Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve been reading some folks’ claims about how batteries are the key to a bright green renewable future. Of course, we wouldn’t need batteries if we didn’t try to depend on unreliable, intermittent sources like solar and wind, but let’s set that question aside for the moment.
A number of ways of storing energy exist that allow us to generate electricity as needed. Batteries, pumped water storage, compressed air, electro-mechanical flywheel systems, electro-chemical “flow batteries”, all are in use in various locations. And there are “intermittent flow” systems, which although they are not storage, allow for greater generation at certain times … including Niagara Falls, where the flow over the falls is reduced at night so more power can be generated when it’s not masquerading as a tourist attraction. Not storage … but pretty cool nonetheless …
Figure 1. Niagara Falls, minus the water.
Setting Niagara aside, I thought I’d look at how much energy storage exists in the world. Here’s a list of all of the world’s energy storage systems, by type.
Figure 2. Global energy storage systems, with capacity in terawatt-hours.
I love science because I am constantly surprised. In this case, the surprises are how much bigger pumped hydro storage is than all the others. The sum of all other systems is about a twentieth of the pumped hydro storage.
The next surprise was where lithium ion batteries, the Tesla Powerwall style of batteries, fall on the list … second from the bottom.
Being curious, I thought I’d look at just the US storage systems. Figure 3 shows that result.
Figure 3. As in Figure 2, but for US energy storage systems, with capacity in terawatt-hours.
The US pretty much mirrors the rest of the planet. Mainly pumped hydro, not much lithium ion batteries.
Now that looks all impressive … but is it really? So I thought I’d compare the electrical energy storage shown in the figures above with the amount of electricity consumed in one single day. I started by looking at the globe as a whole in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Global energy storage system compared to global daily electricity consumption.
Hmmm … doesn’t look at that impressive compared to even one measly day’s electricity usage. For example, all of the lithium ion “Tesla-style” batteries in service would only supply the global electricity demand for … wait for it … two-hundredths of one second.
And once again, I looked at the corresponding US data as well, as shown below in Figure 5.
Figure 5. As in Figure 4, but for US energy storage system compared to US daily electricity consumption.
Proponents of solar and wind power will be glad to know that lithium ion batteries can power the US for about 50% longer than the global average … which is to say, they hold about three-hundredths of one second’s storage for the US, rather than two-hundredths of a second for the world.
Now, looking at this, you’d be tempted to think, wow, we could do it all with pumped hydro energy storage. But pumped hydro has some huge disadvantages:
• To do it you need the proper geographical setup, with hills, a water source, and a place to dam up a valley to make a storage lake.
• Such sites exist, but they are few and far between. And a number of countries have no such sites.
• Often, such sites have roads, towns, or other immovable things of value located where the proposed storage lake would go.
• Even if there are no towns or roads in the proposed location, in California, as in many other locations, it’s basically impossible to put in any new dams, because feelings. The ever-so-green liberals, the ones insisting on intermittent energy sources that require backup, don’t want us to drown some worms and make some squirrels and cute bunnies move to the next valley over to create the backup they demand—that would be krool to nature.
• Good sites are often very far from where the power is needed. You can put a conventional power plant, or even a Tesla-style battery, next to a city where the power need exists … but you generally can’t do that with pumped hydro. So you end up with very large transmission costs and transmission losses.
• Pumped hydro is not all that efficient. You only get back about 70%-80% of the energy that you put in …
• The best sites are far too often already in use.
Subject to those constraints, pumped hydro storage is the best of our to-date bad choices. Some new ones will probably be created, but likely few and far between.
So that’s the current state of play in the world of storing energy to generate electricity. Short version? We are a long, long way from batteries or other storage systems being able to hold and deliver enough energy to do anything larger than balance out short-term fluctuations in energy supply versus demand.
My best to all,
w.
Post Scriptum: As always, in the spirit of avoiding misunderstandings, I ask everyone to quote the exact words that you are discussing. That way we can all be clear on exactly what and who you are responding to.
