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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

#71

Post by IndianAstronaut »

Animats wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

Wind over a large area is far less constant than its enthusiasts claim. Check out the California ISO wind power graphs [1] and the PJM wind power generation graphs.[2] That's real world data over areas over 500 miles across. About 4:1 variation over a day is typical. To average wind over the entire US, a big network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines would be needed. This is quite possible; China is building on…

I wonder what sort of distribution algorithms they use to disperse the wind power. Seems like an appropriate optimization algorithm would do much to solve this issue more than blind infrastructure investment.

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

#72

Post by diminoten »

melling wrote: post #68
diminoten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't see a qualitative potential difference between a quick reply (HN's comments section), and a well thought out article (HN submissions), then I can't help you. HN comments sections cannot be more than superficial. Anything more than superficial deserves to be put in a more accessible and readable place, as a topic in its own right.

Of course replies can be more than superficial. They can contain facts, historical perspective, personal experience, back of the envelope calculations, or qualitative statements from people with specific domain knowledge. After a good HN discussion, there would be enough information for another blog.

No, they can't, because the folks who are commenting at what you think is that level are actually completely unqualified to do so.

The folks who are qualified to write articles and papers on the topics that might interest you, do exactly that. There is no inherent value in wasting intellectual effort on an HN comment. The people who comment on HN are not the people who are the most qualified to speak on a topic in depth, or if they are, their efforts within HN's comment framework will be very limited, and most certainly hindered by the medium, not to mention the audience.

I am personally aware of a handful of genuine experts on HN who comment on articles in their "wheelhouse", and they've never risen to the level of their capabilities while doing so. I don't begrudge them this, it's unreasonable to think they're going to put in the level of effort in an HN comment they put into their professional work, but to suggest HN comments could ever rise to the level of what experts are capable of producing is not only naive, but also greedy, and perhaps more than a little lazy.

If you want to know more about a topic, that's your responsibility. There are a number of ways around which one could wander to learn more about what's currently known regarding a topic, and the folks who are experts and are commenting in HN don't have the time to go through the proper motions of releasing new information. Even if they had the time/inclination, they wouldn't do it here.

If you take nothing else away from my comment, consider the following: This (HN comments section) is a back channel, if anything. You don't scrutinize a back channel, you verify it independently.

You're putting HN on a pedestal. Don't do that.

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

#73

Post by voidlogic »

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…

>You'll never be able to compete with that, fission, fusion, whatever.

You do realize their are passively cooled nuclear reactors being designed?

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

#74

Post by Animats »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #71
Animats wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind over a large area is far less constant than its enthusiasts claim. Check out the California ISO wind power graphs [1] and the PJM wind power generation graphs.[2] That's real world data over areas over 500 miles across. About 4:1 variation over a day is typical. To average wind over the entire US, a big network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines would be needed. This is quite possible; China is building on…

I wonder what sort of distribution algorithms they use to disperse the wind power. Seems like an appropriate optimization algorithm would do much to solve this issue more than blind infrastructure investment.

There are a surprisingly small number of good wind power sites. California has only four really good onshore sites, all of which have large wind farms in operation. Wind power, like hydroelectric power, is very dependent on geography.

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

#75

Post by MichaelApproved »

7952 wrote: post #49
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.

Surely the main cause of failure is human rather than the actual design. Nuclear stations may be safe, but that comes at an increasing cost in money and complexity. How do we deal with the institutional failings that allowed us to build "old reactors with very shitty failure modes". Stop blaming it on the tech. I want reactors that are simple enough to be cheap and easy.

Humans will always make mistakes, even within the design process. Nuclear is a dangerous technology to make a mistake with.

Diablo Canyon Power Plant was partially built backwards, by mistake. It's absurd.

The company updated its plans and added structural supports designed to reinforce stability in case of earthquake. In September 1981, PG&E discovered that a single set of blueprints was used for these structural supports; workers were supposed to have reversed the plans when switching to the second reactor, but did not. According to Charles Perrow, the result of the error was that "many parts were needlessly reinforced, while others, which should have been strengthened, were left untouched." Nonetheless, on March 19, 1982 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided not to review its 1978 decision approving the plant's safety, despite these and other design errors.

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

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

#76

Post by driverdan »

URSpider94 wrote: post #69

One problem that will surface is that the cost of our transmission infrastructure will have to be covered, one way or the other. Currently, with net metering, customers are able to arbitrage power at the retail price, while effectively making use of the grid for both pushing and pulling load. This would be like flying a round-trip from San Jose to Tokyo and back to SFO, and claiming that you only owe the airline for…

I think you misunderstood something in this article. The only stored power that would be on the grid would be from the power companies themselves, not the end users. End users wouldn't resell the power, they'd use it themselves.

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

#77

Post by mark-r »

URSpider94 wrote: post #69

One problem that will surface is that the cost of our transmission infrastructure will have to be covered, one way or the other. Currently, with net metering, customers are able to arbitrage power at the retail price, while effectively making use of the grid for both pushing and pulling load. This would be like flying a round-trip from San Jose to Tokyo and back to SFO, and claiming that you only owe the airline for…

All the more reason for local storage. The closer to the end user that the power is stored, the less load on the transmission lines. If you store it at your own house, it never needs to hit the grid at all.

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

#78

Post by epistasis »

Animats wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

Wind over a large area is far less constant than its enthusiasts claim. Check out the California ISO wind power graphs [1] and the PJM wind power generation graphs.[2] That's real world data over areas over 500 miles across. About 4:1 variation over a day is typical. To average wind over the entire US, a big network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines would be needed. This is quite possible; China is building on…

How much of that observed variation in production is due to the current state of energy demand, and the state of other generators on the grid? It seems that turbines are often powered down.

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

#79

Post by mark-r »

greggyb wrote: post #67

If there's a legitimate arbitrage opportunity for individual homeowners to buy a battery and charge it overnight to cover peak costs, there should be an even stronger case for energy companies to buy larger batteries, install them in low-land-cost areas, and do the thing themselves. If these peak plants are so expensive, then a major utility can save money using batteries rather than peak plants. The cost should be l…

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.

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

#80

Post by greggyb »

mark-r wrote: post #79
greggyb wrote: post #67

If there's a legitimate arbitrage opportunity for individual homeowners to buy a battery and charge it overnight to cover peak costs, there should be an even stronger case for energy companies to buy larger batteries, install them in low-land-cost areas, and do the thing themselves. If these peak plants are so expensive, then a major utility can save money using batteries rather than peak plants. The cost should be l…

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?

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