THE Renewable Energy Thread (merged)

[Graeme]

China Installs the World’s Largest Battery

China now has the world’s largest battery with a storage capacity of 36MWh to combat any intermittence produced by wind and solar power at an adjoining farm.


Near you, that is, if you live in Zhangbei, in China's Hebei province. It's currently, by a distance, the biggest battery in the world. Or, strictly speaking, thousands of batteries linked up in series to provide a total power storage capacity of 36MWh, for an installed capacity of 100MW wind power and 40MW solar PV. With a smart grid connection to boot, that's enough to play a valuable role in buffering the intermittence of both renewable sources.


Nor is it any accident that it's put together, in partnership with the State Grid Corporation, by China's solar PV panel cum electric vehicle company, BYD. The batteries themselves are basically the same lithium-ion phosphate type that it designs for cars. And the Zhangbei installation takes over the 'world's largest' title from AES Corporation's 32MW system, also using car-type batteries, unveiled at the Laurel Mountain wind farm in West Virginia in 2011.

oilprice

[Graeme]

1.5-MWh battery headed for test in Arizona

Arizona Public Service Company has begun testing a 1.5 MWh energy-storage system the size of a shipping container. The goal of the company’s two-year pilot in Flagstaff, Ariz., will be to determine the benefits for storing solar-generated electricity and putting it onto the grid at times when APS customers need it most. The battery could work as well for wind generated power.
“We plan to study a number of things, including how we can decrease equipment stress on high demand days and how we can provide solar energy to our customers after sundown,” says APS Director of Energy Innovation Barbara Lockwood. “This pilot has great potential to change some of the ways we deliver electricity in the future.”
The energy storage pilot will be two-fold. In 2012, the system, which was developed by Electrovaya Inc., a lithium-ion battery manufacturing company, will reside in an electrical distribution substation. The system will be later trucked a few miles up the road to support a neighborhood-scale solar power plant. In addition, Electrovaya has partnered with ABB, a power and automation technology company, to provide the power conditioning and conversion equipment for the battery energy storage system.
A video of the energy storage system can be found on YouTube at ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNMclgXU ... e=youtu.be ).
“This system is possibly the world’s largest Lithium Ion battery in a single container” commented Dr. Raj Das Gupta, Electrovaya’s General Manager, Energy Storage Systems.

windpowerengineering

[Graeme]

GE Partners With Tiny Arista Power To Dominate Huge Energy-Storage Market

General Electric (GE) is moving rapidly to establish its imprint and influence in clean, renewable energy. Its most recent move is to partner with a tiny company it believes has a foothold in the complex multi-billion dollar clean-energy storage market.

GE has signed a “business cooperation agreement” with little known Arista Power (APWS), a designer, manufacturer and integrator of renewable energy generation management and distribution systems.


So GE’s latest effort to get a solid footing in energy storage is a big advance in confronting what analysts contend is the “holy grail” of clean technology. “Solar and wind become more than just niche technologies if the storage problem can be solved,” commented Steven Milunovich, alternative energy analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC), in a report on grid storage.

According to the GE-Arista partnership, GE, the largest maker of power-generation equipment, will join with Arista Power to sell systems that store electricity for commercial customers and release it when demand is at its highest, which would help reduce the cost of electricity.

Arista will use GE’s new, unique Durathon Battery as a key component for its renewable energy power management system, called “Power on Demand Systems.” The unit consists of a wind turbine, solar panels, and specially designed “smart” delivery battery storage that stores energy from the grid. In essence, the Power on Demand system, which Arista has installed in several of its small-business customers, is a storage and power management unit rolled into one.

forbes

[Graeme]

Fossil Fuel Subsidies to Cost US 113,000,000,000 in Next 10 Years (Not Including Climate & Health Damage) without Change

Adding on to that, Jamie Henn of 350.org writes:
“Watching that bottom number tick up with every passing second is pretty outrageous, but there’s good news: we now have an opening to end these taxpayer handouts to corporate polluters. A new poll revealed that 70% of Americans — including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — support ending fossil fuel subsidies.”
Indeed, we do.

As I’m writing this, over 100,000 people have actually signed a petition asking that we cut these fossil fuel subsidies. Of course, if you haven’t already, you can sign it too!

cleantechnica

G-8 to Eliminate Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Curb Climate Pollutants

Leaders of the world's most developed economies, the Group of Eight, have agreed to phase out government subsidies for coal, oil and gas and pursue sustainable energy and low carbon policies "in order to tackle the global challenge of climate change."

