14 ms·

Wind and solar power are disrupting electricity systems

178 points by edward 10y ago

ansible 10y ago
Yes, which is why we need to (as a civilization) put more effort into grid-scale energy storage. My leading candidate for that is some kind of flow battery. There have recently been some announcements about a better and more stable electrolyte that is also non-toxic and non-corrosive. But as always, it might be five years (or never) before that gets commercialized.
- rpedela 10y ago
  Yeah a lithium-ion battery that doesn't catch fire and may be able to double energy density from PBS Nova [1] though I don't think the clip talks about energy density. 1. https://youtu.be/m9-cNNYb1Ik https://youtu.be/m9-cNNYb1Ik
- maxerickson 10y ago
  There's flow batteries being installed today: http://www.uetechnologies.com/18-news/articles/87-flow-battery-installed-in-washington http://www.uetechnologies.com/18-news/articles/87-flow-batte... 8 megawatt-hours is big enough that it will provide meaningful information about operating one on the grid. Tesla also has installed a megawatt hour scale system at a substation in California (using their lithium ion batteries).
- the8472 10y ago
  We'll need a lot more storage and overcapacity than people think. For example yesterday germany had a renewable fraction of around 50% throughout the whole day. Yay? Nope. During january there was a whole week where it was in the 0-10% range during the night and 5-20% during daytime. That means we don't just have to smooth out daily variability but on the span of multiple weeks. Of course that doesn't mean we need to store all of that in batteries or that we need to keep a whole shadow infrastructure of fossil/nuclear plants around. With enough overcapacity from renewables we could also produce hydrogen and store that for example and run it through fuel cells or gas plants when needed. But that still means that a bunch of smartmeters won't fix the issue, we'll need real infrastructure to handle that variability.
  - rb808 10y ago
    In reality it means Wind and Solar really aren't suitable yet to take a significant part of the power supply in Europe.
    - the8472 10y ago
      We need to get from A to B. In between there'll be a time where this variability needs considerable conventional backup. We're living in that time.
  - beat 10y ago
    It's not as bad as you think. The amount of storage capacity required is easily computed from known long-term weather patterns, and we can (and necessarily will) work toward it slowly. "More than people think"? Who cares what people think. It's still cheaper than fossil in the long run, and energy investment is long-term investment.
    - brandmeyer 10y ago
      I'm not convinced that it needs to be explicitly computed in a feedforward sense. If you just let the price float, then price will naturally form an error signal that the energy storage market (and customer demand) can respond to.
      - leereeves 10y ago
        Not many people will be happy "reducing customer demand" in the middle of the night in a bitter cold winter.
        mrfusion 10y ago
        But their automated thermostat won't mind!
        brandmeyer 10y ago
- knicholes 10y ago
  Ever since I've heard about it, I've been rooting for the liquid metal battery. http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112 http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112 Last I read they're working on issues with the high-temperature seals. It'd be awesome to have a big shipping container in my neighborhood that just stores all of our energy for use during peak/off hours.
- desireco42 10y ago
  I think it will be multiple things, that would slowly converge to one or two solutions. Already you can see that Tesla's power wall works really well. Then you have other technologies that would allow cities to store energy. I think we are slowly getting there.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Tesla is selling a lot more Powerpack (industrial or grid scale storage) than Powerwall (home storage.)
    - desireco42 10y ago
      I heard of single municipal installation. Powerwall will make a difference as it enables people to use energy and draw them at different times.
jlebrech 10y ago
what about a gravity battery? and it can serve as a space catapult sometimes too
- rusk 10y ago
  You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    It's not obvious how a "space catapult" could be built from that...
    - rusk 10y ago
      LOL I'm not sure it's obvious how a space-catapult could be built at all .. I'm pretty sure some Darwin nominee would have tried it by now if so /s Come to think of it - the "obvious" flaw to this whole scheme is the need to store enough energy gravitationally and then release it such that it projects something beyond earth's gravitational pull. Strikes me as a non-trivial engineering problem ...
      - Filligree 10y ago
        It's nontrivial, but eventually doable. We'll get there if we want to. No, the bigger problem is the atmosphere. It'll have to go.
      - jlebrech 10y ago
        no need for Darwin nominees, only send equipment via mass drivers.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Better title: "Green power subsidies are disruption the power economy". Subsidies are good for wind and solar, but corrosive to existing infrastructure, which are being squeezed to stay in business. Maybe some more measured plan would be good. Instead of blind enthusiasm.
- dmix 10y ago
  Only 45% of energy subsidies in the US are going to renewable energy (that was in 2013). Quite a bit go to fossil fuel and nuclear as well. Historically from 1950-2010 only 9% of subsidies have gone to renewable energy. Fossil fuel was heavily subsidized for decades with hundreds of billions of dollars. Now it's shifting more to green tech but it's still not the majority. The effects of past subsidies to fossil fuels can still be felt in the industry as mines and wells subsidized long ago are still operational. So renewable energy is not entirely unique in this aspect. But I agree the real costs of renewable energy are not always obvious given how much of the federal/state government's thumb is on the scale. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
  - spangry 10y ago
    Not trying to defend fossil fuels here, but I'd interpret that 2015 global fossil fuels subsidy figure ($5.3 trillion) with some caution. Looking at the paper, they're not really talking about direct subsidies. They're counting 'implicit subsidies' like "undercharging for global warming", "air pollution", "broader vehicle externalities" etc. These unpriced externalities make up at least 78% of the total estimated fossil fuel subsidy. This is a fair thing to do in theory, assuming the same approach is used when pricing other forms of energy generation. But deciding what is and is not an attributable externality is a bit subjective, and externalities themselves are notoriously difficult to quantify. All that aside, even if global warming somehow didn't exist, it still makes a lot of sense to phase out coal power generation, as it causes around one million deaths per year (mostly from air pollution).
