The "Smart Grid"

[ElSupreme]

How Big a Battery Would It Take to Power All of the U.S.?: Scientific American

... storing 100 gigawatt-hours ...

I want that in my Model S! :tongue:.

But seriously wouldn't it be better to have decentralized power storage. I could have a couple Roadster batteries and that would get me through 2 days (without charging my car :wink. The "Smart Grid" would need to have power balancing, but for freak 'no wind' events in a region you would have to roll blackouts if you can't pipe in power from across the country.

 

[Robert.Boston]

The way I read the article, the researchers were assuming substantial supply diversity already -- they only have 20% backup of the variable energy sources. It's also safe to assume that they are talking about the total storage capacity on the system, not some vast centralized facility (which would incur large transmission losses).

Another approach that the author appear to have overlooked is to over-build generation and be willing to discard surplus generation. A study of the Danish system showed that, by building wind turbines equal to 200% of peak load, you could operate the system entirely on wind (provided that you can trim the wind turbines down, but not up). Not very cost efficient, but it's an option.

 

[Lloyd]

Interesting article on energy storage. I would appreciate Roberts comment.

Harness the Power to Store Power - DailyFinance

 

[Robert.Boston]

With current tech, lithium-based batteries don't have enough cycles in them to be good grid-scale energy storage. Consider the current standard, pumped hydro: these typically fully "charge" every night and discharge a high fraction every day. Call that 350 cycles/year. Lithium batteries wouldn't last more than 3-5 years in this application. It gets even worse if you think about using lithium batteries to buffer within-hour variation, such as solar or wind produces. Over a 25-year life that utility guys expect from capital equipment, you'd have 100,000 cycles or so. Not good for current lithium batteries.

 

[VolkerP]

One of the reasons Quebec is so interested is because of Hydro Quebec, which has about 37 GW of installed power. They don't consume anywhere near that, so at night they sell it down to the U.S. at somewhere between $0.005 and $0.01 per KWh. What they would like to do instead is store the night-energy somewhere near the U.S. border in massive batteries and then sell it for $0.02 per KWh during the day

The daytime/nighttime price difference of $0.01-0.015 per kWh yields $10-15 per cycle for a 1MWh battery. If you target $100/kWh for such a storage battery, you need 10,000 cycles (or 27 years) to cover the battery cost. Surely not a viable business model.
If you invest in an additional hydro turbine that is running only during peak time of electricity prices, I am fairly sure you would get better ROI.

Edit: And Peterson would freak out on that outrageous use of Lithium!

 

[Robert.Boston]

Exactly, VolkerP. Furthermore, the Hydro-Quebec system is energy limited, not power limited, over the course of the year. That is, it can't run its hydro system flat-out, or it would run out of water. Thus the series of dams themselves are the storage device for HQ: they simply don't use water unless they need to for internal use or they want to for sales to the U.S. or Ontario (when the prices there are high -- all the neighboring markets run hourly energy markets in which the wholesale power price fluctuates depending on supply and demand conditions).

For years, HQ would sell power to New England during the day, when it was expensive, and buy power from New England overnight, when it was cheap. This preserved HQ's limited water so they could sell even greater volumes of energy during the peak daytime periods and make even more money.

 

[richkae]

How Big a Battery Would It Take to Power All of the U.S.?: Scientific American

Why build batteries that are single purpose?

1 million EVs with 80kWhr batteries equals 80 GigaWhr of energy storage. ( 941,176 85kWhr Model Sses )
That's only 1 hour of the 80GW that the article calls for.
Of course, if you had a million EVs, not all of them would be plugged in and ready to provide power, nor could an 80kWhr EV actually pump out 80kW via whatever it is likely to be plugged in to. 10-20kW is more likely.
10 million plugged in EVs would provide 80GigaWh for 10 hours, and each of them would only have to output 8kW.
But that would leave them empty, and the owners don't want that. The owners might set a limit of 20kWhr that they are willing to sell back.
Now you need 40 million EVs.

If 80% of your EVs are plugged in and participating in the grid ( charging when the wind is blowing + willing to sell back when it is not ) then you need 50 million EVs.
Guess what? We want 50 + million EVs on the road anyway.

Even if your EV doesn't participate by providing power, it sure could be useful by opportunistically charging when the wind is blowing.
If I plug my 85kWhr car in every night, use 15kW on average each day and tell it I want it to have at least 55kW every morning at 7AM, it has a full 2 day cycle to opportunistically use the wind power.
If the wind doesnt blow for 2 days - or I tell it I need it full tomorrow, it has to use the next best source it finds in the middle of the second night.

 

[VolkerP]

How Big a Battery Would It Take to Power All of the U.S.?: Scientific American

The article repeats the point of increased electrical demand for switching transportation from ICE to EVs. We went over that a few times in the past: replacing the ICE vehicle and its gasoline demand frees up a significant amount of crude oil, natural gas, and electricity that were used in refining and transporting. To the effect that for 100 miles driven in a 25mpg ICE you have electricity to drive the EV for at least 25 miles.

 

[Adm]

I just saw a "Ted Talk" by prof. Sadoway of MIT about a liquid metal battery and its potential for the smart grid.

Without a good way to store electricity on a large scale, solar power is useless at night. One promising storage option is a new kind of battery made with all-liquid active materials. Prototypes suggest that these liquid batteries will cost less than a third as much as today's best batteries and could last significantly longer.

The battery is unlike any other. The electrodes are molten metals, and the electrolyte that conducts current between them is a molten salt. This results in an unusually resilient device that can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity. The electrodes can operate at electrical currents "tens of times higher than any [battery] that's ever been measured," says Donald Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at MIT and one of the battery's inventors. What's more, the materials are cheap, and the design allows for simple manufacturing.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22116/

Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy.

 

[jcstp]

About smart grid & smart meters

 

[vfx]

IBM, Honda and PG&E Collaborate on Smart EV Charging

The story is about a three-way partnership between IBM, Honda, and Pacific Gas & Electric to facilitate smart charging of electric cars in a way that makes maximum use of an increasingly smart grid for both distribution of power to customer and storage of transient power from renewables.

 

[Adm]

Remember Mirko Hanneman and his Audi A2 who drove 600+ km on one battery charge? His kolibri battery technology has found its way in storage battery systems from 2 kWh upto 5 mWh

http://www.kolibri-ag.com/en/

 

[Robert.Boston]

I wonder if they'll offer a 60Hz system? Depending on cost, their batteries could be a great adjunct to solar installations in the US.

 

[VolkerP]

Yes, I can see them doing that with the Euro dropping against $. The AC side must be adapted not only for 60Hz (which should be trivial, perhaps just a firmware update) but for different AC voltages and single/split phase, too.

 

[doug]

Remember Mirko Hanneman and his Audi A2 who drove 600+ km on one battery charge? His kolibri battery technology has found its way in storage battery systems from 2 kWh upto 5 mWh

http://www.kolibri-ag.com/en/

5 miliwatt hours or 5 megawatt hours?

 

[samcal]

The sixth yearly Strategic Directions in the United States Electric Utility Sector Report from the consulting and construction company Black & Veatch was published on June 4. It displays an industry on the verge of change