You know what else is a form of energy storage? Fossil fuels! Amazingly enough, we have whole systems in place for extracting and converting those energy stores into usable form. Decades of experience mitigating the issues with those stores. To use them we don’t have to litter the landscape with wind turbines that destroy birds, bugs and bats. We don’t have to mine vast quantities of rare earth’s, copper and other resources. We don’t have to rely on the wind to blow and sun to shine. We don’t have to create an increasingly complex stack of unproven technologies to pretend we won’t have another Texas disaster. Amazing. Who’d of thunk.
All we would then have to do is invest a tiny fraction of that wasted on wind and solar, to ascertain the truth about the undesirables in the flue gases and deal with them. A relatively simple task in comparison, if only the politicians and activists would stay out of it!
My informed estimate is that if we go with wind or solar you have to start by overbuilding supply by at least 5 times needed by nameplate. So if you need a gigawatt of power on average peak, you need to build 5 gigawatts of supply.
You then need to build at least 5 days supply of storage.
I am not sure the world has the infrastructure available to supply the needed materials to build all that in wind and solar. And certainly not in battery backup. No where near enough known lithium.
I agree – I have done some calculations for solar PV here in Massachusetts, and by my calc it is a factor of six.
However, that is only for long term average conditions of solar radiation that takes cloud cover into account.
I have not modeled it further yet, but my guess is that a small increase in the length of time that the sky is overcast or nearly overcast as compared to long term average will maybe double or triple that number.
You must live in California. Here in the UK solar output collapes in the fall and is virtually nonexistent for the whole winter.
The capacity factor is 10% – that is the average annual output is 10% of what a bright summer midday will produce. In winter you might as well not have the panels at all. So you need aroun 6 months of storage, for solar.
Wind is a bit better.
Random trivia I recall from ‘places’
In the pumped storage, energy loss comes from 2 main sources.
1) The turbulence created as the water goes through the pumps and turbines and all that splashing and gurgling as it leaves and re-enters the lakes’
Turbulence in water was how Joule related energy (that of a falling weight) to temperature rise in a known sample of water – hence how the unit of Energy came to be so-named
2) A;lso that the water on its descent and re-ascent requires to be ‘accelerated’ – where it goes from standstill in the lake to x metres per second in the pipes.
It is that Force = Mass times Acceleration that is wasted energy.
In the trivial case, if you could move the water from one lake to the other without accelerating it, you’d improve efficiency no end.
T’was a figure that came from the Aswan Dam and why a UK firm of consultants, who were initially approached to design the project, turned it down flat.
On 2 counts:
1) It would destroy the very fertile farmland, of 7,000 years and counting by damning up the silt other goodness hat actually maintained said fertility.
The Blue Nile brings minerals from Ethiopia and the White Nile bring organics from Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda,
A perfect mix. We could all learn a lesson or two from that.
But also the project was turned down because the UK consultants calculated that 33% of all the water that flowed into the lake behind the dam would simply be lost to evaporation.
So not only was the fertile land of the Nile Delta being trashed, so was 33% of the water it needed to grow stuff.
Ah, The Goode Olde Dayes – when folks actually had principles AND upheld them.
Alas no more
Any comment, Messrs Mann, Gore, Hansen, Biden, Obama, Johnson Schmitt, all of NASA, U of EAnglia, Uni Exeter, UK Met Office…..?
Forgot….
Lithium batterries can actually last quite a long time, IF you don’t overcharge or over discharge them
The classic Lithium Cell is nomiinally 3.7 Volts but will safely charge up to 4.2 Volts
Then, you can still get iuseful grunt out of them down to about 2.7 Volts.
They wont last very long at that, 500 cycles tops.
But if you contain your enthusiasm by not charging them higher than 4.05 and not sucking then down below 3.3, you’ll get 10,000 cycles
THAT was the principle of how Elon gave Tesla drivers a bit of extra grunt to get out of Florida when Hurricane Wot-his-Name came through – whenever it was recently. ish
He told the onboard battery manger to allow that little bit deeper discharge, was it about 40 miles worth?
There are no free lunches. Without knowing the exact charge & discharges allowed in Teslas, that stunt potentially took years off the life of the ‘updated’ batterries
Batteries really are ‘living things’ and just like elephants##, they don’t forget if you mistreat them. Treat them as living creatures and they will return the sentiment, possibly 1000’s of times over
## All animals are like that, not just elephants 🙂
Data. we own a 2007 Ford hybrid Escape AWD. Uses NiMH battery cells. Trick is, the charge is floated between about 45% and 55%. Never more (engine kicks off) never less (engine kicks on). After 14 years and about 90 k miles, still going strong. There were NYC Escape hybrid taxies with 350k miles after 4 years, also with no battery problems.
