Why Our Antiquated Power Grid Needs Battery Storage

Lucas123 writes: Last year, renewable energy sources accounted for half of new installed electric-generation capacity (natural gas units made up most of the remainder). As more photovoltaic panels are installed on rooftops around the nation, an antiquated power grid is being overburdened by a bidirectional load its was never engineered to handle. The Hawaiian Electric Company, for example, said it's struggling with electricity "backflow" that could destabilize its system. Batteries for distributed renewable power has the potential to mitigate the load on the national grid by allowing a redistribution of power during peak hours. Because of this, Tesla, which is expected to announce batteries for homes and utilities on Thursday, and others are targeting a market estimated to be worth $1.2B by 2019. Along with taking up some of the load during peak load, battery capacity can be used when power isn't being generated by renewable systems, such as at night and during inclement weather. That also reduces grid demand.

Comments

Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

We have to spend billions to upgrade the grid, to handle "Green" power sources that are more expensive than their competitors.

The Tesla Battery's cost $13,000 would pay most people's electric bills outright over it's life. Massachusetts just shut down it's offshore wind farm program and more are dying (a welcome event for those of us that pay our own bills ) http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...

 

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

There are other -- probably cheaper -- solutions for local storage than batteries.

A couple of off-the-cuff examples: lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)

Another would be pumped hydro storage. Build a -- yet again very large -- tank at a height. During excess generation periods, use the electricity to pump water into the tank. During peak periods, use the water to turn a generator and reclaim the electricity.

All such systems have inefficiencies, even batteries. But pumped storage and other such solutions are used on a very large scale today... and should be quite workable for the small scale as well. Another advantage of pumped storage is that you now have a nice, big, full water tank with gravity feed in case of zombie apocalypse or whatever.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

I should have added:

For a small-scale pumped-storage system, you should also have a catch tank downstream from your generating turbine. No sense letting all that water go to waste. You just pump it back up high when you have excess generating capacity.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dwywit]

Not sure I understood you - did you mean that $13K is roughly equivalent to your conventional electricity bills over the lifespan of a Tesla battery?

It's not just about cost, either upfront or total costs over the lifespan of panels/batteries/whatever.

You could even step back from the issues about pollution, CO2, global climate change, and look at it this way:

Fossil fuels are a FINITE resource. Even coal will run out, and eventually oil and then coal will become very expensive to extract. Doesn't it make sense to take steps to transition to nuclear and renewable energy sources while conventional fossil fuels are cheap?

We should build nuclear stations with the very best and safest technology - they can handle the large-scale demands of industry, and be a backup for domestic baseloads. It's possible to supply great gobs of electrical energy via PV when the sun is shining - we have to manage that energy, sure, and it's going to cost more than we already pay, but with smart enough controllers, your domestic battery will supply you with a reduced but adequate supply during grid outages. Wouldn't it be great to have lights and refrigeration when the grid goes down? Put it another way: when the grid goes down, sometimes it's for long enough that the contents of your refrigerator and freezer have to be dumped. How much does that cost to replace, and how many times would it need to happen to make a $13K battery worth the cost? Doesn't have to match $13K in actual foodstuffs - what about the convenience factor?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[MinamataHG]

ARES system to put energy storage on the right track.
http://www.gizmag.com/ares-rai...

There you go. Old article but still relevant. Just need to build tracks in your backyard.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Fossil fuels are a FINITE resource

Not to be combative but I realize this will read that way

Everything is a FINITE resource. There is no such thing as an infinite resource, and there are not even indefinitely renewable resources with indefinitely maintainable extraction systems currently.

Lithium is a good example of just such a resource, where the current economic forms are quite finite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

On June 9, 2014, the Financialist publication, produced by the Credit Suisse company, stated that demand for lithium is growing at more than 12 percent a year; according to Credit Suisse, this rate exceeds projected availability by 25 percent. The publication compared the 2014 lithium situation with oil, whereby "higher oil prices spurred investment in expensive deepwater and oil sands production techniques"; that is, the price of lithium will continue to rise until more expensive production methods that can boost total output receive the attention of investors.[87]

BTW Lithium processing is particularly environmentally nasty, right up there with Aluminum smelting. (If going green is your thing)

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I'd love to let you right wingers have your way. I'd love to let you dig up every last lump of coal, the last gallon of crude tar, the last methane pocket. Drain the last aquifer, cut down the last redwood, strip mine the last of the copper and iron and aluminum, every outcropping of phosphate, and dump all the tailings in the river 'cuz it's cheaper. When this finally runs to its logical conclusion and the damage to the biosphere is beyond easy repair and the last of the resources have been used up and thrown out and catastrophic collapse looms, maybe then you'd finally understand that it to ignore the global problem in favor of nothing but (a version of) locally optimal steps unfailingly leads to instability and catastrophe in a system as large as Earth.

Only one problem: Biosphere One is the only biosphere. If one recognizes how precious that makes it, it's pretty much an unavoidable corollary that preserving it in a functional state is more important than being able to scream "fucking told you, dumbasses!" as it dies. So instead, to preserve ourselves and the Earth, we have to save you from your own shortsightedness.

You're "welcome."

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[ishmaelflood]

Trouble is you need very large tanks of water, or to seperate them a long way. For instance a house might use 2 kWh overnight, that's about 7 MJ.

Round trip efficiency for pumped hydro system is around 88%, call it 100, and call g 10. So you need a tower or hill 350m high with 2 tons of water in it, or if you prefer, a swimming pool, 2*5*10m suspended 6 metres above your current pool. So, that's a fair bit of unlikely, just to power one house.

Most sensible big hydro locations have already been gobbled up, they made sense decades ago.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

You know, I'd love to let you right wingers have your way

I didn't realize batteries were voting. But hey if you want to turn technical decisions into political decisions good for you, that's worked really well in the past.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother with any of that expensive crap? It's much cheaper just to burn coal, which has none of those downsides. Even coal's CO2 "pollution" is actually just plant food, so the more coal we burn the better off we'll be!

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Most sensible big hydro locations have already been gobbled up, they made sense decades ago.

The other issue , at least in the U.S. is that it has been near impossible to deal with the permitting process for large water projects. Look at California, if you need an example of just how much damage people are willing to do when it comes to stopping these projects.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[fustakrakich]

Just make the grid global, and you'll have solar all day long, even at night.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[The Cisco Kid]

To be fair, solar is pretty much effectively infinite.

When it runs out, we're gonna be dead anyway, unless we've managed to colonize other planets by then.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dwywit]

Well, yes, even the sun will run out one day - but I hope we as a species will have taken appropriate steps well before that happens.

Seriously, yes, even fissile material is finite, but it's a step in the right direction.

I use lead-acid batteries, 1320ah of them, and I'm off-grid, so I don't know very much about grid-tie systems and the issues they raise. I'm just saying it's possible to live with batteries, and there are even some advantages. They do need periodic replacement (every 8-9 years in my case), but much of it is recycleable, so it isn't just dumped in a landfill. I believe the price of lead in the last few years makes it much more attractive to recycle lead-acid batteries.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[The Cisco Kid]

If it costs more, most people aren't going to buy it, or even be able to buy it.

If you can't make the net cost less, it will fail.

Even if initial cost is more, if it can be financed, and it reduces costs over a decade by a majority of what it costs to repay the loan, that would be good.

But huge upfront cost, only to then mean paying MORE for electric, will go over like a lead balloon.

Give me a motorhome-sized nuclear reactor a block or neighborhood can all pitch in on and buy for 25K ($1000 each across 25 homes, or $500 each across 50), that will then provide electric power for everyone at NO additional cost for two decades. The technology exists.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[517714]

Just because someone doesn't jump on the first "solution" you see doesn't mean that they are not aware of the problem.

The problem is we have no one proposing truly reasonable alternatives. Instead of patching what they call our "antiquated" power grid, perhaps we should actually rethink it. The renewable energy sources have a common problem because they cannot provide power when it is needed with suitable reliability. Allowing people to generate power using solar and wind, use it what they want and sell the rest to utilities sounds very good, but it does not reduce the peak capacity that the utilities must have, further it increases the swing between peak and minimum meaning the utilities must have capacity that can be brought online quickly and shutdown quickly, sometimes several times a day. These "green" energy sources are not nearly as green as they could be in a properly integrated power grid. Patching batteries into the grid just delays a properly engineered solution. Industrial power users are one of the keys to success since they have the greatest financial interest in the cost of power, and have the resources to capitalize the solutions. Having the smallest/smallish users capitalize the grid is stupid because they can't pay for it upfront and if made compulsory, they will pay while industry profits. A smart grid where your car and laptop charge at times of minimal demand/maximum availability is also likely to be needed. With a proper design we won't be wasting huge amounts of resources as we iterate towards a solution.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Solar will last as long as the sun. How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ?
BTW that's another not particularly green thing when you consider all the pollution in China from the processes.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[itzly]

How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ?

Practically forever. The basic materials such as silicon are among the most abundant in the earth's surface. The rarer elements are only used in small amounts.
And it's perfectly possible to make solar panels without causing pollution, if you don't mind paying a little bit more.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[ultranova]

Massachusetts just shut down it's offshore wind farm program and more are dying (a welcome event for those of us that pay our own bills )

And who would that be? Last I checked, coal, gas and oil let you shit your externalities all over other people's environment (and lungs, real estate and insurance costs), and nuclear is impossible due to political reasons.

Wind is more expensive than fossil fuels only as long as you force me to suck up the fumes from your smokestack and tailpipe and consequently die horribly from lung cancer for free. Not to mention the fact fossils will run out eventually, leaving to future generations sitting in the dark if the alternatives are not in place by then.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point people realize you don't actually have to convert all of solar into electricity. A big bunch of normal house hold energy usage goes into heating water, which you can do directly with solar with solat heat collectors. They are very affordable, and een easy to build yourself if you so want to. Requires some plumbing though. Heated water also works as a kind of energy storage. If you have a big enough tank you can take hot showers all night long.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha. No such technology exists, unless you don't count maintenance costs as additional costs. Also, I'm quite certain you won't be getting nuclear reactor and suitable turbine generator for $25k any time soon. You would also need water to boil. A nearby lake or river would do. Gotta turn that turbine somehow, basically it always goes back to steam.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Practically forever. The basic materials such as silicon are among the most abundant in the earth's surface. The rarer elements are only used in small amounts.

Copper indium gallium selenium good luck with that.

And it's perfectly possible to make solar panels without causing pollution, if you don't mind paying a little bit more.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://chinawaterrisk.org/reso...

Gotta ask, is it an agenda you are personally pushing or are you just repeating something you didn't bother to question ?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! Everyone knows refined rare metals are better for plants than CO2. (Alkaline metals is DA BOMB for growing healthy foods)

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[The Cisco Kid]

I suspect we probably have sufficient resources to build a sufficient number of solar panels to nearly cover the entire globe. If/when we get that far, we really don't need to build anymore.

I'm not an expert, but I've got a gut feeling that solar panels don't really "wear out" at least not as a result of generating electricity.

At the very least, I think if we manage to get enough of them and harness them efficiently enough, solar power could provide more power, and for a longer period of time, than gas and oil have/can, combined.

But it can only happen if it makes economic sense. Very few people are going to lie down big bucks, only to then PAY even more for electricity. If I spent thousands of dollars on solar panels and a storage (batteries, etc) system, I'd damn well expect my recurring power bill to plummet if not disappear entirely.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

I get where you are coming from, you are so worried about the future, you are willing to pursue any option no matter how bad it may be in the hope it will make things better tomorrow.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

But it can only happen if it makes economic sense. Very few people are going to lie down big bucks, only to then PAY even more for electricity. If I spent thousands of dollars on solar panels and a storage (batteries, etc) system, I'd damn well expect my recurring power bill to plummet if not disappear entirely.

Exactly. The whole problem with most "Green Power" solutions is they are little more than excuses to pick people's pockets.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

A big bunch of normal house hold energy usage goes into heating water

I'm not quite sure what you think a "big bunch" really is...

We have a pair of 50 gallon hot water tanks in our home. Out of our average $300 a month utility bill, about $10 a month of that goes to heat water. For a family of 5. That showers every day and washes clothes and has a dishwasher.

It is chump change, not worth caring about.

Natural gas is cheap and efficient. Changing the plumbing around to put in a solar hot water heater would cost money and take a long time to repay itself, and frankly while it sounds nice, there is a decent chunk of the year it wouldn't do much and the hot water heaters would still have to run.

We tend to use hot water in surges, so we need lots of it in the morning, for example. In January. When it is snowing outside.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[jellomizer]

Any energy source comes with a trade off.
The problem is we don't have leadership that will accept this fact and say we must sacrifice this to get that.
Right now when ever there is an issue, our elected officials will just throw the baby out with the bath water.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

You know, I'd love to let you right wingers have your way. I'd love to let you dig up every last lump of coal, the last gallon of crude tar, the last methane pocket. Drain the last aquifer, cut down the last redwood, strip mine the last of the copper and iron and aluminum, every outcropping of phosphate, and dump all the tailings in the river 'cuz it's cheaper.

Usually the problem with viewpoints such as yours is that you have a narrow worldview that assumes that you can simply decide these are problems and the whole entire world will go along with you.

It likely won't, and that is the 800lb gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about.

It doesn't matter what the US or Europe does, if China, India, Brazil, and Russia don't go along with it. For that matter, China alone makes or breaks a lot of it.

So... how do you plan to tell China what to do?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

And who would that be? Last I checked, coal, gas and oil let you shit your externalities all over other people's environment (and lungs, real estate and insurance costs), and nuclear is impossible due to political reasons.

Environmentalists made a huge mistake a long time ago fighting against nuclear.

Wind and solar have their place, and that's fine, but they aren't going to replace coal, oil, and natural gas in our lifetimes.

You say nuclear is impossible due to political reasons. You are correct, so perhaps you should work against that and change the perception of nuclear.

As for coal, oil, and natural gas not being "taxed" enough for your taste, you forget that it doesn't matter what the US or EU do, China is really all that counts, and you have no influence there.

China is burning 5 times as much coal today as the US is, in the next 5 years or so, China will grow their coal consumption by the current total amount the US burns. We could shut it all down tomorrow and in 5 years China will have replaced it all.

You're trying to stop the dam from overflowing by putting your finger in one hole. You claim "oh, but it helps, every little bit helps". No, sometimes it doesn't.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

The problem is we don't have leadership that will accept this fact and say we must sacrifice this to get that.
Right now when ever there is an issue, our elected officials will just throw the baby out with the bath water.

Our elected leaders are not as stupid as you think they are.

They fully understand two things:

1. People talk about the environment plenty, but the minute you tell them, "ok, your power bills are going to double because of the environment", suddenly people care a whole lot less.

2. It wouldn't matter if we doubled the price of power via a carbon tax in the US, because of China. And US and EU politicians have no power to make China do anything and if China doesn't change, then this is all just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You think you're being productive, but you're not.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the energy you'd save by not using so many extra apostrophes? It's means it is.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

We may have the silicon base, but the other materials not so much, so no entire globe not going to happen!.

Your Gut is wrong, the panels degrade (faster than a lot of people would like to admit!) and heat helps to kill them (whoops get's warm when the sun's out) .

Solar is a dumb way to go, greens like to get the poor to pay for their panels by not installing battery packs, but expect a free ride from the power company to act like their battery, politicians help with picking the pocket of the poor by forcing subsidies and setting way too high cost for the solar power.

It's pretty much insanity, and lot's of politicians friends and lobbyist's are making $$$$$ for doing the wrong thing!.

At this point any body who installs Solar without battery backup and does not take themselves of the grid are selfish greedy bastards.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not quite sure what you think a "big bunch" really is...

We have a pair of 50 gallon hot water tanks in our home. Out of our average $300 a month utility bill, about $10 a month of that goes to heat water. For a family of 5.

I'd have to see your actual energy usage on that one. Estimates from the Department of Energy claim an average of 18% of the utility bill, which is 54$ a month for your utility bill. Not that you can't be an exception to the average, but you're claiming close to 3% which would be odd.

Even the lowest figure here (for Solar with Electric Backup) hits over 10$ on average a month.

http://waterheatertimer.org/How-much-does-it-cost-to-run-water-heater.html

Gas, well, that averages about twice your number. And that's for a single unit, not a double...so something doesn't add up.

Natural gas is cheap and efficient.

Cheap? Yes. Efficient? Not so much. Combustion wastes a lot.

Changing the plumbing around to put in a solar hot water heater would cost money and take a long time to repay itself, and frankly while it sounds nice, there is a decent chunk of the year it wouldn't do much and the hot water heaters would still have to run.

We tend to use hot water in surges, so we need lots of it in the morning, for example. In January. When it is snowing outside.

Indeed, it'd be better for new home installations and in more southern climates. Where it doesn't snow, and there's lots of people. But it could still be good for you, depending on your solar exposure. Just put a temperature monitor up in your attic, and ask yourself how you feel about all that heat in the summer.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[peragrin]

Not true. Electricity can wear out. The time frame is much longer but it does happen.

Electricity has resistance. resistance adds heat. The sun adds heat. hot ,cold, hot, cold, that changes the temperance of the metals, making them brittle. Granted it takes a while. but over time electric cables wear out. Then you have the insulation materials which ear out faster, when those break you get shorts.

That isn't even talking about erosion and physical damage from being outside.

So yes solar panels can wear out. You might get 30-50 years out of one but it will happen.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[necro81]

We have to spend billions to upgrade the grid, to handle "Green" power sources that are more expensive than their competitors

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the U.S. power grid has been having all manner of problems as it is: single-point failures that affect whole cities or entire regions, mismatches between supply and demand that allow Enron-style speculators to manipulate markets, deferred maintenance tallying tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, externalities associated with conventional generation sources that aren't properly taken into account (e.g., nuclear and fly ash disposal).

And those are the problems that we have today, with the grid as it presently exists. Even if no further renewables were added to the grid and Tesla closed up shop tomorrow (both of which are miniscule sources and sinks compared to the grid), we would still need to invest hundreds of billions just to keep things from getting worse. If we're going to gradually rebuild the grid, we should be rebuilding it sensibly: for increased robustness, efficiency, and flexibility. Yes, that means that it can also accommodate renewables and electric vehicles, but that's a secondary motivation.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a project in the UK doing just this - compressing air with excess energy and then generating electricity it from decompressing the air during peak times. Currently only an experimental prototype. That's then implemented within the grid, and would be at multiple sites across the country. It's more practical than a large weight and can be built anywhere unlike pumped hydro (which needs hilly terrain and space for a reservoir). There's other options too, a flywheel for example could be more practical than lifting a weight (similar idea but much more compact).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[ultranova]

if you want to turn technical decisions into political decisions

Every decision which has consequences to anyone or anything else is a political decision.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[itzly]

Copper indium gallium selenium good luck with that.

