4 ms·

It pleases you to pretend we don't know how to store energy. But we do. You may fly off on tangents assuming we don't, but do not expect people to go with you.

by ncmncm 4y ago

kkfx 4y ago
OK, can you indicate some of such tech? Personally I have a classic LiFeP battery (casually from a Chinese company, like 99% of those on sale) who can actually power my home without heating for a day, can last potentially ten years (6000 recharge "guaranteed"). Nothing that can scale more, behind pumped hydro who demand mountains and water to be done do better, and actually you can't sustainably power a factory from lithium batteries. We do not even know if we can produce enough of them to power just common cars. Oh, and we need planes, trucks, ships etc.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Assuming nothing exists except what you already know about gets you reliably wrong answers. In fact there are a lot of hills. Few places are very far away from any, even in Nebraska. Any hill may serve for pumped hydro, although those over 2000 ft (600m) and have a natural depression are best. A simple earthen levee suffices, otherwise, with a penstock extending down. But we also can compress air, for "CAES". And we can liquify air. Both of these are extremely mature technology. Compressed air is cheaply and safely kept deep underground or underwater, and released through a turbine to recover power put in. Liquified air is vaporized with heat from ambient air. We can electrolyse water and keep the resulting hydrogen in underground cavities, under increasing pressure; both the hydrogen and its pressure store energy. We can synthesize ammonia, to tank and transport, and burn it for fuel in ships and existing combined-cycle gas turbines. Ammonia synthesized in the tropics or where wind is reliable may be shipped anywhere in the world to fill in for shortfalls of local storage. So, nobody needs much local storage. Aviation will soon transition to liquid hydrogen because the value proposition is so great. Anybody lagging will find themselves wholly unable to compete. LH2 will be made and banked on-site at major airports, from power delivered via transmission line. Another simple storage method uses buoyancy, drawing floats down toward the sea floor. Another, raising and lowering a heavy weight in a disused mineshaft. The mineshaft may also contain compressed hydrogen. Your off-grid domestic batteries are the most expensive way to store energy. But they probably will last you longer than 10 years, just as your refrigerator will probably last longer than 3. In the near future you might come to bank hydrogen instead, and put excess in your car. Your electrolyser will last more than 10 years. The compressor might wear out in time, but is cheap.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Reading your post I can only conclude that no such storage tech usable on scale exists. You talk about potential tech, so far used only experimentally at little scale with many issues. Hydrogen is a dream and nothing really seems to arrive, beside the obscene complexity and high costs of all existing prototypes. Pumped hydro with small fall and unfavorable orography it's formally still working but practically useless since it cost much and produce very little energy: we basically need a hill for a single home. grid-connected domestic lithium batteries are the sole effective tech, only at that small scale, with a high but still a bit sustainable cost, actually available commercially. If you want a domestic or city-side compressed-air storage good luck, you'll have to design it as an artisanal prototype. Hydrogen is the very same and so on. Consider a thing: we need energy NOW and in 10, 20+ etc years. Stating that we have some potential tech that might work at a certain scale in a future is stating that IF we survive without food for a decade well... Perhaps at the end of it we will be able to source some food. Is just a scam, not a plan nor something we can do. In the meantime our national grids falter DUE to the amount of connected renewables that makes the grid load vary too quickly of significant amounts for big power plants to compensate quickly enough. Actually the theory of the new deal is that with a smart-grid (that do not exists so far, while p.v., eolic etc do) and a large private BEV connected (because on average many are connected to the grid at the same time) we can compensate high and low demand peaks allowing classic power plant to keep the network up. So far we have much p.v. because grid connected p.v. works enough (roughly 50% cut in electricity fees, relatively quick break even, not so high initial capex) and wind power have many incentives BUT number of BEV on roads are very modest and none of them is "smart grid ready" with power connection and proper inverter/meter to follow the frequency sucking or pumping energy from/to the grid instant by instant with correct billing as an extra bonus. In most countries it's not even legal inject power from batteries to the grid. Please tell me with something valid on scale today, something that exists currently, that we can store energy and keep the network up with massive renewables if you know it. I do not. I tried, I follow news etc and see nothing but the offload of many costs to the public, pretending that's a good thing, and an uneven new deal implementation whose results will be a very deep big mess. All presented with classic PR fanaticism, not much different than nazi propaganda of a new bright future no one feel or foresee in tangible manners. A bit like classic meddle-age church rhetoric that you have to suffer the whole life for a promise of a paradise no one can prove it exists. Again not different than URSS propaganda for a future worker paradise no one see. Just try to figure out a thing: how much thermal energy you need for your own home. How much electricity and equipment costs you need to heat with electricity. Then extend such computation to the mean citizens try to find how many can afford such investments and if yes how much extra power we need from the grid. This normally suffice without adding industry needs. Because it's already clear that if you live in inner lands (cold nights) or sufficiently at northern/southern latitudes (depending on the hemisphere) most people simply can't choose to go electric without rebuilding the home from scratch and most of them can't rebuild the home.

