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

[Lakewood90712]

Some company is trying to develop towers to lift concrete to store energy.

That way it’s not like pumped hydro which requires certain topography.

Ironic th8ng is it’s a Swiss company working on this:

https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/

Maybe something like Sisyphus ? The Greeks were thinking way ahead

 

[rgarling]

I expected to see some discussion of LENR on this thread. Maybe not renewable, but essentially limitless, cheap energy. Once the technology is adopted, there would be no need for a distribution grid, since power would be preferentially generated on site. You could drive coast to coast for a nickle's worth of fuel. See Brillouin Energy, Leonardo corporation, Safire 2018 plasma engine and LENR replications in many other countries.

We are on the threshold of a technology revolution.

 

[NW-Bound]

Some company is trying to develop towers to lift concrete to store energy.

That way it’s not like pumped hydro which requires certain topography.

Ironic th8ng is it’s a Swiss company working on this:

https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/

Interesting! It is the same idea as that of an American company that puts concrete blocks on rail cars to go up/down a hill for energy storage/retrieval. The project by the startup ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) takes 106 acres of land to store 12.5MWhr of energy. That's quite a big footprint for the energy, and the cost of $55M is not exactly cheap either. The cost of $4400/kWh makes it 10 times more expensive than lithium batteries.

The Swiss stacked-concrete tower is more compact and has a smaller footprint. Probably not suitable for California, or where earthquake danger is high.

 

[ERD50]

Some company is trying to develop towers to lift concrete to store energy.

That way it’s not like pumped hydro which requires certain topography.

Ironic th8ng is it’s a Swiss company working on this:

https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/

Interesting! It is the same idea as that of an American company that puts concrete blocks on rail cars to go up/down a hill for energy storage/retrieval. ....

This was discussed on a tech forum I follow. It sounds attractive, but once you do the calculations, you understand that gravity is weaker than "the weak force".


Potential energy = mass x gravity x height.

Egrav = PE = mgh

PE = potential energy, J or kg.m2/s2

m = mass, kg

g = gravity = 9.8 m/s2

h = height, m


from wiki:

Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces of physics, approximately 10^38 times weaker than the strong force, 10^36 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 10^29 times weaker than the weak force.

It takes a LOT of mass lifted a LOT of distance to store much energy.

-ERD50

 

[Totoro]

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.

Total li-ion production capacity currently seems to be somewhere in the few hundreds of GWh right now, and growing at a 15% - 25% rate per year. That's doubling every 3 years or so.


The world uses ~22 million GWh per year. Storing 1% of that, 22.000 GWh. Assuming battery lifetime of 10 years, we need a 2.200 GWh of production. That's about four doublings, or 12 years.

Huge challenge, but doable and in the current trend. Millions of employees for sure.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
https://www.energystoragenetworks.c...ch-more-than-148-gwh-in-2018-says-new-report/

I'm not trying to handwave away the huge rampup and complete transformation here, just saying that there doesn't seem to be a showstopper to get there, certainly if we give it 20 years.

 

[explanade]

Interesting! It is the same idea as that of an American company that puts concrete blocks on rail cars to go up/down a hill for energy storage/retrieval. The project by the startup ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) takes 106 acres of land to store 12.5MWhr of energy. That's quite a big footprint for the energy, and the cost of $55M is not exactly cheap either. The cost of $4400/kWh makes it 10 times more expensive than lithium batteries.

The Swiss stacked-concrete tower is more compact and has a smaller footprint. Probably not suitable for California, or where earthquake danger is high.

There was just an earthquake in TN yesterday.

 

[NW-Bound]

This was discussed on a tech forum I follow. It sounds attractive, but once you do the calculations, you understand that gravity is weaker than "the weak force".

...

It takes a LOT of mass lifted a LOT of distance to store much energy.

-ERD50

Life is not fair. When you need to store energy, gravity is not strong enough.

But when you need to move things about, or to escape to outer space, gravity is too strong.

 

[NW-Bound]

Total li-ion production capacity currently seems to be somewhere in the few hundreds of GWh right now, and growing at a 15% - 25% rate per year. That's doubling every 3 years or so.

The world uses ~22 million GWh per year. Storing 1% of that, 22.000 GWh. Assuming battery lifetime of 10 years, we need a 2.200 GWh of production. That's about four doublings, or 12 years.

