U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#31

Post by nl » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #27

epistasis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EIA understands energy and power, the unit names used for energy and power, and is using them correctly in this short article. As much as I hate it when they use terms like "billion kWh" in some of their reports, it is their prerogative and a correct use of terms. Why do people think that battery storage doesn't have a power specification? To the point that they will incorrectly declare others to now know what th…

What are you talking about? The very first chart in the article is titled "U.S. Battery Storage Capacity (2015-2025)", but the vertical axis is labelled "gigawatts". Storage capacity is not measured in gigawatts. Edit: yes, batteries also have a power delivery rating, but that is not what is implied by "storage capacity".

Their terminology is defined here: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/74426.pdf

I think it is mostly use correctly. They genuinely are talking about "the total possible instantaneous discharge capability" when they talk about "storage capacity increasing".

I think this is because in table 1 of the linked doc they list where batteries help the energy market and most are capacity (as in power delivery capacity) limited, not stored energy limited (ie most of the uses are measured in "hours" of stored energy or less. In general it reads as the limiting factor is power capacity, not energy storage capacity).

I do think the graph in the linked article (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54939) should use terminology consistent with https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/74426.pdf though.

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#32

Post by epistasis » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #22

jdsully wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

watt/hours is the typical measurement. Raw wattage is insufficient without a time component.

Wh, not W/h. W/h is a change in power. "Scotty, increase engine power by 1 gigawatt per hour!"

And for a lot the initial lithium ion storage on the grid, which was used for frequency regulation, the W/h or ability to respond to powe change, was a far far more important characteristic of the batteries than the Wh.

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#33

Post by janalsncm » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #21

Suparna Ray, the independent statistics and analysis EIA person writing about Utility scale photovoltaic and thermal here appears to be using EIA forms like this as the basis for her article. (She's listed as a contact on this form but it is hard to find info on who she is). https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/EIA-860.pdf It would be good to see the actual data.

Is this what you’re looking for?

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#34

Post by olivermarks » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #33

olivermarks wrote: post #21

Suparna Ray, the independent statistics and analysis EIA person writing about Utility scale photovoltaic and thermal here appears to be using EIA forms like this as the basis for her article. (She's listed as a contact on this form but it is hard to find info on who she is). https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/EIA-860.pdf It would be good to see the actual data.

Is this what you’re looking for? https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/

I think that is another generator survey form, not Utility scale photovoltaic and thermal energy generation battery storage.

This is an area I'm interested in. HECO in Hawaii are arguably the most advanced in battery storage. https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/documents/clean_energy_hawa...

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#35

Post by tromp » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 11:42 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #29

tuatoru wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? The very first chart in the article is titled "U.S. Battery Storage Capacity (2015-2025)", but the vertical axis is labelled "gigawatts". Storage capacity is not measured in gigawatts. Edit: yes, batteries also have a power delivery rating, but that is not what is implied by "storage capacity".

Are you saying that you can't measure battery power capacity? Why would you assert something weird like that? Grid assets are measured by power, and power is a key specification of storage capacity. Edit in response to your edit: the EIA, and in fact all the people who run grids and the grid storage, refer to capacity in terms of power, and when talking about "storage capacity" on the grid continues to use power beca…

> Grid assets are measured by power

That seems of limited use without knowing for how long the power can be supplied. 1GW for 1 second is pretty useless. 1GW for a minute not much better. Most people would say that 1GW lasting a day is more storage capacity than 10GW lasting only an hour.

Wouldn't batteries optimized for power take the form of supercapacitors [1] instead?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor#Comparison_with...

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#36

Post by blamazon » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 12:12 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #18

blamazon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even putting costs aside it seems like it could be unlikely that such a thing could be built at all today. Flooding huge swaths of ecosystems is no longer in vogue and dam removal is picking up in pace. When was the last major scale hydroelectric dam built in USA? Edit: looks like the information is here somewhere in the national dam inventory: https://nid.usace.army.mil/#/dams/search/&viewType=map&resul... But I am…

It's worth noting that pumped hydro, and the dams that are getting torn down for environmental these days, often look very different. Usually the dams that are getting torn down, block the entire river, and thus fish from passing up or downstream of the dam. (Fish ladders exist but are not particularly effective.) Pumped hydro may sit by the side of a river, but otherwise not obstruct the flow, and so that is not a m…

Huh, that is a really important point, and totally changed my perspective on pumped storage projects. Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#37

Post by lazide » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #11

crmd wrote: post #3

> Developers and power plant owners plan to significantly increase utility-scale battery storage capacity in the United States over the next three years, reaching 30.0 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2025 Can someone explain how/why they are measuring storage capacity in watts?

