Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Inspired by an interesting guest post entitled “An energy model for the future, from the 12th century” over at Judith Curry’s excellent blog, I want to talk a bit about energy storage.
The author of the guest post is partially right. His thesis is that solving the problem of how to store city-sized amounts of electricity would make a very big difference, particularly for intermittent sources like wind and solar. And he’s right, it would. But he’s wrong not to point out how devilishly difficult that goal has been to achieve in the real world.
Storage of electricity is a very strange corner of scientific endeavors. Almost everything in a 2013 car is very different from what was in a 1913 car … except for the battery. Automobile batteries are still lead-acid, and the designs only differ slightly from those of a hundred years ago.
Figure 1. Elements of a lead-acid car battery. SOURCE
Now, we do have nicads and such, but the automobile storage battery is the bellwether for the inexpensive storage of electricity. Cars need a surprisingly large amount of energy to start, particularly if they are balky. If there were a cheaper way to store that big charge, it would be on every car on the planet. Given that huge market, and the obvious profits therein, people have been busting their heads against the problem since before Thomas Edison made his famous statement about automobile batteries.
And despite that century-long huge application of human ingenuity, in 2013 the lead-acid battery still rules. It’s an anomaly, like fusion energy, a puzzle that has proven incredibly hard to solve. Potential solutions have all fallen by the wayside, due to cost, or capacity, or energy density, or dangerous components, or long-term stability, or clogging, or rarity of materials, or a habit of exploding or melting down, or manufacturing difficulties, the number of pitfalls is legion.
So I’ll get excited when we have something other than lead-acid batteries in our cars. Because that will be evidence that we’ve taken the first step … but even that won’t be enough. The other problem is the huge amount of energy we’re talking about. Here’s some back-of-the-envelope figures.
New York City’s electricity consumption averaged over a 24/7/365 basis is on the order of 5 gigawatts (5E+09 watts) continuous. Let’s take a city a tenth of that size, there’s plenty of them on the planet, China alone has dozens and dozens of cities that big, and lets consider how much storage we’d need to provide three days of stored electrical energy for that city. The numbers look like this
5.0E+08 watts continuous times 72 hours equals 3.6E+10 watt-hours of storage times 3.6E+03 seconds/hour gives 1.3E+14 joules of storage needed
So that means we’d need to store 130 terajoules (130E+12 joules) of energy … the only problem is, very few people have an intuitive grasp of how much energy 130 terajoules is, and I’m definitely not one of them.
So let me use a different unit of energy, one that conveys more to me. That unit is “Hiroshima-sized atom bombs”. The first atomic bomb ever used in a war, the Hiroshima bomb released the unheard of, awesome energy of 60 terajoules, enough to flatten a city.
And we’re looking to store about twice that much energy …
I’m sure that you can see the problems with scalability and safety and energy density and resource availability and security for that huge amount of energy.
So while I do like the guest author’s story, and he’s right about the city-sized storage being key … it’s a wicked problem.
Finally, as usual, Judith has put up an interesting post on her interesting blog. I don’t subscribe to a lot of blogs, but hers is near the top of the list. My thanks for her contribution to the ongoing discussion.
w.
PS—Edison’t famous statement about automobile batteries? He was offered big money in those days, something like ten grand from memory, to design and build a better battery for electric automobiles than the lead-acid battery. He took the money and went back to his laboratory. Month after month, there was no news from him. So the businessmen who’d put up the money went to see him. He said he didn’t have the battery, and in fact he didn’t even have the battery design.
Naturally, they accused him of having taken their money and done nothing. No, he assured them, that wasn’t right at all.
He said there had actually been significant progress, because he now knew of more than fifty ways NOT to make a battery for an electric automobile …
Curiously, Edison ended up inventing a nickel-iron-peroxide battery, which was a commercial failure … so even he couldn’t get past lead-acid.
Similarly, we now know hundreds and hundreds of ways not to make a battery for a city. So I suppose that’s progress in Edison’s terms, but after a century the wait’s getting long. I suspect we’ll solve the puzzle eventually, perhaps with something like a vanadium flow battery or whatever, but dang … it’s a slow one.
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The ultimate energy storage would be anti-matter stored in a Pennings Trap. A more efficient method of producing anti-matter would be required and room temperature super-conductors.
The key to very large electric power storage and practical fusion reactors is advanced nuclear engineering (creation of man-made nuclear materials that occur in a ‘neutron’ star, star trek type engineering), the creation of super long closed strings of neutrons with each neutron loop linked in a manner that is akin to the Armour mail the knights used to protect themselves from arrows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_riveted_armor.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChainMaille_Dragon%27s_Back_Bracelet_or_Roundmaille_Weave.jpg
The closed loops of neutrons are super conductive. The binding force on each neutron loop is roughly a million times stronger than the strongest chemical bond. Linking the loops enables the creation of materials that are flexible and have a tensile strength roughly a million times greater than steel (binding force inside the nucleus of an atom as opposed to the binding force of atom to atom).
