Why Does It Have To Be A Battery

Why does it have to be a battery? Why not pumped storage?
Exotic battery types are going to run into problems if they are rolled out worldwide due to the shortage of exotic metals like lithium, cadmium, etc. A better Idea is to use exotic metals like uranium and thorium directly - in a nuclear power station. Recommend (15) Responses (1) Report Share
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Lokolo 6 December 2011 9:38AM Tesla Motors already does this and a lot of money goes in to battery research for them, which they then sell to other car manufacturers.
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 9:39AM @HarrietHarridan Why does it have to be a battery? Why not pumped storage? Sure, we can discuss any and all forms of energy storage here. And, yes, you're correct to point out some of the problems already associated with batteries. Will batteries of the future be able to avoid some of these problems by using new/alternative materials?
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riccochet 6 December 2011 9:47AM I am not particularly au fait with the technology behind it, but I understood that flow batteries would be a good candidate for this. They work by having a huge pool of electrolyte and as it is charged, they pump it out and replace it with uncharged electrolyte, etc. Then the discharge works in the reverse manner. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery for a wikipedia description. ISTR there was somebody living on an island in the northeasterrn coastal area of the US who had built such a system and was able to go off grid and not need a generator. (I think I read about that on Slashdot.) The other biggie is better adsorbtion of hydrogen as that has the potential for incredible energy densities and, as I understand, very high conversion efficiencies in both directions.
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PKCarpenter 6 December 2011 9:48AM It doens't even have to be electrical energy that is stored. It could be converted to thermal, kinetic, pressure, etc and then reconverted back to electrical when required. During the first season of KERS in F1 some teams experimented with flywheels and such a system is used in Porsche's hybrid 911 GT3. Ground source heat pumps used heavily insulated water tanks to stored energy as they cannot draw a high enough rate of energy (power) from the ground to supply things such has showers which are power hungry. The three questions are: what is the energy storage density, that is how much mass do you need to have per joule?; how quickly can you discharge the energy?; and how efficient the charging and discharging process is? For the third point is depends where we are getting the energy from. If it is the braking system of a car or by burning fossil fuels then a high efficiency (and low entropy) is important. If it is from solar, wind then it just a question of cost. While I don't see us driving around in rubber-band or balloon powered cars it would be nice to see more people, like Porsche, experimenting with alternative energy stores to chemical batteries. For the most dense energy storage, and probably the quickest release rate, storing energy at the atomic level in the form of heightened electron states or the such will probably be the optimum. I guess that's technically a laser so maybe we'll see something along those lines in the future.
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HarrietHarridan 6 December 2011 9:49AM A lot of cash is already being spent on Ultracapacitors. But why bother? Just have nuclear for everything - problem solved.
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PKCarpenter 6 December 2011 10:02AM Response to HarrietHarridan, 6 December 2011 9:49AM I agree on the pro-nuclear stance. Power on-demand (unlike other green energy sources) and it has nothing to do with the price of oil.
Yes nuclear power station are expensive but you could base the price of power generated on the cost of construction over the lifetime of the plant. Of course this would never happen with a privately owned nuclear power station. They could price the electricity inline with that generated from fossil fuel stations and make themselves a healthy profit. As the price of coal and gas goes up in the future so would their profits. As I see, nuclear power, can only be a nationalise option and that is something that the current government would never proceed with. Build nuclear, sell the electricity at cost and reduce the burden of utilities on the UK economy. Hey it might even make us competitive in the manufacturing sector.
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SenorHoppo 6 December 2011 10:09AM I have worked with a number of power storage firms, most notably VRB - vanadium Redox Batteries - which made flow batteries for wind farms. They were sort of crossbetween fuel cells and battery, with ability for ultra deep cycling and could smooth the flow of large wind farms. Uniquely they separated the storage element(electrolyte) from the capacitor or power output. Essentially they turned erratic spiky output into predictable, dispatchable power. Originally developed in Australia they have allowed areas such as King Island between OZ and Tasmania to have huge wind penetration onto grid without adverse effect. Sumitomo corporation in Japan also utilised them. And Riso Labs in Denmark. The problems were in cost and strategy. Small scale ones sold well as wind-diesel generator displacements for telecoms markets, but larger ones for larger wind farms were prohibitive in terms of initial cost, insurance and all usual niggles/issues of new tech. We tried to argue that wind farm operators could then charge more for power as it would be predicatble and continuous and could respond quicklyto demand, but the upfront costs were crippling. However, they have been bought by Chinese company and being rolled out, not on mass scale, but good numbers. It should be priority for all grid operators and utility companies - but they are not that far sighted! Elsewhere, the storage debate should also look at demand-response markets as form of storage, and networked capacity from car batteries in electric vehicles, households etc as new forms of decentralised renewables hook up. I will post details of the other wind-storage systems later - sadly am at work so no time...!
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SenorHoppo 6 December 2011 10:12AM And Harriet Harridan et al
Nuclear will NOT solve everything - vital though it is. It can not respond quickly to demand, just pumps a continuous base load which, though excellent, will not meet the spikes of half time surges etc. Gas is good for this, and other forms. But, to meet this, the real trick is in turning things off, hence earlier comment about demand-response markets. This has real potential to make negawatts a major market very quickly using existing technology (from telecoms and others)
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howardmarch 6 December 2011 10:15AM I don't know enough about it, so could somebody explain why energy from renewable sources cant be used to create hydrogen by electrolysis for later re-use? I suspect that the problem may be efficiency, but this would presumably appear as waste heat, which could perhaps be piped for heating in the same area. Hydrogen is tricky and dangerous to store, but if done at a fixed site (e.g. a hydrogen power station) it doesn't appear too difficult to achieve. Going beyond this, is there any chemical method that could use hydrogen to synthesise simple hydrocarbons? If octane could be produced, the problems of (relatively) safe storage and transport are already well understood, and it could probably be used in petrol engines.
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 10:15AM Electrical energy storage is likely to become more important over time - though we do tend to talk about it as if it is some massive new problem peculiar to renewables. It isn't - most of our towns still have gasometers dotted around them to ensure we could cope with fluctuating gas demand, and there are stock piles of fossil fuels at refineries and power stations all round the country. However we can minimise the amount of storage we need by tackling at demand management too. Many of the things we run on electricty have some flexibility as to when they take power and when they are in a rest state. A fridge for example will turn on the compressor when the contents reach (say) 6 degrees, then turn it off when it has cooled to 3 degrees. But if it had cooled the contents to 4 degrees and then there was a shortage of power on the grid, it would do no harm to switch off a little bit ealier. Likewise, if your milk was gradually creeping back up to 5 degrees and the fridge sensed an excess of power available on the grid, it could switch on and cool slightly earlier. 20 million fridges acting this way could reduce a lot of peaking on the grid. The technology to do this can be retrofitted to a fridge today - it doesn't need smart grids etc - but there is no incentive to do so, so nobody does. You can find more details here http://www.dynamicdemand.co.uk/index.htm
Similar tricks can be used with air-conditioning, water heating, etc etc. In time things that are plugged into the grid to charge (like electric cars) could even allow some of their charge back out into the grid - effectively making our parked car fleet one big battery.
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Bluecloud 6 December 2011 10:16AM We need to build smart grids if you want to fully utilise energy storage. Leo, I assume you are familiar with Peter Sinclair's Plug-in Hybrids video, which shows the potential of connecting the batteries in such vehicles to the smart grid. I see solutions coming from combinations of existing technologies, which utilise energy that would otherwise be wasted (e.g. baseload at night). Likewise the possibilities of utlising demand response. Fridges are a form of energy storage that can be controlled in an automated building connected to the smart grid.
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 10:21AM Another rather lovely historic example of energy storage is at Grimsby docks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimsby_Dock_Tower Similar towers were common on docks and in factories etc - you can visit one in Limehouse andclimb up it. Posting this partly to make the point again that energy storage is not a new problem, and partly because there is a nice picture on wikipedia.
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 10:26AM Response to Bluecloud, 6 December 2011 10:16AM You said what I said quicker.
However fridges can be used in a non-automated building too. You can sense the available power on the grid from any plug socket through small variations in the AC frequency using technology that is decades old. We could do it now.
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 10:26AM Many thanks. Some really thoughtful/constructive comments already. Hope to have a professor of energy storage, and some industry experts, joining the debate soon so please keep your thoughts/examples coming...
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Bluecloud 6 December 2011 10:40AM Response to fr33cycler, 6 December 2011 10:26AM Yes we could address peak demand by automated load shedding. If I remember rightly this signal is simply a reduction in the frequency as load rises. The trouble is that to really have an impact we need to control this process on a massive scale and interconnect the grid in a smart way, otherwise the mixed frequrency signals from diverse generators will just lead to confusion, rather than coordinated control. Still, smart grids are a long way off, so any simple solutions that enable demand response are welcome.
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 11:05AM I've just had this response from Peter J. Hall, professor of energy storage at the University of Strathclyde... The ability to store and release energy is important to every carbon-free energy future. Scenarios with a massive contribution from renewables are the most frequently discussed because of the well-known intermittent or stochastic nature of renewables. However, a scenario in which nuclear fusion becomes an economic reality will have an even greater reliance on storage technologies because the size of such fusion generators (several GW) is likely to dwarf current coal and nuclear plants (~GW). Given the scale and nature of fusion energy, the electrical output will not be able to follow fluctuations in demand. Additionally, since the UK will only need a few fusion generators, the effects of
outage of such a plant would utterly be catastrophic. It is noteworthy that the UKs largest pumped storage facility, Dinorwig, was originally constructed as a back up for nuclear generators. The European Energy Research Alliance (UK representative -UKERC), a conglomerate of Europes largest national laboratories tasked with developing the strategic energy technologies for Europe, has recently announced a major new joint programme in energy storage. Energy storage research in Europe has moved to centre stage. The EERA concentrates on the following areas: Hydrogen and chemical (fuel cells) Electrochemical (batteries and supercapacitors) Mechanical (pumped hydro and flywheels) Thermal Superconducting magnetic energy Techno-economics This represents a very broad and sometimes bewildering range of technologies, which makes objective assessment and comparisons difficult, especially when industrial vested interests are involved. When selecting an appropriate technology a number of considerations need to be taken into account, such as size, efficiency and power handling capability. The latter is especially important and is best illustrated by storage for automotive applications. Batteries are very good at storing large amounts of energy in small volumes, but cannot deliver adequate power for acceleration. Hence they need to be combined with other devices, in this case supercapacitors, which can deliver power, but are not effective at storing energy. Although security of supply is an important consideration for the deployment of energy storage, we have recently shown that energy storage can be economically viable, especially given a suitable energy market. See... http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ee/c2ee02419e It is hugely disappointing that the massive subsidies given to renewable generators are not reflected in the equally important technologies of storage. From a research point of view the UK has strong and active consortia in the areas of hydrogen and electrochemical storage through the EPSRC-sponsored Supergen consortia. However, there are no national facilities for scaling up laboratory research into commercial devices. Industrially, the electrical storage network (www.electricitystorage.co.uk) has been launched to represent UK industrial interests and the UK is especially strong in thermal storage for electrical generation Where will the next breakthroughs occur? In terms of hydrogen, the persistent problem is how to store it safely and at a high density. Solid-state storage in new nano structured materials is currently being investigated. The Lithium air battery is another promising technology and when realised will be able to contain at least 15 times more energy that conventional batteries. Finally, in terms of power delivery, considerable progress is being made in supercapacitor technology, again based on the application of new nano materials and ionic liquids. Professor Hall was invited to make this comment by the UK Energy Research Centre, which is funded by the Research Councils' Energy Programme.
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oldbrew 6 December 2011 11:20AM Molten salt storage is an interesting idea, but expensive at the moment. The process is described here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/22/first-molten-salt-solar-power
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FC1967 6 December 2011 11:20AM There are other options for storing energy. For instance water at Dinorwig power station in Wales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station As for cars, the primary focus must be on battery electric, but don't forget the MDI compressed air powered car: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car There may be more potential for energy storage using compressed air (heat is an issue). Lots of us like the idea of hydrogen powered vehciles but it now seems that cost of manufacture and the cost of an entirely new fuel supply/infrastructure network will prevent the dream becoming reality. Then there is the story about Regenysis, the industrial sized battery: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ctm/publications/w_papers/documents/131006-32_clean_venture.pdf But I would argue that concentrated solar thermal is the nearest thing to a silver bullet. The heat can be stored at the plant, generating electricity throughout the night. The electricity can be transfered from the South, around Europe, using High Voltage Direct Power transmission lines. http://www.desertec.org/?gclid=CPnu-7un7awCFYEhtAod-XoLMQ Hopefully Leo and Lucy will be able to bottom out the relative costs associated with the various differnt technologies. Because it is cost that determines what will happen. The Desertec dream may be best but it would take the governments of the EU to agree to fund the grid network. As for nuclear - please remember that fusion may still be 60 years away. The ITER site suggests we may have to wait until 2075: http://www.iter.org/ The supporters of nuclear fission still choose to ignore all the problems - seismic activity, seismic activity in europe (we have big earthquakes but they are less frequent than Japan), nuclear proliferation (if you choose nuclear for the world then every country of the world has access to the materials for bombs), terrorism (planes into buildings), accidents, storage of waste, etc. You could opt for Thorium fission reactors but the R&D will take time - time humanity does not have. I have reached the conclusion that we need the Manhatten Project on Concentrated Solar Thermal - Spain should be the hub (at least to begin with), because it is a stable EU nation and its economy is dying - fast !
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jayb 6 December 2011 11:23AM
David Roberts did a short piece recently on this: http://www.grist.org/renewable-energy/2011-10-28-cool-energy-storage-projects-make-mockery-politician-pessimism
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FC1967 6 December 2011 11:26AM I posted mine of 11.20 before reading Leo's response of 11.05 (checking my hyperlinks, etc). You will see there is quite a bit more in my bit which Professor Hall has not touched upon. I would really welcome his thoughts.
