{"id":46174,"date":"2019-05-16T07:40:25","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T12:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46174"},"modified":"2019-05-16T07:40:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T12:40:28","slug":"utility-scale-energy-storage-has-a-long-way-to-go-to-make-renewables-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46174","title":{"rendered":"Utility scale energy storage has a long way to go to make renewables possible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Utility scale energy storage has a long way to go to make renewables possible<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What follows comes from my book  \u201c<\/em>When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation<\/em><\/a>\u201d<\/em> , which is also where you\u2019ll find the references backing up what I\u2019ve written below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often get letters from people about energy breakthroughs in biofuels, solar, electric trucks, and so on. This post is about the \u201crecord breaking amount of battery storage add in 2018\u201d (go here<\/a> to read the article). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To enhance your own evaluation of the constant barrage of happy news in the media, here\u2019s why I didn\u2019t get excited or cheered up and go back to thinking the future was bound to be bright and shiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, let\u2019s go over the four possible ways to store electrical energy. We don\u2019t need to store much now, because we still have natural gas, which kicks in to balance solar and wind power (but not coal and nuclear, which are damaged by trying to do this), and for much of the year provides 66% of electricity generation (along with coal), because wind<\/a> and solar <\/a>are so seasonal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if the grid is to be 100% renewable someday, which it has to be since the 66% of power coming from fossil fuels now to generate electricity is finite, then utility scale energy storage is essential Let\u2019s look at what it would take each of the four methods to store just one day of U.S. electricity generation, 11.12 Terawatt Hours (TwH). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only commercial way to store electricity is pumped hydro storage (PHS), which can store 2% of America\u2019s electricity generation today. But we\u2019ve run out of places to put new dams. Only two have been built since 1995. There are only 43 PHS dams now, and we\u2019d need 7800 more to store one day of U.S. electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Utility scale energy storage has a long way to go to make renewables possible What follows comes from my book  \u201cWhen Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation\u201d , which is also where you\u2019ll find the references backing up what I\u2019ve written below.  I often get letters from people about energy breakthroughs in biofuels, solar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11836,11859,269,2654],"class_list":["post-46174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-energy-storage","tag-wind-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46175,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46174\/revisions\/46175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}