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Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

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Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#161

Post by Lorento »

hyperbovine wrote: post #136
john61 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technologies also have risks. If the risk of a technology is the vast devastation of life it should not be used.

Compared with the vast devastation of life which is already taking place as a result of climate change? I'll take my chances with the nukes.

Human life? Is it? Remember famines that used to regularly wipe out the peasants in most civilizations? It's been a while since disasters on those scales happened in most countries. Climate change doesn't sound so bad when you compare it to normal life a few centuries ago.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#162

Post by aharonovich »

How lucky for me, I've just finished doing the same back of the envelope calculation for using a home storage system that would take advantage of Time-Of-Use rates, my conclusion was opposite - when he is concentrating on the gap between ~34c peak rate to ~15c minimum rate I've chosen to focus on the gap between the minimum rate to the ~19c standard tiered rate. the 3-4 cent difference means that you can only save, at the maximum, 3-4 cents per kwh consumed your storage. And storage is very far from this range. Nonetheless, I'm still very optimistic about other uses of storage and I am confident that I would find the right company to short, maybe a company that builds peaker plants.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#163

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

brownbat wrote: post #109
teamonkey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That uses more-or-less the same principle as pumped-storage hydroelectricity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Except it takes a really big train to weigh as much as a lake. Pumped hydro is unbelievable. Tour a pumped hydro facility if you ever get the chance, and ask about the economics. They're buying a dollar of energy at night in Spring and selling it on hot summer days for something like five hundred. (Probably not quite that much, but it was a crazy ratio, to the point where efficiency barely matters - also, free energy…

The ARES website claims that the cost of their train technology is only 60% of an equivalent pumped hydro facility [1]. This is pretty impressive, and I wonder how they do that. Maybe because a water pump is not just a turbine operating in reverse, and thus pumped hydro needs separate equipment for charging/discharging, whereas ARES can use the same?

[1] http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/santa-barbara-energy-storage...

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#164

Post by aharonovich »

greggyb wrote: post #97
beat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're openly talking about it. Let's look again in ten years, given the lead time, conservatism, and regulatory concerns at this scale. "Fail fast" isn't really an option for the grid the way it is for software startups.

I realize I may have come across somewhat pugnaciously above. I am honestly curious about this, though. What utilities/where are talking about this right now? What level of talk are we talking about? Public statements? Designs? Construction permits in the works?

My research has shown that while many utilities have purchased storage (SCE 250 mW in 2014[1]) it's still very experimental and they do it mostly for research purposes or publicity or because the regulator makes them. However, since the electricity business is slow moving, low margin and very capital intensive it's clear why everyone is very interested in any new potentially disruptive technology. Imagine owning a peaker power plant that you've paid for in full using debt and generates a little profit each year under the condition that it can be amortized for 15 more years - if someone built the equivalent of a peaker plant made of batteries, even in 2025, you'd still go under. Scary.

[1] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-top-10-energ...

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#165

Post by aharonovich »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #159
ridgeguy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be, but that doesn't capture the value a consumer with fast response, controllable generation/storage supplies to the grid. Compensating the consumer for power or storage they supply at a particular time is complicated. Existing net metering pays a fixed rate for power supplied to the grid by, say, a solar-equipped residential grid customer. But in fact, fast response power delivered to the grid when the grid…

Thanks, very informative. The biggest challenge seem to be that the current people running both te grid and power companies are so conservative that they seem to be the biggest blocker against something line this being created.

IMO It only seems that way. They do their best to stay on top of all new technology, but as consumers are used to very high level of service (>99.99%) they can afford few risks if any.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#166

Post by amelius »

DennisP wrote: post #110
beat wrote: post #81

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen. This gets to another…

I wrote a couple pro-nuclear comments here. I'm perfectly happy with wind and solar and think we should roll it out as fast as we can, as well as nuclear. Many of the wind/solar advocates, on the other hand, are strongly anti-nuclear. Given the state of the climate that just doesn't make sense to me. All these technologies have their own advantages, and we should use each where it's most effective.

