Slashdot Mirror
Solar Could Lead In Power Production By 2050
Lucas123 writes Solar power could be the leading source of electricity compared with other renewables and conventional sources of power, such as oil and coal, according to a pair of reports from the International Energy Agency. PV panels could produce 16% of the world's electricity, while solar thermal electricity (STE) is on track to produce 11%. At the end of 2013, there had been 137GW of solar capacity deployed around the world. Each day, an additional 100MW of power is deployed. One reason solar is so promising is plummeting prices for photovoltaic cells and new technologies that promise greater solar panel efficiency. For example, MIT just published a report on a new material that could be ideal for converting solar energy into heat by tuning the material's spectrum of absorption. Ohio State University just announced what it's referring to as the world's first solar battery, which integrates PV with storage at a microscopic level. "We've integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost," said Yiying Wu, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.
of making it difficult for homeowners to utilize this technology thanks to the regulatory capture of giant utility companies. http://www.law360.com/articles/573896/enviros-blast-pa-limits-on-customer-solar-generation http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/as-hawaii-demands-utility-reform-thousands-of-solar-installers-are-laid-off This along with downgrading of utilities stock by one of these banks or analysts (I can't recall which right now), we are going to see utility companies use their political connections to stifle this until they can have full control of the solar electricity production.
That's messed up... Only 40 years of oil supply left, compared to 160 years natural gas and 400 years of coal.
No electricity should be generated via oil right now, and definitely not in 2050.
This prediction was made on nonsensical assumptions and optimism, including doubling of efficiency on mass produced panels and absurd lowering of costs.
My ass could lead in power production by 2050 also.
Bend over, let's get started.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Executive Director also stressed that the two reports do not represent a forecast.
The linked article also misstates what the U.S. Department of Energy report contains (no, it doesn't say solar will go from .2 to 10%). People post this kind of nonsense and then wonder why they have a credibility problem.
From the article. "IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven stressed in a statement that her agency's two reports do not represent a forecast. "
The report said "if you wanted to try to have more solar, here's what you would try, and here's what the (devastating) consequences would be. They absolutely did not in any way say that would happen or should happen.
> This prediction was made on nonsensical assumptions
The article said "IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven stressed in a statement that her agency's two reports do not represent a forecast. "
The reports are not predictions of what will happen. They are a statement of "if bureaucrats wanted to increase the use of solar electric, here's how they could try, here's how much magical technology would be required, and here's what some of the (disastrous) consequences would be. It doesn't say that anyone will, can, or should attempt such a thing.
Too bad.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Solar Could be 50+% of production, but only around 35% of energy usage. AKA, we'd be wasting power because we are installing too much solar power while we have no good way to store the power, a new solar station only reduces hydrocarbon use by around 60% per watt in places with existing solar power usage due to the need to idle hydrocarbon plants but the inability to fully shut them down. These returns are diminishing. We need to end all solar subsidies and instead focus on energy storage, not tomorrow but right this second.* Don't let help them open more solar power plants till we can store the power. Am researching tech that won't at best be commercially viable for 10-20 years. It's nuclear resonance fluorescence.
*This is the problem with government subsidies, they start usually doing good they continue until they are bad. Politicians start getting kick backs and thus can't end the subsidies because then they would get the kickbacks.
In other news: "too cheap to meter" fusion power available ten to twenty years from today. Whenever "today" might happen to be.
> "Due to global warming, the sun is only available, on average, half the day"
Are you drunk?
It's not "regulatory capture"; it's the very real cost of maintaining the infrastructure that you count on when it's dark out for a few days. I know you're a special penny, but why do you deserve to get paid more for power than other generators? That is exactly what happens with net metering.
It's available right now. And it could lead in power production by 2050. Like so many things, it's right under our noses..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have a shed on a friend's property which has a number of LED lights on it which are glowing quite well, and it is definitely night.
