Can renewables replace fossil and nuclear fuels?

[shread]

It's hard to say whether Spanky's post should go in a nuclear thread or a climate change thread or the alternatives to oil thread. I finally decided the question needed its own thread. Note the extensive destruction of the earth in the stripmine illustrated in Spanky's post. Lots more than the few square miles at Fukushima, approaching the thousands to tens of thousands of square miles around the Chernobyl plant; (there are people living on much of the contaminated land around Chernobyl).

So who is going to be right? Will renewables replace both fossil and nuclear fuel for electricity generation? Many folks doubt it, such as the executive of the power company in the video linked by Spanky. The video also contains footage of a technological optimist talking about wind-powered pumped storage from mines, utilizing for power generation standard hydro on the drop back into the mine coupled with exploitation of the thermal gradient from mine to surface. One issue with that would be how much flow rate could be absorbed by the mine; I suppose multiple pumps and hydro setups could increase allowable flow. Also, how much thermal gradient would remain once equilibrium is reached?

The big question are:
1) Can some means of storing energy be devised for those periods when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine?

2) Can the alternatives be made safe enough to be socially acceptable:
a) Fossil, through carbon sequestration;
b) Nuclear, through inherently safe plant designs?

 

[minnmass]

1: yes; they're called "batteries". The problems come in how much energy goes into making one, how expensive it is, and how long it lasts. But, the technology is well-proven. Other options may include: pumping water uphill during peak production and running it down through a turbine when demand outstrips supply, or pumping air into a cave, or (using thermal solar instead of photovoltaic solar) storing some of the heat for use through the night, or even harvesting hydrogen to burn during the dark hours.

Plus, in a grid the size of, say, the US or Europe, there's plenty of geographical diversity to help prevent there being no sun/wind anywhere on the grid.

The question isn't "will we find a way to do this?", it's "which combination of options gives us the best bang for our buck?" (with a side of "when will it be less expensive than just burning some more dead dinos?").

2a: no.

2b: yes. Chernobyl was only a disaster because the people running it basically did everything in their power to generate a disaster to see if they could (spoiler: "yes"). Fukushima had some design issues which were spotted well in advance of the tsunami, and which could have been remediated well before that event if the political will to say "this wasn't perfect the first time" was there; IIRC, there were some steps which could have been taken immediately before/after the tsunami to significantly mitigate the resulting fallout.

 

[shread]

minnmass[/url]":ncjjx70x]1: yes; they're called "batteries". The problems come in how much energy goes into making one, how expensive it is, and how long it lasts. But, the technology is well-proven. Other options may include: pumping water uphill during peak production and running it down through a turbine when demand outstrips supply, or pumping air into a cave, or (using thermal solar instead of photovoltaic solar) storing some of the heat for use through the night, or even harvesting hydrogen to burn during the dark hours.

You pretty much destroyed chemical batteries on your own. See some of the other threads on those.

Are there enough pumped storage areas available? Air pressure has lots of loss going both ways, but Danielle Fong's company is developing apparatus for spraying in water to store the heat of compression and re-release it on decompression. Thermal storage has not flown yet, although it could extend the hours of power production from photo-voltaics. Decomposing water is hopelessly inefficient.

Plus, in a grid the size of, say, the US or Europe, there's plenty of geographical diversity to help prevent there being no sun/wind anywhere on the grid.

There are issues with grid capacity. World-wide grids have been proposed. They would work much better with superconductors, which do not appear feasible currently.

The question isn't "will we find a way to do this?", it's "which combination of options gives us the best bang for our buck?" (with a side of "when will it be less expensive than just burning some more dead dinos?").

It isn't the price of fossil fuel that's the issue. It's cheaper. It's the climate change associated with fossil fuel that is the issue. Using carbon credits to reshape the market may be implicit in your response though.

2a: no.

2b: yes. Chernobyl was only a disaster because the people running it basically did everything in their power to generate a disaster to see if they could (spoiler: "yes"). Fukushima had some design issues which were spotted well in advance of the tsunami, and which could have been remediated well before that event if the political will to say "this wasn't perfect the first time" was there; IIRC, there were some steps which could have been taken immediately before/after the tsunami to significantly mitigate the resulting fallout.

 

[minnmass]

shread[/url]":1ymp4yhr]

minnmass[/url]":1ymp4yhr]1: yes; they're called "batteries". The problems come in how much energy goes into making one, how expensive it is, and how long it lasts. But, the technology is well-proven. Other options may include: pumping water uphill during peak production and running it down through a turbine when demand outstrips supply, or pumping air into a cave, or (using thermal solar instead of photovoltaic solar) storing some of the heat for use through the night, or even harvesting hydrogen to burn during the dark hours.

You pretty much destroyed chemical batteries on your own. See some of the other threads on those.

Are there enough pumped storage areas available? Air pressure has lots of loss going both ways, but Danielle Fong's company is developing apparatus for spraying in water to store the heat of compression and re-release it on decompression. Thermal storage has not flown yet, although it could extend the hours of power production from photo-voltaics. Decomposing water is hopelessly inefficient.

