10 ms·

Cost goals met, the DoE is moving on to address grid reliability in solar

166 points by vasili111 9y ago

tryingagainbro 9y ago
This might actually work. A lot of of the dirty work can be done in places with solar /wind power and during the peak energy producing times. Like for aluminum smelting which apparently needs ~10x the energy that steel needs https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-aluminium-7245 https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-aluminium-7245
- codecamper 9y ago
  That might be a good use of solar actually. Smelt the aluminum right at the site, which might have poor grid connectivity. Generate your own power ultra cheap & use it directly for smelting. Save on raw material transport costs. It would be interesting to see a cost / benefit analysis here.
  - mercutio2 9y ago
    Efficient aluminum smelting requires reliable, continuous power for weeks at a time. Photovoltaics are cheap, but the diurnal variation makes them singularly inappropriate for aluminum smelting.
    - SEJeff 9y ago
      And could the economics eventually work of photovoltiacs + battery storage ala a tesla powerpack?
    - codecamper 9y ago
      Why does it need to be continuous?
      - mercutio2 9y ago
        In a nutshell, allowing the aluminum to solidify gums the batch process up catastrophically. Friends who used to work at aluminum plants were surprisingly happy when the plant was snowed in: it was more economical to keep workers onsite running rotating understaffed shifts at triple pay for the duration than to let the pots solidify. From the Wikipedia page on aluminum smelting: An aluminium smelter consists of a large number of cells (pots) in which the electrolysis takes place. [...] Smelting is run as a batch process, with the aluminium metal deposited at the bottom of the pots and periodically siphoned off. [...] However power must not be interrupted for more than 4-5 hours, since the pots have to be repaired at significant cost if the liquid metal solidifies. In addition to Wikipedia, there’s a surprisingly good explanation here: https://www.ega.ae/en/operations/smelters/production-process/aluminium-smelting/ https://www.ega.ae/en/operations/smelters/production-process...
- sremani 9y ago
  But they can do that right next to hydro-electric plants with much more reliability.. If I am not wrong, Alcoa did shutdown their plant in central Washington (crypto-valley), so aluminum smelting is probably not that rage anyway. edit: Crypto-mining may be one alternative, you are converting energy into currency is the most straight forward fashion. Could be the way, who knows.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    It's hard to build airplanes out of Bitcoin. That aluminium must be produced somewhere.
    - sremani 9y ago
      The point, If they are closing Aluminium smelting plants when they are being sold 2cents/kwh from a reliable hydro-electric plant. Wind and Solar's chances are slim to none. I am not questioning the utility of Aluminium here.
    - dx034 9y ago
      You can smelt it in remote places. Iceland has a lot of Aluminium smelting because energy is so cheap. Doesn't mean that you need to produce the aluminium products there.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    Aluminum smelting is still popular in Germany where they are being paid to offset the variability of wind/solar there by ramping production up and down. I have a suspicion that this is being used by Germany to feed them a disguised subsidy.
- csours 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery I'd love to see some napkin math on this.
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    Gasoline has an energy density of 13 000 Wh/kg. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries have an energy density of ~250 Wh/kg, and LiMnO2 lithium primary (non-rechargeable) batteries have an energy density of about 300 Wh/kg. Let's assume energy density near the upper end of that Wikipedia page - say, 6 500 Wh/kg, we have half the energy density of gasoline, and 26x the energy density of lithium ion rechargeables. So your Tesla 100D with 540km range becomes a 14 000 km/8 500 mile range. You can get a battery swap a few times a year, a little less frequently as you'd get an oil change now. But that's still half the energy density of gas. Instead of buying 12 gallons of gas every week or two, you're now buying 720 kg of aluminum every few months. All the gas tanker trucks you see on the road right now? They're replaced with twice as many aluminum-air battery carrying trucks. All the pipelines, supertankers, rail cars, etc? Replaced with aluminum carriers. And on top of all that, gas turns into CO2 and water, disappearing into the atmosphere. With this plan, you have to ship these aluminum batteries back to the manufacturer for rebuilding! You'd have to build thousands of mostly automated battery reconditioning plants and scatter them across the country for that to work.
    - csours 9y ago
      Awesome, thanks for that.
melling 9y ago
What’s it going to take before US homeowners start putting solar on their roofs en masse? With all the power outages in Florida after the hurricane, rooftop solar would have been useful.
- mac01021 9y ago
  Rooftop solar only helps in scenarios like that if you also have an attached storage system. You're not going to power your fridge/oven/dryer directly from the panels. I would also like to see rooftop solar become widespread in the near future. But I think for most people to get on board, they'll need to be able to break even on the investment within something like 3 years.
  - bamboozled 9y ago
    "Rooftop solar only helps in scenarios like that if you also have an attached storage system." These exist nowadays [1] [1] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
    - sremani 9y ago
      Unless there is a some level of prepper in you, those powerwalls do not make any economic sense. Most of the Solars that SolarCity installs are grid tie-in, means no power at substation means no power even with those panels on roof.
      - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        Customer located storage solutions do make economic sense in many situtions, that's why some utilities will pay you to have one in your home and let them control it's charge/discharge when they need to. Usually that economic benefit is left on the table due to the utility being poorly regulated but that's subtly different from the thing itself not making economic sense.
        9y ago
mac01021 9y ago
I wonder how much lower it can get over the next decade.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  The same project published goals last year, for 2030. 2011 goals targetting 2020: $0.09 per kilowatt hour for residential photovoltaics (PV) $0.07 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV $0.06 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV 2016 goals for 2030: $0.05 per kilowatt hour for residential PV $0.04 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV $0.03 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV This slightly older piece from 2015 make some projections based on a 16% learning rate and suggests various large orgs have estimated similar levels: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-indeed/ http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very...
  - ju-st 9y ago
    $0.03 per kWh for utility-scale PV in Dubai, will go online in 2020 (https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/11/29/worlds-cheapest-solar-power-contract-signed-for-dubai-mega-project/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/11/29/worlds-cheapest-solar...)
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      I believe the Sunshot numbers are specifically about the USA. The amount of sunshine, cost of finance and installation costs are three big factors that vary by location, all three of which are probably contributing to that particular bid, but yes the general trend is looking very good.
codecamper 9y ago
Get ready for 8c or 9c per kwh, courtesy of Trump's solar tariffs. Actually, please get ready to fight these tooth & nail. https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-us-solar-industry-doesnt-want-government-protection/ https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-us-solar-industry-doesnt...
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Chinese solar tariffs came in under Obama, not Trump. It was also pretty clearly done at the behest of the fossil fuel industry and "greenwashed" by pretending to be done to protect US solar jobs. US solar manufacturing (as opposed to installation) is a pretty tiny industry with no political muscle. The justifications were cringeworthy too. I took a glance at the US trade dept documents accusing China of protectionism and the first one I saw made accusations of "free advertising" because Chinese local government promoted a local solar company on its website.
  - codecamper 9y ago
    Sorry, to be clear, the ITC is now considering a case which would bring a minimum import price to solar cells. Meaning this would be applied to ALL imports from ALL countries.
EGreg 9y ago
I can still hear many Conservatives saying: "But SOLYNDRA!!" :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
- imglorp 9y ago
  $5 trillion/year global fossil subsidies is nothing to sneeze at [1]. And that's not counting indirect fossil subsidies such as $2T wars on fossil/defense's behalf. It suddenly makes a few $20 billion storm cleanups pale by comparison. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...
peeters 9y ago
So are batteries the only viable storage solution? Does any other storage compare in terms of price and scale? (allowing a dollar value to be put on efficiency) If not I'd assume Tesla would be well positioned there, but I wonder if even it could scale that far.
- dx034 9y ago
  I still hope Ares [1] will turn out to be competitive. The idea is sound and can be build in most areas in the world. You could potentially reach storage volumes within short time frames that only pump storage can rival. Alternatively, there was a German experiment to use underwater concrete pump storage to provide storage close to production for offshore windfarms. Not sure where the project is at, but these ideas could well supplement batteries. [1] http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/
- lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  Like a sister comment it's worth pointing out that there are many different batteries besides the tesla like http://www.ambri.com http://www.ambri.com Is an example - from Donald sadoway at MIT who presents easily my top 5 TED talks on the idea as well (molten salt storage) But we already have good examples of electricity storage by pumping water uphill to reservoirs in Scandinavia etc Storage is probaly not a problem - mobile storage might be
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Heat bricks are distant possibility, seems lot of work to be done, need to store higher temperature than currently possible, only useful immediately for industrial heat if temperatures met and then possibly electricty generation. http://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-free-energy-0906 http://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-...
- spenrose 9y ago
  You raise an important topic with somewhat unhelpful framing: "viable" is a boolean label for a continuous variable, the value of storage, which is context-dependent today and an important feedback element in ever-shifting complex systems. Here's the frame I'd suggest: batteries, demand-response (to which efficiency contributes), grid management, and rate schedules are mutually supporting tools which allow us to continually improve our use of power along several axes, including GHG emissions, efficiency, end-user price, and reliability. There isn't one accurate and stable perspective from which to consider the "value" or "viability" of, say, compressed-air storage. Instead we have a web of complex local, regional, and global situations and concerns, and varying sets of goals to pursue within those situations.
nielsbot 9y ago
Outbrain? Et tu, Ars?

