Nature of land use for new energy storage power station

Note that the land use impact for electricity from storage is higher than all land use impacts except biomass and hydro. Still, only a portion of the storage land use (say 0.1%) would be allocated to one GWh of renewable energy.

The energy transition will cause drastic changes to land use, which provides barriers to adoption of renewables. Storage has relatively high use of land, which has so far been almost unexplored in the literature. Natural gas has lowest land use but there is potential for renewables to improve land use profile via mixed-use development.

In China, accurate land use constraints for energy projects, such as renewable energy and fossil energy power plants, are usually not given in the national and provincial land development plans to ensure the reliable supply of energy.

Finally, the coverage area of China Southern Power Grid should actively develop centralized renewable energy power generation technologies with high efficiency, to reduce its land dependence by improving the efficiency of renewable energy power generation.

If current battery installations are more power dense and more efficient, the proportion of land use from the production phase may become more relatively important. The largest battery currently planned is the Manatee Energy Storage Center in Florida, which covers 40 acres and is rated at 409 MW or 900 MWh .

Therefore, in the southern part of China, the land use target can increase the power generation of nuclear power and gas power but decrease the hydropower, for the purpose of decreasing the land use of power sector, without energy and water policy constraints.