Thermal storage has been demonstrated: http://meincmagazine.com/science/2014/02/ ... goes-down/

The cost concerns with chemical batteries are only in relation to fossil fuels. On-grid storage cares not for weight and but little for size. If batteries were free, we'd have on-grid batteries in a week.

Decomposing water may be hopelessly inefficient, but the important question is the efficiency of water -> hydrogen -> water relative to the efficiency of energy -> air pressure -> energy or re/dis-charge cycles on a battery.

Plus, in a grid the size of, say, the US or Europe, there's plenty of geographical diversity to help prevent there being no sun/wind anywhere on the grid.

There are issues with grid capacity. World-wide grids have been proposed. They would work much better with superconductors, which do not appear feasible currently.

Even without going world-wide, existing large-scale grids can mitigate a lot of cloud cover in specific areas. This particular step doesn't need to solve 100% of the problem of cloudy days, though, as it would necessarily be in conjunction with other on-grid energy storage.

The question isn't "will we find a way to do this?", it's "which combination of options gives us the best bang for our buck?" (with a side of "when will it be less expensive than just burning some more dead dinos?").

It isn't the price of fossil fuel that's the issue. It's cheaper. It's the climate change associated with fossil fuel that is the issue.

The price of fossil fuel is the reason we are still causing climate change associated with fossil fuel. It's so much cheaper to use existing fossil-fuel-burning plants than it is to build out new non-fossil-fuel-burner plants that the fossil fuels keep getting burned and their associated climate change keeps happening. We (in the US, and much of the rest of the "developed" world) have such a large fossil fuel infrastructure in place that the power companies' financial incentive to move to renewable just isn't there.

By way of analogy: electric cars are available (and pretty spiffy, by all accounts). And, they're probably less expensive to own in the long run than an internal combustion engine-powered car. In addition, they almost certainly produce less climate-affecting pollution over their lifetime than an ICE car would. So, why doesn't everyone ditch their old cars for Volts and Teslas? The ongoing costs to maintain and fuel their existing fossil-fuel burners is so much lower than buying a new car that the financial incentives just don't support it yet.

 

[RaceBannon]

I recently ran across these guys who have developed a process to use stored heat to run a motor at night, or when solar/wind sources are off-line. They claim it is 72-80% efficient, compared to pumping water up a hill which is 74% efficient. Looks interesting.

 

[Megalodon]

shread[/url]":2m7pxjwt]The big question are:
1) Can some means of storing energy be devised for those periods when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine?

If solar are now where wind was 10 years ago, then batteries are now where solar was 10 years ago. I'm leaning towards yes, but it's certainly not trivial. The reason I'm optimistic is because there's now a number of technologies with good velocity that aren't obviously going to fail. I think the probability at least one of them is viable is extremely good.

The ones I'm aware of:

-Ambient temperature pumped storage, which you mention. Rather than requiring favorable geology, which is a HUGE constraint, this would allow essentially filling up empty fields with natural gas pipeline. Maybe composite overwrapped would be cheaper. Pressure vessel diameter is limited by hoop strength, but conversely the surface area this implies would lose too much heat. Make the temperature ambient or close and it's a lot more compelling.

-Iron-chromium redox flow batteries. Like vanadium but far cheaper and more plentiful materials.

-Molten metal/salt batteries. Sadoway has started a company, Ambri, which hopes to bring progressively larger batteries to market. These scale well because it's bulk materials dumped into a bucket that then separate out by density.

-Lithium-ion seemed to be out of the running until this crazy billionaire zealot decided to build the total current global production capacity in one place... Apparently this starts getting interesting at $200/kwh and people keep talking in hushed whispers that Tesla might already be getting close to this. They're already marketing Tesla packs for building-sized UPSes and demand management. We are now at the point where any progress at all makes a very economically significant difference.

shread[/url]":2m7pxjwt]2) Can the alternatives be made safe enough to be socially acceptable:
a) Fossil, through carbon sequestration;
b) Nuclear, through inherently safe plant designs?

-No. Sequestration is environmental theater. Its purpose is to reduce the urgency of doing something by manufacturing the appearance of doing something.

-Maybe. Storage would help nuclear too because it would increase demand in off hours.

I think it's going to be hard to beat solar. If you look at what Solar City is doing, they're investing billions is large scale manufacturing of high efficiency panels. If you think about this, the ramifications go all the way through the cost structure. All the mounting hardware, all the installation labor, all the shipping costs are helped by boosting efficiency.

 

[Gisboth]

When discussing thermal storage, don't leave out ice

Cheaply made with excess energy at night, it may significantly reduce cooling costs during the day.

On the west coast:.

With the help of the Ice Bear, a commercial air conditioner uses 95 percent less energy during peak hours, Miller said, ultimately reducing the chance of brownouts and lowering energy bills.

Air conditioning accounts for about 40 percent of electricity usage during peak hours for most buildings, Miller said.
...
Glendale Water and Power has more than 160 Ice Bear units on municipal buildings throughout the city, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

On the east coast: In New York, ConEd is investing in such systems to help meet Gov. Cuomo's goal of replacing energy from the Indian Point nuclear power plant.