    - dmix 10y ago
jartelt 10y ago
I can't help but believe that we would be better off (at least in the US) if utilities had embraced renewables 10 years ago. Rather than fight solar and wind, utilities could have played the role of solar installer/integrator and could have encouraged renewable installation and made appropriate investments in infrastructure to support their variability. Instead, many US utilities chose to fight back against renewables slow their adoption. Now the utilities complain that the grid cannot handle the variability and complain that their job of balancing the grid is getting harder. It's just unfortunate that many public utilities in the US chose to fight innovation rather using the benefits of their monopoly to embrace the change and try to profit from it and provide better service.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  > appropriate investments in infrastructure to support their variability Erm, why didn't you make appropriate investments in infrastructure? Because it cost money. Why should you expect someone else to make an unprofitable venture if you yourself were unwilling to do so? In any case, the variability in solar and wind is known. To keep the same level of electrical service will require a HUGE increase in energy storage. The thing about coal / gas / even nuclear to some degree... you can "turn it off" if there's too much power being pumped into the grid... and you can "turn it back on" if there isn't enough power. That's why natural gas "Peaker Plants" continue to be built, despite the fact that they're much more expensive than Solar or Wind. The enemy of "Peaker Plants" is cheap energy storage. Coal and Nuclear power is more efficient if you just keep it on 100% of the time and then store the energy anyway. And believe me, utility companies HAVE been building cheap energy storage. They're called Pumped Hydro for the most part. Other solutions for cheap energy storage simply didn't exist until recently. Lithium Batteries are expensive and don't provide much storage believe it or not... not on the Gigawatt scale needed to last more than a few minutes. We will likely continue to use "Peaker plants" for the near term, at least until the energy storage issue is solved with something much much cheaper.
  - jartelt 10y ago
    Why didn't I make the investment? Because I am a private citizen and not a public utility... Utilities are able to rate base their investment and get a guaranteed rate of return on the investments they make. This rate base system is part of the reason why they often make costly and unnecessary investments in >$1B nuclear plants or expensive substations rather than in cheap energy efficiency measures or distributed solar. We have the technology to help mitigate renewable variability and could deploy it if we wanted to. Utilities just chose to drag their feet and not invest heavily in deploying those solutions because the wanted to keep building the same stuff they always build and get the ROI.
choward 10y ago
Sorry for being that guy, but I'm getting really sick of the word "disrupt".
- simplemath 10y ago
  "JOIN US AT SOLAR.IO AND RUTHLESSLY DISRUPT THE ENERGY GRID"
- pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
  It’s a red flag. It’s useful.
  - choward 10y ago
    Good point.
scblock 10y ago
This is not a US focused article, but I want to provide some clarifications specific to the US: While the incremental operating cost of wind and solar plants (and the related staffing levels for a given plant size) are much lower than conventional thermal plants because of no fuel cost, they are far from zero or "free". This is a misconception that ignores the need for staffing and maintenance services. Over the 20 year design life of a typical wind plant, for example, operating costs are expected to roughly equal the initial investment in total. Additionally, the subsidies most used in the US for wind and solar development are the Production and Investment Tax Credits (PTC and ITC). Tax credits for new projects will be phased out completely in the next approximately 5-7 years (the phase out plan is of fixed duration, but the tax accounting rules allow projects to claim credits ahead of project completion as long as certain conditions are met, such as start of construction of outlay of sufficient capital to show commitment to project completion). The US renewable industry does not have a general expectation of tax subsidy renewal, and developers, utilities, and suppliers are all looking to be able to build economic projects without tax incentives. The reality is that costs have come down and performance has increased to the point where these renewable resources are largely able to compete with conventional generation on price already. Also, the need for transmission line development is apparent, but it's mostly about bringing transmission to the resources rather than needing to rebuild existing lines. That means large scale transmission projects to connect low population areas with high wind and solar resource to population centers. Existing lines and substations do often need upgrades to accommodate new generation, but those are determined based on study and the costs are often (though not always) borne by the project or group of projects requiring the upgrades. As others have highlighted, large scale energy storage technology is going to be key to reducing the need for peaking power plants to cover load gaps related to these intermittent resources. Editorially: We are fools if we think we can keep burning things we dig out of the ground forever. The solar energy needed to power our lives is already here, and it's on us to learn to harvest and use it effectively. And by all means continue to work on clean nuclear power but at the moment it is not cost competitive.
- reacweb 10y ago
  IMHO, we should have increase nuclear power 20 years ago to avoid the current carbon pollution. Now, it is too late for nuclear. The future is solar power and it is quickly coming. The amount of available solar energy is enormous. In a further future, we may also have solar plants in orbit that would reduce weather problems.
afpx 10y ago
