Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem

When the Sun doesn't shine and the wind is calm, humankind still needs power.

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[wagnerrp]

Feed power and info to devices and let them operate accordingly.

He’ll no. I don’t want my appliances all individually receiving that information and individually making decisions on that information. That means I would need to individually configure all my devices, and that sounds like a pain in the ass. The biggest fundamental problem with IOT is the concept that devices should be smart. Devices should only be smart enough to protect themselves from bad inputs.

 

[carbon60Unit]

He’ll no. I don’t want my appliances all individually receiving that information and individually making decisions on that information. That means I would need to individually configure all my devices, and that sounds like a pain in the ass. The biggest fundamental problem with IOT is the concept that devices should be smart. Devices should only be smart enough to protect themselves from bad inputs.

At some point you do have to tell every device what behavior you want of it, be it directly or via some home level controller or , most likely, somewhere in between. Not a big fan of IOT either, but this seems to be ideally suited to it if standards, openness and privacy/security are properly addressed.

Perhaps I misunderstood your post I initially responded to. It seemed to be advocating running individual power circuits to each load to be controlled.

 

[wagnerrp]

At some point you do have to tell every device what behavior you want of it, be it directly or via some home level controller or , most likely, somewhere in between. Not a big fan of IOT either, but this seems to be ideally suited to it if standards, openness and privacy/security are properly addressed.

Perhaps I misunderstood your post I initially responded to. It seemed to be advocating running individual power circuits to each load to be controlled.

I’m not totally against running individual circuits to each load. If they’re large enough loads to consider shedding them, they probably already are under individual circuits.

I’m trying to refine the definition of a “smart appliance”. Consider the terms “offline”, “online”, and “smart”. Offline is the standard appliance with local controls. Online exposes those local controls for remote access. Smart controls itself.

I want an online thermostat that I can change remotely. I do not want a smart thermostat that decides to shut off on its own. Bringing all the “smarts” to one central hub will be far easier to manage.

 

[LungedJouster]

Each flywheel can store 32 kilowatt-hours of energy, close to the daily electricity demand of an average American household. That’s small for grid applications, but the flywheels are already deployed in many communities, often to balance fluctuations in renewable energy. A municipal utility in Massachusetts, for instance, has installed 16 flywheels next to a solar plant; they supply energy for more than four hours, absorbing electricity during low-demand times and discharging during peak demand, Sanders says.
...
In 2019, Hydrostor launched the first commercial compressed-air storage facility, in Goderich, Ontario, storing around 10 megawatt hours—enough to power some 2,100 homes for more than 5 hours. The company plans several much larger facilities in California and is building a 200-megawatt facility in the Australian town Broken Hill that can supply energy for up to eight hours to bridge shortfalls in solar and wind energy.

Why can't science writers make their numbers comparable? In the first paragraph we learn that one flywheel or 32kWh is about the electricity usage of a US household. The next sentence has 16 flywheels or 512kWh for four hours. 16 times as much energy for a sixth of the time? No, of course we're supposed to work out ourselves that the author is using a different metric and not telling us how many homes are involved.

In the second paragraph we're suddenly talking about 2,100 households, although the system stores a third of the energy of one flywheel, which we recall, serves only one household. (Or one-sixteenth of 96 households if we only turn the lights on 4 hours per day). 200MW (note: not MWh) is then only good for eight hours, suddenly. Clicking through on the link gives us the vital information that the facility stores 1,450 MWh of energy. In Australia that is backup energy for 16,000 homes (90kWh per home) or enough for 45,000 fully supplied US households. A discrepancy that raises all sorts of questions, such as what is the primary energy source of the Broken Hill houses and why do Australians need three times as much electricity as homes in the USA?

 

[numerobis]

Why can't science writers make their numbers comparable? In the first paragraph we learn that one flywheel or 32kWh is about the electricity usage of a US household. The next sentence has 16 flywheels or 512kWh for four hours. 16 times as much energy for a sixth of the time? No, of course we're supposed to work out ourselves that the author is using a different metric and not telling us how many homes are involved.

