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Is large-scale energy storage dead?

April 8, 2016

Is large-scale energy storage dead?

Many countries have committed to filling large percentages of their future electricity demand with intermittent renewable energy, and to do so they will need long-term energy storage in the terawatt-hours range. But the modules they are now installing store only megawatt-hours of energy. Why are they doing this? This post concludes that they are either conveniently ignoring the long-term energy storage problem or are unaware of its magnitude and the near-impossibility of solving it.

The graphic below compares some recent Energy Matters estimates of the storage capacity needed to convert intermittent wind and solar generation into usable dispatchable generation over different lengths of time in different places. The details of the scenarios aren’t important; the key point is the enormous differences between the red bars, which show estimated future storage requirements, and the blue bars, which show existing global storage capacity (data from Wikipedia). It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that the amount of energy storage capacity needed to support a 100% renewable world exceeds installed energy storage capacity by a factor of many thousands. Another way of looking at it is that installed world battery + CAES + flywheel + thermal + other storage capacity amounts to only about 12 GWh, enough to fill global electricity demand for all of fifteen seconds. Total global storage capacity with pumped hydro added works out to about 500 only GWh, enough to fill global electricity demand for all of ten minutes.

Yet microscopic additions to installed capacity are apparently considered a cause for rejoicing. Greentechmedia recently waxed lyrical about the progress made by energy storage projects in 2015 . “Last year will likely be remembered as the year that energy storage got serious …. projects of all sizes were installed in record numbers ….” But when it goes on to list “the Biggest Energy Storage Projects Built Around the World in the Last Year” we find they’re all 98-pound weaklings:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who Killed the Electric Car?

March 23, 2016

Who Killed the Electric Car?

[ Who cares about electric CARS?  Civilization ends when trucks stop running, and trucks can’t run on batteries because they’re too heavy (93% of the cargo weight, 25% of the cargo space), and an all-electric truck fleet would require thousands of new power plants, mostly running on finite fossil fuels. Although Wall street can endlessly come up with new financial products to skim the wealth of the middle class, scientists have to work within the laws of physics and thermodynamics. This is the main reason why even a car battery is not likely to ever pan out, as I explain below.  A more up-to-date version of this post on batteries, and electrifying trucks and locomotives can be found in my book, which also explains why it may be impossible to have an 80 to 100 percent electric grid depending on renewables.  We face not just a fossil fuel shortage, but an electricity shortage in the future, which will strike once natural gas declines to the point it can’t keep the grid balanced. Since natural gas is very local because the USA has few LNG terminals, this may come sooner than expected.  Despite the hype about 100 to 200 years of energy independence promised by many economic pundits, Patzek in his lifeitself blog makes the case that there may be only 3 to 7 years of shale gas in the Barnett, Fayetteville, Haynesville and Marcellus shales.  The decline of conventional natural gas was at a crisis point in 2004 and conventional gas has continued to decline since then. ]

The battery did it.  Batteries are far too expensive for the average consumer, $600-1700 per kwh (Service). And they aren’t likely to get better any time soon.

“The big advances in battery technology happen rarely. It’s been more than 200 years and we have maybe 5 different successful rechargeable batteries,” said George Blomgren, a former senior technology researcher at Eveready (Borenstein).

And yet hope springs eternal. A better battery is always just around the corner:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

For Storing Electricity, Utilities Are Turning to Pumped Hydro

November 25, 2015

For Storing Electricity, Utilities Are Turning to Pumped Hydro

High-tech batteries may be garnering the headlines. But utilities from Spain to China are increasingly relying on pumped storage hydroelectricity – first used in the 1890s – to overcome the intermittent nature of wind and solar power. 

In the past decade, wind energy production has soared in Spain, rising from 6 percent of the country’s electricity generation in 2004 to about 20 percent today. While that is certainly good news for boosters of clean energy, the surge in renewables has come with the challenge of ensuring that electric power is available when customers want it, not just when the wind blows.

Iberdrola–Spain’s Cortes-La Muela project, which uses pumped hydro storage to produce electricity.

To help accommodate the increased supply of wind, Spain’s utilities have turned not to high-tech, 21st-century batteries, but rather to a time-tested 19th-century technology — pumped storage hydroelectricity. Pumped storage facilities are typically equipped with pumps and generators that move water between upper and lower reservoirs. A basic setup uses excess electricity — generated, say, from wind turbines during a blustery night — to pump water from a lower reservoir, such as behind a dam, to a reservoir at a higher elevation. Then, when the wind ceases to blow or electricity demand spikes, the water from on high is released to spin hydroelectric turbines.

That’s precisely what the giant Spanish utility Iberdrola has done with the expansion to its $1.3 billion Cortes-La Muela hydroelectric scheme, completed in 2013. The company uses surplus electricity to pump water from the Júcar River to a large reservoir on a bluff 1,700 feet above the river. When demand rises, the water is released to generate electricity. The 1,762-megawatt pumped storage generating capacity is Europe’s largest and is part of a hydroelectric complex capable of powering about 500,000 homes a year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rethink the Grid: Personal Power Stations

March 26, 2015

Rethink the Grid: Personal Power Stations

Rethinking the grid is quickly emerging as one of the hottest topics. The concept of our own personal power stations can be seductive…and just might save us a whole lot of money too.