The engineering challenge is creating the first neutron loops and linking the loops. A very, very hard vacuum (not possible to create on the surface of the planet, requires a manufacturing facility in either a far earth Lagrange point satellite or on the surface of the moon) is required which enables a very, very, strong electrical field to be generated (the limit of the maximum strength of an electrical field that can be created on the earth is the quality of the vacuum) which enables the individual neutrons to be connected as an open string.
When the neutron loops are charged they become circular and stiffen. Charging the neutron loops enables the super nuclear mail to be used to form structures such as an orbital elevator or a space ship.
The chained linked neutron loops has a mirror like appearance (super conductor).
What I am describing above is reverse engineering. Someone has seen the mirror neutron loop mail material and described it (perfect mirror, cannot be burned, absorbs all heat, flexible, cannot be cut or torn apart, and so on). What they are describing is a super conductive, very, very strong sheet of the neutron loops.
Comment:
The current fusion reactor attempt is using a very strong magnet field to manipulate and compress a super hot plasma (tritium which is highly radioactive and very rare as opposed to deuterium which is not radioactive and is very, very common) to create the condition for fusion of tritium nucleons. That engineering attempt will never work, to be a practical fusion reactor. The neutron mail enables the creation of a tiny reactor that can manipulate individual deuterium nucleons which enables deuterium fusion reaction to take place in a controlled and continuous manner. Small, practical controlled continuous deuterium nuclear reactors removes energy as a constraint. Energy storage would not be required if deuterium nuclear reactors were practical, however, massive energy storage and energy control is required for practical, routine space travel. (The neutron mail for example protects the space traveler from radiation damage due to galactic cosmic rays which makes it not possible for say astronauts to travel to Mars for example as astronauts would be suffering from radiation sickness when they reach Mars and as Mars does not have a magnetic field would die on Mars on the journey home from radiation sickness.)
@ur momisugly A. Scott
As always, we have a problem with energy density and scalability.
The pump-up storage is nice (having “cheap” source of the pumping energy, like your own hydro-power – when you really deliver only at peak demands, or having windpark power supplied to Norwegians), but when you think about these 5GW (even 2GW in time of a malfunctions) to be replaced by pump-up storage then you are talking real beasts.
The higher the head the less discharge you need, so these 50 feet would need a huge dam.
Just for reference – Three Gorges Dam produces 22.5 GW. You may have a peak on facilities required to deliver 5 GW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hydroelectric_power_stations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses_Niagara_Power_Plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Day_Dam
It is good that someone takes from time to time a calculator/pencil and does some numerics for ‘great sustainable technologies’
Recommend books by Robert Bryce on energy and power.
Lead/acid batteries do not suffer from ”battery memory if charged when not fully dead. Lead/acid can remain on charge or stored not fully charged without any problems. The only advance in battery design is the use of a jell electrolite so if you do turn the battery over, or crash your car, there is no spillage. These batteries are air portable whereas the older type were not.
So, to store the amount of energy of 2 nuclear bombs, that would require 2 grams of uramium?
From wikipedia:
“Approximately 600 to 860 milligrams of matter in the bomb was converted into the energy of heat and radiation.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy )
This should be the best argument to start building some inherent safe reactors, imho. Matter seems to be the best storage place for energy. To release it safely is the only challenge.
@Steve Garcia
Somewhere I read about buses in Japan.
They got rid of mechanical transmission. They have a LPG engine driving electrical generator; the electricity drives electric motors at each wheel.
When the bus is braking then the motors act as generators and the generated energy is stored in relatively small accumulators. When the bus starts (accelerates) from the bus-stop or lights then the electrical motors draw the energy from the accumulators thus saving LPG in this very inefficient segment of driving.
Quite a clever way.
The one problem with almost all ‘technical energy stores’ is the danger created when you store a large amount of energy in one place. I suspect that this is a reason why electric cars will never succeed.
We already have LiPo batteries – used extensively for models and laptops, and they regularly catch fire. It’s odd to think that petrol is probably the safest way of storing and transferring energy….
I happen to watch a lecture by some engineering type from the energy sector which was held at a conference in Trondheim, Norway. The “green energy” sector is today part of the global warming industrial complex. These nutters are convinced that dangerous human caused global warming is real and a big problem which has to be solved with “green energy”. My impression was that these people are deadly serious.