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Plataea 6 December 2011 11:28AM Working on a couple of storage projects. Electric vehicles - forget it as a potential store - lifetime battery cost far to expansive (BERR report 2009 circa 60 pence/kwhr - prices have not moved much since). Li-iion - probably OK in LV distribution circuits - but issues with respect to multiple value layers need to be addressed. Vanadium Reflow - multi-MWhr potential - looking at that now - costs starting to add up. For mutli-day storage of electrical power way forward is what the Germans are looking at - electricity to gas followed by storage in the gas distribution network - addresses the issue of multi-day no-wind scenarios - which happen from time to time. Concerning the hydrogen problem - Germans working on that - basically methanisation - round-trip efficiency ain't so good at the moment but will improve - anyway this is not German government policy so they will make it improve. Liair - saw a presentation at a storage conference last week - reminded me of IBM's vapour ware stuff in the 1970s 1980s - looks nice but has some way to go. Concerning the good profs comments on money - LCNF is providing money for storage deployment - which is a start. Regarding blueclouds comment.: I was speaking to a company that does just that in the UK right now. I woudl add that your comment was a bit "mixed frequency" - once a motor or generator is connected to the network then it tends to be "driven" by the network frequency. One tends not to get different frenquencies across a network - although one does get harmonics - perhaps you were referring to that?
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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 11:31AM I am not sure if its an obsession with grid and corporate supply but all the solutions provided come from an obvious monopoly. Energy reduction in terms of insulatation and passivhaus techniques would actually be more cost effective and lower our cost of living. Saying that we concentrate on nuclear and grid tied renewables which is all a bit debatable? Heat energy is a much more realistic proposition to store and we are stuck in the mind set of the grid again as thermal collectors theoretically produce more power. Also in the UK Hydro IE non pumped river fed storage has huge returns but the whole FIT scheme is screwed towards the corporates again. Its Fubar but currently all battery storage methods have huge embedded energy and resource costs. We need to look at how we power our homes and not just how we can continue as we are used to.
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 11:41AM Response to stuartiannaylor, 6 December 2011 11:31AM All very true - the old reduce, reuse, recycle mantra applied to energy. But while we must do that, the worry is it is not sufficient. It's like Government Ministers insisting we should insulate houses before fitting solar panels - yes we should, but as we cannot wait to start fitting solar panels until we have fully insulated all homes, and as we are likely to need both, we should be doing both now. So I completely agree, but think it is useful to look at these technologies - even if it just shows they are difficult and expensive so we should cut energy use to require as few of them as possible.
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 11:42AM Via Twitter... @jontybaba you might be interested in this innovation prize for energy storage - energystoragechallenge.com
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 11:43AM Response to Bluecloud, 6 December 2011 10:40AM The generators are synchronised so this isn't a problem. Check out www.dynamicdemand.co.uk and you can see a little meter telling you what the grid is doing right now (well...with an internet time lag). Not expecting you to rush down and turn your fridge off though.
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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 11:45AM Response to stuartiannaylor, 6 December 2011 11:31AM This sort of sums the situation up .... http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/05/energy-companies-lend-staffgovernment
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 11:47AM Just another thought - some renewables can store energy too - shutting hydro down can allow water to build up during windy spells that could be released more quickly during still periods for example. Tidal lagoons could also have some flexibility (though shorter period as they can only hold on while the tide is lower than the lagoon obviously).
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whythefilter 6 December 2011 11:48AM if we could vastly improve energy storage we could presumably make do with the energy sources we already have?
Perhaps there is another way of looking at energy storage. Rather than focus on ever more efficient (and expensive) ways of generating and consuming energy, we could look at mimicking a bio-energy cycle that shows us how not to waste it. Photosynthesis may not be the most efficient energy conversion process but it is an efficient energy re-cycling loop, plants grow, die, turn to compost, feed the next plants...We on the other hand send 6 million Tonnes of clean wood to landfill, 2O mil Ts of food waste, and generate around 100 mil Ts of bio-waste a year, which is all stored energy. Landfill gas engines tap some of it, but there's 10-20 TWh of electricity available every year we fail to capture. Add the energy that is saved by using the residue as fertiliser and we start to mimic a natural cycle. Millions of homes in developing countries who will never have fridges or be linked to smart grids could still utilise biogas, and do. A pity we cant retrofit our homes this way. My (TM) biogas trapping pyjamas for men over 50 will shortly be on the market.
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wscherphof 6 December 2011 12:01PM Surely, creating better energy storage options is valuable. Surely, renewable energy sources are better than fossil fuels. Surely, nuclear is not an answer in any way. But what we probably need the most at this moment, is a clear problem statement. What exactly is it that we're trying to fix here? What are the things that we worry about and are the values that we want to preserve or generate? What defines a good solution? Is it: ban CO2, everything must turn green? Is it: peak loads and demand troughs are a total waste, we need to invent a system that can bend these massive costs towards something that creates value? Is it: we need a system that creates room for a gradual shift towards renewables, by making peak shaving and trough filling a profitable business? I actually think the Peter Sinclair video http://youtu.be/pSdnycHfLnQ does a really good job in pinpointing some of this (thanks, Bluecloud). I am also convinced that we create the most value right now not by inventing yet another state of the art new revolutionary technology achievement, but by making really clear what the problem is we're trying to solve and what visions we share on the directions we should take to get nearer to where we're heading.
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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 12:01PM I know this is off topic but a big push to refurb and build low energy housing, (passivhaus) and reductions in tax and incentives in insulation and energy efficient renewables (FIT / RHI). This would follow the German model where they build themselves out of recession. Also due to the bulk of many building materials this acts as a hidden protectionism as much is home grown. As said this would reduce our cost of living. stimulate the economy, lower the cost of living which also makes jobs more economically viable. Its just building insulation and pretty standard techniques and it would have benefits accross the board.
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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 12:06PM Another reason http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/05/uk-government-intelligence-nuclear-industry
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Timsky 6 December 2011 12:09PM Given that most domestic energy in UK ( for six months of the year at least) is for space heating, storing solar energy in large well-insulated tanks makes sense, and then heat-pumping it up to a higher temperature for under-floor heating. Source temperature would probably be significantly higher than either air or ground sources, so a heat pump should be very efficient. No batteries required, though a bit of a.c. to drive the pump.
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ShammyB 6 December 2011 12:10PM If we assume mankind is a faction in the same mould as a 'god' video game (Sid Meirr's civilisation et al), then it becomes obvious that the one thing our 'tech-tree' is missing is a portable power supply. Without that, we can't move forward to all the sci-fi technologies we dream about. The only thing we currently have that can provide the sort of power output is the internal combustion engine. If we had a battery that could meet that sort of output, and be about the size of a shoebox or less, we would also soon have cell phones as powerful as desktop computers, but that is only the start: autonomous robots, energy weapons, and maybe even holidays on Mars would all follow. High density batteries are really that important - not just for energy production, but human technology generally: they are our one big stumbling block.
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ponder 6 December 2011 12:10PM
The thing about the Manhattan Project was that cost was largely no object. There was nothing of comparable military effectiveness to an atomic bomb. However, for energy, the end product has to be available at a reasonable price, which is much more challenging. Yes, we could have fusion or renewables+storage powering everything given enough effort, but if it's not affordable, who's going to do it?
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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 12:17PM I think we are confusing the main push of the Manhattan project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium was always on the cards but it doesn't provide weapons!
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BettyWindsor 6 December 2011 12:23PM Renewables wouldn't need to be supported by the "back-up" baseload provided by fossil fuels or nuclear. So, these wonderful renewables still need nasty fossil fuel and nuclear backup It negs the question that if you have to build backup then why bother with the renewables
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fr33cycler 6 December 2011 12:23PM Response to Timsky, 6 December 2011 12:09PM Could those tanks double up as swimming pools...then they'd be really popular.
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MikeRichards 6 December 2011 12:28PM Response to howardmarch, 6 December 2011 10:15AM Your guess was right - electrolysis and fuel cells as a combination aren't actually very efficient. Although electrolysis can in theory be up to 90% efficient, it never is in practice and you are hard pushed to run it at 70% efficient. Fuel cells again can be up to 85% efficient (if you use the heat they inevitably produce in operation), but a more general figure is 50%. So the total efficiency of the system would be 70% * 50% = 35%. Which is around the efficiency of a nuclear power plant - but you'd still need to factor in the cost of maintaining the equipment and building storage for the hydrogen an expensive task and one which also impacts efficiency because compression and decompression use energy. Going beyond this, is there any chemical method that could use hydrogen to synthesise simple hydrocarbons? Using hydrogen to make simple hydrocarbons is a well-understood process, it's called the Fischer Tropsch (FT) process and is done by reacting hydrogen with carbon monoxide at high temperatures and pressures in the presence of an iron or cobalt catalyst. It was the main source of refined aviation fuel for Germany in World War II and was used by SASOL in South Africa to produce oil in the face of international sanctions. A number of small companies are looking at it today, mostly to get high quality liquid fuel out of oil shale and coal, but the principle is applicable to anything that contains carbon and where you can get hydrogen. The FT process usually get hydrogen from steam rather than pumping hydrogen into the reactor as steam is cheap and easy. Having said that the US Navy has looked at making synthetic fuel for ships using FT with the hydrogen coming from electrolysis. It won't be economic, but the US Navy is more concerned with a secure fuel supply than what it costs.
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cactiform 6 December 2011 12:49PM Rotary storage should be considered as a back-up for windmills. If a flywheel energy store was built into the base of every (new) windmill, the distributed storage would add up to a significant amount. Not sufficient to cover days without wind, but enough to allow the system to respond to surges in demand, giving time for alternative generators to be run up. Rotary energy storage would also help to get rid of the nonsense of wind farm operators being paid to not produce power as the power could be dumped into the storage.
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DoctorChris 6 December 2011 12:56PM
Response to BettyWindsor, 6 December 2011 12:23PM What few seem to realise is that about 90% of the lifetime cost of generating electricity from fossil fuels is the cost of the fuel; only about 10% is the cost of the capital equipment. The main benefit from renewables is that you don't need to burn the fossil fuel when the renewables are generating. Even if you had to keep exactly the same fossil-fuel generating capacity, you would still get 90% of the benefit from the renewables that you would get if they generated the same number of GWh in a completely reliable and predictable way. That is why it is worth bothering with renewables.
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Meitnerium278 6 December 2011 12:56PM Response to BettyWindsor, 6 December 2011 12:23PM It negs the question that if you have to build backup then why bother with the renewables Most sailing boats of any size have a backup Diesel. Why not just dispense with the sails? Think about it. The wind doesn't blow all the time, but conventional power plants don't run all the time either. Having multiple energy sources provides security against variations in costs, accidents and natural disasters. The "market" doesn't factor these in, which is why government intervention is necessary.
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Keep 6 December 2011 12:57PM The thought of flywheels as a storage mechanism appeals to me. There is a company out there with a working 20MW storage facility, Beacon Power. I am not sure whether this is the future though because their share price has fallen off a cliff in the last year.
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ifsowhyso 6 December 2011 12:57PM Response to MikeRichards, 6 December 2011 12:28PM Using hydrogen to make simple hydrocarbons is a well-understood process, it's called the Fischer Tropsch (FT) process and is done by reacting hydrogen with carbon monoxide at high temperatures and pressures in the presence
of an iron or cobalt catalyst. It was the main source of refined aviation fuel for Germany in World War II and was used by SASOL in South Africa to produce oil in the face of international sanctions. New, yet more diabolical method to produce Hydro-carbons?. No thanks, says earth. As many suggested above, conversion of energy rather than storage as such (like batteries) is the viable solution. ( Yes, you need batteries for transportation and other mobile items). I have an Idea. ( Not original, but there is nothing new under the sun.) Use Solar energy to split water. Storing hydrogen is difficult, not impossible.
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HollyTree 6 December 2011 12:59PM As i understand it the problem with hydrogen is storage. Could you hydraulic fracture (frack) suitable rock and inject hydrogen for storage?
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Meitnerium278 6 December 2011 1:03PM Response to FC1967, 6 December 2011 11:20AM I have reached the conclusion that we need the Manhatten Project on Concentrated Solar Thermal - Spain should be the hub I agree, except that the North African plan should be given equal or greater priority. It gives the politicians in North Africa an inducement to work closely with Europe. Unlike oil, they would have no alternative markets for the electricity, but they would hold the generation plant hostage. It's a win-win situation for both sides. What's more, it could be generating significant output in 10 years, whereas the timescale for fusion is currently 50 years to never depending on how you rate the engineering challenges.
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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 1:06PM
Fracking is a worry as the whole water table can be changed (fractured) the idea of shattering the very ground between our feet at the expensive of future generations to gain further hydrocarbons or store a potential timebomb is fubar. In the UK it has been published that there is no regulation and many of the fears are by the actual engineers involved in fracking practises. Its hugely expensive if the toxic side is dealt with safely and thats a huge problem as at the moment it isn't.
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Meitnerium278 6 December 2011 1:06PM Response to HollyTree, 6 December 2011 12:59PM Could you hydraulic fracture (frack) suitable rock and inject hydrogen for storage? Hydrogen escapes from almost everything, that's the problem. Fractured rock would just be one big leak.
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Keep 6 December 2011 1:10PM Talking about hydrogen storage, Robert Crabtree at Yale had a neat idea for hydrogen storage in chemical entities rather than big pressurized containers which is a bit blue skies at the moment but nearer than fusion I suggest. The paper outlining it is here though that is probably behind a paywall (sorry reading this at uni so cant tell). It would need research into the catalysts to do the conversions acceptably and the R&D to make a workable device but it looks a cool idea.
