Why Our Antiquated Power Grid Needs Battery Storage 334
Lucas123 writes: Last year, renewable energy sources accounted for half of new installed electric-generation capacity (natural gas units made up most of the remainder). As more photovoltaic panels are installed on rooftops around the nation, an antiquated power grid is being overburdened by a bidirectional load its was never engineered to handle. The Hawaiian Electric Company, for example, said it's struggling with electricity "backflow" that could destabilize its system. Batteries for distributed renewable power has the potential to mitigate the load on the national grid by allowing a redistribution of power during peak hours. Because of this, Tesla, which is expected to announce batteries for homes and utilities on Thursday, and others are targeting a market estimated to be worth $1.2B by 2019. Along with taking up some of the load during peak load, battery capacity can be used when power isn't being generated by renewable systems, such as at night and during inclement weather. That also reduces grid demand.
The grid needs storage - not battery storage (Score:5, Informative)
There are many ways to 'store' electricity. Batteries are just one.
I rather like this one [isentropic.co.uk], a thermal storage solution. Putting air into and out of bladders under deep water is a very simple method, as is moving water up and down hills. Then there are flywheels and fixed volume compressed air storage. (The air bladders above are fixed pressure compressed air storage.) There other thermal storage possibilities, but getting good round trip efficiency is tricky.
There are non-traditional battery techniques too: flow batteries (liquid electrolytes in tanks, adding storage capacity is as easy as adding tanks full of electrolyte) and molten metal batteries (take the idea of aluminium smelting and make it reversible).
All the non-battery alternatives I can think of work at industrial scale, so if you're looking for a household/small business solution, I think that at least for now batteries are it.
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I rather like this one, a thermal storage solution.
Note that they don't tell you what the efficiency or capacity are. As you store more power, they lose more energy. Fairly worthless. It also incorporates a special and expensive engine. Fail, fail.
Putting air into and out of bladders under deep water is a very simple method,
No, no it isn't. First, air-based storage is always horribly lossy due to loss of the thermal energy; your above example tries to solve this with technology and argon, but it is thus complex and runs at high pressures and will be prone to failure. Second, the bladders will have to be replaced regularly, because un
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That doesn't change the fact that on the power grid itself, there is no storage, so any efficiency, even bad efficiency is better than nothing.
As to your used battery idea, it is not a good one. Most used batteries are car batteries. And no they are not an excellent way to add more storage capacity. A used car battery won't hold a charge, or deliver current. That's why they are replaced after all.
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A used car battery won't hold a charge, or deliver current. That's why they are replaced after all.
I think you might have a misconception here -- it sounds like you are thinking of the engine-starter batteries used in a gasoline-engine car. The used batteries the previous poster is referring to are the (much larger) battery packs from an electric car. Those batteries are typically swapped out when their capacity deteriorates to the point where the car's maximum range is no longer acceptable. In that state, the batteries are still perfectly capable of holding a charge and delivering current; just not
Hawaiian Electric (Score:3, Informative)
Hawaiian Electric is full of crap. It's an excuse to charge people thousands of dollars for an "interconnect study" before allowing them to install a grid-tie system, which is totally bogus. It's essentially them making it more difficult/expensive to install solar, and when you do jump through that hoop, they get to extort a big chunk of money from you.
Re:Hawaiian Electric (Score:4, Insightful)
Spoken by someone who truly does not understand how unstable an electric grid really is. If there is more power injected into the grid than there is demand very bad things happen.
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Spoken by someone who truly does not understand how unstable an electric grid really is. If there is more power injected into the grid than there is demand very bad things happen.
Spoken by someone who doesn't live in Hawaii. Here on Maui, an engineering study was done that showed the interconnect study requirement was unnecessary, and that what they charge for it is totally overblown. But because the members of the PUC are too busy getting blow jobs (presumably metaphorically) from HECO they won't do anything about it.
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References please.
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Yes, references please: what exactly is happening if you pump more energy into the grid then there is demand ... and how does it happen?
Your +4 insightful post, two posts back, is just bollocks.
I could tell you what happens but I guess it is more fun and educating for you to read up a bit ...
Fearmonger ... that would be a modding we need.
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It's up to the person making the claim to provide the references. If he does not, we are perfectly justified in assuming they are completely bogus.
