30 ms·

The article doesn’t make this clear so I am assuming those numbers represent GWh of storage. To put this in context Bath County is a reservoir that has 24GWh o

by jweir 4y ago

The article doesn’t make this clear so I am assuming those numbers represent GWh of storage. To put this in context Bath County is a reservoir that has 24GWh of storage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_S...

blamazon 4y ago
Be advised, if one travels to witness this place, (Bath County Pumped Storage Facility) one will likely need to be ready to trespass to get a good look unless you have a prearranged tour. The owners have a lot of money for signs and fencing. But, it's worth it, the grandeur is jaw dropping. There's also little to no cell service due to NRQZ. There's a nice campground at the base of the lower dam. There's actually a lot of pumped energy storage up and down the east coast of the US to take advantage of things like nuclear power arbitrage. (Always-on nuclear power is cheap at night, while on-demand hydro power has a premium during the day) Many manmade power storage lakes doubled as real estate development schemes which made them a slam dunk economically for the power company. For example, my relative has a house on Lake Keowee in South Carolina which has a nuclear power station nestled amongst multimillion dollar lakehouses, and is interlinked to both upper and lower reservoirs for energy storage and heat dissipation. One interesting point is I doubt such projects could be replicated at all today in USA. Batteries are the way forward.
zizee 4y ago
Context for your context: Bath County resevoir is descrbed as "largest battery in the world", and cost the equivilent of 4 billion dollars (in 2021 $), occupies 265 acres of land, and has a capacity of around 14,000,000 m3 of water. I'm curious to see how the costs compare. My understanding is pumped hydro storage gets cheaper at scale. If my math is correct, 24GWH of storage at $4 billion dollars^ is $167 per kilowatt hour. What do these batteries cost to install at scale at the moment? What are they predicted to cost in the next 5, or 10 years? ^ does the 4 billion include the cost of land? Probably not important, even at an "expensive" 200k an acre, that's only 50ish million extra in costs.
- algo_trader 4y ago
  Pumped hydro can amortize over 50-100 years. In a true renewable grid, you will get over 50,000 cycles from the same dam (with some turbine replacements). EDIT: numbers..
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Thermal degradation will likely take it out before 100 years, but odds of wearing out next gen sodium ion batteries by cycling are pretty slim https://natron.energy/product/ https://natron.energy/product/
  - zizee 4y ago
    How much labour is involved in the upkeep/operation vs a battery bank? I think that there are pros and cons of each, we'll end up with a mix of lots of different solutions.
- blamazon 4y ago
  Even putting costs aside it seems like it could be unlikely that such a thing could be built at all today. Flooding huge swaths of ecosystems is no longer in vogue and dam removal is picking up in pace. When was the last major scale hydroelectric dam built in USA? Edit: looks like the information is here somewhere in the national dam inventory: https://nid.usace.army.mil/#/dams/search/&viewType=map&resultsType=dams&advanced=false&hideList=false&eventSystem=false https://nid.usace.army.mil/#/dams/search/&viewType=map&resul... But I am very tired and must sleep so I will not query.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    It's worth noting that pumped hydro, and the dams that are getting torn down for environmental these days, often look very different. Usually the dams that are getting torn down, block the entire river, and thus fish from passing up or downstream of the dam. (Fish ladders exist but are not particularly effective.) Pumped hydro may sit by the side of a river, but otherwise not obstruct the flow, and so that is not a major issue. (Example rendering: https://cdn.forumcomm.com/dims4/default/3ac369d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2184x1456+249+0/resize/1680x1120!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F19%2F00%2F20e314aa489f94e1adbb57b51324%2Fscreen-shot-2022-09-23-at-11.54.50%20AM.png https://cdn.forumcomm.com/dims4/default/3ac369d/2147483647/s...)
digitalscribe 4y ago
The article is perfectly clear that all the values are watts (MW, GW). It's really silly to assume that the literal Energy Information Administration doesn't know the difference between the units of watts and watt-hours. Battery power capacity is watts. Battery energy capacity is watt-hours. This article is talking about power capacity.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I think you are right. It is a little confusing because they use the term “battery storage capacity” a bunch of times. This looks like the… amount of storage capacity that the batteries have. But I think they actually mean it as, like, (battery storage) capacity. Like battery storage is just the name of the type of thing that provides [power] capacity.
fuzzythinker 4y ago
chart says gigawatts
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Batteries have a power capacity too. Most will be in the 2-4hr range (so double the GW figure for a rough estimate) if so.
epistasis 4y ago
You are wrong, the unit is GW, not GWh. Grid resources' most salient aspect is their power rating. For lithium ion batteries, there is typically four hours of duration when discharging at maximum capacity, though sometimes it's as low as one to two hours. And for the earliest lithium ion battery that were used for frequency regulation, it was as low as 15-30 minutes of duration. But today, it's usually safe to multiply the GW by four to get GWh for grid batteries, if one cares about the GWh more than GW for some reason.

