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One big electricity storage problem is seasonal - eg cold sunless winters. Eg batteries are great for daytime charging your car - but they aren't great for stor
by zz865 5y ago
One big electricity storage problem is seasonal - eg cold sunless winters. Eg batteries are great for daytime charging your car - but they aren't great for storing up a whole summer's worth of energy to burn in the winter. Hydrogen could do that.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoA 3x overbuild of solar+wind in an optimal mix, along with a continental grid and 3 hours worth of batteries is all you need for 99.99% reliability over an entire year. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
- ncmncm 5y agoYou probably want a 6x overbuild to account for round-trip losses in your storage system. Cost of storage falls very fast as your efficiency requirements are relaxed, which becomes attractive as raw generating cost plummets.
- kolinko 5y agoAccording to the paper you cited, such setup in Germany would cause 100-500 hours of blackouts each year.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago"continent wide grid" is a key requirement.
- VygmraMGVl 5y agoPg&e has performed similarly over the past 10 years, averaged across California.
- pensatoio 5y agoor... we could use space rocks to heat water. just saying.
- lostmyoldone 5y agoI would assume that many/most countries in climates where power interruptions quickly turn into deaths to avoid building in a dependence on an extra-territorial grid for base-level power supply. It's already a problem in Eurasia with nation states using eg. natural gas delivery as a means to apply political pressure on other states, and this while it is still (relatively) easy to solve energy needs as carbohydrates can be easily transported. If all border crossing energy/power delivery is through a physical network of cables, adapting if delivery is cutoff would be almost impossible unless all gas/coal/oil plants were kept at/near operating condition. Hence, yes, the buildout must be some X times necessary power, as much as possible locally. A significant fraction of that generated power should be used to create a) industrial feedstock b) to generate liquids/gas that can be easily used and transported. The latter in the case some nation is being pressured by energy blockades where the existing grid can not supply enough energy through transmission lines from other bordering states.
- alliao 5y agowhat about those salt brine slurry energy storage? wonder how they're doing now.. https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/21390211 https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/21390211
- jillesvangurp 5y agoThere are plenty of other storage solutions that are cheaper than lithium ion batteries and vastly more efficient than hydrogen. Even just cabling energy around is an option. E.g. the UK is looking at a solution for getting a few GW of Moroccan solar energy connected to their grid to supplement their wind power (which they have throughout the year) and modest amounts of solar which is a bit more seasonal. The fallacy in your argument is assuming there's a need for seasonal storage. That need would only exist if you rely exclusively on solar energy. Which of course people up north don't tend to do and people closer to the equator could actually feasibly do throughout the year. Plenty of places get by mostly powered by different combinations of renewables. E.g. Norway (wind, hydro), Iceland (geothermal, wind), Scotland (wind, tidal wave power), etc. without a lot of storage.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoGeothermal and Hydro are steady sources, not intermittent, so that’s why you don’t need a lot of storage. The hydro dam is the storage. Geothermal also isn’t renewable unless used very very sparingly, most installations I know of will deplete the source in a few decades, perhaps a century.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoGeothermal energy is not going to run out. The sun will go super nova before that happens.