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Oh, c'mon, sense and facts to debunk a conspiracy theory? Where's your tinfoil and kool-aid man?
(Seriously, the scientific and engineering illiteracy rate here on Slashdot is staggering - even it weren't a site whose denizens pride themselves on being the exact opposite.)
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So you would have water on the other side of a mountain. What good would that do? Could't you just desalinate the water on that side of the mountain?
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It's not just excess but rather electricity flows in the wrong direction. It's not an unsolvable problem. Quite the opposite, the problem and the solutions are well understood, but rather one that simply needs capital investment.
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My point exactly. Managing the grid is very complex and adding a huge number of uncontrollable variable inputs does not make it any easier.
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The electric company wants to expand geothermal. There's considerable local opposition. Part of it is because the volcanism on Hawaii is very volatile--there's been incidents of accidentally releasing poisonous gas from the test facilities. Also there's religious issues--the volcanoes on Hawaii are sacred to a lot of the native population.
Pumped Hydro Storage (Score:3)
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They should be build a pumped hydro storage system - like Dinorwig in Wales [wikipedia.org]. These installations are so simple - I don't know why they're not more common.
They are very simple where you have an abundant supply of water and suitable hills or mountains. In other places not so much
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Band-Aids Won't Work (Score:2)
The entire distribution grid needs to re-engineered and rebuilt from the ground up. Hare-brained politically/financially-driven motivated patch schemes are like applying kluges to legacy code; yeah it might work for awhile, but eventually you'll need a newer system. Why buy buckets and plugs for a leaky boat when you need a new boat?
Use excess power to synthesize diesel (Score:2)
Hawaii would be a good fit for the system outlined in this recent story [slashdot.org].
Install enough renewables to have a large excess of power, and use the excess to generate diesel fuel and alleviate Hawaii's high fuel prices.
OR (Score:2)
Use compressed air storage or large water reservoirs where water is pumped between levels and energy is regenerated by hydro generators when it flows back down.
These are established technologies.
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These are established technologies.
Yes, and the former is horribly lossy while the latter has significant environmental impact, and as such is only suitable for limited sites. Established doesn't mean good, or shall we slap a slave collar around your neck and send you down a diamond mine?
Our local generator has three huge batteries (Score:2)
Our local nuclear station has three enormous batteries that hold GWh of electricity for peak times. They are called Lakes Jocassee, Keowee, and Bad Creek.
During the night when the nuclear station generates excess power, water is pumped uphill through the succession of lakes. During the day, when peak demand hits, water flows downhill to generate extra power. It's efficient and relatively cheap to maintain over time.
The surfaces of Bad Creek (at the top) and Jocassee (in the middle) can fall tens of feet ove
"Batteries... has the potential"? (Score:2)
They does?
Funny, I would've thought the Fark Nitpicking Patrol would have been full of early risers.
Well - since the price of battery packs decline (Score:2)
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of off-the-cuff examples: lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)
Another would be pumped hydro storage. Build a -- yet again very large -- tank at a height. During excess generation periods, use the electricity to pump water into the tank. During peak periods, use the water to turn a generator and reclaim the electricity.
All such systems have inefficiencies, even batteries. But pumped storage and other such solutions are used on a very large scale today... and should be quite workable for the small scale as well. Another advantage of pumped storage is that you now have a nice, big, full water tank with gravity feed in case of zombie apocalypse or whatever.
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For a small-scale pumped-storage system, you should also have a catch tank downstream from your generating turbine. No sense letting all that water go to waste. You just pump it back up high when you have excess generating capacity.
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:5, Informative)
Trouble is you need very large tanks of water, or to seperate them a long way. For instance a house might use 2 kWh overnight, that's about 7 MJ.
Round trip efficiency for pumped hydro system is around 88%, call it 100, and call g 10. So you need a tower or hill 350m high with 2 tons of water in it, or if you prefer, a swimming pool, 2*5*10m suspended 6 metres above your current pool. So, that's a fair bit of unlikely, just to power one house.
Most sensible big hydro locations have already been gobbled up, they made sense decades ago.
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:5, Informative)
Most sensible big hydro locations have already been gobbled up, they made sense decades ago.
The other issue , at least in the U.S. is that it has been near impossible to deal with the permitting process for large water projects. Look at California, if you need an example of just how much damage people are willing to do when it comes to stopping these projects.
