18 ms·

Ice storage air conditioning is already a thing in some places to take advantage of cheap electricity at night, though it doesn't make as much sense in the cont

by opencl 5y ago

Ice storage air conditioning is already a thing in some places to take advantage of cheap electricity at night, though it doesn't make as much sense in the context of solar. Maybe it would fit well with wind. I think it will be very difficult to convince industrial operations that currently run as close to 24/7 as possible that they should just leave all of their expensive equipment idling half the time, unless the electricity price difference is made extremely large.

hannob 5y ago
It is actually quite simple to convince industry: An industrial facility will do that if the incentives are aligned that it makes them more money. The interesting thing is: The really challenging part of electricity storage isn't that much. Usually wind+solar complement each other fine. It depends on the location, but the challenge is usually something like 2-4 weeks in the winter when there's little sun and little wind. I.e. an industrial facility would only need to shut down in a very limited timeframe to have a huge effect on grid stability.
- hef19898 5y ago
  It is quite funny that in Germany every energy hungry industry is looking since the last decade to produce flexible enough to benefit from negative and cheap electricity prices during certain periods. Examples I know of first hand are graphite kathodes and electrodes (the process can be stopped for hours as long as temperature doesn't drip under a certain threshold) and paper. Continuous chemical manufacturing is having a harder time so, but they are looking into ways to store process heat for later use and generating needed heat for storage. Nothing came from that at on of previous employers so. Funny is that these same companies, already now making a small fortune from these initiatives, are complaining about electricity prices and base load stability. One of the best complementary sources to renewables are, besides existing nuclear plants, modern gas turbines.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    How is nuclear a good complementary source to renewables? You complement renewables with a source of flexibility, not another source of inflexibility.
    - corty 5y ago
      Stop spreading that myth. Nuclear isn't that inflexible, load following is possible and frequently done over here. "Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope." from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant There are some differences between BWRs and PWRs, but the figures are not hugely different.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        Of course nuclear is inflexible. It's entire economic case is built on operating at very high capacity factor. That reactors can TECHNICALLY operate at lower capacity factor is irrelevant -- the cost of doing so is prohibitive. Economically, partnering renewables and nuclear doesn't work well. Nuclear does a very poor job covering for renewables intermittency, and renewables crowd out nuclear during the times they're churning out the power.
        corty 5y ago
        That is untrue as well. Inflexibility isn't the problem, the cost profile is. Yes, nobody likes running nuclear at half power, because fuel costs are minute compared to the building cost of the plant (Btw that is exactly analogous to the cost profile of renewables: almost all cost is in the building). So as long as you can regulate some pumped hydro plants that, shed some load, etc, you may save some money. Why don't we do load following with renewables, like e.g. shutting off some wind turbines? Same reason as for nuclear, plus some government regulations. And in general, renewables do need a flexible supplement. So what would you suggest? More pumped hydro is impossible to build due to environmental regs, NIMBY and geography. Coal and lignite isn't flexible at all, and it is coal. Gas is extremely expensive to run, so expensive that there are gas peaker plants on idle for years in Germany. Also, they are burning gas. Bio gas is not available in sufficient capacity. Battery storage might be an option 30 years from now when enough old EV batteries are available on the cheap. But that will prevent recycling them into new EV batteries and need even more resources like lithium and cobalt. So the alternatives to nuclear like coal and gas are worse, and only still in use because they don't pay fair a price on their carbon emissions.
- sqqqqrly 5y ago
  Have you ever run such a business?
- bradknowles 5y ago
  Why do you think so many crypto miner companies are moving to Texas? They want to be paid by ERCOT to not draw power during peak times. Yes, ERCOT will actually pay them money, if they’re not drawing power. Chinese crypto miner companies are moving here, and taking over old aluminum smelting operations, kitting them out with tens of thousands of crypto miner computers, and then getting paid for not turning them on.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    That's... an impressive twist on Proof of Work. Threat of Work?
baybal2 5y ago