by jweir 4y ago

blamazon 4y ago

Be advised, if one travels to witness this place, (Bath County Pumped Storage Facility) one will likely need to be ready to trespass to get a good look unless you have a prearranged tour. The owners have a lot of money for signs and fencing. But, it's worth it, the grandeur is jaw dropping. There's also little to no cell service due to NRQZ. There's a nice campground at the base of the lower dam. There's actually a lot of pumped energy storage up and down the east coast of the US to take advantage of things like nuclear power arbitrage. (Always-on nuclear power is cheap at night, while on-demand hydro power has a premium during the day) Many manmade power storage lakes doubled as real estate development schemes which made them a slam dunk economically for the power company. For example, my relative has a house on Lake Keowee in South Carolina which has a nuclear power station nestled amongst multimillion dollar lakehouses, and is interlinked to both upper and lower reservoirs for energy storage and heat dissipation. One interesting point is I doubt such projects could be replicated at all today in USA. Batteries are the way forward.

zizee 4y ago

Context for your context: Bath County resevoir is descrbed as "largest battery in the world", and cost the equivilent of 4 billion dollars (in 2021 $), occupies 265 acres of land, and has a capacity of around 14,000,000 m3 of water. I'm curious to see how the costs compare. My understanding is pumped hydro storage gets cheaper at scale. If my math is correct, 24GWH of storage at $4 billion dollars^ is $167 per kilowatt hour. What do these batteries cost to install at scale at the moment? What are they predicted to cost in the next 5, or 10 years? ^ does the 4 billion include the cost of land? Probably not important, even at an "expensive" 200k an acre, that's only 50ish million extra in costs.

algo_trader 4y ago
Pumped hydro can amortize over 50-100 years. In a true renewable grid, you will get over 50,000 cycles from the same dam (with some turbine replacements). EDIT: numbers..
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Thermal degradation will likely take it out before 100 years, but odds of wearing out next gen sodium ion batteries by cycling are pretty slim https://natron.energy/product/ https://natron.energy/product/
- zizee 4y ago
  How much labour is involved in the upkeep/operation vs a battery bank? I think that there are pros and cons of each, we'll end up with a mix of lots of different solutions.
blamazon 4y ago
Even putting costs aside it seems like it could be unlikely that such a thing could be built at all today. Flooding huge swaths of ecosystems is no longer in vogue and dam removal is picking up in pace. When was the last major scale hydroelectric dam built in USA? Edit: looks like the information is here somewhere in the national dam inventory: https://nid.usace.army.mil/#/dams/search/&viewType=map&resultsType=dams&advanced=false&hideList=false&eventSystem=false https://nid.usace.army.mil/#/dams/search/&viewType=map&resul... But I am very tired and must sleep so I will not query.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  It's worth noting that pumped hydro, and the dams that are getting torn down for environmental these days, often look very different. Usually the dams that are getting torn down, block the entire river, and thus fish from passing up or downstream of the dam. (Fish ladders exist but are not particularly effective.) Pumped hydro may sit by the side of a river, but otherwise not obstruct the flow, and so that is not a major issue. (Example rendering: https://cdn.forumcomm.com/dims4/default/3ac369d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2184x1456+249+0/resize/1680x1120!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F19%2F00%2F20e314aa489f94e1adbb57b51324%2Fscreen-shot-2022-09-23-at-11.54.50%20AM.png https://cdn.forumcomm.com/dims4/default/3ac369d/2147483647/s...)

digitalscribe 4y ago

The article is perfectly clear that all the values are watts (MW, GW). It's really silly to assume that the literal Energy Information Administration doesn't know the difference between the units of watts and watt-hours. Battery power capacity is watts. Battery energy capacity is watt-hours. This article is talking about power capacity.

bee_rider 4y ago
I think you are right. It is a little confusing because they use the term “battery storage capacity” a bunch of times. This looks like the… amount of storage capacity that the batteries have. But I think they actually mean it as, like, (battery storage) capacity. Like battery storage is just the name of the type of thing that provides [power] capacity.

fuzzythinker 4y ago

chart says gigawatts

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Batteries have a power capacity too. Most will be in the 2-4hr range (so double the GW figure for a rough estimate) if so.

epistasis 4y ago

You are wrong, the unit is GW, not GWh. Grid resources' most salient aspect is their power rating. For lithium ion batteries, there is typically four hours of duration when discharging at maximum capacity, though sometimes it's as low as one to two hours. And for the earliest lithium ion battery that were used for frequency regulation, it was as low as 15-30 minutes of duration. But today, it's usually safe to multiply the GW by four to get GWh for grid batteries, if one cares about the GWh more than GW for some reason.