In the second paragraph we're suddenly talking about 2,100 households, although the system stores a third of the energy of one flywheel, which we recall, serves only one household. (Or one-sixteenth of 96 households if we only turn the lights on 4 hours per day). 200MW (note: not MWh) is then only good for eight hours, suddenly. Clicking through on the link gives us the vital information that the facility stores 1,450 MWh of energy. In Australia that is backup energy for 16,000 homes (90kWh per home) or enough for 45,000 fully supplied US households. A discrepancy that raises all sorts of questions, such as what is the primary energy source of the Broken Hill houses and why do Australians need three times as much electricity as homes in the USA?

32 kWh,
16 flywheels of 32 kWh each,
10 MWh, which is rather more than a third of 32 kWh.
200 MW for 8 hours is 1.6 GWh (apparently that’s wrong, it’s only 1.45 GWh)

Merry Christmas.

 

[Veritas super omens]

It's not an irrational hatred. The U.S. nuclear environment is haphazard at best, dangerous at worst.

No two commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. have the same reactor and control system design, if memory serves. That means employees must receive general nuclear systems education and then plant-design-specific training. If they move to another plant then they must be trained on that plant. This isn't just "oh, here we use X fork of Linux instead of the OpenVMS you used at your last plant." Critical procedures and/or emergency procedures may be very different. One plant may use multiple different software applications, each for a different part of the overall process (e.g., one for the reactor, one to monitor the intake and discharge of water used in the secondary cooling loop, one to monitor the connection of the plant to the electrical grid) and another plant might use all different software applications or maybe have some that are the same and some that are different.

All of those differences represent vulnerabilities. The unique combinations of reactor designs and control systems mean every plant must have customized operating and emergency procedures. Each unique set of procedures represents an opportunity for error - e.g., 30 plants represent 30 opportunities to have errors/omissions in procedures and 30 opportunities to have errors/omissions in training. Such errors and omissions in one plant - Three Mile Island - led to a partial meltdown of the TMI-2 reactor.

Unique plant designs also mean each plant represents an opportunity for design flaws in the plant or reactor to cause a problem. I'm not going to mention the RBMK-1000 reactor design used at Chernobyl, as that reactor would never have been allowed in the U.S. But thank goodness U.S. regulations require full containment domes...which Chernobyl didn't have. And shall we mention Fukushima? That mess was preventable. The reactor is in an area known for earthquakes and tsunamis. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) ignored/downplayed prior recommendations to increase their ability to withstand natural disasters, and the Japanese nuclear regulatory authority didn't bother conducting a real risk assessment because of the cozy relationship its people had with the power company and the mentality that their job was to promote nuclear power within the country. When the accident happened, power plant operators found themselves with inadequate training, manuals missing diagrams, and out-of-date procedures.

Cost estimates for disasters are difficult to calculate as there is no single accepted method. Do you count just the cost of the response? Do you count the response + known health costs? Response + known health costs + estimated health costs? Do you add in lost economic output? Following in 2024 dollars, with "total" including estimated economic losses. Cost estimate for Three Mile Island: $2B. Chernobyl: $83B for the response, estimated total up to $700B. Fukushima: $26B for cleanup to date, estimated total cost of $250B.

Know how much a U.S. utility would pay for a Fukushima-level disaster? $16B...with maybe a chance to double that. Per the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (1957) there are two tiers of funding paid into by U.S. nuclear utilities to compensate for claims in a nuclear disaster. Both tiers currently have about $16B in total. If a disaster exceeds that amount then Congress can either retroactively impose additional premiums on the utilities or cover the extra amount with taxpayer money. The cleanup alone for Fukushima is $10B more than is currently in the U.S. fund. And the extra billions will not be covered individual insurance policies - all property and liability claims involving damages caused by a nuclear accident are covered by Price-Anderson.

Now, and only now, have we gotten to disposing of nuclear waste. We have many, many, sites around the country storing waste that will be dangerous for hundreds and even thousands of years. It wasn't environmentalists who killed Yucca Mountain, it was NIMBY-ism. Many agree we need a central repository for dangerous wastes...but pretty much everybody wants the repository to be in somebody else's county.

Before we expand nuclear power in this country we need to look at the total lifecycle of nuclear power. At a bare minimum, we need to make civilian nuclear utilities operate like the U.S. Navy - standardized reactors, standardized procedures, standardized education, relentless training. Know how many nuclear accidents the Navy has had in almost 70 years? Zero.

