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> We need storage and pumped storage is the only practical way to get there with current supply chains and technology. This really cannot be enphasised enough

> We need storage and pumped storage is the only practical way to get there with current supply chains and technology. This really cannot be enphasised enough - this is the only game in town. The solutions are needed yesterday, and must be built on a massive scale - there is no time for a 20 year R&D to production cycle of a miracle technology. Only hydro does not require any new minerals and mining. The only other container that is even worth mentioning is conpressed gas, but it seems to have neither the capacity nor the efficiency of a large hydro deployment

throwaway894345 4y ago
> Only hydro does not require any new minerals and mining. Why is mining a major obstacle, provided it is economical and the environmental costs are some orders of magnitude less than those of climate change?
- comte7092 4y ago
  The environmental costs of mining are extremely localized and that’s also generally where the permitting takes place.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  New mining permits in the US are magnets for environmental review lawsuits. Depending on the type of mine, getting a new one up and running can take 7-17 years, counting planning, permitting and the inevitable lawsuits. Copper and nickel mine runoff can be extremely toxic, especially to aquatic wildlife and wetlands. Remediation isn't really feasible once the damage is done, so plenty of groups would rather outright ban certain rich deposits from being mined at all than take the risk. How sensitive environments elsewhere in the world fare under mines that aren't subject to safety precautions in the US is apparently an "other people" problem.
- sydd 4y ago
  Because lots of mined metals come either from 3rd world countries like Congo with no environmental protection laws or are mined in few places like Russia where a trade war can lead to shortages. Hydro requires the most common mayerials like steel or concrete.
  - pencilguin 4y ago
    And, not even concrete. But there are numerous other storage alternatives that also do not need any special materials. We don't know yet which ones will be cheapest.
retrac 4y ago
Ontario recently started a pumped hydro facility in an abandoned mine, and it will hold ~400 MWh of power that can be charged or released over several days. Several other sites are in planning, including one that, if it goes forward, will hold 8000 MWh. That could run the entire city of Toronto for many hours. Such facilities should allow Ontario to run on a mix of pure nuclear, hydro and wind. Currently about 15% of the electricity supply in the province is natural gas, used at peak times when demand exceeds the constant output of the nuclear/hydro base. At other times, their surplus is sold at a loss. More pumped storage will smooth this out.
philipkglass 4y ago
The only other contender that is even worth mentioning is compressed gas, but it seems to have neither the capacity nor the efficiency of a large hydro deployment. The largest pumped storage station in the US has a storage capacity of 24,000 MWh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... There's an underground hydrogen storage project underway in Delta, Utah with a capacity of 300,000 MWh: https://www.powermag.com/massive-utah-hydrogen-storage-project-garners-finalized-504m-doe-loan-guarantee/ https://www.powermag.com/massive-utah-hydrogen-storage-proje... It would take 22 Deltas to overtake the world's largest pumped storage plant, a massive Chinese installation with 6.6 terawatt hours of storage capacity: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/04/state-grid-of-china-switches-on-worlds-largest-pumped-hydro-station/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/04/state-grid-of-china-s... Still, potential underground hydrogen capacity is tremendous, amounting to thousands of terawatt hours in Europe alone: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201910.0187/v1 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201910.0187/v1
- cwkoss 4y ago
  How does the energy in underground hydrogen get utilized? Is the capacity the combustive energy, or only the energy from the gas pressure?
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    It's burned as fuel in a gas turbine to generate electricity. The process is similar to burning natural gas in turbines, but some equipment adjustments have to be made when running on hydrogen. The Delta project is starting with a 30/70 blend of hydrogen and natural gas, gradually stepping up to 100% hydrogen. Siemens currently has turbines that can burn up to 75% hydrogen and is targeting 100% hydrogen by 2030: https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/priorities/future-technologies/hydrogen/zehtc.html https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/priorities/future-t... General Electric has a variety of gas turbines, accepting 50% to 100% hydrogen in the fuel blend: https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fueled-gas-turbines https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fuele... Mitsubishi claims to offer turbine operation on up to 100% hydrogen: https://solutions.mhi.com/clean-fuels/hydrogen-gas-turbine/ https://solutions.mhi.com/clean-fuels/hydrogen-gas-turbine/