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ARES system to put energy storage on the right track.
http://www.gizmag.com/ares-rai... [gizmag.com]
There you go. Old article but still relevant. Just need to build tracks in your backyard.
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I do agree that someone is trying to sell something.
Unless entire large acrage farms convert into solar, the distribution of retail, commercial refrigeration, high density housing (apartments), etc will notmeet daytime demand. Many businesses have installed some solar to offset their daytime energy use.
Most home solar installations are supplimental with only brief periods where the het pump cycles off durring the day that net metering even feeds into the grid.
In my area I have looked into the possibility o
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I have looked at off grid in Texas, and unless a house is buried deep within the earth, or can take advantage of some natural feature (a nearby water turbine on a stream), keeping the place cooled in the summer is virtually impossible without mains power.
For everything else, a house can run from propane for heating, the gas dryer, water heater, and even the refrigerator. Electric for the smaller appliances can easily be handled by a set of panels, battery bank, inverter, and charge controller. However, HV
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:5, Interesting)
I have personally found that if you mount normal panels (as opposed to the flexible panels that you tape/glue in place directly on the surface), you create some clearance under the panels that air circulates under, insulating the roof from the sun.
To me, solar is a "why not" item. Not just for saving on electric bills, but providing electricity in areas where it isn't worth the hassle to run code-compliant wiring to, especially if all one is needed is basic lighting or a place to charge cordless drill batteries. For RV-ing, solar goes without saying, because it keeps house batteries topped off and helps minimize engine or generator use. Even for a plain old house, one can use a set of panels, storage battery, and inverter as a UPS so one can move all the parasitic draw devices (set top boxes, consoles, USB chargers) to that circuit, where they get clean power... and are not on the electric bill.
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A couple of off-the-cuff examples: lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)
The very large weight would have to be sourced quite locally otherwise the shipping / transport costs to install it onsite would be prohibitive. Maybe design the whole house so it could be hoisted up during the daytime and then sink back down at night ;) That would be cool.
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Interesting)
But pumped storage and other such solutions are used on a very large scale today... and should be quite workable for the small scale as well.
Have you even imagined what permitting such a thing is like? You could only do it in the country, and only where the lay of the land permits it. You can't just put a water storage tank above your house and ignore the consequences. And you're still ignoring that the battery packs have already been constructed. They're going to use used ones. That means the cost of construction of the battery pack is $0, that's considerably cheaper than adding a water tank. All they'll need is a combination inverter and charge controller, as opposed to (for example) a shitload of pipe (the cost of this alone will exceed that of the inverter) as well as a pump, motor, turbine, generator, and finally the charge controller/inverter.
You are ignoring the efficiency of using used battery packs. Stop it.
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There are always flywheels. If those are good enough for IBM UPS systems in the days of mainframes, they are good enough for local electricity storage. I don't know how they compare for energy density compared to batteries, but they are a lot less toxic to the environment than all but NiFe batteries, catastrophic failure of a flywheel is a solved problem, and "recharging" a flywheel is all mechanical, so it is relatively quick. Plus, there is no memory effect, or damage done if a flywheel is drawn to a
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Interesting)
Batteries are heavy. Why not do both?
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure I understood you - did you mean that $13K is roughly equivalent to your conventional electricity bills over the lifespan of a Tesla battery?
It's not just about cost, either upfront or total costs over the lifespan of panels/batteries/whatever.
You could even step back from the issues about pollution, CO2, global climate change, and look at it this way:
Fossil fuels are a FINITE resource. Even coal will run out, and eventually oil and then coal will become very expensive to extract. Doesn't it make sense to take steps to transition to nuclear and renewable energy sources while conventional fossil fuels are cheap?
We should build nuclear stations with the very best and safest technology - they can handle the large-scale demands of industry, and be a backup for domestic baseloads. It's possible to supply great gobs of electrical energy via PV when the sun is shining - we have to manage that energy, sure, and it's going to cost more than we already pay, but with smart enough controllers, your domestic battery will supply you with a reduced but adequate supply during grid outages. Wouldn't it be great to have lights and refrigeration when the grid goes down? Put it another way: when the grid goes down, sometimes it's for long enough that the contents of your refrigerator and freezer have to be dumped. How much does that cost to replace, and how many times would it need to happen to make a $13K battery worth the cost? Doesn't have to match $13K in actual foodstuffs - what about the convenience factor?