Pointless argument without numbers. Are you claiming that a solar panel requires significant amounts of those materials ?
And pointing out that the Chinese are not producing in a sustainable and clean way does not contradict my statement that it can be done cleanly, if you're willing to pay a little bit more. Obviously, the Chinese haven't been very interested in paying a little bit more. This is changing, now that rich people are starting to suffer from pollution.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Environmentalists made a huge mistake a long time ago fighting against nuclear.

You made a mistake just now in primarily blaming the environmentalists. They're the bogeyman for almost everything that goes poorly in industry today. Like Teacher's Unions for Pubic Schools. But they aren't an all-powerful lobby, if they were, don't you think they'd be able to do something about the massive pollution we do have from fossil fuels and other industrial sources? How can they be so ineffective there, but somehow able to keep nuclear power nearly shutdown?

Truth is, a lot of blame can be found in the electric utility boardrooms. They know nuclear being as cheap and efficient as it would be if done properly would kill their other options, so they play their accounting games and make it look impossibly expensive, or just say that they can't do it, even when the rest of us have been paying for decades for them to build their SNF facility.

But hey, maybe you still believe the California Power Crisis was caused by the environmentalists when the real brokers of it were in Houston. Seriously, California had the same installed capacity the years before when they didn't have the blackouts, yet it all changed in a year? And then it didn't happen the next?

What was really going on? Let's look at what really happened and who benefited. Why did so many power plants shut down to run phony maintenance programs? Where did the billions of dollars go?

I guess we were fortunate Enron was so massively greedy they couldn't help but overplay their hand though. The truth eventually came out, even if it was after people stopped paying attention. A pity California didn't send the state militia to seize the criminal conspirator's facilities in their own state, let alone put a bounty on the Enron executives responsible for the crimes.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[ChunderDownunder]

Tariffs? The UN climate change summits are a toothless tiger at the moment. but if they got serious...

e.g. You can have your $POLLUTER-built smartphone but the government will add 20% to the purchase price for any goods produced in any country that doesn't sign up to emissions reductions. All that cheap stuff you buy for zero postage on ebay from $POLLUTER will attract a $20 fee to pick it up from the post office. You can enter the EU but since your country of origin is $POLLUTER, you'll be charged a mandatory â500 fee at the airport. Anyone caught smuggling cheap goods from $POLLUTER will have their assets seized and jailed for 10 years.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

You seem to be conveniently assuming that once used, those elements can never be re-used via recycling. You are also assuming that our current method of creating solar panels is the only possible way, which is clearly nonsensical. To claim these clearly helps your argument, for sure, but it shows you are either ignorant, or being disingenuous. Neither is a particularly noble trait. You should ask yourself the same question you asked the OP, as it appears eerily fitting.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Technician]

I do agree that someone is trying to sell something.

Unless entire large acrage farms convert into solar, the distribution of retail, commercial refrigeration, high density housing (apartments), etc will notmeet daytime demand. Many businesses have installed some solar to offset their daytime energy use.

Most home solar installations are supplimental with only brief periods where the het pump cycles off durring the day that net metering even feeds into the grid.

In my area I have looked into the possibility of off grid, and it would require removal of the laundry pair for hand wash instead and an outside clothsline in all weather.

If I covered my entire roof, I would have to change my primary heating to something not dependant on electric. Yes I could possibly sell some daytime power to the utility for a couple of hours each day, but that small amount an more would be consumed by the supermarket down the street. The utility would never have a net surplus from consumers that is not used locally.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

You are confusing "you" with "everyone". Yet again. You do this frequently, and it would go some way towards explaining why you hold some rather bizarre opinions of the world and those who live in it.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

Yet another one of your pithy, throw-away sentences which shows you really aren't bothered in understanding this topic, but in venting your frustration at your perceived enemies. Cite your sources and you won't look so chronically out of touch with reality.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

Save your breath - this is the guy who wrote the following (without sources or analysis) just a few posts down:

The whole problem with most "Green Power" solutions is they are little more than excuses to pick people's pockets.

If someone can say that with a straight face, they are not willing to learn, and seem to be proud of that fact.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

Says Mr. "The whole problem with most 'Green Power' solutions is they are little more than excuses to pick people's pockets". Brilliant work, Sparky.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[AmiMoJo]

Utilities need to start working with people towards a good solution, or they are going to start dying fast. The more prices go up the better solar PV and batteries will look, and the more people will start to disconnect or pull very little from the grid. Soon communities will start pooling their resources and cutting themselves off from the larger network. The utilities are then forced to charge their remaining customers more, and the death spiral begins.

Of course, they won't do that. They will instead fight tooth an nail to stop the inevitable, and then demand free money because they are too big to fail or threaten to take the grid down with them. Might as well just nationalize them now, before they can do too much harm as they flail about in the throws of death.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what the US or Europe does,
and therefore you can do whatever you want?

You sound like a little kid.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[jblues]

A couple of off-the-cuff examples: lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)

The very large weight would have to be sourced quite locally otherwise the shipping / transport costs to install it onsite would be prohibitive. Maybe design the whole house so it could be hoisted up during the daytime and then sink back down at night ;) That would be cool.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[gbjbaanb]

you must enjoy cold showers a lot!

(I think you calculations are off by a fair bit. I spend more than $10 a month just boiling the kettle for tea).

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of development going on in this space lately, with a lot of VC flowing to various startups. One of the more interesting is Ambri (fka: Liquid Metal Battery Corp.), which is gearing up to full-scale production "real soon now". The linked article also briefly profiles a few other players in this emerging market, as well as some of the VCs. Suffice to say, there are several solutions in the pipeline for the near future.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, the Chinese haven't been very interested in paying a little bit more. This is changing, now that rich people are starting to suffer from pollution.

Oh the irony that a communist country would have wealthy people while the masses starve to death and live in squalor. Western governments should be ashamed of themselves for bowing and scraping at the feet of the Government of the Peoples Republic of China. Chairman Mao needs to return and discipline these corrupt communists. I am surprised President Obama hasn't visited China more often during his reign of lies. Maybe Dear Leader receives daily emails from China about abusive government surveillance all in the name of protecting the ruling class and their wealthy sponsors.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[unapersson]

Nuclear is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy. Private industry doesn't seem to have found a way of doing it cost effectively. People also seem to have problems with it being a global solution to power needs, given all the jumping up and down about countries like Iran getting into nuclear power. Then there's handling of waste and water consumption, so it's hardly problem free.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

You probably shouldn't trot out the "narrow worldview" argument given the dubious logical content of some of your other posts...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla battery price performance will inevitably increase., due to better materials science. We have seen what materials science can do for the semi-conductor industry, with Moore's Law. Getting the storage trend started is huge and worth subsidizing.

Meanwhile Cape Cod flood insurance rates triple, and by 2020 Boston will have been hit by a Katrina sized storm, flooding it's down area.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

What exactly is "household baseload"? And why should it need a "back up"?

Base load is the minimum amount of energy you feed into the grid, it does not change with demand, and around 2:00 till 4:00 it might even be above "demand" as pumped storages are refilled with it.

Anyway, your thoughts make sense ... there are plenty of ways to "store" excess energy, e.g. by cooling the fridge down from -20C to -30C ...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[dave420]

Energy bills don't have to double, and the US and EU emit more CO2 per year than China does, for example.

You don't appear to be being productive either.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like that wind farm wasn't producing enough power to be worth it when in fact it was never built. Of course it was "shut down", they never installed a single turbine and missed milestones so the expected receivers of the power backed out. How does that somehow prove that alternative energy doesn't work exactly? Poor program management is hardly what I'd use to make that point...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Wow, a nitpicker.

For all human percievable purpose wind and sun and even lithium are infinite resources.

BTW Lithium processing is particularly environmentally nasty, right up there with Aluminum smelting. (If going green is your thing)
Only in countries that have no legislation against it, and regarding aluminium: you are plain wrong. You only need electricity to smelt it, and that you can create in any green way you want.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[drinkypoo]

But pumped storage and other such solutions are used on a very large scale today... and should be quite workable for the small scale as well.

Have you even imagined what permitting such a thing is like? You could only do it in the country, and only where the lay of the land permits it. You can't just put a water storage tank above your house and ignore the consequences. And you're still ignoring that the battery packs have already been constructed. They're going to use used ones. That means the cost of construction of the battery pack is $0, that's considerably cheaper than adding a water tank. All they'll need is a combination inverter and charge controller, as opposed to (for example) a shitload of pipe (the cost of this alone will exceed that of the inverter) as well as a pump, motor, turbine, generator, and finally the charge controller/inverter.

You are ignoring the efficiency of using used battery packs. Stop it.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[drinkypoo]

Environmentalists made a huge mistake a long time ago fighting against nuclear.

Ah yes, blame the problem on the people trying to fix things, not on the people who only want to get rich whether nuclear makes sense or not. We had so-called "alternative" energy sources like wind and hydro long before we had nuclear power, and they were always viable.

China is burning 5 times as much coal today as the US is, in the next 5 years or so, China will grow their coal consumption by the current total amount the US burns. We could shut it all down tomorrow and in 5 years China will have replaced it all.

So stop buying goods from China, problem solved. They won't make it if we don't buy it.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[funkymonkjay]

Even better, make a global grid so that there will always be a buyer and seller of energy. http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/arc...

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[drinkypoo]

The problem is we have no one proposing truly reasonable alternatives.

According to you.

Instead of patching what they call our "antiquated" power grid, perhaps we should actually rethink it.

But you won't do that, even a little bit.

The renewable energy sources have a common problem because they cannot provide power when it is needed with suitable reliability.

This is how I know you won't rethink it. Operating the means of production while power is highly available is the answer. We used to call this "making hay while the sun shines". Haven't heard that expression in about a decade though. Now we just want to make hay when we want hay, god damn it.

Allowing people to generate power using solar and wind, use it what they want and sell the rest to utilities sounds very good, but it does not reduce the peak capacity that the utilities must have,

Which is why we're talking about adding power storage, so that the power can be used when it is needed.

further it increases the swing between peak and minimum meaning the utilities must have capacity that can be brought online quickly and shutdown quickly, sometimes several times a day.

See previous sentence.

These "green" energy sources are not nearly as green as they could be in a properly integrated power grid.

That's why we want to integrate power storage into the grid. See, I can use buzzwords, too!

Patching batteries into the grid just delays a properly engineered solution.

You will never have a "properly engineered solution" because progress. You can only have a system that works. Oddly, ours does, most of the time. However, it has some very nasty externalities. Right now we've got spent fuel sitting around on top of reactors just like at Fukushima, reactors which are in fact based on the same design as Fukushima. There is no evidence that we are responsible enough to deal with our nuclear waste, or the waste produced while coal is burned. If we ever reach that level of responsibility, then perhaps we can revisit this conversation.

Having the smallest/smallish users capitalize the grid is stupid because they can't pay for it upfront and if made compulsory, they will pay while industry profits.

Ah yes, the "if made compulsory" FUD. You really have put nothing of substance in this comment. When you have to resort to FUD, just accept you have lost.

A smart grid where your car and laptop charge at times of minimal demand/maximum availability is also likely to be needed.

Cars already do that, so why are you even bringing this up? Besides, anyone who knows anything about power distribution knows that this is the direction the power company is heading anyway. That's part of the "smart grid" initiative. However, it's going to be a long time before your laptop has to do anything, especially since their power budget tends to decrease over time. The industrial users' equipment is already sometimes throttled by the provider, especially HVAC where a delay of a few minutes won't hurt anything.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

otta ask, is it an agenda you are personally pushing or are you just repeating something you didn't bother to question ?
Could ask you the same.

For some strange reason solar panels produced in germany cause no pollution, but well, laws of physics and chemistry bend to our stern will in our small country.

The rest of your posts shows pretty well, that you have no clue at all.

Standard solar cells are made from Silicium, they get doted with Phosphor and Bor.

Copper indium gallium selenium good luck with that.

We have enough of those "elements" to plaster the whole earth with solar panels, and the moon as well, and we can likely even build a road from earth to moon ...

The idea that any element on earth is rare, except Gold, and perhaps variations of Platinum, is completely idiotic.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mlts]

There are always flywheels. If those are good enough for IBM UPS systems in the days of mainframes, they are good enough for local electricity storage. I don't know how they compare for energy density compared to batteries, but they are a lot less toxic to the environment than all but NiFe batteries, catastrophic failure of a flywheel is a solved problem, and "recharging" a flywheel is all mechanical, so it is relatively quick. Plus, there is no memory effect, or damage done if a flywheel is drawn to a 0% SoC... it just stops.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Solar panels do wear out a little bit ...
They are "doted" Silicium, that means one side is p-doted the other side n-doted. Due to heat those two sides start to intermix and in the end the efficiency of the cell goes down or even vanishes to zero.

Electricity can wear out.
Nope.

Granted it takes a while. but over time electric cables wear out.
Nope.

Then you have the insulation materials which ear out faster, when those break you get shorts.

Nope. Long distance high voltage lines are not even insulated. They last for ever unless they corrode.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Your assumption you only use $10 per month to heat water is completely silly.

Unless your solar heating elements are indeed covered with snow, they work just fine in January, too.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mlts]

I have looked at off grid in Texas, and unless a house is buried deep within the earth, or can take advantage of some natural feature (a nearby water turbine on a stream), keeping the place cooled in the summer is virtually impossible without mains power.

For everything else, a house can run from propane for heating, the gas dryer, water heater, and even the refrigerator. Electric for the smaller appliances can easily be handled by a set of panels, battery bank, inverter, and charge controller. However, HVAC needs will tie a residence to the grid.

I wonder if someone can scale the mechanism up for an RV fridge and make a propane based water chiller. This way, power needs would be a lot less (mainly to move air through a heat exchanger), as the propane would be the energy source for the refrigerator. Bonus points in using the Einstein cycle where that uses ammonia, butane, and water.

If HVAC needs can be moved from the grid, that will help immensely, especially in warmer states.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mlts]

I think the key to that $13k outlay is the life of the batteries. If it is like conventional lithium-whatever technology, the batteries will have to be replaced in 4-5 years, making that $13k a $26k expenditure every decade.

However, if the battery life is like NiFe with an automatic watering system, the batteries could run indefinitely, and 100 years from now, the battery bank would still be useful and relevant.

I'm in agreement with the parent. If cars were like reactors, a lot of the press would be pointing to an old Packard or Studebaker and saying how unsafe it is over 55 mph, so all cars should be banned.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Wind and solar have their place, and that's fine, but they aren't going to replace coal, oil, and natural gas in our lifetimes.

In germany they will. So in Denmark, Portugal probably Spain, Italy and even Greece, too.

So you either must be extremely old or live in an extremely backyard country.

Most of the "emerging" nations are installing solar right now instead of new coal/nuclear or other plants.

Your idea about historical not built nuclear plants and their greenness is retarded anyway. Perhaps you might check the news about the "storage problem" of "nuclear waste".

China is burning 5 times as much coal today as the US is, in the next 5 years or so, China will grow their coal consumption by the current total amount the US burns.
That does not make any sense. Is China now burning more than the USA or is it catching up to burn "just as much" in the next 5 years?

We could shut it all down tomorrow and in 5 years China will have replaced it all.
And? What would be the problem with that? Just because "some one else" is polluting and destroying the planet you like to join him to pollute more and destroy faster?

That comes back to the old saying: "Who should do the difficult things?"
Answer: "Those who can!"

Hiding behind "oh but the third world and developing world is increasing their pollution" is just unethical ... but well, we are used to that in certain parts of the world.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[6Yankee]

There are other -- probably cheaper -- solutions for local storage than batteries. A couple of off-the-cuff examples: lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)

Batteries are heavy. Why not do both?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want or need large scale. You want smaller scale. We've had power generation concentrated for some time in large power plants that cover entire regions of the country. Now we're generating power much more locally and we should be storing the excess locally. Driving through NJ over the weekend every telephone pole had a solar panel on it. Why can't they have a 12v battery underneath? If one fails, you have a mechanism for bypassing it and then replace when a dozen or so in the area go bad.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

... but it does not reduce the peak capacity that the utilities must have,
That is wrong.
You assume that all Solar and all Wind input can be zero at a certain time. Which it can't.

further it increases the swing between peak and minimum ...
No it does not. Why should it? The idea is idiotic.

... meaning the utilities must have capacity that can be brought online quickly and shutdown quickly
Wrong again. Load balancing is not done with "power up" and "shut down" plants. Something like powering up a plant you only do if another plant has a failure server enough that you have to get it off grid.

A smart grid where your car and laptop charge at times of minimal demand/maximum availability is also likely to be needed. For that you don't need a smart grid, you simply charge at night.

Smart grids are for "using" the surplus power. And the unwanted surplus power you have at peak times, not at night or base load times.

You activate your washing machine, I have to scale up my plant. You only want 1kW but I have to scale up 5MW (because my old coal plant can't do better).

So I charge you a premium for that 1kW (and any other idiot who draws power at that time), because I have to pay for the excess energy I involuntarily have to produce. With a smart grid I could dump that excess energy in car batteries and other appliances ...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[kaiser423]

Don't forget that adding solar panels is a virtuous cycle with respect to HVAC. You're not only capturing energy, but you're also not dumping that solar load onto your roof and attic. Here in Albuquerque, some of my friends that have put panels up found that even before the panels went live, their electric bills dropped 20+% just due to the panels providing shade for a portion of the roof. Then they found that their solar panels were oversized since they hadn't expected that reduction, and exceeded house demand essentially from 8am to 6pm. Most of them are providing above 90% total load month to month, even in the winter (natural gas heating). Another panel or two and some energy storage and they'd be there.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Chas]

blame the problem on the people trying to fix things.

So, kinda like The Inquisition.

The problem: Ignorance of the masses, widespread fear, and the church trying to edge early medical practitioners out in a social power grab.

The solution: BURN THE WITCH!

And modern power:

The problem: Ignorance of the masses, widespread fear and environmentalists trying to edge out power companies for mindshare in a social power grab.

The solution: NO NUKES! NO NUKES! NO NUKES! NUKES IS BOMBZ!!! Let's put a ton or three of batteries in your place and hook up some solar panels, regardless of suitability! And things'll magically be unicorn ponies that fart rainbows!

But hey, you're blaming the problem on the people trying to "fix" them!