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howardmarch 6 December 2011 1:16PM Response to MikeRichards, 6 December 2011 12:28PM Thanks for the info, Mike. 70% energy efficiency for the production of hydrogen by hydrolysis is better than I was expecting. My idea for using the hydrogen was to use it for compensating for output fluctuations from power sources; for example, where the electricity comes ashore from an offshore wind farm, build a combined power plant that uses a proportion of the electricity to create hydrogen, then when there is not enough source power burn the hydrogen on site in a hydrogen fired power station. Obviously that's a lot of infrastructure, but nothing particularly radical.
That might be fairly inefficient over the whole cycle, but how does it compare to current alternatives? The important feature is that it could in principle be built anywhere and doesn't need any technological breakthroughs. It should be fairly clean as well, although I don't know what materials would be needed for the electrolysis equipment. Regarding the hydrocarbons, the FT process sounds interesting, but I was hoping for a process that uses atmospheric CO2 as the carbon source. Similar to photosynthesis in some ways, but hopefully faster and more efficient. The basic idea is to use energy, carbon (from a "free" source such as atmospheric CO2) and possibly oxygen to create a stable liquid (at room temperature) that is a high density energy source, such as alcohol or octane. Hydrogen seemed an obvious energy input to the process as an intermediate for electricity, but even better would be if it could use electricity directly; maybe that's just fantasy. As well as providing fuel for motor vehicles, if it could be done, such a synthetic fuel might be a better solution for transporting power from desert solar power plants (e.g. the Sahara) than long distance HVDC lines.
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energy source is to grow some plants, and harvest the greenery, Recommend (1) Responses (0) Report Share
ffynnongarw 6 December 2011 1:24PM DoctorChris "What few seem to realise is that about 90% of the lifetime cost of generating electricity from fossil fuels is the cost of the fuel; only about 10% is the cost of the capital equipment." Totally wrong. For gas stations capital cost is greater than 10% and there are also significant costs associated with operations manpower, maintenance, grid connection charges, rates, insurance etc. Gas costs are approx 65%, much less than the 90%. For coal stations the capital element is even higher. Once again there are major costs for limestone purchase, ash disposal as well as the operations and maintenance costs I have listed for gas stations. In summary fuel costs are very much lower than 90%.
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howardmarch 6 December 2011 1:30PM Response to ifsowhyso, 6 December 2011 12:57PM New, yet more diabolical method to produce Hydro-carbons?. No thanks, says earth. As many suggested above, conversion of energy rather than storage as such (like batteries) is the viable solution. ( Yes, you need batteries for transportation and other mobile items). I have an Idea. ( Not original, but there is nothing new under the sun.) Use Solar energy to split water. Storing hydrogen is difficult, not impossible. There's nothing wrong with hydrocarbons as such, just their source. Hydrogen can be stored but not as easily as hydrocarbons created using hydrogen. The overall cycle would be carbon neutral - creating the hydrocarbon
consumes carbon and burning it releases it. The problem at the moment is that the carbon was captured millions of years ago.
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NickRouse 6 December 2011 1:42PM For a better way of storing energy on a large scale look at Isentropic Ltd's scheme www.isentropic.co.uk/ Use a reversible heat-pump/heat-engine to transfer heat between two insulated tanks of gravel. It has a conservatively projected round-trip efficiency of 72% and a added cost for storing the electricity of 1.1p/kWh. Even if this price is optimistic, it is likely to be substantially cheaper than any chemically based system and more efficient than most. It contains no rare or toxic materials and can be put anywhere and can be expanded to multiGWh levels with more gravel tanks. The only rivals for price are pumped hydro storage and underground compressed air storage. Both these are restricted to a few geographical areas and there are not many available in the UK. Pumped hydro has a round-trip efficiency of about 74% and existing compressed air schemes run at about 50%. Before anyone says that this contravenes Carnot's limit, no it does not. The thermodynamics are impeccable. The closeness to the theoretical reversibility of the heat pump/heat engine has been proved in prototypes. Cost and durability are yet to be proved but the prospects are a lot better than batteries, flow and otherwise, hydrogen, flywheels, superconductors, cryogenic or other schemes.
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 1:44PM I've just received this response from Toby Peters of Highview Power... Part 1 Yes, energy storage is seen as the key enabling technology for the low carbon grid to time-shift and firm up wrongtime intermittent renewable energy. But it can be equally valuable with must-run plants, such as nuclear, providing shape and shifting off-peak excess to peak time demand. Critically energy storage is estimated to be worth more than $100bnglobally over the next decade and expected to generate more than100,000 new jobs so it is a big opportunity. Those are big incentives alone for investment by the Government. In America, energy storage is a key pillar of both its low carbon and stimulus programme with more than $200M (pdf) allocated to energy storage projects from 2011 to 2015; while there is both new legislation to require energy storage on the Grid as well as tax incentives to support deployment. The key challenge that energy storage developers face is the UK is that along with no incentives to support deployment (unlike all the clean technologies which storage supports), the commercial opportunities of wrong-time
energy are currently socialised out so the producers of renewables are paid whatever time of the day their energy is produced and in fact even if it constrained because there is too much supply. As an example, in the UK so far this year we have already paid wind farm operators more than 3M to switch their wind farms off and then paid fossil fired generators peak prices to turn their high emission gas and oil generators on at periods of high demand. But the problem is that in the UK we can keep the lights on without energy storage so it is tomorrows problem. The result is that for commercial survival UK energy storage developers have to chase the markets where there is the demand or forward-looking incentives now e.g. America, China or India, Brazil, South Africa. As an example in Inner Mongolia this winter, wind farm operators will turn their turbines off every night losing 36GWhs of zero-emission electricity every night as supply exceeds real-time demand. The Chinese government are in fact accelerating their renewable generation targets to 100GWs of wind power installations by the end of 2015, and it is estimated China will need 60GWs of large scale energy storage across the region by the end of this decade. In the U.S., reports suggest that approximately 25 TWh of wind energy was curtailed (idled) last year to keep the offpeak grid energy price from frequently going negative. That, says Dr David Doty, President of Doty Scientific, reported by Green Tech Media, is about equal to the energy in 700 million gallons of gasoline just being thrown away. Curtailed wind energy in the U.S. appears likely to exceed 40 TWh in 2011. One point to add is that when thinking about storage, as with generation it is not about one technology fits all. A diesel genset is very different to a nuclear power station; both have roles in our grid. And while batteries are viable for small scale energy balancing, the problem is that historically, pumped hydro is the solution for large-scale storage; but as demand rapidly increases, the geographic constraints of pumped hydro and its needs for billions of litres of water are making it unfeasible in many instances. Now for the advert: Highview Power Storage has developed and built a pilot plant of a novel energy storage system which uses liquid air as the storage medium. Critically, the system can be scaled to 100MWs/GWhs of storage, similar to medium scale pumped hydro. Liquid air can easily be stored in the same low pressure tanks as used by the LNG industry - it is hundreds of times more energy dense than water (therefore taking up far less space) - and the process does not need large mountains or lakes. cont...
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 1:45PM part 2... As said, this is not conceptual. We have a fully operational pilot plant, which by the way was part-funded by a 1.1M grant from the UK Governments Department of Energy and Climate Change. It is connected to the Grid and complies with all the regulations and inspections, just like any other commercial generator. The system has more than 150 hours of operational time which is equivalent to two years of UK short term operating reserve usage demand. The plant is currently being operated for seasonal TRIAD management (a UK specific low load factor peaking service). In fact, Highview Power Storage won both the Award for Energy and Environment and the Grand Prix Prize (across all categories) at this years The Engineer Technology and Innovation Awards. for further information please visit Highview website website:www.highview-power.com or contact info@highviewpower.com
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sunnysouthcoast 6 December 2011 1:47PM As well as clean energy and energy storage, shouldn't we be looking more at energy efficiency? I thought a couple of years ago that we would have a short wait for smart switches in houses and (particularly) offices, which switch off all power room by room leaving only essential systems (e.g. alarms, refrigeration). Seeing the daily waste of power in my university departmental premises, it seems to me that this kind of efficiency innovation would be relatively cheap and would reduce the energy draw of big office buildings substantially. I presume these are being tested, but have not seen them commercially available and I think this should be an R & D priority. On the principle of 'reduce, reuse, recycle', surely energy storage will be easier to improve if we use/need less of it.
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pretendname 6 December 2011 2:01PM The next truly great leap forward for humanity will be dense energy storage. Any device that could store ~100K Ampere Hours in the size of an AA battery will open the door to the devices of science fiction. Of course the next truly great leap is sustained Nuclear Fusion.
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optimist99 6 December 2011 2:01PM Remote hydro pumped storage is about to be used (or being used) by the Netherlands and Germany. The pumped storage being in Norway and the interconnection is by undersea, low loss, HVDC cables (similar to those linking the UK with France). Nor-Ned and Nor-Ger The Nor-Ned system is alrady in operation and features the world's longest undersea HVDC cables (560 kms). There are likely to be more pumped storage sites in Germany itself - there is even one in existence already in flat Northern Germany near Hamburg on the Elbe at Geesthacht
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blankwar 6 December 2011 2:08PM Energy storage if of course esential but sources of energy are abviously the first step. If we intend to stop using fossil fuels then we will need first to be able to produce enough energy and secondly to ensure the energy if produced when we need it or stored. There are, as I see it, two reasons to store energy, to make up for a lull in production in the future or to power a vehicle. In the first scenario effcieincy and cost are key. In the second the issue is more safety and portability. Pumped storage is as good a system as any for storing energy to be given back to the grid at a later date, with an efficiency of ~70-80%. The only energy storage system that I can think of with higher efficiency is flywheels, which can top 85%, but will probably be less economical, though have the advantage of not beign dependent on geography. (Batteries can match these efficiencies but considering the environmental issues are probably not a good choice for large-scale storage.) If you want to store energy in a vehicle then you are essentialy looking at a form of chemical energy. A battery will work in cars but probably not in planes. Jet planes of the future will probably use bio-fuel or hydrogen. There are already preety good methods of energy storage, however with our current system we already have stored energy in the form of fossil fuels so dont need them. Build Nuclear power stations and expand renewables and energy storage will grow with them.
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howardmarch 6 December 2011 2:09PM I asked earlier if it was possible to use hydrogen as an energy source for synthesising hydrocarbons. MikeRichards mentioned the Fischer-Tropsch process which is an existing process which is currently used to convert methane to liquid fuels. That led me to the following article in the New Scientist: How to turn seawater into jet fuel This describes a new (2009) process based on Fischer-Tropsch to use CO2 from seawater (A far better source than the atmosphere, apparently) and hydrogen to create a liquid hydrocarbon fuel (similar to petrol and diesel, in layman's terms). With a renewable electricity source, this could be used as a storage/transport method. With several steps involved, the overall efficiency might not be good but it could perhaps be used where there is plenty of solar energy such as the Sahara. I'm not convinced by any of the potential future battery technologies, because they are relatively "dirty" and expensive in terms of the chemicals involved. All resources needed for the Fischer-Tropsch process sound relatively clean and safe.
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geofarce 6 December 2011 2:26PM Flywheel energy storage for transport has been in operation at Stourbridge for several years now in the shape of Ultra Light Rail.
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grantwilson 6 December 2011 2:30PM The challenge that the UK and others are facing is the end of historically cheap fuels. This may be caused by many factors - but there seems to be an inevitability to the increase in fossil fuels going forward. Anything that would mitigate this risk would seem to be worthwhile pursuing - so using renewables to offset part of the import demand for fossil fuels is appropriate - especially in the UK that has an abundance of raw renewable resource. Storage is a logical solution to help solve the temporal difference between demand and supply from weather dependent renewables, but so too is demand side management, greater interconnectivity and energy efficiency. These have differing roles to play, and should be viewed as complimentary rather than competing concepts. Sometimes overlooked is the fact that there are TWh of storage available to the gas and electrical networks at the moment - its just that these are in the forms of stockpiles of coal or reserves of natural gas i.e. fossil fuels are THE most convenient form of energy storage - that is why developed nations are addicted to them. Development of nations can therefore be argued to be predicated on energy storage as well as the energy itself - and if in the future, nations move away from fossil fuels as their energy stores - they will need to find an alternative way to provide the energy stores. In the UK - Toby makes the point that there seem logical reasons why storage would be appropriate - and I agree. However, there are certain anomalies that Ofgem and DECC are aware of in the existing market structure - that actually seem to disadvantage storage developers finding a market. e.g. a Distribution Network Operator is precluded from owning generation plant under its licence to be a DNO. These types of market barriers are being considered and must be addressed. It may well be that having a plethora of differing storage technologies at different sizes and at different levels in the network is the ultimate future (heat as well as electricity) - but to get there from the existing situation of using fossil fuels to store energy is a phenomenal challenge, and will no doubt have to involve some form of alternative fuel vector - be that hydrogen or something else. The importance of storage as a concept is beginning to be recognised around the world - it would benefit the UK greatly to be involved in this. Having a vibrant home market for storage would at least allow further development of the interesting technologies already here, but this is unlikely to develop without some legislative imperatives.
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rajpe
6 December 2011 2:37PM Leo, Has anyone heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Regarding energy storage, you might restate the law as "Use it or lose it." The Law is most easily understood when storing heat, but it applies generally. Anytime you convert energy from one form to another, there are big losses. Also, there are generally large capital costs, which Greens typically overlook. I question the idea that we/ve not made large energy storage R&D investments. We've had this problem for 100 years. The incentive has always been there. Perhaps the USA EPRI could fill you in on some of the past efforts.
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HarrietHarridan 6 December 2011 2:59PM Hi rajpe, Has anyone heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Greenpeace is campaigning for a repeal of that law in Durban.
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rajpe 6 December 2011 3:16PM @HarrietHarridan Thanks for informing me of another example of Greenpeace's important work. We can only hope that Greenpeace's efforts will receive the desired publicity.
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Atomant77 6 December 2011 3:20PM Response to HarrietHarridan, 6 December 2011 9:11AM A better Idea is to use exotic metals like uranium and thorium directly - in a nuclear power station. ... by all means have said Nuclear power station on your own back yard.