If you all are interested in the 'deregulated' energy markets in the US, you may want to check out PJM. Via PJM (and similar regional transmission organizations), you can trade energy and even hook in your own generators and storage. Interestingly, renewables still comprise a tiny fraction of generation. I'm not sure if this is because of regulatory requirements, lack of reliable storage, or because of cost (nuclear and fossils are pretty cheap and reliable producers). Generally, in the US, distribution companies (i.e. electric utilities) purchase energy from the transmission companies. Many don't generate electricity themselves. Actually, most distribution companies are co-ops. There are still regulation via FERC, and they stay active because of high-impact capacity transmission failures in the past. But, it's all cool stuff. And, for those interested in machine learning, you can download a lot (or all) of the data and make a lot of money (I used to work in a pseudo-quant like capacity in that space). http://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx http://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-energy/capacity-markets.aspx https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-en... http://pjm.com/markets-and-operations/energy/real-time/historical-bid-data/unit-bid.aspx http://pjm.com/markets-and-operations/energy/real-time/histo...
- spangry 10y ago
  That sounds very cool. I noticed a while ago that there are a lot of python libraries specifically for electrical grid simulation. Now I know why :) It's quite fortunate your electricity markets aren't vertically integrated monopolies (and the more monopolistic part i.e. transmission, is run by co-ops). Over here in Oz, on the other hand, our dickhead politicians are trying their hardest to sell off anything that isn't nailed down.
- potluckyears 10y ago
  Distribution companies don't purchase energy from transmission companies. You were probably thinking of Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), which are not the same thing as transmission companies. That said, it's not accurate to say that distribution companies purchase energy from RTOs either. RTOs (and ISOs, which are similar) are non-profit organizations that ensure transmission grid reliability and fairness by operating markets in which generators and distribution companies bid or buy energy [1]. The market mechanisms have been designed to also incorporates network balancing and congestion control. RTOs/ISOs are the benevolent, omniscient regional gods in charge of coordinating dispatch for the purposes of ensuring transmission grid reliability. They facilitate sales, they don't sell directly. Transmission companies, on the other hand, are for-profit organizations that build and maintain transmission lines. Their profits are constrained by regulation to be a certain percent return on equity [2], and they need to get permission from the RTO/ISO that monitors their region before making any operational changes to their transmission lines. One more difference is in their scale. There are only ten RTOs/ISOs in North America, and they tend to cover very large regions of the continent. There are many transmission companies, and they tend to cover smaller regions. For example, where I live in Southeast Michigan, the RTO/ISO is the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), and the transmission company is ITC [3], a spin-off from DTE Energy after deregulation forced DTE to pick two from their generation, transmission, and distribution capabilities (they kept generation and distribution, because post-deregulation that's where the money is). However, MISO's entire coverage area includes 52 transmission companies [4]. Basically, under deregulated energy markets transmission is treated as a public utility and the transmission grid is treated as common infrastructure. The grid is operated by non-profits and private companies who are required to be financially independent from generation and distribution interests. That's why the notion that distribution companies buy energy from transmission companies gives the wrong impression of how the system works, though I can see where the confusion could come from. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_transmission_organization_(North_America) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_transmission_organiza... [2] http://archive.jsonline.com/business/lower-profit-recommended-for-atc-other-midwest-power-line-utilities-b99759525z1-386317671.html http://archive.jsonline.com/business/lower-profit-recommende... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Transmission [4] https://www.misoenergy.org/StakeholderCenter/Members/Pages/MembershipList.aspx https://www.misoenergy.org/StakeholderCenter/Members/Pages/M...
booleanbetrayal 10y ago
I think the more interesting story regarding disruption is the story about how dominant energy players will no longer be able to influence foreign affairs due to their net exporter status. If you are looking to de-hinge yourself from overbearing geopolitical influences, standalone energy production is incredibly appealing.
rodionos 10y ago
Wind energy production is remarkably volatile throughout the year, especially if wind farms are co-located in the same pathways as is the case in Denmark. https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/06c5e0b2/2/#fullscreen https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/06c5e0b2/2/#fullscreen The difference between min and max production for wind is over 100x throughout the year and inter-quartile range is 14 and 52GWh per day. So you can't really rely on renewables in this type of configuration just yet. Until storage 'problem' is addressed, possible solutions are: 1. Maintain traditional power sources as baseline providers. The problem is figuring out what is the right baseline. 2. Have interconnects with suppliers of non-correlated sources such as Norway's hydropower plants. 3. Built out nuclear.
philipkglass 10y ago
The rise of renewables at the expense of fossil is also a tale of technological unemployment across mining, power, and even transportation sectors. Coal plants, particularly the older ones most at risk of closure in the US, require significantly more labor per MWh generated than cleaner sources. Here's a recently announced coal plant closure: http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161001/News05/161009993/0/FRONTPAGE/Coal-fired-plant%E2%80%99s-closing-sends-shockwaves-in-Nucla http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161001/News05/1610099... ... the local job options could be pretty limited in far-western Montrose County once two of its major employers close their doors, eliminating what are currently 55 jobs at the plant and 28 at the mine. ... According to the EIA, the Nucla plant generated 416,150 MWh in 2015 for an average annual power of 47.5 megawatts: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/527 http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/527 That's an abysmal productivity per employee (or a fabulous job source, depending on your perspective): 0.86 real annualized megawatts per employee at the plant ; 0.57 megawatts per employee if you include the mining jobs. A well-sited utility scale