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Fossil fuels are a FINITE resource
Not to be combative but I realize this will read that way
Everything is a FINITE resource. There is no such thing as an infinite resource, and there are not even indefinitely renewable resources with indefinitely maintainable extraction systems currently.
Lithium is a good example of just such a resource, where the current economic forms are quite finite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
On June 9, 2014, the Financialist publication, produced by the Credit Suisse company, stated that demand for lithium is growing at more than 12 percent a year; according to Credit Suisse, this rate exceeds projected availability by 25 percent. The publication compared the 2014 lithium situation with oil, whereby "higher oil prices spurred investment in expensive deepwater and oil sands production techniques"; that is, the price of lithium will continue to rise until more expensive production methods that can boost total output receive the attention of investors.[87]
BTW Lithium processing is particularly environmentally nasty, right up there with Aluminum smelting. (If going green is you
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, solar is pretty much effectively infinite.
When it runs out, we're gonna be dead anyway, unless we've managed to colonize other planets by then.
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Solar will last as long as the sun. How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ?
BTW that's another not particularly green thing when you consider all the pollution in China from the processes.
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How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ?
Practically forever. The basic materials such as silicon are among the most abundant in the earth's surface. The rarer elements are only used in small amounts.
And it's perfectly possible to make solar panels without causing pollution, if you don't mind paying a little bit more.
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Copper indium gallium selenium good luck with that.
Pointless argument without numbers. Are you claiming that a solar panel requires significant amounts of those materials ?
And pointing out that the Chinese are not producing in a sustainable and clean way does not contradict my statement that it can be done cleanly, if you're willing to pay a little bit more. Obviously, the Chinese haven't been very interested in paying a little bit more. This is changing, now that rich people are starting to suffer from pollution.
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Save your breath - this is the guy who wrote the following (without sources or analysis) just a few posts down:
The whole problem with most "Green Power" solutions is they are little more than excuses to pick people's pockets.
If someone can say that with a straight face, they are not willing to learn, and seem to be proud of that fact.
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otta ask, is it an agenda you are personally pushing or are you just repeating something you didn't bother to question ?
Could ask you the same.
For some strange reason solar panels produced in germany cause no pollution, but well, laws of physics and chemistry bend to our stern will in our small country.
The rest of your posts shows pretty well, that you have no clue at all.
Standard solar cells are made from Silicium, they get doted with Phosphor and Bor.
Copper indium gallium selenium good luck with that.
We h
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I suspect we probably have sufficient resources to build a sufficient number of solar panels to nearly cover the entire globe. If/when we get that far, we really don't need to build anymore.
I'm not an expert, but I've got a gut feeling that solar panels don't really "wear out" at least not as a result of generating electricity.
At the very least, I think if we manage to get enough of them and harness them efficiently enough, solar power could provide more power, and for a longer period of time, than gas and
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Not true. Electricity can wear out. The time frame is much longer but it does happen.
Electricity has resistance. resistance adds heat. The sun adds heat. hot ,cold, hot, cold, that changes the temperance of the metals, making them brittle. Granted it takes a while. but over time electric cables wear out. Then you have the insulation materials which ear out faster, when those break you get shorts.
That isn't even talking about erosion and physical damage from being outside.
So yes solar panels can wear
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Solar panels do wear out a little bit ...
They are "doted" Silicium, that means one side is p-doted the other side n-doted. Due to heat those two sides start to intermix and in the end the efficiency of the cell goes down or even vanishes to zero.
Electricity can wear out.
Nope.
Granted it takes a while. but over time electric cables wear out.
Nope.
Then you have the insulation materials which ear out faster, when those break you get shorts.
Nope. Long distance high voltage lines are not even insulated. They la
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A big bunch of normal house hold energy usage goes into heating water
I'm not quite sure what you think a "big bunch" really is...
We have a pair of 50 gallon hot water tanks in our home. Out of our average $300 a month utility bill, about $10 a month of that goes to heat water. For a family of 5. That showers every day and washes clothes and has a dishwasher.
It is chump change, not worth caring about.
Natural gas is cheap and efficient. Changing the plumbing around to put in a solar hot water heater would cost money and take a long time to repay itself, and frankly while i
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you must enjoy cold showers a lot!
