A co-design framework for wind energy integrated with storage

The global growth of wind energy markets offers opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, wind variability and intermittency (across multiple timescales) indicate that these energy resources must be carefully integrated into the power system to avoid mismatches with grid demand and associated grid reliability issues. At the same time, community concerns regarding the local installation of renewable energy and energy storage systems have already delayed or even halted the proposed projects. We propose a broadly defined, co-design approach that considers wind energy from a full social, technical, economic, and political viewpoint. Such a co-design can address the coupled inter-related challenges of cost, technology readiness, system integration, and societal considerations of acceptance, adoption, and equity. Such a successful design depends on the understanding of the needs of relevant communities, the regional grid infrastructure and its demand variability, local and global grid decarbonization targets, available land and resources for system siting, policy and political constraints for energy development, and the projected regional and global impact of these systems on the environment, jobs, and communities.