Utilities Are Trying Enormous 'Flow' Batteries Big Enough to Oust Coal Power Plants (yahoo.com) 133
To help replace power plants, Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido, "is turning to a new generation of batteries designed to stockpile massive amounts of energy," reports the Washington Post.
"The Hokkaido Electric Power Network (HEPCO Network) is deploying flow batteries, an emerging kind of battery that stores energy in hulking tanks of metallic liquid." [F]low batteries are making their debut in big real-world projects. Sumitomo Electric, the company that built the Hokkaido plant, has also built flow batteries in Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, Morocco and California. Hokkaido's flow battery farm was the biggest in the world when it opened in April 2022 — a record that lasted just a month before China built one that is eight times bigger and can deliver as much energy as an average U.S. natural gas plant. "It looks like flow batteries are finally about to take off with interest from China," said Michael Taylor, an energy analyst at the International Renewable Energy Agency, an international group that studies and promotes green energy. "When China starts to get comfortable with a technology and sees it working, then they will very quickly scale their manufacturing base if they think they can drive down the costs, which they usually can...."
Lithium-ion batteries are perfect for smartphones because they're lightweight and fit in small spaces, even if they don't last long and have to be replaced frequently. Utilities have a different set of priorities: They need to store millions of times more energy, and they have much more room to work with. "If you think about utility-scale stationary applications, maybe you don't need lithium-ion batteries. You can use another one that is cheaper and can provide the services that you want like, for example, vanadium flow batteries," said Francisco Boshell, a researcher at the International Renewable Energy Agency...
Flow batteries are designed to tap giant tanks that can store a lot of energy for a long time. To boost their storage capacity, all you have to do is build a bigger tank and add more vanadium. That's a big advantage: By contrast, there's no easy way to adjust the storage capacity of a lithium-ion battery — if you want more storage, you have to build a whole new battery... One major barrier to building more of these battery farms is finding enough vanadium. Three-quarters of the world's supply comes as a by-product from 10 steel mills in China and Russia, according to Kara Rodby [a battery analyst at the investment firm Volta Energy Technologies] who got her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying the design and market for flow batteries. Australia, South Africa and the United States also produce vanadium, but in much smaller quantities. Mines that have been proposed could boost supply. And some flow battery start-ups are trying to sidestep the vanadium problem entirely by using different materials that are easier to buy.
The other hurdle is their up-front cost. Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries, Rodby said, and banks are hesitant to lend money to fund an unfamiliar technology. But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they're easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. "There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion," Rodby said.
Here's an interesting statistic from the article. "Over the next six years, utilities will have to build 35 times as many batteries as there are today to soak up all extra renewable energy that will come online, according to the International Energy Agency."
"The Hokkaido Electric Power Network (HEPCO Network) is deploying flow batteries, an emerging kind of battery that stores energy in hulking tanks of metallic liquid." [F]low batteries are making their debut in big real-world projects. Sumitomo Electric, the company that built the Hokkaido plant, has also built flow batteries in Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, Morocco and California. Hokkaido's flow battery farm was the biggest in the world when it opened in April 2022 — a record that lasted just a month before China built one that is eight times bigger and can deliver as much energy as an average U.S. natural gas plant. "It looks like flow batteries are finally about to take off with interest from China," said Michael Taylor, an energy analyst at the International Renewable Energy Agency, an international group that studies and promotes green energy. "When China starts to get comfortable with a technology and sees it working, then they will very quickly scale their manufacturing base if they think they can drive down the costs, which they usually can...."
Lithium-ion batteries are perfect for smartphones because they're lightweight and fit in small spaces, even if they don't last long and have to be replaced frequently. Utilities have a different set of priorities: They need to store millions of times more energy, and they have much more room to work with. "If you think about utility-scale stationary applications, maybe you don't need lithium-ion batteries. You can use another one that is cheaper and can provide the services that you want like, for example, vanadium flow batteries," said Francisco Boshell, a researcher at the International Renewable Energy Agency...