It pleases you to pretend we don't know how to store energy. But we do. You may fly off on tangents assuming we don't, but do not expect people to go with you.

by ncmncm 4y ago

It pleases you to pretend we don't know how to store energy. But we do. You may fly off on tangents assuming we don't, but do not expect people to go with you.

kkfx 4y ago

OK, can you indicate some of such tech? Personally I have a classic LiFeP battery (casually from a Chinese company, like 99% of those on sale) who can actually power my home without heating for a day, can last potentially ten years (6000 recharge "guaranteed"). Nothing that can scale more, behind pumped hydro who demand mountains and water to be done do better, and actually you can't sustainably power a factory from lithium batteries. We do not even know if we can produce enough of them to power just common cars. Oh, and we need planes, trucks, ships etc.

ncmncm 4y ago
Assuming nothing exists except what you already know about gets you reliably wrong answers. In fact there are a lot of hills. Few places are very far away from any, even in Nebraska. Any hill may serve for pumped hydro, although those over 2000 ft (600m) and have a natural depression are best. A simple earthen levee suffices, otherwise, with a penstock extending down. But we also can compress air, for "CAES". And we can liquify air. Both of these are extremely mature technology. Compressed air is cheaply and safely kept deep underground or underwater, and released through a turbine to recover power put in. Liquified air is vaporized with heat from ambient air. We can electrolyse water and keep the resulting hydrogen in underground cavities, under increasing pressure; both the hydrogen and its pressure store energy. We can synthesize ammonia, to tank and transport, and burn it for fuel in ships and existing combined-cycle gas turbines. Ammonia synthesized in the tropics or where wind is reliable may be shipped anywhere in the world to fill in for shortfalls of local storage. So, nobody needs much local storage. Aviation will soon transition to liquid hydrogen because the value proposition is so great. Anybody lagging will find themselves wholly unable to compete. LH2 will be made and banked on-site at major airports, from power delivered via transmission line. Another simple storage method uses buoyancy, drawing floats down toward the sea floor. Another, raising and lowering a heavy weight in a disused mineshaft. The mineshaft may also contain compressed hydrogen. Your off-grid domestic batteries are the most expensive way to store energy. But they probably will last you longer than 10 years, just as your refrigerator will probably last longer than 3. In the near future you might come to bank hydrogen instead, and put excess in your car. Your electrolyser will last more than 10 years. The compressor might wear out in time, but is cheap.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Reading your post I can only conclude that no such storage tech usable on scale exists. You talk about potential tech, so far used only experimentally at little scale with many issues. Hydrogen is a dream and nothing really seems to arrive, beside the obscene complexity and high costs of all existing prototypes. Pumped hydro with small fall and unfavorable orography it's formally still working but practically useless since it cost much and produce very little energy: we basically need a hill for a single home. grid-connected domestic lithium batteries are the sole effective tech, only at that small scale, with a high but still a bit sustainable cost, actually available commercially. If you want a domestic or city-side compressed-air storage good luck, you'll have to design it as an artisanal prototype. Hydrogen is the very same and so on. Consider a thing: we need energy NOW and in 10, 20+ etc years. Stating that we have some potential tech that might work at a certain scale in a future is stating that IF we survive without food for a decade well... Perhaps at the end of it we will be able to source some food. Is just a scam, not a plan nor something we can do. In the meantime our national grids falter DUE to the amount of connected renewables that makes the grid load vary too quickly of significant amounts for big power plants to compensate quickly enough. Actually the theory of the new deal is that with a smart-grid (that do not exists so far, while p.v., eolic etc do) and a large private BEV connected (because on average many are connected to the grid at the same time) we can compensate high and low demand peaks allowing classic power plant to keep the network up. So far we have much p.v. because grid connected p.v. works enough (roughly 50% cut in electricity fees, relatively quick break even, not so high initial capex) and wind power have many incentives BUT number of BEV on roads are very modest and none of them is "smart grid ready" with power connection and proper inverter/meter to follow the frequency sucking or pumping energy from/to the grid instant by instant with correct billing as an extra bonus. In most countries it's not even legal inject power from batteries to the grid. Please tell me with something valid on scale today, something that exists currently, that we can store energy and keep the network up with massive renewables if you know it. I do not. I tried, I follow news etc and see nothing but the offload of many costs to the public, pretending that's a good thing, and an uneven new deal implementation whose results will be a very deep big mess. All presented with classic PR fanaticism, not much different than nazi propaganda of a new bright future no one feel or foresee in tangible manners. A bit like classic meddle-age church rhetoric that you have to suffer the whole life for a promise of a paradise no one can prove it exists. Again not different than URSS propaganda for a future worker paradise no one see. Just try to figure out a thing: how much thermal energy you need for your own home. How much electricity and equipment costs you need to heat with electricity. Then extend such computation to the mean citizens try to find how many can afford such investments and if yes how much extra power we need from the grid. This normally suffice without adding industry needs. Because it's already clear that if you live in inner lands (cold nights) or sufficiently at northern/southern latitudes (depending on the hemisphere) most people simply can't choose to go electric without rebuilding the home from scratch and most of them can't rebuild the home.