NOAA Model Finds Renewable Energy Could be Deployed in the U.S. Without Storage

I've said on many occasions that if you cast your grid wide enough, then you should be able to massively reduce or eliminate the problems associated with intermittent renewables.

However, smelting the copper, aluminium and steel needed to build such a grid must also come at a great environmental impact. Just as we shouldn't ignore the external costs of coal power stations, we shouldn't ignore the external costs of integrating intermittent renewables either.

The simulation found that a national network of HVDC transmission lines in combination with mostly solar and wind energy could lower both electricity prices and carbon emissions