deleted 4y ago
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_hypx 4y ago
The recent appearance of hydrogen energy storage has basically refuted this argument. We can now store all of the renewable energy we want. The only problem is the lack of awareness among environmentalists and engineers.
- speakfreely 4y ago
  My limited understanding was that the electrolysis tech is not yet efficient enough at scale to make this feasible. Do you have links where I could read more about the cutting edge in hydrogen production? This is a very fascinating potential tool for solving the "we don't have enough batteries" problem with renewables.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    The lack of awareness I am talking about also applies to electrolysis. The current state of electrolyzer technology is already good enough to do the job. Future advancements will make this a no-brainer. This is similar to the rise of photovoltaics a decade (which also caught many 'experts' by surprise). Some recent advancements: https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/hydrogen/toshiba-claims-hydrogen-breakthrough-with-new-p2g-production-technology https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/hydrogen/toshiba-claims-hy... https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electrolysis/ https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr... https://energynews.biz/idaho-national-lab-and-bloom-energy-produce-hydrogen-at-record-rates/ https://energynews.biz/idaho-national-lab-and-bloom-energy-p...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    The problem with electrolysis was not its efficiency, the problem was capital cost of the electrolysers (so they could be paired effectively with intermittently overproducing renewables.) Efficiency was more of the concern when it was imagined expensive nuclear power would be driving electrolysers 24/7.
- pydry 4y ago
  Hydrogen leaks like crazy and corrodes storage cannisters. It isnt especially practical.
credit_guy 4y ago
> this is the only game in town. There is another game in town. Emphasis on "is", as in present tense, not future. Natural gas power plants. They emit much, much less CO2 than coal. If we use them to only generate electricity when solar and wind are not enough, we end up with much lower emissions than what the trees remove from the atmosphere. We also end up needing to overbuild solar and wind by only about 30%, not by a factor of 3 or 4. The capital cost of maintaining the current, existing, natural gas power plants is basically zero. The capital cost of building new pumped storage is huge. Here, let me do it for you. Lifting 1 kg to a height of 1 m requires about 10 Joules (more precisely 9.8, as every high school student hopefully knows). One billion kg, or one million tons is 10 giga-joule, or giga-watt-seconds. Increase to 360 million tons, and you get one GigaWatt-hour. One ton is one cubic meter of water, one million is a square of 1km2 area and 1m height, and 360 megatons is a square of horizontal width and length of 6 km and a height of 10 meters. A fairly big lake. Building an artificial one would qualify as a mega-project. It would cost multiple billions of dollars. It would be able to generate one gigawatt of power for one hour. Of course you'd raise it to a certain height, let's say 100 meters, and that would generate the 1GW of power for 4 days. If you have 100% efficiency. Which you don't have, because you lose energy both when you pump up, and when you let the water come down. Assuming an optimistic 25% overall round-trip efficiency, you get 1GW power for one day. If you want for one month, well, you multiply this by 30. Or you can just keep around a 1GW natural gas power plant, and use it when you need it.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  To explain the economics of pumped storage, you must first understand it. Pumped storage round-trip efficiency is not, in fact, 25%, but routinely above 70%. Nobody pumps water up just 10 meters. It is, instead, pumped (say) a thousand meters up to a reservoir commonly 10 meters deep. A 10m-deep reservoir needs only a cheap earthen dike. A dike is hardly a "megaproject", even if km long. Dikes are low tech. The energy is extracted at the bottom end of a penstock. Each ton of water in a reservoir 1000m up stores 10MJ. One just 100x100x10 meters thus holds 100,000 tons, 1000 GJ, >270 MWh, 6 hours at ~40 MW. Nobody needs 30 days' storage. If your hydro storage runs low, and local fuel tankage looks like it might, too, you order out for LNG or, soon, NH3 or LH2 from solar farms in the tropics. Few would need or want a 1km x 1km reservoir. Smaller ones distributed where the power is needed are more useful. An underground cavity, where it exists, can be used instead of a hilltop reservoir, or with one. Burning NG once in a while is no big deal, but NH3 will be cheaper in the near future.

