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Old 12-05-2018, 04:30 PM   #41
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Well, that's a 60 page document that seems to be focused on costs of short term storage to help utilities manage their grids.

No, it's a report on the current state and economic viability of several use cases today for battery storage.


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Maybe I missed it, I got through the first ~ 8 pages, then did searching on "hour" and "day", and I only saw some refs to 4 hours of storage. That's a short night!

That's for a profitable operation in Australia where batteries do peak shaving. What you see here is that these applications are cost effective today, and elsewhere in the report you see the cost trend coming down pretty fast, double digits per annum.


Project it out and batteries are becoming a good alternative to get us through the night. Not today at cost parity, but certainly in a decade at current trends. In some other areas solar concentrating with storage does go through the night (not in the USA). It's a really interesting report if you want to understand what storage is doing and where it is having an impact.

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Yes, "Seasons remain a tough one". That's important, many of us live in a 4-season climate. Solution?
In the short term 100%? None. Pushing to 85% is at current cost trends no issue. Beyond that is in the realm of possible, but we're going to need those 30 years.
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:15 PM   #42
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Was there an answer in there somewhere?

I'm not sure what a "Chinese hoax" has to do with the question. We were not questioning the motivation or if we should do it (though we should, but it is a separate question), we were asking how we could do it.

OK, no silver bullet - agreed.

What series of actions? Again, what is your (reality-based) proposal to get to 100% RE?

-ERD50
Did I owe you an answer? No, I didn't, so knock off the cyber bullying crap. In fact, my mistake was taking you off my ignore list.
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:28 PM   #43
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How many years before your I phone batteries stop holding a charge

Coal & Nuclear are the best energy solution available.

Coal cost something like $0.05 KW to produce, and with the latest in stack scrubbing technology has greatly reduced the smog effect of the 70's. The cost of regulation and security drives the cost of nuclear, so there are ways to cost down that solution.

My last check of solar, several years ago before the Chines dumping, had a 10+ year pay back; at 100% efficiency! Even in Florida and Arizona, there aren't 365 days a year of sun.

We shuttered a rebuilt coal plant near my house a few years ago. Before it was shuttered it was providing 35%+ of the power in the region.

Pull the subsidies for Solar & Wind and it is like a fart in the wind.
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:35 PM   #44
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I don't think that there is a silver bullet, but rather a series of actions that need to be done in coordination, worldwide. The first step is a recognition that we are not dealing with "a Chinese hoax" and that an honest, all hands approach is necessary. We went into WWII flying prop planes and came out with jets and nuclear power. A similar urgent effort could advance energy production, management and reduce energy use.
IIRC, that was tried as part of the Stimulus Package of the prior Admin. One of the leading benefactors was a little company named Solyndra.

I also desire a transition away from fossil fuels, but prefer a market based approach with some expertise and regulatory guidance from GovCo. But no more throwing borrowed taxpayer money at a problem. Hybrid and electric cars made it to market due largely to consumer demand. Same thing is occurring with solar. That's my preferred approach. YMMV!
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:40 PM   #45
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IIRC, that was tried as part of the Stimulus Package of the prior Admin. One of the leading benefactors was a little company named Solyndra...........
Oh give me a break. An all hands approach would be like the Manhattan Project.
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:44 PM   #46
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Did I owe you an answer? No, I didn't, so knock off the cyber bullying crap. In fact, my mistake was taking you off my ignore list.
Well, if you don't want to take part in the discussion, don't.

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Old 12-05-2018, 05:56 PM   #47
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Oh give me a break. An all hands approach would be like the Manhattan Project.

I guess we're in violent agreement. ~$38 billion for renewable energy was in the stimulus bill.


Wikipedia
The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (about $22 billion in 2016 dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons.
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Old 12-05-2018, 06:17 PM   #48
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Something feels off here - Range of the Tesla3 with 75 battery is claimed to be about 310 miles. Would a car like the Tesla 3 get 100mpg on propane? is it that electric use is more efficient than propane use?

How about storing solar energy via molten salt?
I checked and checked my arithmetic, and the data on different Web sites on the energy density of propane. Yes, 75 kWh is equivalent to 2.80 gal of propane. Electric motors are very efficient. Too bad lithium batteries are still expensive, else they would solve a lot of problems.

About using molten salt for thermal energy storage, there's a solar plant called Solana in Gila Bend, about 80 miles southwest of Phoenix, using this technology. There are many other plants like it in the world, and of larger capacities. They use a salt mixture that melts at temperatures as low as 268F, but kept heated up as high as 1000F with solar concentrators. The heat is used to turn water to steam to drive turbines.

The Solana is said to have enough heat storage to run for a few hours after sunset. A plant in Spain achieved a record of running 24 hrs/day for 36 days.

