Storage Becomes a Player

[Bob Wallace]

I ran across this comment on a different site...

All producers need storage to optimize profitability. That means that coal and nuclear plants will be buying storage starting this year. The smart money will be buying battery storage.

My reading is that battery prices are now reaching the point where it's more profitable for large thermal plants to start time-shifting their low demand (low selling price) electricity to higher demand (higher selling price) times. 

That's not going to happen unless there's enough wind and solar to pull prices low when the wind is blowing or Sun shining and the price of battery storage has fallen enough.

Obviously not all grids are going to be in this condition now, but it's likely a point which most grids will have to traverse.

[Sigmetnow]

If it is broken -- fix it!   

Blackout parties: how solar and storage made Western Australia farmers the most popular in town

The energy grid around Esperance and Ravensthorpe is unreliable at the best of times, but after a bushfire took out the poles and wires around these far-flung outback towns last year, the power company asked residents if they might be interested in trying out a more economically and environmentally sustainable way to keep the lights on and the bar fridge humming.

Rather than fully rebuild the sprawling infrastructure required to reconnect all residents to the grid, network operator Horizon Power turned to WA renewables pioneer Carnegie Clean Energy to help roll out stand-alone solar and storage systems.

The Carnegie managing director, Michael Ottaviano, said the scheme had led to a new phenomenon in the towns. “People assume the grid is something reliable and permanent, but in reality it is a centralised system with very long lines out to remote communities – it is in fact highly susceptible to failure,” he says.
...

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/may/15/blackout-parties-how-solar-and-storage-made-wa-farmers-the-most-popular-in-town

[Sigmetnow]

Pumped hydro:

Old Coal Mines Have a Place in the Future of Clean Energy
A century-old technology is being reimagined as renewables boom.

Ben Chafin sees the future of clean energy in abandoned coal shafts.

The Virginia state senator, whose Appalachian district is pockmarked with empty mines, pushed through legislation in April that encourages companies to transform those tunnels into giant storage devices to hold vast amounts of renewable power.

The idea, which Dominion Energy Inc. has been studying, is to fill mines with water and then use electricity from wind and solar farms to pump it up to a reservoir on the surface. When utilities need power, operators open floodgates, letting water gush back into turbines on its way down.
...
For all the talk of lithium ion as the future, pumped hydro is by far the most prevalent form of energy storage in the U.S., accounting for about 97 percent of capacity. There are more than 40 existing facilities nationwide, with a combined capacity of more than 20 gigawatts. That’s enough to power all of New York City for several hours.
...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-24/old-coal-mines-have-a-place-in-the-future-of-clean-energy

[Bob Wallace]

Mines can be very deep.  When the levels between the two reservoirs are greater (provide more head) less water has to be moved to store electricity.

[Bob Wallace]

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) this week announced it would buy solar energy from a new 100MW solar plant at the historically low price of less than US3c/kWh – less than half of what it had agreed to pay in similar contracts over the last few years.

The project will also include 30MW/120MWh of battery storage, and the company says that the power purchase agreement for the combined output is “significantly less” than US4.5c/kWh – nearly two-thirds cheaper than the previous such contract struck in Hawaii, and well below the cost of a gas-fired peaking plant.

Still, Tony Concannon, the head of Reach Solar, which is building a 220MW solar farm in South Australia, and the former head of the Hazelwood brown coal generator, says solar and storage is already cheaper than gas-fired generation and the combined cost would soon be “well below” $A100/MWh.

AGL has also agreed that renewables plus storage are cheaper than gas, meaning that gas will no longer serve as the “tradition fuel” because it is not cheap enough. A report from Reputex also said that solar and storage is now cheaper than peaking gas plants in Australia. The Victorian government also agrees, saying renewables and storage are cheaper than gas.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/stunning-new-lows-in-solar-and-battery-storage-costs-13929/

[crandles]

Pumped hydro:

Old Coal Mines Have a Place in the Future of Clean Energy
A century-old technology is being reimagined as renewables boom.

The idea, which Dominion Energy Inc. has been studying, is to fill mines with water and then use electricity from wind and solar farms to pump it up to a reservoir on the surface. When utilities need power, operators open floodgates, letting water gush back into turbines on its way down.

