Analysis: energy storage cannot solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar power

CRS wrote…
From the link;
“A small startup based in Emeryville, California, will build a pilot-scale energy storage system that COULD provide a cheaper, more practical way of storing large amounts of electricity”.
Not sure I agree that a “small startup” building a “pilot-scale” energy storage system that “could” (from the link) really counts as “simple” and “proven”. Sure a technology has been identified, but there are lots of steps between that and practical electricity storage. And the molten salt energy storage idea has been around for a long time, nothing new here. Ever try to fix a leak in piping that contains molten salt ? Better get some really good gloves and glue (maybe some super-duper-extra-strong-very-high-temperature glue)…..
Cheers, Kevin.

I think that the Germans have solved it. Run lignite at 100% but control output. Only supply on peak demand and make huge profit. Burns a lot of fuel but hey makes a profit and no blackouts.

Agnostic says; On a post recently at WUWT rgbatduke explained why you it is not efficient to transmit electricity more than 300 miles,
BC hydro has a 500 kv transmission system that has been in operation for almost 50 years now.

However, hydroelectric capacity is not readily scaled up as it is restricted by suitable geography
and climate change !!

Grey Lensman
August 26, 2014 at 8:11 pm
“I think that the Germans have solved it. Run lignite at 100% but control output. Only supply on peak demand and make huge profit. Burns a lot of fuel but hey makes a profit and no blackouts.”
We do have a lot of small 300 MW class gas power plants here in Germany which should be very good in compensating for wind power fluctuations. Often they sit right in the center of a wind turbine “park” – which has grown around them to exploit the feed in structure of the existing grid.
Also, many municipalities have combined cycle plants, mixed operation gas and coal, for district heating and municipal power generation. These are also small plants that should be able to ramp quickly.
It would be extremely un-German to burn fuel and discard part of the power. If you have links that show that this is actually happening to any significant degree, show them please.
There were some explicit gas peaker plants that EON threatened to mothball because they only could operate profitably an ever decreasing number of hours per year – most of the time solar+wind swamps the grid. So there are talks underway to compensate owners of these plants for keeping them as reserve. Doubtlessly an expensive market distortion, but all of this has nothing to do with burning lignite and discarding the output.

Dirk, it is in one of the earlier posts. Seems they run at 100% but vent the heat rather than spin to generating power. Then when the demand comes, at very high prices, they just close the bypass. No more blacks outs but no reduction in fuel use

[Full reply prompted by one of RGB’s posts]
Unfortunately, we’ve been using and trying to develop new batteries for decades. While technology has evolved somewhat, I’m not convinced we’ve come anywhere near the breakthroughs we need to truly make solar and wind both cost-effective and realistic. Others also make this point.
The telecommunications industry — among others — still uses vast amounts of batteries to power and provide back-up electrical capacity for “switching stations” or “central offices”, including the electricity pushed out through traditional twisted pair copper lines to ring the wall phone and power the basic capabilities of the traditional phone. Yes, even in this day of fiber optics it is so…
The best batteries on the market — economically — are what they were 20+ years ago: wet cells (sulfuric acid and lead plate, or similar). Same holds true for data centers. If you have never been in a significantly sized datacenter battery room, you should try to find a way to get there (legally). Huge room with ginormous battery racks, holding hundreds of 1,000-pound or larger batteries containing literally tons of battery acid (even if calculated to a “pure acid” equivalent).
Smaller switching stations often have smaller batteries, which may only last for 5-7 years, while the big sites may have big, boxy batteries that may have a service life of 20 years.
If new tech is not showing up in the telecoms and datacenter industries, some of the most “large scale” applications for bulk electrical storage that face real competitive pressures, it’s clearly not ready for prime time, much like solar and wind were pronounced during the Carter Administration.
I’m simply not convinced about the overall viability of storage systems, other than pumped storage, which I dare say will not expand under current and future environmental laws and regulations. While RGB raises some good points, his discussions are heavily sprinkled and sometimes loaded with “IFF” statements
(IFF = if and only if). Read them again to see how we need large enough batteries, and cheap enough solar cells, if anyone ever figures out how to resolve the deal-killers in the engineering, etc.
Ripshin also hits the nail on the head with his comment that while solar energy is free, collection is not. (Ditto for wind.) Along with collection comes a need to transport, which is also not free, and none of these systems are maintenance free, or indestructible (think fire, wind storms, hail, etc.). Nor are they continuous.
I’m an engineer by training, working in risk management. Personally I hope these breakthroughs happen and happen SOON. But, show me facts, show me definitive progress with demonstrable cost-competitiveness without subsidy (FWIW, I believe everything should be compared without subsidy, BTW).
Keep in mind that in my experience, in the U.S. especially, we tend to latch onto the promise of technology and technological advancement early, often before the technology has been adequately tested and proven. Look, for example, at “weathering steel” more commonly referenced in structural engineering and architectural circles as COR-TEN (a U.S. Steel Corp trademark term): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel. There are serious downsides, but it was tried in many situations (not documented by wikipedia, naturally) where it fared quite poorly. Wikipedia does note a few important installations that failed miserably, however.
There have also been environmental (sewage treatment) technologies that were rushed into service with great promise, but that turned out to be spectacular duds. For example, EPA’s push for something called “Breakpoint Chlorination” back in the early 1970’s was a failed though heroic attempt to have it applied nearly everywhere for nitrogen removal based on pilot plant testing at but one or two locations. I know of one site at which is was installed to treat about 36 million gallons of sewage per day — many orders of magnitude larger than for which it had been demonstrated — only to have the state declare it a “brute force approach” that was approved for temporary use only. EPA’s guidance evolved thereafter to [eventually] drop the idea completely (in the never-published 4th edition draft document, naturally). There are other examples.
Most of the above discussion in this thread did not address the need for “spinning reserve” to back up solar and wind if the batteries don’t exist. Likewise such sources will probably also need to spin if the batteries/storage systems do exist, though perhaps they can be powered down somewhat further: if drain/demand on the batteries/storage becomes excessive or prolonged, we otherwise should expect to have one of them thar things called a brownout — or a blackout.
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There is an argument that we should not be looking to store “excess power” but to use it instead. If you use it, it’ll be hard to heat the water for your morning bath/shower overnight, or to energize your ultra-efficient CFL and LED light bulbs at night. In my home, I believe we use far more electricity for activities that begin as the sun’s greatest intensity is past, and before it begins anew the next day, than we do during the day. One minor issue with “making something” with excess power is that in the U.S. we have these pesky things called air emissions permits (water, too) that limit manufacturing emissions in various ways, sometimes by shift, hour of day, and so on, with totals that may not be exceeded without financial penalty. Another pesky problem is how you adjust the labor force for such activities on a day-by-day basis; we know the meteorologists — good though some of them are — are not perfect, so what do we do when storms that were not in the GFS, Canadian or European met models actually show up and screw the solar intensity so that there is no “excess”, or conversely when the storms that were forecast DON’T materialize and there is “excess”?