Zero...as far as we know. The USN is (understandably) tight lipped about their nuclear powered craft. What that means is that no accident has been bad enough to show up to the world audience. Personally I would be very surprised if no "events" causing venting of radioactive material at sea or exposing Navy personnel to unacceptable levels (to civilian assessments) of radioactivity. People make mistakes. No design is flawless. Unexpected and untrained for situations occur. (Aka "shit happens"). I may be wrong and I will never know for sure as the veil of national security is generally robust and the Freedom of Information act keeps certain things under wraps for a very very long time..

 

[numerobis]

Zero...as far as we know. The USN is (understandably) tight lipped about their nuclear powered craft. What that means is that no accident has been bad enough to show up to the world audience. Personally I would be very surprised if no "events" causing venting of radioactive material at sea or exposing Navy personnel to unacceptable levels (to civilian assessments) of radioactivity. People make mistakes. No design is flawless. Unexpected and untrained for situations occur. (Aka "shit happens"). I may be wrong and I will never know for sure as the veil of national security is generally robust and the Freedom of Information act keeps certain things under wraps for a very very long time..

It doesn’t particularly matter though, in a discussion about why we don’t have more nuclear power. With the level of safety in civilian plants (which seem to melt down every 20-odd years), before we even get to paying for meltdowns or waste storage, the plants already run at a loss.

 

[Veritas super omens]

It doesn’t particularly matter though, in a discussion about why we don’t have more nuclear power. With the level of safety in civilian plants (which seem to melt down every 20-odd years), before we even get to paying for meltdowns or waste storage, the plants already run at a loss.

Yes. Despite the vociferous advocacy of a small subset of arsians the list of hurdles is too long and the plummeting price of wind and solar makes it all but impossible for nuclear to be a significant factor in potential future of the carbon free (or better yet carbon negative) economy. SMR's might have a few niche applications but beyond that no significant investment (by the people with the serious money to invest in such things) in nuclear is going to happen. It doesn't matter what magical new widget, thorium, pebble bed etc. etc. you are touting, by the time your (likely way overbudget, and way behind schedule) reactor starts delivering electrons to paying customers your competitors have been getting ROI for 10 plus years, reinvesting those dollars in newer more efficient renewable systems and getting even further ahead.

 

[sjl]

A discrepancy that raises all sorts of questions, such as what is the primary energy source of the Broken Hill houses and why do Australians need three times as much electricity as homes in the USA?

Depends on which part of Australia you're talking about.

Broken Hill is a hot, desert climate. Average temperatures hit 30 plus degrees (C) in November through March, going down to as low as 15 degrees in July; average monthly rainfall varies from 11mm to 23mm (August and January, respectively.) Humidity is typically very low - usually between 0 and 4%. So there's a fair amount of electricity needed to cool the place; there's also the point that Australian homes tend to be very leaky in terms of heat, which exacerbates the heating and cooling costs. I've actually heard it said that Canadians tend to be a lot colder in Australia than in Canada, simply because we don't adequately insulate our homes.

There's one other pertinent question, which is: are you comparing apples to apples? The Broken Hill facility is probably talking about energy for the entire region, both homes and industry, which is going to significantly skew the figures upward.

You're not wrong about a greater degree of clarity being needed in the writing, though; it frustrates the hell out of me (as somebody who did a couple of years of electrical engineering) when people talk about energy storage using either MW or MWh, but not both. (Or equivalent units; MW and kW are essentially the same thing, just on a different scale, for example.) You need both to be able to really judge how good a given storage system is for a given application, after all. A 1 MW system that lasts six minutes (equals 100 kWh of storage) is fantastic for frequency control (aka grid stabilisation), but not so good for keeping the lights on if there's a significant drop in solar or wind output.

 

[numerobis]

Depends on which part of Australia you're talking about.