Sounds pretty good, but the technology is not as widely adopted as one would think. Perhaps complexity, building cost, and maintenance cost are detractors.
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Old 12-05-2018, 06:20 PM   #49
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About cars, yes electric motors are more efficient than combustion engines.

But when it comes to heating your home in the middle of winter, a 75 kWh battery stores just as much heat as 2.8 gal of propane, but the energy container is a lot more expensive with electricity.

So, we can beat the EV vs. ICE debate to death, but comes winter, it is hard to heat your home without burning something.

Of course in the mild winter here in the Southwest, we have the advantage of using heat pumps to gain several times the heat that electricity can deliver. People in Minnesota are SOL.
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Old 12-05-2018, 06:36 PM   #50
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And speaking of electricity usage, I used to feel bad about being an "energy hog" living in the Southwest, where the AC runs nearly all day in the summer, even through the night. And for 2 years in a row, my highest 24-hour consumption hit 100 kWh. That happened when the high hit 120+F.

But that 100 kWh/day consumption happens only for a few days in a year. Other times of the year, it can be as low as 20 kWh/day. My consumption over the last 12 months is 16,159 kWh, for a home of 2,800 sq.ft. with a large swimming pool, using electricity for everything including cooking and heating.

How does the above compare to people living in other states? Just looked it up, and found that the average Midwest household uses 766.4 gal of heating oil each year. That's equivalent to 31,200 kWh. That's double my electricity usage. And that is just for heating oil, as they also use electricity, and perhaps gas too. Yikes! And the average Midwest home is probably smaller than 2,800 sq.ft.

Now, living in the desert does not sound so bad anymore.
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Old 12-05-2018, 07:05 PM   #51
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Might have got caught in the updates, I started before dinner...

Quote:
Originally Posted by NW-Bound View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by calmloki
Something feels off here - Range of the Tesla3 with 75 battery is claimed to be about 310 miles. Would a car like the Tesla 3 get 100mpg on propane? is it that electric use is more efficient than propane use?
I checked and checked my arithmetic, and the data on different Web sites on the energy density of propane. Yes, 75 kWh is equivalent to 2.80 gal of propane. Electric motors are very efficient. Too bad lithium batteries are still expensive, else they would solve a lot of problems..
I'm sure your arithmetic is right, I'm so confident I'm not even going to double check it. The apparent discrepancy is in how the numbers are applied.

Yes electric motors are very efficient at taking energy from the battery and getting it to the wheels ( ~ 90%). The missing link in the above arithmetic is - electric motors don't run on propane!

So feed the propane to a gas turbine to run a generator to make the electricity, and you might get 30% out as electric energy. Then lose ~ 8% in transmission, and maybe 15% in charging the battery, and 90% motor eff. So the new arithmetic is:

assuming 2.8G of propane = 75 kWh,

edit - messed up my math, will return.... OK, 3nd try....

(75kWh ⋅ 0.3 ⋅ 0.92 ⋅ 0.85 ) ~ 17.6 kwH into battery

At 75 kWh and 310 miles per charge, we get 0.242 kw/mile

So 17.6 kwH into battery gets us ~ 72.7 miles on 2.8 G of propane, and that is ~ 26 mpg. Or about 52 mpg if you could count on using a Combined Cycle turbine ~ 60% efficiency. So probably in between, call it 39~40?

Best case for the Tesla is not too impressive compared to a modern hybrid, worst case, many cars blow the Tesla away in efficiency.

OK, we do need to account for refining and delivering gasoline to the gas station. IIRC, I've seen 6 kWh of energy (not electricity! much of comes from burning waste from the refining process itself). I'll see if I can find that number, but i it's 10% of the delivered BTU or kWh, just multiply the ICE/hybrid mpg by 0.9 - still good.

Not counting other losses in the EV, like standby, heat, AC, etc. Not sure those are included in the EPA range #'s. So that would even things up a bit anyhow.

And it looks like NW-Bound's arithmetic on propane kWh was correct - I knew it would be

-ERD50
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Old 12-05-2018, 08:16 PM   #52
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I thought that this was going to be another health related thread!
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Smart Grid
Old 12-05-2018, 08:44 PM   #53
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Smart Grid

I can't speak for other regions, but California is in dire need of " Smart Grid " implementation, and that is not an easy thing to do. I have contacts at CALISO ( The state grid operator) and at So Cal Edison. Mismatches of load and small scale solar production is causing lots of problems and it gets worse by the day. For instance, some of the desert areas have had outages from wild power fluctuation minute by minute when fast moving clouds move in and out Battery storage would help but would need to be remotely controlled to stabilize local grids. . Edison is trying to deal with it.

Lack of coordination and sensible regulation, the state is to blame IMO.

CALISO has always been a day late and dollar short from the time they were created with de-regulation in the late 1990's. They also fell square into ENRON'S shenanigans in 2000.