Presumably they wouldn't 'fill mines with water' they would want to keep them as empty as possible, no? Is the water going to seep away from these mines or is an exit route engineered?

I assumed you want high rainfall rates and large catchment areas so you can have power generation without cost of pumping up water. However is that a disadvantage if you are aiming the facilities to deal with surplus electrical power?

How does efficiency of pumped water compare with running a heavy weight around a pulley to drive generators? I am thinking generators on surface would be more convenient than trying to assemble generators at bottom of mine.

(You can probably tell I am not an engineer, and maybe this belongs in a very silly questions thread.)

[Sigmetnow]

Here's one explainer:

Why pumped hydro beats batteries as a storage solution

There are many different kinds of storage technologies, each with different characteristics. Lithium ion batteries are attractive as they operate effectively at small scales, are lightweight and have good round-trip efficiency. But they are currently expensive per unit of storage capacity.

Pumped hydro at the other end of the scale operates at very large scales, has good round-trip efficiency and is very cheap per unit.

Flywheels (or rotors) have low round-trip efficiency and don’t store a lot of power, but are able to dispatch lots of power in a short time and can also contribute to frequency stability.

Other storage technologies include compressed air, cryogenic (liquid air) energy storage, flow batteries and hydrogen. Each has its respective pluses and minuses....

http://www.ecogeneration.com.au/why-pumped-hydro-beats-batteries-as-a-storage-solution/

[etienne]

Hello,

What about home storage ? There are many projects but I wonder if it makes sense if there is no incentive from the state. Batteries are still too expensive to have them just for fun, and I feel that being an electricity supplier to the network is also a good option when talking renewable.

Best regards,

Etienne

[Bob Wallace]

Pumped hydro:

Old Coal Mines Have a Place in the Future of Clean Energy
A century-old technology is being reimagined as renewables boom.

The idea, which Dominion Energy Inc. has been studying, is to fill mines with water and then use electricity from wind and solar farms to pump it up to a reservoir on the surface. When utilities need power, operators open floodgates, letting water gush back into turbines on its way down.

Presumably they wouldn't 'fill mines with water' they would want to keep them as empty as possible, no? Is the water going to seep away from these mines or is an exit route engineered?

I assumed you want high rainfall rates and large catchment areas so you can have power generation without cost of pumping up water. However is that a disadvantage if you are aiming the facilities to deal with surplus electrical power?

How does efficiency of pumped water compare with running a heavy weight around a pulley to drive generators? I am thinking generators on surface would be more convenient than trying to assemble generators at bottom of mine.

(You can probably tell I am not an engineer, and maybe this belongs in a very silly questions thread.)

With a mine (that didn't have significant leak problems one could have drops (head) of hundreds of feet.  A column of water exerts 0.433 pounds per square inch of pressure.  A 80' head (perhaps what one would get with a dam) would mean 21.65 pounds of water pressure.  A 500' deep mine with a turbine/pump at the bottom would have 216.5 pounds of  water pressure pushing the on the blades.   That means a lot more work using far less water. 

The rope/pulley thing has been proposed.  As has storing energy with an electric engine pulling cars loaded with rocks up slanted rail lines.  The fact that we aren't seeing projects using solid weights and are seeing new PuHS facilities being built leads me to believe the solid weight idea doesn't work out all that well when an engineer scopes it out.

Systems like the mine PuHS would typically be "closed loop" where the water is circulated between the high and low reservoirs.  A closed loop system built in a dry area would need only about 10% additional water to replace what evaporates.  (Assuming uncovered reservoirs.)

[ghoti]

One thing I've learned recently is that pumped hydro is actually quite common and has been since the 1960s. The Oroville Dam problem has lead to a bunch of quite informative videos where I discovered that pumped storage is common along the dams in the California Aqueduct System. It is just nobody made a big deal about it in the past.

[rboyd]

There are only a few appliances that need to run 24 hours a day, such as refrigerators. Other things, such as washing machines and dryers could be more easily demand managed. Perhaps there could be a regulation that 24/7 appliances can only be purchased with an accompanying battery storage that will run it for xx hours?

