5 ms·

Easy technical remedy -- add in storage on key nodes - sell it back to the grid in the evening or when its not high or bid back in on capacity markets. Challen

Easy technical remedy -- add in storage on key nodes - sell it back to the grid in the evening or when its not high or bid back in on capacity markets. Challenge is getting the pricing model correct for such ancillary grid benefits to make it worth it for developer to build.

solardev 3y ago
It's like high frequency trading, except with the nation's power supply
- boringg 3y ago
  Not quite but also, you know power trading markets have existed for a long time right and the lights stay on - probably a 99.9% uptime ;) edit: Just re-read your comment I assumed you were implying high frequency trading as a bad thing - though it might have been to help non-energy people understand.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Well, you're not wrong! I understand power arbitrage is already a thing and for the most part it's OK. But once in a while you get situations like the crazy contracts in Texas a few years back. And I am a little concerned that if we create a large enough storage market controlled by a few big enough players, they could play financial games with a critical commodity, ie hoarding both generation and storage for peak resale value. In both situations maybe there's an argument for market efficiencies and liquidity and such. But it scares me a little. I am not a financial person (in the solar field, but not markets). I could totally be talking outta my ass!
    - boringg 3y ago
      There's always a risk of bad actors in any market. Hopefully we have learned and not forgotten the california energy crisis and Enron from the early 2000s. There are regulators who work on this though the market bad actors normally get caught a couple years after the fact. As long as the regulators keep catching them it seems likely that we won't have as many cheats. The energy markets are significantly layered in power contracts that I would think it would be difficult for an energy storage provider to play that much of a position.
  - alex_young 3y ago
    Well, there was this one energy trading company called Enron, and the power outages in California engineered to boost their profits. I'd say that some amount of weariness is justified in this case.
mcculley 3y ago
Do you have some idea on how to do storage cheap at scale? There is a lot of money for anyone who has an easy technical remedy.
- mprovost 3y ago
  Solar pairs well with hydro - a reservoir is basically a big battery that you recharge by pumping water uphill.
  - arwhatever 3y ago
    Any idea what the efficiency loss might be? I’m sure the loss is very high, but maybe could be overcome with ample solar inputs?
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Modern pumped hydro has a round trip efficiency of around 80%, I understand.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://www.tesla.com/megapack https://www.tesla.com/megapack https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-increase-energy-storage-deployment-thanks-megafactory/ https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-increas... https://lorenz-g.github.io/tesla-megapack-tracker/ https://lorenz-g.github.io/tesla-megapack-tracker/ (on a smaller scale, to date, Tesla has deployed Powerwalls and Powerpacks at more than 50,000 sites worldwide; their Lathrop, CA facility is ramping to manufacture 40GWh/yr of capacity)
- kitd 3y ago
  Dual feed power line, one for home electrics, one for immersion heater. Store excess renewably generated energy in household hot water tanks during the day, to be used in the evening in place of fossil-fuel generated supply, which also evens out load peaks as a side effect. This also works well with home solar.
rtkwe 3y ago
"Just do storage"... It's one of the hardest problems in the entire energy grid and on of the real sticking points of renewable energy, it's quite hard to store appreciable amounts of energy. Pumped hydro is one of the better options but it has the ecological impact of just building new hydro power but less great economic impacts because the water level is less stable for people to live beside.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Ha yeah, this was my thought too. "Do storage" is the right idea, but there is no "just".
- Retric 3y ago
  The numbers really aren’t that insane when you consider how quickly battery production has been ramping up. Nearly 100% of passenger cars going EV fairly quickly isn’t crazy looking at adoption curves. It’s likely those slow down soon, but continuing to build factories just as fast for grid storage is perfectly reasonable. There’s over 280 million cars in the US, assuming on average that’s ~75kWh each we’re looking at ~21 tWh worth of battery storage. Meanwhile the average daily electricity use in the US is currently only 11 tWh. Of course that increases in a 100% EV world but EV’s are generally quite flexible demand. PS: Solar power plants are often built to store ~50% of their daily output in batteries. It’s currently economically viable because that’s released at peak demand and thus peak prices, but with how quickly battery prices have been falling they will soon be viable even for normal nighttime prices.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Back feeding and metering all that power isn't exactly simple and it's also a big economic cost to just shove onto people in the form of increased battery wear and effectively reduced range since the most common trips begin early in the morning before renewables like solar come back online to produce the excess needed to recharge all the cars you've borrowed power from over night. Because of that cost that kind of distributed battery power is going to come out quite expensive unless you're just vastly underpaying for the depreciation of the battery like Uber does for it's drivers' cars wear and tear. Another big thing is your 21 TWh number has huge flaws. That's fully draining everyone's batteries to provide the power and no one is going to accept that we want the cars because we need to go places. Next we're decades away from even getting close to full EV penetration. Even if we stop selling new ICE vehicles they're durable goods that people hold on to for a long time. It's the kind of 'Company/technology X takes over everything' assumption that so vastly inflates the valuations of tech companies all over the sector.
benj111 3y ago
Why storage rather than using when available, eg running fridges/freezers/Aircon slightly cooler, water heaters hotter, charging cars, running the washing machine / dryer. Industrially smelting aluminium, making hydrogen, heating water, desalination. Not that I'm saying storage shouldn't be part of the mix.

