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

explanade said:
Wind?

Build some windmill farms off that beautiful coast.

Or build battery banks.
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Yes, but as NW-Bound points out, these plants are very capital intensive. You want to run them 24/7.

"Producing 100 gal of fresh water from seawater will take about 1.4 kWh." Hmmm, at a $0.30/kWh (CA prices?), that's 0.42 cents per gallon. Or $1 for ~ 250 gallons (~ one day's worth per person?). Add distribution costs, etc. But it sounds like the capital costs may be a bigger factor?

So OK, the wind can supplement solar. But it sounds like grid power would be cheaper than solar/wind plus battery storage, so they would just use the grid to supplement low-wind overnight. So it boils down to the same thing - storage is expensive, and wind/solar are variable, and hard to account for on a reliable grid.

-ERD50
 
What I originally thought about is this. Solar energy is clean and getting cheaper every day. However, its availability is not constant, and so we would have to overbuild so we have enough on bad days.

Then, on good days we have too much and do not know where to put it. In order to store that energy in some other useful forms, we can melt some salt, stack concrete, pump water uphill, charge some lithium batteries, or generate hydrogen by electrolysis, or convert some seawater to fresh water.

I was disappointed to learn that the desalination plant costs so much in capital terms. Else it would be perfect to build something to run completely off solar energy. If it were not for the capital cost, you can build many desalination plants with their associated solar plants nearby. You can generate a lot of fresh water and use your now near-empty reservoirs as the storage of something useful you get from that captured solar energy.

It does not work out because the desalination plant costs so much. It would be cheaper to just store that energy in lithium batteries, which themselves we cannot really afford now.

NYEXPAT said:
Maybe we can extract the energy that is tied up in the Cryptocurrencies?
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Would that not be great? It takes MWh's to compute these precious bits, which cost nothing to store in a USB dongle. Then, you reverse the process, and power an entire town with these bits. :D
 
ERD50 said:
"Producing 100 gal of fresh water from seawater will take about 1.4 kWh." Hmmm, at a $0.30/kWh (CA prices?), that's 0.42 cents per gallon. Or $1 for ~ 250 gallons (~ one day's worth per person?). Add distribution costs, etc. But it sounds like the capital costs may be a bigger factor?
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Electricity may cost $0.30/kWh in peak times. But on days when you have so much and have to pay to give it away, its cost is negative!

So, even if you can get a few gallons of water, that's still better than paying your neighbor state to use your solar kWhs. But if the means of storing or converting that kWh is so costly, it does not work out either.
 
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From the article:

The proposed plan would use wind and solar power to pump water from below Hoover Dam back upstream, depositing water into Lake Mead to be released again at a future time.
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You need 2 reservoirs. I wonder what they plan to use as the lower reservoir, from which to pump water up to Lake Mead.
 
NW-Bound said:
But what does the desalination plant run on at night? Again, you do not want such an expensive asset sitting idle.

So, you feed it with coal-powered electricity when solar power is not available. Now, you are back to the problem with not having RE constantly 24/7.
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At the time construction started,The San Onofre Nuclear power plant was available nearby. By the time the water plant opened, the nuke power plant fate was permanent shutdown.
 
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Lakewood90712 said:
The City of Los Angeles wants to use Hoover Dam and Lake Mead for energy storage. https://www.businessinsider.com/los-angeles-wants-the-hoover-dam-as-a-giant-battery-2018-8

Even if workable, if the fed's let LA City get their fingers in the mix , it will turn into a fiscal nightmare.
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I'm having trouble putting this into perspective. I have no real data yet (couldn't find it in a quick search), but is the grid that Hoover Dam serves actually seeing so much wind/solar that Hoover Dam sometimes goes to zero output now? If not, why do they really need to reverse pump?

That article alludes to the need, but I didn't see numbers. I did find this:

https://qz.com/1224296/california-i...fter-generating-too-much-energy-from-the-sun/

Solar served up an unprecedented 50% of the state’s demand on a sunny day around 1pm PT on March 5. The next day, utility operators reported a second record for total generation from solar which produced 10,411 megawatts, beating out last year’s record by 5%.
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So it seems it is rare, and short-lived (since they mention "around 1PM on a specific date?) to hit 50%. Was the output of Hoover Dam at zero at that time/date?

