Power Grids: The Huge Battery Market You Never Knew Existed 245
ashshy writes Unlike the obvious battery needs for smartphones or electric cars, many consumers are unaware of the exploding need for enormous battery banks as modern power grids are bringing a whole new set of requirements. From the article: "'Our electricity grid was built a certain way, and that way is to have on-demand production,' Argonne National Laboratory battery researcher Jeff Chamberlain explained. 'So as I flip my light switch on at home, there's some little knob somewhere that turns the power up. There is no buffer. It's a very interesting production cycle compared to other consumer goods. It was built a certain way, and the grid is currently changing in two different ways. One is, first our demand is increasing. But another is, around the world human beings are trying to get off fossil fuels and that means using solar and wind. Well, we cannot turn up the sun or wind, or turn down the sun or wind according to our energy needs. So the more those technologies penetrate the grid, the more you need energy storage. You need a buffer. And that is a very difficult challenge that's similar to transportation because it's cost-driven,' Chamberlain said. 'But it's also different from transportation because we're not limited by volume or mass like we are in vehicles. We're working on energy storage systems that are stationary.'"
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Some good use for Graphene! ...in theory.
You could just use Salt... (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.ted.com/talks/dona... [ted.com]
Basically the same technology used in aluminum smelter, with liquid salt for the battery...
Does anyone know if this ever got off the ground?
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Does anyone know if this ever got off the ground?
To quote the wikipedia page on molten salt batteries [wikipedia.org]
Magnesium–antimony cells
In 2009, Donald Sadoway and his team proposed a very low cost molten salt battery originally[20] based on magnesium and antimony separated by a salt[21] that could be potentially used in Grid energy storage systems.[22] Research on this concept is being funded by ARPA-E,[23] Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and Total S.A.[24] Experimental data showed 69% storage efficiency, it had good storage capacity (over 1000mAh/cm2) and relatively low leakage (
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A couple months ago, someone mentioned high capacity, high temperature batteries that used iron, with antimony not part of the picture whatsoever, and IIRC, were within a magnitude of gasoline, although due to the temperature required, wasn't something usable for the phone or Prius.
If I had money to throw at something, it would be battery research. Get batteries that would work at room temperature, were reasonably inexpensive, and had energy density by volume within an order of magnitude of gasoline or die
Pumped storage and transport (Score:4, Informative)
I like pumped storage:
o Lovely water recreation areas - swimmable, boatable, fishable ...there's lots of pumped storage already [wikipedia.org] (~104 GW). More. More! MOAR!
o So while it costs land, it returns most of that land for public use
o Fish and other aquacritter habitat
o excellent control of recovery rate
o doesn't significantly wear out (and if you were to make it underground, won't even evaporate... expensive, but...)
o easy maintenance
o highly scenic
o No red-hot nothing, no batteries, works fine unless it freezes (so in higher latitudes... not good.)
I *also* like this idea for pumped transport:
Imagine a C shape that is almost closed -- just a few feet short of meeting at the ends. It's an almost circular canal. From one end of the C, you pump water into the other end of the C (and add any replacement volume required by evaporation.) This creates a current that operates the entire length of the C. Now, put two of these next to each other. Pump the second one in the opposite direction. Put cranes (or locks) at the ends, so that transport platforms can be moved from one direction to the other. Cost? Initially, Pumps, cranes, canal, transport platforms. In operation: pump energy (solar, please) and evaporation refill. Unless you roof it. :) Length? very, very amazingly long, and if roofed, even longer.
Air pressure. Gravity. Water. Make it work for us. :)
Nickel-Iron Battery -- could we make it better? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-mar... [wsj.com]
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See also: https://ironedison.com/ [ironedison.com]
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And: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/... [cleantechnica.com]
"Nickel-Iron (Ni-Fe) batteries -- developed over a century ago by Thomas Edison -- are gradually replacing lead-acid batteries at a number of applications, especially for solar PV and renewable energy power systems. Unlike lead-acid batteries, they are highly reliable, featuring a longer service life and pollution-free operation.
"The Nickel-Iron technology is great, because it's like rediscovering this great invention," adds Williams. "The fact that Thoma
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Compressed air is a very lossy energy storage method but it's well tried and convenient.
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I wonder how it would compare to AGM (absorbed glass mat) lead-acid batteries. AGM cells are usually drop-in replacement for flooded batteries, and are sealed, so they rarely vent hydrogen gas unless greatly overcharged.
AGM batteries are twice the price on average compared to the flooded lead-acid type. However, if Ni-Fe batteries were the same price or cheaper, it might be worth buying one of those, just for the fact that they are far less toxic, and will last longer than the 1-5 years of life that an av
Batteries not inclu--- err needed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Batteries not inclu--- err needed (Score:5, Informative)
Huge amounts of grid storage are probably not required in the short term but having some cheap storage to handle short-term fluctuations will make the grid operators jobs easier and will keep down the peak costs.