“The Con Ed program correctly focuses on the real electrical energy problem we have in this country which is how and when we use our power. With our national utility load factor now under 50 percent we have twice as much generating capacity as we need if we use electricity at a level rate day and night. Con Edison’s program specifically attacks the peak demand problem.”

“Now,” continued MacCracken, “buildings in NYC that install energy storage technologies, like CALMAC’s IceBank for example (already installed in many iconic NY buildings like Rockefeller, the Bank of America Tower and 55 Water St), will have it paid off in just 3 years, instead of the usual 7-year payback. That is a huge incentive.”

 

[Sp@nky]

I think that in the far future we may get there. I don't know exactly how far that is but I think we'll come up with an affordable way of storing electricity and getting solar and wind generation down to reasonable prices.

I think it's pretty far out there though so I support advanced nuclear myself.

That's not really what my post was about though. It was the fact that the rush to get rid of nuclear and towards renewables has in fact taken them backwards in someways.

 

[shread]

minnmass[/url]":1tco16ec]Thermal storage has been demonstrated: http://meincmagazine.com/science/2014/02/ ... goes-down/

The cost concerns with chemical batteries are only in relation to fossil fuels. On-grid storage cares not for weight and but little for size. If batteries were free, we'd have on-grid batteries in a week.

Decomposing water may be hopelessly inefficient, but the important question is the efficiency of water -> hydrogen -> water relative to the efficiency of energy -> air pressure -> energy or re/dis-charge cycles on a battery.

Yes that's an important question, but the more important one is whether or not using one of these methods with wind and solar can be cost competitive with fossil and nuclear.

Even without going world-wide, existing large-scale grids can mitigate a lot of cloud cover in specific areas. This particular step doesn't need to solve 100% of the problem of cloudy days, though, as it would necessarily be in conjunction with other on-grid energy storage.

Yes, but night time is the big issue, when neither the sun shines nor, frequently, the wind blows, in most of the country.

The price of fossil fuel is the reason we are still causing climate change associated with fossil fuel. It's so much cheaper to use existing fossil-fuel-burning plants than it is to build out new non-fossil-fuel-burner plants that the fossil fuels keep getting burned and their associated climate change keeps happening. We (in the US, and much of the rest of the "developed" world) have such a large fossil fuel infrastructure in place that the power companies' financial incentive to move to renewable just isn't there.

By way of analogy: electric cars are available (and pretty spiffy, by all accounts). And, they're probably less expensive to own in the long run than an internal combustion engine-powered car. In addition, they almost certainly produce less climate-affecting pollution over their lifetime than an ICE car would. So, why doesn't everyone ditch their old cars for Volts and Teslas? The ongoing costs to maintain and fuel their existing fossil-fuel burners is so much lower than buying a new car that the financial incentives just don't support it yet.

I suspect you're being too glib here. There are plenty of new coal burners being built in China every day and plenty of natural gas plants being built in the U.S.

 

[shread]

Gisboth[/url]":1r53byzg]

Spoiler

When discussing thermal storage, don't leave out ice

Cheaply made with excess energy at night, it may significantly reduce cooling costs during the day.

On the west coast:.

With the help of the Ice Bear, a commercial air conditioner uses 95 percent less energy during peak hours, Miller said, ultimately reducing the chance of brownouts and lowering energy bills.

Air conditioning accounts for about 40 percent of electricity usage during peak hours for most buildings, Miller said.
...
Glendale Water and Power has more than 160 Ice Bear units on municipal buildings throughout the city, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

On the east coast: In New York, ConEd is investing in such systems to help meet Gov. Cuomo's goal of replacing energy from the Indian Point nuclear power plant.

“The Con Ed program correctly focuses on the real electrical energy problem we have in this country which is how and when we use our power. With our national utility load factor now under 50 percent we have twice as much generating capacity as we need if we use electricity at a level rate day and night. Con Edison’s program specifically attacks the peak demand problem.”

“Now,” continued MacCracken, “buildings in NYC that install energy storage technologies, like CALMAC’s IceBank for example (already installed in many iconic NY buildings like Rockefeller, the Bank of America Tower and 55 Water St), will have it paid off in just 3 years, instead of the usual 7-year payback. That is a huge incentive.”

How much of this is vapor ware/pr versus the real thing.

 

[shread]

RaceBannon[/url]":1sbfrncf]I recently ran across these guys who have developed a process to use stored heat to run a motor at night, or when solar/wind sources are off-line. They claim it is 72-80% efficient, compared to pumping water up a hill which is 74% efficient. Looks interesting.

That was neat. I wonder, though, how much heat is lost while it's in storage? That seems to be the bane of heat-based systems. So what if it's 74% efficient if you loose 50% of the heat during storage.

 

[shread]

Megalodon[/url]":3n8o101n]
If solar are now where wind was 10 years ago, then batteries are now where solar was 10 years ago. I'm leaning towards yes, but it's certainly not trivial. The reason I'm optimistic is because there's now a number of technologies with good velocity that aren't obviously going to fail. I think the probability at least one of them is viable is extremely good.

