3 ms·

> The economic reality is that battery on the grid is out-competing gas peaker plants in a lot of places because even with the current scarcity and price levels

> The economic reality is that battery on the grid is out-competing gas peaker plants in a lot of places because even with the current scarcity and price levels in the battery market, it seems economical to buy them by the MWH. Do you have any citation for this because I've seen no evidence that this is true. The largest grid scale lithium battery is barely a drop in the ocean by comparison to the energy consumption of the grid. It is only used for short term grid frequency stabilization, which it does admirably.

jillesvangurp 6y ago
I just read the news in the energy market. I think California just ordered a few MwH of battery from Tesla. They seem to be doing a brisk business of selling batteries to grid providers in a market that is entirely supply limited. There are loads of companies working on alternate storage technologies. You are right that there is very little right now. But I'd counter that that is growing rapidly and that that is inspired by those investments paying off for their early adopters. Short term stabilization is actually the key problem that needs solving with energy peaks (which are inherently short term). The sun comes out quite reliably every day to provide a predictable minimum of power levels. Basically solar and wind combined are quite OK. Things like seasonal variation are actually more predictable and something you can plan for. Extended freak periods of clouds with no wind across an entire continent is not a really thing. Such effects tend to be local and temporary. So we can fix a lot by simply moving power around (with cables, another proven technology). The unspoken presumption with storage critics is that we'll need unspecified days/weeks/months of storage for such apocalyptic conditions. As far as I can see this is simply wrong and not something that energy companies are putting a lot of serious money on the table for. I've actually seen zero credible evidence for this; not even a ballpark number of how many TWH of storage that would be needed. So, I'll bounce that question right back at you: how much TWH/PTW do you think is needed/economically justifiable and why? That will allow us to put a price tag on it. The reality is that interconnected grids means the sun is always shining somewhere and wind turbines out on the water or wherever are always providing some power somewhere. If you look at the market, grid connectivity and storage are exactly two things where investments are happening. Long term storage seems much less of a concern for grid providers. Mostly 2-4 hours seems to be the sweet spot of what grid providers seem to be spending on.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  For grid stabilization in the UK we already have 28GWh of pumped hydro storage. I'm not an expert in sizing grid infrastructure but I expect we'd need storage of several times that to balance a less dispatchable grid. The sun is always shining somewhere doesn't work for day / night solar production. Transmission losses are of the order of 0.5% per 100km. By the time you transmit power 20,000km there is nothing left.
  - extropy 6y ago
    Its <3 percent per 1000km if using high voltage DC and multiplicative not additive. So 0.97^(20000/1000)= 0.54. Just under half lost, not infeasible. Also building enough battery capacity to offset the night is doable. UK annual consumption is around 300TWH, let's round to 1TWH a day. The nighttime consumption is about half of the daytime's so only 33% needs to be saved. So we need 350GWH of batteries. It will take a while, cost 35 Billion assuming 100 usd for 1 kwh. Or 2 billion a year or 0.6 cents per KWH of energy consumed.
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      I don't think you can really quote prices when you are talking about battery capacities on the order of the current world wide lithium battery production. Also, it's interesting that Iceland, with their abundance of geothermal power, don't have an interconnection with Europe. That's only 1000km as the crow flies and yet hasn't been considered economically feasible yet.
      - jillesvangurp 6y ago
        There is no lithium shortage. E.g. Tesla is basically mining in Nevada in a place that has apparently more than enough for their quite ambitious roadmap. Also money quote from Elon Musk last week was that it's one of the most common elements in the world. Basically, we've only scratched the surface (quite literally) in terms of actively looking for the stuff as the demand for lithium at this scale is a fairly recent development. As for geothermal, Iceland has geothermal; yes. So do other places. You're talking as if using that as an infinite source of energy is both cheap, feasible, and scalable. It's probably none of those things. Iceland has about 300K people, the UK has around 66M, so we're talking about 220x the energy demand. And running cables across the Atlantic. And doing a lot of infrastructure development in Iceland at the cost of many billions in a market that has energy prices trending down because of other clean energy options. Perhaps that's the reason that it was never really considered as an option. Regarding the quoted prices, I think for the sake of argument this person was deliberately using numbers that are on the super conservative side. E.g. buying battery at 100$/kwh would probably be a spectacularly bad deal considering prices are already dipping below that (and that's for car batteries). Also, for the sake of argument assuming everything happens right now at today's prices is arguably not how this would play out at all. But as he's argueing, even if you make such assumptions it's still doable. So, it's likely to end up being a good deal cheaper than projected there as this plays out over the next decades as prices for batteries continue to drop and we figure out how to do this at scale.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