> Ice storage air conditioning is already a thing in some places to take advantage of cheap electricity at night, Most of South Asia still relies on ice for air conditioning, and food storage, and that hasn't changed in a century. Why? People there only buy it for a few weeks in a year, during extreme heat, or when they slaughter livestock to preserve meat. It's not yet economical for people to put few hundred dollars into an appliance they use few weeks in a year. A lot of places may not even have electricity there in the first place.
cool_dude85 5y ago
Yeah, there was even an off-the-shelf unit to do ice storage in residential homes called an Ice Bear. Looks like they went bankrupt a while ago though.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  …you mean a fridge?
  - storyinmemo 5y ago
    No, or at least not without more steps and automation. WAY back before refrigeration, cooling was done with blocks of ice harvested in winter and stored for the year. Expensive is a word for it. What's being talked about here is thermal energy storage. Ice is created overnight (ok, like a refrigerator), but then during the daytime used to supplement or replace the refrigeration cycle of the compressor to reduce electric load while still providing cooling. I can't quickly find an article (edit: found a 2016 paper, see comments about Boothbay on page page 3-4: https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2016/data/papers/3_262.pdf https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2016/data/papers/3_2...), but it's memorable to me that an island in Maine installed these systems instead of spending more on replacing the distribution line to the island the handle the peak daytime cooling load.
  - chihuahua 5y ago
    I think we're talking about using ice as energy storage: create ice during a time when the supply of electricity exceeds demand, and then use that ice for cooling (AC) at a later time.
Brakenshire 5y ago
It makes sense for solar as well because it produces a peak at noon but not much in the early evening when a.c. demand is still very high.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  fortunately it doesn’t take much battery to shift that
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    Powering a whole house at night takes a lot of batteries. There's not enough battery production on Earth to even accommodate that.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      I don't understand why people make this argument. I mean, the number of factories is not some fixed constant of nature. If demand for a product is high enough, more factories get built.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Depends how much of your loads you can shift to daytime. If your dishwasher/fridge/freezer/heater/cooler/whatever already ran/pre-cooled/pre-heated during the day, you won't need to run much at night. I have an off-grid family member running their lighting+IT loads straight off DC just so the inverter can sleep at night. Its efficiency is garbage with small loads.
    - cinquemb 5y ago
      Luckily there are cheaper solutions for energy storage at grid scale thru CSP and molten salt storage.
      - VBprogrammer 5y ago
ckdarby 5y ago
Looks like Ice Energy went bankrupt and they were leading the charge with these ice storage air conditioning units.
- kolinko 5y ago
  Difficult market for them, considering that energy prices are switching to be the lowest mid-day due to solar...
therealdrag0 5y ago
I once worked for Alstom/GE grid and many regions already have market driven power tied into large energy consumers/producers where they can bid and schedule energy based on the market. So if you have a rock crusher or a freezer (insulation gives flexibility) you might adjust when you power it on based on energy prices.
- thoughtstheseus 5y ago
  Same thing with factories. They flex demand based on electricity pricing.
  - DavidPeiffer 5y ago
    Having worked in a handful of factories, including in very energy intense sectors (aluminum and semiconductors), I'd say that's not the norm. Smelters are a notable exception, as they can be turned down/off relatively quickly as long as the metal in process doesn't solidify - in which case the line will be down for months and will be very expensive to fix and startup again. I could see it being more common on commodity products or when the order book is light. Energy pricing varies by region, but is sometimes based on consumption during the grids' highest couple consumption days in the last year. In those cases, curtailing production can have a huge impact on total cost for the next year. It's a bit of a guessing game, but there is an industry around energy consulting for factories and forecasting which days will be the highest consumption (typically the hottest days).
    - therealdrag0 5y ago
      What regions are your experience in?
- state_less 5y ago
  Trane has a PDF that mentions University of Arizona saving a little under half a million dollars a year using off peak energy prices and ice cooling for storage. https://www.trane.com/Commercial/Uploads/PDF/ContinuingEducation/Trane_ENL_Ice_Storage_Design.pdf https://www.trane.com/Commercial/Uploads/PDF/ContinuingEduca...
pmlnr 5y ago
That has been for a thing for a long time in large commercial skyscrapers: https://www.foxnews.com/story/new-york-skyscrapers-use-ice-to-stay-cool https://www.foxnews.com/story/new-york-skyscrapers-use-ice-t...