Flow batteries are designed to tap giant tanks that can store a lot of energy for a long time. To boost their storage capacity, all you have to do is build a bigger tank and add more vanadium. That's a big advantage: By contrast, there's no easy way to adjust the storage capacity of a lithium-ion battery — if you want more storage, you have to build a whole new battery... One major barrier to building more of these battery farms is finding enough vanadium. Three-quarters of the world's supply comes as a by-product from 10 steel mills in China and Russia, according to Kara Rodby [a battery analyst at the investment firm Volta Energy Technologies] who got her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying the design and market for flow batteries. Australia, South Africa and the United States also produce vanadium, but in much smaller quantities. Mines that have been proposed could boost supply. And some flow battery start-ups are trying to sidestep the vanadium problem entirely by using different materials that are easier to buy.
The other hurdle is their up-front cost. Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries, Rodby said, and banks are hesitant to lend money to fund an unfamiliar technology. But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they're easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. "There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion," Rodby said.
Here's an interesting statistic from the article. "Over the next six years, utilities will have to build 35 times as many batteries as there are today to soak up all extra renewable energy that will come online, according to the International Energy Agency."
Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:5, Informative)
The flow batteries in this article use vanadium but there are other chemistries. Zinc-bromide for example. And I think there's an Iron salt flow battery. There are quite a few more. All have their pros and cons. And this tech has been around for decades.
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The flow batteries in this article use vanadium
Vanadium is expensive and in short supply.
We can't scale production enough to make a difference.
Zinc-bromide for example.
ZnBr is cheap but has poor round-trip efficiency.
None of these flow batteries are as cost-effective as good ole' fashioned lithium-ion batteries.
Sodium batteries are even cheaper. Flow batteries can't compete with them.
Re:Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:5, Informative)
I did some digging, and according to this a 160MWh battery required 18.25 tons of vanadium pentoxide: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
In 2023, China produced 68,000 MT of the stuff: https://www.nasdaq.com/article... [nasdaq.com]
China's output is rapidly increasing too, in part due to demand for these batteries. Apparently there is some in norther Europe too, waiting to be extracted.
What sort of sodium battery are you comparing with? Sodium-sulphur batteries have the disadvantage that they need high temperatures to operate. Sodium-ion batteries are still relatively new and we don't understand enough about their longevity to say if they are better than flow batteries for grid storage applications. Vanadium may also be cost competitive. At this point it's worth investing in both.
MT [Re:Not all flow batteries use vanadium] (Score:3)
I did some digging, and according to this a 160MWh battery required 18.25 tons of vanadium pentoxide: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
In 2023, China produced 68,000 MT of the stuff: https://www.nasdaq.com/article... [nasdaq.com]
I detest the initialism MT, because some people use it to mean "Million Tons" (or million tonnes), while others use it to mean "Metric Tons".
In this reference, it is apparently metric tons.
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Round-trip efficiency is a secondary concern, especially when the power is nearly (or entirely) free or even cost-negative. Cost and scalability are more important.
Vanadium has an advantage over Zinc-Bromine in that both the anode and cathode are in liquid solution. Zinc-Bromine batteries plate out the zinc as a solid, which not only makes them mechanically more complex but harder to scale since you need sufficient anode space and can't simply use more/bigger tanks for bulk storage.
> None of these flow b
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China is the world's top producer of vanadium, meaning they produce more than everyone else combined, so I don't think it's going to be much of a problem for them.
Any country that's set to engage in a trade war with China on the other hand...
Re: Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:2)
Re:Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:5, Interesting)
Flow batteries are the cheapest thing on the planet after pumped storage.
RTFA: "Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries."
If flow batteries were actually cheaper, greedy profit-seeking capitalists would be building them all over the world. They're not.
Try reading onward to the next paragraph: "But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they’re easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. “There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion,” Rodby said."
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"But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run
Because we see business always, always go for the decades long ROI return rather than the bottom line, 4 month horizon CapEx profit?
The most dangerous engineers are those with an MBA and no engineering skills/education/experience.
The most dangerous managers are engineers with no business experience skills/education/experience.
Entropy, my friend, runs only one way. Downhill.
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There's plenty of patient money. VCs exist to make multi-year investments. Sovereign wealth funds often have time horizons of decades. Even public markets can be patient. Amazon, Tesla, and Google lost money for years, even after their IPOs.
The problem is that the business case is based on false assumptions about the competition and financial illiteracy.
Grid-scale lithium batteries already last far longer than ten years and are improving. Sodium batteries for grid storage are already in production and will
Re:Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:4, Interesting)
"But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run
Because we see business always, always go for the decades long ROI return rather than the bottom line, 4 month horizon CapEx profit?
