or it can fail, but one or two of these projects will really verify that they can be based on 100% volatile renewable energy (VRE, solar, wind, etc.).

Chinese PV, PCS, and ESS companies cannot be ignored for selling cheap products at low prices. They are already supplying products to challenging projects with cutting-edge technology. Also, it is the Indian engineering company that was responsible for the entire EPC with them. While we are arguing over one issue or another about Korea’s system system, Chinese and Indian companies are taking steps toward the future. We have to challenge ourselves, too.

Why can’t we try, for example, by installing floating offshore wind power generators off Ulleungdo and demonstrating a 100% renewable energy-based electricity grid based on them?