The problem with EVs is you top the battery off and then drain it way down. And fast charging makes the battery life problem much worse, something Musk does not tell you about his superchargers.
Is the usage band really that tight? I know it’s best to store NiMHs at only 40%, but it seems like you’re not getting the full potential of savings if you are only allowed to use 10% of the battery. It would be interesting if anyone driving a lithium battery hybrid cloud respond with their battery charge-discharge levels.
Er no, that is energy moved from potential to kinetic energy
You get that back when you slow the water down again at the bottom
Well most of it, anyway. 🙂
As heat?
Willis- How about including the energy stored in biomass in the mix. Stockpiled biomass (not of the fossil kind) could provide dispatchable power. What would that look like?
The best way to store solar energy is in photosynthetic organisms, such as trees. More plant food in the air improves this process.
Yes, definitely, burn the really old trees stored in the ground as oil and coal, and let the trees grow for future generations. I wouldn’t mind paying a small carbon tax knowing it went to good ideas like tree planting, city greening projects, artificial coral reefs construction, etc., but not flushed down the toilet of general government accounts or subsidizing rich people’s ev cars or solar incomes.
I refer you to the late Dr Mackays ‘without the hot air’ website and book.
I am sure that climatet change fanatics will know how much energy falls on the earths surface as sunlight.
On average you can recover about 100W/sq meter of solar panel
A wind turbine averages out at 1-2W/sq meter of land area used
I think biomass is between 0.1 and 1W/sq meter.
As with all these things, the ArtStudent™ approach of ‘I cant do sums, but surely…‘ belies the truth.
The appalling fact is that David Mackay is beloved by Greens, because they think – well believe – they dont do ‘thinking’ – that he was showing how to make renewable energy work. Whereas when you read it carefully, he is proving that it never will.
Quite right. They just read the title ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air’ and never bother to read the book itself.
What about the pollution from that? Fossil fuels, even coal, are cleaner burning that wood or other biomass, and you don’t have the hidden fossil fuel energy used to harvest and transport the trees, etc. to the plant. It’s fine using biomass if it’s just waste with no other use and you need to get rid of it anyway, but actually growing trees specifically to cut them down after a few years and the animals have all settled in doesn’t make economic or environmental sense, imho.
The other advantages of trees is that they are not just fuel. They can be used to make houses, paper, sometimes even have fruit to eat each year. Some even look pretty, hold hillsides together, shade the sidewalk.
For the cost of an acorn, and the area of land to let it store the sunshine; there comes a resource of many options. Today the heat / electricity may be most valuable, but tomorrow it may be the paper; Next day it might be just the place to dispose of (recycle) sewage waste………and wood smoke can be scrubbed. The technology is able to be used from homestead scale to industrial scale.
Best time to plant a tree was fifty years ago, next best time is tomorrow. Yes it is an expensive set-aside of good productive land, but there are savings from mining pollution to disposing of faded-out photoelectric arrays.
Just saying, I thank God for designing the trees.
Thing is, pumped hydro has a HUGE base of pre-existing technology (and scale) to back it. Humungous water pumps at surprisingly high electrical-to-head-pressure efficiency have been around since the 1960s. We use them to move water all over parched California. And to fill salt-water dams, for the pumped hydro-near-the-coast.
More definitely could be done, for sure.
Thing is though, there are a couple of electromechanical outliers that might make sense – mostly centripetal rotary storage. It is rather amazing what modest-house-sized rotors made from carbon fiber, kevlar and titanium can store. Ought to be engineered at the University-top-priority level, to make the green world vision … basically possible.
The other are compressed-air in spent (competent) mines and kind of the same at the ocean coasts: ginormous submerged cellular air bags. Not giant single bags… they represent disasters waiting-to-happen. More fractal: tens of thousands of much smaller bags, hooked together like cells, in rather oversized synthetic netting arrangements. Perhaps almost impermeable, so not continuously attacked by local biota.