Methinks someone has confused the terms "fix" with "scuttle".

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mlts]

I have personally found that if you mount normal panels (as opposed to the flexible panels that you tape/glue in place directly on the surface), you create some clearance under the panels that air circulates under, insulating the roof from the sun.

To me, solar is a "why not" item. Not just for saving on electric bills, but providing electricity in areas where it isn't worth the hassle to run code-compliant wiring to, especially if all one is needed is basic lighting or a place to charge cordless drill batteries. For RV-ing, solar goes without saying, because it keeps house batteries topped off and helps minimize engine or generator use. Even for a plain old house, one can use a set of panels, storage battery, and inverter as a UPS so one can move all the parasitic draw devices (set top boxes, consoles, USB chargers) to that circuit, where they get clean power... and are not on the electric bill.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Cyberax]

Nope. There's NO SHORTAGE OF LITHIUM AND NEVER WILL BE. It's pretty much unlimited - all you need is sea salt. Its purification is also straightforward and fairly clean, just as aluminum production. Have you lived near aluminum smelter? I did.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[tsqr]

China is burning 5 times as much coal today as the US is, in the next 5 years or so, China will grow their coal consumption by the current total amount the US burns. That does not make any sense. Is China now burning more than the USA or is it catching up to burn "just as much" in the next 5 years?

If it doesn't make sense, you're probably not parsing it correctly (admittedly, the commas and run-on phrasing present a little challenge). Try this:

China is burning 5 times as much coal today as the US is. In the next 5 years or so, China will grow their coal consumption by the current total amount the US burns.

Or, to re-phrase: Today, China burns 5 times as much coal as the US. In 5 or so years, China will be burning 6 times as much coal as the US. BTW, I have no idea whether this is true, but I'm pretty sure that's the message.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Venner]

This article in Discover magazine about Jack Bitterly's* desire to use new flywheel technologies to power automobiles, is what got me excited about choosing engineering as a college major. It's quite sad that nothing ever came of it, other than a few highly specialized applications, such as the space station. (I read one claim that Kevin Costner's investment in the company was a total loss, but that it had a lot to do with NASA taking over the project and stiffing some of the creditors. Cum grano salis.)

I recently saw that a company called Velkess got a kickstarter project funded for 3-15kWh 48v flywheel storage systems, with expected product delivery dates in the 2016/17 range announced. We'll see if they deliver on promises and if they're in any way price competitive.

*Jack was 77 when that article was published in 1996. Every so often I've looked him up on the internet and as late as 2009, he was still alive and kicking and still working. I've also run across patent applications he has filed as late as 2013. Wow. I hope like heck I'm still that active and doing things I am passionate about in my 90s.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[ArhcAngel]

keeping the place cooled in the summer is virtually impossible without mains power.

While I don't disagree with you completely I would point out a strategically placed set of healthy, mature oak or pecan trees will significantly reduce the internal temp of the house during the day. It does wonders for my house although I still wouldn't give up the HVAC. And if you live in any of the drier areas a swamp/everaporative fan can cool a house quite nicely.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[kenh]

We have to spend billions to upgrade the grid, to handle "Green" power sources that are more expensive than their competitors.

Agree, but let's not forget we (as a country) 'encourage' green energy by:
A) directly sponsoring research & development of green energy
B) directly sponsoring manufacturing of green energy devices
C) directly sponsoring the training of installers of green technology devices
D) indirectly (through tax subsidies) subsidise the purchase of green technology
E) indirectly (though inflated 'guaranteed sale' requirements imposed on utility companies) subsidise the ongoing operation of green technology

Underwriting basic research (A above) is a perfectly appropriate function of government, but the others (B thru E) are market distortions intended to achieve a political end regardless of the financial cost.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[oh_my_080980980]

LMOL, yo dingus, the pollution is from all that coal burning for power and heat.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[oh_my_080980980]

Seriously? The articles is about using batteries to store the over abundance of electrical power being being produced by renewables because the electrical grid handle it. The discussion should be about upgrading the electrical grid - which should have been done sometime ago - but you turn it into a political rant.

Nice one Potsy.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[randallman]

So I did the math. To store just 1 MWH of energy using a weight would require 8 thousand tons.

Check my math:

1 MWH = 1MJ x 3600s = 3.6 x 10^9J.

Energy = mass x gravity accel x height. mass = energy / (gravity x height)

mass = 3.6 * 10^9J / (9.81N/kg x 50m) = 7339450 kg = 8090 ton.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[LtNacho]

lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)

Check out this article: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the.... According to that, you'd need to lift an 800 pound weight to 3 meters to get the equivalent of ... an AA battery! Add the cost of the chains, concrete, pulleys, gears, etc... to lift a huge amount of weight and this gets expensive quickly for the amount of storage you'd get.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[lurking_giant]

Technology from 100 years ago... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as I saw he was sourcing breitbart.com for information, I knew the rest was going to be bullshit anyway.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Ichijo]

Instead of patching what they call our "antiquated" power grid, perhaps we should actually rethink it... Allowing people to generate power using solar and wind, use it what they want and sell the rest to utilities sounds very good, but it does not reduce the peak capacity that the utilities must have...

That goal is achieved by dynamically pricing electricity always just above market equilibrium to create a small, permanent buffer of excess capacity in order to prevent brownouts and blackouts. That means we need to upgrade our antiquated power grid in order to allow the price to rise and fall in accordance with supply and demand.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Ferretman]

I loved my swamp cooler when I lived down in the flatter areas of Colorado...that sucker was cold.

Now I'm up at some altitude and in an ICF house, so my walls are very thick and I haven't felt the need for anything other than a couple of fans. Good construction of the house can very much make a difference, if that's an option (i.e. you're building from scratch).

Ferret

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mspohr]

The sun and wind are "infinite" resources for all practical purposes (5 billion years).
Lithium is very abundant. Not going to run out of it ever. Most lithium comes from brine pumped from the ground and evaporated in solar ponds. It doesn't get much easier (or cleaner) than that.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mspohr]

China is already doing it without anybody telling them.
They've figured out that killing their people with coal pollution is not a good thing so they are closing down old, inefficient coal burners and investing heavily in wind and solar. Coal use in China actually has been decreasing for the past few years.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mspohr]

China has been burning less coal for the past few years, not more. They have figured out that their terrible air pollution in cities is caused by coal and they are investing heavily in solar and wind. They are shutting down old, inefficient coal plants (about 1000 of them, so far).

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? Because it's MORE EXPENSIVE than just buying the power in the first place. Seriously, in most places in the USA the ROI on a solar panel vrs power grid favors the power grid over the ENTIRE usable lifespan of the solar collector. You will never really break even.

Say I spent 10K on solar panels that could carry my home on a sunny day. Let's say that I can achieve on average (including cloudy days and night time) 1/4th of my average $200/month electric bill ($50/month). That's a piss poor ROI and that $10K takes me 200 months (16+ years) to break even. Photovoltaic solar cells have lifespans under 10 years and my ROI in this case is 16 years. Doesn't make sense, and this example is WITH the favorable tax treatment. Take the tax breaks away and it's worlds worse.

Now, if you live in an area where the sun shines nearly all the time, the calculations might be different, but for the bulk of the country PV doesn't make sense for electric generation. If it did, you'd be seeing this done by industrial and retail establishments where the economies of scale would play into their favor, but it's not, so a single home owner is going to be stupid to think their small solar set up will be cost effective.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[SirGeek]

There are other -- probably cheaper -- solutions for local storage than batteries.

A couple of off-the-cuff examples: lifting a very large weight with your excess electricity, then running a generator with it during peak loads or periods. (Did I say VERY large weight?)

Another would be pumped hydro storage. Build a -- yet again very large -- tank at a height. During excess generation periods, use the electricity to pump water into the tank. During peak periods, use the water to turn a generator and reclaim the electricity.

All such systems have inefficiencies, even batteries. But pumped storage and other such solutions are used on a very large scale today... and should be quite workable for the small scale as well. Another advantage of pumped storage is that you now have a nice, big, full water tank with gravity feed in case of zombie apocalypse or whatever.

There actually exist things like this here in Mass. There is a glacial pool that was dug in a mountain near the Connecticut River. During the night, they pump water into the basin and during the day, they let the water flow through turbines.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[andydouble07]

Something is off with your math here. Your theoretical swimming pool has 100 tons of water in it (roughly 1 ton per m^3, 2*5*10=100). So that would be enough to power 50 houses.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a lot of assumptions that energy companies have the resources and capabilities of simply "changing." In most regions, they can't change rates, run cables, make changes, or, in some cases, even change staff without permission from governments at various levels. The system is basically already run by governments, just not coherently. If you want power companies to adapt to new technologies and to their customer you would have to restore a more market based system. This is the primary argument against regulation - that it stifles innovation and change. It's hard to argue that it hasn't stifled it, but it's also easy to argue that it is necessary. There isn't a magic arrow solution but I think it's completely unfair to blame the energy companies for the power grid we have today.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[andydouble07]

Nevermind, I learned how to read in the last 30 seconds.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Your information is *seriously* out of date (like 2 *decades* or more out of date).
Photovoltaic solar cells have lifespans in the 20-30 year range these days.
Maybe you don't live in a particularly sunny area of the country, or you've got other issues regarding sunlight availability, but average ROI for solar installations in the US is ~7 years these days, meaning you've got another 13-23 *years* of savings out of a modern solar installation.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Blaskowicz]

Solar over a particular square kilometer is very much finite in the span of a day, a year or a century.
Vacuum energy is virtually infinite too (aside the problem you most probably can't extract work from it) but say, if it takes collecting an Earth's volume energy for a year just to move a finger once, it is not useful at all.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Well aside from the fact you haven't said anything factual to disprove my statement which logically makes you guilty of the charges you are attempting to lay on me

Here

http://bit.ly/1DxnKLR

Sorry that I expect people to at least be conversant with the things they promote.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mrchaotica]

Massachusetts just shut down it's offshore wind farm program and more are dying (a welcome event for those of us that pay our own bills ) http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...

That project failed because it didn't meet its financing deadline, because people opposed to it tied it up in court for too long. In other words, it didn't die because it was economically bad; it died because NIMBYs and reactionary anti-environmentalists like yourself murdered it.

Take this ludicrous bullshit (quoted from the article), for example:

The Cape Cod Times reports that Charles McLaughlin, Barnstableâ(TM)s assistant town attorney, said: "The townâ(TM)s concerns include the possibility that a collision between a boat and the large electric service platform the project requires could spill thousands of gallons of oil into the sound."

So, this town's conclusion is (incredulously) that the wind farm is bad because one of the oil tankers that it renders obsolete might hit it. That's not the fault of the wind farm; that's the fault of the goddamn oil tankers!

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[kheldan]

What we need is an energy storage system with a lifespan of 20 years; will this Tesla battery last that long, or will it last about as long as a laptop battery before losing enough capacity to make it useless?

Would energy storage be a good idea? Yes. But it needs to be durable, and preferably cheap.

Oh, and memo to the guy who says we should just use lead-acid gel-cell batteries instead? They have one quarter to one fifth the energy density of the cell technology we're talking about; you really want to have half or more of your garage taken up by batteries?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[khallow]

Solar will last as long as the sun. How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ?

Many orders of magnitude longer than the Sun will last.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Solar will last as long as the sun. How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ?

Many orders of magnitude longer than the Sun will last.

You mean after the sun goes off the main sequence.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

So, this town's conclusion is (incredulously) that the wind farm is bad because one of the oil tankers that it renders obsolete might hit it. That's not the fault of the wind farm; that's the fault of the goddamn oil tankers!

You know nothing of ships do you ?

http://www.people.hofstra.edu/...

BTW those usage numbers are in tonnes/day.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[khallow]

You mean after the sun goes off the main sequence.

Sure. The mass of the Sun isn't going anywhere for a while. A near absolute zero mass white dwarf is pretty stable assuming it doesn't get gobbled by nearby blackholes. But we really can't call that the Sun any more.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mrchaotica]

Even if the concern is about other ships and the fuel they're using for propulsion, it's still not reasonable. After all, the ships can just go around the same way they avoid any other fixed obstacle (reefs, islands, whatever). It's certainly not a big enough issue to make it worth continuing to use a polluting form of power generation instead!

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[boristdog]

Propane A/C has been around for a long time.

I had a bad experience with it about 30 years back, but it may be better now.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

It's certainly not a big enough issue to make it worth continuing to use a polluting form of power generation instead!

Really, hmm so you think the need to send boats out to the turbines to service them on a regular basis will have no effect ?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[taiwanjohn]

Just posting to claim the parent as my own. I didn't intend to post anonymously, but my login had expired... Stuff happens.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Greenpeace and their ilk who fought nuclear back in the '70's. Plus Jimmy Carter screwed it up for a generation by banning the reprocessing of spent fuel.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mrchaotica]

Really, hmm so you think the need to send boats out to the turbines to service them on a regular basis will have [an insignificant] effect ?

Yes. Moreover, any effect it did have would be worth it compared to the benefit of avoiding coal.

To make an analogy, coal emits more radiation per megawatt during its normal operation than nuclear power plants have released cumulatively, even including the worst disasters. Similarly, fossil fuel power (coal, oil, and natural gas) pollutes more in its normal operation than wind power would even during the biggest disaster possible.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

To make an analogy, coal emits more radiation per megawatt during its normal operation than nuclear power plants have released cumulatively, even including the worst disasters.

All that does is demonstrate the public's innumeracy about the dangers radiation. You can say similar things about granite buildings.

Yes. Moreover, any effect it did have would be worth it compared to the benefit of avoiding coal.

To who ? You don't live in the area and don't depend on the tourist industry for your livelihood.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Bengie]

There a /. article from the DoE that said Green energy requires a different sort of infrastructure, but it does not cost more than regular power. Adding N units of power costs about the same either way.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Ferretman]

I know of no right winger--or any winger for that matter--who wants what you seem to think. And I pretty much go to all the meetings too.

I do know of a bunch of hardcore leftists who make up strawmans like that though.

Guess where I think you are?

Ferret

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Ferretman]

Right now we've got spent fuel sitting around on top of reactors just like at Fukushima, reactors which are in fact based on the same design as Fukushima.

It seems to me that Fukushima didn't have a design problem as much as it had a bad siting problem.

Ferret

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Power companies hands are pretty tied. In just about every region they can't change rates without an act of legislation, or in the least, approval of some form of government. They have to ask permission to do anything. They certainly can't simply "charge more" when they lost customers. They can't attract and keep top end talent because they lose them to industries that can actually make money and they dare not ask for money because people will simply bash them for profiteering. Demanding "cheap energy" simply devalues our currency and allows non-essential industries (like cable TV and ISPs) to charge more. If you want energy to evolve and grow to what consumers want, you have to give them the freedom to increase the value of their product without ridiculous red tape. Flip the economics of this back where it belongs. Money should flow to what is valuable - energy.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Space for panels is not. Maintenance capacity is not. Available daylight and storage of the power is not infinite. Solar power isn't an energy solution by itself, it's a potential energy generator but not a solution. You can't compare solar energy to fossil fuels without discussing the storage and transportation problems.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Ferretman]

Ha. No such technology exists, unless you don't count maintenance costs as additional costs.

This is untrue. My alma mater was the University of Missouri at Rolla (big tech school in Missouri) and it was a year before I realized that the tiny little building just off the library was an actual working nuclear reactor. Unless it's been relocated/moved it was about the size of two trailers more or less (though of concrete block construction) and I think three stories in all.

Ferret

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "swimming pool" option doesn't sound all that insurmountable. Granted, you're not going to put that in a tiny urban backyard, but a reservoir the size of a single-car garage, with a 6-meter rise isn't that huge. In my suburban neighborhood, many people have garages/shops much larger than that because they apparently need to park three bus-sized RVs in there.

It is a bit ludicrous, though, when you could just buy a battery from Tesla that holds 20 times the energy and is the size of a large washing machine. Much cheaper than a swimming pool too.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

It dipped 2.9%, I wouldn't say that is "less coal for the past few years.

We shall see if that is a trend (a single datapoint doesn't made one) or a blip.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Of course, all that misses the point. China is aiming to cap their coal production by 2020. They might hit it, they might even be early, but that is a far cry from doing much to reduce it.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

they are closing down old, inefficient coal burners and investing heavily in wind and solar.

And building new coal plants...

http://www.climatecentral.org/...

http://energydesk.greenpeace.o...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

Your assumption you only use $10 per month to heat water is completely silly.

If you really stretched it, it might be $20 a month.

Natural gas is so cheap in Texas they are almost giving it away.

My average gas bill is under $100 a month. I use gas for cooking, cleaning (laundry), heating the house, the fireplace, heating water, etc.

It gets quite cold here in the winter, my bill in the winter is often $200 a month, the bill in the summer is perhaps $30 or so.

Considering that I still cook and dry the clothes in the summer, heating the water isn't a major user of gas.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

In germany they will. So in Denmark, Portugal probably Spain, Italy and even Greece, too.

Germany is going to bankrupt itself trying... The cost of power there is already stupid high and it will only go higher.

BTW, how much natural gas does Germany import from Russia? Isn't that part of the geo-political problem there?

Most of the "emerging" nations are installing solar right now instead of new coal/nuclear or other plants.

There of course is great publicity whenever that happens, but you have to look a the numbers.

What percentage of the world's power comes from solar? What was the percentage last year? What will it be next year?

What would it cost to replace existing power with solar and wind?

Run the numbers and you'll find it is a fantasy.

Perhaps you might check the news about the "storage problem" of "nuclear waste".

It isn't a problem, except for the NIMBY crowd and for the laws against reprocessing the waste into plutonium.

And? What would be the problem with that? Just because "some one else" is polluting and destroying the planet you like to join him to pollute more and destroy faster?

Consider the person who is moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic while it is sinking, thinking it will make a difference.

If climate change is indeed a man-made problem, then the efforts that are being made now won't be enough to change the outcome.

That does not make any sense. Is China now burning more than the USA or is it catching up to burn "just as much" in the next 5 years?

http://www.climatecentral.org/...

The US burns less than 1 billion tons of coal, China burns 4 billion tons of it.

"And according to U.S. government projections, China will add yet another U.S. worth of coal plants over the next 10 years, or the equivalent of a new 600-megawatt plant every 10 days for 10 years."

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

No, they are not...

In the summer my gas bill is under $50, sometimes in the $30ish range.

That has to cover cooking and drying clothes as well as heating water.

If you are spending $10 a month to boil a kettle, you must be paying a stupid amount of money for power, and using electricity to do it.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Oh my

What a pot meet kettle moment.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

Nuclear is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy.