Now if something like Isentropic's Pumped Heat Energy Storage pans out and is cheaper than batteries, that would be a radical shift in the electricity market.
Where could you not find a place to build 2 large-ish tanks filled with gravel & argon?
Every large wind farm, power plant or community could build its own local energy storage and there's not a huge upkeep on a system based on pebbles & inert gas.
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ [isentropic.co.uk]
Re:Batteries not inclu--- err needed (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a high-level explanation of how the PHES system works - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Evolution is not a theory,it's a scientific FACT,you fool.
All scientific facts are, in fact, theories. Scientific facts have been over turned time and time again, and this will continue to happen because that's how science works...
And in the end we may actually find absolute truth to be a non-binary thing.
Then again that may just be a wild assed theory...
Re:Batteries not inclu--- err needed (Score:4, Informative)
A common misconception: "Scientific facts have been over turned time and time again."
No scientific facts have ever been overturned, because there are no scientific facts. You are only partially correct about theories.
There are scientific laws, theories, and hypotheses. Scientific laws, which were once theories, have been supported by so many years of consistent observational data that the confidence bounds on their correctness are so tight that it is essentially impossible that they will ever be falsified.
As such, NO scientific laws have ever been overturned. Rather, for ex. Newton's laws of motion, were REFINED by quantum mechanics and relativity so that the laws continue to work correctly at extremes of observability that weren't available to Newton. But over the domain in which Newton's laws were formulated, they are still valid to within any desired tolerance. So they are just as correct today as when Newton expressed them, and they have been that way since the beginning of time and will remain so until the universe is over. The same is true of Maxwell's equations, the gas laws, the laws of thermodynamics, and every other law that I can't recall.
Evolution is a theory, which means that it doesn't have the confidence levels of a law, but is supported by a huge wealth of consistent observations and basically no falsifying ones. That means that even if inconsistencies are observed, they will be subtle and change only our understanding of the mechanisms of evolution, but not the overall basic thesis. It is remotely possible that some evidence will be found that will completely overturn evolution, but it is so remote that you are more likely to die by getting struck by lightning twice on the day a cure for cancer is announced, and after you just won the lottery.
Also importantly, there are basically no competing theories to evolution that are supported by even a shred of *reproducible,* non-circularly speculative, evidence. No, the writings in some book are not evidence, because there is no basis to establish that your favorite novel which states "the contents of this novel are the truth" is any more truthful than any other supposedly self-proving novel written by anybody at all.
Global warming, or whatever it's called these days, and many of the pronouncements of the medical science establishment, such as that you should eat lots of carbs and low fat in order to reduce the likelyhood of getting heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, are hypotheses that are to be seriously questioned. In the latter case, it's looking like the evidence is already becoming clear that it is just plain wrong, and killing people to boot. But because of entrenched interests, there will be resistance to admitting fault and correcting the errors for as long as possible.
These should serve as stern warnings to those who proclaim that the "science is established" for their favorite, political and social identity-reinforcing scientifico-ideologies, that while the *scientific method* is indeed infallible, and is no doubt (along with mathematics) one of the crown jewels of human intellectual accomplishment, the implementation of that method by humans is in no way perfect. Even peer-reviewed research is highly fallible.
Even in the case where the science may indeed be right, such as with global warming which I think is most likely being accelerated by humans and which will probably have undesirable consequences (of highly uncertain magnitude) unless we do something different, it is important not to confuse the scientific realities with the practical realities.
Just because you may be technically correct, it is still possible that there is no way to fix it because of factors which are not amenable to technological control and optimization. For ex., anyone with a brain can predict that the most likely outcome of any of the existing proposed political solutions to global warming are likely to both not solve the problem, and make matters generally worse for the human conditio
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We have day and night rates (Score:3)
Aside from the big supply end solutions there are also demand end solution opportunitues.
Because we have day and night consumer rates there is a market oppotunity for an appropriatly priced home storage unit able to shift night power to day power.
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Never knew existed? (Score:3)
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I've been hearing about batteries being needed for sun and wind is as long as I've been hearing about sun and wind...
Exactly. It's more like "yet another market that needs a cheap solution"
Yes, we know that. (Score:5, Informative)
Battery storage for bulk power has been talked up for years. Mostly by the wind industry. With solar power, you get peak power and peak air conditioning load around the same time. Wind varies about 4:1 over 24 hours, even when averaged across big areas (California or the eastern seaboard). So the wind guys desperately need to store power generated at 4AM, when it's nearly worthless, so they can resell at 2PM. When the wind farm companies start installing batteries at their own expense, this will be a real technology.
With the US glut of natural gas, this isn't needed right now. Natural gas peaking plants aren't all that expensive to build, and make money even if they only run for maybe 6 hours a day. That covers most peak needs.
There are other ways to store energy. Some of the dams of the California Water Project have reversible turbines, which can run either as pumps or generators. They pump water uphill at night, when power is cheap, and let it down during the afternoon to generate power. Since the dams and pumps are needed for water handling anyway, this adds little cost.