by opencl 5y ago

hannob 5y ago

It is actually quite simple to convince industry: An industrial facility will do that if the incentives are aligned that it makes them more money. The interesting thing is: The really challenging part of electricity storage isn't that much. Usually wind+solar complement each other fine. It depends on the location, but the challenge is usually something like 2-4 weeks in the winter when there's little sun and little wind. I.e. an industrial facility would only need to shut down in a very limited timeframe to have a huge effect on grid stability.

hef19898 5y ago
It is quite funny that in Germany every energy hungry industry is looking since the last decade to produce flexible enough to benefit from negative and cheap electricity prices during certain periods. Examples I know of first hand are graphite kathodes and electrodes (the process can be stopped for hours as long as temperature doesn't drip under a certain threshold) and paper. Continuous chemical manufacturing is having a harder time so, but they are looking into ways to store process heat for later use and generating needed heat for storage. Nothing came from that at on of previous employers so. Funny is that these same companies, already now making a small fortune from these initiatives, are complaining about electricity prices and base load stability. One of the best complementary sources to renewables are, besides existing nuclear plants, modern gas turbines.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  How is nuclear a good complementary source to renewables? You complement renewables with a source of flexibility, not another source of inflexibility.
  - corty 5y ago
    Stop spreading that myth. Nuclear isn't that inflexible, load following is possible and frequently done over here. "Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope." from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant There are some differences between BWRs and PWRs, but the figures are not hugely different.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Of course nuclear is inflexible. It's entire economic case is built on operating at very high capacity factor. That reactors can TECHNICALLY operate at lower capacity factor is irrelevant -- the cost of doing so is prohibitive. Economically, partnering renewables and nuclear doesn't work well. Nuclear does a very poor job covering for renewables intermittency, and renewables crowd out nuclear during the times they're churning out the power.
      - corty 5y ago
        That is untrue as well. Inflexibility isn't the problem, the cost profile is. Yes, nobody likes running nuclear at half power, because fuel costs are minute compared to the building cost of the plant (Btw that is exactly analogous to the cost profile of renewables: almost all cost is in the building). So as long as you can regulate some pumped hydro plants that, shed some load, etc, you may save some money. Why don't we do load following with renewables, like e.g. shutting off some wind turbines? Same reason as for nuclear, plus some government regulations. And in general, renewables do need a flexible supplement. So what would you suggest? More pumped hydro is impossible to build due to environmental regs, NIMBY and geography. Coal and lignite isn't flexible at all, and it is coal. Gas is extremely expensive to run, so expensive that there are gas peaker plants on idle for years in Germany. Also, they are burning gas. Bio gas is not available in sufficient capacity. Battery storage might be an option 30 years from now when enough old EV batteries are available on the cheap. But that will prevent recycling them into new EV batteries and need even more resources like lithium and cobalt. So the alternatives to nuclear like coal and gas are worse, and only still in use because they don't pay fair a price on their carbon emissions.
sqqqqrly 5y ago
Have you ever run such a business?
bradknowles 5y ago
Why do you think so many crypto miner companies are moving to Texas? They want to be paid by ERCOT to not draw power during peak times. Yes, ERCOT will actually pay them money, if they’re not drawing power. Chinese crypto miner companies are moving here, and taking over old aluminum smelting operations, kitting them out with tens of thousands of crypto miner computers, and then getting paid for not turning them on.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  That's... an impressive twist on Proof of Work. Threat of Work?

baybal2 5y ago

> Ice storage air conditioning is already a thing in some places to take advantage of cheap electricity at night, Most of South Asia still relies on ice for air conditioning, and food storage, and that hasn't changed in a century. Why? People there only buy it for a few weeks in a year, during extreme heat, or when they slaughter livestock to preserve meat. It's not yet economical for people to put few hundred dollars into an appliance they use few weeks in a year. A lot of places may not even have electricity there in the first place.

