Energy storage nears its day in the sun

[jpak]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL222164020080222

MONACO (Reuters) - Energy storage is an unglamorous pillar of an expected revolution to clean up the world's energy supply but will soon vie for investors attention with more alluring sources of energy like solar panels, manufacturers say.

"It's been in the background until now. It's not sexy. It's the enabler, not a source of energy," said Tim Hennessy, chief executive of Canadian battery makers VRB Power, speaking on the sidelines of a "CleanEquity" technologies conference in Monaco.

VRB will start mass production this year of a longer-lasting rival to the lead acid battery currently used to store energy for example produced by solar panel, Hennessy said.

Low carbon-emitting renewable energy is in vogue, driven by fears over climate change, spiraling oil prices and fears over energy supply and security.

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[NNadir]

1. Actually the sun obeys the second law of thermodynamics.

So do all other systems in the universe, implying that energy storage involves inefficiency and, as is sometimes ignored systematically by the head-in-the-sand squad, waste.

As I referenced elsewhere, a recent paper in <em>Environ. Sci. Tech.</em> reports that the storage of wind power raises it's external cost - expressed by it's carbon impact. by a factor of ten.

This makes it only slightly less noxious than the dangerous natural gas that a certain cult that publishes here like to pretend is "clean."

Energy storage is a dirty business, but one would need to understand sciences like physics and chemistry to know that.

[kristopher]

2. What storage medium is being analyzed? Hydrogen?

Where is it in the supply chain?

What is the purpose of the storage that you are critical of?

[RC]

3. Any energy storage technology is dangerous. The more efficient the storage, the more dangerous

it is. Or to put it another way, the more energy you put in a given space, the more dangerous it is. Simple physics.

[kristopher]

4. True. For example, gasoline is an extremely high density storage medium.

And it is commonly used in daily life by everyday people.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't get the point. I'd like to though, if you'd care to expand...

[kristopher]

5. That'w what I thought, all hat, no cattle.

[jpak]

6. as usual

n/t

[kristopher]

7. Re your original article

That company provides large scale batteries used for grid stabilization. If a section goes down, the batteries carry the load providing time to react, thus preventing cascade failures such as we saw in the northeast a few years ago. They are expensive for most purposes, but cost effective in that application. They've been touting this same development for a couple of years now.

[jpak]

8. AEP has 6 MW of NaS battery capacity in development and expects to have 1000 MW by 2020

http://www.aep.com/newsroom/newsreleases/default.asp?dbcommand=displayrelease&ID=1397

[Dead_Parrot]

9. Aw Jeez, not this shit again

How many times has we tried to point out the difference between energy and power to you? 20 times? 30? More?

1000MW tells us nothing about the energy stored unless we know how long it can be maintained. 10 seconds? 10 minutes? 10 hours?

[jpak]

10. Ahh jeez, not this shite again - for the brazillionth time, I know the difference

and I was quoting the AEP press release - you know, the folks that are buying these things and know the difference between energy and power???

:D

[Dead_Parrot]

13. That you regard AEP's press officer

as the source of all knowledge doesn't help your position much.

[jpak]

14. Sorry - my position is just fine, thank you

:D

[kristopher]

12. What does this criticism have to do with anything?

Unless you define the application then your remark (rude as it was) is worse than irrelevant.

I thought this might be a place for meaningful discussion, am I wrong?

[Dead_Parrot]

15. That AEP plan to deliver 1,000 MW...

...tells you absolutely nothing about the energy storage capacity, which is measured in Joules or Watt-hours: It tells you what power can be delivered at any one moment.

There's a world of difference between using storage to smooth 1GW between the wind dropping and a gas generator starting up (about 30 seconds) and using storage to smooth the power between the wind dropping and picking up again (say, in 30 hours). We've had storage that can handle the former for decades, but until we have storage that can do the latter we're still stuck with burning natural gas and watching the ice caps melt.

To throw some figures out:
Maintaining 1GW for 30 seconds requires 30 GJ of energy.
Maintaining 1GW for 30 hours requires 108,000 GJ of energy.

AEP planing to do the former really isn't that wonderful.

edit: To be fair, they're probably aiming at around 500 to 1000 GJ, but they seem to have forgotten to tell us so we're left pulling figures out of thin air.

[jpak]

16. According to the manufacturer, their 8 MW system in Japan has a storage capacity of 58 MWh

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01/sodiumsulfur_na.html

If that can be scaled, 1000 MW of NaS batteries should have storage capacity of 7250 MWh - equal to the 24 hour output of a 300 MW thermal power plant operating at full capacity.

[kristopher]

18. The issue isn't capability, it is economics

I think you'll find that the only time such a system is cost effective is when there are high costs associated with the loss of power. Note the uses described on the page you linked to. These batteries are not more widely used because they cost too much to be used to meet less expensive power requirements.

Do you understand the way electricity is bought and sold, and what goes into meeting highly variable load demands?

If you aren't well versed in this area try wiki, it isn't great but if you read the short section on wholesale markets will get you started. The "see also" section at the end has come good links. I think you'll find the V2G information will help explain why the NaS batteries are of limited applicability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market

[jpak]

20. AEP is buying 1000 MW of NaS batteries - obviously, they make economic sense to them.

n/t

[kristopher]

17. I agree completely

That's why I didn't understand your hostility. Every company hypes their product in press releases, would you expect them to push away people who look at them because they are interested in storage for renewables? Anyone that is informed isn't going to be deceived, and anyone who isn't informed isn't going to lay out the money for the product. All I see is a press release that is meant to attract attention to the company. No harm no foul in my book - that's the market system at work.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. Fair enough

I try to stay in the realms of information rather than hype, as I reckon it's a little more useful to DUers trying to get thier heads around the issues: The Snark was from the fact that some people seem to make no discernment between power vs energy, power costs vs energy costs, or peak Watts vs average Watts, no matter how often you try to point it out.

Hey ho. We've been here before, and I guess we'll be here again. :(

[kristopher]

11. Cost effective application is limited

to the grid stabilization niche. When they speak of storage for wind, they are shining people on and trying get investors.

There are alternative technologies that are less expensive; that would include 1) pumped hydro where geography is appropriate; 2) V2G, especially as the production of LIon batteries ramps up; 3) Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) to augment natural gas turbines.

1 and 3 are proven cost effective technologies and 2 is in the test phase now.

However, the real story is that we are probably 15-20 years away from reaching the point where the intermittency of wind becomes a factor in grid stability. The main impetus for the development of the storage technologies is to take advantage of wind or solar energy that is being spilled.

Too many people evaluate wind as if it were being used in an off grid application. The trend is almost completely to integrate it into the grid and, eventually as enough geographic distribution is accomplished, to transition to wind as a segment of baseload power. It is theoretically possible but we aren't close to being their yet.