Some truth to people who think we can be 100% renewable

[explanade]

There was a recent article in the NY Times about a resurgence of coal around the world.

It wasn't due to "base load" concerns but the fact that a lot of developing countries like India and Vietnam saw it as the easiest, cheapest way to get reliable power for economic development.

So there's a lot of coal-based power generating plants being planned. The Japanese are helping Southeastern Asia build new coal plants. They're looking to get a return but I guess they're also influenced by Fukushima.

In any event, babies born from now on will have some kind of retirement planning to do. Having enough money to be able to migrate away from areas prone to flooding, maybe disrupted potable water supplies, etc.

[morriss003]

Almost all those who say we can reach 100% renewables do not live in 3rd world countries.

[eroscott]

This 'documentary' was really impressive. It was a $3 rental when my family and I watched it last year. So so well worth it. It includes David Letterman (India) and Cicily Strong (Nevada and Florida).

David Letterman opened some doors in who he was able to talk to. The parts about rural India were stunning.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eroscott Quote: http://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big...g-trips-70003/ The Tesla big battery is having a big impact on Australia’s electricity market, far beyond the South Australia grid where it was expected to time shift a small amount of wind energy and provide network services and emergency back-up in case of a major problem. Last Thursday, one of the biggest coal units in Australia, Loy Yang A 3, tripped without warning at 1.59am, with the sudden loss of 560MW and causing a slump in frequency on the network. What happened next has stunned electricity industry insiders and given food for thought over the near to medium term future of the grid, such was the rapid response of the Tesla big battery to an event that happened nearly 1,000km away. Even before the Loy Yang A unit had finished tripping, the 100MW/129MWh had responded, injecting 7.3MW into the network to help arrest a slump in frequency that had fallen below 49.80Hertz. Data from AEMO (and gathered above by Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College) shows that the Tesla big battery responded four seconds ahead of the generator contracted at that time to provide FCAS (frequency control and ancillary services), the Gladstone coal generator in Queensland. ...

I don't understand something.

Yes, a backup battery bank consisting of just lithium battery and electronics can respond extremely fast, compared to various mechanical means of electricity generation which involves rotating parts, which need time to spin up. So, what is new here?

But despite its speed of response, can the Tesla battery really shoulder the load? It was rated at 100MW, while the coal plant that went down suddenly was 560MW. And the storage capacity of the Tesla battery is 129MWh, which means it can provide its rated 100MW for only 1.29 hours or 77 min. And when it is depleted, it will draw from the grid to recharge itself.

We will need much larger and more expensive banks of lithium batteries before they can really provide for long periods. That of course does not mean that they are not useful for shorter transient loads. It's the case of different technologies complementing each other.

We are still a long way from RE+storage replacing thermal and nuclear plants.

[eroscott]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound I don't understand something. Yes, a backup battery bank consisting of just lithium battery and electronics can respond extremely fast, compared to various mechanical means of electricity generation which involves rotating parts, which need time to spin up. So, what is new here? But despite its speed of response, can the Tesla battery really shoulder the load? It was rated at 100MW, while the coal plant that went down suddenly was 560MW. And the capacity of the Tesla battery is 129MWh, which means it can provide its rated 100MW for only 1.29 hours or 77 min. And when it is depleted, it will draw from the grid to recharge itself. We will need much larger and more expensive banks of lithium batteries before they can really provide for long periods. That of course does not mean that they are not useful for shorter transient loads. It's the case of different technologies complementing each other. We are still a long way from RE+storage replacing thermal and nuclear plants.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-bi...g-trips-70003/

Quote:

The Tesla big battery is having a big impact on Australia’s electricity market, far beyond the South Australia grid where it was expected to time shift a small amount of wind energy and provide network services and emergency back-up in case of a major problem.

These early ones are really proof of concept on a 'small' scale. These can be scaled as needed. That is what you are missing. This started off in a conversation on Twitter and given 100 days. (Of course a lot of prep was done so 100 days is just a highlevel idea that these are not multi-year projects). https://www.afr.com/news/tesla-batte...social_twitter

[CaptTom]

Because of the way electricity is bought and sold, there's a lot of money in being able to stabilize the grid for very short periods.

This is where the power companies are getting familiar with storage technologies. Right now there's no sure bet on longer-term, utility-scale storage in most places, so there's not much investment there.

Probably where we'll see that first is in residences. Think Tesla's "Power Wall." It'll be most economical in off-grid applications, but it's already moving closer to mainstream.

[eroscott]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptTom Because of the way electricity is bought and sold, there's a lot of money in being able to stabilize the grid for very short periods. This is where the power companies are getting familiar with storage technologies. Right now there's no sure bet on longer-term, utility-scale storage in most places, so there's not much investment there. Probably where we'll see that first is in residences. Think Tesla's "Power Wall." It'll be most economical in off-grid applications, but it's already moving closer to mainstream.

