Posts Tagged by energy storage
Energy Storage, Pumped Hydro, and Synthetic Fuels
| November 18, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Here is a magnificent piece on energy storage: a perfect blend of the basic science and economics. It’s a very readable explanation of how and why storage will be required to integrate significant amounts of renewables on the grid.
Today, the vast majority of energy storage is accomplished with pumped hydro. The problems with this, however, are a) only certain (hilly) terrains are appropriate to implement this inexpensively, and b) the stored energy is not portable, i.e., it cannot be used in transportation, which accounts for 40% of our total energy needs.
This gives rise to chemical solutions, also discussed in the piece. Personally, I’m betting on Windfuels, a 2GreenEnergy client, which sports a remarkable breakthrough in synthetic fuels.
Zinc-air Batteries — The Breakthrough We’ve Been Awaiting?
| October 3, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Personally, I think so. There are a few unanswered questions, but I have a great deal of confidence in these people, based on my numerous meetings and phone conversations. Read More
China, Renewables, and Energy Storage
| September 19, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Here’s an excellent article that expands on what I wrote in my report on China and renewable energy.
I agree with a great deal of this, but the figures on the amount of energy and the amount of money are off by several orders of magnitude: ”A KPMG study expects that electricity consumption in China will rise to 6,400 TWh by 2020, up from 3,600 TWh in 2010. To meet that demand, approximately $2.8 billion in additional investment will be needed, says KPMG.” $2.8 billion won’t cover the cost of the cigars for the bureaucrats overseeing this effort.
In any case, there are some excellent observations made here.
A Few Perspectives on Energy Storage
| July 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
One of the things I enjoy most about shows like Storage Week, sitting through many dozens of presentations on energy storage, is the breadth of perspective on the subject of clean energy. We all know that ultimately, storage is 100% required if we are to achieve the high rates of penetration we’d all like to see. That, of course, is a function of intermittency – dealing with the fact that the sun shines only during the day, while the wind blows hardest at night, when the demand is at its lowest. (70% of the total wind energy in California happens at night.)
But here are a few additional ways of looking at storage. A great deal of attention in managing the electrical grid in any given region is placed on dealing with peak consumption on a daily basis – and especially with the few hours per year that represent the absolute highest peaks that occur during the summer’s hottest afternoons. But grid managers’ dealings with load fluctuations and resource availability are not occasional incidents. In one region of the country, the spreadsheet that lists the purchase of “ancillary services,” those that are necessary to provide the precise correct amount of power, has 850,000 rows (i.e., purchases) annually.
Thus, from one important perspective, energy storage solutions compete against gas-fired peaker plants, those facilities that can be ramped up and down very quickly to meet peak demand. How quickly? There are places in the US where weather conditions change dramatically and 900 MW of wind goes to 200 MW in half an hour. And wind is far more predictable than solar, where a cloud can form and blow over a solar field in a matter of minutes.
But another completely different way of looking at storage is finding a home for off-peak energy generation. As we put more wind into our grid mix, we get more off-peak wind – and thus more curtailment – the condition where wind turbines must be turned off because the power they produce cannot be accommodated. Curtailment costs wind developers huge sums of money; last year, it represented 5% of the total installed wind capacity.
Yet another viewpoint is demand response. Utilities pay their customers big bucks (in rate reductions) for the right to cut a certain percentage of power to those customers under peak load conditions.
So, storage provides a great number of different but important benefits. Yet at the end of the day, the gating factor for storage is essentially political and economic. Though there is enormous value to having storage on the grid, the question is: Who’s going to pay for it? In an environment like the one we have in the US, where there are different types of entities that generate, transmit, and distribute the power – each regulated differently, there is no one single entity that can rationally be expected to pay for a solution whose benefits do not accrue solely to that entity.
As one of the speakers here just told me when I confessed how difficult the business issues in this area are so hard for me to grasp, “The politics behind all this is byzantine. It’s not terrible in Texas, but in places like California, it’s a total mess. Powerful interests have succeeded in pushing through legislation, and they derived great benefit, but left the state with a set of regulations that make no sense whatsoever. Don’t feel bad if you’re having trouble understanding this. It took me years to figure it out.”
OK, I feel a bit better. But it sure is a shame that our health and safety — not to mention economical well-being — is being manipulated by a few greedy pigs.
And not to sound pessimistic, but we really seem to be a million miles from straightening this out. In essense, you have huge business interests in the energy industry that have no incentive to move this in the right direction. Are we expecting them to do it anyway? Doesn’t sound too likely to me.
Energy Storage – News from the Infocast “Storage Week” Show
| July 12, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
There are elements of the energy business that I find monstrously complex – namely, everything but the technology. The political wranglings – the way the federal, regional, state, and local agencies work in conjunction with the utilities and the regulatory bodies – appear to be the ultimate rats’ nest.