Yes, there is room for optimism, especially if you extend beyond just batteries. But which ones will make it?

 

[Deleted member 32907]

shread[/url]":368z9efx]

RaceBannon[/url]":368z9efx]I recently ran across these guys who have developed a process to use stored heat to run a motor at night, or when solar/wind sources are off-line. They claim it is 72-80% efficient, compared to pumping water up a hill which is 74% efficient. Looks interesting.

That was neat. I wonder, though, how much heat is lost while it's in storage? That seems to be the bane of heat-based systems. So what if it's 74% efficient if you loose 50% of the heat during storage.

Insulation is a mostly solved problem. Keeping heat for dozens of hours is not hard.

 

[UserJoe]

Syonyk[/url]":35qx26jf]

shread[/url]":35qx26jf]

RaceBannon[/url]":35qx26jf]I recently ran across these guys who have developed a process to use stored heat to run a motor at night, or when solar/wind sources are off-line. They claim it is 72-80% efficient, compared to pumping water up a hill which is 74% efficient. Looks interesting.

That was neat. I wonder, though, how much heat is lost while it's in storage? That seems to be the bane of heat-based systems. So what if it's 74% efficient if you loose 50% of the heat during storage.

Insulation is a mostly solved problem. Keeping heat for dozens of hours is not hard.

That all depends on how big your system is and how hot you want to keep it. They also want ot maintain steep gradients in side the storage medium in addition to minimizing outside heat losses/gains. This is a simple low tech system. I wonder if they looked into heat sinks that undergo phase change to increase the energy storage density in the system.

 

[Gisboth]

shread[/url]":11casm42]
How much of this is vapor ware/pr versus the real thing.

Not sure if serious ...

From the text quoted:

CALMAC’s IceBank for example (already installed in many iconic NY buildings like Rockefeller, the Bank of America Tower and 55 Water St)

From the wiki article on the Bank of America Building:

The cooling system produces and stores ice during off-peak hours, and allows the ice to melt to help cool the building during peak load, similar to the ice batteries in the 1995 Hotel New Otani Tokyo in Japan. Ice batteries have been used since absorption chillers first made ice commercially available 150 years ago, before the invention of the electric light bulb.

(emphasis added)

 

[Conserve]

Doesn’t “off peak” relate to coal and gas units that are available but underutilized at night?

 

[shread]

Gisboth[/url]":3q2m5kse]

shread[/url]":3q2m5kse]
How much of this is vapor ware/pr versus the real thing.

Not sure if serious ...

From the text quoted:

CALMAC’s IceBank for example (already installed in many iconic NY buildings like Rockefeller, the Bank of America Tower and 55 Water St)

From the wiki article on the Bank of America Building:

The cooling system produces and stores ice during off-peak hours, and allows the ice to melt to help cool the building during peak load, similar to the ice batteries in the 1995 Hotel New Otani Tokyo in Japan. Ice batteries have been used since absorption chillers first made ice commercially available 150 years ago, before the invention of the electric light bulb.

(emphasis added)

Yes, it sounds good. But assume I'm not the Bank of America, but just Joe Blow ten-millionaire with one skyscraper in NYC that I rent out. Without all those tax incentives, would there be a financial incentive or penalty in installing one of these things? Hell, even with incentives, because the Bank of America surely did it at least as much for the pr/feelgood benefit as for any other reason.

 

[Megalodon]

shread[/url]"od0eh5c]Yes, there is room for optimism, especially if you extend beyond just batteries. But which ones will make it?

If I had to bet based on what I know of that's in flight right now I'd say lithium ion will be the single largest contributor to grid connected storage capacity.

I don't think that'll be because of utility scale projects or because the economies of lithium ion are fundamentally better. I think it'll be because of Musk. Musk doesn't have to spend a decade scaling his battery startup, he's just dropping $5b on a factory in the desert and debuting at #1, and Solar City is already adding batteries to some solar installations.

It sounds small until you realize just Solar City by themselves will likely do more than a gigawatt of solar capacity in 2015. Probably multiple gigawatts per year or even per quarter within this decade. If any significant percentage of these start including batteries they're going to blow past all the utility scale stuff without even noticing.

 

[Gisboth]

shread[/url]":23jxsgzt]Without all those tax incentives, would there be a financial incentive or penalty in installing one of these things?

This question can be asked about every form of energy: renewables, fossil fuels, nuclear, storage, etc.

Energy is not a free market by any measure.

 

[arcite]

I'd go with orbital solar panels converting sunlight into microwaves, http://ecmweb.com/around-circuit/japan- ... solar-farm

Several billion years of free unlimited energy right there.

 

[redleader]

arcite[/url]":1yn6nog0]I'd go with orbital solar panels converting sunlight into microwaves, http://ecmweb.com/around-circuit/japan- ... solar-farm

Several billion years of free unlimited energy right there.

Basically nothing about that makes any sense. Close to the equator, you get roughly 3x the power by being in space. But you have to build what are essentially three arrays, one solar, one transmitting, and one receiving. And two of them then have to be lifted into orbit and precisely aligned with the Earth.