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rajpe 6 December 2011 3:44PM Please forgive me. I couldn't resist. Thermodynamically speaking Storing energy's what we are seeking. It's not easy, we know, So it's quite apropos That our friends in the media are freaking.
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ifsowhyso 6 December 2011 3:58PM Your rhyme is as bad as your reason, rajpe. You missed the point of article and the comments following it. Storing energy is the theme, not finding it ; [ hint : Think solar or wind ]
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kev67
6 December 2011 4:00PM There was an article in Scientific American the other week about a sort of rechargable/flux battery hybrid. The inventor calls it Cambridge Crude, after Cambridge in Massuchusetts where the MIT is located. Apparently it's like a liquid but composed of litium ion and graphite specks. The lithium ion contains the charge while the graphite enables electricity to conduct. If it works out then you could conceivably fill up your car tank with the stuff at the petrol station.
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LeoHickman 6 December 2011 4:10PM I have just received this response from Gary Taylor, director of the Brunel Institute of Power Systems at Brunel University London... I am currently a coinvestigator on a UKERC-funded project that is investigating future smart grid scenarios. I am also a principal investigator on a number of smart electrical power distribution and transmission network projects. These projects are cosponsored by UK companies such as National Grid and UK Power Networks. The following may be useful for your blog; Cost-effective and environmentally sustainable energy storage will be an even greater challenge in the next decade especially in the UK as well as the rest of the world. Over the last decade at a national level the UK has depleted its main long term energy store that was the North Sea gas fields. Obviously at a national level the UK can now also secure energy supply and store energy on a limited basis in the shorter term by storing fuel such as gas (including LNG) and coal that it imports. However, the UK will then also be dependent on global energy markets and imports. It is also important to note that none of the above points regarding energy storage and security will enable the UK to reach its obligated 2020 CO2 emission reduction targets at a national level. Furthermore, as the UK does not have large amounts of seasonal or pumped hydro-electric power compared to national electricity demand and therefore cannot store electrical power (MWhr) on the scale that the UK may require in the future in order to securely accommodate the large amounts of variable wind power (possibly 20-25 GW by 2020) that is planned mainly offshore in order for the UK to reach its obligated 2020 CO2 emission reduction targets. Hence is critical that the UK invests significant R&D funding over the next five years and beyond in order to investigate and enable the future storage of electrical power at range of levels and scale such as follows: increased interconnection with pan-European supergrids to gain market access to large-scale hydro-electric storage; largescale national infrastructure storage at a transmission or distribution network connected level such as flow batteries or LiFe; highly distributed storage technology including electrical demand side participation ranging from a commercial (ie. heating and cooling) to residential customer level (ie. domestic appliances, electric vehicles, etc.) at the LV level. Finally, it is important to note that a number of UK funding bodies such as EPSRC, TSB, UKERC and Ofgem LCNF are currently funding a wide range of projects that are specifically considering such energy storage challenges in the UK. However, such projects are not always promoted at a national level and do not always lead to demonstration of technology that can be widely deployed. However the Ofgem LCNF scheme is specifically aimed at funding largescale demonstrator projects.
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mquick 6 December 2011 4:21PM Prof Garvey at Nottinham University is developing an energy storage system using compressed air stored in massive air bags in deep water offshore combined with heat storage. This could be useful in plces where there is deep water (several hundren metres) not too far offshore, and particularly relevant if floating wind turbines are successfully developed. Google compressed air energy storage+Nottingham University
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AndrewJones1911 6 December 2011 4:25PM Its great to see such a lively debate and clear understanding of the key role that grid scale energy storage must play in renewables roll out. In response to Toby Peters of Highview Power, Id agree theres a clear lack of energy storage supply supporting the renewables roll out. For example, in the marine industry, there are over 100 UK based suppliers competing against each other and the clock to qualify for the 5 Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC) for marine energy. Yet compared to these suppliers, just a handful work on grid scale storage in the UK at present. In order for Britain to rule the waves again, by rolling out commercial scale wave and tidal projects at home and abroad, Government should be providing greater incentives for energy storage. Energy storage has a symbiotic relationship to the success of renewable technologies, so its key to support it, or else undermine the UKs role in the green economy. Andrew Jones, Managing Director, EMEA, S&C
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Chronos 6 December 2011 4:29PM Response to howardmarch, 6 December 2011 2:09PM As others have said, hydrogen is not the nicest fuel to have to work with. A summary of the problems are: It escapes from almost anything It makes a lot of metals brittle It burns with an invisible flame so hydrogen fires are that bit more hazardous
It has very low density, even in liquid form (70g per litre) so while it's specific energy density is very high, it's volumetric energy density is poor. As an example, the external tank on the Space Shuttle is almost all used for liquid hydrogen The liquid form is deeply cryogenic requiring a lot of energy to produce and excellent insulation to keep cold. It also has a habit of condensing oxygen out of the air onto the cold surfaces introducing another fire/explosion hazard Hydrocarbons are a much nicer way of handling hydrogen. Energy density is better - a litre of petrol contains more hydrogen than a litre of liquid hydrogen, and you can pick substances that are much easier and safer to handle. Given enough cheap energy, it probably would be feasible to make jet fuel from water and CO2 but conversion efficiency would be low and there is the question of making it in large enough quantities to be viable.
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PhilipD 6 December 2011 4:33PM The Spirit of Ireland project is a good attempt to adopt low tech approaches to wind energy storage. The proposal is simply to pump seawater to upland reservoirs using a relatively cheap and crude method (i.e. cut inlets into the land to provide the material for dams, then use simple overland spillways. This form of storage can provide energy both for peaks and baseload when wind generation is low.
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oldbrew 6 December 2011 4:36PM Response to optimist99, 6 December 2011 2:01PM The Nor-Ned system is already in operation and features the world's longest undersea HVDC cables (560 kms) The link between Norway and the UK is already on the drawing board. Statnett Plans to Establish Subsea HVDC Power Link Between Norway and UK
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Alusion 6 December 2011 5:17PM Response to FC1967, 6 December 2011 11:20AM
CSP uses a lot of water and will put pressure on a few rare materials and minerals. Its all about diversification. CSP has a role to play but that's all. Locating in Spain or any other semi-arid area is problematic when you think about the scale. Surely the hub should have more significant technological infrastructure - doesn't Germany make sense given their need to plug such a ridiculously large gap? The key will be exporting the tech, more than perhaps the energy itself, so the fact that Spain is sunnier doesn't make too much difference. Of course Spain may be the main point of generation but one step at a time - we can wait a little til the dust settles. I see someone suggested North Africa - that's pretty crazy from the perspective of energy security and up-front infrastructure. I think we have enough of our energy tied up in that region already, further concentration ill advised to say the least.
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rajpe 6 December 2011 5:17PM Isn't it interesting: All the energy storage ideas mentioned here have been around 100 years. Batteries. Pumped storage. Flywheels. Compressed air. Hydrogen. Etc. And yet, we don't yet have much practical, large-scale energy storage operating. You'd think that there might exist some physical law that is holding us back. Second Law of Thermodynamics, anyone?
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smegal 6 December 2011 5:25PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 5:17PM "And yet, we don't yet have much practical, large-scale energy storage operating." Is about 100 GW of pumped storage hydro worldwide not "much practical, large-scale energy storage"?
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t1mprobert 6 December 2011 5:26PM I wrote an article about grid-connected battery storage for Batteries and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) magazine recently, The charge of the grid-connected battery storage brigade http://millicentmedia.com/features/
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PriceESN 6 December 2011 5:27PM The question is "why are researchers not trying harder to crack better energy storage ?" The answer is that researchers are trying to, and in many cases, succeeding to crack the problems, but in the UK we don't yet have a framework that rewards storage operators. For years, power industry planners have described electricity storage as the "Holy Grail" but the UK power market does not properly reward the benefits of storage at present. This feeds back through the funding chain, disincentivising developers and implementers of storage, and further limiting research to the theoretical aspects. The Electricity Storage Network, the UK's trade association for grid connected electricity storage is promoting changes through the electricity market reform to give true value to the operators of storage. We would then see more projects which use a wide range of storage technologies, of all descriptions, to support renewables, develop the smart grids and operate the power system in a much better way. This is beginning to happen in other countries, where targeted support has delivered some truly interesting projects of multi MW scale. We look forward to this in the UK soon. Developing a strong UK base in electricity storage will feed back to our researchers and developers of new storage technologies and pull technology into the main stream.
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DaveMart 6 December 2011 5:36PM Storing enough energy to enable renewables everywhere attempts to correct one absurdity, using unreliable and intermittent power sources, by the use of another, entirely fantastic amounts of storage. Some idea of the utter impracticality of the notion can be gleaned by looking at the storage needed for different options. An energy flow of 1kw, the amount of heat put out by a one-bar electric fire running 24/7 if used to cover peaking for a nuclear power plant might need 3-4 kwh of storage or so. For wind a weeks calm such as occurred in both of the last two winters would need 168kwh Solar to cover the three darkest months during which almost no power is produced in the UK might need around 2,000kwh Here are the costings on a nation sized battery: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8237 And here are other storage technologies with the numbers put on them: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8405
None of this will convince renewables nut-cases of course, as facts don't count against their prejudices. However there is exactly one way of powering this country in a low carbon way with minimal use of fossil fuels, and that is by using nuclear power. Renewables simply build in the use of fossil fuels for decades to come. And before they start banging on about their fantastical risk assumptions for nuclear, there is no substantial evidence for any medical risk below 100mSv, way more than almost anywhere at Fukushima outside of the plant boundaries.
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Atomant77 6 December 2011 5:44PM Response to PriceESN, 6 December 2011 5:27PM "why are researchers not trying harder to crack better energy storage ?" The answer is that researchers are trying to, and in many cases, succeeding to crack the problems, but in the UK we don't yet have a framework that rewards storage operators. For years, power industry planners have described electricity storage as the "Holy Grail" but the UK power market does not properly reward the benefits of storage at present. When people are onto something good that may endanger someone else's profit, what you mentioned usually occurs. Nikola Tesla is a good example of this.
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orkneywind 6 December 2011 5:53PM Hello folks, Good to see an interesting discussion on the issue of storage. As some of you might be aware, we have had a smart grid running in Orkney for a couple of years, which has allowed the isles to become net exporters of renewable electricity; all wind-sourced so far. The main issue has been one of grid stability, and as more and more generators come on-line, there is a risk that the island voltage will begin to rise. To combat this potential grid fault, the Active Network Management system automatically curtails generation, by requesting a percentage reduction in output. This works fairly well, although we do have days when comms system faults result in a complete stop!! I have noticed however that this system works very well in conjunction with storage heaters, ie when the total control storage heaters are on across Orkney, the demand rises and the grid stabilises. Perhaps a nice and simple thermal storage system is the answer, and from my experience, a renewable powered grid works well when you have a good baseload.
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Tenner 6 December 2011 6:00PM Response to HollyTree, 6 December 2011 12:59PM Hydrogen storage is coming along. A company called Cella Energy - a spin off from research done at the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory - is developing micro-beads which store H2 in solid form at room temperature and pressure, meaning it is extremely safe. A further advantage of this method is it does not require large energy losses found with either compression or liquefaction which helps massively. Whether the energy losses in the H2 production and use would be low enough to allow the process to complete with other forms of electricity storage is to be seen, but these beads can be pumped like a fluid into simple plastic tanks in cars and will then release the hydrogen in a hot cell at a mere 85 degrees meaning waste heat from the engine is enough. We could potentially run the UK's entire transport fleet on offshore wind-produced hydrogen as the storage aspect of the scheme would remove any issues with fluctuating supply giving us energy security and zero emissions. In building a vast offshore wind industry like this we could utilise the skills from the North Sea oil and gas industry as it declines which will aid workers from that sector and the wider economy no end. The company's product meets nearly all the requirements of H2 storage as laid out by the US Dept Energy's Freedom Car initiative but is still at a early stage and hasn't yet mass produced the micro-beads. Definitely one to watch over the coming few years.
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ahsanliverpool 6 December 2011 6:15PM Hydrogen can be created, stored in cylinders and later on used as a fuel for fuel cell technology. It is one of the most promising and safe source of energy storage.
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JRWoodman 6 December 2011 6:18PM OK, here's an idea. Instead of each wind turbine consisting of an expensive 1 MW generator, held 125 metres in the air and containing 2 tonnes of rare earth metals, why not fit each turbine with a simple, cheap, high pressure air compressor? An entire wind farm of, say, 10, 15 or more turbines would then be connected by a network of simple air pipelines to a large underground air pressure vessel.
When electricity is needed, the air would be released through a single, large air-powered generator. Of course there would be a small amount of energy loss -- but the ability to generate as and when demand dictated (ie contribute to base load) would be well worth a 20% loss. You heard it here first. I have several more ideas that would improve, for instance, the effectiveness of tidal barriers.
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farfrom 6 December 2011 6:18PM I think there was once a scheme in the U, to level up the demand on power generation to offer reduced rates at night and encourage domestic installation of concrete block heaters. , these" charged " at night and released heat in the daytime. Then of course heat pumps are gaining in popularity , these reduce electrical heating costs by about 50%
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JRWoodman 6 December 2011 6:21PM Response to ahsanliverpool, 6 December 2011 6:15PM It takes much more energy in the form of electricity to split hydrogen from water, than is contained in the resulting hydrogen. Dead end.
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cgreeko 6 December 2011 6:24PM Here is a variant of modular, in-ground pumped hydropower storage: www.gravitypower.net
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rajpe 6 December 2011 6:49PM @smegal Were pumped storage "the answer" we wouldn't have an energy storage problem. Yes. Pumped storage works on a limited scale. Too bad it throws-away over one-fourth of the energy that is stored. And its capital cost is so high. And so many of the "easy" locations are taken. The reason pumped storage works so well now it that it's asked to do an easy job. Our base-load power stations are highly reliable. Only a small back-up is needed Were we to depend on unreliable power sources, we'd need vastly more storage. You'd be suprised just how much more we'd need.
