In coming days, we'll be talking about how to "power up" renewable energy.
Everyone's talking renewables. G8 leaders are talking about reducing CO2 emissions and increasing renewables; federal and state officials are talking about tough new renewable portfolio standards; many in the general public seem eager to embrace renewables as the only logical way to address global warming (although whether or not they are aware of the price of renewable energy remains unclear).
There's a fundamental problem, however. The one thing no one is talking about is perhaps the one thing that would make the transition to renewables work, namely energy storage.
While it's true that electricity itself cannot be stored, electricity can be stored in a different form ... after all, that's what a battery is.
The reason storage is so essential to renewables is the renewables are intermittent -- the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and they are often located in areas far from population centers. Because the price of wholesale electricity varies throughout the day, when electricity is sold is just as important as how much electricity is sold. But if you can store the energy generated on a sunny or windy day and then inject that energy into the grid at periods of high demand ... well, then you've got yourself a market. You've got both physical and economic control over your resource and the leverage with which to build increasing demand for your product.
So coupling bulk energy storage with renewable energy -- especially remotely located wind farms -- creates a more reliable market for the energy generated and a more attractive environment for investment. Perhaps most importantly, storage also begins to make renewably generated electricity behave, from a market and supply perspective, like electricity from baseload plants such as nuclear.
Before we expect too much from renewables and are disappointed by their failure to perform, we need to start talking about giving them the power they need to succeed. We need to be talking about storage.
Sources:
- The Energy Storage Council
- Pearl Street Power blog
- World Council for Renewable energy: "The case for energy autonomy: Storing Renewable Energies" (call for papers)
- Electricity Storage Association: papers and presentations
Wind: still enough to save the world
Why we overestimate the costs of climate change legislation
The faint silver lining of the Waxman-Markey clean-energy-mandates cloud
Comments View as Flat
GRLCowan Posted 4:52 am
10 Jun 2007
Inefficient but highly transportable storage ...
is what I've been advocating for some time, linke below.
The inefficiency would exist if electricity were used to make it, and at the destination it were used to make electricity. Electricity could conceivably be eased out of the deal at both ends.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:09 am
10 Jun 2007
Well
Well, we already have the technology for EFFICIENT and Highly transportable electricity.
Can charge an AltairNano battery to 80% in 1 minute.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge3
And the 250kW AeroVironment charger provides ample current to accomplish this.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge
The old EV1 for instance could pop an 80% charge in 12 minutes.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge2
_____
So, it all comes down to how do we efficiently store renewable on-demand electricity on the grid.
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sunflower Posted 5:16 am
10 Jun 2007
Disconnect the meme
Renewable energy is much more than electricity.
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:22 am
10 Jun 2007
Who here owns an AltairNano battery?
wrote: we already have the technology for EFFICIENT and Highly transportable electricity [...] an AltairNano battery
How many AltairNano batteries do you own?
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:27 am
10 Jun 2007
Huh?
Do you need to own your own personal nuclear power plant for them to exist?
Don't quite see how that question is at all relevant.
Semantic quibbling at best.
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Charles Barton Posted 5:36 am
10 Jun 2007
more than electricity
"Renewable energy is much more than electricity." - sunflower
How right you are. You could have 100% of peek demand generating capacity, and still not have a light bulb lit. Wind and solar power is going to end up being very expensive if you want to use storage to enhance avaliability on demand. Storage means you may need to go to 200% or even 300% of peek demand capacity, in order to produce the stored energy. Even then the system may ne less than 100% reliable.
Charles Barton
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WWAGD?! Posted 5:45 am
10 Jun 2007
H Man
We can store the solar/wind power as hydrogen.
This man in New Jersey does just that, and he uses the excess to run his vehicles.
He's completely Off The Grid:
http://www.greenoptions.com/blog/2007/03/16/man_lives_pol ...
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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Gar Lipow Posted 5:53 am
10 Jun 2007
storage and hydrogen
I note the article on the guy who uses PV and hydrogen does mentions costs of half a million. You could pay a utility bill for quite some time with that money.
Here is the bottom line on renewable electricity. If we connect a lot of different source together with a long distance grid we will need less storage -- little enough storage that we can meet our storage needs with bulk pumped storage in an ecologically sound way. Closed cycle modular pumped storage avoids most of the ecological problems with conventional dams, and we won't need a lot of them.
