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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

#21

Post by mathgeek »

One thing that kept coming to mind while reading all of this article's details on different methods for storing and selling and buying power at the peaks and valley of pricing was this:

Electricity in our homes is so widespread and popular because it just works. We don't need to think short-term about how or when we use it (although we should and can if you want to). You flip a switch, the light comes on, and you flip the switch again when you're done.

In my mind, there are only two factors that need to be there for widespread adoption: the price needs to come down, and the battery or other storage medium needs to just disappear into the background of in-home electricity usage. Most people will just want to see a lower bill without any costs to their ease of use regarding electricity.

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

#22

Post by nine_k »

Let's calculate a bit.

> Most flow battery companies have $100 / kwh capital cost as a target

With typical power plants generating e.g. 500 MW 24 hours long, the storage is going to be 100000 $/MWh * 500 MW = 50M/hour. If we assume that a solar plant generates power for 12 hours, and the batteries feed the consumers for 12 more hours, it's going to be 600M for storage alone. The solar power plant with a peak power well above 500MW (to feed the day load + charge the batteries for the night) will cost you extra.

I still think that a Thorium molten salt reactor is a strong contender in a price landscape like this. (It also has a nice ability to burn our current stockpiles of radioactive waste from Uranium reactors.)

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

#23

Post by manigandham »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18
DennisP wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage helps nuclear too, with less demanding requirements. You can keep running your nuclear plants at full blast and use storage to average the load. If the storage is cheap enough that'll cost less than partially idling the nuclear plant. Wind and solar, like nuclear, have costs dominated by capital cost, but with less predictable output. To run civilization on those alone, we'd need quite a bit more storage, to…

Wind and solar have a fairly beneficial failure scenario (ie nothing happens, save for the few turbines that have destroyed themselves during adverse conditions). You'll never be able to compete with that, fission, fusion, whatever. We still don't know where to put the waste, we still refuse to acknowledge the ability to reprocess said waste, and so forth. You don't even need more storage to run wind and solar as bas…

We know where to put the waste, lots of the issues are political rather than technical. Lots of NIMBY with this stuff. Fusion also produces far less actual nuclear waste than fission if we can ever get that working. There are also working designs like the molten-salts that have failsafes that work without power and have no disastrous consequences (like radioactive fallout).

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

#24

Post by Retric »

DennisP wrote: post #8
api wrote: post #3

If we do get cheap scalable energy storage, it's pretty much game over (in the long run) for everything but solar and wind. We are basically drenched in free energy, but we can't store it cheaply enough. If that's fixed, we're done here. Nuclear fission may still have on-paper advantages in some markets/climates, but the high PITA (pain in the aXX) factor would probably mean we wouldn't bother going there. We'd just…

Storage helps nuclear too, with less demanding requirements. You can keep running your nuclear plants at full blast and use storage to average the load. If the storage is cheap enough that'll cost less than partially idling the nuclear plant. Wind and solar, like nuclear, have costs dominated by capital cost, but with less predictable output. To run civilization on those alone, we'd need quite a bit more storage, to…

Wind over a large area is far more constant than you might expect the problem is you need a vary large area (east - west coast) to see this. http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/04/averaging-us-east-coas... Still the major advantage to wind is it's the cheapest power out there. (Yes lower than coal, nuclear, hydro, etc.)

PV Solar is also vary steady in the areas you would put it. (AKA not the South Pole.) Storage is useful, but transporting power over distance is much more useful than you might think.

Finally, Hydro has a lot of built in storage allowing you to double output for weeks at a time.

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

#25

Post by ch4s3 »

jeffasinger wrote: post #16
mrfusion wrote: post #11

Random idea, if batteries are cheap enough could we charge them up and ship them on trains back forth instead of building high voltage transmission lines?

I had the same thought reading the article, but after some thought, I doubt it. Grid transmission can be as low as 0.5% per 100 miles already. Batteries lose about 10% of the energy by storing it, that leaves you with needing to go at least 2000 miles in order to make up the battery loss difference, plus needing the energy to move the batteries physically.

Float them down a river.

\s

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

#26

Post by DennisP »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18
DennisP wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage helps nuclear too, with less demanding requirements. You can keep running your nuclear plants at full blast and use storage to average the load. If the storage is cheap enough that'll cost less than partially idling the nuclear plant. Wind and solar, like nuclear, have costs dominated by capital cost, but with less predictable output. To run civilization on those alone, we'd need quite a bit more storage, to…

Wind and solar have a fairly beneficial failure scenario (ie nothing happens, save for the few turbines that have destroyed themselves during adverse conditions). You'll never be able to compete with that, fission, fusion, whatever. We still don't know where to put the waste, we still refuse to acknowledge the ability to reprocess said waste, and so forth. You don't even need more storage to run wind and solar as bas…

The advanced reactors I mentioned produce about a hundred times less waste, and it's back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries. Encase in a block of glass and bury it. They can also use our existing waste stockpiles as fuel, so we'd end up with less waste than we have now. No renewable can accomplish that.