"We strongly support efforts to rationalize and phase-out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, and to continue voluntary reporting on progress," the G-8 leaders declared.

ens-newswire

[dorlomin]

Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy

....
I'd like this thread to be about heat or energy storage. I welcome any comments about this general topic.

Sadoways work is not about thermal storage.

Its a very very interesting aproach that stores electricity or to be more accurate electric potential. I think people should watch the TED talk again and discuss this approach.....

He is clearly on a sales pitch but Id say there is a lot more here than many of the more exotic solutions. Even if this is not cheap enough to be grid scalable it may have a lot of uses.

[Graeme]

Ultracapacitors: The next big thing in energy storage?

We've all heard of the battery, of course -- but how many of us have heard of the ultracapacitor? I'm guessing that's a pretty small slice of the audience, so I'm pleased to say that that's about to change when you listen to my conversation with Mark McGough, CEO, of Oneonta, N.Y.-based Ioxus, the world's top-tier producer of ultracapacitor-based energy storage systems.

A veteran of the alternative energy space, Mark has been at the helm at Ioxus since 2010. He talked ultracapacitor functionality, applications, and why ultracapacitors are being touted as the next big thing in energy storage. Even Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame has indicated that ultracapacitors will be the future of the electric car. Who knew?

So what exactly is an ultracapacitor? To say that it is a battery on steroids is oversimplifying things, but they do, indeed, more or less look like a battery, are more powerful than a battery, and can be charged and discharged up to a million times and in just a matter of seconds -- obvious advantages over battery technology. They basically store and release energy quickly, which in the world of renewable energy is rapidly changing the energy storage landscape.

greenbiz

[cephalotus]

How to power Europe and Northafrika with 91% renewable energies and 9% natural gas at low costs:

http://www.dii-eumena.com/fileadmin/Dat ... dy_web.pdf

Before you start your arguments, please read the study first.

There are 18 scenarios with or without super grid, with low demand, with delayed or high grid costs, with nuclear, without CO2 caps, with more expensive technologies, with super cheap batteries and so on...

There is also some calculation on the "insurance cost" for Europa ( gas peak power plants) against cutting the grid.

The amount of electricity should be enough to power Europe incl. electric heating and mostly electric transportation and a fast growing North African population, maybe including water desalination plants.(?)

Also have a look at the last page with the names of the companies involved in Dii.

best regards

[dsula]

Hmm. 'Fast growing african population'. I don't like the sound of that. And they all want to move to Europe. And Europe is broke.

There's somehting about this study that makes me feel uneasy. But what? I think it's because it's trying to predict the costs and benefits of a 40 year long lasting construction effort, whereas everybody knows any construction larger than a garage shed undertaken by any govenment will in the end cost twice as much as predicted.

Or maybe it's because they want to put a lot of expensive 'western' infrastructure in bomb-happy mohamed nations? But then again, by 2050, probably most of europe is also 'owned' by mohamed.

Aah, what, I'm just being too pesimistic, of course we should try to grow for as long as we possibly can.

[Graeme]

Cephalotus, Thank you for posting this important document. At this point, I have only one question, which immediately came to my mind and follows the concern of the previous poster. How will this project be financed? Germany can finance only half of it's renewable energy industry. We all know that the European economies are struggling. Can you see a solution? I will come back with specific questions later.

[cephalotus]

Hmm. 'Fast growing african population'. I don't like the sound of that. And they all want to move to Europe.

Go to MENA and have a look for yourself. Most of the population is children and those will also have children in the next decades. The MENA population will grow if you like it or not.
And they will want something to eat.
Good, if they have something to sell. They have huge solar and wind ressources and can provide super cheap electricity, so this would be an option.

And Europe is broke.

Go to Europe and have a look. Mots of our infrastructure is quite ok, education level is high.

What you mean is the state of the finances and here Europe is similar to the US or Japan. But money is just painted paper or computer numbers. Nothing to worry much about. Germany went bankrupt 3 times within 100 years and so far I do not feel like living in a broken country.

What we could need is cheap and clean electricity.

I think it's because it's trying to predict the costs and benefits of a 40 year long lasting construction effort, whereas everybody knows any construction larger than a garage shed undertaken by any govenment will in the end cost twice as much as predicted.

Why do you take about the government?

