4 ms·

I’m not an electrical engineer. But, thinking about the power storage/retrieval problem with a computer engineer’s lens, I can draw a parallel to data storage/r

I’m not an electrical engineer. But, thinking about the power storage/retrieval problem with a computer engineer’s lens, I can draw a parallel to data storage/retrieval. L1/L2/L3 caches - expensive, small, but fast. RAM - mid tier, still fast, bigger than cache, less expensive than cache, but limited in capacity compared to disk/flash based storage. SSDs… Disks…. You get the point. Would it be the same with the grid? Several power sources - nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, hopefully not coal and gas. Banks of Lithium batteries acting as first level(efficient and immediate but limited capacity storage). Whatever excess is directed to longer term, non immediate storage - pump up water to generate power later, molten salt, air compression etc. Even more left? - spin up production of time insensitive materials that would be used anyway later - sea water desalination plants, green hydrogen generation, sewage treatment etc. At large scale such tiered ecosystems would be very cool and super useful.

loceng 5y ago
I've wondered if putting an compressed air energy storage system under certain types of buildings would work. Any thoughts on that? E.g. Apple's Ring HQ is already on a floating system to counter earthquakes, so why not add a layer of air? Unnecessary? Much more expensive than other options? Else?
beders 5y ago
Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson makes a similar case but with renewables and storage only: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/WWSBook.html https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/WWSBook...
stcredzero 5y ago
Look into natural gas trading and scheduling. There's already an entire body of knowledge around storing energy, and sophisticated automated contracts, financial instruments, laws, and regulations. "Pools" are just energy storage, and the same geologic features used for those facilities could be used for compressed air storage. (EDIT: I used to do this software!)
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
Sounds trivial enough, now someone just has to built it all. Jokes aside though everything has pros and cons. For storing large amounts of energy from the grid, are you sure lithium batteries make sense? Take a look at this, it's not a scientific article but it gives you a basic overview of the problems we'd face when storing energy in lithium batteries at scale: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/lithium-or-vanadium-in-energy-storage-its-no-contest https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/lithium-or-vana... And that isn't to say that flow batteries are the ultimate solution either, we will have to do better because it's still very expensive.
- epistasis 5y ago
  That article is from 2014. Since then we have deployed dozens of GWh of grid storage. There have been a few small fires, but otherwise it's worked out really well. Lithium ion on the grid is nearly doubling every year, and in places like Texas. I'm having trouble finding a recent article, but this one from 2020 has 3x as many battery GW thank gas GW in the interconnection queue: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/08/interconnection-queues-across-the-us-are-loaded-with-gigawatts-of-solar-wind-and-storage/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/08/interconnection-queue... And if you check out RV and boat forums, you'll find that small scale lithium ion batteries plus solar are enabling a huge change in power for these mobile applications, because it's just damn cheap these days.
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    Just because something gets does doesn't mean it's sensible. That's like arguing coal is the future because China and India have brought online thousands of TWh since 2014. You did not actually address any of the points mentioned in the article explaining why Li-ion is not the go to solution for grid scale storage. Flow batteries have only become relatively cheaper since then btw.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      The actual arguments in the article are weak enough that I'm having trouble paraphrasing them fairly. Instead, I'll point to the numbers: 1) li ion cost is at $150-$300/kWh today 2) these are for batteries that have warranties for 5000-7000 cycles, not the small number that the author got from a website 3) actual installation levels on the grid are far higher than the author estimated. I have nothing against vanadium flow batteries, other than the aren't shipping much. If the can actually hit the $150/kWh mark they say they can in the article, they should be shipping a ton of batteries. And if they are shipping, they should publicize a bit more! California and other states are looking for non-lithium ion batteries with 8 hour+ duration, so there's a market for vanadium even if it can't compete on price.

loceng 5y ago

I've wondered if putting an compressed air energy storage system under certain types of buildings would work. Any thoughts on that? E.g. Apple's Ring HQ is already on a floating system to counter earthquakes, so why not add a layer of air? Unnecessary? Much more expensive than other options? Else?

beders 5y ago

Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson makes a similar case but with renewables and storage only: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/WWSBook.html https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/WWSBook...

stcredzero 5y ago

Look into natural gas trading and scheduling. There's already an entire body of knowledge around storing energy, and sophisticated automated contracts, financial instruments, laws, and regulations. "Pools" are just energy storage, and the same geologic features used for those facilities could be used for compressed air storage. (EDIT: I used to do this software!)

trompetenaccoun 5y ago

Sounds trivial enough, now someone just has to built it all. Jokes aside though everything has pros and cons. For storing large amounts of energy from the grid, are you sure lithium batteries make sense? Take a look at this, it's not a scientific article but it gives you a basic overview of the problems we'd face when storing energy in lithium batteries at scale: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/lithium-or-vanadium-in-energy-storage-its-no-contest https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/lithium-or-vana... And that isn't to say that flow batteries are the ultimate solution either, we will have to do better because it's still very expensive.

epistasis 5y ago
That article is from 2014. Since then we have deployed dozens of GWh of grid storage. There have been a few small fires, but otherwise it's worked out really well. Lithium ion on the grid is nearly doubling every year, and in places like Texas. I'm having trouble finding a recent article, but this one from 2020 has 3x as many battery GW thank gas GW in the interconnection queue: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/08/interconnection-queues-across-the-us-are-loaded-with-gigawatts-of-solar-wind-and-storage/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/09/08/interconnection-queue... And if you check out RV and boat forums, you'll find that small scale lithium ion batteries plus solar are enabling a huge change in power for these mobile applications, because it's just damn cheap these days.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Just because something gets does doesn't mean it's sensible. That's like arguing coal is the future because China and India have brought online thousands of TWh since 2014. You did not actually address any of the points mentioned in the article explaining why Li-ion is not the go to solution for grid scale storage. Flow batteries have only become relatively cheaper since then btw.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    The actual arguments in the article are weak enough that I'm having trouble paraphrasing them fairly. Instead, I'll point to the numbers: 1) li ion cost is at $150-$300/kWh today 2) these are for batteries that have warranties for 5000-7000 cycles, not the small number that the author got from a website 3) actual installation levels on the grid are far higher than the author estimated. I have nothing against vanadium flow batteries, other than the aren't shipping much. If the can actually hit the $150/kWh mark they say they can in the article, they should be shipping a ton of batteries. And if they are shipping, they should publicize a bit more! California and other states are looking for non-lithium ion batteries with 8 hour+ duration, so there's a market for vanadium even if it can't compete on price.