solardev 3y ago

It's like high frequency trading, except with the nation's power supply

boringg 3y ago
Not quite but also, you know power trading markets have existed for a long time right and the lights stay on - probably a 99.9% uptime ;) edit: Just re-read your comment I assumed you were implying high frequency trading as a bad thing - though it might have been to help non-energy people understand.
- solardev 3y ago
  Well, you're not wrong! I understand power arbitrage is already a thing and for the most part it's OK. But once in a while you get situations like the crazy contracts in Texas a few years back. And I am a little concerned that if we create a large enough storage market controlled by a few big enough players, they could play financial games with a critical commodity, ie hoarding both generation and storage for peak resale value. In both situations maybe there's an argument for market efficiencies and liquidity and such. But it scares me a little. I am not a financial person (in the solar field, but not markets). I could totally be talking outta my ass!
  - boringg 3y ago
    There's always a risk of bad actors in any market. Hopefully we have learned and not forgotten the california energy crisis and Enron from the early 2000s. There are regulators who work on this though the market bad actors normally get caught a couple years after the fact. As long as the regulators keep catching them it seems likely that we won't have as many cheats. The energy markets are significantly layered in power contracts that I would think it would be difficult for an energy storage provider to play that much of a position.
- alex_young 3y ago
  Well, there was this one energy trading company called Enron, and the power outages in California engineered to boost their profits. I'd say that some amount of weariness is justified in this case.

mcculley 3y ago

Do you have some idea on how to do storage cheap at scale? There is a lot of money for anyone who has an easy technical remedy.

mprovost 3y ago
Solar pairs well with hydro - a reservoir is basically a big battery that you recharge by pumping water uphill.
- arwhatever 3y ago
  Any idea what the efficiency loss might be? I’m sure the loss is very high, but maybe could be overcome with ample solar inputs?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Modern pumped hydro has a round trip efficiency of around 80%, I understand.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://www.tesla.com/megapack https://www.tesla.com/megapack https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-increase-energy-storage-deployment-thanks-megafactory/ https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-increas... https://lorenz-g.github.io/tesla-megapack-tracker/ https://lorenz-g.github.io/tesla-megapack-tracker/ (on a smaller scale, to date, Tesla has deployed Powerwalls and Powerpacks at more than 50,000 sites worldwide; their Lathrop, CA facility is ramping to manufacture 40GWh/yr of capacity)
kitd 3y ago
Dual feed power line, one for home electrics, one for immersion heater. Store excess renewably generated energy in household hot water tanks during the day, to be used in the evening in place of fossil-fuel generated supply, which also evens out load peaks as a side effect. This also works well with home solar.

rtkwe 3y ago

"Just do storage"... It's one of the hardest problems in the entire energy grid and on of the real sticking points of renewable energy, it's quite hard to store appreciable amounts of energy. Pumped hydro is one of the better options but it has the ecological impact of just building new hydro power but less great economic impacts because the water level is less stable for people to live beside.

sanderjd 3y ago
Ha yeah, this was my thought too. "Do storage" is the right idea, but there is no "just".
Retric 3y ago
The numbers really aren’t that insane when you consider how quickly battery production has been ramping up. Nearly 100% of passenger cars going EV fairly quickly isn’t crazy looking at adoption curves. It’s likely those slow down soon, but continuing to build factories just as fast for grid storage is perfectly reasonable. There’s over 280 million cars in the US, assuming on average that’s ~75kWh each we’re looking at ~21 tWh worth of battery storage. Meanwhile the average daily electricity use in the US is currently only 11 tWh. Of course that increases in a 100% EV world but EV’s are generally quite flexible demand. PS: Solar power plants are often built to store ~50% of their daily output in batteries. It’s currently economically viable because that’s released at peak demand and thus peak prices, but with how quickly battery prices have been falling they will soon be viable even for normal nighttime prices.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Back feeding and metering all that power isn't exactly simple and it's also a big economic cost to just shove onto people in the form of increased battery wear and effectively reduced range since the most common trips begin early in the morning before renewables like solar come back online to produce the excess needed to recharge all the cars you've borrowed power from over night. Because of that cost that kind of distributed battery power is going to come out quite expensive unless you're just vastly underpaying for the depreciation of the battery like Uber does for it's drivers' cars wear and tear. Another big thing is your 21 TWh number has huge flaws. That's fully draining everyone's batteries to provide the power and no one is going to accept that we want the cars because we need to go places. Next we're decades away from even getting close to full EV penetration. Even if we stop selling new ICE vehicles they're durable goods that people hold on to for a long time. It's the kind of 'Company/technology X takes over everything' assumption that so vastly inflates the valuations of tech companies all over the sector.

benj111 3y ago

Why storage rather than using when available, eg running fridges/freezers/Aircon slightly cooler, water heaters hotter, charging cars, running the washing machine / dryer. Industrially smelting aluminium, making hydrogen, heating water, desalination. Not that I'm saying storage shouldn't be part of the mix.