The most dangerous engineers are those with an MBA and no engineering skills/education/experience. The most dangerous managers are engineers with no business experience skills/education/experience. Entropy, my friend, runs only one way. Downhill.
Perhaps not in the USA where very few people seem to be capable of planning or thinking more than a fiscal quarter ahead. However, the USA is not the universe. Many countries have publicly owned energy companies or private ones that do think and plan on these long timescales. Build a nuclear power plant, a hydro or geothermal plant and you had better be prepared to think and plan in terms of multiple decade ROI timescales. These giant flow battery parks are literally designed to be an integral part of giant arrays of solar and wind parks where an ability to just sit there and work reliably for decades on end is not by any means a huge minus. The utility scale celebrity generation industry is not a game for the greedy and impatient
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Basically, more mature technology vs less mature. If flow had developed on a similar path, then it's costs would be more competitive.
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Basically, more mature technology vs less mature.
Flow batteries have been around for 40 years.
They are an older technology than lithium batteries.
You can do all the research on new electrodes or whatever, but that won't fix the fundamental problem that vanadium is expensive.
Re: Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:5, Interesting)
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Basically, more mature technology vs less mature.
Flow batteries have been around for 40 years. They are an older technology than lithium batteries.
Lithium batteries have been around for a heck of a lot longer than 40 years. The currently dominant technology of lithium ion batteries is relatively recent, but the current technology of vanadium flow batteries is also recent-- the first successful vanadium flow battery was patented in 1986 [energy-storage.news], while the first rechargeable lithium ion battery was 1972. [ieee.org]
You can do all the research on new electrodes or whatever, but that won't fix the fundamental problem that vanadium is expensive.
There are many possible redox chemistries for flow batteries. Vanadium is just one of them.
I'm still betting on sodium batteries, myself, but I wouldn't rule
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Except that is wrong, of course there's finite life. Firstly flow batteries have actual maintenance requirements (moving parts) and require pumps to be serviced periodically and secondly the proton exchange membrane (which is frigging expensive) deteriorates over time. Research into extending the life of the membrane is a *BIG THING* and it's kind of shocking that the article would omit this.
I suspect that at very large storage capacities the lifetime cost of flow batteries is cheaper, but for smaller (stil
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Re:Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a huge difference between "Flow batteries are the cheapest thing on the planet" (False) and "Flow batteries might be cheaper at some hypothetical point in the future, assuming lithium batteries only last ten years and conveniently ignoring the fact that they already last far longer than that" (also False).
Judging by TFA that depends on the time scale you operate on. If you don't thing farther ahead than a fiscal quarter Lithium is better, but utility companies tend to think in multiple decades so on that time scale flow batteries might actually 'the cheapest thing on the planet'.
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Judging by TFA that depends on the time scale you operate on.
No, it doesn't.
Grid-scale lithium batteries can last for ten to fifteen years at 90% of capacity and twenty years at 80%.
Even then, much of the value can be recovered when they are recycled.
If a reflow battery costs twice as much (per TFA), and you have a 5% cost of capital, it will NEVER be more cost-effective. It is always cheaper to use lithium and replace the batteries as they wear out.
Sodium batteries will soon make reflow an even worse investment.
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Flow batteries have been taking too long. We should have put in more gov funding or start up grants for decades already!
Upfront cost vs long term cost. Hardly anybody cares about long term outside of government. China will subsidize their electricity to help their whole economy while places like the USA will only subsidize big political donors who don't need it and it doesn't help anybody else long term; if not harms them. Such as coal and oil subsidies giving them extended advantage over the alternatives
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Current status of ferro-/ferricyanide for redox flow batteries
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
the most remarkable aspect of vanadium batts (Score:5, Interesting)
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Vanadium flow batteries were invented more than 40 years ago.
Nobody needs a license to make them.
Perhaps the government lab built something new or different in 2017, but if so, the article you site doesn't mention it.
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Re:the most remarkable aspect of vanadium batts (Score:4, Informative)
I am afraid it has been a general story of the renewable transition. The US in particular has dragged it's heels for what ever reasons and clung to its fossil fuel infrastructure. China is still earlier in it's development so it is still growing, but it has invested a massive amount into renewables, rather than just growing its fossil fuel.