What is desperately needed is a form of energy storage technology. We get within an order of magnitude of energy by volume of gasoline for energy density, and transportation will be fundamentally changed. Even basic power grid design would be changed by such a discovery.
It's not "regulatory capture"; it's the very real cost of maintaining the infrastructure that you count on when it's dark out for a few days. I know you're a special penny, but why do you deserve to get paid more for power than other generators? That is exactly what happens with net metering.
So tax us honestly.
Tax us on energy production and again on consumption -- grid usage -- to maintain the grid, instead of hiding the cost of the grid. Don't let some corporate behemoth charge us what they want based on "Think of the grid!"; the argument is no more valid than "Think of the children!".
Of course, if we do this, I must insist that the grid be owned by the public, as well, rather than some corporate behemoth, and it can be maintained by the lowest bidder. If the corporate behemoth *happens* to be that bidder, good on them. If it doesn't, good on whoever wins instead.
Just like the gas tax or bridge tolls, and public roads.
There is also the cost of burning coal and oil that isn't seen. Climate change is controversial, but it is pretty obvious that it is happening, and really bad stuff is going to happen unless we stop putting CO2 in the atmosphere at the rate that it is going in.
You insensitive clod!
I live in Northern Canada; climate change is a *benefit*, not a *cost*! Change it faster, please!
solar panels cost more in materials (fabbing the silicon, energy for the aluminum, more energy to melt and shape it, etc.) than a panel ever gets back in energy coming in
Yawn. You coal shills need to come up with some new lies. Everyone in the world knows that your statement above is a lie. Solar panels return their embodied energy in 1 to 3 years. They continue to return more energy after that for at least another 50 years. At that point, everything in them is fully recyclable into new panels.
If you must lie for your feudal coal barons, please try to think of some more original and entertaining lies.
They act like they think there could be technological advancements in the next 35 years.
We know better. Technology stopped progressing early last decade and solar will never be useful. In fact, solar energy is bad for you, causes cancer and creates 100 times more pollution than fracking in a nuclear waste site. Being part of the grid is double-plus good. It ties us together as a society and fosters love and understanding. In the long run, fossil fuels save money and keep the environment clean, because we dig that nasty oil and coal out of the ground where it could hurt animals and burn it off safely.
This has been a paid advertisement, and may not represent the opinions of the proprietors of this Slashdot account.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"If you must lie for your feudal coal barons, please try to think of some more original and entertaining lies."
that's never going to happen, they are a single trick pony of ideas
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The energy disinfo trolls are all over solar threads. Gee, i wonder why.
Since solar panels cost more in materials (fabbing the silicon, energy for the aluminum, more energy to melt and shape it, etc.) than a panel ever gets back in energy coming in,
In fact, solar panels would recoup the energy cost of their production in just seven years back in the seventies. And we're talking about the polycrystalline panels. So if anyone was wondering, this is how tired the anti-solar rhetoric is. Not only is it not true, but it's forty years of the same stupid lies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We are currently wasting almost a 100% of it now. All that solar energy and hardly anyone is capturing it.
We're failing to build a Dyson sphere, capture the Earth mantle's heat and siphon the hydrocarbons of Titan, while we're at it.
What is desperately needed is a form of energy storage technology. We get within an order of magnitude of energy by volume of gasoline for energy density, and transportation will be fundamentally changed. Even basic power grid design would be changed by such a discovery.
I suspect autonomous cars will arrive first, as the physics of batteries are quite well researched and finding revolutionary new chemistry seems unlikely. Not that genuinely driver-less cars are close either, but they seem far more realizable using existing sensors and computational power. One of the greatest costs to charging EV vehicles today is the downtime for the driver, if there's no driver then it won't matter for most bulk transport that it keeps stopping to recharge. As for personal transport, it'd take most of the inconvenience out of renting a car (pickup, delivery, driving an unfamiliar car, liability for traffic damage) while being a lot cheaper than a taxi making it a lot more versatile. That is true for ICE cars too, but it makes it a lot more feasible to own an EV that only covers your daily needs. Not having to drive myself is just a bonus, If I could have an alternate car show up at my doorstep when I need it at reasonable rates then I'd only need a single-seater 15 mile radius EV with room for groceries in my garage. Need to go further or have more space? Call on a Leaf or a Tesla or an ICE. If it was that easy, I wouldn't need the car I have today.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I read about that in the PopSci issue back in 1969, right next to an article about flying cars.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This. Solar nicely produces at peak times. Pumped storage is currently under-utilized in Germany.