throwaway894345 4y ago

> Only hydro does not require any new minerals and mining. Why is mining a major obstacle, provided it is economical and the environmental costs are some orders of magnitude less than those of climate change?

comte7092 4y ago
The environmental costs of mining are extremely localized and that’s also generally where the permitting takes place.
zdragnar 4y ago
New mining permits in the US are magnets for environmental review lawsuits. Depending on the type of mine, getting a new one up and running can take 7-17 years, counting planning, permitting and the inevitable lawsuits. Copper and nickel mine runoff can be extremely toxic, especially to aquatic wildlife and wetlands. Remediation isn't really feasible once the damage is done, so plenty of groups would rather outright ban certain rich deposits from being mined at all than take the risk. How sensitive environments elsewhere in the world fare under mines that aren't subject to safety precautions in the US is apparently an "other people" problem.
sydd 4y ago
Because lots of mined metals come either from 3rd world countries like Congo with no environmental protection laws or are mined in few places like Russia where a trade war can lead to shortages. Hydro requires the most common mayerials like steel or concrete.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  And, not even concrete. But there are numerous other storage alternatives that also do not need any special materials. We don't know yet which ones will be cheapest.

retrac 4y ago

Ontario recently started a pumped hydro facility in an abandoned mine, and it will hold ~400 MWh of power that can be charged or released over several days. Several other sites are in planning, including one that, if it goes forward, will hold 8000 MWh. That could run the entire city of Toronto for many hours. Such facilities should allow Ontario to run on a mix of pure nuclear, hydro and wind. Currently about 15% of the electricity supply in the province is natural gas, used at peak times when demand exceeds the constant output of the nuclear/hydro base. At other times, their surplus is sold at a loss. More pumped storage will smooth this out.

philipkglass 4y ago

The only other contender that is even worth mentioning is compressed gas, but it seems to have neither the capacity nor the efficiency of a large hydro deployment. The largest pumped storage station in the US has a storage capacity of 24,000 MWh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... There's an underground hydrogen storage project underway in Delta, Utah with a capacity of 300,000 MWh: https://www.powermag.com/massive-utah-hydrogen-storage-project-garners-finalized-504m-doe-loan-guarantee/ https://www.powermag.com/massive-utah-hydrogen-storage-proje... It would take 22 Deltas to overtake the world's largest pumped storage plant, a massive Chinese installation with 6.6 terawatt hours of storage capacity: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/04/state-grid-of-china-switches-on-worlds-largest-pumped-hydro-station/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/04/state-grid-of-china-s... Still, potential underground hydrogen capacity is tremendous, amounting to thousands of terawatt hours in Europe alone: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201910.0187/v1 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201910.0187/v1

cwkoss 4y ago
How does the energy in underground hydrogen get utilized? Is the capacity the combustive energy, or only the energy from the gas pressure?
- philipkglass 4y ago
  It's burned as fuel in a gas turbine to generate electricity. The process is similar to burning natural gas in turbines, but some equipment adjustments have to be made when running on hydrogen. The Delta project is starting with a 30/70 blend of hydrogen and natural gas, gradually stepping up to 100% hydrogen. Siemens currently has turbines that can burn up to 75% hydrogen and is targeting 100% hydrogen by 2030: https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/priorities/future-technologies/hydrogen/zehtc.html https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/priorities/future-t... General Electric has a variety of gas turbines, accepting 50% to 100% hydrogen in the fuel blend: https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fueled-gas-turbines https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fuele... Mitsubishi claims to offer turbine operation on up to 100% hydrogen: https://solutions.mhi.com/clean-fuels/hydrogen-gas-turbine/ https://solutions.mhi.com/clean-fuels/hydrogen-gas-turbine/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