End result. China is ahead with batteries, electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels and all of the electronics needed to drive it. And by ahead, I mean in terms of underlying science, the development, manufacturing and use in infrastructure.
Hard to see this reversing in the near future. Even if the US had the political will to do so, it would face an uneven race to catch up.
Make Spying Cool Again (Score:3)
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There is still an opportunity for the US to get ahead, or at least compete, on renewables. Offshore wind is currently mostly in shallower areas, with deep water turbines still at the prototype stage. There are different designs being evaluated and an opportunity for whoever develops the first practical and cost effective ones.
The window is closing and either Europe or China will probably get there this decade, but the US can get in on the race if it starts now.
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Vanadium batteries come in many different types. The fact that one specific variant is licensed to China is of little consequence. There are manufactures all over the world toying with this idea.
Welcome to the world of patents and trademarks. There's always someone, somewhere with exclusive rights to make some thing.
Re: the most remarkable aspect of vanadium batts (Score:3)
The agency issued the license, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies. He hired engineers and researchers. But he soon ran into trouble. He said he couldn't persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard.
"I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries," Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit.
He said a fellow scientist connected him with a Chinese businessman named Yanhui Liu and a company called Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd., along with its parent company, and he jumped at the chance to have them invest and even help manufacture the batteries.
Plain old Sand? (Score:2)
What ever happened to thermal sand batteries? Basically you filled the tank with plain old sand, insulated it heavily, and then heated it WAY WAY up. The medium was readily available and then you could just get it hot and pull it back out later. I assume that it is not as thermally dense as these "flow" batteries but goodness it has to be way cheaper to find sand than vanadium.
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What ever happened to thermal sand batteries?
Thermal storage has horrible round-trip efficiency.
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Thermal sand battery is used in Finland in a pilot project (8 MWh storage)
(article in Finnish) https://www.vatajankoski.fi/in... [vatajankoski.fi]
Second one is also being build in Finland (100 MWh storage):
(article in Finnish) https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/arti... [mtvuutiset.fi]
The reason why sand battery works in Finland is because there is a huge demand for heating during the winter. So it is not about storing electricity, it is about storing heat and then distributing the heat directly to the houses, which makes it really efficient. Especia
Utilities have been playing with this for ages (Score:4, Informative)
I saw vanadium batteries for grid storage being talked about long before Telsa threw the first lithium battery on the grid. Heck we've had whole companies come and go, e.g. RedFlow from Australia just went out of business 2 months ago. Yeah their primary product was zinc-bromide flow batteries, but the concept is identical and zinc-bromide was actually newer "technology" than vanadium. And that company was operating for 19 years.
Why mention this? Because I'm frankly sceptical that this will ever take off. If you look to flow battery companies out there, their websites look the same as they did 10 years ago. Lots of promise of grid connection, very little in the way of actual plants being in operation. Call me sceptical that this will take off.
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That was part of why I was so excited when the first time Na-Ion batteries showed up in my news feed, because the article was also about how they were opening a production plant making a purchasable commercial product. For the first time since Li-Ion took over everything portable in the early 2000s, a n
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I saw vanadium batteries for grid storage being talked about long before Telsa threw the first lithium battery on the grid. Heck we've had whole companies come and go, e.g. RedFlow from Australia just went out of business 2 months ago. Yeah their primary product was zinc-bromide flow batteries, but the concept is identical and zinc-bromide was actually newer "technology" than vanadium. And that company was operating for 19 years.
Why mention this? Because I'm frankly sceptical that this will ever take off. If you look to flow battery companies out there, their websites look the same as they did 10 years ago.
I don't know any specifics about RedFlow, but Australia has a terrible record when it comes to infrastructure projects, renewables, R&D funding, or incubating startups. RedFlow's technology may be AMAZING (as I said, not familiar with this specific company) but they are simply in the wrong country to have a decent chance of success.
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That isn't good news about Redflow going bankrupt. I was hoping their next battery bank would be better priced because they work well in hot conditions.
The article mentions that the storage of flow batteries just requires a bigger tank. That isn't true, it needs a bigger cell as well. The Redflow batteries would add or subtract about a kilogram of metal to the plates between a full and empty state of about 600kg of fluid.
