5 ms·

> The story for storage looks better than it ever has but it is still orders of magnitude more expensive more expensive than it needs to be to be practical. St

by Tade0 4y ago

> The story for storage looks better than it ever has but it is still orders of magnitude more expensive more expensive than it needs to be to be practical. Storage is already cheaper than peaker plants and that's all it needs to be for now. Meanwhile HVDC lines appear to also be a viable solution: https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk-power-project-morocco/ https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk-power-p... Not mentioned in this article is the projected cost of this system, which is $22bln. That's actually less than the yet to be finished Hinkley Point C.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I can name some peaker plants but I struggle to name storage facilities other than a handful of oddities like https://damfailures.org/case-study/taum-sauk-dam-missouri-2005/ https://damfailures.org/case-study/taum-sauk-dam-missouri-20...
- wongarsu 4y ago
  For facilities with more than 1GW capacity Wikipedia has a list [1] (though note that that's merely the turbine's capacity, the total amount stored is the GWh figure that's missing for half of the entries). There's also a list specifically with installations that aren't pumped hydro, but none of those would make the list above because of their limited capacity [2]. Pumped hydro dominates the storage game so far, both in number of installations and maximum size. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power_p...
  - Scaevolus 4y ago
    Pumped hydro is extremely dependent on geography. Yes, the extant plants have favorable cost-per-capacity, but that number will only get worse as less favorable sites are used for it.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Pumped hydro potential turns out to be surprisingly independent of geography. What is espectially dependent on geography is placement of already-built dams. But pumped hydro is not the only kind of bulk energy storage.
  - belorn 4y ago
    Last time I checked there doesn't exist a commercial operated pumped hydro that buy renewables when supply is high and sell when the weather/season has changed. I found one plant on the wikipedia list that is at least operated commercially by an private energy company, but they use it to balance their network of fossil fuel power plants when they shut down or start up. During starting/stopping the grid need to stabilize, and doing it themself is cheaper than paying third parties. They stated that in the future when the time is right then they might start to fill the pumped hydro by using renewables, but for now it is power by fossil fuels. Looking at who paid for that storage, it seems to be mostly through subsidies so it was likely a pretty nice deal for them and on paper it look green.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Obviously until there is enough renewable energy capacity to charge up storage, there will not be storage built to charge with it. Posting "storage isn't built out yet" says nothing informative. Before it's built, it hasn't been built.
      - belorn 4y ago
        It is future tech, similar to fusion.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        Storage is trivial freshman physics (lift a weight, pump air to displace water under pressure, pump water uphill) except for batteries, which are also perfectly known physics, with numerous chemistries in mass production, a century of universal use, and working prototypes for more exotic chemistries Thus, literally as different from fusion as is possible to express.
        belorn 4y ago
        Fusion is trivial freshman physics. It is just plasma heated up. Kids play with plasma lamps as toys. Getting energy from it is just as simple as hooking it up to a steam engine.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Not much storage has been built out because there is not enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. Until there is enough, it would be stupid to divert money from building renewables to building storage. After there is enough, it will be time to build out storage. At that time storage will be radically cheaper than today. This has been explained to you several times already. Repeating your assertion about lack of storage tells us about something other than the energy landscape.
hgomersall 4y ago
Do you have some references about cheap storage. I'm keen to learn more about the current state of the art.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The Wikipedia article on pumped hydro mentions some perhaps surprising variations that do not depend on mountain geography. CAES -- compressed air -- is quite mature. Until recently it was considered to have insufficient round-trip efficiency, but that doesn't matter so much anymore. Again, there are numerous interesting variations, including pumping air into a vessel anchored to the sea floor via a pipe from an onshore compressor, and others where heat of compression is banked and added back when extracting power, for better efficiency. In Chile, a big air liquification system is under construction. In principle this is similar to compressed air storage, but without need for pressure vessels. LN2 can be shipped, and is industrially useful directly. A float can be attached to a cable looped through a pulley at the sea floor, and winched down from on shore. This, like several other undersea systems, would work scaled down to local utility size. There are numerous projects preparing to push hydrogen into underground cavities, in some cases cavities natural gas was recently extracted from. A UK company has a system with a thousands-of-tons weight winched up and down in a disused mineshaft. There are a great many disused mineshafts worldwide. They can often be used to keep compressed air or hydrogen in at the same time. Ammonia may be synthesized electrically, and stored or shipped in liquid form under light pressure. Ammonia is massively useful industrially, so synthesis equipment would be idle only when stocks are being drawn down. Form is building out factories to make iron-air batteries. Ultimately, we will end up using a few that turn out to be cheapest, or otherwise (e.g. ammonia, LN2) valuable. We just don't know which those will be. We do know that Energy Vault, a publicly traded pump-and-dump scheme, will not be among them.
  - belorn 4y ago
    Calling green hydrogen cheap is a bit of a stretch. The Swedish government produced a government report on the viability of it a couple/few years ago and the price was around 10x compared to nuclear, and that just for producing it. Storage and transportation would be additional costs on top. There is a reason why there aren't any current investments Sweden/Finland/Germany in order to create green hydrogen for energy production. (There are project to create green hydrogen in industries that explicitly need the hydrogen itself, in which case the cost calculations is much better). In practice we should simply apply the open market and allow energy companies to bid for direct decommission of existing capacity in fossil fuel energy plants. If a commercial company can produce a combined renewables + storage solution that is cheaper than nuclear then that is a major win-win for everyone involved. If it is a bit more expensive than nuclear than it might still be worth it, but then the question is how much more. The combination that should not be allowed to bid is the combination of renewables + fossil fuels, and if needed, laws should be added to that effect.

