ENERGY AND BUILDINGS, no.116253, pp.1-52, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
“This study investigates possible scenarios in which renewable energy sources (RES) represent 30–35 % of the total electricity generation for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power system. The study focuses on solar and wind power integration and analyses the costs and benefits of this strategy. The main goal is to evaluate different energy storage (ES) technologies, especially those based on hydrogen, and how well they can solve the supply–demand imbalances and create the road for a future without fossil fuels. Optimal RES mix, storage needs, and carbon reduction potential can be determined using a techno-economic modeling framework that simulates hourly power demand and generation over a year. The study looks into several fossil fuel replacement techniques, which started with coal and progressed to a complete replacement of coal, natural gas, and petroleum in power generation. The findings show that maintaining coal-fired production alone only requires a small amount of hydrogen storage (around 22,900 m3 at 600 bar), whereas completely replacing fossil fuels can require as much as 14 million m3 of hydrogen storage. For minimum storage needs, the optimal renewable energy system design is 75–80 % wind and 20–25 % solar. A yearly decrease of 227 million tonnes, or 0.61 % of world emissions, of CO2, might be achieved by ERCOT under full transition scenarios. According to these results, it is clear that geographically distributed generation and long-duration storage are crucial for RES variability mitigation. A few policy suggestions consist of improving grid flexibility, encouraging the development of hydrogen infrastructure, and establishing regulatory frameworks to speed up the use of renewable energy sources and energy storage.”