Here’s a good example of how nutty this looks: the power utilities in the US remain uninterested in – and in some cases actively resistant to — electric vehicles. Is there anything not to like about EVs if you’re a utility? It means sales of off-peak power, of which there is a super abundance, and it means stable, long-term growth as electricity replaces oil. Isn’t that good? Maybe someone can explain this.
Of course, the incentives that utilities have are quite enigmatic. It’s said that the real core competency of utilities is the management of regulators. The game is finding clever ways to pass through your costs to the rate-payers. And that represents a nasty little element of the equation: utilities can pass through fuel costs, so getting rid of coal in favor of a resource in which the fuel is free (e.g., solar and wind) represents zero gain in profitability.
In fact, utilities couldn’t care less what fuel they use – or what technologies they’re mandated to use. As long as they can make 12% return on their invested cash, they’ll happily do anything they’re told. Want wave/tidal power in Kansas? No problem, let me charge my customers what it costs to get me 12% on that, and it’s a deal.
It’s one of those moments where I wish I were king of the world. I just think of how easy it would be to create a way to regulate utilities that would provide incentive to do the right thing. I’m available to function as king, btw, but so far I haven’t received the invitation to serve.
Energy Storage: Key Enabler for the Deployment of Renewables — A Lecture on Utility-Scale Batteries
| May 7, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
As a part of our recent discussion on energy storage, Larry Sobel wrote in, calling my attention to this fabulous lecture given by a brilliant and thoroughly entertaining chemistry professor at MIT, who calls upon his students to think differently and go against the grain with respect to developing solutions for grid-level energy storage. As the professor reminds us, storage is the key enabler for the deployment of renewables to make it to base load, as we need to address their intermittence.
The key point here in thinking differently is refusing to pay for attributes you don’t need, since cost is king here; batteries that were invested portable applications are not scaleable at cost; we cannot string together batteries that were invented for laptops, cell phones, or even electric vehicles. Cell phones need to be idiot proof, and to operate in a temperature range that is comfortable when held in one’s hand. Car batteries need to be crash-worthy.
But stationary batteries for utility scale storage need to have none of these characteristics. So what do you get when you throw away the attributes you don’t care about? I hope you’ll check out the lecture.
Energy Storage Vital To Attaining High Penetration for Renewables
| May 7, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Frequent commenter Frank Eggers is right as rain with his comments on my recent solar thermal piece in which he writes:
Superior (technology) would not solve the problem resulting from the fact that the sun is not always shining. …. Instead of concentrating only on the solar generation of electricity, 2GreenEnergy should also cover power storage systems without which solar power would remain impractical, (including) batteries, water pumped to a higher elevation, air compressed into underground caverns, flywheel storage, storing heat in tanks containing a mixture of KNO3 and NaNO3.
Thank you, Frank. While we try to cover storage technologies to some degree, there is no doubt that we could always do a better and more thorough job. And this subject will be increasingly important as the penetration of renewables grows over time. At under 2% (the current penetration rate), I really think it’s fairly meaningless. But yes, as we get into the teens and higher, it will be vital — and it’s never too early to start addressing the problem.
I believe you’ll be interested in this month’s free webinar, featuring Dr. David Doty, an extremely senior physicist whom I’ll be interviewing on this very subject. He has a unique approach and capability in synthetic (liquid) fuels that I find compelling. I hope you’ll agree.
Interesting Presentations at the Summit on Energy Efficiency
| April 28, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
I spent a few happy hours at the Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency over the last couple of days. Most (though not all) of the presentations were really good, and totally relevant to the audience.
I was really pleasantly surprised, because I’ve noticed that sometimes speakers have one PowerPoint deck, and make the same talk, regardless of the audience. None of us could believe that the lady presenting from the Office of Naval Research would spend 15 minutes on a slide, taking us through the names and ranks of dozens of people we couldn’t have cared less about.
Also, I’m amused at the way some speakers present ideas that leave the audience with gaping, obvious questions. Here’s a good example. The spokesperson from Southern California Edison, whose talk was otherwise excellent, talked about an energy storage project that her organization has underway in the Tehachapi Mountains, northeast of Los Angeles. It’s a whole bunch of lithium-ion battery packs that can provide 8 megawatts for 4 hours.
At the conclusion of her talk, I approached her, and we the following dialogue:
Craig: I’m amazed every time I hear about lithium-ion – or any other battery chemistry – proposed for utility-scale storage. If we’re struggling with the price of a 30 kilowatt-hour pack for an EV, is there really any trajectory for what you folks would need?
Linda: It sure would be expensive, wouldn’t it?