This is a first, me sticking up for So Cal Edison.

Rant over, for now.
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Some truth to the people who think we can be 100% renewable
Old 12-05-2018, 08:56 PM   #54
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Some truth to the people who think we can be 100% renewable

Took me awhile to get up the nerve to open this thread. I thought it was a soylent green reference.
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Old 12-06-2018, 01:01 AM   #55
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When one of my engineering society journals did a technology forecast for renewables and reducing greenhouse gases, they used the word "miracles" instead of technological advances.
This response to the hyped miracles sounded pretty realistic:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/env...n-technologies
Articles from IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) or MIT Technology Review are written by engineers for engineers. They contain more facts that laymen do not bother with. It's the same thing with medicine. The public is a lot more optimistic about the cures for cancer than the medical experts that I have read.

The article points out the source of the optimism the public has on technology; people expect that the advances in electronics would find parallels in other fields.

But just because we could double the number of transistors on a chip every few years, that does not mean we could also double the yield of crop, or the capacity of lithium batteries the same way, or extend human life at the same fantastic rate.

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... Human beings have always sought innovation. The more recent phenomenon is this willingness to suspend disbelief. Credit this change to the effect that the electronics revolution has had on our perceptions of what is possible. Since the 1960s, there has been an extraordinarily rapid growth in the number of electronic components that we can fit onto a microchip. That growth, known as Moore’s Law, has led us to expect exponential improvements in other fields...
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Old 12-06-2018, 01:46 AM   #56
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I can't speak for other regions, but California is in dire need of " Smart Grid " implementation, and that is not an easy thing to do. I have contacts at CALISO ( The state grid operator) and at So Cal Edison. Mismatches of load and small scale solar production is causing lots of problems and it gets worse by the day. For instance, some of the desert areas have had outages from wild power fluctuation minute by minute when fast moving clouds move in and out Battery storage would help but would need to be remotely controlled to stabilize local grids. . Edison is trying to deal with it.

Lack of coordination and sensible regulation, the state is to blame IMO.

CALISO has always been a day late and dollar short from the time they were created with de-regulation in the late 1990's. They also fell square into ENRON'S shenanigans in 2000.

This is a first, me sticking up for So Cal Edison.

Rant over, for now.
Didn't California just mandate residential solar for all new homes?

Sounds like a good deal for companies like Tesla who makes residential battery storage system. When the grid goes banana with fluctuating solar power due to cloud cover moving in/out, the state will also have to mandate grid management using batteries. Ka ching!
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Old 12-06-2018, 03:28 AM   #57
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Took me awhile to get up the nerve to open this thread. I thought it was a soylent green reference.
When the black gooey stuff runs out, we are next.
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Old 12-06-2018, 05:26 AM   #58
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and yet, when I watch Monday Night Football, the blimp shots of whatever city they are playing in, show every window of every skyscraper in the metropolitan area lit up like a big Christmas Tree.
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Old 12-06-2018, 06:02 AM   #59
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I tend to believe in today's world there is no such thing as truth. Just opinions .
Ok I think you are wrong...
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Old 12-06-2018, 07:58 AM   #60
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Posted by Totoro Wish granted?


http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/j...SStatesWWS.pdf
I'll take a look at your links later, I gotta run. But off the top of my head, I recall a rebuttal to the Jacobson paper.

I'm skeptical, as I said, I keep up on this, have discussions with experts on technical forums. I'll read your links with an open mind, but I'll be very surprised if there is any 'there' there. At least if we are talking near 100% RE in the next 20~30 years.

-ERD50
Wish not granted.

Here's the critique from NAS I was think of regarding the Jacobson paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/26/6722.full.pdf

Quote:
Jacobson et al. [Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA, Cameron MA, Frew BA (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(49):15060–15065] argue that it is feasible to provide “low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of WWS [wind, water and solar power] across all energy sectors in the continental United States between 2050 and 2055”, with only electricity and hydrogen as energy carriers.

In this paper, we evaluate that study and find significant short- comings in the analysis. In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.[

The system in ref. 11 assumes the availability of multiweek energy storage systems that are not yet proven at scale and deploys them at a capacity twice that of the entire United States’ generating and storage capacity today


.....It is not difficult to match instantaneous energy demands for all purposes with variable electricity generation sources in real time as needed to assure reliable power supply if one assumes, as the authors of the ref. 11 do, that there exists a nationally integrated grid, that most loads can be flexibly shifted in time, that large amounts of multiweek and seasonal energy storage will be readily available at low cost, and that the entire economy can easily be electrified or made to use hydrogen. However, adequate support for the validity of these assumptions is lacking. ....
This reminds me of much of the work done by the guy at Rocky Mountain Institute ( Hunter Lovins), basically, if we just claim that any/all problems and objections are solved, it's easy!


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