solar farm like Desert Sunlight can produce an average annualized power of 147 megawatts with just 15 full time employees, for a ratio of 9.8 megawatts per plant employee. The construction of renewable energy systems still consumes fossil fuels as inputs to manufacturing concrete, glass, metals, plastics, and silicon. Construction machinery likewise still runs on fossils. But the lifetime-amortized dependence on extractive industries for a MWh of renewable energy is much lower than for fossil energy. --- In the recent past, coal made up 30% of all dry bulk shipping: http://marketrealist.com/2014/01/key-players-involved-global-seaborne-coal-trade/ http://marketrealist.com/2014/01/key-players-involved-global... In the USA, coal is the single greatest railroad transport category by tonnage. From 2008-2012, when volumes were considerably higher, coal was an even greater #1 by tonnage and was also the #1 source of railroad revenue: https://www.aar.org/BackgroundPapers/Railroads%20and%20Coal.pdf https://www.aar.org/BackgroundPapers/Railroads%20and%20Coal.... There's no commodity that has enough volume to make up for the decline of coal transportation. There's going to be "stranded assets" left in railroads and shipping along with fossil extraction. And, coming with the rise of electric vehicles, trucking jobs on the chopping block too. Hazmat certified tanker truck drivers -- the ones who drive tankers carrying flammable fluids -- are highly paid, well above trucking jobs in general: http://www.truckdriverssalary.com/tanker-trucking-salary/ http://www.truckdriverssalary.com/tanker-trucking-salary/ https://qz.com/24388/how-to-earn-170000-a-year-driving-a-truck-warning-its-messy/ https://qz.com/24388/how-to-earn-170000-a-year-driving-a-tru... Their ranks will dwindle if/when electric vehicles suppress demand for refueling with fluid fuels. Even if self-driving trucks never pan out.
iamed2 10y ago
The last paragraph says: > The bigger task is to redesign power markets to reflect the new need for flexible supply and demand. They should adjust prices more frequently, to reflect the fluctuations of the weather. At times of extreme scarcity, a high fixed price could kick in to prevent blackouts. Markets should reward those willing to use less electricity to balance the grid, just as they reward those who generate more of it. Bills could be structured to be higher or lower depending how strongly a customer wanted guaranteed power all the time—a bit like an insurance policy. Most electricity in the US is distributed across wholesale electricity markets with nodal pricing, which have all of these mechanisms where distributors/utilities are the customers. The author appears to suggest moving pricing out to end users, which is possible even just on the utilities side, without having to restructure power markets. Restructuring power markets to take into account individual end user behaviour rather than aggregate demand would be a gargantuan effort--right now the California Independent System Operator's (CAISO) optimization process takes into account a few thousand nodal prices, and there are tens of millions of households in California. Having utilities introduce demand response and smart metering to approximate their costs would be a much simpler implementation. It is possible (after clearing many hurdles) to participate in the electricity markets in order to identify inefficiencies around renewables and incentivize their use by providing better price signals to planning markets, but this is very challenging and most utilities and power trading groups/companies are not interested in that angle. It is, however, one of the things we're doing at Invenia ( https://invenia.ca/ https://invenia.ca/).
- hobolord 10y ago
  I think the author is suggesting to give the end user the option to turn on/off power in an attempt to do peak shaving. If spot prices are predicted to go up at a certain time due to grid constraints, then you can inform the user and if they want, they can turn off their air conditioning/washer/pool heater, etc. There would also be the monetary incentive, saving money since the prices are high. https://www.bidgely.com/ https://www.bidgely.com/ offers something similar to that, but I'm not totally sure. This also depends on the pricing models allowed within the retailing side.
deleted 10y ago
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wbillingsley 10y ago
It strikes me that this is very similar to the NBN (broadband network) problem. There is a widely deployed network of old technology that is no longer worth investing in (copper in the NBN case / coal plants) and newer technology (solar + storage) that is still a little pricey (storage) and not widely enough deployed. Which means you need to manage a transition so it's not too painful. A first random guess - One way might be to allow a few coal plants to go bust, and enact "load shedding" (turning off areas of the grid during times of low demand). Within a year or so, enough places will have batteries that you're load shedding less often. If the government purchases the coal plants when they go bust (at a steep discount), they can then stagger the shutdowns enough that load-shedding is controlled. But it doesn't seem sensible to force it to be economic to run the coal plant full-time. Surely that just drags out the transition, and suppresses the demand for storage that we're hoping will be the solution?
corradio 10y ago
The easiest fix to the intermittency problem is to use electricity when renewables produce [1]. That would reduce the need for batteries in the beginning. [1] http://www.co2signal.com http://www.co2signal.com
dimitar 10y ago
So this magazine offers the idea of removing fixed pricing for electricity, but is electricity demand that elastic? Perhaps in some markets, so this might be a good option; but should not be made mandatory. A lot of electricity demand is formed by weather which makes it inelastic in the short-run - you will still pay your bill if you are cold regardless of today's price. In the longer run (next season), you'll just make people give up using electric heating - for natural gas, wood and coal, depending on the region. Consider another policy - a carbon tax, which is a very popular tool among economists or the similar fuel excise taxes. They will lower profits for plants that solve the intermittency issue with fossil fuels, creating an advantage for energy storage. To keep power flowing, the system relies on conventional power plants, such as coal, gas or nuclear, to kick in when renewables falter. this is also partially incorrect - nuclear power plants usually are used to generate a fixed amount of electricity, only France I think which is a primarily nuclear in energy generation does it. In fact hydro-electric plants are commonly used for power balancing, with natural gas power plants in second place.

