World's Largest Solar-Powered Battery Is Now 75% Complete (interestingengineering.com) 204
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: The Manatee Energy Storage Center -- the world's largest solar-powered battery storage facility -- is now 75% finished with 100 of 132 total containers already installed, reveals a press release from Florida Power and Light Company (FPL). The battery is housed in Manatee County as the name indicates and is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year. When completed, the system will have a 409-MW capacity with the ability to deliver 900 MWh of energy. This is enough electricity to power 329,000 homes for more than two hours.
The battery will serve to replace FPL's coal plants. The battery will store energy in order to bring electricity to homes even when the sun's not shining (at night and on cloudy days) meaning other more polluting power sources will not be required. Although customers are bound to see some financial benefits the main gains will be environmental. According to FPL, each battery module is capable of storing an amount of solar energy equivalent to roughly 2,000 iPhone batteries. The complete battery system will be equivalent to 100 million iPhone batteries and the energy storage containers will be organized across a 40-acre plot of land (the equivalent of 30 football fields). The battery will have a lifespan of 40 years.
The battery will serve to replace FPL's coal plants. The battery will store energy in order to bring electricity to homes even when the sun's not shining (at night and on cloudy days) meaning other more polluting power sources will not be required. Although customers are bound to see some financial benefits the main gains will be environmental. According to FPL, each battery module is capable of storing an amount of solar energy equivalent to roughly 2,000 iPhone batteries. The complete battery system will be equivalent to 100 million iPhone batteries and the energy storage containers will be organized across a 40-acre plot of land (the equivalent of 30 football fields). The battery will have a lifespan of 40 years.
Measure using EV car batteries, not iphones (Score:4, Interesting)
I know reporters like to translate things into 'more familiar' units like football fields or prices of big macs etc, but 2,000 iphone batteries isn't really very understandable. EV car batteries are a much better fit for this sort of infrastructure battery, rather than iphone batteries.
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there are a lot more iphones than EV batteries
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The complete battery system will be equivalent to 100 million iPhone batteries
Which generation iPhone? The first gen iPhone had a 1,400 mAh battery [wikipedia.org], current iPhone batteries are 2,800 mAh battery [wikipedia.org] - the reference isn't specific, and it kinda makes a difference.
and the energy storage containers will be organized across a 40-acre plot of land (the equivalent of 30 football fields).
Contrast that with a much better example, a football field - a distinct, specific item.
Re:Measure using EV car batteries, not iphones (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it matter? It's supposed to be an impressive number for the dumb masses who don't understand numbers or SI units.
Re:Measure using EV car batteries, not iphones (Score:5, Insightful)
2,000 iphone batteries isn't really very understandable.
The first paragraph explicitly says that the capacity is 900 MWh, and the power capacity is 409 MW. Those are the standard units. What more do you want?
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I want them to use EV batteries instead of iphone batteries when trying to make 'more familiar' comparisons.
That should have been obvious from my comment.
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A typical EV battery is 90 KWh.
900 MWh / 90 KWh = 10,000
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Yes, I can do maths, thanks.
What I want is for the reporter to use more appropriate comparators when talking about grid-scale battery storage, instead of iphones.
Yes, but how many Olympic swimming pools (Score:4, Funny)
of electricity is that?
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We need to focus on standardizing our units.
We should measure energy in terms of the calorific value of an elephant (1 elephant = 23250 kWh). For larger quantities where that becomes cumbersome, we can express energy in terms of Rhode Island's annual energy consumption (Year 2020 as baseline, 1 Rhode Island ~= 56 billion kWh, or 240,000 elephants).
=Smidge=
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We should measure energy in terms of the calorific value of an elephant (1 elephant = 23250 kWh).
But is that an African or Asian elephant?
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Let's not bring speciesism into this; all elephants burn equally well.
(Also I'd like to correct myself; 2,400,000 elephants not 240,000)
=Smidge=
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I want them to use AA batteries, everybody knows AA batteries, there are more AA batteries than iPhones AND EVs!
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Obligatory EV with AA video [youtube.com]
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So how big is an EV battery? How much of a Tesla's space is taken up by battery? I don't know!