I just read the news in the energy market. I think California just ordered a few MwH of battery from Tesla. They seem to be doing a brisk business of selling batteries to grid providers in a market that is entirely supply limited. There are loads of companies working on alternate storage technologies. You are right that there is very little right now. But I'd counter that that is growing rapidly and that that is inspired by those investments paying off for their early adopters. Short term stabilization is actually the key problem that needs solving with energy peaks (which are inherently short term). The sun comes out quite reliably every day to provide a predictable minimum of power levels. Basically solar and wind combined are quite OK. Things like seasonal variation are actually more predictable and something you can plan for. Extended freak periods of clouds with no wind across an entire continent is not a really thing. Such effects tend to be local and temporary. So we can fix a lot by simply moving power around (with cables, another proven technology). The unspoken presumption with storage critics is that we'll need unspecified days/weeks/months of storage for such apocalyptic conditions. As far as I can see this is simply wrong and not something that energy companies are putting a lot of serious money on the table for. I've actually seen zero credible evidence for this; not even a ballpark number of how many TWH of storage that would be needed. So, I'll bounce that question right back at you: how much TWH/PTW do you think is needed/economically justifiable and why? That will allow us to put a price tag on it. The reality is that interconnected grids means the sun is always shining somewhere and wind turbines out on the water or wherever are always providing some power somewhere. If you look at the market, grid connectivity and storage are exactly two things where investments are happening. Long term storage seems much less of a concern for grid providers. Mostly 2-4 hours seems to be the sweet spot of what grid providers seem to be spending on.

VBprogrammer 6y ago
For grid stabilization in the UK we already have 28GWh of pumped hydro storage. I'm not an expert in sizing grid infrastructure but I expect we'd need storage of several times that to balance a less dispatchable grid. The sun is always shining somewhere doesn't work for day / night solar production. Transmission losses are of the order of 0.5% per 100km. By the time you transmit power 20,000km there is nothing left.
- extropy 6y ago
  Its <3 percent per 1000km if using high voltage DC and multiplicative not additive. So 0.97^(20000/1000)= 0.54. Just under half lost, not infeasible. Also building enough battery capacity to offset the night is doable. UK annual consumption is around 300TWH, let's round to 1TWH a day. The nighttime consumption is about half of the daytime's so only 33% needs to be saved. So we need 350GWH of batteries. It will take a while, cost 35 Billion assuming 100 usd for 1 kwh. Or 2 billion a year or 0.6 cents per KWH of energy consumed.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    I don't think you can really quote prices when you are talking about battery capacities on the order of the current world wide lithium battery production. Also, it's interesting that Iceland, with their abundance of geothermal power, don't have an interconnection with Europe. That's only 1000km as the crow flies and yet hasn't been considered economically feasible yet.
    - jillesvangurp 6y ago
      There is no lithium shortage. E.g. Tesla is basically mining in Nevada in a place that has apparently more than enough for their quite ambitious roadmap. Also money quote from Elon Musk last week was that it's one of the most common elements in the world. Basically, we've only scratched the surface (quite literally) in terms of actively looking for the stuff as the demand for lithium at this scale is a fairly recent development. As for geothermal, Iceland has geothermal; yes. So do other places. You're talking as if using that as an infinite source of energy is both cheap, feasible, and scalable. It's probably none of those things. Iceland has about 300K people, the UK has around 66M, so we're talking about 220x the energy demand. And running cables across the Atlantic. And doing a lot of infrastructure development in Iceland at the cost of many billions in a market that has energy prices trending down because of other clean energy options. Perhaps that's the reason that it was never really considered as an option. Regarding the quoted prices, I think for the sake of argument this person was deliberately using numbers that are on the super conservative side. E.g. buying battery at 100$/kwh would probably be a spectacularly bad deal considering prices are already dipping below that (and that's for car batteries). Also, for the sake of argument assuming everything happens right now at today's prices is arguably not how this would play out at all. But as he's argueing, even if you make such assumptions it's still doable. So, it's likely to end up being a good deal cheaper than projected there as this plays out over the next decades as prices for batteries continue to drop and we figure out how to do this at scale.