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

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

#81

Post by beat » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen.

This gets to another point that bugs me in these discussions... the pushback against wind/solar dominance by the pro-nuclear crowd. Insisting that nuclear power is the right way to go is western-centric. It's fine for the US, Europe, Japan, and other advanced nations that have the infrastructure to support it. But is it a solution for Peru? For Somalia? Of course not. Wind/solar/storage, on the other hand, is totally viable as a solution for even the poorest nations. This alone is an argument for solar over nuclear.

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

#82

Post by beat » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:14 PM UTC

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #35

breischl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's quite true. You don't need a lot of storage to make the peak-shaving, time-arbitrage setup he mostly talked about economic. But you need a whole lot of storage to make a reliable grid out of unpredictable generators. The author briefly touched on this in the context of home battery usage: "Solar + a small battery may get someone in Germany to 70%, and someone in Southern California to 85%, but th…

Given gobs of cheap electricity, what are the options for synthesizing methane? Storing huge amounts of methane and using it to handle grid load is already a solved problem.

Synthesizing methane from biomass is a solved problem at a known cost that can't really be scaled away. It's not significant in the market because it's far more expensive than fossil natural gas. It's also more expensive than coal gasification, which is probably the second round in that particular gun.

So we could see peak load plants powered by gas sourced from filthy coal. More likely than a clean biomass solution, sadly.

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

#83

Post by beat » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:16 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #33

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…

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…

Right. That's the correct use for nuclear in a solar/wind + storage future - a stable and reliable base load.

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

#84

Post by dragontamer » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:18 PM UTC

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…

http://beaconpower.com/hazle-township-pennsylvania/

Not quite "energy arbitrage", but ~hour long "frequency regulation" that was apparently once the domain of natural gas peaker plants are now being handled by a few flywheel energy storage designs.

"Energy Arbitrage" over a 24-hour period could be next.

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

#85

Post by rhino369 » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:19 PM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #54

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 o…

The goal doesn't really have to be zero emissions either. Transportation usage is only 30% of carbon use.

Just cutting electricity usage to zero emission would mitigate the worst of global warming.

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

#86

Post by beat » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:23 PM 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?

They're openly talking about it. Let's look again in ten years, given the lead time, conservatism, and regulatory concerns at this scale. "Fail fast" isn't really an option for the grid the way it is for software startups.

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

#87

Post by rhino369 » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:27 PM UTC

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.

In many states, utilities do not generate power they merely buy it. They call it energy deregulation.

If it really were possible, you'd see companies like Exelon attaching battery storage to their nuke and coal plants to feed it back at a profit during peak rate periods.

My guess is that isn't cheaper than using peaker plants yet.

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

#88

Post by fokinsean » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:48 PM UTC

I don't know about that.

/r/april30th2015

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

#89

Post by r00fus » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

api wrote: post #44

sooper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure. Cheap superconductors would also be a "black swan" for energy markets. They could enable trans-oceanic power lines for example, which would allow solar in Africa to power Manhattan at night. You could create a planetary power grid, which seems to me like something that would almost define a Kardashev type I civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Fascinating. Never heard of this categorization of civilization technology before.

Apparently, according the wiki, in 2012 we were at type rating 0.724, presumably a large portion of that is non-renewable sources like coal/petroleum/natural gas.

Interesting that TypeII is almost a quantum leap over the TypeI - construction of a dyson sphere sounds like an almost unimaginably massive undertaking compared to blanketing the globe with solar cells.

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

#90

Post by crpatino » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 11:03 PM UTC

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?

Batteries are cheap to charge in-place. Once you load those into a train you have to add the cost (both economic and in energy conversion rates) of moving the whole mass around in a diesel powered vehicle.

We already do that with alkaline batteries, and we pay premium price per BTU because of the convenience of begin able to carry small quantities of electricity around. But if you want to move city-powering amounts of it (think millions of Megawatt-hour), I am guessing a grid is more efficient.