178 points by edward 10y ago

Yes, which is why we need to (as a civilization) put more effort into grid-scale energy storage. My leading candidate for that is some kind of flow battery. There have recently been some announcements about a better and more stable electrolyte that is also non-toxic and non-corrosive. But as always, it might be five years (or never) before that gets commercialized.

rpedela 10y ago
Yeah a lithium-ion battery that doesn't catch fire and may be able to double energy density from PBS Nova [1] though I don't think the clip talks about energy density. 1. https://youtu.be/m9-cNNYb1Ik https://youtu.be/m9-cNNYb1Ik
maxerickson 10y ago
There's flow batteries being installed today: http://www.uetechnologies.com/18-news/articles/87-flow-battery-installed-in-washington http://www.uetechnologies.com/18-news/articles/87-flow-batte... 8 megawatt-hours is big enough that it will provide meaningful information about operating one on the grid. Tesla also has installed a megawatt hour scale system at a substation in California (using their lithium ion batteries).
the8472 10y ago
We'll need a lot more storage and overcapacity than people think. For example yesterday germany had a renewable fraction of around 50% throughout the whole day. Yay? Nope. During january there was a whole week where it was in the 0-10% range during the night and 5-20% during daytime. That means we don't just have to smooth out daily variability but on the span of multiple weeks. Of course that doesn't mean we need to store all of that in batteries or that we need to keep a whole shadow infrastructure of fossil/nuclear plants around. With enough overcapacity from renewables we could also produce hydrogen and store that for example and run it through fuel cells or gas plants when needed. But that still means that a bunch of smartmeters won't fix the issue, we'll need real infrastructure to handle that variability.
- rb808 10y ago
  In reality it means Wind and Solar really aren't suitable yet to take a significant part of the power supply in Europe.
  - the8472 10y ago
    We need to get from A to B. In between there'll be a time where this variability needs considerable conventional backup. We're living in that time.
- beat 10y ago
  It's not as bad as you think. The amount of storage capacity required is easily computed from known long-term weather patterns, and we can (and necessarily will) work toward it slowly. "More than people think"? Who cares what people think. It's still cheaper than fossil in the long run, and energy investment is long-term investment.
  - brandmeyer 10y ago
    I'm not convinced that it needs to be explicitly computed in a feedforward sense. If you just let the price float, then price will naturally form an error signal that the energy storage market (and customer demand) can respond to.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      Not many people will be happy "reducing customer demand" in the middle of the night in a bitter cold winter.
      - mrfusion 10y ago
        But their automated thermostat won't mind!
        brandmeyer 10y ago
knicholes 10y ago
Ever since I've heard about it, I've been rooting for the liquid metal battery. http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112 http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112 Last I read they're working on issues with the high-temperature seals. It'd be awesome to have a big shipping container in my neighborhood that just stores all of our energy for use during peak/off hours.
desireco42 10y ago
I think it will be multiple things, that would slowly converge to one or two solutions. Already you can see that Tesla's power wall works really well. Then you have other technologies that would allow cities to store energy. I think we are slowly getting there.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Tesla is selling a lot more Powerpack (industrial or grid scale storage) than Powerwall (home storage.)
  - desireco42 10y ago
    I heard of single municipal installation. Powerwall will make a difference as it enables people to use energy and draw them at different times.

jlebrech 10y ago

what about a gravity battery? and it can serve as a space catapult sometimes too

rusk 10y ago
You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
- jessaustin 10y ago
  It's not obvious how a "space catapult" could be built from that...
  - rusk 10y ago
    LOL I'm not sure it's obvious how a space-catapult could be built at all .. I'm pretty sure some Darwin nominee would have tried it by now if so /s Come to think of it - the "obvious" flaw to this whole scheme is the need to store enough energy gravitationally and then release it such that it projects something beyond earth's gravitational pull. Strikes me as a non-trivial engineering problem ...
    - Filligree 10y ago
      It's nontrivial, but eventually doable. We'll get there if we want to. No, the bigger problem is the atmosphere. It'll have to go.
    - jlebrech 10y ago
      no need for Darwin nominees, only send equipment via mass drivers.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Better title: "Green power subsidies are disruption the power economy". Subsidies are good for wind and solar, but corrosive to existing infrastructure, which are being squeezed to stay in business. Maybe some more measured plan would be good. Instead of blind enthusiasm.

dmix 10y ago
Only 45% of energy subsidies in the US are going to renewable energy (that was in 2013). Quite a bit go to fossil fuel and nuclear as well. Historically from 1950-2010 only 9% of subsidies have gone to renewable energy. Fossil fuel was heavily subsidized for decades with hundreds of billions of dollars. Now it's shifting more to green tech but it's still not the majority. The effects of past subsidies to fossil fuels can still be felt in the industry as mines and wells subsidized long ago are still operational. So renewable energy is not entirely unique in this aspect. But I agree the real costs of renewable energy are not always obvious given how much of the federal/state government's thumb is on the scale. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
- spangry 10y ago
  Not trying to defend fossil fuels here, but I'd interpret that 2015 global fossil fuels subsidy figure ($5.3 trillion) with some caution. Looking at the paper, they're not really talking about direct subsidies. They're counting 'implicit subsidies' like "undercharging for global warming", "air pollution", "broader vehicle externalities" etc. These unpriced externalities make up at least 78% of the total estimated fossil fuel subsidy. This is a fair thing to do in theory, assuming the same approach is used when pricing other forms of energy generation. But deciding what is and is not an attributable externality is a bit subjective, and externalities themselves are notoriously difficult to quantify. All that aside, even if global warming somehow didn't exist, it still makes a lot of sense to phase out coal power generation, as it causes around one million deaths per year (mostly from air pollution).
  - dmix 10y ago