500 m depth has an energy capacity of over 4.5 kWh per (original!) m³ of air. Most of that compressional. Smaller cellular ‘bags’ also dissipates heat-of-compression, yielding a more adiabatic energy equation, again being nearly optimal given the surrounding conditions.
just saying…
The problem with rotary storage is that you either have to bury it under tons of concrete, or site them many miles away from any habitation.
When they fail, they explode. All of that rotational energy is turned to heat in a matter of milliseconds.
Letting the heat of compression dissipate is a loss of efficiency.
Hydrostor is doing some projects with submerged air bag A-CAES (Advanced Compressed Energy Storage) in open water, and have refined that to underground caverns filled with water, using old mining pits and/or shafts. They are building a 200 MW project in NSW, Australia that will deliver 1,600 MWh for 8 hours. I tried (in vain) to find out from their website what the round trip efficiency is. Nowhere to be found, but using some calculations from what they say to compress and uncompress (retrieving the adiabatic heating) it seems they think they have a 77% efficiency. I really doubt that, but maybe they counting the lost heat they claim to recover. While this tech would work practically anywhere, my gut sense is that it isn’t efficient for the cost. Plus it is subsidized heavily, so probably not really economic.
Maybe this one deserves its own main post, like that scheme to lift up heavy bricks with a crane (and drop them when electricity is required) that was here last year. I think that one was busted as inefficient too.
https://www.hydrostor.ca/technology/
I assume you mean a 1600MWh storage system that will deliver 200MW for 8 hours?
Yes. From their website about the Broken Hill A-CAES project. But crickets for end to end efficiencies.
“The Broken Hill Project is a 200 MW utility-scale Advanced-Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) facility that is being jointly developed by Hydrostor and Energy Estate. The Project will be located at a local decommissioned mine and is designed to provide up to 8 hours of electricity discharge at a time (i.e. up to 1,600 MWh). The Project is the first large-scale, long-duration energy storage project in Australia to be selected as a preferred solution in the first stage of a regulatory transmission planning process by a major utility. The feasibility-stage development work for the Project is supported with funding from the NSW government’s Emerging Energy Program. The Project will provide critical back-up generation to ensure reliability of the electricity supply to the Broken Hill community and will solve significant congestion issues being experienced by existing renewable projects in the region. The Broken Hill A-CAES project will allow the region to sustainably unlock the full economic potential of its traditional and renewable natural resources and our goals include working with existing and new resource companies to provide them with a low cost sustainable energy solution.”
I wonder how long they would remain competent with constant cycling of the pressure.
It is always good to begin the week with a laugh, and Figure 4 & 5 were hilarious! Thanks.
I am surprised by the low numbers for pumped storage, but I guess it depends on the definition.
Because, in addition to these pumped storage, there are all the storage in pure hydroelectric reservoirs without pumping facilities. However, it is quite common that large facilities also have some pumping capacity.
A good example of such a facility is Blasjo, Norways biggest Hydroelectric reservoir, which alone has a capacity of 7.8 TWh.
See: https://www.statkraft.com/newsroom/news-and-stories/archive/2013/statkraft-five-largest-batteries/
/Jan
Yes. also look at the Hoover dam.
In reality hydro represents storage without the pump, and in places like france sweden new zealand and switzerland, you can have rain limited hydro that is viably augmented by renewable energy – or preferably nuclear power.
Even in the UK scottish hydro of the non pumped persuasion is a handy source of energy that is hoarded until energy prices are really high, and then used to make up the shortfall.
Hydro and biomass are the only ‘renewable’ sources of stored energy.
While the US is a bit less than 20% of hydro in the world, and something like a quarter of lithium-ion storage, it looks to be around 90% of electro-mechanical storage?!
What would those be, huge flywheels? Where are they used?
They are farms of small, very fast spinning flywheels. Usually underground for safety. And they are only used for voltage (frequency) stabilization on grid fringes.
I had assumed that was the natural storarge inherent in the rotating mass of conventional power stations.
These days spinning reserve doesn’t just mean power stations on and connected to the grid ready to have the steam valves opened, it also means power stations on and connected to the grid ready to use their rotaional energy to support it.
I dont know what ‘grid fringes’ means, either.
Willis,
Would 5 million new EV’s each year with bi-directional chargers and 70kwh battery storage change the equation after a few years?