Solar is expensive and needs a huge amount of public subsidy. :)

Private industry doesn't seem to have found a way of doing it cost effectively.

That has more to do with the laws and regulations they have to jump through, plus the NIMBY crowd.

Why exactly are nuclear reactors in the US banned from producing plutonim? There are whole branches of reactor designs that are illegal due to "oh my god, the nuclear weapons!".

Except, the United States already HAS nuclear weapons, how are we going to give them to ourselves.

The US Navy has a long record of operating nuclear reactors, mostly trouble free. Perhaps we should have them operate nuclear power in the US and let them build better reactors than the Gen 1 designs 40+ years old still being used.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Crashmarik]

Sorry the truth is painful for you.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

It doesn't matter what the US or Europe does,
and therefore you can do whatever you want?

You sound like a little kid./quote

No, actually I'm the grownup in the room.

It is the kid who has the ideal worldview who thinks that if we all just hold hands, it'll all work out.

What I said is the truth, you just don't want to hear it.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

Energy bills don't have to double, and the US and EU emit more CO2 per year than China does, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

So sure of that, are you?

China emits about 25% of all the CO2 in the world. The United States emits 16%.

China''s emissions are rising, the US and Europe have done a pretty good job of tapering off.

But that misses the point, it isn't REDUCING THE INCREASE that needs to happen, it is CUTTING THE TOTAL.

And that isn't going to happen any time soon.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Considering that I still cook and dry the clothes in the summer, heating the water isn't a major user of gas.
Actually I believe it was clear from context that we talked about electricity :D
So bringing up the cheap gas is a bit of cheating, isn't it?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[penguinoid]

Here in Albuquerque, some of my friends that have put panels up found that even before the panels went live, their electric bills dropped 20+% just due to the panels providing shade for a portion of the roof.

Or they could paint their roof white/silver, for less than the price of a single solar panel.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

I would not believe all the nonsense you hear.

Germany is going to bankrupt itself trying... The cost of power there is already stupid high and it will only go higher.

It is not. Compared to our surrounding countries it is pretty on par, and since about 2 years power prices are dropping due to super cheap renewable power.

BTW, how much natural gas does Germany import from Russia? Isn't that part of the geo-political problem there?
A lot. But no it is no geo political problem. The geo political problem is a few 1000 km more in the east, especially in the Ukraine.

[About new solar power] There of course is great publicity whenever that happens, but you have to look a the numbers.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...

What percentage of the world's power comes from solar? What was the percentage last year? What will it be next year?
First of all this is irrelevant, as main stream solar is a new thing. Obviously no one invested much into it 30 or 20 years ago, except germany, So the percentage "of the world" is meaningless.

Run the numbers and you'll find it is a fantasy.
Why don't you do that yourself? You easy figure a new wind plant with the same capacity as a new coal plant is cheaper. Solar is catching up quickly and in a decade or so a new solar plant is cheaper than a coal plant, too.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[mspohr]

Your Guardian reference states 2.1% fall in 2014 and predicts 2.5% fall for 2015.
That looks like a reduction especially considering that their use has been rising rapidly for many years.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Applehu Akbar]

But the flat-earth lobby has a history of opposing pumped storage projects ("It's electrical, so eeee-vil"). Batteries in individual houses might be a "good enough" alternative to rewiring the whole grid to support fluctuating sources.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

Trouble is you need very large tanks of water, or to seperate them a long way. For instance a house might use 2 kWh overnight, that's about 7 MJ.

It isn't intended to be your primary source. Just as with other pumped systems, it's a supplement which stores during periods of excess and supplements during periods of shortage (or higher expense... some systems are now charging more for peak-period usage).

Pumped storage wasn't available UNTIL a couple of decades ago. I worked for an engineering company designing one and it was groundbreaking for its day.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

There's other options too, a flywheel for example could be more practical than lifting a weight (similar idea but much more compact).

A long time ago, there were some experimental buses in Sweden which used a specially-designed flywheel in a vacuum can, with magnetic bearings, to store energy rather than batteries. This is practical for a mobile system because the stored rotational energy can be used to directly drive generators.

In contrast to the steam-engine flywheels of days gone by, the Swedish bus flywheels were thicker toward the middle because of their reportedly extreme rotational speed.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

It's more practical than a large weight and can be built anywhere unlike pumped hydro (which needs hilly terrain and space for a reservoir).

Not necessarily. It's possible to do pumped hydro in the ocean, pretty much anywhere on a continental shelf: pour a (BIG) cylinder of reinforced concrete, and pump water out of it.

It's hardly compact, though.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

Not really... it was suggested (I don't recall by who) that replacing hot water tanks with solar water heaters would save a lot of money...

It might, if the water was heated by electricity. Since it isn't in many cases, that doesn't apply.

Replacing gas hot water heaters with solar, when your gas is as cheap as ours is, makes no sense.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

Have you even imagined what permitting such a thing is like? You could only do it in the country, and only where the lay of the land permits it.

I wasn't exactly proposing to use it in an apartment. It was just some thoughts about what is possible, not what is practical everywhere.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Jane Q. Public]

This article in Discover magazine about Jack Bitterly's* desire to use new flywheel technologies to power automobiles, is what got me excited about choosing engineering as a college major.

They've actually been around for a long time.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

It is not. Compared to our surrounding countries it is pretty on par, and since about 2 years power prices are dropping due to super cheap renewable power.

It isn't cheap, that is the lie. It can be made to appear cheap when enough tax dollars are tossed at it, but the true cost is quite high.

Or you can tax the crap out of coal, oil, and natural gas to make it appear cheap, but that is just raising the price of everything else.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

[About new solar power] There of course is great publicity whenever that happens, but you have to look a the numbers.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...

Great, more government money paying for systems that otherwise wouldn't make sense.

If you read it closer, while the numbers sound impressive, the systems are very small and the total amount of power produced is minor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

That is a better way to look at it. Right now, solar accounts for about 1% of the world's total power production. I have no doubt that number will rise, but the question is, will it rise because total production is rising, or because older power plants are being replaced?

What is the total amount of coal burned every year? Will it actually go down any time soon?

Answer: No, it won't. It might dip a bit, mostly replaced by natural gas. Is it going to 50% of current levels? No, it won't.

So what will be accomplished? Nothing much, other than a whole lot of money trading hands and a bunch of people getting rich off tax dollars.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[drinkypoo]

It seems to me that Fukushima didn't have a design problem as much as it had a bad siting problem.

Fukushima had three problems. One, design. The design is very old and not very good by modern standards. Two, siting. It was put somewhere even ancient Japanese knew was a bad idea. Three, NIMBY. Area residents didn't want to look at generators on pylons.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

Tariffs? The UN climate change summits are a toothless tiger at the moment. but if they got serious...

e.g. You can have your $POLLUTER-built smartphone but the government will add 20% to the purchase price for any goods produced in any country that doesn't sign up to emissions reductions. All that cheap stuff you buy for zero postage on ebay from $POLLUTER will attract a $20 fee to pick it up from the post office. You can enter the EU but since your country of origin is $POLLUTER, you'll be charged a mandatory Ã500 fee at the airport. Anyone caught smuggling cheap goods from $POLLUTER will have their assets seized and jailed for 10 years.

Yes, if you ran the world, you could do that. But you don't get elected to office doing such things.

The US government can't even agree on raising the gas tax, and even I agree it is too low.

The gap between where we are and what it would take to move the needle is bigger than the grand canyon.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

I'd have to see your actual energy usage on that one. Estimates from the Department of Energy claim an average of 18% of the utility bill, which is 54$ a month for your utility bill. Not that you can't be an exception to the average, but you're claiming close to 3% which would be odd.

My electricity use doesn't matter, since I have gas. (for the purpose of heating water)

My average gas bill all year is about $100 a month, in the winter, closer to $200, in the summer, about $50.

In the summer, I still cook with it, I still run the clothes dryer. So what part of the $50 gas bill in the summer (which includes about $5 to have the connection and $40-45 worth of gas) goes towards heating water?

$10 a month? $20 maybe?

Cheap? Yes. Efficient? Not so much. Combustion wastes a lot.

Truthfully, the average customer only cares about the cost. Or lets just say that the "caring about the cost" greatly outweighs the "caring about the Earth".

Indeed, it'd be better for new home installations and in more southern climates. Where it doesn't snow, and there's lots of people. But it could still be good for you, depending on your solar exposure. Just put a temperature monitor up in your attic, and ask yourself how you feel about all that heat in the summer.

I have no problem with putting it in new home construction, the issue is the cost of retrofitting it to older homes.

Frankly, I'll be the first to admit that modern home construction in the US is nothing to be proud of, they are slapped together by cheap labor who doesn't care. Given the very least possible energy efficiency possible, and call it a day.

Why? Because people want "cheap to buy homes", rather than "cheap to own homes".

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

It is a single year with a prediction of the next year.

It is not "falling for several years", as was originally stated.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about limiting this to your electric bill? I referred to the DoE estimates of household energy, that combine all sources, and since you didn't specify, I took it as a combined bill. Whcih given that you are claiming an average for your gas now of around 100$ a month, I believe you were assuming the same in your above 300$ claim? If not, I'm confused.

Anyway, you can see the reference here:

http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/state_briefs/

Texas is higher on the cooling, lower on the space heating, but roughly the same on the water heating as a share of energy usage. Don't see any breakdowns for water heating by type, but that information may be available somewhere if you want to consider the impact to everybody around you, it might be huge.

Since I don't know what water heaters or other appliances you have, how much hot water you use, how much you cook, how much you dry your clothes, or the price you pay per therm, I'll have to refer you to this handy calculator.

http://energy.gov/eere/femp/energy-cost-calculator-electric-and-gas-water-heaters-0

Put your numbers in if you want. Show your work. Maybe it'll come out close to your estimate, I don't know. Or you can put a meter on your water heaters, or since you say you have two, turn one off for a month, though I can understand that last will likely meet opposition.

The average customer, or rather person, is indeed limited in their appreciation of many things. This is why littering remains a problem. Out of sight, out of mind.

But no, what Americans want is not cheap homes, they really want showy homes. They want big stuff. They don't think about insulation, or sun exposure, or water usage, or whatnot. That's unfortunate. Still, the same site above also mentions how houses have changed, and how some of the energy usage has been changed due to various actions and undertakings.

Still, I've seen claims that we could solve unemployment issues if we simply bulldozed older homes and gave away new ones to people. Not sure I favor the plan, but it does have some appeal.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the great and insightful post. WRT drinkypoo, allow me to apologize on behalf of the other humans. Some people have to crap all over reasoned discourse for reasons unknown.

At work, I often try to make sure that the cure is never worse than the disease. It is not because I don't like cures, but because I actually have work, with priorities.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Greenpeace and their ilk who fought nuclear back in the '70's.

Fighting nuclear =/= sole responsibility.

Sure, some environmental groups fought nuclear. If I'd said they were not doing so, you might have a point. But what I said was that the mistake was assuming they were primarily to blame. That's a different notion.

Scapegoats don't work so well if there's not a modicum of truth. But they can distract you from looking beyond the smoke and mirrors.

As I said, there is a lot of blame to be found in electric utility boardrooms. They don't want nuclear. And it's not just the electric corporations, there are others with their own vested interests.

They might have been the one pulling Jimmy Carter's strings too. Or those around him.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

So we should make ourselves poorer today so that strangers in the future will have a different power supply?

Why don't we ditch super expensive power from rooftop solar and use much cheaper central generation, as God intended?

Convenience? How often are you inconvenienced now with 99.998% grid reliability?

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really... it was suggested (I don't recall by who) that replacing hot water tanks with solar water heaters would save a lot of money...

No such outright expression was made. That's your inference.

What came up was Crashmarik complaining about the resources and pollution from constructing photo-voltaic solar panels.

Then an AC (not myself), replied that a big bunch of household energy was used for heating water which could be done directly with solar heat collectors, which were affordable, could be done yourself, with the issue that they required some plumbing.

Crashmarik's words:

Solar will last as long as the sun. How long do you think we will have the resources to build solar panels ? BTW that's another not particularly green thing when you consider all the pollution in China from the processes.

AC's words:

At some point people realize you don't actually have to convert all of solar into electricity. A big bunch of normal house hold energy usage goes into heating water, which you can do directly with solar with solar heat collectors. They are very affordable, and even easy to build yourself if you so want to. Requires some plumbing though. Heated water also works as a kind of energy storage. If you have a big enough tank you can take hot showers all night long.

As you can hopefully see, it's not reading quite how you claim.

To take it as "Everybody should replace their existing water heating at home with solar" is a pretty far stretch. It's more "Using direct solar water heating is a good means to use solar energy on its own" and while replacement may not be of immediate consideration for you(or others, such remodeling can be a pain), new construction, even with gas, can weigh very heavily towards solar.

And there's a lot of people moving to the South. Three of the biggest growing states are there, and they could probably benefit from encouraging solar heat on new homes.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Neil Boekend]

Do both: install solar panels and paint the solar panels white!

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

World wide the amount of coal burned might not go down significantly ... depends how quickly countries like China increase their coal burning.

However over a course of 20 to 50 years coal burning will go down as close to zero as possible.

Germany wants to phase out coal till 2030, if the greens get their way, or till 2050 if the CDU/CSU get their way.

It is only a matter of few years and then wind and solar are in any respect cheaper than coal ... so the burning of coal stops automatically.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't know how cheap your gas is :D

However a solar installation for heating water is not expensive.

E.g. a simple system with a 200l tank (that is about 50 gallons) costs less than 1000EUR, with a lifetime of about 20 years that is less than 50EUR per year.

Ofc it only works if not covered by snow, however it does not mind cold, it makes hot water even under a clouded sky (of course not under a thunderstorm dark sky)

If you only look from the cost aspect it might not be worth it, but it saves a lot of CO2, too.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Neil Boekend]

That grid would need a really large diameter and length HVDC line. The cabling cost alone would be a fortune.
2008 electricity global usage total: 143.851 TWh. It has probably gone up since then but that is the number I could quickly find.
That means an average of 16 TW.
Half of that needs to be transported to the other side of the planet. 8 TW.
Let's assume the HVDC cable can handle 1 million volts, based on the Pacific DC intertie
That means a current of about 8 Mega amps is running through that cable.
Such currents require massive cables. Think big. Think 30 cm (a foot) across.
Since I don't have the time to do the proper estimations I'll assume it is 30 cm.
Volume of a 30 cm diameter cable around the equator is 19,793,200,000 m3
An m3 of copper weighs approximately 9000 kg.
That cable weighs approximately 0.178*10^15 kg. Single cable, we'll need 2, for a total of 0.356*10^15 kg.
Buying that amount of copper is bound to get you into trouble. You see, the problem is that the world yearly production currently is around 17*10^12 kg. You need 21 years of our current production to build your cable. And current copper production is not because it's fun. It's because we need that copper.

The network in the link you provided is even longer than that 40000 km.

And I haven't even touched insulating, supporting or laying the cable. That Pacific DC intertie is over land, with air as insulation. Air is cheap, but much of the grid will have to be across oceans. Water doesn't easily support the steel constructions to carry the cable. Nor does water insulate.

And there are the political issues. Not every country will allow laying your cable across their country for free.

Global grid seems interesting for the uninformed, but calculate for it and you quite quickly see why it isn't done yet.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

It isn't cheap, that is the lie.
If a price is today cheaper than two years ago: we call it cheap.
It can be made to appear cheap when enough tax dollars are tossed at it, but the true cost is quite high.

Actually, the renewable revolution is not payed with tax money but by the consumers.

Or you can tax the crap out of coal, oil, and natural gas to make it appear cheap, but that is just raising the price of everything else.
Yes, that is how a state works and how a state or government influences the economy and the population to change behaviour in a certain way.
Gasoline is highly taxed so people get convinced they don't need to use the car for every bullshit.
CO2 is taxed, so everyone tries to avoid to produce to much CO2.

In the end that is reflected in product prices, but only very very low, so many politicians/economists demand even higher taxes.

As I already said in many other posts, especially to you: my ... and that includes most germans ... power bill is much lower than yours. With a similar or as most here believe: superior life style than yours.

It does not matter that I pay 17cent per kWh (something like 25cent if you include the base costs) ... because I use so few of them.

It does not matter that gasoline in germany is much more expensive than in the USA: first of all we drive much less, as the country is much smaller or more precisely the typical distances are shorter and secondly very often you rather take a train or plane.

Bottom line the question is what you want to achieve as a society, what you are ready to pay what are you ready to sacrifice, if there is any, and how that affects yourself.

My energy bill for my flat rose a bit like 5 years ago, and dropped about 15% about 2 years ago. But as I only pay like 1400Euro per year I don't really care.
Compared to any other cost of living this is the most irrelevant part.
In other words: I'm not at all affected by the changes in the energy sector. Or well, I worked quite often for a power company ... so I make business due to it :D

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Neil Boekend]

BTW Lithium processing is particularly environmentally nasty

Do you mean that particular large dead area around the lithium mines? Yeah, that's there because the ground in that area has high levels of lithium in it. The levels are so high that plants can't grow.
It is the reason the lithium mines are built there. Not the consequence.
Now the process isn't particularly nice and in any other environment the current extraction method would be heavily polluting but since the areas were dead already I can't really care less.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Neil Boekend]

Granted it takes a while. but over time electric cables wear out.
Nope.

Then you have the insulation materials which ear out faster, when those break you get shorts.

Nope. Long distance high voltage lines are not even insulated. They last for ever unless they corrode.

Long distance cables are insulated. Insulated by air.
A cable that was designed to be insulated by PVC is not going to be useful once the PVC degrades. And PVC degrades. Granted it degrades extremely slowly but if you fast forward a couple of centuries air exposed PVC insulation will be mostly gone. Quicker if it is also exposed to sunlight or temperature swings.
Much quicker if it is exposed to wind with some particulate in it (sand is always fun).

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

However over a course of 20 to 50 years coal burning will go down as close to zero as possible.

It is possible that might happen.

I wouldn't put money on it, but it is possible. However, if you think solar and wind will replace it all, I personally think you're mistaken... but we shall see...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

E.g. a simple system with a 200l tank (that is about 50 gallons) costs less than 1000EUR, with a lifetime of about 20 years that is less than 50EUR per year.

That is quite cheap, but that isn't an installed cost...

I just looked up the average cost, and it is closer to $4K to have it professionally installed.

At that cost, it is less attractive.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

If a price is today cheaper than two years ago: we call it cheap.