And by the way if we want to provide all or most power from sun and wind, we don't need "three times peak power". We need renewable capital about three times average consumption, which is a very diffent story. Wind electricity costs 3 - 6 center per kWh even with ~29%-~35% utilization. That is because there is not fuel cost, and O&M costs are so low. Fossil fuel and nuclear plants have much higher O&M than wind.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:14 am
10 Jun 2007
Good news on pumped storage
Reading an article in Scientific American right now
"A Fish Friendly Hydroelectric Turbine gets a New Life"
Says that a conical style turbine allows for 98% fish survival rate, as they pass by it.
Considering how that was one of the big issues with dams and pumped hydro, that certainly helps.
_
One issue I've heard with retrofitting old dams is that they need to re-pass their Environmental Impact Assessment.
Which is why a lot of existing dams don't upgrade to hydropower.
This would certainly help that.
(Plus maybe some legistlation)
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/story?id ...
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q= ...
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GRLCowan Posted 6:29 am
10 Jun 2007
First H2 load at the mentioned hydrogen house ...
turns out to be a US$2,000 import from a hydrogen plant, almost certainly a steam/natural gas reforming plant. As competent persons who were consulted remarked, in I think it was the New York Times weekly magazine or some such thing ... maybe it was a Chick pamphlet ... the hydrogen house has no record and no promise of replacing the hydrogen it will use.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:38 am
10 Jun 2007
Denmark utility says wind costs 18 cents/kWh
Gar Lipow wrote: Wind electricity costs 3 - 6 center per kWh
If that is the case, why is the Denmark utility Dong Energy saying that it cannot afford to deploy windpower without a price guarantee of 18 cents per kWh?
http://gristmill.grist.org/comments/2007/5/31/23234/8204/ ...
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Gar Lipow Posted 6:54 am
10 Jun 2007
Denmark
You would have to ask Denmark. Here in the U.S. it costs between 3-6 cents per kWh. Possibly it is doing the usual thing large institutions do -- trying to extract the maximum subsidy possible?
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:00 am
10 Jun 2007
EERE says less than 5 cents per kWh
http://www.eere.energy.gov/states/alternatives/wind.cfm
I'd take their word over a utility lobbying for a subsidy.
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:08 am
10 Jun 2007
May 2001 3-5 cents per kWh for bulk production
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/pdfs/29267-5.8.6.pdf
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:23 am
10 Jun 2007
The real answer
The real answer is that Denmark just pays more for electricity period.
That said, here's some spiffy wind charts
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2617
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Charles Barton Posted 7:36 am
10 Jun 2007
The Cost of Wind
We have to recognize the difference between the cost of wind as a supplemental source of electricity and wind as a baseload source of electricity. The cost of wind generated electricity rises with each unit peek demand baseload penetration. Advocates of wind must factor in the the costs of duplicate generation capacity, plus the cost of energy storage, in order to find the price of wind as a baseload electricity source. As baseload power wind generated electricity is far more expensive than as a supplement to base load power. It is expensive to have wind generated electricity when ever you throw the light switch.
Charles Barton
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Billhook Posted 7:55 am
10 Jun 2007
Constrained Assumptions . . . .
"The reason storage is so essential to renewables is the renewables are intermittent --"
The article above offers this as its central argument -
when it is of course sheer nonsense, as a highschool review of the alternative energy options will amply demonstrate.
Energy storage may, perhaps, assist the commercial viability of intermittent options such as wind and solar,
but it is wholly irrelevant to geo-thermal, forest biomass, current turbines, hydro great & small, etc.
In addition to which, at what point will authors published on Gristmill start questioning just what "Renewable" means ?
Let alone the question of whether the supply of said energies has saved even a single barrel of oil so far ?
Regards,
Bill
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:06 am
10 Jun 2007
Denmark's electricity is pricy due to windpower
GreyFlcn wrote: Denmark just pays more for electricity
No, it does not.
Denmark pays more for retail electricity (and much of its electricity is imported, in order to subsidize the wholesale costs of its domestically-produced windpower). Denmark's wholesale costs for domestically-produced electricity (55% from coal, 21% from gas and 12% from wind) are comparable to those in other nations.
world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html
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Gar Lipow Posted 8:27 am
10 Jun 2007
variable energy
>Energy storage may, perhaps, assist the commercial viability of intermittent options such as wind and solar, but it is wholly irrelevant to geo-thermal, forest biomass, current turbines, hydro great & small, etc.
Currently we know how to do sun and wind on a large scale, though one can argue about the economics. No one has demonstrated a commercial current turbine. Undeveloped hydro great and small represents a very tiny potential. There are strong limits on what we can get from sustainable biomass. Geothermal electricity we can currently tap again represents a very small number, though potential breakthroughs may change this.