So this was a serious lecture and the suggestions for a solution was serious.
The problem that was asked was, how to save energy from expected surplus of electric energy which happens at times of high energy production from wind power and when the energy consumptions in the grid are low?
They looked at solution for central Europe and especially Germany.
Obviously, today it is not practical or economical to store this energy using batteries or rotating wheels.
The solution they now are contemplating is to build special hydroelectric dams in Norway for storage of this extra electric energy. This also means that they have to improve the underwater power lines.
Why didn’t they suggest that such dams be built in the Alps?
I don’t know, but this guy came from a norwegian company or institute and maybe it is more complicated to build such dams in the Alp due to higher population density.
Needless to say, while this would work, the wasting in cost and the inevitable energy loss while not as bad as the alternatives, the price and energy loss for this system must be huge.
How to stop these people?
@Per
Looks like some people are creating ‘business opportunities’.
Norway has experience in hydro dams, lots of fjords. Delivery expensive electricity is a nice and clean money flow – why should they advice to put such storages in Alps 🙂 ?
To respond to Steve Garcia, I believe that the Audi A6 Hybrid does.
Quote
It combines efficiency and dynamism, and acts as either traction engine, generator or starter, depending on the driving situation and performance requirement, has an output rating of 54 bhp and a maximum torque of 211 Nm. The compact and particularly lightweight electric motor is connected to the crankshaft through a clutch. This parallel hybrid concept ensures that the available power is transmitted directly. This delivers convincing drive-off performance and acceleration in just about every driving situation.
Unquote
As it is directly coupled to the engine, when you brake it collects the waste power directly.
Willis, agreed. My electric car suffers from the same limitations of power density vs cost. But there may be a new contender, thanks to a kid in a science fair. Some sort of Hydrogen and Titanium Dioxide energy storage system.
From the YouTube description: “Eesha Khare, 18, of Saratoga, Calif. received the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award of $50,000. With the rapid adoption of portable electronics, Eesha recognized the crucial need for energy-efficient storage devices. She developed a tiny device that fits inside cell phone batteries, allowing them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds. Eesha’s invention also has potential applications for car batteries.”
MIT is working on something similar, a carbon nanotube based ultracapacitor, something Edison could never have envisioned.
Willis. You might want to check on what I believe is probably the largest currently existing battery storage unit — 64mwh — Sodium-Sulfur battery at Marfa Texas. Marfa is apparently in the middle of nowhere at the end of a 60 mile long and notoriously unreliable transmission line. The battery is apparently intended as a buffer to provide power during the frequent transmission line outages. Big gap from there to the storage needs of a major city. Press Release URL = http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/electric-transmission-texas-brings-largest-utility-scale-battery-in-the-united-states-to-one-of-oldest-cities-in-texas-90247902.html
You might also want to look at Tom Murphy’s blog:http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/. It’s a great read in general and the article http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/12/death-of-a-battery/ has a lot to say that’s relevant. The comments on that article are interesting as well — addressing things one might not normally think of like the desirability of being able to remove and replace individual cells in batteries used for serious electric storage.
Gel electrolyte as an advance; a flaw in modern lead-acid battery design is their sealed cases that prevent disassembly for service, cleaning and refurbishment. That’s probably a marketeering decision to sell more batteries rather than allow repair.
I doubt gelled electrolyte could be filtered and recycled.
Reminds me of the hybrid Challenger article a few years back.
A bunch of gearheads took a stock Dodge Challenger R/T with a V8, installed an electric motor in the driveline, and loaded the trunk with batteries. For most driving situations the batteries charged from the V8, then the car was able to cruise from battery power. With the V8 running at idle (to provide power steering and brake vacuum), they could cruise at highway speed for a while. Also at full throttle both the V8 and the electric motor would put power to the wheels, presumably shredding the tires.
Obviously this design didn’t work out, or we’d either be seeing conversion kits all over or be buying them from the showroom. I can’t remember but I’m pretty sure it was something like 24 batteries in the trunk, or maybe the entire back seat area. Try carrying one of those, they aren’t light.
Other than the example of cars that the story discusses the situation with submarines is similar.
Nuclear submarines have huge lead-acid batteries because if the reactor shuts off while under water the submarine needs enough stored power to reach the surface where they can then start their diesel generator. The smaller that battey is the more space for weapons or the smaller and cheaper the submarine can be.
In diesel-electric submarines, such as Germany has, the batteries provide the propulsive power while submerged. So the better the energy density the longer the submarine can operate quietly for the same size battery.
Both cases are situations where the best battery technology would obviously be used and they all use lead-acid batteries.