In a vacuum, yes... but it isn't cheap if another option remains cheaper...

Actually, the renewable revolution is not payed with tax money but by the consumers.

That's funny, you keep thinking that...

https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

Yes, that is how a state works and how a state or government influences the economy and the population to change behaviour in a certain way.

That's fine, but it doesn't make solar cheap, it just makes everything expensive. Don't lie about it, be honest.

Gasoline is highly taxed so people get convinced they don't need to use the car for every bullshit.

Come try that in America where we actually have some land and room to live. It is not possible to live in most of America without a car, our whole country was largely built based on them, with a handful of exceptions.

Now should it have been? That is another conversation, but it is largely beside the point. It wasn't, it won't be changed within our lifetimes, and that is that.

CO2 is taxed, so everyone tries to avoid to produce to much CO2.

And that is part of why your above comment about the "renewable revolution" being paid for by consumers is so off the mark.

Your government is playing with the markets and using taxes to move the needle. Now that's fine if that is what you want to do, but don't pretend that solar and wind somehow make a lot of sense on their own. Well, actually wind is getting there, it has a place as a nice reserve of power. Solar is still rather nuts in terms of costs.

As I already said in many other posts, especially to you: my ... and that includes most germans ... power bill is much lower than yours. With a similar or as most here believe: superior life style than yours.

It isn't hard to have a low power bill when you live in a cold country in small homes.

I live in a very hot part of America in a very large home, you can't remotely compare our power bills.

The comment about "superior lifestyle" is an opinion and it shows your arrogance and programming by German propaganda.

(that isn't to say I'm not subject to American propaganda, it is just that I'm aware of it)

It does not matter that I pay 17cent per kWh (something like 25cent if you include the base costs) ... because I use so few of them.

I pay less than half for my power that you do. I also live in a much larger house than you do, so the monthly cost for power is not a material concern.

I would imagine that if my power price were more than doubled, then wind and solar could be deployed on a much larger scale here. But then your comment of the "renewable revolution" being paid for by consumers is true, only in the sense of power prices being raised high enough to fund this via your power bill.

But that isn't going to happen here. While I could afford to have my power bill double, a whole lot of Americans could not.

Neither could the average Chinese person pay twice as much for power, so it won't happen there either.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Agripa]

Inefficiencies are not the largest problem; power density, energy density, and economics are. Pumped hydroelectric storage independently scales its power and energy density and it is its large scale which makes it economical. Batteries are expensive. Using gravitational storage with a solid mass and not a fluid is just dumb unless you have gravity control and probably not even then. Large scale flow batteries have the same advantages as pumped hydroelectric storage but I am not sure about their economics.

The costs of large scale storage systems make just building more power plants an attractive option.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Agripa]

I wonder if someone can scale the mechanism up for an RV fridge and make a propane based water chiller. This way, power needs would be a lot less (mainly to move air through a heat exchanger), as the propane would be the energy source for the refrigerator. Bonus points in using the Einstein cycle where that uses ammonia, butane, and water.

Certainly this can be done. There are even prototype solar powered refrigeration systems.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Agripa]

Batteries are heavy. Why not do both?

They are not *that* heavy unless you want to drop them from orbit. By the time you have enough mass in expensive batteries, you have orders of magnitude more energy storage in the batteries themselves.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Agripa]

This just gets back to the problem of economical power storage. Until battery energy per cost drops, a power plant is more economical.

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[Ferretman]

I don't think calling out the design is exactly fair when compared to modern standards. We've learned a lot since then.

Ferret

Re: Talk about creating a demand

[drinkypoo]

I don't think calling out the design is exactly fair when compared to modern standards. We've learned a lot since then.

It's fair because we still have many of these lousy old plants in operation. Your comment would only make sense if not, but we do. Indeed, nuclear regulatory process being what it is, there are essentially no "modern" nuclear plants in operation.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[volmtech]

Oh yeah, having an AC full of toxic ammonia and explosive butane right next to your house is an excellent idea. Those units are fine if they are small (RV fridge) or large (hundred thousand sq ft warehouse.)

Now that HFCs are considered greenhouse gasses more environmental friendly (if not people friendly) processes may be mandated. You may get your wish.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[romons]

Use cisterns. The standard cistern can be 20m deep by 10m by 10m. Two tanks, one 20m deep, the other above it at 10m. Pump water from the lower one into the upper one at night when power is cheap, recover the energy during the day and sell it back to the utility. Each of these has 98Mj of potential energy when 'charged'.

The technology to build and operate these is trivial. They could be put under public and private buildings, and generate cash flow for private investors, like vending machines or laundromats, only without the vandalism. They also serve as an emergency water source of a million litres in times of disaster.

Sometimes the simplest solution is best.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, to long to quote on an iPad.

Wind is cheaper than coal, since a decade more or less.
solar is about to become cheaper right now.

And that has nothing to do with taxes or whatsoever.

You are wrong about the power bill, you are also wrong about the heat or coldness of germany. The summer here is more or less like yours.

Last time you talked about your bill you said you spent like $300 per month. I spend 120EURO per month.

So despite the fact that my price per kWh is higher, I pay less ... and yes you already told me your house/flat is much bigger. Does not change the fact about our bills and that you likely waste a lot of energy.

Regarding the standard of living, only the upper 5 or 10 percent of the americans have a comparable living standard of an average european. However everything is cheap in the USA ... so you don't really care it seems :)

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

Wind is cheaper than coal, since a decade more or less.

Citation needed

Wait, how about I provide one:

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs...

"Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH (than coal)"

solar is about to become cheaper right now.

Not even close...

From the above: "Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces."

You are wrong about the power bill, you are also wrong about the heat or coldness of germany. The summer here is more or less like yours.

What parts of Germany regularly hit 40c and spend about a month at that temp?

Last time you talked about your bill you said you spent like $300 per month. I spend 120EURO per month.

So despite the fact that my price per kWh is higher, I pay less ... and yes you already told me your house/flat is much bigger. Does not change the fact about our bills and that you likely waste a lot of energy.

My house is 353 sqm, how big is yours? The total bill doesn't matter nearly so much as the cost per sqm.

So I'm paying about 85 cents per sqm per month in power, on average. What is your per-sqm average?

And I'm not even taking into account that I work from home, thus use more power than the average person does anyway, since I'm here all day.

Regarding the standard of living, only the upper 5 or 10 percent of the americans have a comparable living standard of an average european.

Citation needed.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

I was wrong with the price of solar power, mixed it up with the earnings you make on the stock exchange.

However wind is cheaper than coal ... we are already closing coal plants, new built ones, because they can not compete with the price on the market.

If you don't remember, my flat is only 100sqm ... but the size should have no effect on electric bills. As like you: I only have one kitchen, e.g.

The cost per sqm is only relevant for heating and in your case AC. The rooms that are not in use should not use energy, pretty simple.

And for the standard of living, it is common knowledge :D no citations needed. But perhaps my percentage is wrong and the amount of americans living on the standard of an european is much lower. On the other hand you have weird ideas of standard of living anyway ...

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[FlyHelicopters]

However wind is cheaper than coal ... we are already closing coal plants, new built ones, because they can not compete with the price on the market.

In Texas, we're slowly shutting down coal and it is largely being replaced by natural gas. That being said, we're the largest state for wind power in the US, so we're doing a decent amount of that too.

Wind is much cheaper than solar, but of course it kills a lot of birds, so go figure. No free lunch. :(

If you don't remember, my flat is only 100sqm ... but the size should have no effect on electric bills. As like you: I only have one kitchen, e.g.

The cost per sqm is only relevant for heating and in your case AC. The rooms that are not in use should not use energy, pretty simple.

Not quite that simple. I have 5 people who live in my home, that uses far more energy than a single person in a small flat would. Also, my ceilings are more than 20 feet tall in the main rooms, that makes my heating/cooling bills much higher than yours (unless you also have two story rooms). My family room, living room, dining room, front entrance, and hallway are all two stories. In addition, it is open concept, so the upstairs kids playroom is open to the house below as is the upstairs hallway, so keeping warm air down low and cold air up high is nearly impossible, forcing additional heating a cooling that a more closed house would not require.

Now you could argue that is bad design, but my point is simply that sqm alone or how many kitchens a home has doesn't indicate the power bill.

And for the standard of living, it is common knowledge :D no citations needed. But perhaps my percentage is wrong and the amount of americans living on the standard of an european is much lower.

Or you could be wrong and it is much higher. :)

Far more American's likely have fully AC homes than Europeans, for example. We have more food at lower prices, we have more cars, we have more gadgets...

I suppose it depends on what you consider to be a higher standard of living. If it is "who has the most stuff", then Americans win by a landslide.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Far more American's likely have fully AC homes than Europeans, for example.

Jumping in because I saw this.

That's a terrible metric for a reason that shouldn't need much evidence to show it, and would likely include checking the average temperatures of various European cities versus Americans and then wondering how much many Europeans would bother caring about having AC. Or a quick look at an appropriate map or globe.

You might as well compare vacuum cleaner wattage. Well, before the new energy standards anyway.

Re:Talk about creating a demand

[angel'o'sphere]

Well in 30 years I'm close to 80, but perhaps you invite me to your nice house then and we drink a Whiskey ...

Well, I like the irish ones, or we settle on Whisky, as I like the scotch, too.

So we can look back on the energy revolution :D and perhaps know if that EM drive really works, like discussed on /. lately

Water heigh storage: dams

[Anonymous Coward]

Best know energy storage right now is to pump water up dams when we have too much energy.

In Europe, I think half of energy from dam is official "renewable", meaning the other half is from water that was pumped up.

This is quite good to flaten energy requirement peaks. Unfortunatly, this results in not so eco-friendly big dam projects.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a really good article about this in ieee spectrum not too long ago. Take away from the article: there are no major technical hurdles to using pumped water storage, just a relatively small investment and some relatively major political/organisational issues. Just another case of why we can't have nice things.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

there are no major technical hurdles to using pumped water storage, just a relatively small investment and some relatively major political/organisational issues. Just another case of why we can't have nice things.

Hmm... No major technical hurdles? A small investment?

I live in Dallas, TX, the area has about 7 million people living here. The elevation doesn't change by more than about 100 feet across hundreds of miles. The only water sources of any size are 4 large man made lakes used for drinking water.

How exactly would you use pumped storage when a 20 or 30 mile drive doesn't change the elevation by more than about 30 feet?

Re:Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

Best know energy storage right now is to pump water up dams when we have too much energy.

Sure, if you happen to have a large hill near by and a large source of water.

That actually doesn't exist in very many places.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[CrimsonAvenger]

Ditto. Highest hill in the area (New Orleans) is less than 50 feet (15m) tall, and it's man-made (Monkey Hill in the Zoo)....

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument (and New Orleans guy) would be more reasonable if electricity weren't the primary unit being transmitted, and if it wasn't possible to move it thousands of miles with relatively little losses.

Dallas need not have local pumped storage for it to be viable.

There are much better reasons to be against hydro-reservoirs.

Though one of them is that compressed air might be even more viable, and that can be put in a lot of places, including Dallas and New Orleans.

But speaking of Texas, there's actually a town there that has invested in a giant battery due to electric transmissions issues that arose from a 60-year old transmission line. Which still had to be upgraded, but the town also found it prudent to provide for other means to secure their electrical systems.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

How exactly would you use pumped storage when ...
By building an artificial hill 30 feet high and putting the storage on top of it.

If you already have build 3 artificial lakes it would be a piece of cake, just use the stuf you dug out, and pile it up somewhere.

Man, even the old Egyptians and Chinese could do that!!

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

30 feet doesn't offer enough height to do anything.

And the water is already about 30 feet above the lower land area, that is why the lakes were built there. The 4 lakes were built in the only place around that allowed the south end to be dammed and the water to fill in.

I suspect you don't quite understand the math behind raising a billion gallons of water a hundred feet or more into the air.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

30 feet doesn't offer enough height to do anything.
Ofc it does. The hight is irrelevant if you have enough water.

Hint: check how tidal plants work ... most of them are placed at places where the hight difference is less than 30 feet.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

Ofc it does. The hight is irrelevant if you have enough water.

You're glossing over the "if you have enough water" part.

It takes a LOT of water at 30ft to make much of a difference, and that amount of water is NOT that common.

In the United States, I can think of maybe half a dozen lakes big enough for 30ft to be enough. At 300ft, the number is in the hundreds, but they are not all next to 300ft tall hills that are big enough to hold the water. Actually, almost none are.

---

What is silly is that you're somehow under the assumption that this shouldn't be that hard and only ignorance is keeping it from happening.

That is just not true. Generally the people in charge of such things aren't complete fools and almost everyone likes making money. If it was so easy, we'd be doing it.

And that doesn't even get into the NIMBY crowd who would fight it tooth and nail.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

Yep, people who live next to a mountain don't know what "flat" really is.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

That is FLAT, and it goes on for a LONG way...

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

You miss the simple point: so far there was no need for more pumped storage.

And again: the USA are literally full with ideal spots for pumped storage.

Generally the people in charge of such things aren't complete fools and almost everyone likes making money. If it was so easy, we'd be doing it.

You again miss the point: there is no money to make with pumped storages. Unless: you suddenly have a huge surplus solar or wind energy which you can store.

It is a chicken/egg problem. As soon as the surplus is there some people will consider to store it. And places will be found that are suited for it. But nevertheless you have then the dilemma that you want the storage either close to the power plants or close to the consumer (likely a city) or both, and hence you have to deal with NIMBY people.

However in Germany pumped storage plants are usually considered "nice lakes" and "nature". As long as no one needs to relocate, they get accepted.

Or problem however is, the best options are indeed mainly claimed. Also we have an incredible high amount of storage already.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

And again: the USA are literally full with ideal spots for pumped storage.

You might consider looking at a topographical map of the US.

Besides the two main mountain ranges, the vast majority of the country is rather flat.

Power plants and storage can only be so far from the point of use.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

However in Germany pumped storage plants are usually considered "nice lakes" and "nature". As long as no one needs to relocate, they get accepted.

Germany is not a flat country, it is covered in hills and elevation changes.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

Neither are the USA a flat country :)
And as I said before, even in flat areas you easy can make an artificial hill. We even do that in germany :)

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

You still don't get the main point: there is no need for more pumped storage. Unless you create a market for it, by installing LOTs of wind and solar power.

And then I suggest: you look on a map. I guess in an hour you easily find 100 suitable spots for a pumped storage plant.

Perhaps you need half an hour to warmup though ...

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

You build hills dozens of meters in the air strong enough to hold a billion gallons of water and have enough protection in place to make sure it doesn't get out of the reservoir and flood the surrounding area?

How much do you think that costs? Do you have a link to an example?

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

This one is build on the tip of a natural hill: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... around 1919 already

This one is not on an artificial hill either, but only has a few meters difference between the upper and the lower reservoir: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

This one is close to what I meant: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

This one is on an artificial hill: http://www.swr.de/kaffee-oder-... easy to see on the pictures

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

This one is build on the tip of a natural hill: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... around 1919 already

Yep, and it stores a WHOLE 39 MW... that is nice, but it is noise in the grand scheme of things.

That hill is also taller than anything within 500 miles of where I live.

This one is not on an artificial hill either, but only has a few meters difference between the upper and the lower reservoir: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

A "few meters"? Really? It is 128 meters higher... That isn't a "few meters", that is a lot!

This one is close to what I meant: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

That is 300 meters difference in height. As I said, there is a LOT of elevation changes in Germany. I'd have to travel a thousand miles to find a hill that high here.

This one is on an artificial hill: http://www.swr.de/kaffee-oder-... easy to see on the pictures

So for 155 million euros, power is provided for 1600 homes...

That is a TERRIBLE investment...

There are about 5 MILLION homes in the Dallas, TX area...

This is all a nice idea, but you really are off by 3 orders of magnitude in what would be required to provide such power storage for a large number of people.

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

So for 155 million euros, power is provided for 1600 homes...

That is a TERRIBLE investment...

No, it is not.
It is an investment to store power that otherwise would go to waste.

As I pointed out several times now, pumped storages as we have it right now is not even used to store excess energy, it is used to balance the grid.

155M is peanuts. No idea where you live ... but if your numbers are right it is about 100,000 per home. No idea why you call that "TERRIBLE expensive", seems you are not used to large scale infra structure projects.

Facepalm. For 155M you can not even make a railway ... well just a few feet.

The railway for the ICE from Wuerzburg to Hannover, about 280km, costed 6billion (not million, for clarification) Euros.

A house like yours would cost in Europe 2 - 6 millions. So the plant you complain about costs like 20 to 75 times as much as your house costs?

And you call that expensive? And it is not the plant providing the power for the houses, it is a "load balancing plant" as mainly all pumped storages in central Europe are.

The owner makes a million in earnings every day!

A plant like that is amortized in a year, max 10 years.

Your country must be really weird if you have such a strange relation to "money is everything".

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[FlyHelicopters]

No, it is not.

Yes it is, and at the end of the day, you don't know that much about investments and the cost of capital.

But that's ok, you won't listen and your mind is made up, so carry on with your silly thinking. :)

Re: Water heigh storage: dams

[angel'o'sphere]

And you made up your mind what "pumped storage" is for in classical grids. And your idea is wrong.

Actually I calculated you down how damn cheap that particular plant was :D

Not *battery* storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries suck.

Pumping water into a high reservoir, is the usual storage, a large lake only needs a small generator pumping station so its far more efficient.

If you have a wind turbine at home, it would be better pumping water up into a loft tank, rather than directly generating electricity. You can then generate electricity as you need it by dropping water from the high tank to a low tank as you need it. Generating the electricity then.

Solar is more tricky, but even then, batteries are not a good fix.

Can someone invent SOLAR POWERED PELTIER EFFECT AIRCON! Airconditioners need to run in hot weather and peltier effect needs a hot end, so why not create a solar collector heating the hot end of a peltier cooler? So we don't need all the electricity?

Re:Not *battery* storage

[ledow]

Do you even understand what a Peltier does? It sucks at power generation, absolutely sucks, even if it's possible.

Because primarily it's not a generator - that's just an inefficient side-effect - it's a heat pump. And what you're suggesting is to heat the hot end of a Peltier, thereby doing what? Generating a pittance of electricity. You'll also need to cool the cold end of else it's just a block of metal. It's the temperature difference that matters. And there's no such thing as a free lunch in energy terms.

However, batteries do suck. But carving out valleys to be dams and reservoirs also sucks.