Using less hydro during the day may net as much as reverse pumping, at no added cost. I feel I'm missing something, if Hoover Dam output wasn't at zero.

... The state is regularly shunting electricity to Arizona and other states (sometimes paying them to do so) to avoid overloading its own power lines ...
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I'd like to know more. NW-Bound reports that they pay very high TOD pricing in AZ. Seems AZ would be eager to take any excess, even if they had to pay a small price. Why does CA need to pay AZ to take it?

-ERD50
 
ERD50 said:
I'm having trouble putting this into perspective. I have no real data yet (couldn't find it in a quick search), but is the grid that Hoover Dam serves actually seeing so much wind/solar that Hoover Dam sometimes goes to zero output now? If not, why do they really need to reverse pump?

That article alludes to the need, but I didn't see numbers. I did find this:

https://qz.com/1224296/california-i...fter-generating-too-much-energy-from-the-sun/

So it seems it is rare, and short-lived (since they mention "around 1PM on a specific date?) to hit 50%. Was the output of Hoover Dam at zero at that time/date?

Using less hydro during the day may net as much as reverse pumping, at no added cost. I feel I'm missing something, if Hoover Dam output wasn't at zero.

I'd like to know more. NW-Bound reports that they pay very high TOD pricing in AZ. Seems AZ would be eager to take any excess, even if they had to pay a small price. Why does CA need to pay AZ to take it?

-ERD50
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https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/ar...ery-the-hurdles-are-more-legal-than-technical

The plan as I understand is to construct a pumping plant and 20 mile underground pipeline between the dam and a downstream res., pump water upstream when excess RE is available. I am not an engineer, but a $3 billion construction project uses a lot of fossil fuels and generates a massive amount of CO2.

IMO, the project is a classic Self Licking Ice Cream Cone.
 
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ERD50 said:
... The state is regularly shunting electricity to Arizona and other states (sometimes paying them to do so) to avoid overloading its own power lines ...
Click to expand...

I'd like to know more. NW-Bound reports that they pay very high TOD pricing in AZ. Seems AZ would be eager to take any excess, even if they had to pay a small price. Why does CA need to pay AZ to take it?

-ERD50
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The surplus solar power happens in late spring, when the sun angle is getting high for good solar production, the cooler weather means no air-conditioning needed and the low temperature also means the panels have better efficiency. And it is probably in the late morning too, not late afternoon.

About "very high TOD pricing", here's the fact. :)

My area is serviced by SRP (Salt River Project) a non-profit state agency that manages the watershed providing water to the Phoenix metro area, and also the various hydro power plants along the Salt River. They offer different price plans, from a flat-rate one to two different TOD plans.

The TOD plan I picked charges 7.41c/kWh during off-peak hours, and 22.26c/kWh for on-peak period, which is from 1PM-8PM in the middle of the summer. Lower prices apply during early summer. The peak periods and prices are also different for the winter. The above prices are for the most expensive period of the year, which are the months of July and August.

PS. Saturdays and Sundays are off-peak. That's when we do laundry.
 
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Heavy industry experience here

The things that come to the surface in this thread just make it clear that there are a lot of power users in this country that really depend on 24 hours continuously high load power. I worked in industry for 35 years and early in my career I was Engineering Manager at a manufacturing plant that had two 13.8 KV feeders coming into our powerhouse where electrical power was distributed to many large and power eating electrical melting furnaces that produced 10,000 pound ingots of brass and copper alloys to be rolled on large rolling mills that were driven by multi thousand HP electrical motors.

We produced 100,000,000 pounds of alloy base metal tubing, sheet, strip, wire, etc each year. We had 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing operations under roof and 1,500 employees working 24/7. I can't even imagine how much electrical power we used, but it was gigantic. And we had 5 plants like this in our small company. We were not in the class as GM or other big guys.

The U.S. has many production plants making all kinds of products and these plants eat electricity in large portions.

Now I think a few windmills and PV installations are fine, but I just don't see the U.S. even starting to do much more than power a few thousand houses and a small % of expensive cars.

Yes, the desalinization plant is power hungry but there are many, many more sources like it everywhere.
 