I don't know, exactly, for my iPhone either, but I can guess ~50% of the space. Even if I'm wrong by a large amount, it's not that big a real physical difference. I can pretty easily visualize 2000 iphones -- a 10x10 stack of iphones 20 units tall? easy peasy.
I can't really visualize 10x10x20 Teslas, other than "holy shit really big."
They gave the data for people for whom such information is meaningful, so I'm not
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I want to know how many hours the plant can be without sun and still not have an interruption. It's not clear from the article.
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FTA: for 2 hours if 329,000 homes are drawing from it, I expect ymmv depending on time of day
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2 hours doesn't sound very useful tbh
Re:Measure using EV car batteries, not iphones (Score:5, Informative)
For peek power consumption?
With such a battery, you can run a normal energy plant much more optimal, reducing fuel consumption, wear and maintenance considerably. And as a result it will reduce pollution too.
During daylight both solar and wind can help charging the battery for the evening peek. At night wind and the plant can charge the battery for the morning peek.
The morning peek (breakfast) and evening peek (dinner) can be handled by the battery, as the plant has hardly any need to ramp up production.
That is how I would configure batteries like this. And neighborhood batteries in cities. And the battery from an EV in remote/off-grid locations.
It won't be that simple to manage this using software and smart grids, and in the beginning there will be some extra losses of energy as kinks in managing the smart grid get ironed out. At least it is an actual start of more efficiently energy management.
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ok but you still need to have a backup system for night and cloudy days
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08mwXICY4JM [youtube.com]
Video about the Texas power grid near total collapse. I'm not anything remote to an expert, but my understanding of these battery backup systems is that they help stabilize the entire power grid and help to cover peak usage or unexpected plant outages.
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Lots of people I know own an iPhone. None own an EV.
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Interesting you'd say that, since iPhone batteries aren't replaceable, while most EV batteries are.
And when EV batteries degrade too much to be good for vehicles (where you need high-density with good discharge and recharge rates), they're ideal for fixed infrastructure use instead (where weight density doesn't matter, and discharge and recharge rates are generally much lower per individual battery also).
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What model of iPhone?
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A fair request especially given that at some time in the future there could be incentives for drivers to allow their car batteries to also be used for grid balancing. So the power station is equivalent to 12,000 Tesla model S batteries (75kwh) each.
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"EV car batteries are a much better fit for this sort of infrastructure battery, rather than iphone batteries."
If you'd ask the Australian president Scott Morrison, it's a 'Big Banana'.
Sensational Summary (Score:2)
The battery will store energy in order to bring electricity to homes even when the sun's not shining (at night and on cloudy days) meaning other more polluting power sources will not be required.
So, it'll completely deplete itself in a couple of cloudy days in a row? And then, in the article, they throw out a whole bunch of numbers that are meant to impress the average reader: 2000 iPhone batteries, 100 million iPhone batteries, 12 million solar panels, blah blah, none of which seem to add up when multiplied. If this is not a press release meant only for show, I don't know what is. Why go through so much trouble to store energy when there are easier ways to do it [discovermagazine.com], pumped hydro being the easiest?
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So, it'll completely deplete itself in a couple of cloudy days in a row?
Gosh, I bet the engineers who designed the thing never thought of that.
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Or perhaps the problem is the bad reporter who wrote this article didn't think of it and didn't ask the engineers to explain how they handle cloudy days, as a service to their readers whom they are trying to inform.
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Florida is connected to the national grid. They handle cloudy days by buying power from elsewhere. It isn't cloudy everywhere at once.
In the future, they will deal with cloudy days by raising the spot price for residential electricity. My EV has a range of 250 miles. My daily commute is 20 miles. I normally recharge nightly, but I can go a couple of weeks between charges if I need to. A smart-charger could check the price before charging.
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It isn't cloudy everywhere at once.
... and it is amazing just how hard it seems to be for some people to understand that.
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Florida will also get non solar power as well. I know that Florida Man lives in Florida, but it's still a sure bet that someone has considered these issues long before the Slashdot armchair think tank did.
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Why do you think everyone with an electric car is charging their battery from flat to 100% every night?
Re:Sensational Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
You are sensationalizing the impact of cloudy days. Solar cells have excellent performance on cloudy days, normally in the ballpark of 40-70% of rated capacity.
Part of the reason for this is that cooler solar cells perform better, making it harder to catch all the energy from full sun without some expensive cooling solution.