Insulation keeps water heated in the middle of the night hot until at least the middle of the next night, and you just need a tank big enough to hold what you use. As said above, a 1960s solution to what to do with all that spare base load power in the middle of the night instead of the expensive process of shutting coal fired units down at night to warm up again over several hours in the morning.
That's what we are using now, we just keep the power plant millions of miles away for safety, and transfer the power wirelessly.
Learn to love Alaska
Joke + not funny = troll
Learn to love Alaska
Storage is a solved problem. I've visited hydro storage facilities. They are here now, they work, and they are in use. There are plenty of others. But they aren't in mass production because they aren't needed. Waiting until the valve caps are designed to decide whether to build a car that has working prototypes is stupid.
The only reason there isn't widespread energy storage solutions is that it's not needed, and may never be needed.
So why wait for roads to be built to every address in the world before making cars? The first cars were made without dedicated roads. Those came quickly after. Roads and storage are solved problems. But you don't build them until you have demand.
Learn to love Alaska
We've had the batteries a long time, Thomas Edison developed the NI-Fe battery back in 1901, you wouldn't want them for an electric car, but to level-out grid demand or to keep the lights on in the house after sundown when you're off the grid they are near perfect.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Storage for what? If we had "perfect" storage, it wouldn't do anything to reduce our demand for fossil fuel. We need more generation first. Storage is a solved problem with no demand.
Learn to love Alaska
Almost every article I read says "efficiency" (% of photon energy converted to electricity) is the problem with solar panels, and there is all this focus on higher-efficiency panels. But let's get it straight: It won't be rising efficiency (watts/m^2) that make solar panels really take off; it's not like limited roofspace is the bottleneck that we're all fighting here. It's cost: dollars per watt. As cost drops, solar panels should further proliferate.
From an energy companies perspective the big problem with solar is that you need to think about what happens on a cloudy day or at night. Basically that means you need to have altenative capacity to produce energy that is in most cases 100% of the installed PV capacity, as the power storage technologies that are available now just aren't up to storing the PV from sunny days for later use.
And energy use goes down on cloudy days (less A/C used). You are looking for a problem that doesn't exist. There are plenty of battery technologies out there. They aren't used because they aren't economical, not because they don't exist. There isn't enough solar production to make storage save anything.
For example PV represents upto 40% of the power for the French operator SEI (sei.edf.fr) who supply power to Corsica, Martinique, Guadoloupe, etc. However, they have enormous diesel generators they replace the PV at night and cloudy days.
And it's what, about 80% of usage during the day? So until that 40% approaches 80%, they obviously don't have over-production of solar that would allow storage. If they had "perfect" storage now, it wouldn't be used. So that's obviously not the problem."Production" needs to be 100% of usage before storage without parallel generation would be feasible. 40% is well below the ability to serve those areas, no matter what the storage was.
Learn to love Alaska
Only if they orbit solar power satellites. Part time power is silly."
That eliminates the random element. But the power output will still be "part time" due to the Earth being in the way for about half the time. Only a geostationary orbit will not require any kind of tracking. A geosynchronous orbit creates a North-South ground track. (The article dosn't even mention Indonesia, BTW). Any other orbit is going to create a complex ground track requiring "handover" and possibly multiple satellites in the same orbit. There's also the issue of how do you create such a satellite which isn't capable to being used as a weapons grade maser.
Build 100 1000 megawatt fission plants and be done with it.