Lakewood90712 said:
https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/ar...ery-the-hurdles-are-more-legal-than-technical

The plan as I understand is to construct a pumping plant and 20 mile underground pipeline between the dam and a downstream res., pump water upstream when excess RE is available. I am not an engineer, but a $3 billion construction project uses a lot of fossil fuels and generates a massive amount of CO2...
Click to expand...

I read about objections to the desalination plant too. It was mostly about environmental effects when the water discharged is saltier than the ocean water that is taken in. Some also say it indirectly creates CO2. But when people run out of water, well, it's a matter of priority. :)

... IMO, the project is a classic Self Licking Ice Cream Cone.
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Don't you think some businesses may also get a portion of that good tasting ice cream? :)

aja8888 said:
The things that come to the surface in this thread just make it clear that there are a lot of power users in this country that really depend on 24 hours continuously high load power. I worked in industry for 35 years and early in my career I was Engineering Manager at a manufacturing plant that had two 13.8 KV feeders coming into our powerhouse where electrical power was distributed to many large and power eating electrical melting furnaces that produced 10,000 pound ingots of brass and copper alloys to be rolled on large rolling mills that were driven by multi thousand HP electrical motors.

We produced 100,000,000 pounds of alloy base metal tubing, sheet, strip, wire, etc each year. We had 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing operations under roof and 1,500 employees working 24/7. I can't even imagine how much electrical power we used, but it was gigantic. And we had 5 plants like this in our small company. We were not in the class as GM or other big guys.

The U.S. has many production plants making all kinds of products and these plants eat electricity in large portions.

Now I think a few windmills and PV installations are fine, but I just don't see the U.S. even starting to do much more than power a few thousand houses and a small % of expensive cars.

Yes, the desalinization plant is power hungry but there are many, many more sources like it everywhere.
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We will just let the Chinese do all the manufacturing. Problem solved. :facepalm:
 
Silly question maybe .. are base load plants more efficient than peakers?

In any case, I do believe California has had excess renewable. So it actually might shift peaker (gas) to renewable at some points. Haven't looked for it though.
 
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Nah. It's better to let the Chinese do all the heavy manufacturing, which then allows us to blame them for burning lots of coal.

NW-Bound said:
… The TOD plan I picked charges 7.41c/kWh during off-peak hours, and 22.26c/kWh for on-peak period, which is from 1PM-8PM in the middle of the summer. Lower prices apply during early summer. The peak periods and prices are also different for the winter. The above prices are for the most expensive period of the year, which are the months of July and August.

PS. Saturdays and Sundays are off-peak. That's when we do laundry.
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Many CA posters here talked about tiered price plans, and the cost per kWh is a lot higher than what I pay.

I looked up PG&E and saw that they also have a TOD plan which is similar to what I pick, with the peak period from 3PM to 8PM. They do not show the prices, unless I have an account to log in. Hmmm... They do not want people outside the state to know?

Anyway, another Web site with second-hand data shows that the off-peak price is around 32c/kWh, and the on-peak one is around 40c/kWh. Boy, at these prices it's not surprising that people would be installing solar panels like mad. And the serious ones would also be buying Powerwalls. Ka ching!
 
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Totoro said:
Silly question maybe .. are base load plants more efficient than peakers?

In any case, I do believe California has had excess renewable. So it actually might shift peaker (gas) to renewable at some points. Haven't looked for it though.
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Most modern base load plants are just slightly on thermal efficiency, but massively more efficient when it comes to capitol cost vs. usage.

We have a glut of peaker plants, some have been sitting for years , with operators in BK. During our post de-regulation years of power crisis (2000-2003) way too many were built in the late 2000's.

In the summer, CALISO ( the state grid operator ) solicits peak load energy supply for the following day. Out of state , cheaper ( coal derived ?) electricity is often used, and many gas fired peaker plants stay idle.

I am looking at my official 2013 and 2014 " Power Content Label "..... 2013, coal 8 % gas 44% % Unspecified sources 12% along with some solar, wind ,nuke, hydro, etc. for 2014 it shows coal 0% gas 27% and unspecified sources 40%

Gee, coal drops to 0 % and unspecified increases to 40% ? Not blaming the utility, most of the energy is sourced from the state grid operator.