A few years ago, if you thought solar sucked, you were a bit of a pessimist. Nowadays, if you think solar sucks, you're just plain wrong.
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Dude, I was being generous with the 2 hours! From TFA:
This is enough electricity to power 329,000 homes for more than two hours.
I gave them 48 hours, which is 24x the rated output. It's one thing charging up the batteries and feeding 3300 homes for 200 hours, or feeding 33000 homes for 20 hours, but when your stated goal is to feed 329000 homes, WTF good is 2 hours unless it's only good for during peak time to offset other renewable energy? And then, there's no information on how long it takes it to get a full charge. What if it takes 3 full sunny days? All I'm saying is tha
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And then, there's no information on how long it takes it to get a full charge. What if it takes 3 full sunny days?
At peak output, it will take a little over two hours to fully recharge the system. It will of course depend on how much of the power output is being used at the time to provide power to homes.
When completed, the system will have a 409-MW capacity with the ability to deliver 900 MWh of energy.
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I'd assume that the engineers figured out what they needed to provide, looked at the climate data for the site and sized things appropriately to do the job they were asked to do, which might not be the use-case you're envisioning.
Of course, everybody involved could be incredibly dumb.
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there are easier ways to do it, pumped hydro being the easiest?
Have you ever been to Florida?
It is as flat as Kansas. Or Holland.
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Okay. I get it. The closest mountain is 1 state away. Still. There are probably easier ways to store energy than something that requires lots of raw materials and construction.
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Oddly enough, I've been to all three places. FYI, western Kansas has rolling hills. It's the eastern part of the state that's stereotypically flat. But I digress.
Yeah, suggesting pumped hydro in Florida is rather foolish. I'm betting GP didn't even bother looking at where this plant was located before performing the typical Slashdot armchair analysis.
Do the batteries float? (Score:2)
Florida is due to go under water pretty soon...
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There are proposed systems that use stacked or raised concrete blocks instead of pumped hydro. That should be possible even on a flat area.
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yes, yes, controlled by an ingenious system of levers and pulleys !!!!
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Literally the flattest state of the US, where the highest point above sea-level is just over 100m???
Stick to writing your soft porn novels and leave the engineering to engineers.
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Who says "SOLAR BAD"? Besides, this is a battery pack, not a solar panel array
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On the linked article they mention it is a solar battery facility, "The Manatee Energy Storage Center – the world’s largest solar-powered battery storage facility ", in other articles they mention that it is adjacent to an existing solar facility
Manatee county has 244 days a year of sunshine (well over the national average of 205), there is also a potential for 11,000 MW of wind generated energy throughout Florida which could likely benefit from battery backup
Interestingly, Tesla has started con
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Is there a day when you aren't sucking nuclear dick?
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Maybe there is a barren area of land, completely devoid of plant life, and incapable of supporting plant life
You just described a lot of Florida. OK, maybe something grows in those crappy spots, but nobody cares about it.
Look, this plant sits on 40 acres out of Florida's 42 million acres. It's not even a dot.
Find a better argument
Solar power won't get us to Mars and back. (Score:2, Informative)
Look, this plant sits on 40 acres out of Florida's 42 million acres. It's not even a dot.
Right, but how much power does this "dot" supply? I've seen the numbers on solar power and in many high population density areas of the world the "dots" add up to more land than there is available for both energy and food. This means people can choose to freeze or cook to death (depending on the local climate), starve to death, or find energy sources that provides more power per area.
Find a better argument
There's plenty to argue against solar power. Since this is Florida we have the issue of hurricanes. A nuclear power plant
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Look, this plant sits on 40 acres out of Florida's 42 million acres. It's not even a dot.
Right, but how much power does this "dot" supply? I've seen the numbers on solar power and in many high population density areas of the world the "dots" add up to more land than there is available for both energy and food. This means people can choose to freeze or cook to death (depending on the local climate), starve to death, or find energy sources that provides more power per area.
Here it is: https://www.google.com/maps/@2... [google.com]
Now zoom out. It's nothing
They already told you, it supplies 329,000 homes for two hours.
The county it is in has 322,000 PEOPLE, so far less homes than that, in an area of over 500,000 acres
This battery farm is basically the size of a typical shopping mall in a county with plenty of shopping malls.