jartelt 10y ago

I can't help but believe that we would be better off (at least in the US) if utilities had embraced renewables 10 years ago. Rather than fight solar and wind, utilities could have played the role of solar installer/integrator and could have encouraged renewable installation and made appropriate investments in infrastructure to support their variability. Instead, many US utilities chose to fight back against renewables slow their adoption. Now the utilities complain that the grid cannot handle the variability and complain that their job of balancing the grid is getting harder. It's just unfortunate that many public utilities in the US chose to fight innovation rather using the benefits of their monopoly to embrace the change and try to profit from it and provide better service.

dragontamer 10y ago
> appropriate investments in infrastructure to support their variability Erm, why didn't you make appropriate investments in infrastructure? Because it cost money. Why should you expect someone else to make an unprofitable venture if you yourself were unwilling to do so? In any case, the variability in solar and wind is known. To keep the same level of electrical service will require a HUGE increase in energy storage. The thing about coal / gas / even nuclear to some degree... you can "turn it off" if there's too much power being pumped into the grid... and you can "turn it back on" if there isn't enough power. That's why natural gas "Peaker Plants" continue to be built, despite the fact that they're much more expensive than Solar or Wind. The enemy of "Peaker Plants" is cheap energy storage. Coal and Nuclear power is more efficient if you just keep it on 100% of the time and then store the energy anyway. And believe me, utility companies HAVE been building cheap energy storage. They're called Pumped Hydro for the most part. Other solutions for cheap energy storage simply didn't exist until recently. Lithium Batteries are expensive and don't provide much storage believe it or not... not on the Gigawatt scale needed to last more than a few minutes. We will likely continue to use "Peaker plants" for the near term, at least until the energy storage issue is solved with something much much cheaper.
- jartelt 10y ago
  Why didn't I make the investment? Because I am a private citizen and not a public utility... Utilities are able to rate base their investment and get a guaranteed rate of return on the investments they make. This rate base system is part of the reason why they often make costly and unnecessary investments in >$1B nuclear plants or expensive substations rather than in cheap energy efficiency measures or distributed solar. We have the technology to help mitigate renewable variability and could deploy it if we wanted to. Utilities just chose to drag their feet and not invest heavily in deploying those solutions because the wanted to keep building the same stuff they always build and get the ROI.

choward 10y ago

Sorry for being that guy, but I'm getting really sick of the word "disrupt".

simplemath 10y ago
"JOIN US AT SOLAR.IO AND RUTHLESSLY DISRUPT THE ENERGY GRID"
pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
It’s a red flag. It’s useful.
- choward 10y ago
  Good point.

scblock 10y ago

This is not a US focused article, but I want to provide some clarifications specific to the US: While the incremental operating cost of wind and solar plants (and the related staffing levels for a given plant size) are much lower than conventional thermal plants because of no fuel cost, they are far from zero or "free". This is a misconception that ignores the need for staffing and maintenance services. Over the 20 year design life of a typical wind plant, for example, operating costs are expected to roughly equal the initial investment in total. Additionally, the subsidies most used in the US for wind and solar development are the Production and Investment Tax Credits (PTC and ITC). Tax credits for new projects will be phased out completely in the next approximately 5-7 years (the phase out plan is of fixed duration, but the tax accounting rules allow projects to claim credits ahead of project completion as long as certain conditions are met, such as start of construction of outlay of sufficient capital to show commitment to project completion). The US renewable industry does not have a general expectation of tax subsidy renewal, and developers, utilities, and suppliers are all looking to be able to build economic projects without tax incentives. The reality is that costs have come down and performance has increased to the point where these renewable resources are largely able to compete with conventional generation on price already. Also, the need for transmission line development is apparent, but it's mostly about bringing transmission to the resources rather than needing to rebuild existing lines. That means large scale transmission projects to connect low population areas with high wind and solar resource to population centers. Existing lines and substations do often need upgrades to accommodate new generation, but those are determined based on study and the costs are often (though not always) borne by the project or group of projects requiring the upgrades. As others have highlighted, large scale energy storage technology is going to be key to reducing the need for peaking power plants to cover load gaps related to these intermittent resources. Editorially: We are fools if we think we can keep burning things we dig out of the ground forever. The solar energy needed to power our lives is already here, and it's on us to learn to harvest and use it effectively. And by all means continue to work on clean nuclear power but at the moment it is not cost competitive.

reacweb 10y ago
IMHO, we should have increase nuclear power 20 years ago to avoid the current carbon pollution. Now, it is too late for nuclear. The future is solar power and it is quickly coming. The amount of available solar energy is enormous. In a further future, we may also have solar plants in orbit that would reduce weather problems.