Not wearing my tin foil hat today , I swear.
 
Totoro said:
... In any case, I do believe California has had excess renewable. So it actually might shift peaker (gas) to renewable at some points. Haven't looked for it though.
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A peaker has to be something you can turn on with demand, and the problem with RE is that the weather may not cooperate. I understand that peakers are also used to take on some loads for planned shut-downs of the base plants, when the latter need to be off for maintenance.

I don't think it makes sense to use solar or wind generators as peakers. That would mean they are sitting there idle most of the time. As they use no consumables (except for hydro power plants) in contrast with natural gas peakers, why not try to put their output to use whenever it is available?

Hence, the problem with storing solar and wind power when you have more than you can use right at the moment. With natural gas, you can stockpile the fuel until you use it.

Again it comes down to needing cheap ways to store excess energy.
 
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All these related topics keep coming up in Dec in my feeds across my media networks.

Youtube 12-Dec-2018 The battery that could make mass solar and wind power viable | Dispatch

Aug-2018
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aalsin...-storage-and-renewable-energies/#b4d09e22c620
Professor Sadoway is a bit of a renegade amongst battery researchers. Most industry executives and researchers argue that lithium-ion batteries will pave the pathway to the future of solar storage. Tesla’s Powerwall, for instance, uses rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for stationary energy storage that can power your home through the sun’s rays. The lithium-ion market is projected to be worth $93.1 billion by 2025, according to Grand View research, but Sadoway believes that lithium-ion has limitations that should not be underplayed.

“Nobody in the in the modern world is going to settle for green electricity only part of the time,” he says. “We expect electricity on demand all the time. Wind doesn't blow all the time and sun doesn't shine all the time. The missing piece is storage. Lithium-ion batteries are out there and it works in your phone and in your computer, but no one has ever installed lithium-ion batteries at grid scale unless it was part of some demonstration. The costs are still way too high. I see everything pivoting on the availability of reliable grid-level storage.” (For more on that, watch Sadoway’s TED talk, “The missing link to renewable energy.”

Earlier this year, Professor Sadoway published results of his new battery technology, using liquid metal, in Nature, the world’s preeminent science journal. “The battery, based on electrodes made of sodium and nickel chloride and using a new type of metal mesh membrane, could be used for grid-scale installations to make intermittent power sources such as wind and solar capable of delivering reliable
[][] baseload electricity [][]
,” MIT’s press release noted. It’s certainly an innovative idea, and one that Sadoway believes could lead us into a new era of sustainable energy storage.

“I consider this a breakthrough,” Sadoway said in the release, “because for the first time in five decades, this type of battery — whose advantages include
cheap,
abundant raw materials,
very safe operational characteristics,
and an ability to go through many charge-discharge cycles without degradation — could finally become practical.”
Click to expand...
 
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ERD50 said:
Well, losses still matter. Of course, if the economics are greater than the losses, it works (financially).

And that's what I understand, the batteries are now cheaper than new peaker plants. But, the peaker plants produce energy, the batteries store it. So unless we have an excess of RE, we are still using fossil fuel to fill those batteries, plus enough to cover the losses.

-ERD50
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Or they could be charged using wind power from Texas, or hydropower from the Pacific NW.

Regardless, if there's only a 10% round-trip loss that's a bargain compared to older peak-shaving approaches like pumped storage, where it might take 2-3 kWh overnight to make 1 kWh the next day.
 
ncbill said:
Originally Posted by ERD50
Well, losses still matter. Of course, if the economics are greater than the losses, it works (financially).

And that's what I understand, the batteries are now cheaper than new peaker plants. But, the peaker plants produce energy, the batteries store it. So unless we have an excess of RE, we are still using fossil fuel to fill those batteries, plus enough to cover the losses.

-ERD50
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Or they could be charged using wind power from Texas, or hydropower from the Pacific NW. .... .
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Are there regular excesses from those sources? Texas may have an occasional excess, it's rare, so it makes the news, but I've never seen anything to put it in perspective. Percent overall,percent of peaker energy? Something, anything?