Huge challenge, but doable and in the current trend. Millions of employees for sure.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
https://www.energystoragenetworks.c...ch-more-than-148-gwh-in-2018-says-new-report/

I'm not trying to handwave away the huge rampup and complete transformation here, just saying that there doesn't seem to be a showstopper to get there, certainly if we give it 20 years.

I would not mind if lithium battery gets less expensive. And long before the world uses it in massive energy storage plants, I will already use recycled EV batteries in my DIY home energy storage system.

One can go on eBay, and search for "EV battery" to see that there's a market for batteries taken off totaled cars for use in DIY home storage systems. The going price is around $200-300 for 1 kWh. Not real cheap yet.

Last year, I was able to acquire 22kWh of LiFePO4 cells, surplus and unused, to use in my home system. Heh heh heh...

 

[aja8888]

from wiki:
It takes a LOT of mass lifted a LOT of distance to store much energy.

-ERD50

Without getting scientific, I would surmise that it takes a lot of energy to move and lift that mass where you want it.

 

[eroscott]

I would not mind if lithium battery gets less expensive. And long before the world uses it in massive energy storage plants, I will already use recycled EV batteries in my DIY home energy storage system.

One can go on eBay, and search for "EV battery" to see that there's a market for batteries taken off totaled cars for use in DIY home storage systems. The going price is around $200-300 for 1 kWh. Not real cheap yet.

Last year, I was able to acquire 22kWh of LiFePO4 cells, surplus and unused, to use in my home system. Heh heh heh...

This guy powers his home with Tesla batteries.
https://057tech.com/solar

 

[NW-Bound]

This guy's system is huge compared to mine - 44.4kW of solar panels, 186 kWh of battery vs. 5.5kW and 22 kWh.

He also has a lot of land to work with. My suburban lot cannot support that many panels, and my roof orientation is also wrong. My 2nd home in the high country has a perfect south-facing hill slope for solar panels, but I do not live there full-time, nor need that much energy up there. But this brings up a question: on a good day, this guy produces more than he uses. Can he sell the surplus? If not, why so much capacity?

And before people get excited about this, they need to think about how much such system costs. The average Joe cannot afford it.

 

[NW-Bound]

I just saw the graph on his site; he depleted his large battery overnight, and it was empty before sunrise on Dec 12, 2018. At the end of today, he was able to recharge the battery to 50%, while also using the solar power produced, but not without also drawing from the grid.

This guy is an energy hog. I think he uses electricity for heat, whether that is with a heat pump or not.

His stat for Dec 12, 2018: 57.43 kWh from solar panels, 67.3 kWh from the grid, total consumption 114.6 kWh. Note that a big percentage of the consumption is actually used to charge the batteries, so his real consumption is less than that. However, not 24 hours are shown on the chart, so he will have burned some more before midnight.

Anyway, it shows that on this winter day, a 44kW solar array can produce only 57.43 kWh, just more than 1 hour of equivalent full sunlight. On a real snowy day, the production will be 0.

PS. I hit screen refresh, and his total consumption for the day has incremented to 115.6 kWh.

 

[JoeWras]

Somewhere on his site he says he is all electric, which makes sense.

Peek at his graphs a few days ago. Assuming he is in NC (per the contact info), he experienced a snow storm, which had the triple whammy of killing the sun, covering the panels, and raising energy usage for heat.

 

[NW-Bound]

Somewhere on his site he says he is all electric, which makes sense.

Peek at his graphs a few days ago. Assuming he is in NC (per the contact info), he experienced a snow storm, which had the triple whammy of killing the sun, covering the panels, and raising energy usage for heat.

Regarding snow covering the panels, why doesn't he do what the "solar road" guy proposed? That is to use electricity to heat and melt the snow on the road/panel?

 

[NW-Bound]

His power drawn from the grid has jumped up from 5kW to 25kW, and held at that level for 1 hour now. I think he has plugged in his Tesla.

 

[ERD50]

This guy's system is huge compared to mine - 44.4kW of solar panels, 186 kWh of battery vs. 5.5kW and 22 kWh. ....

And before people get excited about this, they need to think about how much such system costs. The average Joe cannot afford it.

Yes, even thinking forward (and for easy math!) to $1/watt installed solar, and $100/kWh Lion, that's $44,400 PLUS $18,600 = $63,000. So unless he was super-creative, his cost far more than that.