Batteries have a huge future. (Score:2)
Too many show stoppers for flow battery tech (Score:2)
Vanadium flow batteries are cool tech with some serious potential, but let’s not get carried away with the optimism here. There are some pretty big challenges that people tend to gloss over, especially when it comes to scaling this for grid-level storage.
1. Geopolitical dependence. The vast majority of the world’s vanadium comes from China and Russia. That’s not just a supply chain hiccup—it’s a geopolitical landmine. If you’re building critical energy infrastructure arou
Re: Too many show stoppers for flow battery tech (Score:2)
You talk about Russia and China like they aren't places. They can use this tech even if you don't want to due to your fear.
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Not saying I disagree, but many of these points are the same if you substitute "lithium" for "vanadium."
Crustal abundance (Score:2)
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That's how much battery bon be bo 9be.
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TFA says the Vanadium electrolyte is stored in 130 tanks of 10,000 gallons, which is nearly exactly the volume of 2 Olympic swimming pools (of nominal 2 meter depth).
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How many humans would they need? I haven't watched all The Matrix prequels but...
'How was your weekend? Did you lose weight? Your skin looks fabulous.'
'Oh, I was at the health spa. They put you in this pod full of Tritium-Fluorine-Thorium electrolyte soup and jack you into a multiplayer virtual reality metaverse.'
Re:units (Score:4, Interesting)
They designed a power plant based on flow batteries that generates the same instant power as a typical power plant based on burning natural gas.
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Batteries do not generate; they store and releases.
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That depends on how technical you want to get. If you can say that coal plants generate energy, which is just a chemical reaction based on energy stored in the coal, then you can say that batteries generate energy, since the electrical energy is the result of chemical reactions of the electrolyte.
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I suppose if we want to be complicit in the leakage of stupidity into the world, where a battery is an electric generator. Harbor Freight and the like have been engaging in this for a few years now.
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I hate the whole idea of calling a battery power station a "generator", but in HF's defense they did not invent that description for it. It is very widely used. The solar panel is the "generator", the solar controller+battery+inverter in a single box with a single PCB is best described as a "bad idea" first and a "power station" second, or possibly even "power storage station" but I think it can have a pass since it has the inverter in it as well.
Converged devices are a real bad plan any time you aren't tig
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Agree on all points. Though i've seen that power station [harborfreight.com] name used with things that are *just* a battery and inverter. They even link to 'generator safety' on the web page which is doubly confusing for the normie.
The Brother MFC I have, and the one before it, have been stellar. Not that I send faxes either. But I do copy things and the like, and if i needed the capability it is a nice to have.
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And then I saw the "MPPT Solar Controller" thing there so I stand corrected.
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The operation cycle of a battery has two phases. When a source of energy is applied to a battery, it accumulates. When an electrical load is applied to a battery, it generates.
This battery in particular is clearly composed of a storage unit (the electrolyte tank) and a generator unit (a flow cell).
When an EV is equipped with a hydrogen tank and a flow cell, we still say the hydrogen generates energy. Here it's a tank full of a vanadium solution. The only difference is the vanadium electrolyte is operated in
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Did you mean fuel cell vs flow cell? It makes more sense with the former.
I'm not arguing the vanadium thing, I presume if you added more vanadium to one side of the reaction, you'd get power out the other side. Which is electric generation of a sort, though expensive, and mostly not what you would be doing, which would be pumping in juice and getting it back out cyclically. I'm arguing about those batteries at HF that are advertised as power stations and as alternatives to generators, and people believin
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Several ways to answer your comment:
1) The plant generates power to the customers, independently of the technology it is based on.
2) In all rigour, nothing generates energy (First law of thermodynamics).
3) If we consider from operational point of view that burning methane (a redox reaction in gas phase) generates energy, then it's the same when the redox reaction happens in an aqueous solution.
4) Nothing prevents someone to build a natural gas plant that reverts the cycle and produces back methane from carb
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So you’re suggesting pouring a constant supply of electrolytes into a flow battery?? A BATTERY is a storage device. You CHARGE and discharge them. A GENERATOR converts one form of energy to another. You can always put more wind, steam, water, into a turbine. The process happens in one direction. You dont run a turbine backwards to make steam. You dont run a boiler backwards to make coal. When you drain a battery you have to REVERSE the process to charge it back up. Otherwise its a chemical plant gener
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It would be possible to provide a constant supply of electrolytes. The charge and discharge cycle could be split.