Craig: To be sure. Well given that, why build this 32 megawatt-hour project, which is obviously a drop in the bucket?
Linda: To be honest, I’m not sure.
Craig: Hmmm. Though I’ve heard good arguments for other ideas, to me, pumped hydro seems to be the only good storage technology — and especially if you’re in the mountains anyway, with the natural changes in elevation.
Linda: Yes, you’re probably right.
Craig: OK, thanks very much. Good presentation!
Linda: Thanks!
See? Nice, cordial conversation, but one that left me wondering what’s going on there. It’s a strange world sometimes.
Synthetic Fuels — Cutting-Edge Ideas on Energy Storage
| April 10, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
Here’s a short follow-up to my piece on synthetic fuels the other day, in which I mentioned that I would be driving up to San Jose for another “Craig Shields…At Your Service” session.
I spent the day with Dr. David Doty (http://www.dotyenergy.com/), the developer of a proprietary set of processes for formulating liquid fuels from off-peak wind energy, water, and carbon dioxide. Soon after he and his wife (also incredibly sharp), met me at the appointed place and time and exchanged a few pleasantries, we launched into a fascinating discussion on the issues associated with each of the major forms of energy generation and storage available now and for the foreseeable future.
I listened to their viewpoints on how even things that sound good to me (like CSP with molten salt) won’t scale and come down in cost effectively. I’m not sure I’m completely onboard with all of this — after all, the businessman in all of us tends to pull forward the facts that stand in the favor of our own ideas. Having said that, this was a terrifically compelling presentation — particularly when we got into a potential solution to all this: Doty’s unique and patented approach to synthetic fuels.
I suppose you could say it’s similar to what the “ammonia as fuel” folks are talking about, but
a) using CO2 (a greenhouse gas, but more difficult and expensive to acquire in high concentrations than atmospheric nitrogen), and
b) aimed at developing using a much higher-grade (energy dense) fuel.
His presentation makes a great deal of sense in terms of the chemistry and thermodynamics, and he’s gotten the endorsement of some of the other top researchers in the field.
Of course this still leaves us burning hydrocarbons, even if they’re carbon-neutral. But, as a pragmatist, I often ask myself: Even if we have millions of electric passenger cars on the road soon, how long before we have electric Class 8 trucks? Electric airplanes? In my estimation, this approach to eco-friendly liquid fuels may be a solution with a great deal of impact on our civilization for a century to come.
Yet we need to acknowledge that skeptics will dismiss the idea out of hand, given that so many other attempts to develop synthetic fuels scaleably and cost-effectively have failed outright - or at least languished in obscurity and unmet expectations. “You must run into people who write you off as a crackpot or a charlatan,” I ventured. Doty smiled graciously. “Only once or twice a day,” he grinned.
Ammonia Fuel Network — Great Presentation on Energy Storage and Transmission
| June 14, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
The Ammonia Fuel Network’s Executive Direct John Holbrook was good enough to send me a few DVD’s in which Bill Leighty made presentations on the numbers that surround ammonia a fuel. I was struck by a number of things.
First, Bill is a consummate presenter to an academic audience. He’s measured, rational, and extremely credible – without a hint of bombast – or really any effort to use emotion to convince the audience of anything at all. Even in a subject matter in which the entire survival of our species is at stake, Bill just plows though the material as if he were discussing Hannibal and the Punic Wars. This dispassionate approach carries into the choices he makes to frame the discussion of the imperative to move to renewables. “We only have 200 years of coal left,” he says, choosing an indisputable but fairly unexciting fact. It was as if, if we only had more coal, everything would be just fine. I would have been up there waving my arms and talking about Chernobyl, skyrocketing cancer rates, global climate change, and empowering terrorists. I could almost Bill thinking: I could do that too. But why?
Second, I realize that I’ve been a bit glib about energy storage and transmission. Although there is very little discussion here about concentrated solar power and molten salt energy storage, there is considerable exposition on the cost of electricity transmission – which is considerable. I began to realize how challenging all this HVDC grid build out really is, given the costs, the NIMBY (not in my backyard) effect, and the consequent political and legal difficulties.
An elegant solution here would be one that addressed several different problems in one. And I challenge anyone to review these presentations and not be impressed with the elegance with which liquid ammonia offers a reasonably low-cost answer to the challenges we will ultimately face as the penetration of renewables grows larger and the issue of firming (delivered reliable power, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year) becomes more thorny. We have about 20 GW of wind installed in the US today, representing about 2% of our total capacity. And already the wind industry to running out of places to plug its power into the grid. Without a solution to store and transport that energy, the renewables industry will quickly hit a wall – and ammonia just may be the answer.
If you’re interested in the presentations, please let me know.