I just saw the graph on his site; he depleted his large battery overnight, and it was empty before sunrise on Dec 12, 2018. At the end of today, he was able to recharge the battery to 50%, while also using the solar power produced, but not without also drawing from the grid. ...

And he still needs grid power!

-ERD50

 

[Lakewood90712]

Regarding snow covering the panels, why doesn't he do what the "solar road" guy proposed? That is to use electricity to heat and melt the snow on the road/panel?

Like the self licking ice cream cone theory ?

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes, even thinking forward (and for easy math!) to $1/watt installed solar, and $100/kWh Lion, that's $44,400 PLUS $18,600 = $63,000. So unless he was super-creative, his cost far more than that.

And he still needs grid power!

-ERD50

Solar panels cost around $1/W new, but used Li-ion batteries still run around $200-300/kWh.

His installation has 17 Midnite charge controllers, at $600 a piece. There are 8 GS8048A Outback inverters, at $4,200 a piece. That's $44K in electronics.

Add in a few more thousand dollars in miscellaneous hardware and copper wire.

So, even now, this probably costs more than $120K just in material, not counting labor and support structure for the panels. He did this a few years ago, and probably spent more than $150K.

 

[NW-Bound]

Thinking more about this, I believe the only way to live off-the-grid is to be where it is not cold in the winter. This is so that you do not need heating. In exchange, you will need power for air-conditioning in the summer, but electricity in the summer is a lot easier to obtain via solar power. Heat causes loss of PV panel efficiency, but this is easier to compensate by deploying more panels. When you do not get sunshine in snowy areas, no amount of solar panels will help you.

And you'd better build a smaller home, perhaps 1000 sq.ft. A larger home will need more panels, and you will need a large lot to deploy your panels. This means living away from the city center, and not even in the suburb.

And then, this is just for residential use. Society at large still needs to get energy for industrial production, transportation, etc... And that is also more easily obtained in warmer climate.

I think this looks bleak, unless we bring in some nuclear power. Else, people in colder climates are in real trouble when fossil fuel runs out. David MacKay painted a really bleak future for the UK in his TED talk.

 

[Cessna152]

Dry cask storage is easy.

Some newer reactor design use more of the fuel and generate less waste .

A far bigger problem , the earth does not have a limitless amount of uranium to mine.

It turns out it isn't hard to collect yellowcake from seawater in useful quantities, and the amount in the ocean (by my math) could satisfy the entire human race current power usage (from all sources) for hundreds of thousands of years. This is the research that showed it possible, reported in 2003:

The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform concentration of 3 mg U/m3 in the world’s oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible. A uranium-specific nonwoven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an adsorption cage 16 m2 in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height. We submerged three adsorption cages in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m at 7 km offshore of Japan. The three adsorption cages consisted of stacks of 52 000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the nonwoven fabric was >1 kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time of 240 days in the ocean.
From “Aquaculture of Uranium in Seawater by a Fabric-Adsorbent Submerged System”

Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.13182/NT03-2

 

[JoeWras]

I was going to joke about replacing the concrete blocks with lead (Pb), but that's not possible because it is now considered toxic waste.

If we want to get serious about human induced climate impact, nuclear has to come back on the table. Everyone needs to calm down and talk. It will have to be different and much more costly. That's OK, because the alternatives discussed are not cheap either.

Speaking of impact to the environment... E-Scooters are supposed to help with the last mile problem. But some people are so ticked about them, they are taking them and throwing them in the river or lake! This is causing a negative environmental impact. Batteries are not benign.

 

[misanman]

Cold Fusion

I expected to see some discussion of LENR on this thread.

Well, I invested in KMS Fusion stock back in the 70's. Cold fusion was going to be the answer to all our energy problems.

 

[TwoByFour]

If we want to get serious about human induced climate impact, nuclear has to come back on the table.

That and more birth control. All of our problems can be tied back to an unsustainable human population.

 

[Totoro]

Thinking more about this, I believe the only way to live off-the-grid is to be where it is not cold in the winter.

High latitude suburban areas are going to be tough ones indeed. Limited land for wind/water, solar can't hack it in the winter. And lots of heating costs.

Drive your oversized EV to the local supercharger a few times a week

 

[rgarling]

Well, I invested in KMS Fusion stock back in the 70's. Cold fusion was going to be the answer to all our energy problems.

Sorry for your loss, but LENR devices are actually in service now.