Tom
I fear not, Tom. Since all of them are likely to be charging at the same time (night), I don’t see how they could be of use for storage.
In any case, globally, 5E+6 * 70E+3 = 350E+9, which is about a third of a terawatt hour if you drained every battery dry … but then the people couldn’t go to work, could they? So only a small portion of their charge could be added back into the grid.
Finally, since the EVs represent a new additional load on the system … all they could do is ameliorate some small part of the increased load.
Regards,
w.
So wouldn’t it be cheaper than lithium batteries to make a couple of giant metal plates (I mean huge) and turn the Atlantic into giant battery. What could possibly go wrong? It’s about as believable as powering the modern world with non-existent fantasy battery breakthroughs.
(Do you really need sarc?)
Very interesting read. I’m still in awe at the sheer stupidity of our leaders still heading down their blind path of useless “renewables” that are not the answer. Now the same blindness for the EV and battery push but it’s ludicrous as no one stopped to think of the actual grid itself and how will they ever support their brainless ideas? Many countries have severely dated grids the cost will be enormous to bring them up to par and will still need fossil fuel in every aspect of their green dream. It’s just insane.
And the name renewables in itself is a total oxymoron title for such energy that sure does have a short life timeline like wind and solar and batteries that are not easily recycled and mostly end up buried and worse for the land then before. And to those that preach bio is a true renewable if you think having to use trees then replant them, wait a century to reuse is the way to go well …..
I am far more in awe of the greed and corruption that our leaders display in promoting unworkable solutions to nonexistent problems, whose only result is in transfer of money from hoi polloi to the elite.
They will get away with it as long as you let them.
The facts have all been out there for decades. It is not possible that they are not known.
I’ve mentioned that before too. Just think of the massive work to be done to upgrade local utility distribution equipment. Substations, local power lines, house transformers, home breaker panels, etc.
There is NO safe way to store energy. All stored energy is a bomb waiting to go off.
The storage systems we use at the moment are mainly coal, oil and gas. These can, and do, explode, but we know how to handle them. Big batteries, or big dams, are more dangerous.
I assume that by “safe” you mean “foolproof”. Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
uranium and plutonium are way safer than even coal
Australia has about 7 GW of hydro electricity generation capacity (total electricity demand 24 GW) of which hydro delivers on average about 7% or about 1.7 GW. Of course most of those dams were built 50-60 years ago before the greenies stepped in. There is abouut 1 GW of pumped hydro in that mix with pumps used overnight to pump the water back into the high storage.
Currently there is a major pumped storage initiative known as Snowy2.0
https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/generation/the-snowy-scheme/
Snowy 2.0 will provide an additional 2 GW of dispatchable, on-demand generating capacity in 2025, with approximately 350 GWhr of large-scale storage, so about 1 weeks storage. Reported cost is $4.6 billion but there are suggestions of cost overruns.
Only suggestions of cost overruns?
I would have expected nothing less than guarantees of cost overruns.
Is the Wivenhoe Dam in SE Qld included in your 1GW pumped hydro capacity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wivenhoe_Power_Station
Mini-nukes in every county, all disconnected from each other except when backup supply is needed. Batteries are for flashlights.
One of the nascent storage technologies is via liquid air. I thought about this back in the early 1970s, and bounced it off of a neighbor who was an engineer and inventor. He became quite interested in it, but we moved away before he could ever give me a definitive opinion. (I subsequently got two engineering degrees, myself.)
It strikes me that this could have a synergistic effect in conjunction with wind turbines, making both a dispatchable source of energy. Instead of using the wind turbine to generate electricity, use it to directly (mechanically) drive an air compressor, and feed a tank farm connected to multiple wind turbines. The liquefaction process doesn’t take much power after the initial compression to ~1,100 psi, all of which subsequent power could be provided by an expansion engine using a portion of the compressed air. The liquid air could be transported either by truck, train, or pipeline.
The energy storage density of liquid air is dependent on how it is used, and here is where there is a lot of room for creativity. I lived in Southern California for 28 years, in the “Inland Empire.” Air conditioning is a must in that area, and it takes a lot of energy. My highest electric bill of all time was $1,200, back in the early 2000s, virtually all of it due to air conditioning power requirements. If wind-produced liquid air was used simply to absorb heat in place of conventional air-conditioning, in that market it would make sense. The heat absorbed could be run through a Stirling cycle engine in the process, and provide energy for the home. Whether the capital cost is worthwhile is TBD.