There is no excess hydro, and I don't think there are plans to install more (other environmental concerns). There is even talk of removing hydro, to return rivers to their original state.

edit/add: On my 2nd cup now - Actually, you would never charge a battery from 'excess hydro', that makes no sense. One of the great features of hydro is that it can be ramped up/down quickly, it is used as a 'peaker'. So that's what they would do, not use it to fill a peaker battery when they can do it directly. Typically they use little/no hydro at night, so the water is available for use during the day. Hydro power has a pretty low capacity figure, which seemed odd to me at first, since you could run it at moderate output 24/7 (near 100% cap factor). But they save it for peaks, and average is capacity factor for Hoover Dam is ~ 23% (wiki) - IOW, they can 'peak' about 5x the average output.



ncbill said:
... Regardless, if there's only a 10% round-trip loss that's a bargain compared to older peak-shaving approaches like pumped storage, where it might take 2-3 kWh overnight to make 1 kWh the next day.
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Where do you get that number? 30% ~ 50% round trip? I've always heard ~ 75%. OK, from wiki:

The round-trip energy efficiency of pumped-storage hydroelectricity varies between 70%–80%, with some sources claiming up to 87%.
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-ERD50
 
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I vaguely recall something about liquid metal batteries. Anyone seen any real data?

That video was pure marketing fluff. Inside this magic box is something that can change the world. Big names were dropped. Grandiose claims made. I sense there's a "but..." somewhere.
 
Yes, many claims were made, but no details were given about that big square block that was supposedly the battery, not even tentative specifications such as how many kWhs that battery can store.

On the other hand, Sadoway is a renowned professor/researcher, and has had many accomplishments. He is no Elizabeth Holmes.

Still, Ambri, the start-up intended to commercialize his work has been around at least since 2012. In 2015, it failed in the 1st attempt to build a demo battery, which was caused by failure of certain high-temperature seal. This molten-metal business is hazardous.
 
Texas Proud said:
Interesting video.... and if he can do it (no real data given, just general stuff) then the people who are betting Tesla as the grid battery maker are going to be very disappointed...
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Yes, unfortunately no real substance there.

However, it seems reasonable to me that there could be better options for battery storage than some form of LION. LION is popular for mobile applications accuse it is relatively small/light for the power. But those aren't that important for grid storage. Cheap, reliable, and easy is more important for the grid, so maybe this battery, or the flow battery or something is a better match.

Doesn't sound like any Holy Grail to me, but I dunno. Hmmm, let's look at a personal level, how cheap would a battery need to be? Does this simplified math provide perspective?

Average home uses ~900kWh/month, so 30 kWh/day. Assume $0.10/kWh for ez math, and assume this battery can last 20 years. Over 20 years, we would spend:

0.1 ⋅ 30 ⋅ 365 ⋅ 20 = $21,900 on electricity. (not counting inflation, etc, but this is also offset by opportunity cost on battery investment).

So lets keep the cost increase to less than doubling our bill, just for reference. We would need a 30 kWh battery to cover one day, but we probably need more for seasonal use, let's say 100 kWh for more ez math. Hmmm, so even as high as @ $219/kWh, it would 'only' double our electricity cost. And that is where LION should be soon if it isn't already?

So if they can get cost down to say $50/kWh, that's a $5,000 investment (plus inverters) with a roughly 25% increase to a bill? But inverters probably double that? Plus installation costs? The key is 20 year life.

Since solar in most areas has a long payback period w/o subsidies, adding 25%~50% to the cost really hurts. Does my perspective make a little bit of sense (I realize it's quite a SWAG).

-ERD50
 
NW-Bound said:
Yes, many claims were made, but no details were given about that big square block that was supposedly the battery, not even tentative specifications such as how many kWhs that battery can store.

On the other hand, Sadoway is a renowned professor/researcher, and has had many accomplishments. He is no Elizabeth Holmes.

Still, Ambri, the start-up intended to commercialize his work has been around at least since 2012. In 2015, it failed in the 1st attempt to build a demo battery, which was caused by failure of certain high-temperature seal. This molten-metal business is hazardous.
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Here is a fairly recent (Aug 2018) article that talks about the delay and currrent state (although still fairly highlevel):
https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...ng-its-liquid-metal-battery-dreams#gs.tnsTCMM

You are certainly right that Sadoway has a long reputation:
https://dmse.mit.edu/faculty/profile/sadoway
 
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