cool_dude85 5y ago

Yeah, there was even an off-the-shelf unit to do ice storage in residential homes called an Ice Bear. Looks like they went bankrupt a while ago though.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
…you mean a fridge?
- storyinmemo 5y ago
  No, or at least not without more steps and automation. WAY back before refrigeration, cooling was done with blocks of ice harvested in winter and stored for the year. Expensive is a word for it. What's being talked about here is thermal energy storage. Ice is created overnight (ok, like a refrigerator), but then during the daytime used to supplement or replace the refrigeration cycle of the compressor to reduce electric load while still providing cooling. I can't quickly find an article (edit: found a 2016 paper, see comments about Boothbay on page page 3-4: https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2016/data/papers/3_262.pdf https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2016/data/papers/3_2...), but it's memorable to me that an island in Maine installed these systems instead of spending more on replacing the distribution line to the island the handle the peak daytime cooling load.
- chihuahua 5y ago
  I think we're talking about using ice as energy storage: create ice during a time when the supply of electricity exceeds demand, and then use that ice for cooling (AC) at a later time.

Brakenshire 5y ago

It makes sense for solar as well because it produces a peak at noon but not much in the early evening when a.c. demand is still very high.

dv_dt 5y ago
fortunately it doesn’t take much battery to shift that
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Powering a whole house at night takes a lot of batteries. There's not enough battery production on Earth to even accommodate that.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    I don't understand why people make this argument. I mean, the number of factories is not some fixed constant of nature. If demand for a product is high enough, more factories get built.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Depends how much of your loads you can shift to daytime. If your dishwasher/fridge/freezer/heater/cooler/whatever already ran/pre-cooled/pre-heated during the day, you won't need to run much at night. I have an off-grid family member running their lighting+IT loads straight off DC just so the inverter can sleep at night. Its efficiency is garbage with small loads.
  - cinquemb 5y ago
    Luckily there are cheaper solutions for energy storage at grid scale thru CSP and molten salt storage.
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago

ckdarby 5y ago

Looks like Ice Energy went bankrupt and they were leading the charge with these ice storage air conditioning units.

kolinko 5y ago
Difficult market for them, considering that energy prices are switching to be the lowest mid-day due to solar...

therealdrag0 5y ago

I once worked for Alstom/GE grid and many regions already have market driven power tied into large energy consumers/producers where they can bid and schedule energy based on the market. So if you have a rock crusher or a freezer (insulation gives flexibility) you might adjust when you power it on based on energy prices.

thoughtstheseus 5y ago
Same thing with factories. They flex demand based on electricity pricing.
- DavidPeiffer 5y ago
  Having worked in a handful of factories, including in very energy intense sectors (aluminum and semiconductors), I'd say that's not the norm. Smelters are a notable exception, as they can be turned down/off relatively quickly as long as the metal in process doesn't solidify - in which case the line will be down for months and will be very expensive to fix and startup again. I could see it being more common on commodity products or when the order book is light. Energy pricing varies by region, but is sometimes based on consumption during the grids' highest couple consumption days in the last year. In those cases, curtailing production can have a huge impact on total cost for the next year. It's a bit of a guessing game, but there is an industry around energy consulting for factories and forecasting which days will be the highest consumption (typically the hottest days).
  - therealdrag0 5y ago
    What regions are your experience in?
state_less 5y ago
Trane has a PDF that mentions University of Arizona saving a little under half a million dollars a year using off peak energy prices and ice cooling for storage. https://www.trane.com/Commercial/Uploads/PDF/ContinuingEducation/Trane_ENL_Ice_Storage_Design.pdf https://www.trane.com/Commercial/Uploads/PDF/ContinuingEduca...

pmlnr 5y ago

That has been for a thing for a long time in large commercial skyscrapers: https://www.foxnews.com/story/new-york-skyscrapers-use-ice-to-stay-cool https://www.foxnews.com/story/new-york-skyscrapers-use-ice-t...