afpx 10y ago

If you all are interested in the 'deregulated' energy markets in the US, you may want to check out PJM. Via PJM (and similar regional transmission organizations), you can trade energy and even hook in your own generators and storage. Interestingly, renewables still comprise a tiny fraction of generation. I'm not sure if this is because of regulatory requirements, lack of reliable storage, or because of cost (nuclear and fossils are pretty cheap and reliable producers). Generally, in the US, distribution companies (i.e. electric utilities) purchase energy from the transmission companies. Many don't generate electricity themselves. Actually, most distribution companies are co-ops. There are still regulation via FERC, and they stay active because of high-impact capacity transmission failures in the past. But, it's all cool stuff. And, for those interested in machine learning, you can download a lot (or all) of the data and make a lot of money (I used to work in a pseudo-quant like capacity in that space). http://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx http://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-energy/capacity-markets.aspx https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/buying-and-selling-en... http://pjm.com/markets-and-operations/energy/real-time/historical-bid-data/unit-bid.aspx http://pjm.com/markets-and-operations/energy/real-time/histo...

spangry 10y ago
That sounds very cool. I noticed a while ago that there are a lot of python libraries specifically for electrical grid simulation. Now I know why :) It's quite fortunate your electricity markets aren't vertically integrated monopolies (and the more monopolistic part i.e. transmission, is run by co-ops). Over here in Oz, on the other hand, our dickhead politicians are trying their hardest to sell off anything that isn't nailed down.
potluckyears 10y ago
Distribution companies don't purchase energy from transmission companies. You were probably thinking of Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), which are not the same thing as transmission companies. That said, it's not accurate to say that distribution companies purchase energy from RTOs either. RTOs (and ISOs, which are similar) are non-profit organizations that ensure transmission grid reliability and fairness by operating markets in which generators and distribution companies bid or buy energy [1]. The market mechanisms have been designed to also incorporates network balancing and congestion control. RTOs/ISOs are the benevolent, omniscient regional gods in charge of coordinating dispatch for the purposes of ensuring transmission grid reliability. They facilitate sales, they don't sell directly. Transmission companies, on the other hand, are for-profit organizations that build and maintain transmission lines. Their profits are constrained by regulation to be a certain percent return on equity [2], and they need to get permission from the RTO/ISO that monitors their region before making any operational changes to their transmission lines. One more difference is in their scale. There are only ten RTOs/ISOs in North America, and they tend to cover very large regions of the continent. There are many transmission companies, and they tend to cover smaller regions. For example, where I live in Southeast Michigan, the RTO/ISO is the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), and the transmission company is ITC [3], a spin-off from DTE Energy after deregulation forced DTE to pick two from their generation, transmission, and distribution capabilities (they kept generation and distribution, because post-deregulation that's where the money is). However, MISO's entire coverage area includes 52 transmission companies [4]. Basically, under deregulated energy markets transmission is treated as a public utility and the transmission grid is treated as common infrastructure. The grid is operated by non-profits and private companies who are required to be financially independent from generation and distribution interests. That's why the notion that distribution companies buy energy from transmission companies gives the wrong impression of how the system works, though I can see where the confusion could come from. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_transmission_organization_(North_America) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_transmission_organiza... [2] http://archive.jsonline.com/business/lower-profit-recommended-for-atc-other-midwest-power-line-utilities-b99759525z1-386317671.html http://archive.jsonline.com/business/lower-profit-recommende... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Transmission [4] https://www.misoenergy.org/StakeholderCenter/Members/Pages/MembershipList.aspx https://www.misoenergy.org/StakeholderCenter/Members/Pages/M...

booleanbetrayal 10y ago

I think the more interesting story regarding disruption is the story about how dominant energy players will no longer be able to influence foreign affairs due to their net exporter status. If you are looking to de-hinge yourself from overbearing geopolitical influences, standalone energy production is incredibly appealing.

rodionos 10y ago

Wind energy production is remarkably volatile throughout the year, especially if wind farms are co-located in the same pathways as is the case in Denmark. https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/06c5e0b2/2/#fullscreen https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/06c5e0b2/2/#fullscreen The difference between min and max production for wind is over 100x throughout the year and inter-quartile range is 14 and 52GWh per day. So you can't really rely on renewables in this type of configuration just yet. Until storage 'problem' is addressed, possible solutions are: 1. Maintain traditional power sources as baseline providers. The problem is figuring out what is the right baseline. 2. Have interconnects with suppliers of non-correlated sources such as Norway's hydropower plants. 3. Built out nuclear.