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Cyfareddol 6 December 2011 6:55PM Could stored compressed air be a viable energy source? Compressed air could be transported in tanks or pipes to generators. Could be use as an energy source for vehicles. The technology is cheap and familiar.
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MikeRichards 6 December 2011 7:17PM Response to howardmarch, 6 December 2011 1:16PM Regarding the hydrocarbons, the FT process sounds interesting, but I was hoping for a process that uses atmospheric CO2 as the carbon source. CO2 is such a tiny percentage of the total volume of the atmosphere (0.04%) that it is economically infeasible to extract it from the air. However, there is already a pilot plant running on the Reykjanes Peninsula of Iceland which is turning waste CO2 that is vented from the HS Orka geothermal plant (yep, even they're not completely clean) into methanol which can be blended with gasoline. The same thing could be done with CO2 which comes up with natural gas and which is often vented into the atmosphere. Methanol could then be used as a substitute fuel for more carbon intensive fossil fuels.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 7:20PM Response to HarrietHarridan, 6 December 2011 9:49AM HarrietHarridan 6 December 2011 9:49AM A lot of cash is already being spent on Ultracapacitors. But why bother? Just have nuclear for everything - problem solved. A full on nuclear solution to our energy wants would still require a substantial investment in storage technology. The problem here in the consistency of the output rather than intermittency. It is difficult to vary the output of nuclear plant in line with demand.
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MikeRichards 6 December 2011 7:20PM Response to ifsowhyso, 6 December 2011 12:57PM New, yet more diabolical method to produce Hydro-carbons?. No thanks, says earth. FT from coal is a screaming nightmare in terms of CO2 emissions, but the same process works on anything containing lots of carbon. It could be used to turn agricultural waste into high grade gasoline and diesel which would help offset methane emissions and allow us to continue using our existing energy ecosystem.
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MikeRichards 6 December 2011 7:26PM Response to Cyfareddol, 6 December 2011 6:55PM Compressed air storage in salt caverns has been around since the late 1970s. Essentially you pump air into the ground in times of low demand and then release it through turbines when the power is needed. The first project was in Germany and could generate nearly 300 MWe. There are a couple of restrictions - obviously you need the proper geology, salt is by far the best reservoir - but there's plenty of that around, so that's not a killer.
The biggest problem is one of efficiency, when compressing air you use energy and have to get rid of a lot of heat (think how hot your bicycle pump gets), and when it comes the other way you need to heat the air once again. There have been a few proposals to use compressed air for propulsion (you can run it through a conventional engine or a turbine). I know it was planned for Mexico City where it would help overcome the terrible smog from petrol driven vehicles. The problem here is that there isn't that much energy in a given volume of compressed air and the storage containers weigh a lot to be strong enough to survive a collision.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 7:27PM Response to ahsanliverpool, 6 December 2011 6:15PM ahsanliverpool 6 December 2011 6:15PM Hydrogen can be created, stored in cylinders and later on used as a fuel for fuel cell technology. It is one of the most promising and safe source of energy storage. How effectively can Hydrogen be stored. As I remember it, Hydrogen, being the smallest possible atom, has a nasty habit of leaking. I'm sure there is ongoing research in this area, but I was not aware that the problems had been solved.
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wscherphof 6 December 2011 7:56PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 5:17PM What is the problem with storage being lossy? If the energy to be stored is of a renewable source and it would otherwise not be used, even big losses would not undermine the business case for storing it and using it when needed.
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JScharf 6 December 2011 8:01PM
PK carpenter mentions F1 flywheels. http://www.williamshybridpower.com/ Williams have developed theirs into something that has widespread possiblities. See the link for all the details.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 8:11PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 5:17PM rajpe 6 December 2011 5:17PM Isn't it interesting: All the energy storage ideas mentioned here have been around 100 years. Batteries. Pumped storage. Flywheels. Compressed air. Hydrogen. Etc. Here is an interesting new one I came across a while back Isentropic Storage. I only have a link to the R&D company developing it, but they do provide some background information on the requirements for energy storage, and a good description of their process. The engineering looks sound. Our system is a highly reversible, gas cycle machine that works as both an engine and a heat pump. It is the first time that a reversible system has been developed both to store and recover electricity using a thermodynamic approach. And yet, we don't yet have much practical, large-scale energy storage operating. As yet, while fossil energy appears cheap because we do not properly account for it's wastes, we have had no pressing need for such technology. We simply turn the gas plants up or down in line with fluctuations in demand. Other non-fossil fuel-based sources of power generation, nuclear in particular, are not able to operate at varying power levels. Even if nuclear power alone were to replace fossil fuel-based generation, the only method of handling variations in user demand, without widespread use of a suitable storage technology, would be to create an excess of generation capacity to handle peak load, then simply dump this excess when it is not required. This is both wasteful of equipment and an inefficient use of energy. You'd think that there might exist some physical law that is holding us back. You keep on invoking the Laws of Thermodynamics, without ever enlightening us as to what they mean, or your precise point in relation to them. Law 1: You cannot win Law 2: You cannot even break even. Essentially this means that heat engines can never be 100% efficient. Some of the energy must always escape to the environment as heat, instead of doing useful work. I think that this is also relevant to energy storage, as some of that energy is always lost when changing from one form to another, electrical to water pressure in pumped storage for instance.
I've been having a discussion recently about Germany's solar industry. Many argue it's a waste of time because the sun doesn't shine at night. At present there's about 25GW of capacity which produces an average output of 25GW. It's also getting quite cheap - before subsidies it's cheaper than retail electricity. But it's just about reaching the limits. If Germany gets all over sun this June, a lot of the electricity will be wasted.
But the solar revolution is set to continue and we were discussing what would 300GW of capacity need. The two main things are: 1. Energy storage, as per this article. The Frauenhofer Institute is looking at Sodium Sulphur batteries which have the potential to come down in cost to about 100/KWhr, but that's a guess. NaS batteries can be cycled about 10,000 times so per unit they're cheap. The storage capacity needs to be about 18 hours or so so the summer solar cycle can spread over a day. 2. The other thing which is an alternative to electrical storage are domestic fuel cells being developed by companies like http://www.cerespower.com/, coupled to a domestic heat store (a big tank of hot water). As well as converting gas to electricity at 60% efficiency, they also use the "waste" heat for heating. But they will also be a huge source of power which can be turned on/off by the grids to give the peak power. And there will be more demand for these in winter, where the heat is useful, and the solar power modules almost (but not quite) useless. A large house might have, with costs in 2025): 10KW of solar cell modules (cost 10,000) A 30KWhr Sodium Sulfur batterey (cost 3,000) A 5KW fuel cell generator (Costs 3,000 - also replaces the boiler) A 1000 litre hot water tank Multiply that by 20 million and you have a fairly low carbon society. Yes - a comprehensive deployment of nuclear power would be cheaper, and result in less gas being used.
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BurningUpTime 6 December 2011 8:22PM You want energy storage? Try a company called Isentropic down in Hampshire. http://www.isentropic.co.uk/
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rajpe 6 December 2011 8:33PM @wscherphof Good question. Consider wind power. Wind power operates at AVERAGE of only about 24% of rated capacity. When the wind blows, you'd better store lots of power, for the times it doesn't. Let's say half of your produced power gets stored & later sent to the grid. That means that you'd lose 1/8 of your total generated power. At least.
Your storage system will have high capital costs and ITS OWN operating costs. Added together, all these could add 50% to your cost of power. These are additional "renewable energy" costs which generally get ignored. Of course, if you don't care what energy costs, there is no problem. Unless you've done engineering/cost studies, you can't imagine how easy it is to forget or gloss-over cost items that come back later and make a shambles of your economic model.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 8:38PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 5:17PM Apologies rajpe. Just spotted your earlier post re thermodynamics. Missed it on the first skim. The rest still stands though.
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Vasileios 6 December 2011 8:42PM As other people indicated the chemical bond is the best (most dense) way to store energy. Thats why fossil fuels are so successfull. Our best chance is going to be create sustainable energy chains were energy from the sun is stored in a chemical bond (hydrocarbons, H2, etc). Nature is doing it beautifully for bilions of years
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rajpe 6 December 2011 8:47PM @UnderminingOrthodoxy The Second Law essentially tells you that you can't transform energy without loss. Energy losses are a cost. Energy storage systems have additional capital costs.
Energy storage systems have their own operating costs - almost always ignored. The reason we don't have vast energy storage systems is that they cost too much. Be careful when scientists or economists claim to have energy storage answers. The point where science and economics intersect is called Engineering.
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IzzyWright 6 December 2011 8:49PM What would be the cost of building reservoirs out at sea? Wind turbines could be used to empty the reservoirs and water entering as and when required would be used to generate power.
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wscherphof 6 December 2011 8:56PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 8:33PM I believe someone stated here that 90% of fossil powered generating costs is the fuel. Maybe wind power is still an option then.
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wscherphof 6 December 2011 8:58PM Response to IzzyWright, 6 December 2011 8:49PM Those reservoirs... will they float?
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 9:03PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 8:47PM rajpe 6 December 2011 8:47PM @UnderminingOrthodoxy The Second Law essentially tells you that you can't transform energy without loss. Energy losses are a cost. Energy storage systems have additional capital costs. Energy storage systems have their own operating costs - almost always ignored. The reason we don't have vast energy storage systems is that they cost too much. Be careful when scientists or economists claim to have energy storage answers. The point where science and economics intersect is called Engineering. How about when the engineers (their about page reveals 2 engineers and an accountant) I pointed you to have what looks like a viable system, in the eyes of this engineer? Please take a look. As a sceptic on the need for storage, who appears to understand some engineering, your considered response would be interesting. You may even learn something.
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MSimon 6 December 2011 9:05PM http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-energy-storage-device-recharge-electric.html Researchers at Nanotek Instruments, Inc., and its subsidiary Angstron Materials, Inc., in Dayton, Ohio, have developed a new paradigm for designing energy storage devices that is based on rapidly shuttling large numbers of lithium ions between electrodes with massive graphene surfaces.
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Tenner 6 December 2011 9:08PM Response to JRWoodman, 6 December 2011 6:21PM
It takes much more energy in the form of electricity to split hydrogen from water, than is contained in the resulting hydrogen. Dead end. Not sure what point you are making here. All types of storage (including your interesting wind/compressed air scheme) involve energy losses. The question is what round efficiencies are possible and at what price. H2 is very much on the table.
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Teratornis 6 December 2011 9:20PM Leo Hickman: Breakthroughs in battery technology hit the headlines from time to time, but it seems as if we've barely moved beyond the rechargeable lithium-ion, nickel-metal hydride and lead acid batteries that have served us for decades. Lead acid batteries have served us for over a century, having been invented in 1859. Lots of decades there. The first commercial lithium-ion battery became available in 1991. By 2000 Li-ion batteries were common for consumer electronics use. So, not quite "decades" plural yet. The first commercial nickel metal hydride batteries reached the market in 1989. So just barely decades there. Development continues, with fairly recent innovations such as low-self-discharge nickel metal hydride batteries introduced in 2005 that permit longer shelf lives between recharges. The main problem with batteries is our long experience with fossil fuels, which conditions us to expect an energy system will deliver a remarkable combination of properties, often including: low cost, high energy density, portability, ease of handling, abundant supply, etc. Batteries (or ultracapacitors, etc.) may take a long time to do everything we are used to doing with fossil fuels. Redesigning the ways we use energy is (of course) equally as important as improving energy storage technology.
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rajpe 6 December 2011 9:20PM @UnderminingOrthodoxy Thanks. I looked at the link. They claim to lose only 20-28 per cent of the energy. That's in the range of pumped storage. Their idea may be pretty good, but I'm skeptical about things in development. However, I do wish them the very best luck with their new company. It sounds like a labor of love for the founders.
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wscherphof 6 December 2011 9:22PM Some guys at MIT do storage of solar energy directly. They can produce a material that chemically changes when hit by light, and then just stays that way until you trigger it to give back the energy in the form of a heat burst. Sounds interesting since it's renewable generation and storage in one. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/update-energy-storage-0713.html http://anpron.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Azobenzene-Functionalized-Carbon-Nanotubes-As-High-EnergyDensity-Solar-Thermal-Fuels.pdf
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Teratornis 6 December 2011 9:28PM Response to Tenner, 6 December 2011 9:08PM The question is what round efficiencies are possible and at what price. H2 is very much on the table. Indeed, the spot price of electricity can vary by more than a factor of three depending on the time of day (or night). Occasionally the price of wind power becomes negative, for example when the wind is blowing hard and demand is low at 3 AM. Sometimes transmission capacity is tied up and the grid cannot accept the output of a wind farm. At those times even an inefficient on-site storage capacity might pay for itself, by allowing the wind farm to accumulate energy to sell when the spot price is high. Hydrogen also has the possibility of being a portable carrier for energy. People are often willing to pay more for energy that can move with them.
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Tenner 6 December 2011 9:28PM Response to EnviroCapitalist, 6 December 2011 8:22PM At present there's about 25GW of capacity which produces an average output of 25GW Interesting post but not sure about that sentence; surely 25GW of solar capacity will only output that much at peak (i.e.midday) and obviously nothing at night so therefore will average far less than the rated capacity. Not that I'm
against solar mind, in the end you have to look at cost per MWh not MW installed but this sentence does seem wrong.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 9:29PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 9:20PM And what of the notion that storage will also be required for large scale nuclear?
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Tenner 6 December 2011 9:38PM Response to IzzyWright, 6 December 2011 8:49PM It has been thought of as described here. Not sure about costs involved but I'd guess they would be crazily high.
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Tenner 6 December 2011 9:47PM Response to Teratornis, 6 December 2011 9:28PM Hydrogen also has the possibility of being a portable carrier for energy. People are often willing to pay more for energy that can move with them. Yep, definitely. I posted about this earlier with regards to Cella Energy, an interesting company to be watching.