(I think you calculations are off by a fair bit. I spend more than $10 a month just boiling the kettle for tea).
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Your assumption you only use $10 per month to heat water is completely silly.
Unless your solar heating elements are indeed covered with snow, they work just fine in January, too.
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, yes, even the sun will run out one day - but I hope we as a species will have taken appropriate steps well before that happens.
Seriously, yes, even fissile material is finite, but it's a step in the right direction.
I use lead-acid batteries, 1320ah of them, and I'm off-grid, so I don't know very much about grid-tie systems and the issues they raise. I'm just saying it's possible to live with batteries, and there are even some advantages. They do need periodic replacement (every 8-9 years in my case), but much of it is recycleable, so it isn't just dumped in a landfill. I believe the price of lead in the last few years makes it much more attractive to recycle lead-acid batteries.
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Wow, a nitpicker.
For all human percievable purpose wind and sun and even lithium are infinite resources.
BTW Lithium processing is particularly environmentally nasty, right up there with Aluminum smelting. (If going green is your thing)
Only in countries that have no legislation against it, and regarding aluminium: you are plain wrong. You only need electricity to smelt it, and that you can create in any green way you want.
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What exactly is "household baseload"? And why should it need a "back up"?
Base load is the minimum amount of energy you feed into the grid, it does not change with demand, and around 2:00 till 4:00 it might even be above "demand" as pumped storages are refilled with it.
Anyway, your thoughts make sense ... there are plenty of ways to "store" excess energy, e.g. by cooling the fridge down from -20C to -30C ...
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I think the key to that $13k outlay is the life of the batteries. If it is like conventional lithium-whatever technology, the batteries will have to be replaced in 4-5 years, making that $13k a $26k expenditure every decade.
However, if the battery life is like NiFe with an automatic watering system, the batteries could run indefinitely, and 100 years from now, the battery bank would still be useful and relevant.
I'm in agreement with the parent. If cars were like reactors, a lot of the press would be point
Tesla battery also far larger than needed (Score:2)
The Tesla Battery's cost $13,000 would pay most people's electric bills outright over it's life.
The Tesla's battery is also 53, 70 or 85 kWh whereas the average household uses around 1 kW (kWh/h) and certainly can get by with a few kWh of storage to handle its overproduction of solar during a day.
In the end, it's just economics. Does solar + battery pay itself back in lowered electricity bills? If it does, nothing else matters.
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From what I have seen the home battery is 15kwh.
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And it's cost is twice what a lead acid solution could be made for. I priced a peak shaving battery for a commercial building, and we were looking at a cost of $300/kWh for the battery, and a savings over the 1,000 cycles of ...$250/kWh(B).
The big challenge for utilities is the 5/6-7/8PM time frame when solar production drops to near zero and lighting consumption goes up. Batteries are a good solution for time shifting noon-3PM production to this window. This will be economical when peak pricing shifts f
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The Tesla's battery is also 53, 70 or 85 kWh whereas the average household uses around 1 kW (kWh/h) and certainly can get by with a few kWh of storage to handle its overproduction of solar during a day.
You didn't read the article, did you?
For $13,000, you get a 10kWh battery. The average home is using 900kWh in a month, or 30 per day.
This battery would provide, on average, about 8 hours of power.
In the end, it's just economics. Does solar + battery pay itself back in lowered electricity bills? If it does, nothing else matters.
It doesn't, and that is the problem.
It can be kinda, sorta masked with enough rebates and government tax dollars to LOOK like it does, but it really doesn't. It is just taking money out of the left pocket and putting it in the right and nothing has changed.
Scale it up to a million home and those tax incentives w
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I only use about 10 kwh a day. A 5 kw solar system is about $3600 plus inverter. The 10 kWh system complete with install and the 5 kw of panels would cost a bit less than $20k. I currently pay about $.22 a kwh plus about $1 a day just to have the grid there. The ROI is 16.6 years assuming no maintenance cost, interest or increase in grid costs assuming I can go fully off grid. It goes over 20 years if I still have to pay to have the grid hooked up (or some "grid goes by the house so pay" type fee)
Re:Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Insightful)
And who would that be? Last I checked, coal, gas and oil let you shit your externalities all over other people's environment (and lungs, real estate and insurance costs), and nuclear is impossible due to political reasons.