I doubt this makes sense at the moment, but who knows. Imagine a mid oceanic floating wind farm. You might charge the electrolyte there. When it's full, you swap the charged electrolyte for discharged from a tanker. The tanker then ferries the charged electrolyte to where ever you need it.
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Extremely inefficient. Factor in the transportation cost. Batteries are NET0 when it comes to energy production. A water reservoir is not a water source for your town. You either get it from rivers, lakes, rainfall, or underground aquifers. The reservoir is a water reserve. It fills in the gaps. When you drain a swimming pool it doesnt magically respawn full again. A grain silo doesnt produce food. These all have one similarity. They all have a very finite resource that is very short term.
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Offshore power generation makes more sense to create hydrogen. You dont have to ship in the water. Do the conversion right there and ship out the hydrogen. Its lighter factoring in energy density and your transportation costs are all in one direction. Its a battery when EnergyOUT never exceeds EnergyIN within the scope of the cycle. Generation takes externally stored energy and coverts it for less energy than we extract. Oil was stored a million years ago. Solar was stored billions of years ago on another c
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Offshore power generation makes more sense to create hydrogen. You dont have to ship in the water. Do the conversion right there and ship out the hydrogen. Its lighter factoring in energy density and your transportation costs are all in one direction...
Then we could use zeppelins to transport the hydrogen! I'm not saying it's the most efficient, but it would certainly be cool :-) If the zeppelins are really big (they'd have to be) we could also use their reflective nature to mitigate a bit of global heating...
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My UPS generates energy for my computer to use when needed. It does so by transforming chemical species, and of course it has the advantage that it is reversible; but I don't see a difference with a UPS that wouldn't be reversible, either because it use classical alkaline batteries, or because it uses gaseous reactants (oxygen). I wouldn't call the UPS a generator, because it plays two functions; that of a generator, and that of an accumulator.
you’re suggesting pouring a constant supply of electrolytes into a flow battery?
That the Vanadium battery can be recharged by replacing the elec
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So you’re suggesting pouring a constant supply of electrolytes into a flow battery??
Read up on flow batteries [wikipedia.org]. They're structurally different from the batteries you and I might commonly encounter. They use tanks of liquid electrolytes which get pumped into a reaction cell. When the electrolytes come out, they have a different mix of ions than when they went in.
At that point, you have to replenish the original electrolytes and do something with the used ones. In theory, you could just dispose of the spent electrolytes and pump in new ones from a tanker truck. In the power smoothing case, th
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energyOUT /= energyIN ... thats the difference between a generator and a battery. At some point you had to dump more or the same energy into it that you want to get out. Solar/Coal/Oil do not share this equation because the energy put into them is millions of years old and they only are considered batteries when your scope encompasies trillions of years. When your scope is 100 years the EnergyOUT greatly exceeds EnergyIN. It doesnt get any simpler than this. A flow battery is still a battery in its definit
Re: units (Score:2)
I don't see much difference between trucking a load of coal in to add power to the system and running a wire in to recharge your electrolyte. These aren't closed systems, you put energy into them somehow. Most of them run off energy converted from sunlight during some prior eon or more recently.
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I don't see much difference between trucking a load of coal in to add power to the system and running a wire in to recharge your electrolyte.
Or running a factory to make fresh electrolytes, at least not in the biggest picture. Naturally, the details matter a lot.
These aren't closed systems, you put energy into them somehow. Most of them run off energy converted from sunlight during some prior eon or more recently.
Or radioactive decay in the case of nuclear and geothermal.
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A BATTERY is a storage device. You CHARGE and discharge them.
A gas tank in a car is also a storage device which you charge and discharge. The car comes equipped with a generator of mechanical power (converts chemical energy into mechanical power) and is called an engine.
A tank of hydrogen in a car is also a storage device; the flow cell of the car is an electrical generator (transforms the chemical energy stored in the hydrogen into electricity), which can power an electrical engine.
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Now replace the hydrogen tank with a tank of vanadium electrolyte. You still have a tank full of chemical energy, and a generator (a flow cell) which powers the electrical engine. The only difference is that with the vanadium you keep the product (another electrolyte) rather than releasing it into the atmosphere; you can resell it back to the factory, or reversing yourself by passing en electrical current.