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IzzyWright
6 December 2011 10:02PM Response to Tenner, 6 December 2011 9:38PM Thank you Tenner.There are ongoing advances in material science.I was thinking honeycomb rather than open water storage.. The trouble is cement production brings nearer any carbon tipping point.It will be no help having carbon reduction in fifty years time if tipping point is in twenty years .
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Tenner 6 December 2011 10:11PM Response to IzzyWright, 6 December 2011 10:02PM Right, would be interested to hear more about the honeycomb idea and another alternative is pumped storage which uses heavy weights in the water to increase the water pressure without having to increase the volume of water. It's described here, just stroll down past the ice/air con bit (which is also interesting).
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DaveMart 6 December 2011 10:11PM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 6 December 2011 7:20PM Modern nuclear plants can throttle well. The thing is that their cost is almost all build cost, and running them costs only around 2 US cents a kilowatt hour, including everything. There are no technical obstacles to turning them up and down though, so unlike for renewables you only need as much storage as makes economic sense.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 6 December 2011 10:13PM Response to Tenner, 6 December 2011 9:28PM Tenner 6 December 2011 9:28PM Response to EnviroCapitalist, 6 December 2011 8:22PM At present there's about 25GW of capacity which produces an average output of 25GW
Interesting post but not sure about that sentence; surely 25GW of solar capacity will only output that much at peak (i.e.midday) and obviously nothing at night so therefore will average far less than the rated capacity. Not that I'm against solar mind, in the end you have to look at cost per MWh not MW installed but this sentence does seem wrong. To have a realistic comparison between the costs/unit of different energy sources, you would also have to take into consideration various hidden subsidies, and the fact that we do not properly account for waste costs from fossil or nuclear sources.
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rajpe 6 December 2011 10:28PM @UnderminingOrthodoxy. . . .You asked me: "And what of the notion that storage will also be required for large scale nuclear?" What a way to ask a question! Are you trying to make me think? Well, here goes. My guess is that all of this discussion is "academic" as they say. It's all pointless. No grand new energy storage will be developed. Or needed. Renewables will limp along, but never become the deciding factor for energy. Shale gas will be developed and supply all new UK energy needs. Gas turbines go on-line and off-line easily, so energy storage isn't an issue. They also produce energy cheaply from shale gas. There goes "energy poverty." P.S. Never = not in the lifetime of my grandchildren.
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Galvanize 6 December 2011 10:30PM Response to LeoHickman, 6 December 2011 11:05AM Additionally, since the UK will only need a few fusion generators, the effects of outage of such a plant would utterly be catastrophic. Leo, I call bullshit on this statement. Is there any chance of your learned friend commenting further on this? Given the scale and nature of fusion energy, the electrical output will not be able to follow fluctuations in demand. Secondly, how does your learned friend know this?
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rajpe 6 December 2011 10:34PM @UnderminingOrthodoxy I forgot to add: It may be that the UK could fail to develop its own shale gas resources. If that's the case, maybe if you are very nice to them, the Poles will sell you their's
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DaveMart 6 December 2011 10:40PM http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/nottingham.html Tanking the figures for Nottingham, close to the middle of the country, solar insolation varies from a high of 4.47 Kwh m2 per day in June down to 0.47 in December. This means that a notional 25GW nominal capacity array here would produce about 4.47/24 in June, or about 18.6% of nominal, or 4.65GW right when it is least needed and would make baseload less economic. During the day it would produce about double that, for a grid wrecking 9GW or so, and would be obviously useless at night. In December it would produce about 2% of nominal, or 500MW when it would really be needed. Currently solar costs around $6,000kw nominal, with almost all of this in difficult to reduce installation, transformers etc, and only about $1 in the actual panels which solar advocates are always banging on about cost reductions on. Let's assume the panels are free, so call it $5,000kw. The cost of the 25GW nominal is then $125 billion for a power source which is almost useless when most needed, and in cloudy weather would produce no power at all. The same $125 billion would buy around 20GW of nuclear power, which would cover almost all of the UK's baseload and operate at a 90% + capacity factor or an actual 18GW, based on the costs of the first of a kind reactor in Finland, which has over-run on costs. Solar in the UK is economic illiteracy approaching lunacy.
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Galvanize 6 December 2011 10:44PM Response to Bluecloud, 6 December 2011 10:16AM <blockquoteI see solutions coming from combinations of existing technologies, which utilise energy that would otherwise be wasted (e.g. baseload at night).> Could you explain how is baseload energy at night a waste?
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Tenner 6 December 2011 10:50PM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 6 December 2011 10:13PM To have a realistic comparison between the costs/unit of different energy sources, you would also have to take into consideration various hidden subsidies, and the fact that we do not properly account for waste costs from fossil or nuclear sources. Absolutely. The waste and damage costs of fossil fuels should be internalised through accurate taxation just as the intermittent-nature of renewables should. Only then will the market function effectively. Either that or we revert back to a centrally-planned power system which has to consider all the pluses and minuses of each generation source but can't see that happening.
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Galvanize 6 December 2011 10:53PM Response to LeoHickman, 6 December 2011 1:44PM But the problem is that in the UK we can keep the lights on without energy storage so it is tomorrows problem. The price differential between charging the storage system at low energy prices and selling it at high prices has to be sufficient to overcome the efficiency of the storage system, or it doesnt get used. This is today`s problem.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 7 December 2011 12:01AM Response to DaveMart, 6 December 2011 10:11PM DaveMart 6 December 2011 10:11PM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 6 December 2011 7:20PM Modern nuclear plants can throttle well. The thing is that their cost is almost all build cost, and running them costs only around 2 US cents a kilowatt hour, including everything. There are no technical obstacles to turning them up and down though, so unlike for renewables you only need as much storage as makes economic sense. All modern plants or just some specific designs? Throttling as easily as gas plants, or just better than the existing nukes? Then there is the other nuclear storage issue, the 100,000 year mausoleum with the sign reading "Keep out. This one really is cursed".
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ColinG 7 December 2011 12:31AM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 7 December 2011 12:01AM >Modern nuclear plants can throttle well. All modern plants or just some specific designs? Throttling as easily as gas plants, or just better than the existing nukes? All light water reactors can vary output for load-following between about 60% and 100% of full-power. That accounts for about 90% of the world's reactors, old and new. (It just happens that the UK has not historically used light water reactors apart from Sizewell B; so we're a special case. The UK built pumped-storage to balance its gas-cooled reactors.) Modern reactors, like the EPR, are specifically designed to allow load-following at constant temperature so that the reactor components are not stressed, and operating life is maintained. Here is an artciles showing how the old German nuclear powerstations could load-balance renewables (if they weren't being phased out at considerable cost). http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2010/2/9/65045/87786
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UnderminingOrthodoxy
7 December 2011 12:40AM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 10:28PM rajpe 6 December 2011 10:28PM @UnderminingOrthodoxy. . . .You asked me: "And what of the notion that storage will also be required for large scale nuclear?" What a way to ask a question! Are you trying to make me think? I like to challenge people's assumptions. If they come back with a coherent and rational response, that may in turn challenge mine. If I have actually made you think, that would be an honour and a pleasure Well, here goes. My guess is that all of this discussion is "academic" as they say. It's all pointless. No grand new energy storage will be developed. Or needed. Renewables will limp along, but never become the deciding factor for energy. Shale gas will be developed and supply all new UK energy needs. Gas turbines go on-line and off-line easily, so energy storage isn't an issue. They also produce energy cheaply from shale gas. There goes "energy poverty." P.S. Never = not in the lifetime of my grandchildren. I notice you have avoided answering the question directly, assuming we went for mostly nuclear, would we need storage? My guess for the future differs from yours by quite a margin. Partly because I take a slightly longer view. My descendants, assuming they make it that far, will eventually discover that renewables are all that is left them. I'd like to be working towards that future right now. Shale gas probably will be further developed, and to hell with the consequences. Even ignoring the effects CO2 released, the EROEI will be nowhere near as good as previous sources. We are scraping the bottom of the fossil barrel here. It will not be as cheap, and given the insatiable demands of 10 billion humans all wanting our high energy lifestyle, it will not last that long.
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kermis 7 December 2011 12:55AM Response to grantwilson, 6 December 2011 2:30PM I'm glad to see somebody noting energy storage issignificant feature of the current energy system; typically the UK has enough coal and oil in store to see us through three months (other countries also have significant gas storage, but historically this was less of an issue in the UK). I would not advocate the need for a similar level of energy storage for renewables, but I recall reading (letter in the E&T magazine) that National Grid reported in the first 5 months of 2010 wind output was 18% of capacity. This implies either you either need to build many times times as much wind capacty as typical demand, or you need storage that can move energy from one season to another.
Assuming storage makes its money by buying and selling electricity (as opposed to grid deferal or other ancillary services), storage will be most economic with high price differentials. But adding more storage will reduce price volutility (which is never popular with polititians and consumers), reducing the viability of further storage. This makes me wonder what price signals would be like without the four existing pumped storage plants, or for that matter without economy 7.
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Galvanize 7 December 2011 1:00AM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 7 December 2011 12:40AM I notice you have avoided answering the question directly, assuming we went for mostly nuclear, would we need storage? That would depend upon the GW capacity of each individual reactor. Dinorwig was built ostensibly to cover Sizewell B, even though the sudden loss of Sizewell B in isolation would not cause black outs. One of the quotes by Leo from one of his contacts alluded to this, and he also mentioned that fusion reactors would, by design, need to be very large capacity. I would question this personally, as the grid would be very averse to having individual generating units that could cause black outs through the loss of just one unit.. In fact, I would question all of what he said, considering how far away fusion appears to be. Dinorwig now operates in the STOR market, which is the most lucrative option for it at the moment.
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fr33cycler 7 December 2011 1:22AM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 5:17PM I don't think that is interesting at all, or much to do with the second law of thermodynamics. It is because we haven't faced a shortage of fuel, or a climate problem. We have stored masses of energy in that time - stockpiles of coal, oil tanks, gasometers. Problem is the use of them is now causing problems and we need an alternative.
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DaveMart 7 December 2011 1:52AM
Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 7 December 2011 12:01AM For throttling see the excellent reply already given. The supposed 'problem' of nuclear 'waste' is an invention of Greenpeace and sister organisations intent on fuddling the public. It is perfectly good fuel for reactors only slightly more advanced than those used at present, which has had less than 1% of its energy used. There are many designs which can use it, including the Prism design proposed at Sellafield. Nuclear 'waste' is one of this country's most valuable assets. For storage there is nothing wrong with sticking it in a dry cask after a few years in a cooling pond. The real problem is the 10,000 times as voluminous waste created by coal mining, which would bankrupt the coal industry if the regulations for disposal were a fraction as severe as for nuclear which pays for storage of its waste. Goodies from the coal industry such as mercury and arsenic with a half life of forever are in contrast dumped in the soil and water.
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DaveMart 7 December 2011 2:00AM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 7 December 2011 12:40AM I notice you have avoided answering the question directly, assuming we went for mostly nuclear, would we need storage? The direct answer is that some limited amounts of storage are used by any grid, and nuclear would make use of that. It would not absolutely need the storage though, it is just that using some would be the cheapest option. Renewables though are utterly dependent on such huge quantities of storage that they are a pipe-dream, or would be if they did not in practise simply burn coal and gas to make up for the fact that they are a lousy and unreliable energy source. That is why Germany was building 20 more coal plants even before closing its nuclear plants. Germany talks green and burns coal, which together with gas are what actually power the country. Renewables just make them expensive as they have to be carried by the fossil fuels. Germany and Denmark remain some of the highest per capita emitters of CO2. Nuclear France is much lower.
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MarkUNSW 7 December 2011 6:10AM Leo, We don't need inflexible baseload power stations to back-up fluctuating wind and solar in an electricity grid. However, we do need flexible peak-load plant, and this can be run on liquid or gaseous biofuels produced sustainably. The research group to which I belong at UNSW is currently running computer simulations, hour by hour, of the Australian National Electricity Market on 100% renewable energy. We use actual data on demand, solar and wind for 2010. We supply demand with various mixes of concentrated solar thermal (CST) with thermal storage, solar photovoltaic (PV)s, wind, existing hydro and biofuelled gas turbines -- all commercially available technologies. In our baseline scenario CST has 15 hours of molten salt storage and a solar multiple of 2.5. The small amount of hydro has
a storage and the gas turbines can be considered to be a form of storage too. With such mixes we can supply hourly demand with the same reliability as the existing polluting fossil-fuelled system. We have no difficulty supplying baseload. The principal challenge in a system with about half the energy coming from solar is to supply peak demand in winter, when some days are overcast and winds are sometimes weak. Then we manage to fill the gaps with a combination of gas turbines and demand reduction. Of course, there will have to be different challenges and different renewable energy mixes in supplying 100% renewable electricity in the UK. Our first peer-reviewed paper on this topic can be downloaded from www.ies.unsw.edu.au/staff/mark.html/. More to be published in 2012. Cheers, Mark
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LeoHickman 7 December 2011 10:17AM I received this contribution via email... Yes, storage will be important and valuable to our future energy system and recent research confirms this. (Btw, such a low carbon future also happens to be more affordable, secure and sustainable - that is why UK policy is keen on it). However, before we get excited about 'Apollo style technology solutions', let us not forget that some of the need for storage can be addressed with 'low-tech' solutions: domestic hot water tanks and demand flexibility can make a significant contribution, too. In fact they provide a very similar type of storage (a few hours) as batteries, only at a fraction of the cost. Understanding their contribution better deserves more attention. Once their potential is exhausted, we may find that what we need most are storage technologies covering days or weeks. Batteries are no good at that, and this is where technology breakthroughs are needed. On nuclear (be it fission or fusion), it is not a question whether it can load follow, but if you'd want to part load a plant with high capital and low short run marginal costs (wind is the same). Storage can help reduce the system costs, by allowing such capital intensive assets to operate closer to their optimum. They make good companions. Philipp Grnewald UKERC PhD Student Centre for Energy Policy and Technology Imperial College London
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LordMike 7 December 2011 1:08PM I like this device it's a great way to improve wind turbines http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/articles/storing-wind-under-water
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whistleman 7 December 2011 1:56PM Lots of talk of various energy storage systems but is there anything being done in the near term? yes there is.. see http://www.sse.com/Sloy/ProjectInformation/ and http://www.sse.com/OurBusiness/AssetsAndProjects/#/?country=All&category=Projects&primaryEnergy=All&seconda ryEnergy=All&location=BalmacaanHydro http://www.sse.com/OurBusiness/AssetsAndProjects/#/?country=All&category=Projects&primaryEnergy=All&seconda ryEnergy=All&location=CoireGlas Pumped storage provides demand when needed,( too much power available on the grid) and generation when needed, (too little power available on the grid). Pumped storage supports both renewables and nuclear power by providing the flexibility needed. Must declare an interest . I am working on all 3 of the above projects which should provide 1260 MW of storage by 2020.