There are 3 main areas from my research and presentations I've seen. Some companies I follow are doing the 2nd one. 2nd graphic are examples of it.
1) Residential
2) Commercial
3) Utilities


____________________
Commercial examples

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eroscott ... These early ones are really proof of concept on a 'small' scale. These can be scaled as needed. That is what you are missing. This started off in a conversation on Twitter and given 100 days. (Of course a lot of prep was done so 100 days is just a highlevel idea that these are not multi-year projects)...

No, I don't think I am missing anything.

Tesla had already had a design, and the 100 days was just for them to transport and install multiple units to Australia.

As for scaling it up, in another thread I showed some numbers, but have not been able to find them again. But these are not hard to look up, so I just did it again.

Take for example Los Angeles County. In 2017, it used 67,569 GWh. That's the capacity of 523,790 Tesla 129MWh battery plants. If we just want to store 1-day's worth, we still need 1,435 plants to store 185 GWh. And that's just for one county in the US.

Tesla's Gigafactory is currently producing 50 GWh/year, and projected to be 150 GWh/year when completed. So, it will take one year of battery production to produce battery to store 1 day of use for LA county.

When we talk about an entire country, how many gigafactories will we need? And then, batteries do wear out, and we need to talk about attrition rate. We do not build them up just once, and call it done.

Scaling up something like this is a huge effort that perhaps nothing like it has been done. How many people will we need to drop what they work on to just go build batteries?

[NW-Bound]

I have been working on my DIY home solar project, as often mentioned here.

I currently have 5.5kW of solar panels installed, to be used to charge a 22kWh bank of lithium battery.

I have not hooked up the various parts, but have been doing a lot of calculations. It is not possible for me to scale this up so that I can be completely off-grid.

My peak energy consumption is 100kWh/day in the hottest summer day. I would need 4x more solar panels, and maybe 4x more lithium batteries. It would cost way too much to be practical.

PS. It would not be hard for me to live off-grid, but it has to be in a tiny house. To turn my 2,800-sq.ft. home into off-grid is too expensive, and besides the lot is not large enough for me to build a solar farm although this is what I want to do.

[eroscott]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound No, I don't think I am missing anything. Tesla had already had a design, and the 100 days was just for them to transport and install multiple units to Australia. As for scaling it up, in another thread I showed some numbers, but have not been able to find them again. But these are not hard to look up, so I just did it again. Take for example Los Angeles County. In 2017, it used 67,569 GWh. That's the capacity of 523,790 Tesla 129MWh battery plants. If we just want to store 1-day's worth, we still need 1,435 plants to store 185 GWh. And that's just for one county in the US. Tesla's Gigafactory is currently producing 50 GWh/year, and projected to be 150 GWh/year when completed. So, it will take one year of battery production to produce battery to store 1 day of use for LA county. When we talk about an entire country, how many gigafactories will we need? And then, batteries do wear out, and we need to talk about attrition rate. We do not build them up just once, and call it done. Scaling up something like this is a huge effort that perhaps nothing like it has been done. How many people will we need to drop what they work on to just go build batteries?

Nice job. I like the way you think.

Of course, we are talking about only needing a partial days supply as solar, wind, hydro, etc can be used to supplement all this at different parts of the day where excess can be stored but things like solar can simply be used during the day.

Why are you just limiting your thought to 1 gigafactory?
Why are you only thinking about 1 company? - Tesla. Notice Tesla is not even listed below!!
There are several storage companies and many around longer than Tesla.
This stuff is snowballing.

Do you know what percentage of lithium batteries are reusable? It is impressive.

q=biggest+lithium+producers https://www.google.com/search?q=bigg...hium+producers

q=biggest+battery+storage+companies https://www.google.com/search?q=bigg...rage+companies
Notice Tesla is not even listed below!!

[JoeWras]

Man, I wish I had saved some of my Weekly Reader papers back from grade school, during the energy crisis. Hard to believe, but this was a hot topic back then, and it wasn't pretty.

I don't remember the details, but what I do remember was we pre-teens were discussing how we'd never even drive, because there would be no cars due to the lack of energy. Nuclear and solar were topics of discussion.

45 years later, we're driving. But the party can't last forever, even though it was extended.

Solar (and storage) improvements need to get on a Moore's law path of improvement to make it really viable.

[eroscott]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWras Solar improvements needs to get on a Moore's law path of improvement to make it really viable.

Did you see this graphic?

[NW-Bound]

Well, even if there are 10x more companies building batteries besides Tesla, the factor of 10 would still pale besides the magnitude of the problem, if we need and want 10,000 companies like Tesla.

I guess I do not know enough about battery production to understand how big a part of the world's economy it will take to build all the batteries we would need.

I wonder if someone has done this calculation on a macro level, similar to what David MacKay has done about RE on the TED talk linked in a post earlier in this thread.

[JoeWras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eroscott Did you see this graphic?

No. I do now. I'm thinking of the lack of progress in the 90s.


What about storage? Any similar graph?

[eroscott]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Well, even if there are 10x more companies building batteries besides Tesla, the factor of 10 would still pale besides the magnitude of the problem, if we need and want 10,000 companies like Tesla. I guess I do not know enough about battery production to understand how big a part of the world's economy it will take to build all the batteries we would need. I wonder if someone has done this calculation on a macro level, similar to what David MacKay has done about RE on the TED talk linked in a post earlier in this thread.