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in your analogy you have to push your car backwards the same distance as you drove it forward to recharge your electrolyte. Do you really fucking think your amazon warehouse is making the shit you buy?
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you probably think Carbon Neutral and Carbon Negative are the same thing too. A battery is energy Net0 at best. Gasoline is energy positive because the scope at which energy was put into the system predates humanity let alone this century. If you have to spend 1200 joule to extract 1000 joule of energy its not replacing a fucking power plant. If you only have to spend 100 joule to extract 1000 joule because the other 900 joule was stored 20 million years ago, then its a power generation. How are you missing
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There certainly is a power input to recharge the power plant battery, but the summary does not mention which technology. It does not matter to my rationale. The claim is that the whole power plant (which includes an electrolyte store, a fuel cell generator, and an unspecified source of energy to recharge the battery) is designed to generate power from battery that equates that of a plant based on a gas turbine.
They can have an intermittent source of energy, e.g. wind or solar, charge it during excess produc
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I correct myself: traditional batteries (zinc-carbon, Ni-Cd, NiMH, Li-ion) are not included as generators because they don't include a device for the conversion. They spontaneously produce electricity.
However fuel cells, which is the topic here, are an engineered device able to produce electricity. A fuell cell is a generator. This is why flow batteries are a generator.
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And natural gas powerplants just release.
The combustion of natural gas and the oxidization of Vanadium in a flow battery are basically the same kind of reaction* except former produces heat you have to change into mechanical and then electrical energy while the latter is engineered to produce the electricity directly. Oh, and the second one is easily reversible while the first one is only with quite a bit of difficulty.
Re: units (Score:2)
This makes more sense.
Our local natural gas plant is limited in the energy it can deliver by the size of the subterranian gas reserves that feed it.
That said: a flow battery isn't a bad idea for fixed storage. If you want to increase its capacity, just add more storage tanks.
Re:units (Score:4, Informative)
Even worse in that they even compare power generation to power storage. A battery does not generate power. It stores and releases power. You cannot replace power generation with s battery. You can replace power losses with a battery. Its like saying you can replace a river with a water tower or reservoir. They serve different functions. A battery still has to be charged. A solar cell generates power, a turbine, whether its steam, wind, or water propelled, generates power, a battery does not.
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You can replace peak-load generation with batteries, and that means you can make more use of base-load or intermittent generation sources.
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Exactly. The article suggests batteries are somehow replacements for generators. Batteries prevent waste. They increase efficiency. They conserve fuel. At no time is my UPS for my PC replacing the permanent need for electricity from my utility company.
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If you are in a very sunny part of the world with a large roof and lots of solar panels on it, then it could potentially allow you to go off-grid.
Without the batteries, you would need to buy electricity when the sun isn't shining, and either have wasted electricity in the middle of the day or have to sell it to the grid.
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that doesnt make it replace a generator, that makes it consume less resources by storing excess for later consumption. Your solar panels ARE the generator, your battery is your short-term storage. Its like collecting rainwater in barrels so you can shower later instead of waiting for it to rain. At no time is the fucking barrel producing rain water. Using an enormous battery on the power grid does not in any way replace a power plant. It might reduce waste so less coal is burned. It might offset resource co
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No, but it allows existing generating capacity to be used more efficiently, and that more efficient use could mean that you don't need other generating capacity.
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It converts chemical energy into electrical energy.
A coal or natural gas power plant also converts chemical energy into electrical energy.
Whether a battery or a power plant "releases" or "generates" power is simply semantics, upon which Internet trolls love to pounce!
No, the real difference is that a battery has a fixed capacity, but up to that limit, it's significantly easier to convert electrical energy back into chemical energy in a battery
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You cannot replace power generation with s battery.
Literally no one replaces power generation with a battery. What they do is replace power waste with a battery.
Even worse in that they even compare power generation to power storage.
Who is the "they"? Are you talking about the media? Or are you ignorant of the fact that grid operators consider batteries as power generators because ... that's what they are. Anything that feeds the grid is a generator and anything that feeds the grid can replace a generator over the service time that is specified. The fact that the battery is also a consumer when required isn't relevant.
Its like saying you can replace a river with a water tower or reservoir. They serve different functions.