Would greatly facilitate the demand management of the grid if the battery could be told to charge at cheap rates (lots of sun/wind) then run the appliance when supply is low. Could refrigerators also be made to be even much better insulated?

The government needs to set such regulations, then the market will provide the creativity. Remember when the car companies complained that they couldn't afford seatbelts etc., then magically they could? Corporations will always whine about new regulations, then when forced to do something magically find a way.

[Bob Wallace]

One thing I've learned recently is that pumped hydro is actually quite common and has been since the 1960s. The Oroville Dam problem has lead to a bunch of quite informative videos where I discovered that pumped storage is common along the dams in the California Aqueduct System. It is just nobody made a big deal about it in the past.

Go to the DOE Energy Storage Database - Advanced Search page and check the Pumped Hydro Storage box and you can see the hundreds of PuHS facilities around the world.  Looks like there are 327 sites that are functional.  Another 22 that are announced or under construction.

https://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/advanced_search

The oldest in operation was opened in 1905 in Trentino, Italy. 

[TerryM]

There are only a few appliances that need to run 24 hours a day, such as refrigerators. Other things, such as washing machines and dryers could be more easily demand managed. Perhaps there could be a regulation that 24/7 appliances can only be purchased with an accompanying battery storage that will run it for xx hours?

Would greatly facilitate the demand management of the grid if the battery could be told to charge at cheap rates (lots of sun/wind) then run the appliance when supply is low. Could refrigerators also be made to be even much better insulated?

The government needs to set such regulations, then the market will provide the creativity. Remember when the car companies complained that they couldn't afford seatbelts etc., then magically they could? Corporations will always whine about new regulations, then when forced to do something magically find a way.

Refrigerators can easily and cheaply be made more efficient by insolation and/or by changing the access doors. (sliding drawers that offer limited access while leaving the rest undisturbed)
Appliances, (washers & driers) that only operate when electrical costs are below a certain minimum might sell well today. A relatively inexpensive addition to the unit that could offer substantial savings in some regions.
Air Conditioning and heating need to be ready to run 24/7, and more efficient designs are out there. The problem here is that squeezing the last possible BTW out of a system can make the unit so fragile, and so expensive to repair, that it may not be financially viable. This wall has been hit  in the past.


Terry

[etienne]

Hello,

There are many solutions to adapt load to availability. For example :
- Refrigerator and deepfreezer could have two different temperature so that things are cooled more than needed when too much electricity is available - cold energy storage, so you don't need  24h/day electricity for the refrigerator.
- wash machine and dishwasher could get warm water from the tap so that water is heated when electricity is available (hot storage) or with any kind of fossil fuel (heating oil kWh cost about half an electricity kWh in Luxembourg - you need a heat pump if you want to be cheaper than fossil fuel).

Such storage solutions probably have a better efficiency than storage as electricity.

I have the feeling that utilities make so much money from balancing the gird that they really don't want to break that business (pumping water when price are negative, and producing electricity when costs are high). I guess this is why we don't get a rebate when filling batteries when electricity costs are low, looks like they need that low cost for their storage. This is why I was asking the question about the aim of batteries at home without state incentives.

Best regards,

Etienne

[TerryM]

Hello,

There are many solutions to adapt load to availability. For example :
- Refrigerator and deepfreezer could have two different temperature so that things are cooled more than needed when too much electricity is available - cold energy storage, so you don't need  24h/day electricity for the refrigerator.
- wash machine and dishwasher could get warm water from the tap so that water is heated when electricity is available (hot storage) or with any kind of fossil fuel (heating oil kWh cost about half an electricity kWh in Luxembourg - you need a heat pump if you want to be cheaper than fossil fuel).

Such storage solutions probably have a better efficiency than storage as electricity.

I have the feeling that utilities make so much money from balancing the gird that they really don't want to break that business (pumping water when price are negative, and producing electricity when costs are high). I guess this is why we don't get a rebate when filling batteries when electricity costs are low, looks like they need that low cost for their storage. This is why I was asking the question about the aim of batteries at home without state incentives.