As to renewable energy saving a barrel of oil. While the Alaska wind example I posted about recently, wind electricity is directly placing diesel fuel consumption.
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:30 am
10 Jun 2007
One reason wind is so pricy: high O&M costs
Gar Lipow wrote: Fossil fuel and nuclear plants have much higher O&M than wind.
Scrolling down at this WNA link to the 2003 graph below the sentence, "A detailed study of energy economics in Finland published in mid 2000 showed that nuclear energy would be the least-cost option for new generating capacity," reveals that O&M costs in euros for various sources were: nuclear 7.2, gas 3.5, coal 7.4, and wind 10.0.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:00 am
10 Jun 2007
Well if we want to play the externality game
Well, if we want to play the externality game.
How about we add the DOD/DOE budget onto the cost of Nuclear
And the global warming cost onto coal.
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:09 am
10 Jun 2007
Externalities
GreyFlcn,
Did someone-else mention externalities?
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:07 pm
10 Jun 2007
Nuke & Wind O&M
http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/EMS/reports/ann-rpt-wind-06-ppt.pd ...
>Scrolling down at this WNA link to the 2003 graph below the sentence, "A detailed study of energy economics in Finland published in mid 2000 showed that nuclear energy would be the least-cost option for new generating capacity," reveals that O&M costs in euros for various sources were: nuclear 7.2, gas 3.5, coal 7.4, and wind 10.0.
Cherry Picking and from a biased source (world nuclear association).
Look at this(pdf) U.S. Department of energy study O&M costs for project built from 2,000 forward in the U.S. are about .8 cents per kWh.
In contrast, again according to the U.S. DOE, O&M (including fuel) for nuclear plants were estimated to be 1.8 cents per kWh in the U.S.
I suspect that the high figure for wind in places like Finland and Denmark is the fact that they were early adapters,and thus have older more expensive wind generaters. Older turbines not only have higher capital costs, but higher O&M costs.
I will note that it is pretty widely recognized that new utility scale wind tends to run 6 cents per kWh or less. Really, wasting our time by continuing to press a discredited point does not enhance your credibility.
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Charles Barton Posted 1:10 pm
10 Jun 2007
Supplemental or baseload
Gar Lipow I have differentiated between the cost of supplemental wind power, and the cost of baseload wind power. Baseload would be a reliable, 24 hour a day power source. Supplemental power comes on line intermittently and does not respond to consumer demand. You report the cost of wind power to be "6 cents per kWh or less." Is this the cost of supplemental wind power, or the cost of baseload wind power?
Charles Barton
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:42 pm
10 Jun 2007
Externalities
Yep.
If you want to look at the "whole picture" costs, on one technology, it's only fair that you do the same for other technologies that you compare it to.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:48 pm
10 Jun 2007
Barton
Nucbuddy, who I was responding to was claiming that wind in general had these outragous cost. As for baseload, widely dispersed wind farms in different climates connected by HVDC lines, with a little bit of storage can in fact provide base load.
For example a column I wrote on the subject:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/12/63111/0928
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Nucbuddy Posted 2:08 pm
10 Jun 2007
Nuke production-costs (O&M + fuel): 1.66c/kWh
Gar Lipow wrote: according to the U.S. DOE, O&M (including fuel) for nuclear plants were estimated to be 1.8 cents per kWh in the U.S.
Your link says that figure was from 2001. Nuclear production costs (O&M + fuel) have been continuously dropping. In 2006 they (famously, since the announcement in February 2007) were 1.66 cents/kWh.
thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/02/recordlow_produ.html
From 1997, nuclear production costs have been:
nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=351
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Production_Costs.pdf
Nuclear fuel-costs alone have been almost-continuously dropping (despite skyrocketing uranium prices) since 1995:
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Fuel_Costs.pdf
nei.org/documents/Monthly%20Fuel%20Cost%20to%20U.S.%20Electric%20Utilities.pdf
And nuclear non-fuel O&M costs have been almost-continuously dropping since 1997:
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Non-Fuel_OM_Costs.pdf
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WWAGD?! Posted 2:28 pm
10 Jun 2007
Hydro House Rules
Solar-hydrogen homes try to overcome doubts
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/business/bgsoho.1- ...
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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WWAGD?! Posted 2:32 pm
10 Jun 2007
Solar House DENIERS REPENT!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/business/bgsoho.1- ...
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:51 pm
10 Jun 2007
Jabailo
I think everyone here can agree that hydrogen is a dumb idea.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/hydrogen4.png
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:54 pm
10 Jun 2007
Actually
Tesla Motors's numbers are even less kind to hydrogen.
