5 ms·

It gets worse. Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology, the intermittency problem of renewables makes most of them a non-starter

by spangry 10y ago

It gets worse. Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology, the intermittency problem of renewables makes most of them a non-starter from a cost perspective. To cover 'always on' baseload demand, you need about 5-6 time that amount of maximum generating capacity, optimally geographically dispersed to ensure at least one or a few are producing sufficient power while the others are essentially 'off'. This also means you need 5-6 times the amount of transmission infrastructure compared to if you have centralised power generation that can be rapidly scaled up and down. Burning coal is one such solution (obviously a terrible one given climate change). Gas is good for intermittent 'peaker' plants, but it's not exactly cheap nor co2 free. Contrary to what's being said above, I think fission absolutely must be explored to avoid a climate catastrophe. Our current fission reactor tech is basically the same tech we had in the 50s and 60s, which manages about 3% fuel efficiency (mostly due to the use of solid fuels). Despite this, it's still at least 'in the ballpark' cost-wise, and also the second safest form of power generation, according to the IPCC, over its entire life-cycle (from mining to waste disposal and remediation). Incidentally, hydro is the first. If we could invest even just a little bit of money into furthering fission research, we could very well end up with an abundant, cheap and safe method of generating baseload power. Or we could yammer on about the cost of 'political capital' and accept a much higher probability of extinction because a section of the population are either misinformed or just flat out ignorant. Yeah, let's do that.

grzm 10y ago
Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology Do you think grid-level energy storage needs to be batteries, as opposed to other forms? If so, why?
- Crito 10y ago
  There is only so much pumped hydro storage you can make...
  - gnud 10y ago
    Pumped hydro seems simplest, and we often have the power plant already in place. But temperature differential storage, pressure differential storage, and creating hydrogen all seems to scale better to me.
    - rplst8 10y ago
      I've read some things about pumped hydro. The losses reduce efficiency and the amount of water you need to pump is pretty unbelievably large.
- spangry 10y ago
  Not at all, and sorry I guess I misspoke. Whatever works: pumping water up hill, spinning flywheels etc. all sound fine to me. It's simply a question of whether it meets current energy demand, environmental impact, and cost. Come to think of it, I've only ever looked at the per KW hour cost of batteries (lead-acid seems to be the clear winner). You wouldn't happen to have references for other energy storage methods?
  - grzm 10y ago
    Other than Wikipedia, no; I was hoping you would. That's why I asked. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage I think it's an interesting field though.
    - spangry 10y ago
      Me too. I recently read about these hybrid battery-capacitor thingies that sounded pretty promising. I'll see if I can dig up the link. EDIT: here we go - http://www.nature.com/articles/srep04315 http://www.nature.com/articles/srep04315 . Lithium iron phosphate batteries (LiFePO). Although I'm assuming this particular combination doesn't provide favourable enough economics (or it would probably be a household name already), I can definitely see how this approach in general could. You could have the best of both worlds: cheap, but slow charge/discharge storage combined with the ability to very quickly scale up to meet peak daily demand for a limited (but sufficient) period of time.
    - nkurz 10y ago
      David Mackay's "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" has good numbers comparing many different forms of energy storage: http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/ http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/. It's a "hard-headed" engineering look at our energy options written by a physicist. It might be a bit outdated (published in 2008), but when it came out it was the best compendium I'd seen.
      - robryk 10y ago
Reason077 10y ago
and also the second safest form of power generation, according to the IPCC, over its entire life-cycle (from mining to waste disposal and remediation). Incidentally, hydro is the first. I'm surprised that hydro could be considered safer than nuclear. That seems incorrect based on past experience. Hydro dam failures have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths during the past 50 years or so. That's far more than Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters, even accounting for later deaths due to radiation-related diseases. The Banqiao Dam failure alone in 1973 killed 171,000 and displaced more than 11 million people.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I've studied and written on the Banquiao Dam Failure, (1975, by the way) several times. It's an interesting failure, particularly as compared with nuclear disasters. First and foremost, it was an administration, planning and design failure, compounded by weather, enineering, response, and other factors. The background was adminstrative pride, ignored engineering warnings, insufficient spillways, poor communications, and no disaster planning. The immediate trigger was an unprecedented "perfect storm" -- the collision of a tropical typhoon and a cold front -- unleashing 1,000+ mm of rain in 24 hours, completely overwhelming the dam. The area was densely populated, what communications there were were down on account of the storm, and rougly 20,000 people were killed in the immediate flooding. The remaining 100,000 deaths occurred due to disease and starvation in the area as a result of no effective disaster and recovery response. The most telling characteristics of Banqiao though are these: 1. Some 40 years after the incident, the region is not a nondiscretionary multi-centennary wildlife preserve and exclusion zone, but home to some 17 million inhabitants. That is, once a flood zone stops being a flood zone, it returns to its previous state relatively quickly. 2. Banqiao itself is far and away the most extreme accident of its type. There have been other major dam-related incidents, in India and Italy (Vajont Dam tsunami), but each was some two orders of magnitude lower in deaths than Banqiao. The common elements in virtually all dam disasters are 1) poor understanding of risks, 2) suppression of criticisms, and 3) poor or no warning systems. Keep in mind that dams are simple systems from an engineering standpoint: a large mass of material which regulates water flows. And yet these do fail with some regularity most especially in less-developed areas. The premise that the complexity of nuclear power plants will somehow pose fewer risks lacks credibility. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/the-forgotten-legacy-of-the-banqiao-dam-collapse-7821 https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/the-forgotten-...