Best regards,

Etienne

Washing Machines - both for clothes and dishes are fed from the hot water line, at least in N.America. Additional heat is added as needed. Dryers for clothes and a drying cycle for dishes are both very energy intensive.
Many fresh foods don't store well when temperatures are too low. Buying a better insulated refrigerator, wrapping all the hot water pipes, and adding a solar pre heater all will help.


Terry

[etienne]

Many fresh foods don't store well when temperatures are too low. Buying a better insulated refrigerator, wrapping all the hot water pipes, and adding a solar pre heater all will help.


Terry

The problem with fresh food storage is much better handeld by new generations of refrigerators. Unfortunately, the price of the refrigerator will not provide a valid information regarding its efficiency. I have a 6 months old refrigerator, and for some unknown reason it was in "super cool" modus (just above freezing) this morning, and I didn't loose anything. It's a smart gird ready product that's very good but without much design, just stainless steel around it. My wife would have prefered another model that was like 50% more expensive with a much lower energy class.

I believe that there is a future for energy storage in its final form (heat, cold) and in systems waiting for energy availability to start (washmachines, dishwashers...). The technology already exist on the appliance side.

Best regards,

Etienne

[Sigmetnow]

Energy storage deployment surge 591% in the US to support renewable energy growth and stabilize the grid

• 71 megawatts of energy storage were deployed in Q1 2017, growing 276% over Q1 2016.
• 233.7 megawatt-hours of energy storage were deployed in Q1 2017, an increase of 944% from the same quarter last year.

https://electrek.co/2017/06/06/energy-storage-deployment-surge/

[etienne]

Well, to come back to my refrigerator issue, I know it is a little bit out of topic, but I found something that was not useable after my "supercool" (just above freezing) event. I had some grape syrup that became hard, the sugar crystallized in the bottle. No Idea if this is related to the event or if this would have happened anyway. But I really had no problem with all the fresh products.

[Sigmetnow]

 A simplified look at various energy storage systems.

The Biggest, Strangest ‘Batteries’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/energy-environment/biggest-batteries.html

[Bob Wallace]

A simplified look at various energy storage systems.

The Biggest, Strangest ‘Batteries’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/energy-environment/biggest-batteries.html

Good graphics.  (Haven't found a way to capture/store them.)

[numerobis]

Energy storage deployment surge 591% in the US to support renewable energy growth and stabilize the grid

• 71 megawatts of energy storage were deployed in Q1 2017, growing 276% over Q1 2016.
• 233.7 megawatt-hours of energy storage were deployed in Q1 2017, an increase of 944% from the same quarter last year.

https://electrek.co/2017/06/06/energy-storage-deployment-surge/

Impressive. Looks like batteries cleared the bar and are now ready for mass deployment.

Well, to come back to my refrigerator issue, I know it is a little bit out of topic, but I found something that was not useable after my "supercool" (just above freezing) event. I had some grape syrup that became hard, the sugar crystallized in the bottle. No Idea if this is related to the event or if this would have happened anyway. But I really had no problem with all the fresh products.

Microwave it to just warm it a bit (or just leave it on the counter) and the crystals will melt again. I have to do that with any honey I stored over winter -- to save on heating I let my apartment temperature get to the mid/upper teens.

[Sigmetnow]

A simplified look at various energy storage systems.

The Biggest, Strangest ‘Batteries’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/energy-environment/biggest-batteries.html

Good graphics.  (Haven't found a way to capture/store them.)

On an iPad, using the Reader View (click the symbol on the left side of the URL field in Safari), clicking on the graphic and choosing Save Image saves it as a GIF in Photos. (Although Photos won't give any indication it is a GIF, at least in the software version I'm using -- I use a GIF app to check.  )

[Bob Wallace]

Post them here and I'll capture them from your post.  Got no iPad/Safari.

[Sigmetnow]

Post them here and I'll capture them from your post.  Got no iPad/Safari.

Let's see if this works.  Click to animate.

[Sigmetnow]

Cool, it does work!  (Click to animate.)

Here are the next two:

[Sigmetnow]

And two more:

Edit: Sorry, I can't get the flywheel image to save as a GIF from the article.   

[Sigmetnow]

And the final two.

Edit:  the train GIF animates for me in a GIF app, but not when clicked in this post. 

[Bob Wallace]

Thanks for the images.  All stored away for future use.