Dii is a industry initiative. Look at the last page. There are trillions(!) of €/US$ involved that are desperately searching for long term investments with good interest rates.

Or maybe it's because they want to put a lot of expensive 'western' infrastructure in bomb-happy mohamed nations? But then again, by 2050, probably most of europe is also 'owned' by mohamed.

Maybe investing in power plants in North africa isn't much worse than providing mudschaheddin in Afganistan with weapons to fight the Russian and after that providing the North alliance with weapons to fight the Mudschaheddin and after that fighting yourself against both of them for more than 10 years without any chance to win...

Aah, what, I'm just being too pesimistic, of course we should try to grow for as long as we possibly can.

We will always try to grow, no matter what. Do you want to tell the people in MENA that they should stop growing and keep living in their current state, because people from US or Europe don't wnat to give up their living standard?
Better to grow solar and wind power plants than to build more coal and nuclear power plants. Maybe the US or China will go the nuclear path, but imho that's much more expensive. If they go on with coal we all are fucked...

Peak oil is s small problem compared to "peak atmosphere usage".

[cephalotus]

Cephalotus, Thank you for posting this important document. At this point, I have only one question, which immediately came to my mind and follows the concern of the previous poster. How will this project be financed? Germany can finance only half of it's renewable energy industry. We all know that the European economies are struggling. Can you see a solution? I will come back with specific questions later.

Wealth in Germany is more than 6 trillion Euros (not counting real estate). Banks are desperately searching for long term investments with significant interest rates. German 10 year bonds are around 1% interest and old life assurance policies have to provide 4+x % minimum interest rates to their clients.

Germany was able to invest in 7-8GW of new PV installations in 2010 and in 2011 and that was very easily financed.

There is more money around than you can image...

It's a lot less risky to invest in a PV power plant then to invest in a nuclear reactor, RWE, the biggest electricity provider in Europe said some days ago. They also announced to stop all nuclear plans in _any_ country (UK, Netherlands, Bulgaria, ...), but to built PV power plants in southern countries.

[Graeme]

Cephalotus, I promised to come back later with questions. You must understand that these are questions from a layperson who is not in a position to ask questions that are detailed, specific or technical (electrical engineering). I read through the article quite quickly and noted the following questions:

p7: Do you know when will the "Desert Power 2050: Getting Started" be published?

p11: Do you know to what extent EU governments have negotiated with MENA suppliers (and vice versa) a price structure?

p12: It was interesting to me to see that half of the supply will come from wind and a quarter from solar. Do you think this mix could change by 2050? Can climate (wind) be predicted for 2050? They mentioned on p35 that geothermal and marine might play a larger role by 2050. Maybe even solar too.

p13: How far has grid extension planning/construction progressed?

p14: We know this region (esp MENA) is politically unstable. Can supply really be secured in this environment? Perhaps by 2050, these countries will be relatively stable and democratized.

p18: Has this document been shared with utilities/governments in member countries? Scenarios mentioned on p56 may be of interest to them.

p36: Considering historical price volatility (p59), why bother considering fossil fuels? You wouldn't have to pay for carbon emissions either. At least eliminate coal. Can central Europe use another power source besides gas (p68)? This will likely gradually decline anyway as supply dwindles.

p40: Storage technologies may also be quite different by 2050. Don't need gas insurance (p97), electricity can be stored.

p69: Are there any contingencies for disruption of power supply when transmission lines are broken?

p104: Can all countries concerned be persuaded to adopt the cheapest Low Demand Connected scenario?

[cephalotus]

p7: Do you know when will the "Desert Power 2050: Getting Started" be published?

No.

p11: Do you know to what extent EU governments have negotiated with MENA suppliers (and vice versa) a price structure?

The governments do not have to negotiate. It's private investors that will bilt the power plants and they will sell it on the market. Government could make some FIT, but so far this i not planned (in Europa for MENA electricity)

p12: It was interesting to me to see that half of the supply will come from wind and a quarter from solar. Do you think this mix could change by 2050? Can climate (wind) be predicted for 2050? They mentioned on p35 that geothermal and marine might play a larger role by 2050. Maybe even solar too.

It already changes to a higher degree of PV. So far petrothemal geothermal energy is ultra-expensive, mich cheaper hydrothermal geothermie is possible only in very small amounts.

The biggest problems in the cost forecast figures should be offshore wind and CSP technologies.

p13: How far has grid extension planning/construction progressed?