I think the reality of it is that you are more right and my thinking is smaller scale ... probably too much peaker plant replacement reading on my part.

Good article that talks about California to make your point: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...n-up-the-grid/

MIT has an energy dept with a lot of information. Renewable Energy | MIT Energy Initiative

Check out this report as one example which is part of a series going on for 1.5+ decades:
http://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/upl...ctric-Grid.pdf

[NW-Bound]

I just looked at that 1st article in MIT Technology Review, published quite recently on July 27, 2018.

It looks bleak for Californians, who seem to insist for more and more RE, whether technology is there or not. Maybe some technology breakthroughs will happen to save them. We will see.

[eroscott]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound I just looked at that 1st article in MIT Technology Review, published quite recently on July 27, 2018. It looks bleak for Californians, who seem to insist for more and more RE, whether technology is there or not. Maybe some technology breakthroughs will happen to save them. We will see.

In a strange coincidence MIT also very recently (last week) released research on just this topic!

Below via: “Sun in a box� would store renewable energy for the grid | MIT News

Quote:

'Sun in a box' would store renewable energy for the grid Design for system that provides solar- or wind-generated power on demand should be cheaper than other leading options. Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office December 5, 2018 MIT engineers have come up with a conceptual design for a system to store renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, and deliver that energy back into an electric grid on demand. The system may be designed to power a small city not just when the sun is up or the wind is high, but around the clock. The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowing metal back into electricity when it’s needed. The researchers estimate that such a system would be vastly more affordable than lithium-ion batteries, which have been proposed as a viable, though expensive, method to store renewable energy. They also estimate that the system would cost about half as much as pumped hydroelectric storage — the cheapest form of grid-scale energy storage to date. “Even if we wanted to run the grid on renewables right now we couldn’t, because you’d need fossil-fueled turbines to make up for the fact that the renewable supply cannot be dispatched on demand,” says Asegun Henry, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “We’re developing a new technology that, if successful, would solve this most important and critical problem in energy and climate change, namely, the storage problem.”

[Tetto]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 Show me some storage tech that has some reasonable path towards supporting 100% renewable across all the grids in the US in the next 30 years. I'm very interested in this stuff, I follow it closely, and discuss it on other forums with experts in the field. Show me. -ERD50

I’ve read about using flywheels as storage devices. They could be made cheaply, have a massive weight for efficiency and storage capacity. It’s something worth exploring and once up to rotational velocity, it wouldn’t take much to keep it there until the sun goes down.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eroscott In a strange coincidence MIT also very recently (last week) released research on just this topic! Below via: “Sun in a box� would store renewable energy for the grid | MIT News

Thanks for sharing.

Quite a novel and interesting concept. But molten silicon at 4000F? I dunno.

They had to shield the Space Shuttle against the 3000F heat of reentry, and after a few decades of flight, that still represented a major hazard and resulted in the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

[ERD50]

Missed the recent posts while I worked on this...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack .... For the US, biomass would require almost 100% of land area, wind would require 30-40% of land area, and PV solar about 15-20%. Imagine that, really. .... https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mack..._on_renewables

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Well that’s bizarre, I don’t know what to think now. I also found an academic paper that concluded the US would have to devote 0.6% of all land to PV solar to supply current demand. A lot of land, but not 25%. OTOH, David MacKay was knighted in 2016, could he be that wrong? Guess I may have to dig further...

Where did you see/hear that 15-20% for the US? I didn't see it in the video, I only saw UK? Did I miss it?

I came up with ~ 150,000 sq miles ( ~ 400 miles x 400 miles ) of PV to replace all energy in US. Based on:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/...us_energy_home

Quote:

97.70 Quadrillion BTUs; energy consumption US 2017 0.293071 watt-hour per BTU 28.63 Quadrillion watt-hours 28,633 Terra Watt-hours

and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_..._Mojave_Desert

Quote:

A 2013 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory concluded that the average large photovoltaic plant in the United States occupied 3.1 acres of permanently disturbed area and 3.4 acres of total site area per gigawatt-hour per year.

And assuming 20% capacity factor and $1/watt installed, it would cost ~ 19 years of USA GDP, plus batteries, land, maintenance, etc.

$377 Trillion $ @ $1 Watt installed ; Giga is 'billion' (10^9)

$19 US GDP trillion USD (2017)
19 Years of GDP

And ~ 4.3% of USA land (if it was all in the sunny, clear desert).

3.4 Acres per Gigawatt-hours per year
97,352,325 Acres to meet US energy

640 Acres per square mile
152,113 sq miles

100 x 100 = 10,000 sq miles - MUSK's estimate - Musk says 100 miles x 100 miles of PV would power all US energy, with 1 mile x 1 mile for battery storage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uoz...ature=youtu.be

Check my math, could have slipped a decimal or two somewhere. Lotsa zeroes and conversions!

Did Elon post his numbers somewhere?

-ERD50