It's nothing to get worked up over. It doesn't have to solve all energy demand problems to still be beneficial.
When it comes to energy, diversity of supply is a good
We are going to build more nuclear power plants. (Score:3)
They already told you, it supplies 329,000 homes for two hours.
That's not helpful because it doesn't tell me how many of these "dots" are needed to make a dent in the problem. I've seen the math and nuclear power would have a lower environmental impact than solar + storage.
It doesn't have to solve all energy demand problems to still be beneficial.
I agree. That still doesn't make this a good idea. I've seen the numbers for solar power. I worked on a solar power project while a student at university and solar power on the grid is a shitty idea. If you want to convince me otherwise then you need to show better numbers.
I'm getting tired of s
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It's not "green" energy if it is killing plants.
While that's a cool story, it ain't so.
The increasing number of solar arrays in my area are growing plants underneath just fine. They even need mowed underneath depending on the natural foliage there. Birds nest in the eaves. What's more, we have a lot of these arrays going in on fallow land, not being farmed.
And while you promote wind, there are plenty of people who claim wind doesn't work (of course it does).
As for nuclear - yes, it can be made safe. Just not by humans.
Fukushima is the prime examp
You have it backwards. (Score:3)
Fukushima is the prime example.
How many people were killed or injured from the Fukushima meltdown? Compare that to those killed and injured from the tsunami and the unnecessary evacuation.
You have it backwards. Fukushima showed us how the layers of safety on the power plant saved many lives. People died in the mismanagement due to an unnecessary evacuation. We learned from that and it will not happen again. Comparing the dead and injured from Fukushima to wind, solar, hydro, or whatever and nuclear power still comes out ahead.
Fukush
More FUD and NIMBY (Re:You have it backwards.) (Score:3)
You need to compare Fukushima to the damage that would have been done, and continue to happen, if anything other than nuclear power had been used in it's place. As bad as Fukushima was we know anything else would have been worse.
You claim that I am not acknowledging there was not screw up. I did acknowledge a screw up, they did not need to evacuate anyone but those in the immediate vicinity of the reactor, and perhaps not even that. Only the power plant is contaminated to the point where people cannot li
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The noise from solar causes birds to have cancer. That's what "they" say...
Re:Sensational Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Just try finding a place and getting permits to put in a pumped hydro facility. It simply cannot be ramped up to meet the storage needs we have. Much as I don't like giant battery packs, they are probably the best way to store solar energy for the time being.
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Just try finding a place and getting permits to put in a pumped hydro facility. It simply cannot be ramped up to meet the storage needs we have. Much as I don't like giant battery packs, they are probably the best way to store solar energy for the time being.
In trying to think of how to summarize in a short paragraph how batteries will likely lead to the demise of solar power on the grid I keep failing. The process is complex but I'm seeing batteries on the grid as detrimental to solar power, not beneficial.
Perhaps the shortest way to explain it is that all energy sources benefit from storage, just that solar benefits the least. The more storage the less solar benefits. At some point the detriments of solar no longer outweigh the benefits. Solar will go awa
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Hurricanes (Score:2)
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pumped hydro being the easiest?
Pumped hydro is a serious pain.
Re:Sensational Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
So, it'll completely deplete itself in a couple of cloudy days in a row?
One of the predictable, but weird, types of posts about any electrical power story here on slashdot are the people who imagine that every thing operates entirely by itself and must handle all cases unassisted. Florida Light and Power is the biggest electricity producer in the nation and then run a grid all across Florida. These batteries are part of a grid system and by levelling out solar power availability they are allowing themselves to operate that grid with fewer fossil fuel power plants.
A couple of cloudy days? They will produce more power from other plants in the grid, maybe look at the weather forecasts and bring more plants on-line.>/p>
Whoa! What a concept. Managing a grid!
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These batteries are part of a grid system and by levelling out solar power availability they are allowing themselves to operate that grid with fewer fossil fuel power plants.
A couple of cloudy days? They will produce more power from other plants in the grid, maybe look at the weather forecasts and bring more plants on-line.>/p>
Whoa! What a concept. Managing a grid!
Well, Texas can't do it, so it must be an impossible task! 8^/
This shows how hard it is to store electricity (Score:2)
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The only hydro pumping that makes sense in Florida is from someone's full basement back out after the seasonal flooding.