There is one small libe bewtween Marocco and Spain, but it was built before Desertec. There is also the NorNED cable ind the Noth and NorLINK will be built soon. Theer are plans for some large power plants in Marocco and another cable from Marocco to Spain.

p14: We know this region (esp MENA) is politically unstable. Can supply really be secured in this environment? Perhaps by 2050, these countries will be relatively stable and democratized.

They have been stable enough to buy oil and gas from them.

p18: Has this document been shared with utilities/governments in member countries? Scenarios mentioned on p56 may be of interest to them.

sure.

p36: Considering historical price volatility (p59), why bother considering fossil fuels?

The last 10% are the most expensive.

You wouldn't have to pay for carbon emissions either. At least eliminate coal. Can central Europe use another power source besides gas (p68)? This will likely gradually decline anyway as supply dwindles.

Methane could have much more uses besidespower plants and it could be made out of electricity and or biomass

p40: Storage technologies may also be quite different by 2050. Don't need gas insurance (p97), electricity can be stored.

Super cheap batteries will not change the scenario. Not any options for long term storage are available. ringwall storage systems are an example. you have to start to build them now to have them available in 2050.
http://www.dlr.de/blogs/en/desktopdefau ... _read-271/

p69: Are there any contingencies for disruption of power supply when transmission lines are broken?

Maybe we should talk about this in 10 or 20 years.

p104: Can all countries concerned be persuaded to adopt the cheapest Low Demand Connected scenario?

I doubt that we will see any low demand scenario without expensive energy prices. As long as energy is cheap, demand will raise.
But it is not neccessary to have a low demand scenario, there is plenty of solar and wind potential in MENA region to power not only the electricity sector, but also to heat industrial prcesses and buildings and to use it for mobility.

best regards

[Graeme]

C, Thank you for your generous response. I have a couple of further questions.

Do you see ultracapacitors playing a role for energy storage (wind turbines) in Europe in future?

Does spaced-based solar power have a role to play for the European grid?

[cephalotus]

Do you see ultracapacitors playing a role for energy storage (wind turbines) in Europe in future?

I don't see this. They are way to epxensive per kWh. It is expected that battery systems based on Li-C / LiFePO4 technology could become cheaper than 100€/kWh in the next 10 years and those could be good for 10.000+ full cycles andmore than 1 million short cycles at high currents.

There is nothing inside a Li-C / LiFePO4 that is expensive, Lithium is very cheap ( in contrast to public opinion)

There are some projects with ultracapacitors in electric/hybrid busses for rekuperation and they could be usefull in e-bus systems where you make ultrafast recharge systems at bus stops with 400kW power for some seconds. (you need a capacitor in the vehicle and another one in the grid). But this would also be doable with good batteries, it's mostly about trying different options...

Does spaced-based solar power have a role to play for the European grid?

Never ever.

You can now buy PV moduls for less than 50€ct/W in Germany (ok, this is lowest quality). Wait for another 3-4 years and terrestic PV will be cheaper than coal power plants in China.

The nice thing about the Desertec concept is, that you do not need any magic, any snake oild or any new fancy technology. Everything is already available for many years. CSP technologies need furteher development for cost reduction (and efficiency and water consumption. Als low pressure water destilation / desalination processes could be included for the waste heat) and cost reduction / relaibility of offshore wind energy is difficult to predict.
The rest is easy. We already have many GW of PV and onshore wind energy in Europe, only little new pump storage capacity is needed and gas fired power plants are nothing really new (see Siemens GuD in Irsching IV, a turbine that can go from 100MW to 580MW and back at a rate of 35MW/min and has an efficiency higher than 60%). Germany already has natural gas /methane storage capacity of 200,000 GWh and we are already building more of it.

PS: Germay plans to stop PV subsidies when 52GW of PV capacity is reached. At the moment 28GW are installed, so this will take another 3-10 years. (my guess would rather 3 than 10 years). After that PV has to compete on the free market with other power generation options and I'm sure that this will be succesful. We are talking about PV in cloudy Germany with long and dark winters, not about a desert region...

[Daniel Rirdan]

The backbone of renewable plan I propose are the solar power towers. I ran a sim­u­la­tion on every tem­per­a­ture, cloud cov­er­age, solar radi­a­tion, humid­ity, and wind para­me­ter of every hour of the year in five key loca­tions around North America. I opti­mized the hourly power out­put for every hour of the day, for every month of the year, and for every one of the five dif­fer­ent regions. Then I com­bined it all into one energy-generation com­pos­ite and reviewed the resul­tant hourly energy out­come against antic­i­pated demand for every hour of the year. The damn thing works.

