3 ms·
Battery storage works just fine for intraday use. And you don't even need batteries for industrial heat, which is a very substantial fraction of total energy d
by rgmerk 3y ago
Battery storage works just fine for intraday use.
And you don't even need batteries for industrial heat, which is a very substantial fraction of total energy demand. You can heat up a box of rocks/bricks/sand/graphite with resistive wires and run water through pipes to get the heat out again.
And you don't need to dig out massive reservoirs for pumped hydro in much of the world. You just need a decent-size mountain range somewhere convenient to your electricity grid. Much of the time you can repurpose conventional hydroelectric dams for the job.
Another alternative to storage is interruptible demand. If you're making hydrogen with electrolysis (another potential alternative energy storage medium)
you can just turn the electrolysers off when electricity prices are high. There are lots of studies and while the more time you're using your electrolyser the better, the economics of running them intermittently are likely to be quite reasonable.
Finally, it's worth pointing out that most people in the developed world seem likely they will have several day's worth of home electricity usage parked in their driveways by 2035 or so. Tapping just a small amount of that will make a huge dent in dunkelflautes.
- michaelt 3y agoAs a Brit with solar panels, in June I get 15x the kWh output that I get in December. Which is the month with the highest demand for natural gas, for heating. So I think we need more than just intraday storage.
- rgmerk 3y agoYes, solar power has a huge amount of seasonal variation in the UK and the rest of northern Europe. And obviously, batteries on their own won't cut it to deal with this seasonal variation. But northern Europe, particularly the UK, has a lot less solar and a lot more wind in its grids than Spain, California, or Australia, for that very reason. Beyond that, there are quite a few other current or near-term technologies you can use to deal with the seasonality of supply and demand. First, insulating its houses properly to reduce the winter demand peak. Second, switching to heat pumps is another. Third, expanding biogas production and using it specifically for the winter peak. In the long term, producing hydrogen in the summer and storing it for the winter seems like the most likely solution for 100 or near-100% renewable grids in northern Europe at this point.
- tomatocracy 3y agoIf you want to use wind as baseload in the UK, you need enough storage to go through a wind drought which lasts for weeks. On top of that, the UK currently largely uses piped gas for space and water heating so unfortunately moving to heat pumps and EVs makes the problem even worse since both increase demand for electricity further (even if they net reduce energy demand/use). I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that nuclear is likely to be a significantly cheaper solution when factoring in total system costs, especially if you can build a whole series of nuclear plants and benefit from economies of scale.
- anovikov 3y agoAnother solution is to simply install 15x solar panels and switch off some when there is too much power. Because a panel currently goes for 11 cents per watt and there's almost no more expenses involved with overbuilding - no inverters, transformers or grid connection as you just switch off them on DC panel output point if there's too much power - it comes dirt cheap.
- rgmerk 3y agoYou can do that kind of thing in the US, but land use is a real constraint in the UK. The politics of land use in the UK are also diabolical.
- tim333 3y agoYou could put them in the Sahara and run a cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Powe...