166 points by vasili111 9y ago

This might actually work. A lot of of the dirty work can be done in places with solar /wind power and during the peak energy producing times. Like for aluminum smelting which apparently needs ~10x the energy that steel needs https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-aluminium-7245 https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-aluminium-7245

codecamper 9y ago
That might be a good use of solar actually. Smelt the aluminum right at the site, which might have poor grid connectivity. Generate your own power ultra cheap & use it directly for smelting. Save on raw material transport costs. It would be interesting to see a cost / benefit analysis here.
- mercutio2 9y ago
  Efficient aluminum smelting requires reliable, continuous power for weeks at a time. Photovoltaics are cheap, but the diurnal variation makes them singularly inappropriate for aluminum smelting.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    And could the economics eventually work of photovoltiacs + battery storage ala a tesla powerpack?
  - codecamper 9y ago
    Why does it need to be continuous?
    - mercutio2 9y ago
      In a nutshell, allowing the aluminum to solidify gums the batch process up catastrophically. Friends who used to work at aluminum plants were surprisingly happy when the plant was snowed in: it was more economical to keep workers onsite running rotating understaffed shifts at triple pay for the duration than to let the pots solidify. From the Wikipedia page on aluminum smelting: An aluminium smelter consists of a large number of cells (pots) in which the electrolysis takes place. [...] Smelting is run as a batch process, with the aluminium metal deposited at the bottom of the pots and periodically siphoned off. [...] However power must not be interrupted for more than 4-5 hours, since the pots have to be repaired at significant cost if the liquid metal solidifies. In addition to Wikipedia, there’s a surprisingly good explanation here: https://www.ega.ae/en/operations/smelters/production-process/aluminium-smelting/ https://www.ega.ae/en/operations/smelters/production-process...
sremani 9y ago
But they can do that right next to hydro-electric plants with much more reliability.. If I am not wrong, Alcoa did shutdown their plant in central Washington (crypto-valley), so aluminum smelting is probably not that rage anyway. edit: Crypto-mining may be one alternative, you are converting energy into currency is the most straight forward fashion. Could be the way, who knows.
- adrianN 9y ago
  It's hard to build airplanes out of Bitcoin. That aluminium must be produced somewhere.
  - sremani 9y ago
    The point, If they are closing Aluminium smelting plants when they are being sold 2cents/kwh from a reliable hydro-electric plant. Wind and Solar's chances are slim to none. I am not questioning the utility of Aluminium here.
  - dx034 9y ago
    You can smelt it in remote places. Iceland has a lot of Aluminium smelting because energy is so cheap. Doesn't mean that you need to produce the aluminium products there.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Aluminum smelting is still popular in Germany where they are being paid to offset the variability of wind/solar there by ramping production up and down. I have a suspicion that this is being used by Germany to feed them a disguised subsidy.
csours 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery I'd love to see some napkin math on this.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  Gasoline has an energy density of 13 000 Wh/kg. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries have an energy density of ~250 Wh/kg, and LiMnO2 lithium primary (non-rechargeable) batteries have an energy density of about 300 Wh/kg. Let's assume energy density near the upper end of that Wikipedia page - say, 6 500 Wh/kg, we have half the energy density of gasoline, and 26x the energy density of lithium ion rechargeables. So your Tesla 100D with 540km range becomes a 14 000 km/8 500 mile range. You can get a battery swap a few times a year, a little less frequently as you'd get an oil change now. But that's still half the energy density of gas. Instead of buying 12 gallons of gas every week or two, you're now buying 720 kg of aluminum every few months. All the gas tanker trucks you see on the road right now? They're replaced with twice as many aluminum-air battery carrying trucks. All the pipelines, supertankers, rail cars, etc? Replaced with aluminum carriers. And on top of all that, gas turns into CO2 and water, disappearing into the atmosphere. With this plan, you have to ship these aluminum batteries back to the manufacturer for rebuilding! You'd have to build thousands of mostly automated battery reconditioning plants and scatter them across the country for that to work.
  - csours 9y ago
    Awesome, thanks for that.

melling 9y ago

What’s it going to take before US homeowners start putting solar on their roofs en masse? With all the power outages in Florida after the hurricane, rooftop solar would have been useful.