_hypx 4y ago

The recent appearance of hydrogen energy storage has basically refuted this argument. We can now store all of the renewable energy we want. The only problem is the lack of awareness among environmentalists and engineers.

speakfreely 4y ago
My limited understanding was that the electrolysis tech is not yet efficient enough at scale to make this feasible. Do you have links where I could read more about the cutting edge in hydrogen production? This is a very fascinating potential tool for solving the "we don't have enough batteries" problem with renewables.
- _hypx 4y ago
  The lack of awareness I am talking about also applies to electrolysis. The current state of electrolyzer technology is already good enough to do the job. Future advancements will make this a no-brainer. This is similar to the rise of photovoltaics a decade (which also caught many 'experts' by surprise). Some recent advancements: https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/hydrogen/toshiba-claims-hydrogen-breakthrough-with-new-p2g-production-technology https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/hydrogen/toshiba-claims-hy... https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electrolysis/ https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr... https://energynews.biz/idaho-national-lab-and-bloom-energy-produce-hydrogen-at-record-rates/ https://energynews.biz/idaho-national-lab-and-bloom-energy-p...
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The problem with electrolysis was not its efficiency, the problem was capital cost of the electrolysers (so they could be paired effectively with intermittently overproducing renewables.) Efficiency was more of the concern when it was imagined expensive nuclear power would be driving electrolysers 24/7.
pydry 4y ago
Hydrogen leaks like crazy and corrodes storage cannisters. It isnt especially practical.

credit_guy 4y ago

> this is the only game in town. There is another game in town. Emphasis on "is", as in present tense, not future. Natural gas power plants. They emit much, much less CO2 than coal. If we use them to only generate electricity when solar and wind are not enough, we end up with much lower emissions than what the trees remove from the atmosphere. We also end up needing to overbuild solar and wind by only about 30%, not by a factor of 3 or 4. The capital cost of maintaining the current, existing, natural gas power plants is basically zero. The capital cost of building new pumped storage is huge. Here, let me do it for you. Lifting 1 kg to a height of 1 m requires about 10 Joules (more precisely 9.8, as every high school student hopefully knows). One billion kg, or one million tons is 10 giga-joule, or giga-watt-seconds. Increase to 360 million tons, and you get one GigaWatt-hour. One ton is one cubic meter of water, one million is a square of 1km2 area and 1m height, and 360 megatons is a square of horizontal width and length of 6 km and a height of 10 meters. A fairly big lake. Building an artificial one would qualify as a mega-project. It would cost multiple billions of dollars. It would be able to generate one gigawatt of power for one hour. Of course you'd raise it to a certain height, let's say 100 meters, and that would generate the 1GW of power for 4 days. If you have 100% efficiency. Which you don't have, because you lose energy both when you pump up, and when you let the water come down. Assuming an optimistic 25% overall round-trip efficiency, you get 1GW power for one day. If you want for one month, well, you multiply this by 30. Or you can just keep around a 1GW natural gas power plant, and use it when you need it.

pencilguin 4y ago
To explain the economics of pumped storage, you must first understand it. Pumped storage round-trip efficiency is not, in fact, 25%, but routinely above 70%. Nobody pumps water up just 10 meters. It is, instead, pumped (say) a thousand meters up to a reservoir commonly 10 meters deep. A 10m-deep reservoir needs only a cheap earthen dike. A dike is hardly a "megaproject", even if km long. Dikes are low tech. The energy is extracted at the bottom end of a penstock. Each ton of water in a reservoir 1000m up stores 10MJ. One just 100x100x10 meters thus holds 100,000 tons, 1000 GJ, >270 MWh, 6 hours at ~40 MW. Nobody needs 30 days' storage. If your hydro storage runs low, and local fuel tankage looks like it might, too, you order out for LNG or, soon, NH3 or LH2 from solar farms in the tropics. Few would need or want a 1km x 1km reservoir. Smaller ones distributed where the power is needed are more useful. An underground cavity, where it exists, can be used instead of a hilltop reservoir, or with one. Burning NG once in a while is no big deal, but NH3 will be cheaper in the near future.