4 ms·

80% round trip efficiency is killer for what they are selling here though. That 20% loss is directly cutting into your trading margin. imagine you buy 1MWh at 1

80% round trip efficiency is killer for what they are selling here though. That 20% loss is directly cutting into your trading margin. imagine you buy 1MWh at 100USD; you immediately lose 20% of it, so you now need prices at $125 just to break even. The ability of higher efficiency technologies to perform many more profitable trades in a given year has a significant impact on ROI.

the-dude 5y ago
Don't spot prices for energy fluctuate wildly especially now with renewables in the mix? What does it matter you lose 20% if the alternative is selling at a loss?
- ElKrist 5y ago
  Yes they fluctuate enough that you can make a profit even with a "20% loss". Here [1] you can see today's prices on the electricity spot market for Europe (Changing the date does not work in my browser though) Another way to say this is that there is a real economical value for storage because of the increase in renewables [1] https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche
- jakewins 5y ago
  I mean, I suppose the purpose of these batteries are about seasonal rather than hourly differences.. but assuming you want to use them for something like coupling to a PV array and doing hourly trading: The alternative isn't selling at a loss, it's using technology with higher round trip efficiency. Say you have two batteries, both 1MW/4H systems, one lithium at 95% efficiency, one this CO2 thing at 80% effiency. In the highly volatile SE4 spot region in the Scandinavian grid, if you traded in 2019 you'd have made $80K USD with the CO2 battery, $155K USD with the Lithium one (assuming you traded perfectly). A tigher efficiency envelope lets you exploit many smaller 10-20% cost gaps, rather than having to sit for many days to wait for gaps in the 30-40% range. Not to say that Lithium would have a higher ROI over all than this technology, just to say that round trip efficiencies have significant impact on revenues here.
  - ec109685 5y ago
    Isn’t the ROI all that matters since the cost to build the thing is it’s own efficiency loss, paid out over the lifetime of the project?
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    Here is where you're wrong: you're thinking in terms of 4 to 1 power to storage. A CO2 battery can have a very large storage for 1MW. It could potentially have a storage of 40 hours. You keep charging it for months, and then release it all when there is a week long lull of wind and solar production. Such short bursts of energy are typical for Li-Ion batteries, but quite atypical for other forms of energy. It's the same principle as with the flow batteries.
- jhgb 5y ago
  It gets even better if you have your own generator. Electricity you can't sell immediately has zero value without storage, and you'll have increasing amounts of such electricity in the future.
NonContro 5y ago
Due to Solar, some hours of the day have negative energy prices. Your profit potential is infinite if you can charge from 11am - 5pm and then release it all from 7pm-midnight. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341393321/figure/fig3/AS:891268183883782@1589506302716/Wholesale-California-electricity-prices-over-24-h-on-a-spring-day.png https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341393321/figure/fi... What we should be doing though is building this smart charging and dispatch functionality into cars, so that we don't make our existing electricity peaks even peakier when people get home from work and immediately plug in and charge their EVs. Ideally people would charge their cars at work, during the day. I guess we need to lean on employers with huge parking lots to provide EV charging.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- smolder 5y ago
  The profit potential is not infinite because the arbitrage affects the prices. If you do enough storage and release, eventually the load is practically flat on the generation side and the price fluctuations become insignificant.

the-dude 5y ago

Don't spot prices for energy fluctuate wildly especially now with renewables in the mix? What does it matter you lose 20% if the alternative is selling at a loss?

ElKrist 5y ago
Yes they fluctuate enough that you can make a profit even with a "20% loss". Here [1] you can see today's prices on the electricity spot market for Europe (Changing the date does not work in my browser though) Another way to say this is that there is a real economical value for storage because of the increase in renewables [1] https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche
jakewins 5y ago
I mean, I suppose the purpose of these batteries are about seasonal rather than hourly differences.. but assuming you want to use them for something like coupling to a PV array and doing hourly trading: The alternative isn't selling at a loss, it's using technology with higher round trip efficiency. Say you have two batteries, both 1MW/4H systems, one lithium at 95% efficiency, one this CO2 thing at 80% effiency. In the highly volatile SE4 spot region in the Scandinavian grid, if you traded in 2019 you'd have made $80K USD with the CO2 battery, $155K USD with the Lithium one (assuming you traded perfectly). A tigher efficiency envelope lets you exploit many smaller 10-20% cost gaps, rather than having to sit for many days to wait for gaps in the 30-40% range. Not to say that Lithium would have a higher ROI over all than this technology, just to say that round trip efficiencies have significant impact on revenues here.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Isn’t the ROI all that matters since the cost to build the thing is it’s own efficiency loss, paid out over the lifetime of the project?
- flavius29663 5y ago
  Here is where you're wrong: you're thinking in terms of 4 to 1 power to storage. A CO2 battery can have a very large storage for 1MW. It could potentially have a storage of 40 hours. You keep charging it for months, and then release it all when there is a week long lull of wind and solar production. Such short bursts of energy are typical for Li-Ion batteries, but quite atypical for other forms of energy. It's the same principle as with the flow batteries.
jhgb 5y ago
It gets even better if you have your own generator. Electricity you can't sell immediately has zero value without storage, and you'll have increasing amounts of such electricity in the future.

NonContro 5y ago

Due to Solar, some hours of the day have negative energy prices. Your profit potential is infinite if you can charge from 11am - 5pm and then release it all from 7pm-midnight. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341393321/figure/fig3/AS:891268183883782@1589506302716/Wholesale-California-electricity-prices-over-24-h-on-a-spring-day.png https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341393321/figure/fi... What we should be doing though is building this smart charging and dispatch functionality into cars, so that we don't make our existing electricity peaks even peakier when people get home from work and immediately plug in and charge their EVs. Ideally people would charge their cars at work, during the day. I guess we need to lean on employers with huge parking lots to provide EV charging.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smolder 5y ago
The profit potential is not infinite because the arbitrage affects the prices. If you do enough storage and release, eventually the load is practically flat on the generation side and the price fluctuations become insignificant.