by spangry 10y ago

grzm 10y ago

Unless we develop viable (and affordable) grid-level battery technology Do you think grid-level energy storage needs to be batteries, as opposed to other forms? If so, why?

Crito 10y ago
There is only so much pumped hydro storage you can make...
- gnud 10y ago
  Pumped hydro seems simplest, and we often have the power plant already in place. But temperature differential storage, pressure differential storage, and creating hydrogen all seems to scale better to me.
  - rplst8 10y ago
    I've read some things about pumped hydro. The losses reduce efficiency and the amount of water you need to pump is pretty unbelievably large.
spangry 10y ago
Not at all, and sorry I guess I misspoke. Whatever works: pumping water up hill, spinning flywheels etc. all sound fine to me. It's simply a question of whether it meets current energy demand, environmental impact, and cost. Come to think of it, I've only ever looked at the per KW hour cost of batteries (lead-acid seems to be the clear winner). You wouldn't happen to have references for other energy storage methods?
- grzm 10y ago
  Other than Wikipedia, no; I was hoping you would. That's why I asked. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage I think it's an interesting field though.
  - spangry 10y ago
    Me too. I recently read about these hybrid battery-capacitor thingies that sounded pretty promising. I'll see if I can dig up the link. EDIT: here we go - http://www.nature.com/articles/srep04315 http://www.nature.com/articles/srep04315 . Lithium iron phosphate batteries (LiFePO). Although I'm assuming this particular combination doesn't provide favourable enough economics (or it would probably be a household name already), I can definitely see how this approach in general could. You could have the best of both worlds: cheap, but slow charge/discharge storage combined with the ability to very quickly scale up to meet peak daily demand for a limited (but sufficient) period of time.
  - nkurz 10y ago
    David Mackay's "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" has good numbers comparing many different forms of energy storage: http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/ http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/. It's a "hard-headed" engineering look at our energy options written by a physicist. It might be a bit outdated (published in 2008), but when it came out it was the best compendium I'd seen.
    - robryk 10y ago

Reason077 10y ago

and also the second safest form of power generation, according to the IPCC, over its entire life-cycle (from mining to waste disposal and remediation). Incidentally, hydro is the first. I'm surprised that hydro could be considered safer than nuclear. That seems incorrect based on past experience. Hydro dam failures have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths during the past 50 years or so. That's far more than Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters, even accounting for later deaths due to radiation-related diseases. The Banqiao Dam failure alone in 1973 killed 171,000 and displaced more than 11 million people.

dredmorbius 10y ago
I've studied and written on the Banquiao Dam Failure, (1975, by the way) several times. It's an interesting failure, particularly as compared with nuclear disasters. First and foremost, it was an administration, planning and design failure, compounded by weather, enineering, response, and other factors. The background was adminstrative pride, ignored engineering warnings, insufficient spillways, poor communications, and no disaster planning. The immediate trigger was an unprecedented "perfect storm" -- the collision of a tropical typhoon and a cold front -- unleashing 1,000+ mm of rain in 24 hours, completely overwhelming the dam. The area was densely populated, what communications there were were down on account of the storm, and rougly 20,000 people were killed in the immediate flooding. The remaining 100,000 deaths occurred due to disease and starvation in the area as a result of no effective disaster and recovery response. The most telling characteristics of Banqiao though are these: 1. Some 40 years after the incident, the region is not a nondiscretionary multi-centennary wildlife preserve and exclusion zone, but home to some 17 million inhabitants. That is, once a flood zone stops being a flood zone, it returns to its previous state relatively quickly. 2. Banqiao itself is far and away the most extreme accident of its type. There have been other major dam-related incidents, in India and Italy (Vajont Dam tsunami), but each was some two orders of magnitude lower in deaths than Banqiao. The common elements in virtually all dam disasters are 1) poor understanding of risks, 2) suppression of criticisms, and 3) poor or no warning systems. Keep in mind that dams are simple systems from an engineering standpoint: a large mass of material which regulates water flows. And yet these do fail with some regularity most especially in less-developed areas. The premise that the complexity of nuclear power plants will somehow pose fewer risks lacks credibility. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/the-forgotten-legacy-of-the-banqiao-dam-collapse-7821 https://www.internationalrivers.org/resources/the-forgotten-...