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Post by Singleton Engineer on Feb 23, 2017 8:50:49 GMT 9.5
Repeated from BNC's OT26, as suggested.
Here is the missing explanation of the liquid sodium battery which Eclipse Now omitted from his post. NB I have tracked back to the initial source and read through the company's web site.
I'm not convinced that liquid sodium batteries aimed at hours and not weeks storage time and with 30% recovery factor will be of much commercial use. The referenced article and related claim that it is somehow an improvement on load-following, scaleable, reliable electricity generation.
The molten silicon idea has some merit, but as presented has all the hallmarks of a scam, starting with admission that large sums of public money have already been absorbed by its backers, with no practical outcome.
I wish them well with the IPO,but will risk none of my own hard-earned.
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Post by Greg Simpson on Feb 27, 2017 16:39:58 GMT 9.5
I often gazed longingly at my CRC handbook at the heat of fusion of silicon. It is ridiculously high, so it makes an ideal target for energy storage. Practical considerations always made me shut up about it, though. I'm happy someone seems to be taking is seriously, but they better have billions of dollars to sink into the project.
Silicon melts at 1683 K. On the one hand that's great, since the Carnot efficiency is over 80%. On the other hand, we have little experience with materials that can work with molten silicon. It's going to take a large tub of it to keep the heat loss down for any long term storage. Many metals will soften too much from heat to be useful, and others may form silicides. Ceramics may be the best bet, but they are hard to work with.
It might be easier to qualify material for a thorium reactor.
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Post by huon on Jan 29, 2018 15:27:38 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 3, 2019 17:19:01 GMT 9.5
In the meantime,
Wood Mckenzie Sees Utility Scale Battery Storage Doubling in 2019 & Tripling in 2020 Steve Hanley 2019 Mar 07 CleanTechnica
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 4, 2019 10:19:17 GMT 9.5
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 4, 2019 12:24:45 GMT 9.5
We have a flow battery about 2 km north of my house. It cost the federal government, a grant to Avista Utilities and SEL, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratory, several million dollars. It works great to stabilize the grid against the wind farm up the road and also lightening storms; nary a flicker since the battery was installed. Despite the cost it is a short duration battery, nominally one hour but there just for stabilization.
The article
Finance, not technology, could be the key innovation for flow batteries Peter Maloney 2018 Feb 27 Utility Dive
leads off with an artist's rendition of our local flow battery. The author is rather pessimistic about the future of flow batteries but one readily finds other sources claiming that the cost of newer designs will drop the price to the US $30/kWh range or even lower.
Currently some wind farms include a short duration battery to provide high quality power irrespective of wind gusts. Some solar power farms include 4 hour duration batteries as the demand to run air conditioning extends into the late afternoon and evening hours. However, for Californa several Pacific Northwest utilities are interested in wheeling power south over the Pacific Intertie; I suppose to compensate for the 3% decline in the electricity market in the Pacific Northwest.
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Post by huon on Apr 4, 2019 15:05:24 GMT 9.5
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Post by engineerpoet on Apr 5, 2019 12:24:15 GMT 9.5
the article fails to mention how much a day's storage would cost. You don't say! Just like the cost of Audi's e-gas and the actual cost/energy of the hydrogen they've been dumping into the natural gas system in Germany (in lieu of any specific use for it, like saving it for FCVs or oil refining) has been almost forbidden to mention. If you get the feeling that daring to mention cost would turn public support for this "daring, innovative, Green approach" into steadfast opposition, you're probably right. Greens love the idea of energy being a privilege of the right-thinking elite; the public, not so much.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 6, 2019 14:19:54 GMT 9.5
Greens love the idea of energy being a privilege of the right-thinking elite Yes, it does seem to be more about righteousness than about saving the greenhouse. Those windmills seem to be waving forgiveness to the sinners driving by. I wonder if there are more suburban solar panels facing the street than facing the sun...
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 6, 2019 16:05:04 GMT 9.5
Clean energy is catching up to natural gas David Roberts 2018 Oct 26 Vox
Some of the proposed projects using wind or solar together with large batteries, some to replace peakers. Whatever, the prices bid are quite low.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Apr 7, 2019 9:15:30 GMT 9.5
Here is the link to David Roberts' article: www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/7/13/17551878/natural-gas-markets-renewable-energyThe article gives an exciting picture of the rising opposition to natural gas in the US. However he falls short of actually giving a timetable to its extinction. Until we actually see that timetable, we must be sceptical of enthusiasts' and politicians' claims to be decarbonising the economy. Instead of pointing out the rise of nuclear acceptance in the US, David Roberts points to the falling cost of batteries. However he fails to persuade us that the cost of batteries is converging on a practical cost for (say) six months storage of total consumption across every grid. For South Australia's average consumption of 1.3 GW, capacity of such a battery would have to be somewhere more than half a gigawatt-year The article includes a photograph with a caption that implies that the South Australian renewables are backed up by batteries (i.e., supplying wind energy for all of the time that the wind doesn't blow). Clearly the author wants to believe it, but since the image and presumably its caption was supplied by Tesla itself, he has allowed us to be deceived by their sales talk. In fact the South Australian battery (of a few gigawatt-minutes) is used for phase control, whereas the wind backup is partially supplied by a purposely-installed 250 MW gas peaker, yes gas, bought by the same government that bought the battery.