Here is a case where they didn’t use lead-acid batteries. In 2003 a massive NiCad storage battery system was installed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3312118/Worlds-biggest-battery-switched-on-in-Alaska.html
2,000 square meters
1,300 tons
40 megawatts
And it will supply 7 MINUTES of power for Fairbanks’ 12,000 residents. That time will allow for the cities backup diesel generators to start and come up to power.
That is half an acre for 12,000 people for 7 minutes of power. Try scaling that up for a major city and for even a full our.
I live on an Island that gets its electrical power from a long distribution through a heavily wooded rural peninsula and a five mile underwater cable. Our diesel electric generators are relatively inexpensive to install, operate and maintain.
My comment on refurbishing batteries was inspired, in part, by being shown their new flashing/control batteries that replaced the eighty year old originals recently.
Here are some submarine battery details already in the public internet domain
http://yarchive.net/mil/submarine_battery.html
While I like Willis’ equating battery storage to atom bombs, the truth is if we were ever dull enough to build such a thing it would be in banks which upon explosion would be significantly less than a fat man or little boy. The cost though…someone mentioned $60B which is only the initial cost…upkeep would be in the order of several billion a year. For that cost you could build 10 1.1GW nukes or 100+ coal fired plants. Stockpile the coal and there is your backup. Gas turbines are great too but if you want to store the fuel onsite its a little more tricky (yeah they can run on diesel, but thats still a lot of diesel, coal is less particular about how you store it). Nuclear fuel is no problem to store, its the spent fuel people whine about. I would have no problem storing a couple spent fuel casks in my back yard if the HOA would let me. (I am an old nuke and done a few reactor refuelings)
As already mentioned we have an amazingly stable form of energy storage. It is called matter. The future cold fusion devices will probably replace all the larger batteries over the next 20 years. As John Douglas provided, the ECAT is already moving into real applications. MIT is testing LENR and the government is funding several of these studies. Dekaflon is another company said to be ready to introduce real products in the near future.
California is building a number of pumped storage facilities to store wind and solar energy. However, their capacity is limited – around 11 hours of 1000 MW output. And the cost is very high – they aren’t much cheaper than a nuclear power plant. They also lose around 30% of the energy
they are sent. They have no ability to replace en masse reliable energy generators. Solar/wind output can disappear for days and weeks, not simply a few hours. So California’s storage is short term, and no solution to the unreliability problem of solar/wind. In the past pumped storage made economic sense, since it allowed large base load plants (nuclear/coal) to operate at peak output efficiency , sending excessive energy to the PS until needed during peak demand hours.
The alternative (using gas power) was much more expensive. But nowadays gas is cheap –
even replacing coal, so pumped storage no longer can be justified economically.
Re: pumped hydro storage. A number of years ago–about 30–the proposal was made and studied to build an underground pumped hydro storage facility in Northern New Jersey. It went like this: The upper reservoir would be a surface lake, the lower reservoir would be a cavern excavated out about 2500 feet below ground. The site was that of an old iron mine, and much of the old mine workings were still there, as well as detailed subsurface data and surveys. Ultimately, the idea was tabled as not economically feasible at the time, although I recently learned it is back under consideration. The other potential problem was that there are numerous small geologic faults running through the area; whether they would truly threaten the integrity of such a facility was never determined so far as I know.
This type of facility could be built anywhere the subsurface geologic structure is stable enough to support it, even Kansas.
The idea that Edison never invented anything is about as clueless a clam as I’ve ever seen, as is the claim that Tesla was some sort of super inventor. Tesla’s later work was mostly a fraudulent
attempt to garner Fed govt dollars for a series of nutty Tesla ideas about wireless power
transmission, death rays and other nonsense. I might add that nowadays Edison’s direct current is considered the best way to transmit electricity over long distances, not Tesla’s AC current. Edison created tons of inventions before he even had a lab or was a “manager,” a silly characterization for Edison – the person who came up with the ideas his lab worked on.
Edison’s genius spawned an enormous range of inventions. Tesla’s competence was severely limited – and he failed completely on his most cherished ideas later in life.
If we think of Thorium as stored energy, why stored energy for cities when we can have LFTR supply it on demand?
Regarding hydroelectric storage, if room temperature super-conductors were developed then that would allow you to effectively “take the mountain to mohammed”. But they don’t exist yet. People are trying.
Another tall order that lead-acid provides better than just about anything else specifically for vehicles so far (not counting Li-ion on 787’s just yet..) is reliable service at extreme temperatures. It has to provide a large minimum number of cranking amps at sub zero F yet not disintegrate at ~120 F. Such would not be a requirement for grid storage which could be kept at a steady relatively high or low temperature as required for some specialized electrochemical system.