Not even considering the incredible engineering challenges of building 2 kilometer square structures in orbit, nor of focusing and aligning gigawatt class beams, or the cooling needed for a system that is going to be transmitting 1E9 watts at probably less than 99.99% efficiency while in orbit, its going to be incomprehensibly cheaper to just put the panels on the ground and build 3 or 4 times as many of them over a wide area so that on average you have the same power.

 

[Deleted member 32907]

What if we made them replaceable hex tiles with LED lighting?

 

[KD5MDK]

Gisboth[/url]":13ku3vi0]

shread[/url]":13ku3vi0]Without all those tax incentives, would there be a financial incentive or penalty in installing one of these things?

This question can be asked about every form of energy: renewables, fossil fuels, nuclear, storage, etc.

Energy is not a free market by any measure.

Knowing the functional efficiency is still important as to whether it makes sense to invest in efficient cooling systems or simply more clean electrical generation power.
If I know that switching my customers to an ice based cooling system allows me to avoid spending X on additional peak generation, I'm invented to offer them discounts/rebates/whatever up to X to induce them to switch, but I shouldn't exceed X or I'm making a less efficient choice.

 

[dio82]

Megalodon[/url]":7xbxyr6t]

shread[/url]":7xbxyr6t]Yes, there is room for optimism, especially if you extend beyond just batteries. But which ones will make it?

If I had to bet based on what I know of that's in flight right now I'd say lithium ion will be the single largest contributor to grid connected storage capacity.

I don't think that'll be because of utility scale projects or because the economies of lithium ion are fundamentally better. I think it'll be because of Musk. Musk doesn't have to spend a decade scaling his battery startup, he's just dropping $5b on a factory in the desert and debuting at #1, and Solar City is already adding batteries to some solar installations.

It sounds small until you realize just Solar City by themselves will likely do more than a gigawatt of solar capacity in 2015. Probably multiple gigawatts per year or even per quarter within this decade. If any significant percentage of these start including batteries they're going to blow past all the utility scale stuff without even noticing.

Irrelevant.

You are simply ignoring the uninmaginable scales necessary for building any noteworthy electricity storage device. Solar photovoltaic power (PV) will never be cost effective ... even more so considering the future 1$/kWh cost of storing electricity.

Just for your consideration of the scales necessary. Firstly, there is absolutely no product that comes even close to the mass of fossil fuels produced and burned per year by all of mankind. NOT EVEN close. Global agricutural output is a pittance compared to fossil fuels. Cement is a pittance. Steel is a pittance.
And in terms of energy density, fossil fuels are very damn near the maximum permissible by physics!! Any alternative to fossil fuels will need to consist of moving even more mass!!

Any alternative to just-in-time electricity production will necessitate not thousands of tons, not millions of tons. It will necessitate billions of tons.

You may inject that the mass of a lithium ion cell is capable of holding many tank fills of charge over its life time. That is correct. BUT, the energy density of the best Li-Ion batteries is about 1/100 of that of oil (0.4MJ/kg versus 45MJ/kg). Given a very optimistic life expectancy of 1000 cycles, we are talking hence about a replacement mass of 1/10 of that for oil, i.e. approximately 4.1 billion tons of oil / 10 = 410 million tons of Li-Ion batteries PER YEAR! OK, thermal efficiency versus electricity conversion efficiency is still missing, but that does not really change THAT much. So maybe 100-200 million tons per year.

And this is just for oil!

Lets have a look at all fossil fuels together: 5.3*10^14 J
So roughly 400-500 million tons of new Li-Ion batteries per year.

Yes. The outlook is THAT grim.
There is no alternative.
Not even close.


Edit:
Disclamer:
The above is just a quick order of magnitude hack check nothing more. Give or add 100 million tons as you see fit ... it does not change the magnitude of the issue.

 

[shread]

Gisboth[/url]":1als9i4z]

shread[/url]":1als9i4z]Without all those tax incentives, would there be a financial incentive or penalty in installing one of these things?

This question can be asked about every form of energy: renewables, fossil fuels, nuclear, storage, etc.

Energy is not a free market by any measure.

Oh, it's close enough to a free market world wide. Even with tax penalties/incentives the cost of various fuels is such a huge number that it is the dominant factor, viz coal vs gas in the U.S. However, to argue against my case, there was a hidden incentive in the coal vs gas thing, created by the initial financing of large-scale gas fracking. The contracts for the financing forced the gas drillers to keep drilling after the price of gas tanked even though they were losing money on new wells, viz Columbia Gas. I believe that was probably a mistake on everybody's part --no one expected fracking to yield as much as it did, but it may have been deliberate on the part of the banks, a hidden hand reducing CO2 emissions per kilowatt.

 

[MilleniX]

dio82:
You're glossing over the fact that only a fraction of electricity generated will have to be stored. Solar generation experiences its peak close in time to peak usage, especially when spread across entire continents that can be transmission-linked. You only need to store and discharge the integral of the time-shift in net energy usage from when its generated, after you allow for any transmission from distant sources.

