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“Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

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Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#71

Post by tsimionescu »

londons_explore wrote: post #51
tsimionescu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really scale. The power grid needs to be reliable, and there needs to be some idea of how much capacity you actually have. If people simply hook up an unknown number of batteries of unknown capacities in unknown spaces, how can you rely on the resulting power grid? How can you plan extensions? Not to mention high capacity batteries are huge fire risks, especially worn out high capacity batteries. Can you…

There are plenty of grids with wide deployment of community solar, which are also unknown-capacity, unknown-delivery. They work because in aggregate they are predictable. The demand side of most power grids is the same - you don't need to tell anyone that you want to switch on the oven, but if everyone in the world switched on their oven at the same time, the worlds electricity grid would collapse. At scale, everythi…

> There are plenty of grids with wide deployment of community solar, which are also unknown-capacity, unknown-delivery.

There are some important differences. For one, those are using bespoke new batteries, not used car batteries. For another, the battery storage is not concentrated, so much lower risk of fires spreading from battery to battery (which you've ignored).

For a third, if a battery fails, it's most likely going to be the house whose battery has failed that loses power if the grid was at its limit, it won't be a whole neighborhood, nor some industrial plant.

Finally, I would be quite surprised if there is any significant power grid where any industrial consumer would be at a risk of losing power even if all community batteries were to be unplugged from the network (ignoring the effects of a sudden surge, like in the oven example, of course).

Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#72

Post by mbgerring »

londons_explore wrote: post #48
mbgerring wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can come work on the problem of opening up the electricity market to small players today: https://www.arcadia.com/careers

Alas, I see no way they'll be successful, because the 'old players' who need disrupting own all the electricity cables and get to set the rules.

Well, our growing revenue seems to suggest otherwise, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#73

Post by jlmorton »

tsimionescu wrote: post #37
jlmorton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important point to be made is that as electric vehicles take off, we'll soon start to find ourselves with an avalanche of worn batteries that no longer adequately support EVs, but work just fine as grid storage. There are 280 million vehicles in the US. If fifty million of those were electric vehicles, then ten years later we'd have enough already-produced batteries to power the entire United States overnight. The…

Do you really believe it is feasible to collect 50 million used car batteries in various states of wear and connect them to the grid while expecting this to be a stable solution to solar power during the night?

Sorry for the late reply, but you might be interested in this report from the California Lithium-ion Car Battery Recycling Advisory Group [1].

I'll quote a brief section:

> In general, batteries will be retired from use in an EV when the range and performance is no longer acceptable to the driver. The remaining capacity of the battery at the time of retirement will vary depending on consumer preference, but it is generally assumed to be between 70- 80%.

> Given the large capacity and high performance of modern vehicle batteries, retired batteries could still offer significant value in lower-power, secondary applications, such as storing energy from solar panels to be used in off-grid or peak demand-shaving applications.37

> A growing body of research has examined the environmental impacts and technical and economic feasibility of repurposing batteries for use in second-life applications.38–42 Since repurposed batteries are a relatively new phenomenon, data about their performance is uncertain, particularly because of the uneven degradation of battery cells over time. However, it is estimated that battery lifespan can be extended by 10 years or longer depending on the application.38,43,44

[1] https://calepa.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/12/Fin...

Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#74

Post by falling_ »

tsimionescu wrote: post #47
londons_explore wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the power market is fully 'open', then yes, it will happen. All it takes is for a car scrap dealer to realise that for every EV battery he grabs out and hooks up to the grid he'll earn $200/year. Before long, every scrap dealer will be doing it to every car. However, I suspect that small players will be barred from the electricity markets via mountains of bureaucracy and certification, so that might not happen.

That doesn't really scale. The power grid needs to be reliable, and there needs to be some idea of how much capacity you actually have. If people simply hook up an unknown number of batteries of unknown capacities in unknown spaces, how can you rely on the resulting power grid? How can you plan extensions? Not to mention high capacity batteries are huge fire risks, especially worn out high capacity batteries. Can you…

Sell a storage system that allows the batteries to be safely and individually stored and integrated. It could estimate the capacity of each battery and house 20 or so. Such a system could probably pay for itself after using it for less than a year. There are certainly going to be guaranteed minimum capacities that such a system could promise, it doesn't need to be perfect. If enough people invest in such power storage systems, you don't need to have a single system work 100% of the time, just like you don't need every wind turbine to work 100% of the time.

Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#75

Post by brnt »

ben_w wrote: post #56
brnt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik thats one of the challenges: there is no such thing as utility scale batteries. Nothing that stores a summers worth of PV and releases it in winter.

That’s kinda why Tesla is doing what it’s doing. I’m not sure the exact production, but it looks like nearly 4 GWh in fixed storage last year, and at least 50 GWh (0.93 megacars * 54 kWh smallest battery) in their cars required the ability to rapidly make factories that can make batteries that could also be used in grid storage (I’m assuming making the batteries is the hard part of both electric cars and grid storage…

Its a decent effort, but to put 4GWh in perspective: my small house requires about 10MWh in heating over the winter. I can reduce that with a heat pump by a factor 4, but that till means the storage is only enough for about 1800 homes.

We need a PWh+ of storage, and we need it in the next decade, and we are nowhere near on schedule.

Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#76

Post by ben_w »

brnt wrote: post #75
ben_w wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s kinda why Tesla is doing what it’s doing. I’m not sure the exact production, but it looks like nearly 4 GWh in fixed storage last year, and at least 50 GWh (0.93 megacars * 54 kWh smallest battery) in their cars required the ability to rapidly make factories that can make batteries that could also be used in grid storage (I’m assuming making the batteries is the hard part of both electric cars and grid storage…

Its a decent effort, but to put 4GWh in perspective: my small house requires about 10MWh in heating over the winter. I can reduce that with a heat pump by a factor 4, but that till means the storage is only enough for about 1800 homes. We need a PWh+ of storage, and we need it in the next decade, and we are nowhere near on schedule.

Very few people need seasonal storage, most people are on a grid connected to somewhere closer to the equator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid

Re: “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

#77

Post by brnt »

ben_w wrote: post #76
brnt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a decent effort, but to put 4GWh in perspective: my small house requires about 10MWh in heating over the winter. I can reduce that with a heat pump by a factor 4, but that till means the storage is only enough for about 1800 homes. We need a PWh+ of storage, and we need it in the next decade, and we are nowhere near on schedule.

Very few people need seasonal storage, most people are on a grid connected to somewhere closer to the equator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid

All of Europese, far starters.
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