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It would be stupid to spend on storage before there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. In the meantime they spend, sensibly, on renewabl

by ncmncm 4y ago

It would be stupid to spend on storage before there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. In the meantime they spend, sensibly, on renewable generating capacity. By the time there is enough, storage will be massively cheaper. In the meantime, charging storage from gas or coal and then drawing it down is the same as burning gas or coal for immediate use, just with losses.

capitainenemo 4y ago
The storage should be built in conjunction with the renewable generation to avoid those excess grid damaging events which is just wasteful. Similar issue to US where constructing generation is being subsidised but not constructing storage along with it.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  There are no "grid damaging events".
  - capitainenemo 4y ago
    Correct, because they price it negatively to avoid that happening. It's still indicative of a problem.
elihu 4y ago
Batteries will probably be cheaper, but pumped hydro storage will probably cost about the same since it's a mature technology. I could see Norway or Switzerland being major players in pumped hydro storage, given their geography. Awhile back I did a bunch of math to try to figure out how much stored gravitational energy is in Lake Mead, and if I didn't make any major mistakes it came out to be about as much energy as the U.S. uses (as electrical energy) in 24 hours. The idea of moving that amount of water around on short time scales is hard to fathom.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The overwhelming majority of storage will not be batteries, unless a massively cheaper battery chemistry takes over. Lake Mead stores (well, stored) radically less energy than mountaintop reservoirs with thousands of feet of "head" can hold behind cheap earthen dikes. Look up "penstock".
  - elihu 4y ago
    I suppose I should have clarified that I meant "lake Mead if at capacity" which it isn't. Stored energy (in a fixed gravitational field) is the product of height and mass. Hoover dam has a "hydraulic height" of 576 feet according to a government website, though the average height of any given drop of water is less than that because the lake is deep (or it was, anyways). The thing about lake Mead is that the volume of water is absolutely huge. I don't think there are any mountaintop reservoirs anywhere close to it because though the altitude difference could be a lot more, it's hard to store large amounts of water on a mountaintop. If we estimate that the average height of water in Lake Mead is 400 feet and it holds 26 million acre feet, then a pumped hydro storage system with 4,000 feet of altitude difference would need to hold 2.6 million acre feet to be equivalent. I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that in the U.S. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station in Virginia has an upper reservoir of about 35.6 thousand acre feet and a vertical distance of 380 meters (1,246 feet).
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      There are dozens of such reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada range in California. None of them will take as much water as Lake Mead, but they don't need to. Sweden has lots of high mountains that may have shallow reservoirs built cheaply on top of. Reservoirs with earthen dikes are radically cheaper than the sort of dams needed for traditional hydro power, and may be placed almost anywhere, because they do not need or destroy a watershed. Lots of small ones, placed close to users, are better than one big one like Lake Mead.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  The cost of batteries is actually rising, now that manufacturing costs only make up ~25% of a battery's cost [1]. The remaining 75% is raw materials, dominated by the cathode and anode, which are having trouble keeping up with demand [2]. 1. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a... 2. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/ev-battery-costs-set-to-spike-as-raw-material-shortages-drags-on.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/ev-battery-costs-set-to-spik...

by ncmncm 4y ago

capitainenemo 4y ago

The storage should be built in conjunction with the renewable generation to avoid those excess grid damaging events which is just wasteful. Similar issue to US where constructing generation is being subsidised but not constructing storage along with it.

ncmncm 4y ago
There are no "grid damaging events".
- capitainenemo 4y ago
  Correct, because they price it negatively to avoid that happening. It's still indicative of a problem.

elihu 4y ago

Batteries will probably be cheaper, but pumped hydro storage will probably cost about the same since it's a mature technology. I could see Norway or Switzerland being major players in pumped hydro storage, given their geography. Awhile back I did a bunch of math to try to figure out how much stored gravitational energy is in Lake Mead, and if I didn't make any major mistakes it came out to be about as much energy as the U.S. uses (as electrical energy) in 24 hours. The idea of moving that amount of water around on short time scales is hard to fathom.

ncmncm 4y ago
The overwhelming majority of storage will not be batteries, unless a massively cheaper battery chemistry takes over. Lake Mead stores (well, stored) radically less energy than mountaintop reservoirs with thousands of feet of "head" can hold behind cheap earthen dikes. Look up "penstock".
- elihu 4y ago
  I suppose I should have clarified that I meant "lake Mead if at capacity" which it isn't. Stored energy (in a fixed gravitational field) is the product of height and mass. Hoover dam has a "hydraulic height" of 576 feet according to a government website, though the average height of any given drop of water is less than that because the lake is deep (or it was, anyways). The thing about lake Mead is that the volume of water is absolutely huge. I don't think there are any mountaintop reservoirs anywhere close to it because though the altitude difference could be a lot more, it's hard to store large amounts of water on a mountaintop. If we estimate that the average height of water in Lake Mead is 400 feet and it holds 26 million acre feet, then a pumped hydro storage system with 4,000 feet of altitude difference would need to hold 2.6 million acre feet to be equivalent. I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that in the U.S. The Bath County Pumped Storage Station in Virginia has an upper reservoir of about 35.6 thousand acre feet and a vertical distance of 380 meters (1,246 feet).
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    There are dozens of such reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada range in California. None of them will take as much water as Lake Mead, but they don't need to. Sweden has lots of high mountains that may have shallow reservoirs built cheaply on top of. Reservoirs with earthen dikes are radically cheaper than the sort of dams needed for traditional hydro power, and may be placed almost anywhere, because they do not need or destroy a watershed. Lots of small ones, placed close to users, are better than one big one like Lake Mead.
Manuel_D 4y ago
The cost of batteries is actually rising, now that manufacturing costs only make up ~25% of a battery's cost [1]. The remaining 75% is raw materials, dominated by the cathode and anode, which are having trouble keeping up with demand [2]. 1. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a... 2. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/ev-battery-costs-set-to-spike-as-raw-material-shortages-drags-on.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/ev-battery-costs-set-to-spik...