Re:Yes, we know that. (Score:4)
Battery storage for bulk power has been talked up for years. Mostly by the wind industry. With solar power, you get peak power and peak air conditioning load around the same time.
I agree that has been historically true, but that's changing fast. Once Solar PV penetration gets to the point where about 5% of all the electricity is coming from solar PV, it starts to get really expensive to handle the load swings. To be clear, I mean 5% of total electrical demand for the year. That means the instantaneous peaks will be in the ballpark of 50% of grid energy coming from solar.
Most countries are very far from this point, but Germany and Italy are there today. Both countries have dramatically slowed their adoption of solar PV, mostly because of grid integration issues. All of those issues would be solved with cheap storage.
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Once Solar PV penetration gets to the point where about 5% of all electricity is coming from solar PV..
Uhm. You realize you're talking almost a (not even taking into account rising consumption) 20-fold increase right?
Currently Solar (all kinds), accounts for 0.34% of all energy consumed in the US. And that's AFTER a record-setting 41% increase in new installation.
Even if solar stays at this sort of growth rate, you're still talking nearly 10 years before it hits the levels you're talking about (again, NOT taking into account increases in consumption).
And, honestly, people have been trying to eak out more c
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You are forgetting something. 2 somethings to be more precise.
1. As solar tech gets better it gets more installed. As it gets more installed economy of scale allows for lower prices. As the prices drop they get more installed. Rinse and repeat untill the minimum price of the tech is reached. During that time some companies will have invested in additional research to lower the price per watt.
Rinse, repeat.
2. There are only a few solar concentrator towers now. Those will be build faster and faster if the pri
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Is that EE is your username a mere unused decoration or an utter lie? Who outside of bad science fiction is suggesting 50% of grid energy coming from solar?
If you are going to push an agenda please at least be honest about it and perhaps advocate your agenda instead of trashing what you see as opposition. Solar is in the mainstream now whether we like it or not so we have to deal with it.
Re: Yes, we know that. (Score:2)
If you and all your neighbors were producing a surplus, the substations would need to be backfeedable. Most aren't, and would either need to be upgraded, or local storage would be needed.
Inverters force energy into the grid by raising voltage. In the situation where everyone is producing and nobody consuming, the lines will become overvoltaged and the solar collectors would be shut down by the inverters. Near 0% efficiency in the primary solar hours isn't a good thing.
That's the degenerate case. It won't ha
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You are mixing units to your detriment-- think in kW not kWh. You are also incorrect regarding efficiency; when you pay for your demand up front efficiency is much more incentivized.
Don't batteries just compete against gas turbines? (Score:2)
Some day soon, in some areas, there will be enough solar to handle most power needs at peak insolation. When that happens, we'll have significantly cheaper grid power in the day than during the night. Then we'll see how much of the balancing water can do and if batteries can outcompete gas for the rest.
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Can't the wind farms just use gas turbines instead of batteries as long as those are cheaper? I'd assume batteries will be used if/when they become the cheapest way to handle the balancing.
1. Gas turbine designs for wind power exist, but are currently not 'mainstream', ergo more expensive and less efficient per watt produced. You're looking at a 10-15% drop in joules produced per year* for a given turbine size.
2. In order for them to have an effective amount of 'battery' you need some sort of air storage facility. There are underground formations that are ideal for this, but those are often used to store other things and thus, selection is limited. Just building a giant pressure vessel i
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Gas peakers use jet engines for quick starts, the electricity generated cost $0.19 per kWh, quite expensive.
With all of the new electric cars hitting the market lithium-ion batteries have finally dropped in cost Tesla + Panasonic are currently building a mega-factory to build cheap Li-ion batteries, cost is expected to drop below $100 per kwh of storage capacity.
I don't see why compressed air storage couldn't be cheap with sufficient investment. Geothermal can also be used for peak demand, it's another huge
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With solar power, you get peak power and peak air conditioning load around the same time.
Not quite. Peak demand in California is between 6 to 7PM, peak solar production is approximately 12 noon. Peak load does not drop signficantly until well after sunset.
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According to PG&E, that is not accurate.
Peak demand on the PG&E grid in the Summer is 1200-1800 PDT, the time when a westerly-facing solar array would be generating maximum electricity.
Lowest demand is between 2130 and 0830, when there would be little or no solar generation.
If you give bonus incentives to line up solar arrays on the Western roof or at a slightly westerly angle, peak demand in the Summer in California would line up almost perfectly with peak generation.
During the winter, the demand s
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Peak demand on the PG&E grid in the Summer is 1200-1800 PDT
I am not sure if you are intentionally lying but here is the California outlook [caiso.com] for supply and demand from PG&E. Notice the peak is between 5PM and 6PM and the demand does not drop off to noon levels until 11PM. Today's sunset in California is about 7PM so much of that higher energy use is after the sun goes down so angling the panels will not help much. Look a little further down the page I linked. Notice that between 5-6pm the supply from solar drops from 70% of noon maximum to 37% of maximum even tho
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PG&E sets its rates based on AVERAGE demand. The peak demand for the Summer is 1200-1800 (these are the times the grid is typically strained the most) which is why the peak rate occurs at this time.