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen.png
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:38 pm
10 Jun 2007
Peaking Peaks
Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Coal.
Yeah... nothing really new to Grister's I guess.
So it's really a question of whether we go green, or we glow green :P
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WWAGD?! Posted 4:39 pm
10 Jun 2007
Grayfalcon.NET : The Hub of the Universe
Yes, the vast worldwide audience of "greyfalcon.net" and its assorted rants is surely in agreement.
However, science, industry and government are moving towards the 21st Century Hydrogen Economy.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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WWAGD?! Posted 4:40 pm
10 Jun 2007
And Tesla sells....?
...yes, B-A-T-T-E-R-I-E-S
Of course they would fear hydrogen, the renewable energy that delivers the highest energy per unit weight.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:49 pm
10 Jun 2007
So I take it
So I take it Ulf Bossel, founder of the European Fuel Cell Forum isn't credible enough for ya :P
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen
(Note, they still like fuel cells, just not mobile ones)
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:15 pm
10 Jun 2007
40 trillion tons of uranium will peak before 2050?
GreyFlcn wrote: Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Coal.
Yeah... nothing really new to Grister's I guess.
youtube.com/watch?v=1TCbl3bpPvY
So it's really a question of whether we go green, or we glow green
The description of that video says:
At 14:49 in that video, Richard Heinberg says, "Uranium supplies [are] also going to peak well-before 2050, even in the best-case scenario."
How long, GreyFlcn, do you figure it would take for human society -- at its present power-consumption level -- to burn through 1% of the ~40 trillion tons of uranium in the crust?
theoildrum.com/node/2472#comment-181500
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Whiskerfish Posted 6:22 pm
10 Jun 2007
Pumped-storage
has major enviro impacts. Dams are dams, and you've got to look at the cost of getting all that water uphill.
Whiskerfish
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:48 pm
10 Jun 2007
Re: NucBuddy
Thats why I didn't mention it.
Assuming no reprocessing even if we did run out of Uranium they'd just switch to Thorium anyways.
And yes, even if the fuel cost shot up a couple hundred percent it wouldn't make much difference.
Running out of various forms of Uranium isn't really the reason why I take issue with Nuclear.
The reason I take issue is mainly because it would speed proliferation, and even though it does come in pretty big chunks, the ability for it to scale rapidly, safely, with ready access to cooling resources just isn't there.
Mainly I think the oppourtunity cost just isn't there as compared to ample renewables. (Which in the worst case scenario all we'd have to do is create an excess of capacity and use shunts)
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amazingdrx Posted 10:54 pm
10 Jun 2007
My favorite way
To store electric power from renewables is to store it as heat or cold. And reduce electric power use with conservation so that a very small battery bank can do the job. Or backup can come from a biogas digestor that produces gas when it is needed to go through a fuel cell/microturbine (or ICE generator collecting cogeneration waste heat for cooking and domestic hot water storage).
First reduce heating and cooling needs way down, for refrigeration, cooking, and air conditioning, the really big kwh guzzlers.
When the wind blows hard or the sun shines use heat pumps or direct circulation to ground heat sink to store refrigeration as frozen salt water. Home air conditioning coolness is already stored in the ground, simple circulation will do that job.
Cooking heat can be stored with molten wax. And home heating and hot water storage stored with phase change salt solutions like sodium sulfate decahydrate.
What is left to feed on kwh? lighting, computers, teevees, and appliaces are all available in super efficient versions.
If power use is very low, batteries will be cost effective.
the goal of powering a home and plugin car as well from a home power system (disconnected from the grid) is attainable at a reasonable cost with a 5 to 10 year payback period without subsidies. I believe it, but can't prove it..yet.
Given a large enough grid with various inputs of biogas, wind, solar, and water power, storage might be a completely moot point though.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 10:58 pm
10 Jun 2007
Huh?
"While it's true that electricity itself cannot be stored"
Capacitors and superconducting energy storage systems store electricity directly. A 500 KVDC grid that used nanotech capacitors or superconducting storage would do the job. But at what cost? Mass production efficiency might bring them within reach economically.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Rune Posted 4:16 am
11 Jun 2007
Alternative energy won't scale any time soon
I just read through all of the above comments and the only one that seemed connected to the business reality of providing substantial substitutes for conventional energy in the near to medium term was amazingdrx's mention of the importance of conservation, IMO. Think about it. We have built up the oil, gas, and coal economy in earnest over the past 100 years. We did it because it was relatively cheap, quick, and easy to do so. Now we are seeking to develop new energy sources that mostly convert various forms and effects of current solar energy reaching the Earth into something we can use almost immediately. It has not proven to be nearly as quick, cheap, or easy to figure out how to do this on the enormous scale we have come to rely on conventional sources to provide. This despite more and more fat grants, tax breaks, and consumer subsidies that are being poured into newer sources of energy.