 

[dio82]

MilleniX[/url]":3lmlpljq]dio82:
You're glossing over the fact that only a fraction of electricity generated will have to be stored. Solar generation experiences its peak close in time to peak usage, especially when spread across entire continents that can be transmission-linked. You only need to store and discharge the integral of the time-shift in net energy usage from when its generated, after you allow for any transmission from distant sources.

Electricity transmission over continents is a purely unfeasible pipe-dream.

Integrated over a year and accounted for seasonality of an AC heavy electricity consumption characteristic, solar power can at best provide about 20% capacity factor. With a non-AC heavy characteristic, at best 10%. The remaining electricity will need to be buffered in batteries, or excess capacity of PV production thrown away (actually cheaper). BTW, "throwing away" PV production is much more difficult than you may think...

Note, in terms of "consumption" of Li-Ion batteries integrated over an entire country, it does not matter whether a 1kWh Battery is charged once or 1000 times per year. Integrated over an entire country, roughly the same amount of replacement batteries will need to be produced. It does matter enormously in terms of upfront costs, though.

 

[Megalodon]

I don't want to belittle the enormous scale required, because one way or another you're correct it's going to be huge, but I don't really consider it hopeless in principle, and the assumptions going into that are worth exploring.

dio82[/url]":216nvosp]Irrelevant.

You are simply ignoring the uninmaginable scales necessary for building any noteworthy electricity storage device. Solar photovoltaic power (PV) will never be cost effective ... even more so considering the future 1$/kWh cost of storing electricity.

Most estimates put Tesla's battery cost under $300/kwh, maybe even under $250/kwh, and they're aiming for under $200/kwh with the new factory. So assume a 1000 cycle life and you get $0.20/kwh. This isn't natural gas but it's already a lot less than $1/kwh. I'd discount it more because stationary storage isn't mass or volume constrained like a car or phone, the degraded capacity is still useful. If you're 70% after 1000 cycles use an average of 70% times 2000 cycles and it's more like $0.14/kwh.

This is no natural gas replacement, but it's also pretty surprisingly awesome for assumptions likely to be met this decade without miracles with a technology not even meant for grid applications. It's also recyclable so even though startup materials costs are high, cycle limitations don't put a hard ceiling on how much energy a kilogram of mined materials can buffer.

dio82[/url]":216nvosp]Any alternative to fossil fuels will need to consist of moving even more mass!!

It wouldn't be necessary to move all the energy generated through a storage phase though.

dio82[/url]":216nvosp]OK, thermal efficiency versus electricity conversion efficiency is still missing, but that does not really change THAT much. So maybe 100-200 million tons per year.

EV efficiency is like 4x gasoline though. Conversion and transmission losses on the grid don't incur storage penalties. That's the easy part.

There's other stuff like marine shipping. That'll be harder. If you do the BotE math for a container ship it ends up being like tens of megawatts for like a week. Even with the above $200/kwh cost it's like a billion dollars for a panamax container ship.

But again, I think that's amenable to technology at TRL 8 or better. There's another EV startup, Phinergy, that does a once-through metal-air cell, currently aluminum. This avoids the too much mass problem because oxidizing a metal is in similar energetic territory to fossil fuels and the metal is recycled. It may not be possible to create a rechargeable metal-air cell, but it's certainly possible to oxidize the metal once and then re-smelt it later.

 

[Gisboth]

KD5MDK[/url]":37flwijz]If I know that switching my customers to an ice based cooling system allows me to avoid spending X on additional peak generation, I'm invented to offer them discounts/rebates/whatever up to X to induce them to switch, but I shouldn't exceed X or I'm making a less efficient choice.

For any given scenario, X will be adjusted for tax dis/incentives, govt loan guarantees, govt rate guarantees, etc.

What would be the impact on nuclear if the govt ended its market incentives?

The expiration of the production tax credit will surely have some impact on new wind projects.

etc.


That this approach (ice storage) might potentially help reduce peak demand requirements, however, is a key bullet pt in the concept's pitch.

(I've vainly searched for follow-ups about Glendale's pilot project, but all I could find was this from SCPPA.)

 

[SpocksBeer]

MilleniX[/url]":2le11shh]dio82:
You're glossing over the fact that only a fraction of electricity generated will have to be stored. Solar generation experiences its peak close in time to peak usage, especially when spread across entire continents that can be transmission-linked. You only need to store and discharge the integral of the time-shift in net energy usage from when its generated, after you allow for any transmission from distant sources.

Well, that's not necessarily true for temperate climate zones (ie, those that neither experience particularly hot summers, nor harsh winters). In those places, demand peaks during the early morning and late evening - especially during winter, during the working week. That's when people wake up and turn their electric heaters on, or get home from work and do the same.

In this case, demand is inversely proportional to solar PV output.

 

[shread]

The DOE has a number of nice pages that document some of the stuff that's been discussed here. Of course they rapidly go into more detail than most of us have time to digest, but here is one snippet.