Wind is more expensive than fossil fuels only as long as you force me to suck up the fumes from your smokestack and tailpipe and consequently die horribly from lung cancer for free. Not to mention the fact fossils will run out eventually, leaving to future generations sitting in the dark if the alternatives are not in place by then.
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Nuclear is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy. Private industry doesn't seem to have found a way of doing it cost effectively. People also seem to have problems with it being a global solution to power needs, given all the jumping up and down about countries like Iran getting into nuclear power. Then there's handling of waste and water consumption, so it's hardly problem free.
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Environmentalists made a huge mistake a long time ago fighting against nuclear.
Ah yes, blame the problem on the people trying to fix things, not on the people who only want to get rich whether nuclear makes sense or not. We had so-called "alternative" energy sources like wind and hydro long before we had nuclear power, and they were always viable.
China is burning 5 times as much coal today as the US is, in the next 5 years or so, China will grow their coal consumption by the current total amount the US burns. We could shut it all down tomorrow and in 5 years China will have replaced it all.
So stop buying goods from China, problem solved. They won't make it if we don't buy it.
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blame the problem on the people trying to fix things.
So, kinda like The Inquisition.
The problem: Ignorance of the masses, widespread fear, and the church trying to edge early medical practitioners out in a social power grab.
The solution: BURN THE WITCH!
And modern power:
The problem: Ignorance of the masses, widespread fear and environmentalists trying to edge out power companies for mindshare in a social power grab.
The solution: NO NUKES! NO NUKES! NO NUKES! NUKES IS BOMBZ!!! Let's put a ton or three of batteries in your place and hook up some solar panels
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Wind and solar have their place, and that's fine, but they aren't going to replace coal, oil, and natural gas in our lifetimes.
In germany they will. So in Denmark, Portugal probably Spain, Italy and even Greece, too.
So you either must be extremely old or live in an extremely backyard country.
Most of the "emerging" nations are installing solar right now instead of new coal/nuclear or other plants.
Your idea about historical not built nuclear plants and their greenness is retarded anyway. Perhaps you might che
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Any energy source comes with a trade off.
The problem is we don't have leadership that will accept this fact and say we must sacrifice this to get that.
Right now when ever there is an issue, our elected officials will just throw the baby out with the bath water.
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The problem is we don't have leadership that will accept this fact and say we must sacrifice this to get that.
Right now when ever there is an issue, our elected officials will just throw the baby out with the bath water.
Our elected leaders are not as stupid as you think they are.
They fully understand two things:
1. People talk about the environment plenty, but the minute you tell them, "ok, your power bills are going to double because of the environment", suddenly people care a whole lot less.
2. It wouldn't matter if we doubled the price of power via a carbon tax in the US, because of China. And US and EU politicians have no power to make China do anything and if China doesn't change, then this is all just rearranging the
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Energy bills don't have to double, and the US and EU emit more CO2 per year than China does, for example.
You don't appear to be being productive either.
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Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the U.S. power grid has been having all manner of problems as it is: single-point failures that affect whole cities or entire regions, mismatches between supply and demand that allow Enron-style speculators to manipulate markets, deferred maintenance tallying tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, externalities associated with conventional generati
Massachusetts did ot shut down Cape Wind (Score:2)
Massachusetts did ot shut down Cape Wind. Cape Wind is delayed because rich people on Cape Cod launched endless lawsuits because it would affect their view from their private compunds (even thought it was to be 4.8 miles off th coast).
It was so bad that the judge even commented on it [wikipedia.org]: "There comes a point at which the right to litigate can become a vexatious abuse of the democratic process."
This dried up Cape Wind's financing which lead to National Grid and NStar pulling their power purchase agre
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You know, I'd love to let you right wingers have your way
I didn't realize batteries were voting. But hey if you want to turn technical decisions into political decisions good for you, that's worked really well in the past.
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Every decision which has consequences to anyone or anything else is a political decision.
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Re: Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because someone doesn't jump on the first "solution" you see doesn't mean that they are not aware of the problem.