Broken Hill is a hot, desert climate. Average temperatures hit 30 plus degrees (C) in November through March, going down to as low as 15 degrees in July; average monthly rainfall varies from 11mm to 23mm (August and January, respectively.) Humidity is typically very low - usually between 0 and 4%. So there's a fair amount of electricity needed to cool the place; there's also the point that Australian homes tend to be very leaky in terms of heat, which exacerbates the heating and cooling costs. I've actually heard it said that Canadians tend to be a lot colder in Australia than in Canada, simply because we don't adequately insulate our homes.

There's one other pertinent question, which is: are you comparing apples to apples? The Broken Hill facility is probably talking about energy for the entire region, both homes and industry, which is going to significantly skew the figures upward.

You're not wrong about a greater degree of clarity being needed in the writing, though; it frustrates the hell out of me (as somebody who did a couple of years of electrical engineering) when people talk about energy storage using either MW or MWh, but not both. (Or equivalent units; MW and kW are essentially the same thing, just on a different scale, for example.) You need both to be able to really judge how good a given storage system is for a given application, after all. A 1 MW system that lasts six minutes (equals 100 kWh of storage) is fantastic for frequency control (aka grid stabilisation), but not so good for keeping the lights on if there's a significant drop in solar or wind output.

Far simpler: Australian people are using a third as much energy as US homes. And homes in rich countries tend to be estimated to have three people on average. So… it’s the same. But OP wants to have a rage boner.

 

[camchatt What]

I thought they had washed out after the test tower, what's the latest with them? (not promised funding, this is a febrile market full of VC shenanigans). I can't see anything on a plant after the big-ass crane.

They're still going strong! Here's the current project they're up to

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/energy-vault-rackscale-partner-data-center-battery-storage/735796/

 

[camchatt What]

A power wall has 13.5kWh of capacity. In order to get that much storage from a 10t brick, you have to lift it 500m in the air.

Agreed, that's the entire concept of what they're doing. A brick will last 100 years and can easily be replaced. (Their bricks are comprised of rammed earth) they use solar to lift it, then a generator produces energy via gravity. It's a simple system that will last longer than we will. A power wall is reliant on lithium, powered by the grid, and is only warranteed for 8 years. It's energy saving but not revolutionary.

 

[camchatt What]

A whole data center? For how long? Probably a few hours. That's a drop in the bucket for what's being discussed here.

It's not kinetic energy. It's potential energy. And it's doing literally the same thing pumped hydro is doing with a lot less mass and a lot less height.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/energy-vault-rackscale-partner-data-center-battery-storage/735796/
Please look into what they're up to. It's very cool and beautifully simple. Also it is kinetic, as the entire concept is based on a flywheel

 

[OrvGull]

Agreed, that's the entire concept of what they're doing. A brick will last 100 years and can easily be replaced. (Their bricks are comprised of rammed earth) they use solar to lift it, then a generator produces energy via gravity. It's a simple system that will last longer than we will. A power wall is reliant on lithium, powered by the grid, and is only warranteed for 8 years. It's energy saving but not revolutionary.

The bricks may last 100 years, but the winches and cables sure won't.

 

[camchatt What]

The bricks may last 100 years, but the winches and cables sure won't.

But steel is cheap. Lithium isn't

 

[OrvGull]

But steel is cheap. Lithium isn't

Steel is cheap, wire rope is not particularly. And you have a ton of moving parts that need to be maintained and regularly inspected in this scheme.

Lithium prices peaked in 2023 and are about 1/8th what they were then. It's not cost-prohibitive anymore. And there are other battery chemistries that are cheaper. Lithium batteries have the advantage of being more efficient than most of them, but once you're mechanically hoisting things you've thrown efficiency out the window anyway.

 

[OrvGull]

This video pretty neatly sums up the problems with Energy Vault-style gravity-storage schemes.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGGOjD_OtAM

They're complicated and the energy density is terrible.

 

[wagnerrp]

Agreed, that's the entire concept of what they're doing. A brick will last 100 years and can easily be replaced. (Their bricks are comprised of rammed earth) they use solar to lift it, then a generator produces energy via gravity. It's a simple system that will last longer than we will. A power wall is reliant on lithium, powered by the grid, and is only warranteed for 8 years. It's energy saving but not revolutionary.

A brick is weak and brittle, and not self supporting to particularly high heights. In order to store energy, you have to create a tall structure, and then you have to lift a massive amount of weight to the top of it. The structure needs the strength to support that weight.