The page on storage projects lists a large number (949) of projects involving a considerable number of technologies, including flywheels, hydro, ice, batteries, chilled water, hot water, capacitors, hydrogen from water and compressed air. There are some operational batteries in the the tens of kW range, usually designed to operate less than an hour while resources are redirected to handle loss of a generating station or transmission line. There are a number of Ice Bear units mentioned; the Glendale Water and Power - Peak Capacity Project cost $2170/kW. Ice and chilled water units are usually in the hundreds of kW, but some reach the low tens of thousands of kW; they tend to have long duration, 1-2 days. The thousands of kW chilled water unit, Texas Cooperative, improves gas turbine efficiency. Hydro is the only storage listed that can handle millions of kW for long periods. The India One Solar Thermal Plant is listed as being able to deliver 1000 kW for 16 hours. The Pennsylvania ATLAS (Aggregated Transactive Load Asset) switches home water heaters on and off very quickly to buffer load.

Some of these technologies address problems that are not germane to storing renewably generated power, such as load buffering, but many do. It is encouraging, but the big missing item is the cost. This page is a start to any who wish to explore that issue.

 

[Megalodon]

SpocksBeer[/url]":k819j5o2]In this case, demand is inversely proportional to solar PV output.

Peaks not lining up is a different thing than being inversely proportional.

 

[SpocksBeer]

Megalodon[/url]":3a3mpd2t]

SpocksBeer[/url]":3a3mpd2t]In this case, demand is inversely proportional to solar PV output.

Peaks not lining up is a different thing than being inversely proportional.

No, but this graph of 24 hours of Victorian demand has a peak in the morning, a dip during the middle of the day, and a second larger peak at the end of the day. This is a fairly typical example of conditions here; it's just not sunny when demand is highest during winter.

 

[Megalodon]

SpocksBeer[/url]":wvwt9v5j]No, but this graph of 24 hours of Victorian demand has a peak in the morning, a dip during the middle of the day, and a second larger peak at the end of the day. This is a fairly typical example of conditions here; it's just not sunny when demand is highest during winter.

But again, this is a different and importantly easier problem than actually being inversely proportional. Inversely proportional would be peak at local midnight.

And having lived in Melbourne, allow me to offer some observations, because there's some extremely low hanging fruit here, and whether it's a coordinated rollout or price shocks when it's way too late, something's going to have to change.

-Neither peak aligns with local noon, but morning peak does have sunlight even around solstice like we are now. Evening peak can be offset significantly with fairly simple means like heating that can come on automatically and pre-warm the house. Places where it gets significantly cold have been doing this for decades even without the incentive of lower rates.

-The energy efficiency there is astonishingly bad. I have literally, without exaggeration, been colder on a summer morning in Melbourne than a winter morning in Calgary at -40. One way or another this has to improve, even coal is getting more expensive. Thankfully the current standard is so bad that even minimal efforts will yield large improvements.

-I'm not sure what you're talking about when you mention places where summer isn't particularly hot, but it's definitely not Victoria. Mid 40s is hot. Accordingly summer peaks are significantly higher than winter due to air conditioning just like the rest of us, per https://www.aer.gov.au/node/12051, and climate change means more of that. If you want mild try San Francisco, we're lucky to crack 30.

Interestingly enough when googling this information I also saw reports about PV already helping out significantly for summer peak, per http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/solar-p ... wave-52250. Sounds like it may have prevented or at least mitigated rolling blackouts, which have happened in other recent heat waves. Definitely sounds like summer peaks are the bottleneck for Victoria, and you stand to benefit in exactly the way MilleniX described.

 

[dio82]

I just want to clarify that I am not against PV. I actually think that due to the fairly good correlation of PV with AC usage, all AC heavy countries should make it mandatory in their building codes that any AC system needs to be offset by an equal amount of rated PV kWp installation. Whether that PV installation is built in your home, or one just buys production rights from somewhere else is irrelevant.

No subsidy, no nothing. Just the mandatory requirement to offset AC power with PV.

Of course such a system cannot be introduced over night and would need a gradual roll-out. Early adopters, though, would get the enormous benefit that their installed PV electrical output should pay for the investment all by itself. Late adopters, after electricity market prices have crashed, would of course never recoup their costs.

 

[redleader]

SpocksBeer[/url]":329x1pic]

Megalodon[/url]":329x1pic]

SpocksBeer[/url]":329x1pic]In this case, demand is inversely proportional to solar PV output.

Peaks not lining up is a different thing than being inversely proportional.

No, but this graph of 24 hours of Victorian demand has a peak in the morning, a dip during the middle of the day, and a second larger peak at the end of the day. This is a fairly typical example of conditions here; it's just not sunny when demand is highest during winter.

That graph shows the energy useage actually doesn't peak very much at all during the day. The value at 12 noon is only 20% less than the peak at 6 PM, and consumption is relatively uniform. If that data is actually representative, you'd have almost ideal conditions for solar.

Edit: Of course you're out of luck for nighttime demand.

 

[Megalodon]

dio82[/url]":2gncwjze]I just want to clarify that I am not against PV.