The efficiencies - again - of a small in-house reservoir are so poor as to be worthless. How much power do you think you're going to get by pumping even mains-pressure water through a pipe? I'll tell you... you can power an FM radio, because there's an actual commercial product that does this on your shower hose, and I'm not aware of ANYTHING more powerful that uses the same generation method. And anything you've pumped to the loft and dropped down won't be that pressured. And what do you do with the water once it's dropped? You wasted it, that's what. Because pumping it between tanks forever is going to require more maintenance than a loft tank, and those have gone out of fashion for all kinds of reasons, not least that a lot of them can't be classed as drinking water.

The efficiencies we're talking about here are pittances. By comparison, a decent, expensive, high-tech battery is actually quite a commercial piece of hardware, if they can pull it off. If batteries were so inefficient, you wouldn't use one in your car. 12V 400Ah of power is not to be sniffed at and can least you YEARS and YEARS with an ancient lead-acid technology (I've never had to change - or maintain - a car battery in my life yet). That's why all the home wind- and solar-generation plants use such things, they're one of the best things we've got on that scale. The next step up is flooding some poor bugger's village to make a new reservoir and destroying the natural habitats.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[FlyHelicopters]

Pumping water into a high reservoir, is the usual storage, a large lake only needs a small generator pumping station so its far more efficient.

You glossed over part of that "high reservoir".

Locations with plenty of water and a large enough elevation change to matter are actually rare. They exist, and many of them are already being used.

If you have a wind turbine at home, it would be better pumping water up into a loft tank, rather than directly generating electricity. You can then generate electricity as you need it by dropping water from the high tank to a low tank as you need it. Generating the electricity then.

Yes you can, and those systems exist today. You *MIGHT* be able to run a a radio or laptop computer on it, for 10-15 min.

I suspect you don't quite understand how much power that wold make, or rather would not make.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[angel'o'sphere]

Locations with plenty of water and a large enough elevation change to matter are actually rare. They exist, and many of them are already being used.

They are neither rare nor used up.
They might be to far away from the next big power plant or city or simply be in another country, but the idea that all areas for pumped storage are used up is imply: nonsense

Re:Not *battery* storage

[Phreakiture]

Tempers have flared pointlessly here, so let me do my best to provide a simple, hopefully helpful answer.

The hot end of a Peltier device is heated by the heat that gets pumped (by the device) from the cold end. When you apply power to the device, it heats the hot end by moving heat from the cold end, which is how the cold end gets cold.

So you don't want to heat the hot end; you want to cool it, presumably using a heatsink and maybe a fan.

For bonus points, we can take a lesson from the mechanical aircons and do this: The cold end is going to have water condense on it. You need to dispose of that water, of course, but what you can do with some of it is use it to wet down the heatsinks on the hot side so that evaporative cooling is added to the mix. On a typical window aircon, the equivalent takes place in that the condensate is collected in a reservoir (the excess is what drips out of the bottom of the machine) and the outside fan will usually have a ring on it that splashes this water up onto the condenser coil (which is the hot end and heatsink of a mechanical aircon).

In the end, I don't know if your Peltier aircon would be more efficient or not, compared to a mechanical one, but it could be a worthwhile experiment. Just don't heat the hot end, because that's getting the ideas wrong.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[bored_engineer]

In the end, I don't know if your Peltier aircon would be more efficient or not, compared to a mechanical one

Not. The main advantage of a peltier cooler is its size. You can force quite a lot of heat transfer in a small space without the compressor, fans and radiators necessary for a heat pump.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[FlyHelicopters]

I suspect you overestimate how many such locations exist.

You need a lot more than a 100ft elevation change and a lot more than a small lake, to produce a decent amount of power.

It takes a LOT of water and a LOT of height to make a LOT of power.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[angel'o'sphere]

It takes a LOT of water and a LOT of height to make a LOT of power.

Yes and no. You can trade hight for amount of water and vice versa. It is no difference if I pump 1 gallon of water 100 feet uphill or 100 gallons 1 foot.

You need a lot more than a 100ft elevation
The actual elevation is irrelevant.

Hence there is plenty of space to build pumped storage. The reason why those places are not used are plenty:
o no need for pumped storage (the main reason, all developed nations already have enough of it)
o distance to either consumers or producers
o ecological
o general anti position of population

Re:Not *battery* storage

[FlyHelicopters]

Yes and no. You can trade hight for amount of water and vice versa. It is no difference if I pump 1 gallon of water 100 feet uphill or 100 gallons 1 foot.

Not quite, but yes, they are somewhat interchangeable. The equipment requires more than 1 foot of height to work, but the point is understandable.

That being said, it takes a lot more than one gallon to make it work.

A million gallons of water, lifted 30 feet off the ground, or 300 feet off the ground, won't account for much storage. The cost to build a tank to hold a million gallons of water in the air is not cheap at 30ft, much less at 300ft.

Now try the math at a billion gallons, which sounds like a lot but it really isn't.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[angel'o'sphere]

The point was, the water reservoirs could have been built with pumped storage in mind.

Or if they need another reservoir, they could keep that in mind.

Most countries already have a quite nice amount of pumped storage, hence they don't "need" more to balance the grid.

However if you wanted to store large scale solar energy, pumped storage is a simple and reliable solution.

Now try the math at a billion gallons, which sounds like a lot but it really isn't.
The math actually is straight forward, only the back and forth between kWh and Joules is a bit annoying :D and the conversion of gallons into kg or liters or cubic meters :D

Re:Not *battery* storage

[FlyHelicopters]

The point was, the water reservoirs could have been built with pumped storage in mind.

Well sure, if the land was a different shape...

But it isn't, so no... they couldn't have...

I'm not quite sure what is so hard to understand. Let me try simple words:

"there isn't enough water in the lake at the height that it is built to provide enough storage to be worth the trouble"

Or if they need another reservoir, they could keep that in mind.

Sure, they could... except... THERE AREN'T ANY HILLS TO BUILD THEM ON.

Sheesh...

And of course, that ignores the fact that we've been trying to build a new reservoir for 20 years now, but the problem is not technical, it is political.

http://www.texastribune.org/20...

"But environmental advocates and northeast Texas residents have argued that the Dallas-Fort Worth area needs to focus more on water conservation before embarking on expensive reservoir projects."

For frack sake, the damm enviromentalists are BLOCKING IT!

Yea, yea, conserve water, that's great. The Dallas area has added a million people in the past 15 years, but no new water sources. We'll add another million people in the next 15-20 years.

We need another reservoir, but the stupid fracking environmentalists don't want one.

This is why so many people have stopped listening to them, they are against EVERYTHING. There is no reasonable compromise with them.

I get that we need to conserve, I get that we can't just consume everything. But we have to be able to consume something. There is a happy middle ground there somewhere.

Re:Not *battery* storage

[angel'o'sphere]

But it isn't, so no... they couldn't have...
Ofc, they could have. As I said before a 30 feet (not metters) artificial hill is enough, and using the dig out soil from some reservoirs to make that hill had worked just fine.

Would it have been a super high capacity storage: no.

Would it work: yes.

What had it costed? No idea as I don't know what they did with the dig out. Perhaps they sold it? And earned money on it. Perhaps they needed to deposite it somewhere, and payed for that.

Only when Tesla ..

[Anonymous Coward]

announces that it will be making such a product it seems to be relevant.
Not to metion that we had these type of devices here in Japan for years already.

Re:Only when Tesla ..

[MinamataHG]

Probably because nobody does know about it outside Japan.
Japan usually sucks at promoting it's technology.

Re:Only when Tesla ..

[Phreakiture]

It's been available in the US as well. The annoying part is that omitting it is part of what brought down the price of solar arrays.

Around ten to twelve years ago, if you wanted a solar array, a battery bank was part of the picture. You would get ahold of a Xantrex or an Outback (I think there may have also been others, but these are the ones I recall) grid-tie inverter and a matching charge controller. It would use generated power first to charge your batteries, and then sell to the grid when the batteries are full. Running from grid-first or batteries-first was something you could configure depending on the capabilities of your equipment.

Then along came the "batteryless" inverters, and that's what almost everyone is using now. They are designed to treat the grid like a battery, and that works until you hit a certain level of saturation, which is what is now keeping electrical engineers up at night -- we may be approaching that level.

The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[Michael Woodhams]

There are many ways to 'store' electricity. Batteries are just one.

I rather like this one, a thermal storage solution. Putting air into and out of bladders under deep water is a very simple method, as is moving water up and down hills. Then there are flywheels and fixed volume compressed air storage. (The air bladders above are fixed pressure compressed air storage.) There other thermal storage possibilities, but getting good round trip efficiency is tricky.

There are non-traditional battery techniques too: flow batteries (liquid electrolytes in tanks, adding storage capacity is as easy as adding tanks full of electrolyte) and molten metal batteries (take the idea of aluminium smelting and make it reversible).

All the non-battery alternatives I can think of work at industrial scale, so if you're looking for a household/small business solution, I think that at least for now batteries are it.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[drinkypoo]

I rather like this one, a thermal storage solution.

Note that they don't tell you what the efficiency or capacity are. As you store more power, they lose more energy. Fairly worthless. It also incorporates a special and expensive engine. Fail, fail.

Putting air into and out of bladders under deep water is a very simple method,

No, no it isn't. First, air-based storage is always horribly lossy due to loss of the thermal energy; your above example tries to solve this with technology and argon, but it is thus complex and runs at high pressures and will be prone to failure. Second, the bladders will have to be replaced regularly, because under deep water is not a comfortable environment for them.

as is moving water up and down hills.

The efficiency is not great, but it's a lot better than anything based on compressing gases.

Then there are flywheels and fixed volume compressed air storage.

Well, compressed air storage is still stupid, but flywheels are cool, and applicable ones have been around for at least a decade, see Beacon Power. So yay, we found the viable alternative to used batteries! That took a really long time.

The truth is that used batteries are an excellent way to add more storage capacity, since they're just lying around anyway.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[caseih]

That doesn't change the fact that on the power grid itself, there is no storage, so any efficiency, even bad efficiency is better than nothing.

As to your used battery idea, it is not a good one. Most used batteries are car batteries. And no they are not an excellent way to add more storage capacity. A used car battery won't hold a charge, or deliver current. That's why they are replaced after all.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[Jeremi]

A used car battery won't hold a charge, or deliver current. That's why they are replaced after all.

I think you might have a misconception here -- it sounds like you are thinking of the engine-starter batteries used in a gasoline-engine car. The used batteries the previous poster is referring to are the (much larger) battery packs from an electric car. Those batteries are typically swapped out when their capacity deteriorates to the point where the car's maximum range is no longer acceptable. In that state, the batteries are still perfectly capable of holding a charge and delivering current; just not as much charge as when they were new.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[cnaumann]

There are a lot of household tasks that use electricity that can be rescheduled to reduce peak demand. Water heating is a prime example.Lots of folks take a shower in the morning and leave the house. The water heater turns on to make water that will not be used in great quantity for 8 or even 24 hours later. If the water heater were smarter, it could keep a little hot water available for washing hands and stuff, but recharge overnight.

Your freezer could work in a similar way. It could be set to get colder at night and a little warmer in the day to reduce peak demand.

Air conditioning systems could run dehumidification cycles at night to help reduce the burden during the day. They could also increase temperature slightly at the neck in the 'duck curve' (late in the day where solar generation is ramping down, but demand is still very high).

Clothes drying and dishwashing could be scheduled to run at night.

The simplest way to make all this happen is for the utility companies to start charging different rates depending on the incremental cost of the power being generated. The utility company would update your meter several times a day, the meter would communicate with your appliances and you would have to decide if it is all worth it.

Battery storage at the household level may be part of the solution, but it is difficult to justify for most markets at the current prices of electricity and batteries. If you were paying a dollar per kilowatt hour for peak rates, you might think a little differently.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[tomhath]

That doesn't change the fact that on the power grid itself, there is no storage

That's not true, there are many examples of storage. Reservoirs, piles of coal, even some pumped hydro and batteries (although those are not usually cost effective).

The problem is that the utility companies which own and manage the grid have designed it to operate a certain way; they want to balance generation with demand. But now politicians are trying to force it to be operated a different way; generate as much as you can and figure out some way to deal with the fact that the generated power might be too much or not enough for the demand.

Some people seem to think that a bunch of really big batteries is a good solution. Actually it's just an expensive hack to try and cover up the problem that the politicians created by allowing people to back feed a highly variable and not easily controlled amount of power onto the grid.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[drinkypoo]

I've also used a slightly amount of hyperbole, they won't cost $0. Packs will at minimum have to be tested and recertified, and in many cases will need cells replaced — and individual cells will need to be tested and matched into groups of cells with similar characteristics for maximum output. That all costs some money. However, it costs nowhere near as much as putting the packs together in the first place; it costs some charge and discharge cycles, but there's no reason why these cycles can't be performed as part of an actual operating load-smoothing plant. After all, you'll have many modules in parallel, and any which cause you problems will simply be removed from the system. On the other hand, some packs might well be usable without any cell replacement, and they really would cost only the transportation costs and testing logistics and overhead, less the profit from their participation in load balancing during testing.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[drinkypoo]

As to your used battery idea, it is not a good one. Most used batteries are car batteries.

Aside from the fact that we're talking about used EV batteries, it might interest you to know that high-end vehicles are now replacing their flooded lead-acid starter batteries with Li-Ion packs. Even a really dinky one is capable of starting the vehicle, but the truth is that there's embarrassingly more electrical accessories in the modern car, and they need a battery with more capacity so that you can use them all at once even in a vehicle with a stop-start system. As the price on electrically-operated accessories (like power steering, heat pumps, and so on) comes down due to economies of scale, you can expect this trend to proliferate down to cheaper cars. It's pretty hilarious to look even into older vehicles, say a saturn, and compare the size of the battery to the size of the engine. Which block is bigger, the battery box or the cylinder block? A Li-Ion battery would be half the size, and let you design a foot off the length of the vehicle — or put it someplace else, where it would do you more good.

Anyway, these Li-Ion packs can be broken down and their individual cells tested, matched, and re-used, so the car starter battery of the future will also be useful for these systems... just not the batteries of today. Those are already aggressively recycled, however, like most car parts.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[Anonymous Coward]

"as is moving water up and down hills."

I think the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power does this. They buy electricity at night at a lower cost and use it to pump water from a storage area up into a damn (or damns). In the day water flows down through generating turbines, or something. I heard about this over 20 years ago. I may have some details wrong. I don't know if this is used a lot in power generating, or just a few locations.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[sjames]

Cheap used batteries are a good storage medium at the home since when PV is in use they are at the point of production and consumption. So you lose energy to the storage inefficiencies but by avoiding transmission losses (both ways) it's likely a wash.

At power plants, if a demand drop leaves them dumping excess energy, nearly any storage is better than sending it up the stack.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[sjames]

I'm fairly sure he meant used LiIons from EVs, not old starter batteries.

LiIon degrades a bit more gracefully and at some point still has a good bit of capacity for stationary applications but not enough for a car.

Re:The grid needs storage - not battery storage

[gzuckier]

I rather like this one, a thermal storage solution.

Note that they don't tell you what the efficiency or capacity are. As you store more power, they lose more energy. Fairly worthless. It also incorporates a special and expensive engine. Fail, fail.

Putting air into and out of bladders under deep water is a very simple method,

No, no it isn't. First, air-based storage is always horribly lossy due to loss of the thermal energy; your above example tries to solve this with technology and argon, but it is thus complex and runs at high pressures and will be prone to failure. Second, the bladders will have to be replaced regularly, because under deep water is not a comfortable environment for them.

as is moving water up and down hills.

The efficiency is not great, but it's a lot better than anything based on compressing gases.

Then there are flywheels and fixed volume compressed air storage.

Well, compressed air storage is still stupid, but flywheels are cool, and applicable ones have been around for at least a decade, see Beacon Power. So yay, we found the viable alternative to used batteries! That took a really long time.

The truth is that used batteries are an excellent way to add more storage capacity, since they're just lying around anyway.

Efficiency wise, you can't beat flywheels, surprising to the novice who is accustomed to trying to improve batteries. . Not so good for vehicles which hate to carry around a blast shield around them for when they explode, but if you're talking about stationary installations, flywheels are the bomb (haha).

AIRCON = Airconditioner

[Anonymous Coward]

Peltier effect AIR CONDITIONER, the aim is to remove the DEMAND for electricity not generate electricity.

Yes its a heat pump, which is the whole point, hot end = solar collector, cool end = inside the house, middle = the heat dissipation.

In other words a similar setup to a Perltier fridge but instead of a gas or electric heater driving it, a solar collector.

Re:AIRCON = Airconditioner

[fnj]

You are a fucking nincompoop. Peltier cooling works by pumping heat from the cold side to the hot side. You have to COOL the hot side, not heat it, idiot.

Re:AIRCON = Airconditioner

[Anonymous Coward]

Nincompoop, love it, takes my back to the 50's.

Then it might not be Peltier effect, the cooler used in small fridges with a hot end, a cold end and a middle heat disperser. You heat the hot end, the cold end gets colder, and the heat from both is removed by cooler plates in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

I thought these were peltier effect because I saw a science program back in the 80s (Tomorrows World), where he basically heated one end with a blow torch to cool the other end to freezing point and describe how oscillating cystals plates pump the heat to the middle, i.e. he describes Peltier effect driven by a heated end.

Let the grid slowly die

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously, inb4 all the "just upgrade the grid whats the problem" comments. Not saying that the grid's frailty it isn't an immediate problem that needs to be solved, but we seem to be moving toward an era of self-generation as a primary source of power and the grid as a backup. I would not be surprised if we eventually ditch the grid almost entirely.

Hot water is already generated and stored on premise. A hot water tank
- generates hot water as fast as possible
- can run out of hot water, you need to wait until it refills and reheats, (sound familiar?)
- can be serviced or replaced by authorised plumbers

I would not be surprised if PV panels & batteries like the ones mentioned will be the same in future.

Re:Let the grid slowly die

[jklovanc]

but we seem to be moving toward an era of self-generation as a primary source of power

Anyone who lived in a multi-story building will not be self generating. While self generation might be good for some sub-urban and rural areas there is no way it will suffice for urban areas. Therefore the grid will always be needed.

Your hot water analogy is way off considering that a day's worth of PV power may not even last part of a day. That would not be good if your refrigerator only worked part of the day or your computers used for work did the same.

Re:Let the grid slowly die

[Anonymous Coward]

but we seem to be moving toward an era of self-generation as a primary source of power

Anyone who lived in a multi-story building will not be self generating. While self generation might be good for some sub-urban and rural areas there is no way it will suffice for urban areas. Therefore the grid will always be needed.