 

[wagnerrp]

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/energy-vault-rackscale-partner-data-center-battery-storage/735796/
Please look into what they're up to. It's very cool and beautifully simple. Also it is kinetic, as the entire concept is based on a flywheel

That link suggests it’s just a gigantic battery, and they’re not even supplying the battery. There’s no mention of flywheels anywhere. Their only claim to fame is that they stack someone else’s battery modules on top of each other, making them harder to service and replace.

 

[Wickwick]

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/energy-vault-rackscale-partner-data-center-battery-storage/735796/
Please look into what they're up to. It's very cool and beautifully simple. Also it is kinetic, as the entire concept is based on a flywheel

Did you read your own link?

Energy Vault will deploy its multistory B-Nest battery enclosures

...

B-Nest is a modular, technology “agnostic” solution that uses structural engineering intellectual property Energy Vault developed for its gravity energy storage systems, the company says. Its potential 10-hour duration is significantly longer than the one- to four-hour durations typical of ground-mounted lithium-ion battery storage systems.

...

Its potential 10-hour duration is significantly longer than the one- to four-hour durations typical of ground-mounted lithium-ion battery storage systems.

It's not fly wheels. It's a multi-story tall gravity storage system that uses third-party batteries as the weights of a gravity storage system (I've provided a link in the quote to the web site).

The sales pitch is higher energy density in space-constrained applications. It is not cost vs. lithium-ion batteries. As such, it doesn't remotely address the need defined in the article of a multi-week storage mechanism that's an order of magnitude or two cheaper than batteries. The link you provided showed its marketing endurance is all of 10 hours. That means the real-world value is much lower.

 

[NetMage]

It's a multi-story tall gravity storage system that uses third-party batteries as the weights of a gravity storage system (I've provided a link in the quote to the web site).

I don’t think the gravity storage system is part of it - it is just batteries stored in a tall building using the engineering from their gravity storage research. I don’t think the batteries move.

And, it shows they don’t really have much faith in their gravity storage systems. It would be like SpaceX pivoting to make water towers because they have a lot of steel cylinder expertise - it wouldn’t be a sign Starship was going well. It seems batteries in a building beat moving weights in a building.

 

[OrvGull]

And, it shows they don’t really have much faith in their gravity storage systems. It would be like SpaceX pivoting to make water towers because they have a lot of steel cylinder expertise - it wouldn’t be a sign Starship was going well. It seems batteries in a building beat moving weights in a building.

Much like how the Soviet N1 program pivoted from building rockets to building sheds.

 

[wagnerrp]

I don’t think the gravity storage system is part of it - it is just batteries stored in a tall building using the engineering from their gravity storage research. I don’t think the batteries move.

It’s not like building a heavy loading 10 story building is all that difficult. The gravity storage system would need a heavy loading 100 story building

 

[Veritas super omens]

Flywheels you say? For some reason I picture Jeff Goldblum in a McLaren...

 

[skierpage]

It's a multi-story tall gravity storage system that uses third-party batteries as the weights of a gravity storage system

Do the math. A 9.6 MW/19.3 MWh Tesla Megapack weighs "84,000 lbs max". Using our trusty units calculator , let's see how much potential energy we gain by lifting it 100 meters into the air (at large cost for the winch, racking in the roof of a building, and wear and tear): 84000 lbs * gravity * 100 m = 10.38 kWh 10 kWh, or 0.05% of the chemical energy in the battery.

Gravity is a terribly weak force.

 

[bjn]

Do the math. A 9.6 MW/19.3 MWh Tesla Megapack weighs "84,000 lbs max". Using our trusty units calculator , let's see how much potential energy we gain by lifting it 100 meters into the air (at large cost for the winch, racking in the roof of a building, and wear and tear): 84000 lbs * gravity * 100 m = 10.38 kWh 10 kWh, or 0.05% of the chemical energy in the battery.

Gravity is a terribly weak force.

My unit to visualise potential energy due to gravity is the Olympic Swimming Pool Meter. ie: the energy to lift the water in a full size Olympic swimming pool 1 meter. That’s 50m x 25m x 2m of water. You only get 6.81kWh for each meter you lift it.