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smegal 7 December 2011 2:29PM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 9:20PM Why are you so obsessed with round trip efficiency? The purpose of energy storage is to store excess or cheap energy. As long as the price that the energy is sold at is proportionally higher than the price it is bought at, the losses are irrelevant. Imagine that you have a grid with large thermal generators that cannot easily be throttled back, in the day they will not be generating enough, at night they are genrating too much. This is where energy storage comes into its own.
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ChadHall 7 December 2011 2:40PM
Energy storage is a vital part of the push toward a sustainable future with a reduced demand on fossil fuels. Being able to generate energy from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, and wave, are great, but a good portion of that energy is created when demand may be low, therefore it is either wasted or turned off. There are many storage technologies, each with their strengths and weaknesses. For example, batteries have a high energy density, but have a low power density and low cycle life. Ultracapacitors have a high power density and cycle life, but a lower energy density. Getting some of the large companies together, in a Manhattan Project style of collaboration would help in putting these various storage technologies together to create a hybrid energy storage system that is capable of performing high energy, high power, with a high cycle life. Another key part of the energy puzzle is efficiency. For example, ultracapacitors use their energy more efficiently than a battery (95%+ round trip efficiency vs. ~70% round trip efficiency). By using a variety of storage technologies, designers can increase the efficiency of their designs, thus reducing the demand for energy. One good example is motor starting; ultracapacitors can deliver high amounts of power in a short time for motor starting, reducing the demand of the grid and increasing the efficiency of the delivered energy from the grid. Best Regards, Chad Hall VP Sales, Ioxus, Inc. Web: www.ioxus.com
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energystorage1 7 December 2011 3:12PM I have followed the debate with interest. I note a key point that Toby Peters identified yesterday. While we can debate about whether we today need energy storage in the UK and what technology, we are missing out on a major global market opportunity which is going to see tens of thousands of jobs created and massive investment by many countries. This is a 'here now' opportunity to use our existing engineering skills to protect, create and secure jobs and also develop export. By building up an industry now, it will also ensure that we have the in-country expertise to support the future plans in the UK to deploy storage rather than have to import as we currently do (NAS batteries, etc). Investing now in storage therefore is about catalysing industry, not just planning for the low carbon economy.
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Galvanize 7 December 2011 3:46PM Response to LeoHickman, 6 December 2011 10:26AM Is this actually going to happen, Leo? I have some questions directed at your industry experts throughout this discussion that have, thus far, gone unanswered.
If it would help,I could condense them all in to one post.
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Galvanize 7 December 2011 3:50PM Response to smegal, 7 December 2011 2:29PM As long as the price that the energy is sold at is proportionally higher than the price it is bought at, the losses are irrelevant. I refer you to my post on 6th Dec at 10:53PM. Imagine that you have a grid with large thermal generators that cannot easily be throttled back, in the day they will not be generating enough, at night they are genrating too much. This is where energy storage comes into its own. Better still, let us imagine the actual grid where this is not the case.
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energystorage1 7 December 2011 3:54PM Something to consider when looking at batteries as the solution to our energy storage needs. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/8938791/Rare-earth-metal-shortage-a-ticking-timebomb.html
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Meitnerium278 7 December 2011 4:17PM Response to energystorage1, 7 December 2011 3:54PM Something to consider when looking at batteries as the solution to our energy storage needs. There are large quantities of lanthanides on the sea floor; the Japanese have found vast deposits off Hawaii. And the nice thing about them is that they are just about 100% recyclable; just about all the nickel and mischmetall in a NiMH battery (the sort in the Prius) can be reused as often as you like. The problem is with small batteries that get thrown away, since big batteries are attractive trade-ins.
You're right -- in that sense it is feasible, except that in making hydrogen from electricity supplied by many wind turbines, storing it and then turning it back into electricity again requires quite an expensive infrastructure. OTOH (my earlier comment at 6 December 2011 6:18PM refers), compressing air directly by a number of wind turbines and storing it in one large underground tank, requires a relatively cheap infrastructure; in that a single, say, 5 MW air-powered electric generator in an underground bunker could quietly service a whole wind farm of turbines. And when it does run, that single turbine would operate at maximum output without the need for the fancy gearboxes and the variable-load capability necessary with a wind-powered generator-on-a-pylon that needs to cope with gusts of wind. Recommend (3) Responses (0) Report Share
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ifsowhyso 7 December 2011 4:57PM Smarter and smaller grids are the solution which will answer storage problem also. Sounds Utopian, but nationwide grids are things of past; Future is localized power generation and distribution. We need to build smart grids if you want to fully utilise energy storage. I agree, Bluecloud. Pragmatism is not the answer; we can leave that to politicians.
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TBombadil 7 December 2011 5:44PM If this is a brainstorming session of any idea goes how about:Build a large insulated pond under each new building. Use a heat pump to extract heat from the building during the summer and pump the heat into the pond. Use the heat pump to extract heat from the pond in the winter to warm the building. A lot of energy in a house goes into creating water vapour e.g. cooking, showering, boiling kettles and even sweating. The heat pump could extract that heat by cooling the air and condensing the water vapour as it is expelled. in fact it could go further and extract the latent heat of fusion by dropping the temperature below freezing point and expelling snow. Anyone for snow fights and snowmen in mid summer then? (:-))
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JRWoodman 7 December 2011 5:59PM Response to TBombadil, 7 December 2011 5:44PM Actually you don't need a pond -- you can just use the ground. I have a ground source heat pump and I have the option of doing just that -- though frankly in the summer for me in the SW, where it doesn't become quite as hot as the SE due to having the sea all round, it isn't worth the trouble. In the winter the HP takes heat out of the ground, while in summer the same underground pipe loops can be used for cooling the house. It wouldn't make sense from an energy expenditure viewpoint to use the heat pump to extract the heat from the house in summer; all you need is a supply of cool air -- cooled by the water from the underground loops -- and a few open windows to let the warm air out.
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fluter 7 December 2011 6:31PM Response to TBombadil, 7 December 2011 5:44PM If this is a brainstorming session of any idea goes how about:...this scheme I noticed which does seasonal storage for heat: http://www.greenbuildingpress.co.uk/article.php?category_id=1&page=2&article_id=1029
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TBombadil 7 December 2011 6:34PM Response to JRWoodman, 7 December 2011 5:59PM Yes I know conventional heat pump systems use the ground as a heat source and sink but the ground doesn't actually store energy. My thought was that it might be possible to store heat in the tank during the summer for use during the winter, hence the need for insulation.
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djcmackay 7 December 2011 6:39PM Low-cost energy storage could definitely unlock the potential of renewables. The Department of Energy and Climate Change, where I work, is exploring the innovation needs for storage technology, and how Government funding could support that innovation. We expect to announce details of an innovation support programme in the new year. Its also worth mentioning that under DECCs Smart Grid Demonstration Fund, which ran from 2009/10 to 2010/11, 2.6m was invested in eight storage and smart grid projects. One of these, Highview Power Storage, won prizes at The Engineers Technology and Innovation awards last Friday. And it's not only DECC that is enthusiastic about the potential of storage - the Energy Technologies Institutes Energy Storage and Distribution project is also supporting innovation in storage technologies. David MacKay Chief Scientific Advisor, DECC Author of Sustainable Energy - without the hot air
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TBombadil 7 December 2011 6:41PM Response to fluter, 7 December 2011 6:31PM Thanks for the link, it's a variation on the same theme. It seems to use rubble for the heat store and solar heating during the summer to store heat for winter. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.
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TBombadil 7 December 2011 7:02PM I remember over 40 years ago there was a lot of talk about photochemical smog in San Francisco and my father started looking at energy storage systems for cars. We looked at chemical storage, pressurised gas, heat and in flywheels. Most were pretty similar as regards energy stored per unit of weight but the one that eventually looked the best was a steel and carbon fibre flywheel with the carbon fibre pre-stressed if possible and wound circumferentially round the steel inner. People are always worried about flywheels exploding because the greatest stress in a steel flywheel would be at the centre so any crack would shatter the flywheel. However with a circumferentially wound carbon fibre flywheel the greatest stress would be at the outside edge. Any over-stressing would simply make it fray at the edges. There were some technical problems to overcome like how you allow the car to rotate about the flywheel when going over a humpback bridge. After all you don't want the rear wheels to come off the ground as you go up the one side and the front wheels come off the ground as you go down the other side.
From what I understand most of the problems have been solved and we may expect to see some flywheel cars before too long. Flywheels have the advantage that energy can be stored in the flywheel and taken out much faster than with a battery.
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UnderminingOrthodoxy 7 December 2011 7:46PM Response to DaveMart, 7 December 2011 1:52AM DaveMart 7 December 2011 1:52AM Response to UnderminingOrthodoxy, 7 December 2011 12:01AM For throttling see the excellent reply already given. Yes, I did see that excellent reply and it was an informative link. It looks like nuclear is more flexible than I had thought. However, reading through the report, I got the impression, that it is somewhat more involved than throttling a gas plant. At some balance point, storage would be less effort than varying the output of the reactor. The supposed 'problem' of nuclear 'waste' is an invention of Greenpeace and sister organisations intent on fuddling the public. It is perfectly good fuel for reactors only slightly more advanced than those used at present, which has had less than 1% of its energy used. There are many designs which can use it, including the Prism design proposed at Sellafield. Nuclear 'waste' is one of this country's most valuable assets. For storage there is nothing wrong with sticking it in a dry cask after a few years in a cooling pond. The real problem is the 10,000 times as voluminous waste created by coal mining, which would bankrupt the coal industry if the regulations for disposal were a fraction as severe as for nuclear which pays for storage of its waste. Goodies from the coal industry such as mercury and arsenic with a half life of forever are in contrast dumped in the soil and water. I had not realised they were so inefficient, less than 1%! Slightly more advanced designs? Slightly more efficient? The suggest that storage is not a problem is absurd, and no it is not entirely down to Greenpeace even if you would like that to be true. How much does this "non problem" cost us per year. The first time I heard of spent fuel ponds was regarding the minor difficulties caused by their siting at Fukushima. I'd agree with you about coal, filthy stuff.
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kermis
7 December 2011 10:28PM Response to ifsowhyso, 7 December 2011 4:57PM Smarter and smaller grids are the solution which will answer storage problem also. Sounds Utopian, but nationwide grids are things of past; Future is localized power generation and distribution. How do you think this will work? If every small grid is to be stable and secure, it will need to undertake its own balancing, have its own reserve and every generating unit will have to be significantly smaller. What technologies do you think can deliver more cheaply and efficiently on a smaller scale?
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EnviroCapitalist 7 December 2011 11:35PM @Tenner 6 December 2011 9:28PM Response to EnviroCapitalist, 6 December 2011 8:22PM At present there's about 25GW of capacity which produces an average output of 25GW Interesting post but not sure about that sentence; surely 25GW of solar capacity will only output that much at peak (i.e.midday) and obviously nothing at night so therefore will average far less than the rated capacity. Not that I'm against solar mind, in the end you have to look at cost per MWh not MW installed but this sentence does seem wrong. Woops, decimal point error. 25GW capacity gives an average of about 2.5GW. A year or two ago, there was a comparison: 60 billion of committed subsidies from the German FIT scheme resulted in an average of 1.6GW of production. A huge success. Meanwhile the first EPWR reactor is overruning in costs and will end up at about 6 billion to produce an average of 1.6 GW. And this is considered a failure.
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Galvanize 8 December 2011 1:34AM Response to TBombadil, 7 December 2011 5:44PM If this is a brainstorming session of any idea goes how about:It might as well be. It doesn`t look like Leo and his "industry experts" are going to be turning up any time soon to answer my questions.
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JRWoodman 8 December 2011 10:44AM Response to TBombadil, 7 December 2011 6:34PM Actually the ground does store energy. I know of an engineer with a heat pump who warms up the ground in summer using his solar thermal panels and then extracts it in winter. He reckons it makes the heat pump more efficient (the warmer the ground the less work it has to do).
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wesg 8 December 2011 12:34PM Response to djcmackay, 7 December 2011 6:39PM Or just roll out small home renewable units? compiled of a few lorry batteries a converter ,a good solar panel and a small mill to generate charge.. all this macro talk is deviating from what's actually needed on the ground, and if the tech boom and the multitude of devices that go with it are causing much of these problems, then surly a device that can elevate the juice needed to power the billions of devices is a possible cure or a much needed 2nd source of energy. Do it now, build it locally, sale it affordable or with gov assistance, just do it, yesterday.