As a case in point, I sim­u­late in my book a thor­oughly elec­tri­fied (trans­porta­tion and all) United States and Canada. The North American grid demand for the year 2027 was pro­jected by me to require 10,365 TWh annu­ally. Or more to the point, between 700 GWh and 2,000 GWh in any given hour. These num­bers fac­tor in 13% trans­mis­sion losses, which given super­con­duct­ing, under­ground cables, is a rea­son­able assump­tion (the losses are largely due to the local, exist­ing AC lines).

The cost of run­ning the show solely on solar and wind would be a glo­ri­fied park­ing lot for mir­rors, tow­ers, and tur­bines cov­er­ing a com­bined area of about 225,000 sq. km. For this rea­son, I am the first to state that there is noth­ing all too green about this pro­posed setup. I refer to the power scheme I have put together as “lower impact tech­nolo­gies.” Just that.

Now, vir­tu­ally none of the power plants in my sim­u­la­tion were in the desert, or in ultra-sunny areas—as I am not enter­tain­ing any notions of degrad­ing what­ever is left of the Southwest deserts. No siree. 131,000 sq. km of needed land will come from land cur­rently under ethanol cul­ti­va­tion, 144,000 sq. km will come from land cur­rently used for soy for feed con­sump­tion (which, yes, opens up obvi­ous ques­tions, beyond the scope of this let­ter). Above and beyond land, we will need about 1.9 bil­lion tons of con­crete, 1.4 bil­lion tons of steel, and (most wor­ri­some) 140,000 tons of silver.

In broad brush­strokes, the scheme calls for 250,000 wind tur­bines (2.5MW capac­ity), 16,000 mas­sive solar tower power instal­la­tions, 50,000 sq. km. worth of PV mod­ules, and a few hun­dred depleted nat­ural gas cav­erns pro­vid­ing stor­age capac­ity for about 12 mil­lion tons of hydro­gen gas (capa­ble of pro­vid­ing 198 TWh worth of power once the gas is pumped up and ran through fuel cells).

Daniel Rirdan

[Cloud9]

That may be the way we build the future after the collapse.

[Daniel Rirdan]

Let us not be in rush to go from denial of our plight straight to resignation and subsequent expectation of collapse. Instead, let us avert the worse that is yet to come. The means are at hand.

This aside, the level of trans-continental coordination required for such a power grid will not be possible in a post-collapse world. Nothing much would be possible.

Daniel Rirdan

[Graeme]

Congratulations! Your scheme is very similar to the European Desertec one.

desert-power-2050-new-study-t65514.html

[SeaGypsy]

More numbers please Daniel! (Excellent project BTW, even if it becomes a Dear John letter).

Cost in current USD$? (@ current 5 year average mineral/ metal prices)

Carbon generation of the project and payback time?

Wear and replacement/ maintenance cost once stable?

Replacement of the current oil powered vehicle fleet?

Displacement of oil burn energy requirement? (has this been factored at all?/ It's a pretty huge thing. The system is not at all geared towards electricity as a transport fuel at present, vast chunks of the economy rely on folks driving themselves around).

Also, why would you put anything on top of 'Soy feed land"? Are deserts more precious than soy fields? Seems a bit loopy to me to wipe out 223/223 km2 of farmland for the sake of the 'precious virgin desert'. You do know how many people the USA feeds at present? What should they eat instead? To a lesser extent the same argument goes to ethanol, as there is always a choice to switch end product/ purpose, back to food if necessary.

Then you mention 'fuel cells/ hydrogen'; without having listed Platinum in your very brief set of numbers in the OP. You do realize nobody has invented a cheap catalyst/ that current technology makes fuel cells very expensive on any scale?

Then PV. Why PV? (at all) The technology is basically redundant compared to solar thermal, especially when you are talking about huge scale projects and maximum lifespan/ bang for buck and maintenance costs. I just don't get why you would want to spend 20 years building this massive solar array, just to have to go back where you began and rip it all off to start again/ just doesn't make sense (When all indications are that thermal solar can last many times longer).

Another question is why would you count windfarms as having excluded farms? The 2 are generally compatible, unlike large scale solar.

Your optimism is refreshing, we need more thinking optimists here. But please don't just ignore the glaring questions.