mac01021 9y ago
Rooftop solar only helps in scenarios like that if you also have an attached storage system. You're not going to power your fridge/oven/dryer directly from the panels. I would also like to see rooftop solar become widespread in the near future. But I think for most people to get on board, they'll need to be able to break even on the investment within something like 3 years.
- bamboozled 9y ago
  "Rooftop solar only helps in scenarios like that if you also have an attached storage system." These exist nowadays [1] [1] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
  - sremani 9y ago
    Unless there is a some level of prepper in you, those powerwalls do not make any economic sense. Most of the Solars that SolarCity installs are grid tie-in, means no power at substation means no power even with those panels on roof.
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      Customer located storage solutions do make economic sense in many situtions, that's why some utilities will pay you to have one in your home and let them control it's charge/discharge when they need to. Usually that economic benefit is left on the table due to the utility being poorly regulated but that's subtly different from the thing itself not making economic sense.
      - 9y ago

mac01021 9y ago

I wonder how much lower it can get over the next decade.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
The same project published goals last year, for 2030. 2011 goals targetting 2020: $0.09 per kilowatt hour for residential photovoltaics (PV) $0.07 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV $0.06 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV 2016 goals for 2030: $0.05 per kilowatt hour for residential PV $0.04 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV $0.03 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV This slightly older piece from 2015 make some projections based on a 16% learning rate and suggests various large orgs have estimated similar levels: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-indeed/ http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very...
- ju-st 9y ago
  $0.03 per kWh for utility-scale PV in Dubai, will go online in 2020 (https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/11/29/worlds-cheapest-solar-power-contract-signed-for-dubai-mega-project/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/11/29/worlds-cheapest-solar...)
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    I believe the Sunshot numbers are specifically about the USA. The amount of sunshine, cost of finance and installation costs are three big factors that vary by location, all three of which are probably contributing to that particular bid, but yes the general trend is looking very good.

codecamper 9y ago

Get ready for 8c or 9c per kwh, courtesy of Trump's solar tariffs. Actually, please get ready to fight these tooth & nail. https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-us-solar-industry-doesnt-want-government-protection/ https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-us-solar-industry-doesnt...

crdoconnor 9y ago
Chinese solar tariffs came in under Obama, not Trump. It was also pretty clearly done at the behest of the fossil fuel industry and "greenwashed" by pretending to be done to protect US solar jobs. US solar manufacturing (as opposed to installation) is a pretty tiny industry with no political muscle. The justifications were cringeworthy too. I took a glance at the US trade dept documents accusing China of protectionism and the first one I saw made accusations of "free advertising" because Chinese local government promoted a local solar company on its website.
- codecamper 9y ago
  Sorry, to be clear, the ITC is now considering a case which would bring a minimum import price to solar cells. Meaning this would be applied to ALL imports from ALL countries.

EGreg 9y ago

I can still hear many Conservatives saying: "But SOLYNDRA!!" :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies

imglorp 9y ago
$5 trillion/year global fossil subsidies is nothing to sneeze at [1]. And that's not counting indirect fossil subsidies such as $2T wars on fossil/defense's behalf. It suddenly makes a few $20 billion storm cleanups pale by comparison. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...

peeters 9y ago

So are batteries the only viable storage solution? Does any other storage compare in terms of price and scale? (allowing a dollar value to be put on efficiency) If not I'd assume Tesla would be well positioned there, but I wonder if even it could scale that far.

dx034 9y ago
I still hope Ares [1] will turn out to be competitive. The idea is sound and can be build in most areas in the world. You could potentially reach storage volumes within short time frames that only pump storage can rival. Alternatively, there was a German experiment to use underwater concrete pump storage to provide storage close to production for offshore windfarms. Not sure where the project is at, but these ideas could well supplement batteries. [1] http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
Like a sister comment it's worth pointing out that there are many different batteries besides the tesla like http://www.ambri.com http://www.ambri.com Is an example - from Donald sadoway at MIT who presents easily my top 5 TED talks on the idea as well (molten salt storage) But we already have good examples of electricity storage by pumping water uphill to reservoirs in Scandinavia etc Storage is probaly not a problem - mobile storage might be
stevenwoo 9y ago
Heat bricks are distant possibility, seems lot of work to be done, need to store higher temperature than currently possible, only useful immediately for industrial heat if temperatures met and then possibly electricty generation. http://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-free-energy-0906 http://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-...
spenrose 9y ago
You raise an important topic with somewhat unhelpful framing: "viable" is a boolean label for a continuous variable, the value of storage, which is context-dependent today and an important feedback element in ever-shifting complex systems. Here's the frame I'd suggest: batteries, demand-response (to which efficiency contributes), grid management, and rate schedules are mutually supporting tools which allow us to continually improve our use of power along several axes, including GHG emissions, efficiency, end-user price, and reliability. There isn't one accurate and stable perspective from which to consider the "value" or "viability" of, say, compressed-air storage. Instead we have a web of complex local, regional, and global situations and concerns, and varying sets of goals to pursue within those situations.

nielsbot 9y ago

Outbrain? Et tu, Ars?