I'm not sure why you think one data point constitutes some kind of disproof of PG&E's peak-demand rate schedule. It's akin pointing to the declining temperatures in Green Bay between August and February as proof against global warming.
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You're apparently talking about PV. Solar thermal power production lags behind peak solar output by a bit, and continues producing a bit after sunset, much as air-conditioners do.
And in any case, you're oversimplifying it too much. The very peak of demand may be 6pm, but demand is very, very high for several hours throughout the afternoon, and tracks pretty closely with solar output...
Tesla batteries (Score:3)
I believe that Tesla has this as a target market. A recent article about a Tesla factory tour mentioned that they were in the process of assembling a 4000 kwh battery pack to be used for fixed place energy storage (the cars are 60 or 85 kwh). Tesla will have an amazing capacity to produce batteries once they build their "gigafactory" (supposedly greater capacity that all of the existing Li battery factories) and it seems that they are looking to have a business selling battery packs.
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The car is simply a vehicle to sell batteries ;).
Actually, the car is just a big battery and a motor plus lots of software to run it all.
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Actually, the car is just a big battery and a motor plus lots of software to run it all.
I'm actually a bit surprised that no one ever talks about using grid-connected electric cars as distributed storage. It would cut everyone's range down by a bit, but as more and more pluggable electrics and hybrids are manufactured, the ability to set the last 10 or 20% charge as on-demand storage seems like it might be viable.
It would require some pretty smart grid tech, but we are working on that anyway.
The problem with load balancing is real, though. In Alberta, they have already capped the fraction of s
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I'm actually a bit surprised that no one ever talks about using grid-connected electric cars as distributed storage.
Well, I talk about using their old batteries as grid storage, does that count? I've looked at using the batteries while they're still in the car, but right now I figure that they're better off using EV charging to help match demand with production, but not actually 'run things in reverse' outside of using the car as a big UPS in specific scenarios, where they're using it in an outright outage, not merely to help level the load.
My reasoning is that people are generally going to be more range conscious, they
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It's not a bad business model at all. After all, that's what internal combustion engine companies have been doing for over a 100 years. They call it "General Motors", and not cars, for a reason.
Energy storage systems that are stationary..... (Score:2)
What if you were working on batteries the size of a tractor trailer that had the energy density to power large cities for a week or two. Then you wouldn't need the grid. You could just drive the battery to where it could be charged, near the wind or sun, then when it was full, move it to the place where it was needed.
I appreciate the real time complexity of the power grid, but it is time to rethink distribution. It would be cool if every house in the USA could get off the grid through local energy storag
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For powering a city for a week or two a tractor trailer sized battery ain't gonna cut it. Unless you sneakily fill it with an unshielded nuclear reactor with a magical heat-energy conversion (size being the impossible limit).
There is a reason most coal plants suitable to power a city have water or train supply lines: that amount of coal delivered by truck is not feasible.
Solar is the future, but for storage for a city for a day you are talking about a large parking lot filled with battery containers. Even w
I smell someone needing a subsidy (Score:4, Insightful)
With pretty good reliability, any "report" like that is followed by someone direly needing taxpayer funding to provide ... whatever, ignoring that profit originally was supposed to be reinvested instead of dumped on some idiots that are already overpaid.
Vanadium Redox Battery (Score:3)
The largest battery in the world (Score:3)
The largest battery in the world already exists in Virginia.
Bath County Pumped Storage Station [wikipedia.org]
Which can deliver 3 GIGAWATT for a metric shitload of time
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Flywheel spin and political spin (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been posting about this, and the spin some politicians are pushing is reprehensible. Recently, Arizona allowed fees [businessweek.com] to charge rooftop-based solar energy producers for the privilege of selling or donating electrons to others for use. A few incredible or insane politicians are trying to spin it as if solar adopters are leeches despite the fact that they already pay for interconnect fees and all the excess energy they use.
The alternative, of course, is to go completely off the grid using your own batterie
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Substations convert and distribute 220 to your neighborhood, from high tension wires from the power plants.
Line voltage may even go up from 110
What are you, 200 years old? How are your carbon filament lights doing these days?
125V and 240V+ is typical US line voltage. If you're seeing 110V and 220V, your (knob and tube?) wiring is ready to catch fire...
Re: Flywheel spin and political spin (Score:2)
Sorry, localizing the storage vs storage far away, like tfa is talking about, is far more efficient. There's certainly loss on storage and retrieval.
However, I've seen several local substation proposals for storing energy using banks of flywheels, and even more for rail.
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Anybody can "propose" any ridiculous thing they want. It's a common trick for companies to say they're "working on" something that's going to be better than everything else out there. That's where the term "vaporware" comes in.