by Tade0 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

I can name some peaker plants but I struggle to name storage facilities other than a handful of oddities like https://damfailures.org/case-study/taum-sauk-dam-missouri-2005/ https://damfailures.org/case-study/taum-sauk-dam-missouri-20...

wongarsu 4y ago
For facilities with more than 1GW capacity Wikipedia has a list [1] (though note that that's merely the turbine's capacity, the total amount stored is the GWh figure that's missing for half of the entries). There's also a list specifically with installations that aren't pumped hydro, but none of those would make the list above because of their limited capacity [2]. Pumped hydro dominates the storage game so far, both in number of installations and maximum size. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power_p...
- Scaevolus 4y ago
  Pumped hydro is extremely dependent on geography. Yes, the extant plants have favorable cost-per-capacity, but that number will only get worse as less favorable sites are used for it.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Pumped hydro potential turns out to be surprisingly independent of geography. What is espectially dependent on geography is placement of already-built dams. But pumped hydro is not the only kind of bulk energy storage.
- belorn 4y ago
  Last time I checked there doesn't exist a commercial operated pumped hydro that buy renewables when supply is high and sell when the weather/season has changed. I found one plant on the wikipedia list that is at least operated commercially by an private energy company, but they use it to balance their network of fossil fuel power plants when they shut down or start up. During starting/stopping the grid need to stabilize, and doing it themself is cheaper than paying third parties. They stated that in the future when the time is right then they might start to fill the pumped hydro by using renewables, but for now it is power by fossil fuels. Looking at who paid for that storage, it seems to be mostly through subsidies so it was likely a pretty nice deal for them and on paper it look green.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Obviously until there is enough renewable energy capacity to charge up storage, there will not be storage built to charge with it. Posting "storage isn't built out yet" says nothing informative. Before it's built, it hasn't been built.
    - belorn 4y ago
      It is future tech, similar to fusion.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        Storage is trivial freshman physics (lift a weight, pump air to displace water under pressure, pump water uphill) except for batteries, which are also perfectly known physics, with numerous chemistries in mass production, a century of universal use, and working prototypes for more exotic chemistries Thus, literally as different from fusion as is possible to express.
        belorn 4y ago
        Fusion is trivial freshman physics. It is just plasma heated up. Kids play with plasma lamps as toys. Getting energy from it is just as simple as hooking it up to a steam engine.
ncmncm 4y ago
Not much storage has been built out because there is not enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. Until there is enough, it would be stupid to divert money from building renewables to building storage. After there is enough, it will be time to build out storage. At that time storage will be radically cheaper than today. This has been explained to you several times already. Repeating your assertion about lack of storage tells us about something other than the energy landscape.

hgomersall 4y ago

Do you have some references about cheap storage. I'm keen to learn more about the current state of the art.

ncmncm 4y ago
The Wikipedia article on pumped hydro mentions some perhaps surprising variations that do not depend on mountain geography. CAES -- compressed air -- is quite mature. Until recently it was considered to have insufficient round-trip efficiency, but that doesn't matter so much anymore. Again, there are numerous interesting variations, including pumping air into a vessel anchored to the sea floor via a pipe from an onshore compressor, and others where heat of compression is banked and added back when extracting power, for better efficiency. In Chile, a big air liquification system is under construction. In principle this is similar to compressed air storage, but without need for pressure vessels. LN2 can be shipped, and is industrially useful directly. A float can be attached to a cable looped through a pulley at the sea floor, and winched down from on shore. This, like several other undersea systems, would work scaled down to local utility size. There are numerous projects preparing to push hydrogen into underground cavities, in some cases cavities natural gas was recently extracted from. A UK company has a system with a thousands-of-tons weight winched up and down in a disused mineshaft. There are a great many disused mineshafts worldwide. They can often be used to keep compressed air or hydrogen in at the same time. Ammonia may be synthesized electrically, and stored or shipped in liquid form under light pressure. Ammonia is massively useful industrially, so synthesis equipment would be idle only when stocks are being drawn down. Form is building out factories to make iron-air batteries. Ultimately, we will end up using a few that turn out to be cheapest, or otherwise (e.g. ammonia, LN2) valuable. We just don't know which those will be. We do know that Energy Vault, a publicly traded pump-and-dump scheme, will not be among them.
- belorn 4y ago
  Calling green hydrogen cheap is a bit of a stretch. The Swedish government produced a government report on the viability of it a couple/few years ago and the price was around 10x compared to nuclear, and that just for producing it. Storage and transportation would be additional costs on top. There is a reason why there aren't any current investments Sweden/Finland/Germany in order to create green hydrogen for energy production. (There are project to create green hydrogen in industries that explicitly need the hydrogen itself, in which case the cost calculations is much better). In practice we should simply apply the open market and allow energy companies to bid for direct decommission of existing capacity in fossil fuel energy plants. If a commercial company can produce a combined renewables + storage solution that is cheaper than nuclear then that is a major win-win for everyone involved. If it is a bit more expensive than nuclear than it might still be worth it, but then the question is how much more. The combination that should not be allowed to bid is the combination of renewables + fossil fuels, and if needed, laws should be added to that effect.