I did see a paper a couple years ago on running a section of the U.S. electric grid on wind/solar alone. They had a computer try about ten thousand scenarios, and found that the cheapest was to overproduce energy by a factor of three, and add a bit of storage. So at least for that region, wind/solar would have to be less than a third the cost of fossil per kWh to be competitive. I certainly hope it gets there.

In the meantime, we can't really afford to be picky about our non-carbon energy sources. Modern nuclear plants have excellent safety records, and more advanced reactors look even better. Let's just not build any more of the 1970's-era plants that have run into trouble. We've learned a lot since then.

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

#27

Post by james-skemp »

mathgeek wrote: post #21

One thing that kept coming to mind while reading all of this article's details on different methods for storing and selling and buying power at the peaks and valley of pricing was this: Electricity in our homes is so widespread and popular because it just works. We don't need to think short-term about how or when we use it (although we should and can if you want to). You flip a switch, the light comes on, and you fli…

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, according to http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708%20 , so perhaps that's why.

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

#28

Post by sooper »

api wrote: post #3

If we do get cheap scalable energy storage, it's pretty much game over (in the long run) for everything but solar and wind. We are basically drenched in free energy, but we can't store it cheaply enough. If that's fixed, we're done here. Nuclear fission may still have on-paper advantages in some markets/climates, but the high PITA (pain in the aXX) factor would probably mean we wouldn't bother going there. We'd just…

What about something unexpected like superconducting transmission lines between temporal energy producing / consuming zones?

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

#29

Post by jimktrains2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
tertius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either that or more Gen3+ Nuclear. Why not both I would say.

Nuclear plants take years to build and have shitty failure scenarios. Best to stopgap coal until renewables take over with combined cycle natural gas plants, fueled by cheap natgas from fracking. It's not perfect, but those natural gas plants will still be kept around as peaking plants and they're an order of magnitude cleaner than coal plants (as well as producing much less CO2 per unit of power generated).

> Nuclear plants take years to build and have shitty failure scenarios

That's only because we won't build any newer designs that don't have shitty failure modes and insist that we keep old reactors with very shitty failure modes online, though.

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

#30

Post by classicsnoot »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18
DennisP wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage helps nuclear too, with less demanding requirements. You can keep running your nuclear plants at full blast and use storage to average the load. If the storage is cheap enough that'll cost less than partially idling the nuclear plant. Wind and solar, like nuclear, have costs dominated by capital cost, but with less predictable output. To run civilization on those alone, we'd need quite a bit more storage, to…

Wind and solar have a fairly beneficial failure scenario (ie nothing happens, save for the few turbines that have destroyed themselves during adverse conditions). You'll never be able to compete with that, fission, fusion, whatever. We still don't know where to put the waste, we still refuse to acknowledge the ability to reprocess said waste, and so forth. You don't even need more storage to run wind and solar as bas…

In my limited experience [1 windmill that i am currently working on] the biggest issue we are facing is lightning strike. The windmill is located on a small island .6 miles off of the coast of Maine. the structure rises 20+ feet over the tops of the trees. The Seawind is pretty consistent so wind seemed like a good idea, but the first strike fried the innards of the turbine and compromised the lines running to the battery array [the system uses a ruggedized Ranger power management computer to charge the batteries (28 inline 1.5 amp boat batteries) from either the windmill or the diesel generator]. I know very little about all of this, but it has been left to me to get it working. The system only has to power 110v outlets [30+], a water pumping system [well pump + distro pump], and a washer and dryer. As it stands we run the Genny for ~6 hours then use the batteries for ~18 hours. The island is only inhabited for ~2 months all year, but it is still expensive and dirty. The Island is conifers rooted in primeval moss on top of pink granite. there is little to no dirt, and i have limited access to TNT and my biggest rock drill bit only goes down 2 feet, so the grounding system (which i think is where the fault in the system is) is my biggest concern. As of now, i am going to attempt to use a surface, chemical grounding system, but, again, i don't really know what i am doing so it is pin the tail on the donkey with my hands tied behind my back. If anyone has experience with windmills and/or grounding i could desperately use some advice...
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