3 ms·

I agree. Nonetheless, some industry are willing to give it a test to see how feasible it is. https://www.lightmetalage.com/news/industry-news/smelting/trimet-

I agree. Nonetheless, some industry are willing to give it a test to see how feasible it is. https://www.lightmetalage.com/news/industry-news/smelting/trimet-starts-trial-operation-of-its-virtual-battery/ https://www.lightmetalage.com/news/industry-news/smelting/tr... > “We have reinvented the electrolysis process for the production of aluminium. For the first time, we will be able to vary the energy supply during operation significantly. This will allow us to react to changes in the electricity supply, which will benefit the power supply to households in Essen,” says Philipp Schlüter, CEO of TRIMET. “As an aluminium producer, we are naturally an energy-intensive company. As such, however, we are also a valuable partner for the energy revolution.” > The €36 million trial installation converted a total of 120 furnaces in hall one of its Essen plant, which will be able to consume either 25% more or 25% less energy for up to 48 hours. The energy requirement can also be reduced to zero for up to an hour, if necessary. This means up to 2,000 megawatt hours of electricity can be stored for use in the energy revolution. ----------- It requires new smelters, new software, new engineers. Its all very expensive. But it might be worthwhile. Just don't go like... crazy... with the idea right? There's downsides, but the upsides are immense. Keep an eye on the costs and practicality, and give it a test. It might be worthwhile. That's my outlook anyway. Maybe Aluminum specifically is run too close to 100% utilization to be useful (we do have a very predictable amount of Aluminum...), but maybe other industries have a more start/stop and feast/famine kind of setup that would benefit from off-hours automation for energy price optimizations and/or even grid-tie stabilization. But there are _real_ Aluminum plants giving this idea a test. So this isn't "vaporware" or even "theoretical". This is a real test occurring today. ------------- We have to ask ourselves: is a 2GW-hr battery the best thing to build? What if Aluminum-smelters could instead vary their load by +/- 25% with this new software/manufacturing mechanism? What costs more, the 2GW-hr battery or this software + manufacturing change to Aluminum plants? In both cases, we get 2GW-hrs of "energy storage". EDIT: IE, varying your load each day is a form of energy storage that should be considered by members of society. It may very well be cheaper to achieve 2GW-hrs of virtual energy storage by upgrading industry, rather than trying to build impossibly huge amounts of Li-ion batteries.

vlovich123 3y ago
Varying load by +/- 25% is neat but that doesn’t solve the “I need energy at night” problem for solar. You either need batteries or wind (but even wind is risky because you’re screwed during windless nights). All these other ideas are worth exploring and I’m 100% in favor of them, but the only path to decarbonizing the grid is nuclear & I’m so frustrated by all the solar absolutists that think renewables can power 100% of the grid by 2050 just because solar panel costs are dropping. We’d get much closer to net 0 if we were building fission plants aggressively (cue all the solar proponents claiming it’s too expensive or unsafe even when it really isn’t and solar costs are intentionally calculated in a misleading fashion to ignore the buildout needed for energy storage or altering unrelated industries to make solar more attractive).
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  When the grid transition began in the 2000s the hope was that solar prices, storage and nuclear would all see massive cost declines that made a fast transition possible. This has occurred for solar PV. It’s reasonably plausible that it will also occur for storage, given the huge incentives and rapid increase in manufacturing efficiencies. It has not happened at all for nuclear and there’s currently nothing on the horizon that gives much hope this will change by the 2050/60 time frame. Even China, which is blasting away at nuclear, predicts it will only be 18% of their generation by 2060 (and that’s likely optimistic.)
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Yeah, nuclear is hard because it was strangled in the crib for 50 years and it’s hard to make up that ground on time scales for net 0. It still remains the better bet for decarbonizing the grid and all the other neat ideas seem mostly like party tricks and nothing more. I think China in particular is interesting because there’s a good chance that they’re building enough capacity that their costs start to decrease & they become the world leader in fission plants. Specifically interested in what they’re doing with MSR designs because they should be much much cheaper than traditional HWR designs. But yes, it’s going to take us a minute to rebuild and restart our fission know-how as a species. It’s also telling that China is building a heck of a lot of fossil plants (natural gas & coal) in addition to lots of solar. That’s because they have a lot of electrification to do (they have a massive rural population & they also have much more transportation that needs to electrify to use grid power). Solar is a fine companion to handle daytime peak growth (which is why they’re reaching TW scale with solar) but that baseload growth remains a problem which is why they’re building so many fossil fuel and nuclear plants.

vlovich123 3y ago

Varying load by +/- 25% is neat but that doesn’t solve the “I need energy at night” problem for solar. You either need batteries or wind (but even wind is risky because you’re screwed during windless nights). All these other ideas are worth exploring and I’m 100% in favor of them, but the only path to decarbonizing the grid is nuclear & I’m so frustrated by all the solar absolutists that think renewables can power 100% of the grid by 2050 just because solar panel costs are dropping. We’d get much closer to net 0 if we were building fission plants aggressively (cue all the solar proponents claiming it’s too expensive or unsafe even when it really isn’t and solar costs are intentionally calculated in a misleading fashion to ignore the buildout needed for energy storage or altering unrelated industries to make solar more attractive).

matthewdgreen 3y ago
When the grid transition began in the 2000s the hope was that solar prices, storage and nuclear would all see massive cost declines that made a fast transition possible. This has occurred for solar PV. It’s reasonably plausible that it will also occur for storage, given the huge incentives and rapid increase in manufacturing efficiencies. It has not happened at all for nuclear and there’s currently nothing on the horizon that gives much hope this will change by the 2050/60 time frame. Even China, which is blasting away at nuclear, predicts it will only be 18% of their generation by 2060 (and that’s likely optimistic.)
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Yeah, nuclear is hard because it was strangled in the crib for 50 years and it’s hard to make up that ground on time scales for net 0. It still remains the better bet for decarbonizing the grid and all the other neat ideas seem mostly like party tricks and nothing more. I think China in particular is interesting because there’s a good chance that they’re building enough capacity that their costs start to decrease & they become the world leader in fission plants. Specifically interested in what they’re doing with MSR designs because they should be much much cheaper than traditional HWR designs. But yes, it’s going to take us a minute to rebuild and restart our fission know-how as a species. It’s also telling that China is building a heck of a lot of fossil plants (natural gas & coal) in addition to lots of solar. That’s because they have a lot of electrification to do (they have a massive rural population & they also have much more transportation that needs to electrify to use grid power). Solar is a fine companion to handle daytime peak growth (which is why they’re reaching TW scale with solar) but that baseload growth remains a problem which is why they’re building so many fossil fuel and nuclear plants.