“Get big or get out!” Those were the famous, and controversial, words of Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture in the seventies. Considering the combination of renewable technology and battery storage, a new popular mantra may emerge: get small and be free.

Much ado about all things renewable together with the objections that technologies can never fully replace fossil fuel generation is popular among a certain set. Here in Texas, among arch conservatives, Solyndra lives on…and on…and on. But the truth is that Solyndra is ancient history. New technologies are ramping up and have been highly successful and may change the way we use the grid forever. Perhaps most interesting of all, however, is the way in which new ways to think about the grid and electricity are prompting entrepreneurs worldwide to rethink, remake and reuse. For instance, what if we all had the ability to transform our homes into micro personal power stations?

The grid is an interesting beast. It typically operates using several different power options together with some back up reserve. Oddly, it runs with virtually zero storage capacity because large amounts of electricity are difficult to store. So nobody really addressed that problem. Until now.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2014 biggest year ever for solar, but oil price threat looms

March 24, 2015

2014 biggest year ever for solar, but oil price threat looms 

In 2014, record low prices for solar panels fueled a solar boom. The U.S. alone installed 30% more solar photovoltaic capacity than in 2013, making last year the biggest ever for solar PV, according to the 2014 Year-in-Review Solar Market Insight report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

solar increase

Industry analyst Tam Hunt argues that in a few years, economics of energy alone will lead the world to achieve the “solar singularity”:

The “solar singularity” will, by my definition, occur when solar prices become so cheap that solar becomes the default power source based on cost alone. We aren’t there yet, but we’re probably just a few years away from that point, particularly since energy storage costs are already declining strongly.

The main reason why solar will become cheaper than other options for power? It’s the falling cost of solar panels, according to Hunt, following an established rate of decline. “Swanson’s law, named after the founder of SunPower, states that the price of solar panels generally drops by 20 percent with every doubling of shipped panels.”

Interestingly, Hunt notes that Swanson’s Law may not be 100% reliable if past performance is any guide. “From the mid-1990s until 2008, solar costs declined by relatively little, primarily due to stubbornly high silicon prices against a backdrop of increasing commodity prices across many markets, until the crash of 2008.”

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/03/2014-biggest-year-ever-for-solar-but-oil-price-threat-looms/#sthash.F457M3uv.dpuf

 

 

Resource Insights: Five energy surprises for 2015: The possible and the improbable

December 28, 2014

Resource Insights: Five energy surprises for 2015: The possible and the improbable.

The coming year is likely to be as full of surprises in the field of energy as 2014 was. We just don’t know which surprises! I am not predicting that any of the following will happen, and they will be surprises to most people if they do. But, I think there is an outside chance that one or more will occur, and this would move markets and policy debates in unexpected directions.

1. U.S. crude oil and natural gas production decline for the first time since 2008 and 2005, respectively. The colossal markdown in world oil prices has belatedly been followed by a slightly smaller, but nevertheless dramatic markdown in U.S. natural gas prices. The drop in prices has already resulted in announcements from U.S. drillers that they will curtail their drilling operations significantly next year.

But drilling that is already contracted for will likely go forward, and wells waiting for completion will be completed. It can be costly to pull out of drilling contracts. And, failing to complete already successful wells and bring them into production is downright foolish since the costs incurred in drilling the wells including future debt payments remain. In those circumstances, some revenue at lower prices is preferable to no revenue at all.

Having said all that, scaled-down drilling plans when combined with what’s left in drillers’ immediate inventory both to drill and complete may not be enough to overcome the prodigious production decline rates from existing wells in deep shale deposits of oil and gas which have provided almost all the recent growth in U.S. production. The decline rates are 60 to 91 over three years for tight oil plays and 74 to 88 percent over three years for shale natural gas plays.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Innovations in Energy Storage Provide Boost for Renewables by Dave Levitan: Yale Environment 360

October 28, 2014

Innovations in Energy Storage Provide Boost for Renewables by Dave Levitan: Yale Environment 360.

Because utilities can’t control when the sun shines or the wind blows, it has been difficult to fully incorporate solar and wind power into the electricity grid. But new technologies designed to store the energy produced by these clean power sources could soon be changing that.

by dave levitan

Intermittency has long been considered the Achilles heel of renewable power generation. The U.S. electricity grid, after all, is largely built around big, centralized coal and nuclear power plants that can run all the time, whether demand is high or low. In contrast, grid engineers have no controlover when the sun shines or when the wind blows, making it difficult for solar or wind to fully supplant the dirty-but-reliable fuels that keep the power grid humming along smoothly.

That may finally be changing. Large-scale and technologically advanced energy storage projects — from massive lithium-ion battery installations in the California mountains to giant, compressed air caverns under the Utah desert have recently been commissioned or announced. And while numerous hurdles remain — including needed improvements in reliability and safety, regulatory and market changes, and of course, cost — policy moves in many states are steadily nudging the industry forward. 

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

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