57 ms·

> Storage is a solved problem. Lol no, it really isn’t. > Pumped hydro has been in use for decades around the world, Pumped hydro works if you have mountains

> Storage is a solved problem. Lol no, it really isn’t. > Pumped hydro has been in use for decades around the world, Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good luck doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands. > battery systems are becoming commonplace as lithium ion battery prices have plunged They are nowhere near the right scale. Bear in mind, in Europe they’d need to store energy over several weeks or months. The continent is prone to winter anti cyclonic conditions that go on for weeks, with no wind and no sun light. It’s quite different from, say, most of Australia. > alternative battery technologies have matured I’d like to know which one, because as far as I know none of the alternative are anywhere near maturity. Progress is being made, but you’re overselling it. > Several Iron-flow chemistries are now commercially deployed. These are no silver bullets and have several drawbacks, including the “flow” bit, which requires pumps and valves. Efficiency is also not that great. There are sulphides, lithium-air, and Na-ion designs that are more promising. But again, none of that is mature, or even really produced at scale. > I don't understand why every time wind/solar are mentioned on HN, someone feels the need to say "tHe WiND doEsn'T alWAys BloW" while utilities are actively deploying storage, and not just for "when the sun isn't shining", but to help smooth peak usage to avoid transmission upgrades, provide resiliency from infrastructure failure during weather events, and increase flexibility for service/maintenance that doesn't require outages. It’s the counterpoint of all these “lol renewables all the way” posts that crop up any time we discuss energy policy. Most people would say that there are very good use cases for renewables. But they won’t be enough. If you read analyses at the grid level (some of that is in the IPCC reports), constant base production is very much required, otherwise you need to vastly overbuild and your grid has one huge point of failure (yes, freak meteorological events do happen).

donny2018 4y ago
Pumped hydro also works if you have water at all, which my country doesn’t. So, some kind of new molten-salt reactor which doesn’t need water for cooling and can be built in the desert could work very well for us.
peterfirefly 4y ago
Just a minor nit -- and some links for those who might not know where to find them. I of course agree with you. > Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good luck doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands. It works in Wales and Scotland -- but not in England where it is needed the most. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_United... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Transmission lines work fine in England. Wales and Scotland are hard by.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    (... as people actually say, in England. Or did.)
moloch-hai 4y ago
> Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. This falsehood has been corrected numerous times on HN. It need not be repeated. Pumped hydro is in no wise dependent on any of those. All it needs is a hill. Even England has hills. Even Australia has hills. The Netherlands are in Europe, which has hills. Another falsehood is that "you need to vastly overbuild". This too has been frequently corrected. We use, today, NG for backup. We will have no need to demolish any of that infrastructure, even after storage is built. Overbuilding renewables to charge storage makes compelling economic sense, just because it is so cheap, but the NG backup remains. Eventually, synthetic fuels will be cheaper, for such occasions, imported from solar farms in the tropics. So, renewables have no such "single point of failure". This falsehood need not be repeated. Finally, pumped hydro and batteries are just two of numerous practical storage technologies being deployed. Their round-trip efficiency is of minimal importance when they are charged from free surplus. Storage with NG backup provides fully ample 100% service with exactly zero "constant base production" needed or wanted.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  My I-think-conservative WAG for the cost and land-area-use differences between England and Switzerland, for this kind of storage, would be about 50x and 5-10x, respectively, for similar amounts of stored energy. Both elevation and grade of the surrounding land matter a lot for how much energy you can reclaim per stored liter, and having two or three sides of your reservoir provided by nature in the form of steep-walled valleys has to provide serious cost savings. Like of course any water you push up a hill is gonna gain potential energy, but I think a reasonable reading of "works" in that post was "works efficiently enough that it's actually worth doing", not "is technically possible".
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Your "wild-ass guesses" for costs are worth as much as you say. Grade, less: it affects mainly how long the penstock must be, but pipe is cheap. An earthen berm is a very cheap construction project. Classically those were achieved with hand labor worldwide, for millennia, eventually augmented with wheelbarrows starting in China, and oxcarts. They cost less today. Nature providing one, two, three, or four walls (steepness optional) reduces construction cost, but the turbines and pumps are a substantial part of the total. Opex is of course extremely low. Bonus points for solar farms floating on the reservoirs. Round-trip efficiency of pumped hydro is near the top of all alternatives, although efficiency is relatively unimportant when the power being stored was free.

donny2018 4y ago

Pumped hydro also works if you have water at all, which my country doesn’t. So, some kind of new molten-salt reactor which doesn’t need water for cooling and can be built in the desert could work very well for us.

peterfirefly 4y ago

Just a minor nit -- and some links for those who might not know where to find them. I of course agree with you. > Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. It works great in the Alps; good luck doing that in the UK or in the Netherlands. It works in Wales and Scotland -- but not in England where it is needed the most. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_United... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...

moloch-hai 4y ago
Transmission lines work fine in England. Wales and Scotland are hard by.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  (... as people actually say, in England. Or did.)

moloch-hai 4y ago

> Pumped hydro works if you have mountains, valleys you can flood, and dams. This falsehood has been corrected numerous times on HN. It need not be repeated. Pumped hydro is in no wise dependent on any of those. All it needs is a hill. Even England has hills. Even Australia has hills. The Netherlands are in Europe, which has hills. Another falsehood is that "you need to vastly overbuild". This too has been frequently corrected. We use, today, NG for backup. We will have no need to demolish any of that infrastructure, even after storage is built. Overbuilding renewables to charge storage makes compelling economic sense, just because it is so cheap, but the NG backup remains. Eventually, synthetic fuels will be cheaper, for such occasions, imported from solar farms in the tropics. So, renewables have no such "single point of failure". This falsehood need not be repeated. Finally, pumped hydro and batteries are just two of numerous practical storage technologies being deployed. Their round-trip efficiency is of minimal importance when they are charged from free surplus. Storage with NG backup provides fully ample 100% service with exactly zero "constant base production" needed or wanted.

yamtaddle 4y ago
My I-think-conservative WAG for the cost and land-area-use differences between England and Switzerland, for this kind of storage, would be about 50x and 5-10x, respectively, for similar amounts of stored energy. Both elevation and grade of the surrounding land matter a lot for how much energy you can reclaim per stored liter, and having two or three sides of your reservoir provided by nature in the form of steep-walled valleys has to provide serious cost savings. Like of course any water you push up a hill is gonna gain potential energy, but I think a reasonable reading of "works" in that post was "works efficiently enough that it's actually worth doing", not "is technically possible".
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Your "wild-ass guesses" for costs are worth as much as you say. Grade, less: it affects mainly how long the penstock must be, but pipe is cheap. An earthen berm is a very cheap construction project. Classically those were achieved with hand labor worldwide, for millennia, eventually augmented with wheelbarrows starting in China, and oxcarts. They cost less today. Nature providing one, two, three, or four walls (steepness optional) reduces construction cost, but the turbines and pumps are a substantial part of the total. Opex is of course extremely low. Bonus points for solar farms floating on the reservoirs. Round-trip efficiency of pumped hydro is near the top of all alternatives, although efficiency is relatively unimportant when the power being stored was free.