The problem is we have no one proposing truly reasonable alternatives. Instead of patching what they call our "antiquated" power grid, perhaps we should actually rethink it. The renewable energy sources have a common problem because they cannot provide power when it is needed with suitable reliability. Allowing people to generate power using solar and wind, use it what they want and sell the rest to utilities sounds very good, but it does not reduce the peak capacity that the utilities must have, further it increases the swing between peak and minimum meaning the utilities must have capacity that can be brought online quickly and shutdown quickly, sometimes several times a day. These "green" energy sources are not nearly as green as they could be in a properly integrated power grid. Patching batteries into the grid just delays a properly engineered solution. Industrial power users are one of the keys to success since they have the greatest financial interest in the cost of power, and have the resources to capitalize the solutions. Having the smallest/smallish users capitalize the grid is stupid because they can't pay for it upfront and if made compulsory, they will pay while industry profits. A smart grid where your car and laptop charge at times of minimal demand/maximum availability is also likely to be needed. With a proper design we won't be wasting huge amounts of resources as we iterate towards a solution.
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Utilities need to start working with people towards a good solution, or they are going to start dying fast. The more prices go up the better solar PV and batteries will look, and the more people will start to disconnect or pull very little from the grid. Soon communities will start pooling their resources and cutting themselves off from the larger network. The utilities are then forced to charge their remaining customers more, and the death spiral begins.
Of course, they won't do that. They will instead figh
Re: Talk about creating a demand (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is we have no one proposing truly reasonable alternatives.
According to you.
Instead of patching what they call our "antiquated" power grid, perhaps we should actually rethink it.
But you won't do that, even a little bit.
The renewable energy sources have a common problem because they cannot provide power when it is needed with suitable reliability.
This is how I know you won't rethink it. Operating the means of production while power is highly available is the answer. We used to call this "making hay while the sun shines". Haven't heard that expression in about a decade though. Now we just want to make hay when we want hay, god damn it.
Allowing people to generate power using solar and wind, use it what they want and sell the rest to utilities sounds very good, but it does not reduce the peak capacity that the utilities must have,
Which is why we're talking about adding power storage, so that the power can be used when it is needed.
further it increases the swing between peak and minimum meaning the utilities must have capacity that can be brought online quickly and shutdown quickly, sometimes several times a day.
See previous sentence.
These "green" energy sources are not nearly as green as they could be in a properly integrated power grid.
That's why we want to integrate power storage into the grid. See, I can use buzzwords, too!
Patching batteries into the grid just delays a properly engineered solution.
You will never have a "properly engineered solution" because progress. You can only have a system that works. Oddly, ours does, most of the time. However, it has some very nasty externalities. Right now we've got spent fuel sitting around on top of reactors just like at Fukushima, reactors which are in fact based on the same design as Fukushima. There is no evidence that we are responsible enough to deal with our nuclear waste, or the waste produced while coal is burned. If we ever reach that level of responsibility, then perhaps we can revisit this conversation.
Having the smallest/smallish users capitalize the grid is stupid because they can't pay for it upfront and if made compulsory, they will pay while industry profits.
Ah yes, the "if made compulsory" FUD. You really have put nothing of substance in this comment. When you have to resort to FUD, just accept you have lost.
A smart grid where your car and laptop charge at times of minimal demand/maximum availability is also likely to be needed.
Cars already do that, so why are you even bringing this up? Besides, anyone who knows anything about power distribution knows that this is the direction the power company is heading anyway. That's part of the "smart grid" initiative. However, it's going to be a long time before your laptop has to do anything, especially since their power budget tends to decrease over time. The industrial users' equipment is already sometimes throttled by the provider, especially HVAC where a delay of a few minutes won't hurt anything.
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That is wrong.
You assume that all Solar and all Wind input can be zero at a certain time. Which it can't.
further it increases the swing between peak and minimum ...
No it does not. Why should it? The idea is idiotic.
Wrong again. Load balancing is not done with "power up" and "shut down" plants. Something like powering up a plant you o
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You know, I'd love to let you right wingers have your way. I'd love to let you dig up every last lump of coal, the last gallon of crude tar, the last methane pocket. Drain the last aquifer, cut down the last redwood, strip mine the last of the copper and iron and aluminum, every outcropping of phosphate, and dump all the tailings in the river 'cuz it's cheaper.
Usually the problem with viewpoints such as yours is that you have a narrow worldview that assumes that you can simply decide these are problems and the whole entire world will go along with you.
It likely won't, and that is the 800lb gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about.
