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It's a common misconception that energy storage needs to handle all the power needs of an area for a significant time. The most immediate need for energy stora
by audunw 6y ago
It's a common misconception that energy storage needs to handle all the power needs of an area for a significant time.
The most immediate need for energy storage is frequency regulation, and short hours-long dips in power output. If we can solve that we can scale renewables very far.
For days-long dips in power output, it's probably better to keep some gas power plants on stand-by. I think many areas of the world has enough of them to handle these needs already. To make it sustainable, they could be switched to using renewables fuels, like hydrogen or ammonia made from electricity. We're going to need a shit-ton of those kinds of fuels for trucks, ships and airplanes anyway, so setting aside some of it for backup power wouldn't be a huge problem.
For seasonal variations, I think trash burning power plants is a reasonable solution. Sweden and Norway has some of them, and they also provide heating to nearby homes. I mean, yeah: first of all we should reduce, reuse and recycle. But eventually our trash become unrecyclable, and burning it seems to be the best option. Modern facilities seems to be able to extract almost all harmful compounds from the waste then. There are also experiments with carbon capture from these plants, which in a fully renewable world could make them carbon-negative, and become one of several tools to help reduce CO2 in the atmosphere again over time.
And of course, nuclear would be a great help. If it can be made cheap enough again, it can be used for seasonal variations. But we're still going to need renewables. So we still need energy storage for frequency regulations and minute/hours-long dips in energy output. Nuclear power plants are NOT a good solution for that.
- martinald 6y agoNot true in northern European countries. The problem isn't day to day regulation, it's the massive demand in cold snaps in winter (when there is very little wind generation - cold weather tends to have little wind). You're talking balancing 20-30GW of additional demand with little solar/wind generation for weeks/months - probably at least 1TWh of storage required for the UK alone. Keep in mind this will only get worse as heating demand is switched from natgas to electricity.
- cogman10 6y agoThis seems like a "running before we can walk" statement. Until we can handle day to day problems, it seems weird to worry about edge cases. I imagine as we transition to renewables and storage we will still have fossil fuel peeker plants to handle these sorts of snaps. It won't be until our power storage is far more beefed up that we'll shut those down, and that will take years.
- ms4720 6y agoA cold snap like that can happen every 3-5 years, think really cold February. If you don't have the capacity to handle it people will die and lots of things will break. It is not an edgcase
- martinald 6y agoIt's actually worse than that, there are many days in winter in the UK with high demand and virtually no solar/wind output. But obviously a really cold snap would be even worse (and as you said isn't an edge case - even if it is look at the damage that happened in Texas when it wasn't accounted for)
- raverbashing 6y agoAgree. See Texas for an example.
- cogman10 6y agoIt is when we aren't running 1 year on pure renewables. Let's worry about events that happen every 3 to 5 years when we've got 1 year of renewable only figured out. It will take years before this is potentially a problem and by that time we'll likely have gone through a few cold snaps.
- f6v 6y ago> This seems like a "running before we can walk" statement. Europe tries to be at a forefront of green energy. No sun/wind is a real issue there, not just an edge case.
- ianai 6y agoI’d just build the generation out to that maximal use case. During the off peak times power a desalination, hydrogen, or other energy intensive plant.
- martinald 6y agoThe problem is the UK sees maybe 1-2GW of renewable generation sometimes in winter while demand is about 50GW. So you'd have to overbuild 25x to cope with these days. Keep in mind the UK already has about 30GW of solar and wind potential nameplate capacity. Your suggestion would result in a requirement of 700GW of solar and wind to be installed. On windy and sunny days would result in probably 350GW of generation, at least 300GW more than we need.
- ianai 6y agoSeems nuclear would be more optimal there.
- bjourne 6y agoHomes in the UK are poorly insulated, likely due to a previous over-reliance on fossil fuels. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/nov/29/uk-homes-most-expensive-heat-eu-fuel-poverty https://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-bl... Better insulation and switching to district heating where applicable could yield massive savings.
- amluto 6y agoDistrict heating still needs heat to come from somewhere. Admittedly, low grade heat like is used for heating can be stored for days in the form of hot water in insulated tanks.
- eloff 6y agoAll the while the north sea with it's wind is right there, and the Sahara with it's sun nearby too. Some investment in long distance power transmission would go a long way towards smoothing out the grid.
- im3w1l 6y agoImporting energy from Sahara comes with serious geopolitical issues. Do you really want to commit to peacekeeping in a huge area of Africa? Keep in mind that oil can be stockpiled much more easily than electricity, stockpiles that let you weather small storms. Importing electricity means being on top of every hint of a blip.
- eloff 6y agoThere are many countries in North Africa of varying levels of stability and many locations for potential underwater transmission lines. If Israel can build natural gas pipelines to Italy, I think we can handle a subsea electrical cable. You don't want all your eggs in one basket, but this seems like a poor excuse for having zero eggs at all.
- after_care 6y agoLong distance power transmission is a significant political and military liability, not to mention a fantastic terrorist target. We cannot guarantee that the UK will be at peace with every county between them and the Sahara forever. Hosting the power line would grant significant political or military leverage.
- eloff 6y agoYou don't want a single point of failure. Having multiple lines across a geographic space is the way to go. It's a big upfront investment, but it could be much cheaper than storage at scale. I think ultimately you want power transmission stretching from the UK to Japan so as the sun moves the power generation continues. I imagine it will happen one day, because it would seem to make so much sense, but this is something governments could make happen a lot sooner if they put their mind to it.
- ericd 6y agoWrt cold snaps being a big problem, it seems like we could just massively insulate dwelling and improve our energy use auditing, if it became necessary? Vacuum insulation panels are a bit pricey, but they’re crazy insulative for the thickness. If we’re willing to deal with thicker walls, there are a variety of other options that are downright cheap (shredded newspaper, for example). We’ve been designing around super cheap on-demand energy for a while now, but we did manage before that.
- kstenerud 6y agoActually, almost none of our trash is recyclable (despite what you've heard). Plastic is particularly bad, and it's only now, with China banning import of "recyclable" materials, that we're finally seeing just how much of a farce it is. Burying it is a form of CO2 sequestration. Burning it just releases it into the atmosphere.
- kortex 6y agoBut it's already out of the ground. I'd rather burn 1T CO2 worth of plastic trash made from oil and prevent 1T CO2 worth of coal or heavy oil being extracted and burnt. Not that it's 1-to-1, point is burying plastic is probably less net carbon vs burning.
- kstenerud 6y agoSure, provided that the burn efficiency is high enough.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago> It's a common misconception that energy storage needs to handle all the power needs of an area for a significant time. You are only looking one half of the problem. Wind power in the UK has a power factor of about 35%. What that means is to meet the average demand from the UK electricity grid we'd need not install 3 times as much Wind Power as the demand. This is borne out in the current figures, we have some 25GW installed wind power for an average of about 6GW supplied. If we have enough renewables to meet the demand on average, a windy day across the UK is going to result in a glut of power. If we don't have ways of storing that modestly efficiently then our only choice will be to take turbines out of service, increasing the overall cost.