Point me to one single flywheel that can store energy without massive losses over the course of one day (on earth, not in space). All existing units are "for mi
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Try this one:
Where does this shit come from? (Score:2)
I'm curious - where the fuck are you guys getting this from? Did
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bugnuts said:
Some unscrupulous legislators are trying to saddle solar generators with the cost of those who choose not to use solar.
and then AC said:
You're so wrong, you couldn't even write for Fox News.
So, AC, are you saying that you think there are no unscrupulous legislators? Or are you saying that there are no legislators involved in saddling solar generators with other costs? Or is it that you have no understandin of what you're responding to so you just throw up a cute phrase?
Gas - problem solved (Score:2)
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The electric grid loses about 5% - 7% of its power due to transportation.
Actually some wind plants in Germany do that. Feeding H2 created by electrolysis into the gas grid and using a gas turbine connected to the gas grid during high demand. (Well, you combine a wind farm/park with one gas turbine obviously)
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Feeding H2 created by electrolysis into the gas grid and using a gas turbine connected to the gas grid during high demand.
Can you quote some references for this? Because I'm kinda skeptical they're "feeding H2 ... into the gas grid". They might feed methane after combining the H2 with a source of carbon to create CH4, losing at least 50% of the input energy in the process (and another 25% after combustion in a CCGT, or more in an OCGT), plus needing a carbon sources (typically biomass, but can be CCS). But as for molecular H2 in a natural gas pipe ... no chance.
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You mean something like the "gas" we get from the gas company to power our water heaters (and frequently provide heating in the winter - it makes less than good sense to burn gas to make electricity, then use the electricity to make heat, when you could just burn the gas to make heat directly), I take it?
Yes, we use "gas" too, and not just the kind you call "petrol"....
Another huge battery market, Robots (Score:2)
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I build robots and they all suck
Fembots?
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Oh, to have mod points! My first thought as well. My second thought was "Lucy Liu Bot".
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I am a firm believer that the end design for most robots will be a combination like you suggest. That the robots will be fairly stupid and controlled by a central powerful computer. But if the robot is moving with any haste then it will need instant feedback loops running between its sensors and motors.
But even in this scenario on a farm the central computer will ide
A long list of possibilities (Score:2)
I've been interested in this for some time. Here are some solutions I've come across:
Something like a standard battery
Flow batteries, where you store liquid electrolytes in tanks, and energy capacity is proportional to the capacity of the tanks
Salt/Liquid metal batteries. Take the process for smelting aluminium, and make it reversible. (The metal used need not be aluminium.) There is a good TED talk on this.
Fixed volume compressed gas storage: pump gas into a pressure vessel or abandoned mine
Fixed pressure
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
I am like this guy; looked into all the same stuff over the years.
Additions:
Flywheels: Dept. E helped develop viable designs which scale long ago but the costs keep it a niche product for data centers needing a buffer while the gas generators turn on.
Elevated Mass: ridiculous idea from a green website last year by some german engineer or professor. When I did the math, I figured I'd have to move the whole house 3m upward to get enough mass/power as a $30,000 battery pack (it's more feasible if you have a c
Store money too, not just power (Score:2)
Regardless of how good battery tech gets, it will always be easier to store money than to store energy. How can the former substitute for the latter? There are some latency-insensitive electricity consumers, like heating, cooling, pumping water, etc. While there's a shortage of supply, give the consumers an incentive to store money (not pay for expensive electricity) until there's more supply, and they can make up for the backlog then.
Letting the electricity price float is a natural way to give consumer
Duck Chart (Score:2)
I found a very interesting report from California ISO about the difficulties of integratong large amounts of solar into the grid. It is all about the Duck Chart [caiso.com]. It revolves around how conventional supply has to adjust to compensate for the supply of solar based electricity. You can read the report to get the fine points but the issue is the steepness of the duck's neck. During the day solar can supply a lot of electricity. During that time demand on conventional supply is low. That is called the belly of t
Nukes us storage (Score:3)
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"Nukes have ramp times on order of 2-3 days...."
Nonsense! You couldn't run nuclear ships if that were true! You can design nuclear reactors to have any ramp time you like.
Current Grid-connected nuclear power stations are designed to provide base load, where ramp time is irrelevant. Bu they don't have to be...
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Nuclear ships have a very simple way around this: They run at full power most of the time, and dump the excess energy when not needed to run the engines. It's horribly inefficient, but even used with such inefficiency nuclear reactors still pack an energy density that puts any diesel engine to shame.
Remember what happened after the Fukushima reactor's unplanned shutdown: Emergency pumps had to be rushed in to keep cooling water running through the core. It's called decay heat: Even if you shove all the cont
Re:Build more nukes! (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no.
Former Naval Nuke guy here...we didn't run the plant at full power most of the time. We seldom ran it at half power.
Yeah, the nuke plant on a sub or surface ship is engineered differently than a power reactor ashore. Among other things, the fraction of the maximum output dedicated to making electricity is generally quite small, since we need steam more than we need electricity.
Even so, we didn't operate near max electrical output all that often either, much less maximum steam output.