Which is something we already know how to do. Including designs which can be throttled and produce little long term radioactive waste.As well as designs which could be developed if money wasn't being squandered on wind and solar.
My ass could lead in power production by 2050 also.
Get this man a truck load of bean burritos and a very soft toilet seat, STAT!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
No biggie, we'll just move you next door, downwind... Oh, and don't drink the water... there was a small leak, and...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So, solar generating 50% of world's electricity by 2050.
And what about the rest ? We need 100% renewables by then, are you telling me that wind+hydro+biomass+geothermal will produce the balance ?
Honestly, how much coal and natural gas will still be burned by then ?
Per the usual, the anti nuclear wind+solar only ignore the real problems and focus only on the pleasant side of their ideas.
We could get rid of 100% of coal and 50% natural gas far before that if we start adopting nuclear in mass scale right now.
I'm not saying no to solar. I'm just saying, without nuclear there is no hope of fixing climate change in time.
The other side of this scale is how winter heating will be done by 2050 ? Without nuclear heating, we'll be forced to keep burning natural gas and coal for heating.
Wind can't scale in lockstep with solar. At least solar produces everyday. Wind can go for days without producing much. We have no hope of storing a week worth of grid production to allow mass scale wind energy production, even with far lower chemical battery costs.
We need to get rid of 100% of coal by 2050 and the vast majority of all natural gas and petrol usage. This solar 50% electricity by 2050 scenario provides none of that.
This whole hoopla is a carefully orchestrated movement to force the world to continue to use coal and natural gas as much as possible for as long as possible. Only nuclear can actually get us off burning fossil stuff quickly.
Solar is a solution for all equatorial and tropical areas of the world, urban and rural.
In Brazil, solar is already at grid scale parity, since we are a tropical+equatorial country. Since Feed In Tariffs were adopted a few months ago, solar can grow in urban areas as well.
Brazil electricity right now is roughly 70% hydro, 20% natural gas, 2% nuclear, 2% solar+wind, the balance oil+biomass.
With all the hydro we have, we can incorporate large scale wind with hydro doing load following. Most countries don't have a boatload of hydro to allow mass wind adoption.
I hope we can move towards 65% hydro, 10% nuclear, 10% wind, 15% solar, getting rid of natural gas/coal/oil for electricity production, but it would attack one of the govt sacred cows which is the state owned Brazilian Oil company Petrobras.
Pumped storage is certainly not underutilized in Germany.
Pumped storage does not show up on 'renewable' charts as it is a zero sum game, you get the same energy out of it you pumped up first.
So the energy behind pumped storage is counted.
If you had a clue how power grids work you would not make such brain dead comments. Germany has roughly 10GW pumped storage power and roughly 50GWh storage as work/energy. Afaik in percentage of daily power production we are world leader.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Understand I work for a power company, and as I said I'm giving the electric companies perspective.
And energy use goes down on cloudy days (less A/C used). You are looking for a problem that doesn't exist. There are plenty of battery technologies out there. They aren't used because they aren't economical, not because they don't exist.
I'd say you live in a warm climate.. Cloudy days means more energy in colder climates. France uses at its peak about 100 GWatts of electricity. Say you'll need at least 10 hours of battery storage, then you are talking about 1 TWh of power storage for 100% replacement by PV. You can't seriously imagine that any current battery technology can supply that type of storage. Hydro can get you part of the way there, but the largeset damn in France has 800MW of generation and can only supply about 2h at that level. As well that dam is not a STEP (Pump water up hill when power is cheap to store energy) and there are only 5 such dams in France for geographical reasons. So as I said there is not storage technologies that are suitable
I never meant storage technologies don't exist just as you say they are not economically viable or available in large enough quantities to make any meanful difference.
There isn't enough solar production to make storage save anything.
Storage is not about "saving" anything, its about making the supplied energy meet exactly the demand. With an intermittent source such as PV you absolutely need another means to ensure demand meets supply, with the ultimate means availble to the power grid being of course a blackout.