Your hot water analogy is way off considering that a day's worth of PV power may not even last part of a day. That would not be good if your refrigerator only worked part of the day or your computers used for work did the same.

Diesel generators are an ideal solution for multi-unit residential buildings especially in combination with solar panels and geothermal heating/cooling.

Re:Let the grid slowly die

[drinkypoo]

Diesel generators are an ideal solution for multi-unit residential buildings

Ideal in what way? Certainly not in efficiency, or CO2 production.

So the Musk Ox Can Shit All Over the Power Barons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why else!

What's worse: lead or lithium IN MASSIVE QUANTITES?

Hawaiian Electric

[NoKaOi]

Hawaiian Electric is full of crap. It's an excuse to charge people thousands of dollars for an "interconnect study" before allowing them to install a grid-tie system, which is totally bogus. It's essentially them making it more difficult/expensive to install solar, and when you do jump through that hoop, they get to extort a big chunk of money from you.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

Spoken by someone who truly does not understand how unstable an electric grid really is. If there is more power injected into the grid than there is demand very bad things happen.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[NoKaOi]

Spoken by someone who truly does not understand how unstable an electric grid really is. If there is more power injected into the grid than there is demand very bad things happen.

Spoken by someone who doesn't live in Hawaii. Here on Maui, an engineering study was done that showed the interconnect study requirement was unnecessary, and that what they charge for it is totally overblown. But because the members of the PUC are too busy getting blow jobs (presumably metaphorically) from HECO they won't do anything about it.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[fustakrakich]

All the excess can be used to pump the desalinated water over the mountains.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken by someone who truly does not understand how unstable an electric grid really is. If there is more power injected into the grid than there is demand very bad things happen.

It's amazing how many people think of managing the grid as a task not unlike using a potato and some electrodes to power a clock.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

References please.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

So you would have water on the other side of a mountain. What good would that do? Could't you just desalinate the water on that side of the mountain?

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

My point exactly. Managing the grid is very complex and adding a huge number of uncontrollable variable inputs does not make it any easier.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[thegarbz]

It's not just excess but rather electricity flows in the wrong direction. It's not an unsolvable problem. Quite the opposite, the problem and the solutions are well understood, but rather one that simply needs capital investment.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[DerekLyons]

Oh, c'mon, sense and facts to debunk a conspiracy theory? Where's your tinfoil and kool-aid man?

(Seriously, the scientific and engineering illiteracy rate here on Slashdot is staggering - even it weren't a site whose denizens pride themselves on being the exact opposite.)

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

So you would have water on the other side of a mountain. What good would that do? Could't you just desalinate the water on that side of the mountain?

Quite right. It's Hawaii, so instead of water they should use lava and forgo the expensive desalinization.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

Use The Google gramps.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[tomhath]

There are studies on both sides by groups with agendas. Pick the one you want to believe, but take them all with a big grain of salt.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[wisnoskij]

Why would anyone install solar on a volcanic active island where there is unlimited heat energy at ground level. It seems to me that Hawai should be powering half of America with its geothermal energy.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Chris Mattern]

It's up to the person making the claim to provide the references. If he does not, we are perfectly justified in assuming they are completely bogus.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, references please: what exactly is happening if you pump more energy into the grid then there is demand ... and how does it happen?

Your +4 insightful post, two posts back, is just bollocks.

I could tell you what happens but I guess it is more fun and educating for you to read up a bit ...

Fearmonger ... that would be a modding we need.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Chris Mattern]

The electric company wants to expand geothermal. There's considerable local opposition. Part of it is because the volcanism on Hawaii is very volatile--there's been incidents of accidentally releasing poisonous gas from the test facilities. Also there's religious issues--the volcanoes on Hawaii are sacred to a lot of the native population.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

Managing a grid is not complex at all.

Building up a new one or adding new plants takes some thinking. But thats it.

No idea why you post so many nonsense about grids and electric power.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, there is something to be said for doing some basic legwork on your own. People get frustrated at having to do that kind of thing for others.

Took me one search to find this study:

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57215.pdf

Here's another:

http://www.hnei.hawaii.edu/sites/dev.hnei.hawaii.edu/files/Task%202%20Reports%201%202%20%26%203%20web%20cvr.pdf

I'm sure there would be others.

That these grievances are really being expressed is also found at:

http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/559236/Study-requirements-for-solar-systems-frustrating-for-installers--homeowners.html?nav=10

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Chris Mattern]

On the other hand, there is something to be said for doing some basic legwork on your own.

On the main hand, there is nothing to be said for doing other people's legwork for them. It's not up to me to lift a finger to prove *your* point.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

Over supply is handled by increasing the frequency and therefore the power capacity of the power line. Increase the frequency too much and electrical units can have problems. If a piece of equipment is expecting 60Hz and is getting 65Hz or 70Hz it may be damaged.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

Managing a grid is not complex at all.

Do you have any references that back up that statement?

How about you do some reading on grid complexity. Managing a grid is very akin to juggling many different inputs and outputs so the supply closely matches the demand. Our electricity system only works in a very narrow range of voltage and frequency. Go outside of those parameters and failures occur.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

... Not just to increase the power capacity of the line. Much of the non-islanding technology in the inverters works by monitoring line noise and frequency. If the line gets noisy, it assumes the grid has gone down, and shuts down. If the frequency drifts too far from spec, it shuts down. If the grid shifts the frequency, they can essentially perform a forced remote shutdown of any attached solar inverters.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

On the main hand, there is nothing to be said for doing other people's legwork for them.

Probably why the suggestion above was to use the Google to look for the study, y'think?

Nobody is terribly interested in doing your legwork for an online forum.

You want to see a study? Look it up. Read it. Even if you are led to water, getting you to drink may be more trouble than it is worth.

It's not up to me to lift a finger to prove *your* point.

It's not up to me for my points (or anyone else's) to be proven to you, you could believe whatever you wanted regardless.

Much like the people in Hawaii contend is the case for their electric utility.

Sad. But hey, you could be a good candidate for the Supreme Court with that attitude.

They're demonstrating in full force the qualities of temperance and consideration that this country truly has at the very top.

Sad. It really is.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

Sigh ... you could do better than that.

Over supply is handled no, not handled ... it is a side effect happening automatically ... by increasing the frequency correct ... and therefore the power capacity of the power line wrong.

If a piece of equipment is expecting 60Hz and is getting 65Hz or 70Hz it may be damaged. True but extremely unlikely, especially as the frequency wont exceed 61 or 62 Hz. Parts of the grid above that frequency get automatically disconnected from the rest of the grid.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

99% of grid management is done automatically.

The other 1% is only questioning yourself if you rather buy power or produce it yourself.

I worked for grid and power companies ... so I have a pretty good idea about it.

Except for looking at the grid frequency and increase/decrease output of the plants connected to that part of the gird, you don't need to do much. All power plants connected to the grid (sub grid) have a specific role as in producing base power, load following or balancing power.

You know a day in advance which plant has to do what at a certain time in day, unless there is a malfunction. The only plants reacting in seconds are balancing power plants.

There is no complexity involved in that. However as the article you link implies: there is lots of options for improvement and to safe money.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

That is how the grid works now. What will happen of a large percentage no longer comes from dispatchable plants but instead from roof top PVs scattered all over the place?

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

Exactly the same ... either the PV plants disconnect themselves or the sub grid is disconnected from the main grid.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

I do not believe there is a way to remotely disconnect an individual hose from the grid.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

Here is an interesting quote from the first report;

Distributed PV contributes less variability to the grid, but it presents a challenge in high-penetration scenarios (in the absence of a smart grid) because of the inability of the utility to curtail its power production, which results in less flexibility for grid operators.

The study even admits it is incomplete

Although reliability challenges increase with increasing levels of variable
renewable generation, this study found those challenges are manageable from the standpoint of the bulk power system for the scenarios studied with the mitigation approaches recommended. Note that this study did not look at the capital costs for the higher renewable energy scenarios or the mitigation strategies. It also did not assess the integration issues at the distribution level of the power systems.

If you read that paper you will see that there are ways to integrate solar into the grid. The issue is that those methods require modifications and equipment to implement. How much will those changes cost? Who should pay for those changes?

The study even points toward the need for more studies;

The insights from the Hawaii Solar Integration Study form a large body of knowledge for future grid integration studies, and the results can be used to further our understanding of grid integration in other island systems as well as in mainland U.S. systems with high regional solar and wind penetrations.

The second article is about connecting three grids and little if anything about the impact of solar on the grid

The last article is a complaint and does not prove anything.
Here is the entire article;

Maui homeowners and photovoltaic system installers are expressing frustration at requirements that they pay for expensive "interconnection studies" before installing solar panels, with no guarantee that their project will be approved after the study is complete.

There is no reference to how much an interconnection study costs. Here is a better explanation about what an interconnection requirements study (IRS) is and what it is necessary in certain instances. An IRS looks into the local grid capacity to handle the input of electricity from the new installation and whether or not local upgrades would be required to accommodate it. Note that an IRS is only required when there is a lot of solar already on the local grid.

Note that the first two articles deal with much higher level grid issues and not local grids.

Look at the current policy from Hawaiian Electric. Notice that IRS's are only required if DML is >250%. They may be required at lower levels depending on the age and capability of the local grid.

I fail to see how any of this supports the statement that interconnect study requirement is unnecessary,

Sorry but posting a few links to article with the words "Hawaii", "grid" and "integration" is not research.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

Parts of the grid above that frequency get automatically disconnected from the rest of the grid.

Where do these disconnections take place? I would bet at a substation. If it is there then many houses would be effected by a disconnection.

You are looking at the grid like it is now with a few inputs and many drains. With few inputs it is simple to cut off the offenders. It is very different when thousands of small producers are added to the mix. With thousands of inputs it is much more difficult to cut of just the right ones.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

With thousands of inputs it is much more difficult to cut of just the right ones.
No it isn't. Every "input" is connected to the grid with safeguards to cut itself off in case of need.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

A "consuming" house not. But as soon as you have a power plant connected to the grid in your house, ofc it can be disconnected remotely!

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

No it isn't. Every "input" is connected to the grid with safeguards to cut itself off in case of need.

When thousands decide to cut themselves off at the same time there could be problems. There needs to be central control to decide who is cut off. That does not yet exist and will take time, technology and money to introduce.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

Do you have anything to back that up? As far as I know the connection to the grid from a net zero house is exactly the same as a consuming house.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

As far as I know the connection to the grid from a net zero house is exactly the same as a consuming house.
Do you have anything to back up this, sorry to say so: "brain dead idea"?
Did you even follow the discussion here on /.?
This article is full of posts about how complicated and how expensive the grid connection of a solar plant is.

Sorry, google is your friend. It is not my job to tell you the basics of _your legislation_ how a solar plant is connected to _your grid_

If you need something about how it is done in germany I can give you plenty of links ... in german though.

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

Arg ...

1) there are not thousands connected to the same sub grid
2) They wont decide to disconnect at the same time, how should they come to that conclusion?
3) No, we already have the internet. No special technology or money involved ...

The whole grid is already working with not much central control involved ... how difficult is it to grasp that a single plant connected to the grid only needs to do two things?
a: keep the feed-in in synch/phase with the grid frequency
b: decide if it is overproducing (by watching the grid frequency) and disconnecting if needed ???

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[jklovanc]

I am not talking about a high capacity solar plant. I am talking about a large numbers of houses with PVs on the roof which may or may not inject electricity into the grid. See the difference?

Re:Hawaiian Electric

[angel'o'sphere]

There is no difference.
They are connected in a way that they can disconnect automatically. Any other way is illegal. Even in your country.
Further if their yield exceedes a certain amount, and I assume that is already at the 5kW point, they have a real time link to the grid operator and can be disconnected remotely. That is how it is done in Europe, Imwould realy wonder if the USA would handle that differently, would not make any sense.

Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[grimJester]

The Tesla Battery's cost $13,000 would pay most people's electric bills outright over it's life.

The Tesla's battery is also 53, 70 or 85 kWh whereas the average household uses around 1 kW (kWh/h) and certainly can get by with a few kWh of storage to handle its overproduction of solar during a day.

In the end, it's just economics. Does solar + battery pay itself back in lowered electricity bills? If it does, nothing else matters.

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[Crashmarik]

From what I have seen the home battery is 15kwh.

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[FlyHelicopters]

The Tesla's battery is also 53, 70 or 85 kWh whereas the average household uses around 1 kW (kWh/h) and certainly can get by with a few kWh of storage to handle its overproduction of solar during a day.

You didn't read the article, did you?

For $13,000, you get a 10kWh battery. The average home is using 900kWh in a month, or 30 per day.

This battery would provide, on average, about 8 hours of power.

In the end, it's just economics. Does solar + battery pay itself back in lowered electricity bills? If it does, nothing else matters.

It doesn't, and that is the problem.

It can be kinda, sorta masked with enough rebates and government tax dollars to LOOK like it does, but it really doesn't. It is just taking money out of the left pocket and putting it in the right and nothing has changed.

Scale it up to a million home and those tax incentives would have to go away.

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[thogard]

I only use about 10 kwh a day. A 5 kw solar system is about $3600 plus inverter. The 10 kWh system complete with install and the 5 kw of panels would cost a bit less than $20k. I currently pay about $.22 a kwh plus about $1 a day just to have the grid there. The ROI is 16.6 years assuming no maintenance cost, interest or increase in grid costs assuming I can go fully off grid. It goes over 20 years if I still have to pay to have the grid hooked up (or some "grid goes by the house so pay" type fee)

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[aaarrrgggh]

And it's cost is twice what a lead acid solution could be made for. I priced a peak shaving battery for a commercial building, and we were looking at a cost of $300/kWh for the battery, and a savings over the 1,000 cycles of ...$250/kWh(B).

The big challenge for utilities is the 5/6-7/8PM time frame when solar production drops to near zero and lighting consumption goes up. Batteries are a good solution for time shifting noon-3PM production to this window. This will be economical when peak pricing shifts from 12-6PM to 1-7PM. It has already shifted one hour from 5 years ago. Unfortunately, this will make PV a worse payback.

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[Anonymous Coward]

you also assume taxpayers footing the subsidies, no degradation of the system and no interest, which might be valid today, but is a bad long-term perspective..

Re: Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I only use about 10Kwh a day

Then whatever you have to say is irrelevant

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[FlyHelicopters]

I only use about 10 kwh a day.

Then you are neither the problem nor the solution.

I use, on average, about 93 kWh per day. Even then my electric bill averages about $300 a month or $3,600 a year.

To pay for a $13,000 battery and a $13,000 solar panel system ($26K), I'd have to live here for... the rest of my life, to pay it back...

Really, the life of the system is lower than the payback period... It makes no sense.

I currently pay about $.22 a kwh plus about $1 a day just to have the grid there.

You pay twice as much per kWh as I do (11 cents) and you pay a LOT more for the monthly connection (I pay about $5 a month for it).

So if the numbers don't really make sense for you, imagine how stupid they are for me?

Like I said, this simply makes no financial sense. Unless they can get the cost way down. If they can, we can revisit the numbers.

Re:Tesla battery also far larger than needed

[thogard]

Then you are neither the problem nor the solution.

Oddly enough though, I am the market.

I expect my numbers are right on the sweet spot for a 10 kWh system. Large battery systems should help but most of the rest of the costs will scale linearly with maybe a 10% drop at 4 times the size.

So if the numbers don't really make sense for you, imagine how stupid they are for me?

My power generator will sell me power for $.025 a kwh under a contract. The rest of the $.22 is the grid, billing system, peak cost overruns and taxes so I don't see this a an electricty generation problem but more of a middleman problem and those tend to get worse as time goes on. I expact that since the grid goes past the house that in 30 years I'll get an electricty bill for about $100/mo (in todays dollars) even if I'm not cnnected.

Pumped Hydro Storage

[joelholdsworth]

They should be build a pumped hydro storage system - like Dinorwig in Wales. These installations are so simple - I don't know why they're not more common.

Re:Pumped Hydro Storage

[Chrisq]

They should be build a pumped hydro storage system - like Dinorwig in Wales. These installations are so simple - I don't know why they're not more common.

They are very simple where you have an abundant supply of water and suitable hills or mountains. In other places not so much

Re:Pumped Hydro Storage

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be build a pumped hydro storage system - like Dinorwig in Wales. These installations are so simple - I don't know why they're not more common.

They are simple in Wales and Scotland because you have lots of adjacent valleys with different heights. So you can tunnel between the valleys to provide the vertical drop. A lot of countries do not have such suitable geology.

Re:Pumped Hydro Storage

[tomhath]

The generating station at Niagara Falls is a better example. But pumped water requires a big reservoir and lots of excess generation capacity to be worthwhile. It doesn't make sense on a small scale.

Re:Pumped Hydro Storage

[Anonymous Coward]

like this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_Station#Upper_reservoir_failure

Re:Pumped Hydro Storage

[eric_harris_76]

Also, sometimes there are problems. Taum Sauk in Missouri, for instance.

A lot of water, up high, has a lot of potential energy. (That is the idea, after all.) If it bypasses the turbines due to an accident, there can be a lot of, um, "erosion".

More 'Climatedot' bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of reading about 'climate change' on this site. There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', and renaming it 'climate change', which doesn't mean anything like the same thing, doesn't make it any more real.
This is just another stupid article trying to push the bullshit of 'climate change' on us.

Re:More 'Climatedot' bullshit

[dave420]

Either you are wrong or all the evidence is wrong. I wonder which is more likely? If you have some evidence of your own, go present it and get your Nobel prize!

Re:More 'Climatedot' bullshit

[Crashmarik]

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

BTW you are also wrong about the Nobel, Seeing as AL Gore got it for making statements that even the climate nuts won't claim as their own anymore, the best way is not to have evidence but just make stuff up.

Nature NEEDS batteries everywhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

More refined heavy metal in landfills and ghost towns is good for mother nature!

Re:Nature NEEDS batteries everywhere!

[Neil Boekend]

Indeed. However, when we increase the use of batteries the price of lithium will go up as a result. That almost inevitably causes investment in lithium battery recycling.
No need to put the used batteries in landfills. Soon we'll be digging the ones already in there out to make new batteries.

Whining incumbents

[Anonymous Coward]

Storage is good. No question. And in terms of efficiency, having distributed storage next to generation makes a lot of sense.

But this talk about a "bidirectional load" is just whining incumbents trying "law engineering" before real engineering to solve their (revenue) problems.

As long as it makes more financial sense, they'll chose the law engineering thing instead of doing their *fucking job*.