Load following Nuclear Plants (Score:4, Informative)
Because I try not to respond to ACs, I'll stick it in here.
As you pointed out, Nuclear ships DO NOT run their plants at 'full power all the time'.
But even HUGE nuclear plants can be built to be capable of 'load following', [wikipedia.org] going from 100% down to 50% and below [oecd-nea.org] on a consistent basis. France [world-nuclear.org] has a number of them.
Part of the problem with using reactors for load-following is that all the reactors in the USA are very old Gen-II designs, you need to be at least 'newer' Gen-II to do a lot of load following, and we don't have enough nuclear for them to NEED to load-follow, leaving them as the cheapest margin for on-demand power.
If we went from our current mix of about 20% nuclear, 40% coal, to a carbon-neutral mix of 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, and 20% 'other, including hydro', you'd have most of your peaking power in 'other', but nuclear power would still have to adjust for peaking.
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The energy would have been lost anyway. Now you reduce the supply line.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/13/newser-navy-seawater-fuel/7668665/
all that unused energy.
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A small reactor on a ship can be ramped quite quickly, but a large multi gigawatt land based reactor takes a lot of time in orde to minimize thermal stresses.
Who says we have to build huge?
Practicality says it has to be huge (Score:2)
Thus building huge - at least in terms of the amount of steam if not the actual reactor/s, is the only thin
Re:flywheel (Score:5, Informative)
There's a much easier solution, already in operation - pumped hydro power plants. They're hydro electric power stations, but when there's a surplus of supply, they pump water up into their reservoir. When peaks of power production are needed, they generate. They can be turned on at a moments notice (all it takes is opening a sluice, and dropping the water), and can store vast amounts of energy.
Re:flywheel (Score:5, Interesting)
Pumped storage costs about $200 million per GWh of electricity stored to build. It needs specific geography, high and low reservoirs close to each other to reduce losses pumping water uphill over long distances. It also needs a guaranteed supply of water, lots of it and the sunny parts of the US where large amounts of solar power are being generated are distinctly lacking in water to the point of being either deserts or often in drought conditions during the summer. Pumped storage is also lossy, typically about 65% efficient round-trip.
Mass battery technology costs about ten times as much as pumped storage ($2 million per MWh for sodium/sulfur batteries from NGK), flywheels are a bit less but still a lot more than pumped storage. Cheaper methods of energy storage like compressed air tend to be very lossy.
Grid gas, coal and nuclear generators don't need storage as they either run flat out to meet the instantaneous demand and they can throttle back in quieter times. At the moment intermittent wind and solar generators use the grid as free storage but the more intermittent power that is added to the generating mix the more that storage will be needed to deal with peak inputs and debits. Getting wind and solar farm operators to pay for this extra storage probably isn't going to happen, sadly.
Storage isn't valuable right now (Score:5, Informative)
Pumped storage ... needs specific geography, high and low reservoirs close to each other to reduce losses pumping water uphill over long distances. It also needs a guaranteed supply of water, lots of it and the sunny parts of the US where large amounts of solar power are being generated are distinctly lacking in water
One only needs a low reservoir (see the Taum Sauk). Furthermore, while pumped storage certainly isn't a good idea in the Southwest, it is ideal in the Great Lakes area, where there's tons of wind resources (see: Iowa, Minnesota, etc.). And, as it turns out, there is a (functionally) infinite supply of water in Lake Michigan and a functionally infinite amount of land with delta h on the West Coast of Michigan, which has hills immediately adjacent to the Lake due to thousands of years of wind blowing from Wisconsin to Michigan. A storage plant like this already exists, just south of Ludington MI. We could easily build 100 GW worth of pumped storage there, equal to the capacity of all nuclear power in the US.
Pumped storage is also lossy, typically about 65% efficient round-trip.
My experience is that the average is closer to 75%, and it can be as high as 90% with modern, well maintained pumped storage. Pumped storage also has extremely fast ramping capabilities, making it very useful for the minute-by-minute operation of the grid. Of course pumped storage, like all major power plants, requires transmission investment to be fully useful.
Grid gas, coal and nuclear generators don't need storage as they either run flat out to meet the instantaneous demand and they can throttle back in quieter times.
Nuclear, coal, and gas steam plants have very real operational limitations. Nuclear is almost never ramped back to follow load; it's cheaper in the long run to pay negative locational marginal prices (LMPs) if need be. Coal and gas steam can only ramp a few MW per minute, and have minimum outputs whereby they can't maintain power any lower -- and that's often at about 50% of capacity. At that point, any lower output requires a shut down, and then a 12-30 hour cool down whereby the unit can't be restarted. Nuclear, coal, and gas steam are extremely inflexible generators relative to hydro, gas/oil CT, and even gas CC.
At the moment intermittent wind and solar generators use the grid as free storage but the more intermittent power that is added to the generating mix the more that storage will be needed to deal with peak inputs and debits.
