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The Energy Storage Fiasco – How Soon Will It Be Abandoned?

2 points by harambae 2y ago

ggm 2y ago
Lithium batteries are not the only storage. Flow batteries have higher physical land space requirements but are within limits "trivial" to scale for Wh duration: it's add more tanks. The surface of membrane across which you do the flow determines the current, capacity is liquid storage volumes. This is ideal for utility scale distribution. Non-electrochemical methods of storage are also possible and viable at scale, the classic one being pumped hydro. They have loss levels, so are not "free" in terms of the energy inputs let alone capex to construct, but the point here is not really "oh we lost storing, lets not do this" the point is "what capacity, for what GWh, for what duration in storage" and they'd work fine. I don't want to be the contrarian to the contrarian, but this is basically a rant against storage which attacks one form of storage: the one which people focus on because its available in volume right now. However, other places in the US grid are exploring flow batteries, Pumped Hydro has been around since the dawn of electricity supply time, and variations on thermal storage and regen, pumped air or other working fluids all exist outside the lab. Still, you have to acknowledge the scale of the problem. The principle scale problem here is the sheer weight of nay sayers who want to doomscroll over deployments which provide less GW and less GWh and argue directly to "this cannot handle a dunkelflaut of 10 days" or some other number.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  There is already a fairly large flow battery installed in California and flow battery prices have been plunging spectacularly, so I expect them to have serious traction soon.
  - ggm 2y ago
    Sadly an Australian innovator in the field (redflow/Zcell) went into administration. They had done a lot to push commercially viable models forward and sold into telco rural and remote, and I think were tendering into this market in California, as well as the US army base deployments.

2 points by harambae 2y ago

ggm 2y ago

Lithium batteries are not the only storage. Flow batteries have higher physical land space requirements but are within limits "trivial" to scale for Wh duration: it's add more tanks. The surface of membrane across which you do the flow determines the current, capacity is liquid storage volumes. This is ideal for utility scale distribution. Non-electrochemical methods of storage are also possible and viable at scale, the classic one being pumped hydro. They have loss levels, so are not "free" in terms of the energy inputs let alone capex to construct, but the point here is not really "oh we lost storing, lets not do this" the point is "what capacity, for what GWh, for what duration in storage" and they'd work fine. I don't want to be the contrarian to the contrarian, but this is basically a rant against storage which attacks one form of storage: the one which people focus on because its available in volume right now. However, other places in the US grid are exploring flow batteries, Pumped Hydro has been around since the dawn of electricity supply time, and variations on thermal storage and regen, pumped air or other working fluids all exist outside the lab. Still, you have to acknowledge the scale of the problem. The principle scale problem here is the sheer weight of nay sayers who want to doomscroll over deployments which provide less GW and less GWh and argue directly to "this cannot handle a dunkelflaut of 10 days" or some other number.

jeffbee 2y ago
There is already a fairly large flow battery installed in California and flow battery prices have been plunging spectacularly, so I expect them to have serious traction soon.
- ggm 2y ago
  Sadly an Australian innovator in the field (redflow/Zcell) went into administration. They had done a lot to push commercially viable models forward and sold into telco rural and remote, and I think were tendering into this market in California, as well as the US army base deployments.