I get that, you're talking about scalability limits as extremely large solar share starts to happen, and there is legit skepticism that it's even possible to deal with.

My take is that scalability problems that seem daunting can be taken care surprisingly rapidly once there's unsubsidized ROI to be had. Financing these things isn't the problem, there's trillions of dollars of capital available if it can make money and isn't demand limited.

There's an interesting talk by someone from Tesla on some of these grid systems, it hits a lot of these points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSox7mLbyE

tl;dw They're not worried about fundamental material scarcity, they're already marketing commercially sized systems, longer lasting batteries are likely possible but "pristine when obsolete" probably doesn't make sense, utility scale (100s of mw/mwh) coming soon.

My take is that a major grid like WECC can probably quite easily absorb tens of gigawatt hours of battery capacity for things like demand management and frequency stabilization without anyone having to take overnight storage seriously or make any big long term bets on it (except Tesla).

redleader[/url]":2gncwjze]That graph shows the energy useage actually doesn't peak very much at all during the day. The value at 12 noon is only 20% less than the peak at 6 PM, and consumption is relatively uniform. If that data is actually representative, you'd have almost ideal conditions for solar.

Australia's in the middle of winter now. Their summer peak was more than 30% higher, is better correlated with sunlight, and is already seeing significant benefit from rooftop PV.

 

[shread]

Megalodon[/url]":4kpqvbdh]
My take is that a major grid like WECC can probably quite easily absorb tens of gigawatt hours of battery capacity for things like demand management and frequency stabilization without anyone having to take overnight storage seriously or make any big long term bets on it (except Tesla).

I doubt this, but would have to learn more about the U.S.'s Eastern and Western Interconnects to formulate a counter that is more than a guess. East of the Mississippi, there isn't much overnight wind. I doubt the capacity of the Eastern Interconnect is sufficient to transmit overnight wind power from west of the river. Hydro also can be turned on and off at will, although lack of a regular schedule can play havoc with recreation and even drown people; instead of pumped storage, turn hydro off when the wind blows and the sun shines. It would be nice to see some approximation of a circuit design with loads and sources and basic transmission capability.

 

[Megalodon]

shread[/url]":36jqlcj6]I doubt this, but would have to learn more about the U.S.'s Eastern and Western Interconnects to formulate a counter that is more than a guess. East of the Mississippi, there isn't much overnight wind. I doubt the capacity of the Eastern Interconnect is sufficient to transmit overnight wind power from west of the river. Hydro also can be turned on and off at will, although lack of a regular schedule can play havoc with recreation and even drown people; instead of pumped storage, turn hydro off when the wind blows and the sun shines. It would be nice to see some approximation of a circuit design with loads and sources and basic transmission capability.

I'm not sure you're understanding what I'm saying.

Demand charges are a charge to a commercial utility customer for the entire month based on their biggest peak of the month, measured over some relatively short period like 15-20 minutes. This means small amounts of storage at the customer level can create large savings without having to store that much power, particularly for bursty demand patterns.

Think about the fact that these battery systems make sense even if you're all nuclear, natural gas, and coal. It's great news for renewables but renewables aren't their main job. They allow a company to structure their electricity purchases more efficiently, wherever the electricity is coming from.

The large economic value of this sort of arbitrage combined with the relatively small entry level is what makes me think these are going to proliferate way faster than any other storage scheme.

 

[shread]

Megalodon[/url]":1ahuon25]

shread[/url]":1ahuon25]

Megalodon said
My take is that a major grid like WECC can probably quite easily absorb tens of gigawatt hours of battery capacity for things like demand management and frequency stabilization without anyone having to take overnight storage seriously or make any big long term bets on it (except Tesla).

I doubt this, but would have to learn more about the U.S.'s Eastern and Western Interconnects to formulate a counter that is more than a guess. East of the Mississippi, there isn't much overnight wind. I doubt the capacity of the Eastern Interconnect is sufficient to transmit overnight wind power from west of the river. Hydro also can be turned on and off at will, although lack of a regular schedule can play havoc with recreation and even drown people; instead of pumped storage, turn hydro off when the wind blows and the sun shines. It would be nice to see some approximation of a circuit design with loads and sources and basic transmission capability.

I'm not sure you're understanding what I'm saying.

Demand charges are a charge to a commercial utility customer for the entire month based on their biggest peak of the month, measured over some relatively short period like 15-20 minutes. This means small amounts of storage at the customer level can create large savings without having to store that much power, particularly for bursty demand patterns.

Think about the fact that these battery systems make sense even if you're all nuclear, natural gas, and coal. It's great news for renewables but renewables aren't their main job. They allow a company to structure their electricity purchases more efficiently, wherever the electricity is coming from.

The large economic value of this sort of arbitrage combined with the relatively small entry level is what makes me think these are going to proliferate way faster than any other storage scheme.

Then it would depend on how demand charges are measured and calculated. If either changes, your batteries might not save you anything. Each pumped storage unit in the DOE link I cited previously is already in the gigawatt range for > 24 hours. It will take a village (all approaches). Of course, as the market shakes out, those who make the right choices will get richer.