This doc has more information: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/74426.pdf They’re talking about the power capacity , which is the maximum instantaneous rate of discharge as measured in kW, as opposed to the energy capacity which is measured in kWh. From what I can glean, it appears that for many applications, the power capacity is actually the more important number.

It is a bit weird, and seems to come from a history of fossil fuel, nuclear, and/or hydropower where the total capacity is always some (very large) multiple of the instantaneous power level.

With storage currently just supplementing other power sources as renewables aren’t the majority (or all) of available capacity to provide grid stability, it makes sense I guess. None of these battery storage systems need to provide meaningful load beyond a few hours now.

Hard to imagine that won’t change at some point though, probably soonish?

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#38

Post by lazide » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

blamazon wrote: post #36

bobthepanda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that pumped hydro, and the dams that are getting torn down for environmental these days, often look very different. Usually the dams that are getting torn down, block the entire river, and thus fish from passing up or downstream of the dam. (Fish ladders exist but are not particularly effective.) Pumped hydro may sit by the side of a river, but otherwise not obstruct the flow, and so that is not a m…

Huh, that is a really important point, and totally changed my perspective on pumped storage projects. Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Interestingly, it’s also becoming somewhat common to dam off (concrete-fence-off?) the entire top of a hill somewhere for pumped hydro. Essentially the opposite of what you’d do for a hydropower installation.

It also makes a lot more sites interesting.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512...]

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#39

Post by epistasis » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

tromp wrote: post #35

epistasis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that you can't measure battery power capacity? Why would you assert something weird like that? Grid assets are measured by power, and power is a key specification of storage capacity. Edit in response to your edit: the EIA, and in fact all the people who run grids and the grid storage, refer to capacity in terms of power, and when talking about "storage capacity" on the grid continues to use power beca…

> Grid assets are measured by power That seems of limited use without knowing for how long the power can be supplied. 1GW for 1 second is pretty useless. 1GW for a minute not much better. Most people would say that 1GW lasting a day is more storage capacity than 10GW lasting only an hour. Wouldn't batteries optimized for power take the form of supercapacitors [1] instead? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapaci…

It turns out that the resources that get deployed in the grid are useful ones rather than something that deploys 1GW for 1 second. So referring to the power capacity, and dispatching based on power capacity, is how to make decisions when operators bus into the grid. At any moment, a power source may trip off, or decide that the price they are being paid is not high enough to justify continued operation.

The grid is an amazing, absolutely massive, machine for matching power at the generation and load sides. Power, of both the real sort and the reactive sort, are the name of the game.

As far as optimization for power over minimal capacity, the best use case for supercapacitors might be frequency regulation, but batteries have proven to be superior for that particular use case, with a few fly wheels also taking part.

Re: U.S. battery storage capacity to increase significantly

#40

Post by epistasis » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #37

kevinventullo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doc has more information: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/74426.pdf They’re talking about the power capacity , which is the maximum instantaneous rate of discharge as measured in kW, as opposed to the energy capacity which is measured in kWh. From what I can glean, it appears that for many applications, the power capacity is actually the more important number.

It is a bit weird, and seems to come from a history of fossil fuel, nuclear, and/or hydropower where the total capacity is always some (very large) multiple of the instantaneous power level. With storage currently just supplementing other power sources as renewables aren’t the majority (or all) of available capacity to provide grid stability, it makes sense I guess. None of these battery storage systems need to provi…

"Long duration" storage doesn't have many economic use cases right now, unless the cost is a tiny tiny fraction of current storage costs. There are many startups developing tech for this, and one with the most hype (and the one I'm most excited about) is Form Energy, which is using iron-air chemistry.

Nonetheless, I do not expect to see a significant market demand for such batteries until into the 2030s; it takes a really high level of renewables penetration before it makes sense to start having long duration storage at the moment.

If there is a large need for it, I would expect that a lot of existing installations will be upgraded with longer duration, so that the same inverters and grid connection can be reused. New connections to the grid are becoming quite difficult to build on a reasonable time scale, and there's starting to be significant economic rent from just the permitting and connection stages.