Free storage? Wind and solar fueled generators, like all generators, sell the energy instantaneously. Your metaphor makes no sense. All operating power plants sell in real-time. Same price for the same power. Eventually, substantially more storage will have economic value, but on the mainland US grid, not for a long time. California is poised to have 33% renewables by 2020, and they don't need additional storage. (There's an order for ~1.5 GW of storage to be procured, but it's not needed -- it's CA's way of pushing progress forward, seeing that eventually storage will be a less expensive resource (LCOE) than CTs.) Most other parts of the mainland won't have exceeded 10% non-dispatchable renewables by then.
Getting wind and solar farm operators to pay for this extra storage probably isn't going to happen, sadly.
Why should they? In most of tUSA, there's a day ahead and a real time market. Power has a price (LMP). Generators can sell into that market or not. When supply exceeds demand, the LMP goes negative, and all generators who are operating are equally responsible for the problem; all generators who are operating at those times pay the same financial penalty. That includes operating wind and solar and the nuclear and gas and coal that can't turn down.
In the mean time, the number of MWh that are curtailed is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total MWh consumed in America. Storage simply isn't very valuable on the American grid right now because we
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First, it'd be nice if you included a link to the Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station [wikipedia.org], rather than just reference it. Heck, with a dam breakage in 2005 that took it out of operation until 2010, it seems that catastrophic failure is still a possible problem. The 2005 failure luckily didn't kill anybody, but it did sweep one home aside and injure 5.
Hopefully modern engineering combined with using 'rollar compacted concrete', which is a modern version of 'Roman Concrete' for those of you out there that lik
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As for 'why' they should pay for the storage, it's because they're seen as introducing the problem. Nuclear and coal at least operate all the time, and nobody is building another baseload plant that would exceed the demand limit.
By operating a high capacity full-time, "base lead" plants are shoving the problem of variability onto other generators and making the swings much worse for them.
If base load plants are cheaper because their capital costs are spread out over more energy, then they are cheaper only for the investors, not the customers. They do not decrease the net price of electricity. They just make peak-demand usage more expensive.
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First, {lease learn to use the quote tag to differentiate your words from the words you are commenting on.
One only needs a low reservoir (see the Taum Sauk).
I guess you didn't read about Taum Sauk [wikipedia.org] very well (emphasis mine)
The pumped-storage hydroelectric plant was built to help meet peak power demands during the day. Electrical generators are turned by water flowing from a reservoir on top of Proffit Mountain into a lower reservoir on the East Fork of the Black River. At night, excess electricity on the power grid is used to pump water back to the mountaintop.
Taum Sauk uses two reservoirs, a high one top of Proffit Mountain and a low one on the East Fork of the Black River. All pumped storage uses 2 reservoirs as it stores the energy as potential energy in the difference in altitude of the higher and lower reservoirs. Using a natural lake as the low reservoir is still a second reservoir.
And, as it turns out, there is a (functionally) infinite supply of water in Lake Michigan and a functionally infinite amount of land with delta h on the West Coast of Michigan,
Too bad
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But it's already built. Wherever there was a big river, dams have been constructed to take advantage of it, and they've been extremely profitable investments. Adding a pump to an existing dam to convert it to pumped-storage operation, is rather inexpensive.
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Adding a pump to an existing dam to convert it to pumped-storage operation, is rather inexpensive.
You have no idea how dams work. Water that leaves a dam flows down river and is not available to be pumped up again. Even if you added another dam to catch the water it would decrease the efficiency of the original dam as the drop would be decreased.
The power loss is overwhelmingly because of evaporation from the dam reservoir.
Again you need to look into facts before commenting. The no electric motor or generator is 100% efficient. For example, water turbines [mpoweruk.com] have an efficiency as high as 95%. Since that is for a turbine optimized for generation and pumped storage uses the same turbin
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Unless you dig a nice big hole at the bottom that can hold a day's worth of water. Then there's no loss of head pressure and plenty of water available to be pumped.
It's not like I imagined any of this. Dams ARE converted to pumped-storage.
That's just a little bit hi
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Unless you dig a nice big hole at the bottom that can hold a day's worth of water.
Do you even realize how much water that is? For example Taum Sauk is a 550MW plant that has a reservoir with 1.5billion gallons of water in it that would drain in 24 hours. A hole big enough to hold that water would be 46 acres and 100 feet deep. Digging a hole that big is not a viable solution. Can you show a reference where this has been done or even contemplated?
It's not like I imagined any of this. Dams ARE converted to pumped-storage.
References please.The only places I can find where conventional dams are used for pumped storage us where there is a lake close downstream and t
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Try reading whole sentences. The following is a quote from this article [uspowerpartners.org].
Due to evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and mechanical efficiency losses during conversion, only between 70% and 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained in this process.
Here is a quote from another article [stanford.edu]
The cycle is generally about 80% efficient, with losses due to water evaporation and engine non-idealities.
And another article [ucsd.edu].
Pumps and turbines (often implemented as the same physical unit, actually) can be something like 90% efficient, so the round-trip storage comes at only modest cost.