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Except for large towers, who has basements in Florida? The water table is usually too high, and torrential rain too common, to make that feasible. Homes are all on slabs there, or sometimes stilts (when near the ocean).
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No, it'll completely deplete itself in a couple of cloudy hours in a row....
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Until FPL gets to a point of significant curtailment of solar, which they are no where near close to, these batteries actually help increase the capacity factor o
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> Let me repeat for the simple minded. Nat gas plants, not solar, will ramp up to charge these batteries.
No.
Natural gas plants will ramp up to make up any deficits the battery can't provide. Natural gas plants *already* ramp up to make up the deficits to meet early evening demand. The battery will be charged by solar in late morning/mid-day when installed solar capacity plus other non-dispatchable generation (coal, wind, nuclear) exceeds demand, and discharge in the early evening to provide the power tha
witness the power (Score:5, Funny)
Now witness the power of this armed and fully operational charging station.
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Power factor correction? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their reactances.
40-acre plot of land (Score:2)
40-acre plot of land (the equivalent of 30 football fields):
https://www.heraldtribune.com/... [heraldtribune.com]
Forty Years? (Score:3)
The battery will store energy in order to bring electricity to homes even when the sun's not shining (at night and on cloudy days) meaning other more polluting power sources will not be required. ....SNIP... The battery will have a lifespan of 40 years.
40 years is 14,610 days, assuming this battery will be used every night, can the array handle 14,610 recharge cycles? That seems like a lot, but who knows?
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I can't find any information about what chemistry they're using. LFP batteries, IIRC, last 4k cycles, which can be extended a lot by not using the top and bottom of the charging curve. Flow batteries are supposed to last 10k+ cycles.
And by "last", manufacturers normally mean to 80% of new capacity, but it might (unsubstantiated guess) be cost-effective for a storage facility to run the batteries more or less into the ground.
I couldn't find any real technical details anywhere.
But it was comforting to know it could charge 100 million IPhone batteries. What a relief
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Unless the power is currently going out every night your assumption is off.
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14k cycles isn't massive if the cells are properly conditioned and not cycled over their full capacity. TFA says that the 900MWh figure is the amount of energy it can deliver to the grid, but the actual total capacity of the battery is likely to be well over 1GWh.
It doesn't say what chemistry they use but lithium batteries degrade much faster when charged above 80% or below 10%. If they have a spare 30% capacity that they don't use and keep the state of charge between 10% and 80% then each "cycle" is nowher
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Well shit you better shoot those engineers an email and let them know batteries have a finite charge cycle.
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It doesn't matter, because Parrish County has an elevation of 43 ft. It's not going to be there in 40 years. It's too bad they didn't put it someplace with a future, instead of in Florida.
Oh, the huge manatee (Score:2)
Like the battery, this post is 75% co
I know it's hard (Score:5, Informative)
"409-MW capacity with the ability to deliver 900 MWh of energy"
=> ability to deliver 409 MW power and has 900 MWh energy capacity.
Somebody is confused about basic EE.... (Score:2)
That is "can deliver 900MW" and has "409MWh of capacity". Are we with stupid now or what?
May also be "900MWh of capacity" and "can deliver 409MW". The stupidity goes all up to the original press release. Apparently, FPL has no clue how electricity works.
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Apparently, FPL has no clue how electricity works.
I could get on board with that assessment. I can't go two weeks without having a power interruption of some kind, and at our previous place, those bozos left an unarmored 150 amp cable strung a hundred feet or so across the yard to the transformer with the meter box open and wrapped in plastic for more than a week while they waited for a trencher to become available. They did put little pink flags along the length of the cable, though.
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That does sound bad.
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I agree. While these batteries profit from being able to charge and discharge fast (by buying electricity cheap and then selling it expensively as regulating reserve), half an hour for full discharging is a bit low.