The fact is, the most hyped sources of cleaner current energy (as opposed to dirtier, ancient, stored in the ground sources) make up a tiny fraction of 1% of world energy sources. Even if we can grow the clean and new energy sources as quickly as we were able to scale up the simpler tasks of pumping and digging vast stores of fuel out of the ground, which, so far, we can't, it is going to take the better part of a century to get close to where we are today in terms of energy demand. And so long as that demand grows at a modest 1% per year, the increase in the quantity of energy demanded will dwarf the new energy coming online at current 30% to 80% growth rates--rates that are very difficult to sustain, by the way.
Some day, probably after all of us are dead and the population as a whole has declined enough to reduce energy demand for that reason alone, cleaner, current energy conversion and use may be the answer to most energy needs. But for right now, with the capabilities and cost structures we really face when we go about reducing the amount of GHG and toxins we put into our air and water when we light up our world, heat and cool our buildings, and do some work, efficiency and conservation measures beat the crap out of the potential to make a dent in the problem with new energy sources. To put it in perspective, a mere 1% decrease in what would otherwise have been the level of this year's energy demand trumps all of the wind and solar generation installed over the past few decades many times over.
What this means to energy storage is that efficiency is critically important because it provides a way of balancing peak loads and peak generation from the energy sources most of us will use for most of our energy needs for most of our lives. If we can keep dirty peaker plants offline, and maybe retire some other older plants, by storing the excess generation capacity of cleaner plants, we will be able to do more good in the next decade or two than all of the wind and solar we can even hope to see during that period. And, of course, what we learn about efficient and less expensive storage will eventually pay enough benefits to worry about when cleaner and more current energy sources eventually scale up decades from now.
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amazingdrx Posted 6:17 am
11 Jun 2007
Thanks rune
Oh it'll scale. hehey. I got your scale.
It's only a challenge... from a design and business perspective. So what's the problem, without challenge life would be boring.
Tackle these problems and come on in for the win with us. Big fossil corporate governance has an ass kicking coming, and they are going to get it. From small business building out distribuited renewable generation and storage.
Say ghoodbye to all that loot you oily pirates. Arrrrhh.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Septimus Posted 6:23 am
11 Jun 2007
Storage and Wind Turbine Generators(WTG)
Why pay $6000/8000 per/kW for Wind Energy, which requires 1.8cent/kWhr subsidy--not very economic. ( this $2000/kw name plate rating) Useful energy delivered averages in most regions no better than 30%.Energy Storage as a power "extender" can increase the WTG capacity to 65% or more, with the benefit of delivering firm capacity,allowing for capacity payment, a better deal than just delivering energy.The "spilled" energy or night time generation has very little value to the grid.
Compressed Air Energy Storage-CAES(Bulk) Plus Wind can now provide Load following,Voltage Regulation, Frequency control,Grid support, Spinning reserve,VaR control etc. and reduce thermal plant cycling( that is the extra capacity that must be available when the wind velocities drop)
Installing a 300 MW CAES plant vs. 3 x 100MW open cycle Gas Turbines or a Combined Cycle plant for better fuel utilization is a costly proposition and does nothing to "extend" the WTG capacity.
Wind as renewable source of energy will continue to grow here in the USA and is a resource to look upon favourably--Storage can really bring WTG's into the Baseload Market, reduce C02 emissions, and bring increased "green" power to the market.
'Run of the River' hydro plant which avoids new dams can also benefit from Bulk Storage, as the night time generation(rather than shutting down)can now fall into the same benefit profile outlined earlier.
Septimus van der Linden. Gas Turbine and Emerging Technologies.
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Charles Barton Posted 6:28 am
11 Jun 2007
"Uranium supplies and thorium
"Uranium supplies [are] also going to peak well-before 2050, even in the best-case scenario." - Richard Heinberg
It is inexcusable for someone who bills himself an an expert to know so little about energy. Generation IV reactors are expected to use Thorium rather than Uranium for breeding purposes. Thorium is 4 times as plentiful as Uranium in the Earth's crust. Sigh. This guy is a blithering idiot who needs to take a Freshman course on energy resources.
Charles Barton
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:49 am
12 Jun 2007
The darkhorse in the storage mix
While powering vehicles with fuel cells onboard is just a pipedream, I wouldn't be suprised if fuel cells would end up being an ideal form of grid storage.
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=22558&hed=Po ...
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