Sure, there's a bit of distributed control in there, and if you have some local overproduction capacity, you might have to choose to not realize it (you don't run a gas-electrical power plant at 100% if there's no demand either -- with photovoltaics that's even easier). Simple, straight engineering, nothing else.

Bidirectional load, my ass. What's their line made of, diodes?

Band-Aids Won't Work

[some old guy]

The entire distribution grid needs to re-engineered and rebuilt from the ground up. Hare-brained politically/financially-driven motivated patch schemes are like applying kluges to legacy code; yeah it might work for awhile, but eventually you'll need a newer system. Why buy buckets and plugs for a leaky boat when you need a new boat?

Re:Band-Aids Won't Work

[EmagGeek]

There will never be anything other than a politically-motivated, secret back-room solution to any problem. Solutions will be chosen based upon who benefits, not upon whether they are actual solutions.

This is the world we live in where the incompetent shitbags float to the top and ends up in Washington while the competent people remain trying to do competent things in the face of an endless stream of policy waste from those same shitbags.

Re:Band-Aids Won't Work

[some old guy]

Concur.

Re:Band-Aids Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the buckets and plugs are cheap, and the new boat is expensive, and if you buy the expensive things now, you don't have anything left over for pork.

Just need dispatchable electricity generation

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the answer for load balancing renewable electricity will be dispatchable coal power plants, with some flywheel energy storage for sudden changes in generation. Yes, turning coal power plants on and off will shorten the lifespan of parts of the power plant, and no one has tried to make a dispatchable coal power plant, but electricity storage is expensive, and coal is cheap.

Use excess power to synthesize diesel

[hackertourist]

Hawaii would be a good fit for the system outlined in this recent story.

Install enough renewables to have a large excess of power, and use the excess to generate diesel fuel and alleviate Hawaii's high fuel prices.

Why this whole article is pie in the sky bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't enough lead in the world to build lead acid batteries to achieve enough storage. There isn't enough lithium either, nor enough nickel. This guy's a physicist who has genuinely "done the math":

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/

As for pumped storage, that's even more laughable:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/

Before assuming that we can produce simple fixes like this it's important to look at the limits of the planet we live upon. A future where we use sustainable energy will have to be a future where that energy is mostly used when it is abundant and where rather less is used when it is not abundant.

10 kWh home battery = the roadster

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla started out with the Roadster, aimed at rich enthusiasts, to get their technology to market and improve their designs. This is probably the same approach. In 2020, the home battery might cost 2000$ for a 20 kWh battery. With solar panel prices falling around 50% every 2 years, things will start to become interresting for ordinary people.

Massachusetts did ot shut down Cape Wind

[hhammermill]

Massachusetts did ot shut down Cape Wind. Cape Wind is delayed because rich people on Cape Cod launched endless lawsuits because it would affect their view from their private compunds (even thought it was to be 4.8 miles off th coast).

It was so bad that the judge even commented on it: "There comes a point at which the right to litigate can become a vexatious abuse of the democratic process."

This dried up Cape Wind's financing which lead to National Grid and NStar pulling their power purchase agreements.

Arguing off-shore wind on its technical merits or detractors that is useful; spreading misinformation is not.

Worlds Biggest Utility Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to inject some verifiable facts. Golden Valley Electric in Alaska has a battery built by ABB installed in Fairbanks, AK

The battery is rated at 26 MW for 15 minutes, or 40 MW for 7 minutes. The price is reported to be $35 million.

My calculator says that same energy could be spread to 1/3 MW for 14 hours.

http://www09.abb.com/global/scot/scot232.nsf/veritydisplay/3c4e15816e4a7bf1c12578d100500565/$file/Case_Note_BESS_GVEA_Fairbanks-web.pdf

http://www.gvea.com/energy/bess

Re:Worlds Biggest Utility Battery

[jeffb (2.718)]

Okay, 26 MW for 15 min is about about 6.5 MWh, ignoring load scaling (total capacity tends to be higher if you don't draw it as quickly). $35 million for 6.5 MWh is about $5.40 per watt-hour.

The Tesla battery is 10KWh, with an initial retail price of $13K. That's $1.30 per watt hour, less than a quarter the price you quote for the ABB battery.

Does this mean the Tesla solution's cost is 1/4 that of the ABB solution? Hard to say. Building something at the ABB scale, with reliability guarantees suitable for a utility, surely adds expense. On the other hand, mass-production leads to economies of scale that ABB probably won't ever enjoy.

Thanks for the links!

Sterilization events

[mpercy]

Biosphere One, as you call it, has sustained several nearly sterilizing events in its 4.5B year history, not to mention that it was uninhabitable for about the first 1B years or so. The planet will go on after the human virus has died out, even if humans take 99% of all other current species with them.

Now, that's not to say it's a good idea to go about defiling the planet as you describe, but just to place some perspective on it. Humans are a mere speck on this big ol' rock, and said rock is insensate and does not need to be "preserved".

Are humans as a species stupid enough to wipe themselves out as you describe? Probably. Good riddance, then.

Re:Sterilization events

[Neil Boekend]

The fact that dear old Earth will keep spinning if all humans die does not mean I won't fight tooth and nail to prevent global man made catastrophes.
Laziness means I won't fight tooth and nail to prevent global man made catastrophes.

Re:Why this whole article is pie in the sky bullsh

[Punko]

The math in your example was to build a battery for the entire US to carry it for 7 days, including all transportation costs (air, rail, automobile) as electricity. I think that it is very safe to say that this oversizes the battery requirements for even a North American grid by one, if not two orders of magnitude. 7 days without any baseload generation, 7 days over the entire US without any sunshine, wind, hydroelectric flow, is simply an unreasonable target.

OR

[azav]

Use compressed air storage or large water reservoirs where water is pumped between levels and energy is regenerated by hydro generators when it flows back down.

These are established technologies.

Re:OR

[drinkypoo]

These are established technologies.

Yes, and the former is horribly lossy while the latter has significant environmental impact, and as such is only suitable for limited sites. Established doesn't mean good, or shall we slap a slave collar around your neck and send you down a diamond mine?

Antiquated grid and bidirectional load?

[DougPaulson]

"As more photovoltaic panels are installed on rooftops around the nation, an antiquated power grid is being overburdened by a bidirectional load its was never engineered to handle. The Hawaiian Electric Company, for example, said it's struggling with electricity "backflow" that could destabilize its system"

This doesn't make sense, the grid copes with bidirectional loads all the time. Where a generator is producing excessive power, it's redistributed into the surrounding grid. Where a local generator is maxed out, then more power is drawn into from the surrounding grid. I think what's really bugging the electric companies is that with more people generating their own electricity, the power companies are generating less revenue.

Yet Another State Threatens to Penalize Solar Power Users

Oklahoma Will Charge Customers Who Install Their Own Solar Panels

Re:Antiquated grid and bidirectional load?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Depending on how you want to look at it there are 2 or 3 types of networks on the grid depending on perspective.

On way is by looking at the transmission grid and distribution grid. On the transmission grid where you see high voltage lines and generators and power flows both directions withing this network. You are correct in this respect. The problem arises on the distribution network side where instead of high voltage lines and generators you have customers and low voltage stuff. Here things are basically designed to flow one way, which is to the consumers.

The other way of looking at it is with 3 networks being high, medium, and low voltage. With this view things get a little more interesting as there can be bidirectional power flow within each level but it becomes problematic when it is between levels.

With either view of the power grid it really isn't too big of a problem* if you or a few nearby people are providing excess power that your neighbors are using as you are all on the same substation that is fed with medium or high voltage lines and provides you with your nice low voltage power. The problem is that if too many of you are feeding power back into the grid it may outstrip demand and now instead of that substation taking power from the medium voltage network it now is trying to push power up into the medium voltage network. This is not what the current grid was designed for and the equipment at the substation while it can do it doesn't do it well. The same thing can happen between the medium voltage and high voltage networks although it is rarer but has happened. This also ignores the grid management aspect of things which is all in software and is basically a traveling salesman problem solved as best as it can be continuously.

These are not unsolvable problems but instead are engineering ones that people are working on. Companies are already designing better switch gear, beakers, transformers, etc to handle bidirectional traffic. The modeling, management , and market applications are being developed to handle many more points as well as having them be bidirectional. Granted these now require substantially more computing power but technology has progressed where getting that computational heft isn't an issue.

*The one issue you have with large scale intermittent distributed power (rooftop PV) is what I like to call the rouge cumulus cloud. It is a nice sunny day and he decides to blow in over your neighborhood, and then out. All of a sudden your local substation goes from pumping power out to sucking it down, then back to pumping it out. It doesn't even have to be this severe, just going from low draw, to high draw, back to low draw presents similar although not as severe problems.This is murder on equipment and a real bitch to deal with from a grid management perspective. To prevent this some local grid level storage at the substation would help to level the load making it much easier to deal with. So again not an impossible problem but an engineering one.

Our local generator has three huge batteries

[EmagGeek]

Our local nuclear station has three enormous batteries that hold GWh of electricity for peak times. They are called Lakes Jocassee, Keowee, and Bad Creek.

During the night when the nuclear station generates excess power, water is pumped uphill through the succession of lakes. During the day, when peak demand hits, water flows downhill to generate extra power. It's efficient and relatively cheap to maintain over time.

The surfaces of Bad Creek (at the top) and Jocassee (in the middle) can fall tens of feet over the course of a few hours. Keowee (at the bottom) is maintained level as it is also the source of cooling water for the reactors.

It's a pretty cool system, and having the manmade lakes has generated billions in economic activity for the area in real estate, recreation, and tourism.

"Batteries... has the potential"?

[jeffb (2.718)]

They does?

Funny, I would've thought the Fark Nitpicking Patrol would have been full of early risers.

Re:"Batteries... has the potential"?

[Enigma2175]

They does?

Funny, I would've thought the Fark Nitpicking Patrol would have been full of early risers.

Why would the Fark Nitpicking Patrol be on Slashdot? Are there not enough typos on Fark to satisfy them? I know that can't be the case, there are thousands of man-hours of work just correcting misused apostophe's alone.

INVESTIGATE

[Anonymous Coward]

Any form of traditional energy generation or delivery is highly suspect now and anything claimed needs to be deeply studied by numerous investigators. Big energy is being beaten down by technology and there is so much money involved that anything they can do inside or outside the law will likely be tried. And somebody had best be thinking about freezing big energy profits to provide for the billions in clean up from the pollution they have created. For example just how do we restore rivers and creeks loaded with mercury from coal mining?

Re:Why this whole article is pie in the sky bullsh

[Bob the Super Hamste]

What about sodium and sulfur? those would seem to work for grid level storage and are actually being made and used currently even if not widely yet. Also that was a fairly silly assumption such as needing a battery to run the entire US for 7 days, but having a battery that could power 1/7th the US for a couple of days would probably be much more reasonable to avoid stuff like the Northeast blackout of 2003.

Well - since the price of battery packs decline

[kilodelta]

Just buy your own battery pack and cut off the grid connection completely. Problem solved. That's what I plan to do because National Grid is mostly bandits now - with double digit rate increases annually lately. They claim it's a natural gas shortage because there are only two pipelines in the state. I call bullshit because I know regular LNG shipments come in via big boats.

And the other problem with batteries...

[SirGeek]

For the grid there are reserve requirements (i.e. demand + 10%) in case a generator goes down and they need to pick up the slack.

Batteries are being integrated, but its slow. the ISOs/RTOs need to figure out how to incorporate them into their market systems (and how to pay people, etc.)

Accurate metering of the energy being put back into the grid, Accurate metering of the actual consumption from the grid, etc.. None of this is "trivial"

Economics

[PPH]

There are quite a few technologies being proposed to solve the energy storage for renewable sources problem. What needs to be addressed is: Who pays for it?

"Our antiquated grid" does just fine when we schedule power from producers with a commitment to produce or provide 'spinning reserve' in the event that they can't. That has been a part of the economic decision making process for decades that selected one source over another. But now, the renewables community is angling to push this part of the responsibility onto other entities. "You need batteries. We'll just sit here and generate when we feel like it."

Large Tesla battery quite useful

[John Bayko]

Having a large house battery has other uses, such as for power outages. But consider this: an electric car has a huge battery capacity, but can charge from mains at only a trickle. That's okay for a commuter where you charge overnight, but if you have heavy use (say, a moving weekend) you need to charge it faster. Having a battery that has a rapid charging connection to the car (like the stand-alone chargers) fixes that problem - park for half an hour, and you're ready to go with almost a full charge.

Re:Large Tesla battery quite useful

[FlyHelicopters]

Having a battery that has a rapid charging connection to the car (like the stand-alone chargers) fixes that problem - park for half an hour, and you're ready to go with almost a full charge.

While you're right, you miss the point.

You're asking Joe and Jane Consumer to go from a car that "recharges" in 5 min to one that, using a special supercharger, takes half an hour.

It also costs more and comes with the fun of range anxiety.

"Saving the planet" sounds nice and in polls, everyone cares about it, but when it comes down to the family car, you're going to find a level of resistance far beyond your imagination.

I asked my wife what she thought about this the other day, and her reply was, "I'll drive an EV when I don't have to worry about range and can recharge in 5 min anywhere".

She'll tell you, the vast majority of mothers driving their kids around aren't interested in even the CHANCE of being stuck on the side of the road.

When it comes down to personal safety and the safety of her kids vs. "saving the planet", rest assured that the planet comes in a VERY DISTANT second...

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like this entire article is based upon a misconception. Rooftop solar does not strain the grid. You aren't making excess power and forcing it backwards down wires that have nowhere to put it. Solar panels generate power only during the day, which happens to be the same time that people use the most power. If you're generating more power than your own house can consume, it will naturally flow to the nearest customers that are consuming. So rooftop solar actually reduces load on the grid, by lowing the amount of power that utilities have to generate during peak load hours, and by shortening the distance that they have to transmit it.

One Word.

[ah.clem]

Orbo.

NOT antiquated

[Anonymous Coward]

Find another word. This one doesn't fit. Our power systems are very much state-of-the-art. The fact that they are having trouble in the political arena does not make them antiquated. Until we have an alternative that is OBVIOUS TO ALL, this will continue to be a political problem. When a clear alternative finally becomes available, power systems will be ready for it.

WTF??

[WindBourne]

Lithium processing is envirinmentally damaging? You are obviously anothet fucking right winger without any science knowledge. processsing is cheap and clean.

Re:WTF??

[Crashmarik]

http://www.foeeurope.org/sites...

Friends of the earth disagrees with you.

Re-read your link

[WindBourne]

It is NOT the processing, but the mining of it. Places like Chile will use scarce water to turn it into a brine and then start the processing.
OTOH, Here in America, we are finding the lithium from heated brine solutions down below. In particular, we are bringing up brine solutions for geo-thermal electricity and then pulling the lithium out after the fact, and then re-injecting the cleaned up water back into the hole.
With this approach, there is NO mining, but instead, making use of an on-going process.

And yes, China, along with Europe, push for the DIRTY mining of Lithium. They are pretty bad, but they want it cheap.

Re:Re-read your link

[Crashmarik]

I'll let you split hairs about processing vs refining.

And yes, China, along with Europe, push for the DIRTY mining of Lithium. They are pretty bad, but they want it cheap.

If it isn't cheap it's not economical.

OTOH, Here in America, we are finding the lithium from heated brine solutions down below. In particular, we are bringing up brine solutions for geo-thermal electricity and then pulling the lithium out after the fact, and then re-injecting the cleaned up water back into the hole.

Which is why we don't have enough to supply our need.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/miner...

Here in America, we are recycling our lithium batteries. It is Europe that is dirty WRT to not recycling it. Sadly, Europe would rather scream about somethings, while ignoring the real damage that they do to the earth.

Nobody recycles batteries for the lithium. A small amount get recycled for cobalt That will change as the price of lithium rises, of course as that happens we are back to economics..

Re:Re-read your link

[WindBourne]

Such nonsense.

Nobody recycles batteries for the lithium. A small amount get recycled for cobalt That will change as the price of lithium rises, of course as that happens we are back to economics..

And yet, the total batteries are being recycled as we speak here in America.
Here is more.

Which is why we don't have enough to supply our need.

Sadly, again, you have no real knowledge of science, or what is going on. You took something from several years ago, which is predicated on PROVED RESERVOIRS that want to be acknowledged. Yet, it is wrong.
Now, go look up Simbol Mining Corp. Simbol is going to feed Tesla, which is working on a factory that will MORE THAN DOUBLE CURRENT LITHIUM ION PRODUCTION. Now, that is just 1 company that will be providing all this.
In addition, for the future Here is more.
You just have to read a bit, rather than as little as possible. In addition, stay up on your science.

Finally, as to being cheap/economical, it is regularly about scale, not about process. Bolivia and Chile are pushed by Europe to be dirty, but, Tesla will be looking for more than what Bolivia, Chile, China, and Australia put out together, THIS YEAR. And considering that it will come from America (and Canada), that will increase the scale. Finally, as Tesla gears up, Simbol's will also expand outwards to other geothermal units.

BTW

[WindBourne]

Here in America, we are recycling our lithium batteries. It is Europe that is dirty WRT to not recycling it. Sadly, Europe would rather scream about somethings, while ignoring the real damage that they do to the earth.

Try to learn how to read

[Crashmarik]

My steatement

Nobody recycles batteries for the lithium. A small amount get recycled for cobalt

your link

The Umicore battery recycling technology
“Product” is comprised of an alloy that’s refined into cobalt, nickel and other metals

And exactly why

http://www.altenergystocks.com...

Battery Chemistry
        Metal Value Per Ton
Lithium cobalt oxide $25,000
Lead acid $1,400
Lithium iron phosphate $400
Lithium manganese $300

The batteries aren't being recycled for the lithium.

Hope you didn't put too much of your money in Tesla

So obvious it has escaped the Grid operators

[pebear]

You would have thought that this was such an obvious answer that someone would have come up with this solution a long time ago. Also batteries can act as a buffer just in case of spikes too. The batteries can protect the grid from energy spikes. Now the big question is: Who is going to pay for all these batteries? I plan on adding batteries to my solar cell installation but why should I pay for grid upgrades when those bastards have been and still are over charging me. Northeast Utilities, now Eversource got a rate increase from the State of CT in a year that fuel prices have been at low levels, so low we have not seen cheap fuel in decades yet they convinced the CT DPUC board to hike the rates. They are claiming poverty because of all the solar cell installations. Bastards...

Good Grief

[metaforest]

Rarely have I ever seen this much stupid in a single thread on /.
Good job on that.