philipkglass 10y ago

The rise of renewables at the expense of fossil is also a tale of technological unemployment across mining, power, and even transportation sectors. Coal plants, particularly the older ones most at risk of closure in the US, require significantly more labor per MWh generated than cleaner sources. Here's a recently announced coal plant closure: http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161001/News05/161009993/0/FRONTPAGE/Coal-fired-plant%E2%80%99s-closing-sends-shockwaves-in-Nucla http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161001/News05/1610099... ... the local job options could be pretty limited in far-western Montrose County once two of its major employers close their doors, eliminating what are currently 55 jobs at the plant and 28 at the mine. ... According to the EIA, the Nucla plant generated 416,150 MWh in 2015 for an average annual power of 47.5 megawatts: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/527 http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/527 That's an abysmal productivity per employee (or a fabulous job source, depending on your perspective): 0.86 real annualized megawatts per employee at the plant ; 0.57 megawatts per employee if you include the mining jobs. A well-sited utility scale solar farm like Desert Sunlight can produce an average annualized power of 147 megawatts with just 15 full time employees, for a ratio of 9.8 megawatts per plant employee. The construction of renewable energy systems still consumes fossil fuels as inputs to manufacturing concrete, glass, metals, plastics, and silicon. Construction machinery likewise still runs on fossils. But the lifetime-amortized dependence on extractive industries for a MWh of renewable energy is much lower than for fossil energy. --- In the recent past, coal made up 30% of all dry bulk shipping: http://marketrealist.com/2014/01/key-players-involved-global-seaborne-coal-trade/ http://marketrealist.com/2014/01/key-players-involved-global... In the USA, coal is the single greatest railroad transport category by tonnage. From 2008-2012, when volumes were considerably higher, coal was an even greater #1 by tonnage and was also the #1 source of railroad revenue: https://www.aar.org/BackgroundPapers/Railroads%20and%20Coal.pdf https://www.aar.org/BackgroundPapers/Railroads%20and%20Coal.... There's no commodity that has enough volume to make up for the decline of coal transportation. There's going to be "stranded assets" left in railroads and shipping along with fossil extraction. And, coming with the rise of electric vehicles, trucking jobs on the chopping block too. Hazmat certified tanker truck drivers -- the ones who drive tankers carrying flammable fluids -- are highly paid, well above trucking jobs in general: http://www.truckdriverssalary.com/tanker-trucking-salary/ http://www.truckdriverssalary.com/tanker-trucking-salary/ https://qz.com/24388/how-to-earn-170000-a-year-driving-a-truck-warning-its-messy/ https://qz.com/24388/how-to-earn-170000-a-year-driving-a-tru... Their ranks will dwindle if/when electric vehicles suppress demand for refueling with fluid fuels. Even if self-driving trucks never pan out.

iamed2 10y ago

The last paragraph says: > The bigger task is to redesign power markets to reflect the new need for flexible supply and demand. They should adjust prices more frequently, to reflect the fluctuations of the weather. At times of extreme scarcity, a high fixed price could kick in to prevent blackouts. Markets should reward those willing to use less electricity to balance the grid, just as they reward those who generate more of it. Bills could be structured to be higher or lower depending how strongly a customer wanted guaranteed power all the time—a bit like an insurance policy. Most electricity in the US is distributed across wholesale electricity markets with nodal pricing, which have all of these mechanisms where distributors/utilities are the customers. The author appears to suggest moving pricing out to end users, which is possible even just on the utilities side, without having to restructure power markets. Restructuring power markets to take into account individual end user behaviour rather than aggregate demand would be a gargantuan effort--right now the California Independent System Operator's (CAISO) optimization process takes into account a few thousand nodal prices, and there are tens of millions of households in California. Having utilities introduce demand response and smart metering to approximate their costs would be a much simpler implementation. It is possible (after clearing many hurdles) to participate in the electricity markets in order to identify inefficiencies around renewables and incentivize their use by providing better price signals to planning markets, but this is very challenging and most utilities and power trading groups/companies are not interested in that angle. It is, however, one of the things we're doing at Invenia ( https://invenia.ca/ https://invenia.ca/).

hobolord 10y ago
I think the author is suggesting to give the end user the option to turn on/off power in an attempt to do peak shaving. If spot prices are predicted to go up at a certain time due to grid constraints, then you can inform the user and if they want, they can turn off their air conditioning/washer/pool heater, etc. There would also be the monetary incentive, saving money since the prices are high. https://www.bidgely.com/ https://www.bidgely.com/ offers something similar to that, but I'm not totally sure. This also depends on the pricing models allowed within the retailing side.

deleted 10y ago

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wbillingsley 10y ago

It strikes me that this is very similar to the NBN (broadband network) problem. There is a widely deployed network of old technology that is no longer worth investing in (copper in the NBN case / coal plants) and newer technology (solar + storage) that is still a little pricey (storage) and not widely enough deployed. Which means you need to manage a transition so it's not too painful. A first random guess - One way might be to allow a few coal plants to go bust, and enact "load shedding" (turning off areas of the grid during times of low demand). Within a year or so, enough places will have batteries that you're load shedding less often. If the government purchases the coal plants when they go bust (at a steep discount), they can then stagger the shutdowns enough that load-shedding is controlled. But it doesn't seem sensible to force it to be economic to run the coal plant full-time. Surely that just drags out the transition, and suppresses the demand for storage that we're hoping will be the solution?

corradio 10y ago

The easiest fix to the intermittency problem is to use electricity when renewables produce [1]. That would reduce the need for batteries in the beginning. [1] http://www.co2signal.com http://www.co2signal.com

dimitar 10y ago

So this magazine offers the idea of removing fixed pricing for electricity, but is electricity demand that elastic? Perhaps in some markets, so this might be a good option; but should not be made mandatory. A lot of electricity demand is formed by weather which makes it inelastic in the short-run - you will still pay your bill if you are cold regardless of today's price. In the longer run (next season), you'll just make people give up using electric heating - for natural gas, wood and coal, depending on the region. Consider another policy - a carbon tax, which is a very popular tool among economists or the similar fuel excise taxes. They will lower profits for plants that solve the intermittency issue with fossil fuels, creating an advantage for energy storage. To keep power flowing, the system relies on conventional power plants, such as coal, gas or nuclear, to kick in when renewables falter. this is also partially incorrect - nuclear power plants usually are used to generate a fixed amount of electricity, only France I think which is a primarily nuclear in energy generation does it. In fact hydro-electric plants are commonly used for power balancing, with natural gas power plants in second place.