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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

#51

Post by patcon »

diminoten wrote: post #47
melling wrote: post #46

Got any real numbers to back that up? I'm guessing that it just feels good to bang on your chest and make that call. The reality is probably a lot different. How are all the megacities going to get enough solar and wind power, for example? Tokyo, NYC, Mexico City, Shanghai, etc. all running from solar? How big will the grid need to be to power NYC? Anyway, I'd love to see a deeper analysis and less chest pounding.

HN isn't where you go to learn , HN is where you go to expand the realm of possible information for you to consume. When you read a comment like the above, your response shouldn't be to demand for sources, your response should be to go research the topic on your own. This site would be much better if folks understood that HN itself isn't a place for someone to "get wonky". On my debate team, we had a rule of "no wonk…

Hm. Good point. I like that rule.

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

#52

Post by Animats »

classicsnoot wrote: post #30
toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

You need a lightning protection consultant. Lightning protection is a solved problem - power lines, large communication towers, and wind farms are struck all the time, without serious problems. Doing it right can get expensive, but is quite possible.

Grounding on hard rock is tough. There are methods for measuring ground conductivity, and in a situation like that, you'll need them.

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

#53

Post by ThomPete »

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…

I don't think thats is entirely correct. The issue isn't just storage but also production/output of the actual energy and as someone else once said here. Green energy is a linear solution to an exponential problem. I think there is something to that.

Also it doesn't solve anything for space travel which I don't believe are going to be put on hold.

But it will definitely be great.

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

#54

Post by markbnj »

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…

>> We are basically drenched in free energy, but we can't store it cheaply enough. If that's fixed, we're done here.

I think that's a simplistic view. Yes there is tremendous energy in the movements of air in the atmosphere, and water in the seas, even more in the daily exposure to sunlight, and quite a bit in the geologic forces operating in the earth's interior. That's all well and good, but what matters in terms of powering a modern civilization is energy density, portability, and durability. Electric power isn't going to get a lot more portable than it is now. Storage improvements will make it more durable. But in terms of density the only sources we have are heat cycle sources dependent on fossil and nuclear fuels. Storage advances don't magically make renewable sources dense enough to replace the power we now get from non-renewable sources.

Edit: I should also have mentioned the obvious non-heat cycle source, hydro, which is dense enough in some places to be a very significant contributor.

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

#55

Post by fennecfoxen »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
jimktrains2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't disagree that we can build better designs. I disagree that we can build them quickly and cheap. According to the OECD: "As nuclear power plants are complex construction projects, their construction periods are longer than other large power plants. It is typically expected to take 5 to 7 years to build a large nuclear unit (not including the time required for planning and licensing)." "Between 2002 and 2008, f…

All the modern design proposals are to mass-produce smaller units -- sometimes, completely sealed units -- which would then be installed several to a site, and maybe sent back to the manufacturer to be refurbished at periodic intervals. This is the "save money by mass production" economies-of-scale approach, as opposed to "save money by being more efficient with large custom-built plants" economies-of-scale approach which has failed the industry and led to many of those ballooning costs.

(Whether we have the regulatory wherewithal to go with that plan is another matter, but the very idea of reusing the same design over and over does help keep compliance costs down, and you can focus on site-selection costs.)

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

#56

Post by digikata »

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 and solar might have large capital costs in-total for similar capacity, but you can deploy it in much smaller increments and time periods than nuclear plants - that goes for both actual deployment as well as R&D investments. I think that makes a huge difference in how the technologies are rolling out in practical market terms. I expect it will be similar for storage technologies - much lower capital investments required for a given increment of technology improvement & roll-out.

Now, new small fission reactor R&D may work out differently, but we have yet to see any of those efforts come out of the gate in terms of being even close to ready-to-install states.

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

#57

Post by eigenvector »

breischl wrote: post #48
eigenvector wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base-load nuclear is the opposite of dispatchable. Dispatchable means you can turn it on and off at will. It takes a long time to shut down a nuclear plant and start it back up again (on the order of days not minutes). By contrast, natural gas plants can be highly dispatchable hence their use as operating reserve in many ISOs.

Hm. I was about to tell you that you're wrong, but then noticed you're an electrical engineer... so I guess you probably know more about this than I do. But, my understanding is that dispatchable is the opposite of intermittent generation (solar, wind), because you can choose when it's running or not. Also, baseload is the opposite of peaking, because baseload generators take a relatively long time to turn on/off. Th…

Well yes, it's dispatchable in that sense. If you frame dispatchable as a binary property, it's certainly dispatchable in the way that wind is not.

But if you think of it from a power system planning perspective of economic dispatch (not just, can I dispatch - but can I afford it), nuclear isn't really there. Yes, you can E-stop a nuclear plant in seconds, but the cost is astronomical. Some nuclear plants like Bruce NGS in Ontario have thermal bypass - this increases their dispatchability by allowing them to dump steam and reduce electrical output quickly without touching the thermal output.

Nuclear's dispatchability doesn't really counter-act wind or solar's lack thereof since the time scale you're looking at is much different. Being able to start and stop my nuclear plant in 72 hours doesn't really help me if the wind stops blowing for a couple of hours. So in practice, you'd build other, more easily and economically dispatchable assets to meet your needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_dispatch

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

#58

Post by melling »

diminoten wrote: post #47
melling wrote: post #46

Got any real numbers to back that up? I'm guessing that it just feels good to bang on your chest and make that call. The reality is probably a lot different. How are all the megacities going to get enough solar and wind power, for example? Tokyo, NYC, Mexico City, Shanghai, etc. all running from solar? How big will the grid need to be to power NYC? Anyway, I'd love to see a deeper analysis and less chest pounding.

HN isn't where you go to learn , HN is where you go to expand the realm of possible information for you to consume. When you read a comment like the above, your response shouldn't be to demand for sources, your response should be to go research the topic on your own. This site would be much better if folks understood that HN itself isn't a place for someone to "get wonky". On my debate team, we had a rule of "no wonk…

It certainly could and should be a place to learn. How do chest pounding statements add value, especially when they fall apart after the first question?

There are definitely a lot of knowledgable people who read this site. Why wouldn't you want them to contribute and take deeper dives? Superficial conversations are essentially noise.

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

#59

Post by eigenvector »

mrfusion wrote: post #10

If utilities install these batteries near the last mile, would that also cut down on power outages during storms?

Probably not since most radial power systems are not designed to support islanded operation for a segment of the system. Grid batteries will likely be designed to automatically disconnect during grid outages just like distributed generation.

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

#60

Post by hueving »

Guvante wrote: post #37
IanDrake wrote: post #12

>This leads to what seems to be a paradoxical situation. A battery that is more expensive than the average price of grid electricity can nonetheless arbitrage the grid and save one money. That’s math. Missing in the math is logic. If enough people do this, the price will even out and the arbitrage opportunity will vanish. It's like an arbitrage trading a model that makes money when paper trading but loses money when…

The fact that an arbitrage opportunity will not always be available does not mean that arbitrage opportunity does not exist. Also electricity companies would be very slow to adjust to reduced demand by lowering prices, making this work for longer than a naive analysis would predict.

>The fact that an arbitrage opportunity will not always be available does not mean that arbitrage opportunity does not exist.

Spotting a leftover cookie on the table means you will probably be able to get a free cookie. It doesn't mean that you have found a way to solve world hunger.

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