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Post by David B. Benson on Apr 8, 2019 17:44:45 GMT 9.5
Florida Power & Light is going to install a 409 MW, 2 hour duration, battery. Nothing I could find suggests why. But then FP&L decisions are always obscure to me at the opposite end of the country.
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Post by engineerpoet on Apr 10, 2019 1:17:25 GMT 9.5
However he falls short of actually giving a timetable to its extinction. Until we actually see that timetable, we must be sceptical of enthusiasts' and politicians' claims to be decarbonising the economy. Of course there's no timetable. That would be a standard they'd immediately fail, because the "natural gas bridge" is a bridge to nowhere. The Greens are financed by Big Gas (aka Big Oil) and they have no plans to ever get off it. Nuclear power is the Energy Source Which Must Not Be Named, because to as much as mention it gives it mindshare that Big Oil wants it denied. "Renewables" and batteries are the concepts used to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Never mind that Australia's grid could be totally decarbonized in the next 20 years by going nuclear; even the possibility must not be mentioned because it threatens Big Gas. I believe the figure for the USA came to something on the order of a cubic mile of lead-acid batteries. Florida Power & Light is going to install a 409 MW, 2 hour duration, battery. Nothing I could find suggests why. Besides frequency control and greenwashing, a battery of that size would be good for meeting evening peak demand using stored nuclear or PV power. It would allow for fewer starts of NG-fired peakers and increase the time between overhauls, so it might even save some money.
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Post by David B. Benson on Sept 12, 2019 12:11:11 GMT 9.5
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Post by Roger Clifton on Jan 25, 2020 10:33:54 GMT 9.5
Batteries are not suitable for so-called backup. Nobody knowledgeable thinks so. Ahah! So listen up, worried people. If you have been led to believe that renewables-plus-batteries can provide 100% of a nation's power needs, you have been wickedly deceived. The voice in the quote above is about as close as you're going to get to the conscience of the world's power engineers. When he says "nobody knowledgeable thinks so", that includes not just the world's power engineers, but the engineers who advise entrepreneurs, speculators, heads of government departments, – and political leaders with their hands on taxpayers' money and their eyes on environmentally-worried voters. Having been advised, they too are knowledgeable. Every one of them who assures us that renewables-plus-batteries can replace all fossil fuels is lying. When they profit, it is fraud. It seems that the familiar promotions of renewables-plus-batteries have never been more than sanctified bullshit for the credulous. Meanwhile, our concern to decarbonise the future remains. The kiddies have charged us with inaction – they can see that we are all talk and no action. Could it be that all this talk about 100% renewable energy has always been fraudulent, deflecting our attacks on fossil fuels? See also Nation-scale impossible, in this thread.
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Post by David B. Benson on Feb 20, 2020 16:37:22 GMT 9.5
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Post by thinkstoomuch on Feb 28, 2020 22:55:44 GMT 9.5
Not sure where to put this. Relates to a bunch of things. An interesting new stat on the US EIA site. Storage system Capacity factors. Article today on it. www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42995Something that I will need to think on.
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Post by David B. Benson on Feb 29, 2020 15:05:58 GMT 9.5
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Post by engineerpoet on Feb 29, 2020 19:59:36 GMT 9.5
The total planned for the vicinity of Moss Landing is the even more astounding 2.2 GWh. So not even half the capacity of Diablo Canyon for 4 hours... let alone 24/7. The clowns who advocate for this crap need to be physically beaten for lying. Only if they suffer and die for their lies will this crap stop.
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Post by David B. Benson on Feb 29, 2020 20:31:57 GMT 9.5
... So not even half the capacity of Diablo Canyon for 4 hours... let alone 24/7. Not the same purpose. Rather to balance the increasing proportion of so-called renewables on the California grid. Now the premature closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is unfortunate but the utility companies have to soldier on ...
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Post by engineerpoet on Mar 1, 2020 12:44:20 GMT 9.5
Not the same purpose. Rather to balance the increasing proportion of so-called renewables on the California grid. A pathetically small contribution, even together incapable of replacing so much as a fraction of what their policy is set to destroy. These people are not in error. They are evil.
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Post by David B. Benson on Mar 5, 2020 20:06:42 GMT 9.5
The California en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curveexplains why localities with abundant solar power are installing 2--5 hour duration batteries now that the price of utility-scale batteries has dropped.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Mar 6, 2020 9:14:42 GMT 9.5
Earlier you said – Batteries are not suitable for so-called backup. Nobody knowledgeable thinks so. and now you say – localities with abundant solar power are installing 2--5 hour duration batteries Now are you implying that these batteries are supplying grid scale power for up to 5 hours after sundown? A giant step in technology would be necessary. It would be good if that were true. However I suspect that the journalists who speak of several hours of battery are deliberately concealing the negligible power output over those hours of low sun. The pipedream of 100% renewables is not in sight at all. It is at best a commercial fraud making money on a false promise. At worst it is a sop to a doomed generation by the ageing decision-makers who could not care less about their future. Let's find and quote the power output every time so-many hours of battery are claimed.
