Ender
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- Name: Ender
Ender’s Recent Comments
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Fix Transport First
My ideas is to concentrate on transport first. Try to start a crash program to replace IC cars and trucks with Vehicle to Grid (V2G) capable battery electric cars and plug in hybrids. This way we help mitigate climate change with reduced emissions (up to 30%) and help solve the twin problem of Peak Oil.
The huge storage potential of V2G cars and trucks will enable a much greater penetration of renewable power and can lead to the desired phasing out of coal.
Stephen Gloor Perth Western Australia
On Some clarifications and such posted 2 years, 9 months ago 2 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
100% renewables
"How do you run the grid on 100% renewables without some sort of storage? What if cloudy weather coincides with windless days for three days in a row?"
No-one is suggesting that we do this. You cannot run the grid on 100% thermal coal or 100% nuclear either as both these technologies require 'backup' from peaking plants to provide the demand for short term changes that neither of the technologies can provide.
We need to get away from the concept that renewables need backup. Fossil fuels need backup as well and it is called spinning reserve. Right now there are massive generators spinning consuming energy, producing CO2 and generating nothing. They are doing this because at any time a large generator could drop out and they are the backup.
What the true picture is that each generating source has its capacity factor - storage increases this for renewables. Yes a single wind farm, even in a good wind area, may not have any wind for a month however a coal plant may be out for the same period for maintenance or faults and nobody bats an eyelid. Some nuclear plants are out of action for a year or more from serious faults.
Due to the fully automatic operation of vanadium batteries and the fact they are as efficient small as they are big they do not have to big and central. The storage can be distributed in thousands of small power nodes in communities providing local storage not only for wind farms but local PV plants on people's homes.
Stephen Gloor Perth Western Australia
On Efficiency is the key posted 2 years, 11 months ago 31 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Vanadium batteries
Gar - why the requirement for 75 hours of capacity. There is no way that a distributed renewable grid would have no energy input for that long. Forcing a requirement for this is like forcing the present grid to be 100% reliable. It is not, which makes a company like mine spend a couple of million dollars providing a UPS for each of it sites for when the grid does fail.
To make renewables more dispatchable then only something like 6 or 12 hours storage is needed. If V2G gets going in a big way then we will have a lot more storage available however just the local storage of vanadium batteries would be sufficient for a much greater expansion of renewable power. These batteries are vastly more efficient and evironmentally friendly that pumped storage or hydrogen however some hydrogen, or hydrogen converted to methane or methanol, will always be stored.
6 hours storage for a 90MW wind farm:
From the FAQ
:As the size of the system in kWh increases, the cost per unit decreases significantly. The incremental cost of storage for large systems is approximately $150 per kWh.:In six hours a wind farm of 90MW would be expected to deliver .3 * 90 000 * 6 = 162 000 kWh. At $150 per kWh then the this would cost
162 000 X 150 = $24 300 000. Which would increase the cost of the wind farm from 50 million to 75 million however it would now be despatchable and have a repository to store excess wind power."The vanadium redox (and redox flow) battery was first patented by the University of New South Wales in Australia in 1986"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_batteryStephen Gloor Perth Western Australia
On Efficiency is the key posted 2 years, 11 months ago 31 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Renwable Storage
Pumped hydro and hydrogen are not the only options.
Try Vanadium batteries from VRB systems at about $150/kWh
http://www.vrbpower.com/
Another good Aussie inve...
help solve 2 problems with one solution - climate change and peak oil.Stephen Gloor Perth Western Australia
On Efficiency is the key posted 2 years, 11 months ago 31 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Transform the Way we Drive and Generate Power
Could not agree more. There is a path to a sustainable future and with some changes could be brought about. Perhaps we need more positive people to make it happen. These are the steps that I see as a start.
- Conserve Energy - the easiest, cheapest, and fastest method of reducing greenhouse emissions and downsizing our power requirements.
- Replace Oil Based Transport - Replace IC cars with Plug in hybrids and Battery Electric Cars and make all transport electric or electric hybrid. Make sure that all the PHEVs and BEVS can participate in Vehicle to Grid. Clean up cities and promote public transport and bicyles/walking.
- Increase Renewables to 75% - use the battery storage potential of millions of AC electric cars to allow renewables - solarPV, solar thermal, wind, wave tidal and biomass to increase share of power generation to 75%.
- Convert All Coal Thermal Plants to IGCC - get rid of all coal thermal plants and use a mixture of natural gas, stored renewable hydrogen and gasified coal to fuel flexible and fast reacting gas turbines that can interact automatically with renewable power.
- Transform the current vunerable, monolithic and centralised electricity grid into a fault tolerant, decentralised smart grid based on small self contained, but communicating, cells.
- Conserve Energy - the easiest, cheapest, and fastest method of reducing greenhouse emissions and downsizing our power requirements.