I'm genuinely wondering, if it is possible to rob 250 million pounds' worth of diamonds from a bank vault in London, how difficult it would be to obtain access to some nuclear waste.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#167

Post by nextw33k »

beat wrote: post #81

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen. This gets to another…

I am very much pro-nuclear.

I argue against wind and wind alone, it is a very unreliable source of energy, I think it is crazy to rely on gusts of wind to power a population. Nuclear is the only technology which offers a base load without burning fossils.

Solar I am happy with, it could be better than nuclear but the storage problem needs solving before it gets onto everyone's roof.

That's another problem with solar, people are putting up fields of the stuff when there is already enough roof space. In my mind large retail shops should be mandated to fill their roofs with solar.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#168

Post by ghshephard »

Animats wrote: post #158
ghshephard wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a lot of our equipment tested in Florida (where they have some large testing centers) for lightning tolerance. I've been told, that you don't actually verify the equipment can be safely struck by lightning - as anything that is hit by lightning, is immediately destroyed. The objective is to ensure that equipment nearby a lightning strike doesn't suffer secondary damage (possibly from a power surge in the line…

Antenna towers get hit all the time, and the transmitters and receivers survive if installed properly. First, there's a spark gap between the antenna and ground, with big metal contacts, copper or silver, a short distance apart. That diverts most of the lightning bolt to ground. Then the feed line for the antenna has a big inductor, a coil made of heavy busbar, usually in a grounded can. This is often placed through…

You seem to know a lot about this, so all I can do is reiterate that when we take our electronics to florida to be tested, our QA guys make it clear that no company's electronics are designed to survive a lightning strike - including ours. (Though we are designed to resist a 22 calibre bullet). We install a lot of lightning arrestors, mandatory in Florida, São Paulo, Singapore -- and we seem to do fine in those areas (knock on wood) - but I've been told that's to prevent a nearby lightning strike from running down the antenna line into our electronics. If our RF gear (which is mounted outdoors in weather rated containers) gets hit with a direct strike - 100% guaranteed destruction.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#169

Post by luch »

nextw33k wrote: post #167
beat wrote: post #81

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen. This gets to another…

I am very much pro-nuclear. I argue against wind and wind alone, it is a very unreliable source of energy, I think it is crazy to rely on gusts of wind to power a population. Nuclear is the only technology which offers a base load without burning fossils. Solar I am happy with, it could be better than nuclear but the storage problem needs solving before it gets onto everyone's roof. That's another problem with solar,…

I live in France, where nuclear energy is dominant, and I can tell there are some serious issues with nuclear power.

First, nuclear can be extremely inefficient since it's heavily centralized : I have friends working for energy distributors telling me they can lose more than half the energy between the power plant and the client's house.

More importantly, nuclear waste disposal and power plant cleaning costs are heavily underestimated. I've worked for the CEA, the French nuclear agency where they invented the first French atomic bomb and reactor in the sixties, and some experiments aren't still cleaned up yet in 2010's (the current objective is to fully clean up the laboratory in 2025-2040). That is a massive cost which is not factored into the kW price.

I think decentralized technologies are the way to go regarding energy (using local loops and "smart grids") even if they aren't viable now (solar panels cost more in energy to produce than they give back during exploitation for example).

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#170

Post by aharonovich »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #142
james-skemp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renters. Every time I hear about advances in renewable energy I get a little sad. I've rented for the last decade plus, and unless I get married and decide to settle down, will probably continue to rent for the next decade plus. Homeownership would allow me to take advantage of these sorts of advances, but so would the ability to take advantage of this as a renter. Looks like only ~35% of US households rent, accordin…

Where I live, in Sweden, you can. I purchased shares in a wind power coop. It feeds me all the electricity I need wherever I live in the country, at cost of production. And with interest rates at effective zero here the investment is significantly better than having the money in the bank.

So who is covering the cost of transmitting to power from the wind farm to your city and the cost of distributing it all the way to your home?
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