Funny, a
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Funny, a water utility would say they serve the same function: a supply of water. The fact that one is finite again doesn't change this fact. You're splitting hairs while ignoring both how and why the industry talks about these things the way they do.
you think a water tower supplies water? Holy fuck youre as far from an engineer as a shoe salesman. A water tower does not in any way supplement supply. It supplements PRESSURE. It converts potential energy into water pressure. Water towers reduce the need for active pumps, thats why they are 100ft in the air and not sitting on the ground.
Saying a battery replaces a coal plant is complete ignorant shit. A power grid battery can provide power for a day or two tops. Eventually it runs out of storage. Then its
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Literally no one replaces power generation with a battery. What they do is replace power waste with a battery.
That is what the person you replied to said. You agree with them.
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Even worse in that they even compare power generation to power storage. A battery does not generate power. It stores and releases power.
Yes. We go through this every time there's a thread on grid-scale batteries. As much as the mass media would like to simplify it, to talk about batteries you need to consider how much energy it can store and how much power it can source and sink. Either or both can be important depending on what question you're trying to answer. Well, there's a third parameter, how long can the battery run, but with any two you can figure out the third.
The general public and mass media have been spoiled by conventional powe
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there is simplifying and then there is making the public ignorant. Simplifying it would be to say we use batteries in order to store excess for later use instead of throwing it away. Its not a new concept. We keep leftovers of food. We reclaim waste heat. Hell in the 70s people used contraptions to vent their dryer exhaust back into their homes in the winter instead of dumping that heat outside. Granted you had to do something about filtering the lint and humidity but reclaiming that heat is a concept peopl
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There is simplifying and then there is making the public ignorant. Simplifying it would be to say we use batteries in order to store excess for later use instead of throwing it away.
I agree and I'm pretty sure when someone hears "battery" they grasp the concept. Problem is, we're all familiar with AA and cell phone batteries. I don't know about you but I have little concept how much power and energy are in a battery with (to use common units of measurement) two olympic pools of electrolyte and a basketball court sized membrane.
Plus, I don't think your average journalist took physics and so might not have the background to even understand the math behind energy and power.
What they have done, instead, is convince the world that one day the whole power grid is going to be nothing but batteries.
I wouldn't say
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Except that power generation has a very serious problem: people are used to paying for power by the KWH --, the power company is paid[1] proportional to the average demand. But people are also used to being able to consume as much power as they want instantaneously, which means the power company has to size for peak demand. The entire area between the peak demand and the average demand is wasted generation capacity.
So a battery effectively displaces some of the generation capacity that would be kept availab
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My guess is peak power output. Journalists don't know the difference between energy and power, not between kWh and kW and their new moronium units they like, like kW/h or kWh/h or kW/yr.
Re:Bbbut ... (Score:4, Informative)
Bbbut ... NUUUCUUULARRR?!?!?!
Even nuclear benefits from battery storage.
Nuclear produces steady power 24/7, but demand is not steady.
So battery backup can store energy when demand is low, like in the middle of the night, and provide power when demand is high.
The most difficult demand peak to serve is 4-7 pm, when solar is fading, but people are coming home from work, turning on the AC, and powering up the stovetop and oven to cook dinner.
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The latest proposals for nuclear is to actually have a thermal battery between the reactor and turbines. This would allow the turbines to not have to be nuclear grade regulated, plus you could install more turbine and be able to vary the production based on demand. Extra power is stored, excess demand pulls.
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That's a new twist on it, but from what I've read, being able to decouple the turbines from the nuclear regulations would make them literally millions of dollars cheaper.
Building a nuclear grade thermal tank is relatively cheap - it's still just a tank. Having to deal with all the nuclear regulations for turbines, that's expensive.
You can decouple because with a big enough tank, at some point the radiation from said tank will match the production of the reactor - IE thermally safe, without the need for ext
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The problem is always cost. Batteries make renewables able to deliver cheap energy 24/7, and nothing else can compete on price.
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modern nuclear designs can easily adjust output to demand. Basically any of the fuel regulated reactor designs are like this. as opposed to classic control rod pools etc that are difficult to ramp up or down.
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modern nuclear designs
Well then, lets build some.
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I agree. When can we start?
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modern nuclear designs can easily adjust output to demand.
SMRs can adjust.
MSRs cannot.
Nor can PBRs.