It doesn't matter what the US or Europe does, if China, India, Brazil, and Russia don't go along with it. For that matter, China alone makes or breaks a lot of it.
So... how do you plan to tell China what to do?
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Tariffs? The UN climate change summits are a toothless tiger at the moment. but if they got serious...
e.g. You can have your $POLLUTER-built smartphone but the government will add 20% to the purchase price for any goods produced in any country that doesn't sign up to emissions reductions. All that cheap stuff you buy for zero postage on ebay from $POLLUTER will attract a $20 fee to pick it up from the post office. You can enter the EU but since your country of origin is $POLLUTER, you'll be charged a mandat
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Sterilization events (Score:2)
Biosphere One, as you call it, has sustained several nearly sterilizing events in its 4.5B year history, not to mention that it was uninhabitable for about the first 1B years or so. The planet will go on after the human virus has died out, even if humans take 99% of all other current species with them.
Now, that's not to say it's a good idea to go about defiling the planet as you describe, but just to place some perspective on it. Humans are a mere speck on this big ol' rock, and said rock is insensate and d
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Do you even understand what a Peltier does? It sucks at power generation, absolutely sucks, even if it's possible.
Because primarily it's not a generator - that's just an inefficient side-effect - it's a heat pump. And what you're suggesting is to heat the hot end of a Peltier, thereby doing what? Generating a pittance of electricity. You'll also need to cool the cold end of else it's just a block of metal. It's the temperature difference that matters. And there's no such thing as a free lunch in energ
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You are a fucking nincompoop. Peltier cooling works by pumping heat from the cold side to the hot side. You have to COOL the hot side, not heat it, idiot.
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Pumping water into a high reservoir, is the usual storage, a large lake only needs a small generator pumping station so its far more efficient.
You glossed over part of that "high reservoir".
Locations with plenty of water and a large enough elevation change to matter are actually rare. They exist, and many of them are already being used.
If you have a wind turbine at home, it would be better pumping water up into a loft tank, rather than directly generating electricity. You can then generate electricity as you need it by dropping water from the high tank to a low tank as you need it. Generating the electricity then.
Yes you can, and those systems exist today. You *MIGHT* be able to run a a radio or laptop computer on it, for 10-15 min.
I suspect you don't quite understand how much power that wold make, or rather would not make.
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but we seem to be moving toward an era of self-generation as a primary source of power
Anyone who lived in a multi-story building will not be self generating. While self generation might be good for some sub-urban and rural areas there is no way it will suffice for urban areas. Therefore the grid will always be needed.
Your hot water analogy is way off considering that a day's worth of PV power may not even last part of a day. That would not be good if your refrigerator only worked part of the day or your computers used for work did the same.
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Diesel generators are an ideal solution for multi-unit residential buildings
Ideal in what way? Certainly not in efficiency, or CO2 production.
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Best know energy storage right now is to pump water up dams when we have too much energy.
Sure, if you happen to have a large hill near by and a large source of water.
That actually doesn't exist in very many places.
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there are no major technical hurdles to using pumped water storage, just a relatively small investment and some relatively major political/organisational issues. Just another case of why we can't have nice things.
Hmm... No major technical hurdles? A small investment?
I live in Dallas, TX, the area has about 7 million people living here. The elevation doesn't change by more than about 100 feet across hundreds of miles. The only water sources of any size are 4 large man made lakes used for drinking water.
How exactly would you use pumped storage when a 20 or 30 mile drive doesn't change the elevation by more than about 30 feet?
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How exactly would you use pumped storage when ...
By building an artificial hill 30 feet high and putting the storage on top of it.
If you already have build 3 artificial lakes it would be a piece of cake, just use the stuf you dug out, and pile it up somewhere.
Man, even the old Egyptians and Chinese could do that!!
Re:Why this whole article is pie in the sky bullsh (Score:4, Interesting)
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Okay, 26 MW for 15 min is about about 6.5 MWh, ignoring load scaling (total capacity tends to be higher if you don't draw it as quickly). $35 million for 6.5 MWh is about $5.40 per watt-hour.
The Tesla battery is 10KWh, with an initial retail price of $13K. That's $1.30 per watt hour, less than a quarter the price you quote for the ABB battery.
Does this mean the Tesla solution's cost is 1/4 that of the ABB solution? Hard to say. Building something at the ABB scale, with reliability guarantees suitable for a