And it's what, about 80% of usage during the day? So until that 40% approaches 80%, they obviously don't have over-production of solar that would allow storage. If they had "perfect" storage now, it wouldn't be used. So that's obviously not the problem..
If fact the 40% peak PV is for a Sunny Sunday afternoon, so a lot further away from 80% than you think. .
"Production" needs to be 100% of usage before storage without parallel generation would be feasible. 40% is well below the ability to serve those areas, no matter what the storage was.
Why ? Storage already exists in the grid in reasonable quantities by pumping water up hill. I really think you have no idea how a power grid works.
The supply of electricity must meet the demand at all times, with a little bit of slack taken up in voltage or frequency drops. To meet this simple supply/demand equation, traditionnally there the power production means were split in the two types; "Base" and "Peak". The optimal base energy source is extremely cheap, in Europe on the order of 50€ to 100€ per MWh but with frakking in the US a bit cheaper on the other side of the pond, but difficult to put online, with lead times from hours to days. "Peak" power is optimised for the time it take to put online, of the order of minutes but not cost. A gas turbine might, basically a jet engine with a 200Wh inline generator, costs 1000€ or so for a MWh of prodution. PV and most other renewable energy sources are "Intermittent", so in periods where the base supply is sufficent, they subsitute foe the base supply source, but without storage you can you remove the base source because the source is intermittent. Any amount of storage can allow the removal of some base power source, but to make a meanful reduction in the base source you'd need at least 10h of storage of that base storage. For example to get rid of a 900 MW nuclear reactor at replace it with 900 MW of PV you'd need 9GWh of storage.
D.
If there weren't 'suburbs' in Detroit where all the white people moved to when they had enough money, Detroit wouldn't be having problems.
wait what?? are you saying that the city is ruined because white people left? You would think the people who stay there would have some self respect and want to maintain their city. How about instead of blaming them for leaving we figure out why they left and work on stopping that??
I know, its easier to blame whitey
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
if you dont know where to buy real gold, you are doing it wrong. its really not that hard
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Hey, Mr. Coward, if that's true, why to panel producers put up to 25 year warranties on them? The warranty says they will produce at least 80% of stated power level for that long.
About your use of expletives: Fuck you.
Here in Wisconsin, USA have only one electricity provider, WE-Energies. If you install solar and are connected to their grid they charge a higher rate. WTF is up with that?
Pumped storage is certainly not underutilized in Germany.
You can look up the actual use of pumped storage here:
http://www.agora-energiewende....
Power from pump storage never even comes close to 10GW. Does look pretty underutilized to me. But if you have better data, please share.
Pumped-storage definitely is also not profitable at the moment because solar reduced peak power prices:
http://www.icis.com/resources/...
Pumped storage does not show up on 'renewable' charts as it is a zero sum game, you get the same energy out of it you pumped up first.
Ofcourse, why are you telling me this?
If you had a clue how power grids work you would not make such brain dead comments.
Well, if you would be able to present actual numbers, you would not have to resort to insults.
Germany has roughly 10GW pumped storage power and roughly 50GWh storage as work/energy.
This sounds about right, but this is installed capacity, not what is actually used.
Afaik in percentage of daily power production we are world leader.
Ofc power of pumped storage does not come close to 10GW, that is precisely the reason, we "only" have slightly under 10GW installed, more is not needed :)
Pumped-storage definitely is also not profitable at the moment because solar reduced peak power prices ...
That is nonsense in several dimensions.
'Peak' power prices are high, and solar profits from that, there is no real decrease in prices around peak times due to solar power. Next is: "peak" does not mean what you think it does. That is why I put it in quotes. Third, pumped storage is not used for 'power production', it is a storage, hence the name.
Finally: pumped storage plants are the most profitable plants in germany. They buy energy for negative prices, they not only get it 'for free' but get 'profit' on top of it.
Their comtribution to the grid is huge. They are the primary contributors to 'primary reserve energy' (seconds reserve, seconds as in time) and also important for 'secundary reserve energy' (minute reserve, minute as in time).
