Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by olau » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 8:45 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #176

lancewiggs wrote: post #174

Shocked at the amount of support for nuclear here. Use the data - how much solar, wind and nuclear capacity had been installed in the last 5 years? Nuclear is not getting cheaper, not significantly, so what does this imply for the next five years? The answers are obvious, and non nuclear. New Zealand, where I live, declared itself nuclear free in 1984. We are currently generating 70-80% of our electricity using renew…

Apologies for the mobile link, but [0] says that in 2014 over 50% of your energy was from oil and coal. Have you a source on your claims? I know that many of the non-nuclear countries in Europe end up importing a lot of their power from neighbouring countries like France, who's main supply is nuclear. The big advantage of nuclear is it's relatively safe and readily available. How many people have been killed in nucle…

Energy consumption != electricity consumption.

Regarding France, that argument works both ways.

And whatever advantages nuclear may or may not have, that doesn't matter if it's too expensive.

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

#182

Post by patrickk » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 8:46 AM UTC

digikata wrote: post #50

intrasight wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar photovoltaic probably needs more servicing per kWh than any other method. If those panels aren't clean, you don't get the expected return.

I predict at some point that something like an roomba for solar panels might spring into existence...

They actually already exist. Google "solar panel cleaner robot" or similar.

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

#183

Post by maccard » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 8:47 AM UTC

olau wrote: post #181

maccard wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for the mobile link, but [0] says that in 2014 over 50% of your energy was from oil and coal. Have you a source on your claims? I know that many of the non-nuclear countries in Europe end up importing a lot of their power from neighbouring countries like France, who's main supply is nuclear. The big advantage of nuclear is it's relatively safe and readily available. How many people have been killed in nucle…

Energy consumption != electricity consumption. Regarding France, that argument works both ways. And whatever advantages nuclear may or may not have, that doesn't matter if it's too expensive.

Ah, I missed the electricity part, sorry!

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

#184

Post by bainsfather » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 8:47 AM UTC

luch wrote: post #169

nextw33k wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heav…

"solar panels cost more in energy to produce than they give back during exploitation for example)"

is not correct (maybe your information is from e.g. 20+ years ago). There are many sources, here is one of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon#Energy_pay...

About: ".. they can lose more than half the energy between the power plant and the client's house." - this seems extremely unlikely to be a representative case. Maybe your friends were telling you about some extreme case (they are always the best stories :)

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

#185

Post by patrickk » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 9:03 AM UTC

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.

Interesting. Would you mind posting details? I would like to know more, if it's possible in Germany, expected ROI etc.

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

#186

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 9:43 AM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #96

exelius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually; cheap storage makes the argument for nuclear energy even better. Nuclear is very bad at responding to demand because it can take weeks or months to restart a nuclear reactor. Under any scenario, you're going to need some kind of power grid. That grid is going to have a non-zero "base" load as batteries charge, etc. Nuclear is perfect for generating this base load - it's reliable, clean and not subject to th…

The problem for nuclear is that with the way the bulk electricity market works, shaving off the peaks could hurt the ROI of building a new nuclear plant significantly. In New York and New England, suppliers bid in how much power they are willing to supply at a given price, the market operator runs a giant LP solver over the bids and transmission constraints between locations in order to satisfy demand in each locatio…

Storage shaves off price valleys, as well, by adding demand in off-peak hours. Every kilowatt-hour that's low enough under the peak price will convince someone to buy a battery to time-shift the power.

My model is that cheap batteries would drive on-demand power stations out, in favor of batteries + base load.

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

#187

Post by nl » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 9:59 AM UTC

ridgeguy wrote: post #125

afarrell wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for nuclear is that with the way the bulk electricity market works, shaving off the peaks could hurt the ROI of building a new nuclear plant significantly. In New York and New England, suppliers bid in how much power they are willing to supply at a given price, the market operator runs a giant LP solver over the bids and transmission constraints between locations in order to satisfy demand in each locatio…

My understanding is that nuclear power is used to serve base load, which is the demand that isn't subject to significant variation. This allows generator owners to run nuclear generators at their cost-effective maximum output. It's true that there is great variation in electricity pricing, with peak shaving and other so-called "ancillary services" bringing as much as 100X as high a price as base rate (for a short per…

The issue with base load contracts is that they are increasingly being undermined by power that is much cheaper, and reliable almost enough to substitute for base power.

Generally speaking most jurisdictions would have to be stupid to sign up to new long term (20 year+) base power contracts, but that's what nuclear power needs to pat for the high upfront costs.

As this article shows, new storage tech and load management tech makes it likely that base load will be less and less important over time.

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

#188

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 10:02 AM UTC

cwal37 wrote: post #34

It stands out to me that pumped storage only gets a passing mention. We've had that as a proven energy storage technology for decades. People in the industry love to talk about it and file FERC applications for preliminary permits on the same sites over and over (I would know, I've had to read nearly all of them over the last year at work), but it's never deployed at the scale people expected. It'll be interesting to…

Pumped hydro is virtually all deployed grid-scale storage -- 90%+ (and plus quite a bit as memory serves).

It's cheap, effective, scalable, and highly efficient.

It's also got limited sites and localized environmental impacts.

Where you been hiding?

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

#189

Post by nl » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 10:04 AM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #80

mark-r wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the part about studies that make the case that utilities could be doing this today. Utilities are conservative though, I don't expect them to jump in with both feet right away.

> This is, of course, speculative. We don’t know if the study findings scale to the whole of the United States. It’s back of the envelope math. Atop that, the study itself is an analysis, which is not the same value as experience. Hence my question. Do we actually see any utilities making steps in this direction?

There are a number of pump-solar energy storage plants already in use, including some in the US. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectrici... for details.

Its not as sexy as new battery tech, but it works really well and is a very attractive option in some locations.

Outside pump solar, California is planning 1.3 GW storage by 2020. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_E... will show you the status of projects.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_projec... is an interesting list of projects, including battery based, but also things like flywheels.

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

#190

Post by mauricemir » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 10:25 AM UTC

Interesting though the Compressed Air storage could have some "interesting" failure modes.

Back when I was an Engineering Technician my thermo fluids lecturer commented that if the main reservoir for the labs compressed air system burst it would flatten the entire lab block.