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Post by David B. Benson on Mar 6, 2020 10:52:56 GMT 9.5
... Now are you implying that these batteries are supplying grid scale power for up to 5 hours after sundown? ... No, that is just how the storage capacity is rated. As an example, a 100 MW solar power park is now commonly equipped with an associated battery capable of delivering 100 MW for 4 hours. The battery is charged from the solar panels during the earlier part of the day and discharged into the grid during the following time of highest demand, due to the air conditioning load. That's the neck portion of the California en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curveNow on the scale of a typical grid, 100 MW is not more than a few percent of the total generation. The battery simply shifts the consumption a few hours past generation. A typical pumped hydro scheme does the same on a typically longer cycle of operation, being charged overnight and discharged during the day. The usual problem with journalists is the same as with lawyers. They fail to comprehend that it requires two numbers to describe storage: the maximum transfer rate and the length of time such a rate can be maintained. As examples both New York state and California have farcical laws specifying a certain number of megawatts of storage to be installed by a certain date. Nothing is stated about duration.
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Post by engineerpoet on Mar 6, 2020 12:31:32 GMT 9.5
The battery is charged from the solar panels during the earlier part of the day and discharged into the grid during the following time of highest demand, due to the air conditioning load. Just think of the wasted resources and money from doing this with batteries instead of ice storage. It's criminal.
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Post by David B. Benson on Mar 6, 2020 12:42:37 GMT 9.5
... instead of ice storage. ... I assume that you mean the ice for air conditioning. A few so-called big box stores have the space and capital to arrange for ice production when the price of electricity is low. This must be rare for homes; I've never heard of it so I assume that it is not economic for some reason.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Mar 6, 2020 12:52:05 GMT 9.5
a 100 MW solar power park is now commonly equipped with an associated battery capable of delivering 100 MW for 4 hours. The battery is charged from the solar panels during the earlier part of the day and discharged into the grid during the following time of highest demand. Wow! A battery of 400 MWh capacity and 100 MW output is three times bigger than South Australia's "world's biggest" battery on both counts. Since the latter cost more than US$60 million, the former would be expected to cost around US$200 million. However you say that commercial solar farms are commonly equipped with one, to profit from the power price difference between sunny time and high demand times. That would imply that my costing, implying US$500,000 per MWh, is horribly out of date. Hence my query for any unannounced revolution in technology. Would you be able to provide us with a link that specifies an existing such site – with the two numbers that characterise it?
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Post by David B. Benson on Mar 6, 2020 14:57:52 GMT 9.5
Roger Clifton, I meant planned projects. There are at least two given earlier on this thread. The one being installed in the Mojave Desert is about the size I mentioned. The group for Moss Landing is much larger.
Yes, flow battery prices have dropped dramatically recently.
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Post by David B. Benson on Mar 6, 2020 18:32:41 GMT 9.5
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Post by thinkstoomuch on Mar 6, 2020 20:32:55 GMT 9.5
No, that is just how the storage capacity is rated. As an example, a 100 MW solar power park is now commonly equipped with an associated battery capable of delivering 100 MW for 4 hours. The battery is charged from the solar panels during the earlier part of the day and discharged into the grid during the following time of highest demand, due to the air conditioning load. That's the neck portion of the California en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curveNow on the scale of a typical grid, 100 MW is not more than a few percent of the total generation. The battery simply shifts the consumption a few hours past generation. A typical pumped hydro scheme does the same on a typically longer cycle of operation, being charged overnight and discharged during the day. The usual problem with journalists is the same as with lawyers. They fail to comprehend that it requires two numbers to describe storage: the maximum transfer rate and the length of time such a rate can be maintained. As examples both New York state and California have farcical laws specifying a certain number of megawatts of storage to be installed by a certain date. Nothing is stated about duration.
David you say "commonly". Again please define what you mean in number terms what is meant by commonly. Or perhaps what you mean by "now", perhaps you meant planned.
In the an article you recently posted about FPL community solar. 1.5 GW is being added as part of their 30 million panels by 2030 program(guesstimates are around 10 GW of solar) and the only utility scale battery FPL is adding is less than one half GWH. If it was common I would expect something like 2 to 6 GWH (10 to 25 GWH for the total additions to 2030) of batteries. FPL Doesn't even cover all the state.
The US utility scale added 2,825.5 MW of wind, 1,924.0 MW of solar and 1.6 MW of Batteries in 2019.
Or if you want to look at the California. In January they curtailed(mostly for economic reasons) more, 138 GWH (~97% solar), than in all the Januaries since 2015 when they started keeping records for their chart. Around 8.2% of the solar total generation adding what is curtailed into how much is used(which I keep on a separate worksheet adding daily curtailment totals). In fairness they did better in Feb. curtailed 146 GWH but more solar generated (2,001,545 vs 1,558,139 MWH).
Heck it is getting close to 1% of total generation and imports curtailment for solar so far this year(~0.8 or 0.9%). They need to do something. If the current trend continues a few GWH's of batteries could be used almost daily just to alleviate curtailment issues.
T2M
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