The actual numbers (a bit outsated) about how much pumped storage germany has installed, you can find on wikipedia.
And: pumped storage plants work both ways: they artificially increase demand to fit the current power production _and_ they are the prime contributor to fix sudden surges in demand and keep the grid frequency stable. .that is what they are build for: demand shaping (that is what power companies call 'peak').
Could we use more of them? Yes in 10 to 30 years when we are primarily renewable, but right now we have - 'typicaly german' - more than twice the amount we need to keep the grid(s) stable.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'd say you live in a warm climate.. Cloudy days means more energy in colder climates. France uses at its peak about 100 GWatts of electricity. Say you'll need at least 10 hours of battery storage, then you are talking about 1 TWh of power storage for 100% replacement by PV. .
So a peak that lasts 10 hours?
If fact the 40% peak PV is for a Sunny Sunday afternoon, so a lot further away from 80% than you think. .
So storage is even further away from being needed?
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Ofc power of pumped storage does not come close to 10GW, that is precisely the reason, we "only" have slightly under 10GW installed, more is not needed :)
Not coming close to the installed capacity is the definition of underutilized. My point is exactly that Germany currently has more than enough pumped storage, so what are you trying to tell me?
Pumped-storage definitely is also not profitable at the moment because solar reduced peak power prices ...
That is nonsense in several dimensions.
Hey, I gave a source. Although I admit I should have said: building more pumped storage is currently not profitable. Maybe the old ones can still be operated in a profitable way, but considering the low utilization I somehow doubt it.
'Peak' power prices are high, and solar profits from that, there is no real decrease in prices around peak times due to solar power.
Peak power prices in Germany are *not* high anymore:
"The spread in Day-Ahead prices between peak and baseload hours reached an all time low of 4.36 €/MWh in 2013, the maximum spread was
2006 with 13.85 €/MWh (inflation adjusted in prices of 2010)." (fraunhofer)
Next is: "peak" does not mean what you think it does. That is why I put it in quotes.
You are not making sense. What is you definition of peak?
Third, pumped storage is not used for 'power production', it is a storage, hence the name.
Yes - again - I know this - why are you telling me this?
Finally: pumped storage plants are the most profitable plants in germany.
Interesting, that is why most projects have been put on hold?
“Currently, such systems are not economical to operate, but we expect a realisation for our project in the next ten years, this means not before 2023-2024,” said a Stadtwerke Mainz spokesman." (From the link I posted.)
They buy energy for negative prices, they not only get it 'for free' but get 'profit' on top of it.
Negative prices exist occasionally and only for short amount of time. They can make a profit at that time but not much because it does not last long. In the past they could make a lot of profit by buying cheap electricity in the night and selling it at peak time. This is much less profitable now because the difference between peak and base prices is much less.
Their comtribution to the grid is huge.
No.
They are the primary contributors to 'primary reserve energy' (seconds reserve, seconds as in time) and also important for 'secundary reserve energy' (minute reserve, minute as in time).
I don't doubt that pumped storage can be useful in providing balancing power. But the market for balancing power is not big enough to make them profitable right now.
The actual numbers (a bit outsated) about how much pumped storage germany has installed, you can find on wikipedia.
I know how much there is installed, thank you. This discussion is not about how much is installed, but how much is actually used.
And: pumped storage plants work both ways: they artificially increase demand to fit the current power production _and_ they are the prime contributor to fix sudden surges in demand and keep the grid frequency stable. .that is what they are build for: demand shaping (that is what power companies call 'peak').
Power companies call demand shaping 'peak'? I don't know what you are trying to say....
Could we use more of them? Yes in 10 to 30 years when we are primarily renewable, but right now we have - 'typicaly german' - more than twice the amount we need to keep the grid(s) stable.
Thank you. This was exactly my point: There is more than enough pumped storage right now in Germany - despite the already high amount of intermittent power sources such as wind and solar. For 80% or 100% renewables more could be useful.