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The summary is pretty stupid, this solar facility is designed pretty explicitly to be equivalent to a very small peaking plant. This will in no way impact coal use in Flordia. It might offset some oil burning though, Flordia is one of the few states I know where oil units are still used on a semi frequent basis due to their proximity to the gulf and the isolated nature of their grid. There are also some weird financial incentives to build combined solar and storage facilities, particularly in Flordia, wh
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FPL decommissioned their last Florida coal plant in January [power-eng.com]. This battery facility is located next to a major solar PV plant in the city of Parrish, Manatee County. It is replacing an old oil burner [bradenton.com] built in the 1970s. Supposedly, their biggest oil burner in the State [heraldtribune.com], responsible for 33% of all their oil burning in 2007. Wikipedia lists Manatee [wikipedia.org] as by far the largest, almost as big as all the rest combined.
They also claim this plant is allowing them to accelerate the decommissioning of two other 1970s-era n
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Makes sense.
Could we please get complete news? (Score:2)
Why do we get to hear about rockets that are 2/3 built and power banks that are 3/4 complete? Doesn't anyone complete a project anymore before talking about it?
Quite frankly, what is this? Steam Early Access and Kickstarter?
How exactly does this reduce pollution? (Score:3)
According to this graphic [statista.com], FPL's power generation is 78% gas, 12% nuclear, 8% solar, and 2% coal. 78+12+8+2 = 100.
The claim is that these batteries will be used to shift solar power to night, allowing them to replace the coal plants used at night. Since coal accounts for 2 units of generation, and charging and discharging batteries is about (0.8)*(0.8) = 64% efficient, that means it requires 3.125 units of solar to charge the batteries. Call it 3 units. 3 units of solar need to be stored in the batteries, to yield 2 units of energy from the batteries at night.
So we end up with the following before and after energy-to-the-grid profiles:
That's short of 100 by 3 units. To get it back up to 100, you need to get 3 more units of energy from somewhere. Given the selection of sources, your only choice is gas. So you end up with this new after profile:
So you haven't really replaced the coal plants with solar. You've replaced them with gas. Furthermore, because you're using batteries to time-shift solar power, you've had to add 3 units of gas to replace 2 units of coal.
Instead of pumping solar power into batteries, why not get rid of the batteries entirely and send all that solar power directly to the grid during the day?
That results in the 2 units of coal being replaced by 2 units of gas. Since 1 fewer units of gas is needed than with the batteries, using the batteries to time-shift solar power actually results in more pollution than simply replacing the coal plants with gas.
I've been saying this for years: using batteries to time-shift solar power to night doesn't make sense until your nuclear+renewable generation exceeds 100% of consumption during the day. As long you're still generating some of your power with fossil fuels during the day, it makes more sense to use any renewable energy immediately when it's generated during the day. And simply shift the remaining fossil fuel power generation from daytime to nighttime. Trying to shift renewable power to nighttime with batteries when you're still burning fossil fuels during the day, just results in some of the renewable power being wasted charging and discharging the batteries, forcing you to burn more fossil fuels to make up the deficit.
Re:How exactly does this reduce pollution? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically your entire post can be summarized by saying "I don't know the difference between dispatchable and non-dispatchable power generation."
The whole point of storage is to convert non-dispatchable renewable energy into dispatchable energy, displacing fossil fuels - particularly natural gas. For example, peak solar output is mid-day, which does not line up with peak demand in early evening. To meet peak demand with solar you would need to install a lot more capacity, which means you are over generating in mid-day. That's bad news. The solution is to add at least a few hours worth of storage, so you can reduce the total solar you need to install and take the mid-day surplus and apply it towards early evening deficits.
Which is exactly what this facility is intended to do. It's about time shifting peak production to meet peak demand - a difference of only a few hours - not time shifting from day to night.
=Smidge=
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Confused by the article (Score:2)
Another worry about 100 million iphone batteries would be fire. Power substations hav
Trailer parks are tornado magnets (Score:2)
Every time a tornado forms it seems to head right for the nearest trailer park.
The thing is basically a trailer park full of trailers of batteries. I hope they are bolted down really well
More on pumped hydro (Score:3)
There's a pumped storage facility in Massachusetts that's been around half a century, that delivers 3 times the power (1200MW) for 4 times as long (8 hours): https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/12/02/northfield-mountain-hydroelectric-station
And yes it works below freezing, just like hydro dams work in the winter.
Of course in a state where most of the high points are old landfills (https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-reg-mount-trashmore-grows-20180712-story.html) it might be a bit tricky...
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And ready to explode upon first use.
Oh, the hu- .... sorry. I'll stop.