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wesg 8 December 2011 12:35PM Response to wesg, 8 December 2011 12:34PM Alleviate * not elevate sorry
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dave2020 8 December 2011 3:42PM Response to djcmackay, 7 December 2011 6:39PM Dear David,
In my submission to the National Grid "Operatingin2020" consultation 2009, I sent them the perfect solution to this very big IF:If we had a lot of renewable power that was easily turn -off-and-onable, all the problems (of fluctuation and storage) in Ch. 26 would go away. Professor David Mackay FRS Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air p190. Earlier in this thread cgreeko 6 December 6:24PM pointed out:"Here is a variant of modular, in-ground pumped hydropower storage":www.gravitypower.net Which confirms that the technology I propose should be used, on a smaller unit scale, for integral energy storage in off-shore installations, is already a commercial choice for stand-alone grid balancing. Since a large cylindrical vessel, part filled with ballast, is a perfectly practical option for the basic structure of a floating wind turbine, isn't it a no-brainer to put this wasted space to better use, by housing a raised weight accumulator in it below sea level? My design utilises a WEC to stabilize a vertical axis wind turbine, which I feel is far more suitable for a severe marine environment. To quote from my letter to National Grid:The National Grid's projections to 2025 in the Gone Green Scenario show no new energy storage. Why on Earth is that? Prof. David MacKay's Plan 'M' map indicates a four-fold increase in storage to deal with a similar level of intermittency. Both these scenarios are based on the false premise that wave and wind power will forever be 'intermittent'. As it's wasteful to produce electricity and then store it, my new wind/wave machines incorporate storage before the generator. They eliminate intermittency, create negative reserve, control frequency and slash capital costs. There is no curtailment as excess capacity is always stored, so no costs are incurre d "pulling back" wind. In response to my proposals in respect of - Question 38: Are there further aspects of storage or other storage technologies we should consider when looking forward to 2020? - National Grid simply acknowledged: One respondent argued strongly that storage could be integrated into intermittent generation installations thus eliminating a range of issues raised within the consultation document. Another respondent commented that investment would be stimulated if National grid identified a requirement for storage. What I had to offer was unique in "eliminating" the problems under discussion. All the other proposals submitted offered nothing more than a range of measures for mitigating the effects of intermittency. And it would have been considerably more stimulating for all generation companies of a 'green' persuasion, if National Grid had done some simple technical due diligence and passed on the know-how, to demonstrate the huge potential benefits of energy storage before generator. Instead, I guess, they will be pressing ahead with their plans, The western undersea grid is a "no-brainer", Mr. Holliday insists which may not lay cables in the best location to service future floating renewables? I outlined my design philosophy to CAT but failed to arouse any curiosity there. More recently I challenged Guardian science correspondents to lend their brainpower to the innovation 'crusade', but again, so far without success. Given the utter incompetence of us Brits, when it comes to actually exploiting disruptive technology, I am now beginning to disseminate the knowledge abroad. The insurmountable hurdle is the crass ideology of politicians who refuse to invest in infrastructure, new manufacturing or IPR:The ownership and exploitation of new ideas is not a matter for the WAG or the WDA Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development?!?! 2004. The government's role is one of facilitating a climate for innovation, rather than evaluating specific inventions. Patricia Hewitt. Secretary of State DTI Jan. 29 2003. The UK seems to be unique in its cavalier disregard of the value of the intellectual property we create. No other state gives it away to foreign competitors, do they?
When I offered to assign intellectual property free to Technium Performance Engineering I was told that, as a public body, it was forbidden (by EU rules, apparently!) from owning IPR! Do you know of any tricks that will get (blinkered) politicians or applied science experts thinking outside their own very confined boxes? (e-mail 20 Nov. 23:08 Leo and Lucy)
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ifsowhyso 8 December 2011 3:59PM Response to kermis, 7 December 2011 10:28PM Think of Solar energy augmented by wind etc. Every user of energy will also be generating it. Every generator of energy will also be storing the excess energy apart from supplying it to grid. Function of grid will be that of balancing supply and demand and again storing excess energy, ps : Small grid doesn't mean disconnected. When need arises they can lend or borrow energy.
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dave2020 8 December 2011 8:22PM Response to djcmackay, 7 December 2011 6:39PM Addendum to my post above:A link that works, I hope: www.gravitypower.net And two posts on CATanswers you may have missed: http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/6643752 http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/6659612 I haven't as yet made an approach to the ETI, as the Request for Proposals system is looking for commercial enterprises to undertake projects that are way beyond my capabilities - financial or technical. If the ETI ever puts out a request for ideas I'd be happy to oblige.
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kermis
8 December 2011 9:26PM Response to ifsowhyso, 8 December 2011 3:59PM I suggest you look at the output profile of wind and of solar and ask yourself how much storage you would need. Then consider how your neighbours' wind and solar generation performs. I thinkyou will find there is a very high level of correlation between your output and theirs. So when you have an excess so will they; and when ou are short, so are they. So assuming you and your neighbours need to import power, how far would you have to go in order to find a neighbourhood with a surplus? You soon get to realise the grid is still required, and peak flows will be of a similar size.
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Teratornis 9 December 2011 1:25AM Response to rajpe, 6 December 2011 10:28PM P.S. Never = not in the lifetime of my grandchildren. If your grandchildren have not been born yet, or are very young, and if civilization could continue much as it has, then their life expectancy would extend through most or all of the current century. Unfortunately for your grandchildren, humans are currently on pace to trigger in the neighborhood of 4 to 6 degrees C of additional climate warming by 2100. The brutal logic of climate change indicates that "[an increase in global temperature of 4 degrees Celsius (7.5 degrees Fahrenheit)] is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable." In a 4 degrees warmer world, carrying capacity estimates [are] below 1 billion people. Global population looks set to rise to at least 9 billion by 2050, so at least 9 out of 10 people will likely die prematurely after that, if humans keep doing what they're doing lately which is to raise greenhouse gas emissions each year according to the worst case scenario. Thus to say "not in the lifetime of my grandchildren" might be a shorter time frame than you may imagine, unless your grandchildren are lucky, clever, and rich enough to squeeze into the privileged remnant who might find a habitable refuge from man-made global warming and defend it against any desperate climate refugees in excess of its carrying capacity.
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Galvanize 9 December 2011 4:31PM Response to LeoHickman, 6 December 2011 10:26AM Hope to have a professor of energy storage, and some industry experts, joining the debate soon so please keep your thoughts/examples coming... You might as well close this discussion, because you know this isn`t going to happen Leo.
How come so many people on CiF don`t like it when scientists and "experts" have their knowledge and expertise questioned?
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dave2020 10 December 2011 12:07PM I can understand your pessimism galvanize. If you have hit the nail on the head, may I suggest to Leo and Lucy that an exercise in crowd-sourcing ideas should be followed up by writing a conclusion piece, as Polly Curtis does for 'Reality Check'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/nov/21/prince-philip-windfarms-useless Offshore windfarms are much more expensive to build and it will take longer for them to become cost effective (see 12.32pm). But they are more popular because they are less imposing on the populated landscape and produce more energy because of higher winds. Windfarms will always require other sources of energy to cushion falls in production caused by changes in weather conditions and sudden surges in demand. Around 15% to 22% of electricity produced by wind power must be supplemented by other sources to cope with fluctuations. The second paragraph is wrong to state that windfarms "will always require" to be "supplemented by other sources" as wind power can be run far more productively if energy storage is part of the equation. There is only one question that needs to be answered. Does the integration of energy storage in marine renewables cost more or cost less? This solution is unique in providing both balancing services and generation in one package - renewable electricity dispatched at the flick of an automated switch, just when it's needed. That alone would justify additional capital investment, but if my design is less expensive than the existing separate technologies of conventional wind+wave+grid-based storage, then it really is a no-brainer. P Holmes may see some answers to the question if we could vastly improve energy storage we could presumably make do with the energy sources we already have? but do we have any better understanding of Why aren't we investing more on improving energy storage technology? So please, Leo and Lucy, let us all know what your conclusions are, and if you're unable to ascertain the facts on any particular issue, I'm sure there are experts out there who are willing to help. For example, I'm sure that djcmackay can answer the question I pose above.
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dave2020 11 December 2011 4:00PM I've often been given the advice - "Don't call yourself an inventor", but it's very difficult to hide the shameful truth. It seems they must be right, because even CIFers are loath to offer even token support - look, not a single 'recommend' or 'response'!
No, this is not off topic. The question was: "Why aren't we investing more?" I have already touched on the reasons in previous posts, but perhaps we should delve deeper. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/18/economics-keynes-schumacher Any behaviour not conforming to this theory is deemed irrational; other motivations such as altruism, love, the greater good or aesthetic appreciation are not considered: they are not the province of economics. Over the past few decades economics has colonised not only much academic inquiry in the social sciences, but also public debate as a whole. Most notably, it has colonised politics. By giving "scientific" support to programmes of deregulation and privatisation over the past 40 years, it has managed to transform our economic structures to conform to its ideal of free markets, in the belief that competition between rational consumers and producers would enforce "correct" prices and lead to an economic optimum. This theory of how the economy would work if there were free competition has thus been put to the test. The result is what I believe will prove to be the worst economic disruption in the history of the developed world. If engineers based their practice on a theory that produced a series of collapsed bridges, that theory would get an instant makeover. No one would employ engineers to build bridges until they were sure the problem had been fixed. But there is not the slightest sign among mainstream economists that there is any need for change, nor is there much hesitation among politicians to continue to seek economists' advice. The politicians might have been wise to heed Einstein: "We cannot solve problems using the same mindset that created them." How many investment wankers consider the state of the economy in 20 years time, or the state of the planet in 100? Why would they, when they can invent a fantasy casino to give them a stonking ROI in 20 days or 20 hours? An income stream from long-term infrastructure development isn't sexy enough for shareholders, or so they assume. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/11/will-hutton-david-cameron-wrong-on-europe If the coalition is serious about rebalancing the British economy, it is preposterous to place a fragment of the City at the forefront of our national priorities. David Cameron is the best and worst of upper-middle class, home counties England - decent enough but saturated with prejudices he has never cared to challenge. Prejudice is the first refuge of an irrational mind that clings to discredited beliefs. No U-turns, ever! "Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results." Albert Einstein again. Help the masters!! of finance back on their feet so they can engineer their next boom. Hardly rational, is it? http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/dec/09/brian-cox-robin-ince-xxmas Celebrate the ideas rather than the people. That's the epitome of the rational mind, because ideas are always open to challenge, whereas people hate to change their minds. As I've been saying for two decades - Judge the invention, not the inventor, but many people won't do it and that includes engineers. Doesn't anyone have what it takes to accept my challenge? Is the death of curiosity drummed into our kids to get them through exams, or Is it a cultural mind-block? One comment on an article written by an American is enough to stimulate a long conversation. Makes you wonder.http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/automakers-new-renewable-energy-investors-sustainablecars#start-of-comments Where's the investment going to come from if not from QE by the Bank of England and the ECB?
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dave2020 12 December 2011 4:33PM There's a motto I'm obliged to follow due to circumstance: If at first you don't succeed.. . . .
Let's look at current prospects and the state of play. David Cameron supports this: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn11_005/pn11_005.aspx surplus wind energy produced off Britain's coast (when electricity demand in the UK is low, but wind speed is high) could be exported to Norway and used to pump water in its hydro-electric power stations. Electricity produced by hydropower could then be sent to Britain at times of high demand when the wind is not blowing. We can study the Danish experience here - not very efficient and quite costly. The same approach for us would transfer energy profits from Britain, which has a large National Debt, to Norway, which has a huge SWF. Not a very rational economic strategy. Is it worth the cost of laying HVDC cables? Only if they go to countries that need to import our (future) surplus electricity. So there is NO urgent need for them now. There is a very urgent need to adopt storage technologies along with the renewables soon to be installed. At some point soon, we need to stop deploying intermittent generation. The sooner the better. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/sep/22/energy-supergrid-electricity-wind "We have vast offshore resources of renewable energy" he (Tim Yeo) said. "In fact, we potentially have enough wind, wave and tidal energy to more than match our North Sea oil and gas production and transform the country from a net energy importer to a net energy exporter." There's potentially tens of thousands of jobs in it too, he said. But we can only ever exploit its full potential if we have sufficient energy storage and we'll only profit from it if that resource is in our hands - another no-brainer, if I'm not mistaken. Sustainable energy for ever and jobs for life. What are the alternatives? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/07/uk-climate-advisers-biomass-push That's a stupid idea isn't it? Importing more fuel that's not even zero carbon - idiocy! If we don't need biomass plant, how much does that save, both on capital and on-going fuel costs? If we don't need new nuclear, how much does that save - your grandchildren in decommissioning costs? There are industrial requirements for fossil fuels, but domestic energy could switch, over time, to all electric. Who can know what the market price of gas will be in 20 years? If we need much less of it, who cares? http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/12/thinktank-blasts-renewables-support It's easy to see why we aren't investing more when certain people so enjoy celebrating their own ignorance. Livermore said the main drawbacks of wind and solar were that they must be backed up with gas, coal or nuclear generation when the wind does not blow or sun shine. You might as well ask Nigel Lawson to write a report on sustainable energy! Critics of renewables have become increasingly vocal in recent months with some backbench Conservatives suggesting they are unaffordable in an economic downturn, an argument the nuclear industry privately admits is playing into its hands. The Department of Energy and Climate Change said Livermore had failed to recognise that the UK had already attracted nearly 2.5bn of investment in renewable energy, with the potential support of more than 10,600 jobs. A department spokesman said: "This report completely misses the point." Well of course it does, that was its remit.

Why Does It Have To Be A Battery

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Why Does It Have To Be A Battery

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Why does it have to be a battery? Why not pumped storage?

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SenorHoppo 6 December 2011 10:12AM And Harriet Harridan et al

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jayb 6 December 2011 11:23AM

David Roberts did a short piece recently on this: http://www.grist.org/renewable-energy/2011-10-28-cool-energy-storage-projects-make-mockery-politician-pessimism

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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 12:06PM Another reason http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/05/uk-government-intelligence-nuclear-industry

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ponder 6 December 2011 12:10PM

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DoctorChris 6 December 2011 12:56PM

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stuartiannaylor 6 December 2011 1:06PM

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