So a peak that lasts 10 hours?
Again this is not about the peak power source but the replacement of a base power source by an intermittent one. The 10 hour number is a number that wouls allow the lack of an intermittent source to be replaced by battery for a reasonable period of time.
So storage is even further away from being needed?
As the title of the article is "Solar Could Lead In Power Production By 2050" and the only way Solar can do that is to replace a base power source then storage is needed to make an intermittent source like Solar look like a base source from the grids persepective then yes storage is needed.
D.
Seems I misunderstood what you wanted to say with "underutilized". If you want to say: we have more storage and more power from pumped storage then we actually use, yes. That is exactly the point of it, otherwise it would be risky to run the grid.
The sources you gave are irrelevant.
Pumped storage is the prime source for stabilizing the grid. That is the only thing it is used for. If you find a link that says building new plants is not profitable, then obviously that is exactly what I said. We have more than enough pumped storage, why should we build more? I understood your "underutilizing" that we don't build more plants, and I pointed out, we have enough. So we agree I guess?
Back to peak. The term is used for 3 different things, and you seem to mix them up.
First: at the energy spot market we distinguish between peak and offpeak. This are simple times of the day. That has nothing to do with "how high the peak of power demand is". So if you want to compare "peak" with "base(correct: offpeak, as base is something completely different again)" then that is not very meaningful. Peak hours: 07:00 - 19:00 and offpeak: 19:00 - 07:00.
Second: peak as the high load area between 9:00 and 21:00 (estimated, to lazy to look at a graph of power demand in Germany) This is what americans usually call peak, and this is what yields premium prices if for some unexpected reason power at that time gets scarce.
Third: the fine grained quick changing power demand (leading to surplus or need) fullfilled by extremely fast reacting power plants, like gas turbines and pumped storage. This is the peak the power industry is talking about.
Their comtribution to the grid is huge.
No.
How can you say that? A modern grid like germans would be impossible without pumped storage.
The alternative to pumping uphill is destroying the surplus power in huge resistors. Expensive
The alternative to adjusting to increasing demand are gas turbines expensive. Both expensive ways get eliminated by pumped storage, with an efficiency of roughly 85% and only installation and maintenance costs. Even if the have to buy the power for real money, which they usually don't do, a pumped storage plant is cheaper than "destroying surplus energy" and "generating reserve energy from gas or coal".
I don't doubt that pumped storage can be useful in providing balancing power. But the market for balancing power is not big enough to make them profitable right now.
That is nonsense. There is no market for more balancing power nevertheless all actually running pumped storage plants are running profitable.
However perhaps you understand now: they are only used fro balancing power.
Power companies call demand shaping 'peak'? I don't know what you are trying to say....
Yes, they do. In german the term is "Spitzenlast", translates into english as peak.
What is understood by americans as peak (and sometimes called peak at the energy spot market) is in german still "Mittelllast" or in english "load following")
"Balancing Power" is technically "peak power" but "legal" or in terms how grids and power companies interact it is "reserve energy". A bit complicated to explain, but assuming I have a good idea how my grid will behave next hours and the plants to utilize it, the energy I produce to follow exactly the demand is "peak energy" (and you can not buy that at the energy spot market).
However in the moment an unexpected change occurs on top of that (where I have no plant to counteract this change) it is called "balancing energy", that balancing energy I usually buy from specialized power producers. That is also handled at the energy spot market, but has nothing at all to do with the their traded "peak energy".
Thank you. This was exactly my point: There is more than enough pumped storage right now in Germany - despite the already high amount of intermittent power sources such as wind and solar. For 80%
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Dry?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Seems I misunderstood what you wanted to say with "underutilized". If you want to say: we have more storage and more power from pumped storage then we actually use, yes. That is exactly the point of it, otherwise it would be risky to run the grid.
The sources you gave are irrelevant.
Your refusal to look at actual data or provide sources for your statements is annoying and makes all discussion with you pointless.