Please note that 90% pump efficiency + 90% turbine efficiency equals 81% overall efficiency.
Here is another [aidic.it];
First, the charging process in pumped hydro storage is affected by the pump efficiency that pumps the water into the upper reservoir at times of low electrical demand. The losses during discharging process on the other hand are caused by the turbine operation to generate electricity at peak load periods. The total charging and discharging rate is given by calculating the product of the efficiencies of pipe (friction losses) and the mechanical equipments
The hourly evaporation losses is assumed to be negligible because the amount of water evaporated is far too small compared to the total water volume in the reservoir
That paper quotes efficiency at 75 – 85 percent.
Here is an article [waterpowermagazine.com] stating that evaporative losses are minor;
North Eden Creek will be the primary source of water for the initial fill of the lower reservoir. Water rights will need to be secured, both for the initial fill and annual evaporation maintenance. The advantages of this system are that once the initial fill has occurred, the only water needed will be a small amount to offset annual evaporation from the reservoirs. The precipitation and evaporation balance will result in an annual water loss of approximately 0.2m over the total surface area of both reservoirs.
While higher in the desert evaporative losses do not effect cycle efficiency significantly.
Need I go on? Yelling without up backing you statement with reference
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Most of your sources that just state total losses and don't bother to separate out the evaporative losses, don't lend ANY support to your assertion at all.
Some you are using out of context... "something like 90%", "assumed" and "small amount" are obviously not meant as rigorous and exact figures, yet you try to use them as such.
You never asked, nor even argued with my statement... You just acted like it didn't exist and then q
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yep. Driest place on Earth, according to an early edition of the Guinness Book, is the leeward slope of Mount Erebus. Not a drop of rain for 50 million years.
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Yeah, but everyone on /. from the US claims that all options for those plants (real estate) are used up ;)
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There's a much easier solution, already in operation - pumped hydro power plants.
Pumped hydro works but just cannot be scaled to provide sufficient storage [ucsd.edu]. Hence other solutions are needed. Actually it's likely nothing short of a combination of many approaches will be enough.
It already is enough because ... (Score:2)
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Research the S.T.E.P. options. Hydro power storage can be scaled, too. Other possbilities are molten salt and compressed air storage for instance.
Yes, there are losses to all these systems, but the ability to store 50% to 90% of electricity produced through renewables makes them well worth considering.
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It's a partial solution. Hydro power is only really available in certain areas, and transmission losses kill some of the gains. BC makes a good amount of money this way. North America's hydro capacity is probably as large as it will ever be, because it's extremely destructive of wildlife habitat and of arable land.
There is a variation on this which has huge potential and can be done on a large scale. It requires large construction efforts, but what hydro-power options don't?
Construct a huge vertical cylinder in the ocean. During periods of surplus, pump water OUT of the cylinder. During peak periods, let water back in (and of course turn turbines with it).
I read about this not long ago, and I think (I am not certain) someone is building one right now, or has applied to build one.
and transmission losses kill some of the gains
This is true of any storage solu
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You'd have to build a turbine hall under the sea with all the ongoing maintenance arrangements. Easier said than done.
Yes, indeed. I did mention that it would involve major construction. But I am convinced that if they can do oil wells, they can do this.
The majority of the construction, though, is of course a massive concrete and steel wall. We do have the requisite experience to do that well enough underwater, or (more likely? I'm not sure) above ground and hauled out in sections.
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It's the fact that about half or more of the population is so scientifically illiterate that they actually believe stuff like this, that is leading me, at my age, to begin to just not care anymore. I'm just going to goof off for the few years I might have left on this world.
Look, if these f*cking self-powered generators are real, and are so f*cking simple to build that some guy can build one in his garage (which must be true, since there are literally 1000s of these videos out there) then why the f*ck are
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http://news.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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It looked like this [yimg.com], right?
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No, HVDC is good enough. You don't need 99% efficiency at 10x the cost of 90% efficiency. It's just not worth it. Besides, I doubt the efficiency of superconductors with their associated refrigeration would be competitive with HVDC anyway, or why else is it that HVDC is the market leader for long haul transmission right now?
Simpler tech. wins. HVDC is simple, in the sense that the failure modes are rather localized and not terribly difficult to repair and/or design in some redundancy to mitigate so as
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No, HVDC is good enough. You don't need 99% efficiency at 10x the cost of 90% efficiency. It's just not worth it. Besides, I doubt the efficiency of superconductors with their associated refrigeration would be competitive with HVDC anyway, or why else is it that HVDC is the market leader for long haul transmission right now?
I agree, HVDC can be made to work above or (preferably) below ground with a suitable amount of aluminum cross section and/or heat sink. There are some interesting calculations for 5-288GW transmission lines in this paper Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security [scribd.com] which I use as a reference for raw capacity and conductor size. But Faulkner's 1-4 million VDC dream is unlikely in an age where practical Voltage Source Converters operate at ~345kV.
Faulkner is a hero of