A few companies are promoting this technology, which has more growth potential than pumped hydro, since it requires only insulated storage tanks.
Is it efficient? Well, that again depends on how it’s used. But substituting air compressors for huge generators certainly saves the resources consumed by todays wind turbines, and that by itself may make it economically efficient – the only measure by which energy schemes should be judged.
For the converted what Willis has written here makes sense and is backed up by real data. However, the unconverted alarmist does not even want to sit down and quietly examine and thoughtfully discuss this presentation. Instead they resort to personal attacks on the bearer of good or bad news that contradicts their narrative and its echo from the media.
Interesting post. It strike me that if a conventional hydro plant is locate on a river/reservoir where the daily and/or annual influx of water is not sufficient to run the turbines at full blast 100% of the time, then that facility can effectively be used for energy storage: let it accumulate water when you don’t need the electricity, open the turbine gates when you do need it. This kind of hydro facility would pair well with intermittent sources such as wind/solar.
What I don’t know is what % of the installed US hydro capacity is water-limited vs how much is turbine-capacity-limited.
100% correct, and at least for the USA and certainly for the UK the answer is 100% of it is water limited, apart from possibly the niagara type installations.
And you are right that it couples veryt nicely to renewables.
It couples even MORE nicely to nuclear.
France and Switzerland with almost 100% hydro/nuclear are the two lowest emitting countries in Europe. ‘Renewable’ Germany is the highest.
Found an interesting & relevant piece:
“In recent years, with all of the interconnections between utilities, and the wholesale trading that goes on, some smart companies have bought a bunch of old hydro plants and replaced the generators with much larger ones. These companies can now store water behind their dams for much of the day, simply by not using the water for generation, and not spilling it. This happens when market prices are low, but when the wholesale price spikes during peak periods, they can generate an entire days worth of energy in a few hours, and they make very good money in doing just that. This type of operation appears to have a low capacity factor, as the generators only run when the prices are high. The key is that an operator can choose when that is needed, and is not forced to wait for wind or sunny weather.”
https://energywithouthotair.ca/2019/01/03/hydro-and-wind-capacity-factors/
Average capacity factor for US hydro is only about 41%, which reinforces the point that generation capacity exceeds average water flow.
That is getting more impossible now due to creek/river ramping rates, turning the water on full blast for part of the day, and then turning it down or off. Of course this happens all the time with the big dams, at peaking in the morning and prime time, but they always have some base load releasing water. With smaller dams, the fishery gets stranded in pools at low flows after having surplus water, not to mention water temperature changes. Everything getting more complicated… can’t operate like we used to.
Willis asked me to post this here.
Here it is.
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-6um
Funny character that Elon Musk. Like a Robert Heinlein space explorer freebooting capitalist he will go to the stars and damn the nay- sayers. Mucho grande cojones!
He also flogs dodgy batteries and seems completely aware of the concept of energy density . How many tonnes of battery do you need to make a tonne of steel? We are not talking Shipstones here and Elon’s super AA’s catch fire too. I
f you can not pack more kilowatts per kilogram than good old fossil fuel or even better nuclear then you are toast and Elons starships had better rely on nuclear or fossil fuel or ” The stars will not be for us”
Energy density, Storage Capacity , How many Terawatt hours do we need ? Concepts completely beyond the pea brain mentality of our green new dealer sqacking monkeys.
Unless the game plan is ” all you little people will freeze in the dark and starve. But you will be happy.
Please tell me I AM PARANOIC. But am I paranoiac enough
For some reason Musk does not like nuclear. It does not appear in any of his plans for martian colonies.
In my opinion, his martian colonization project is really a cover for developing Starship/SuperHeavy launching/recovering defense payloads or geoengineering devices into orbit. Kind of like Howard Hughes did with the Glomar Explorer to recover the sunken Soviet sub.
No RTGs!
What could go wrong with 25 pounds of P238 in everyone’s basement? Plus it would heat the house for a really long time from all the excess ‘heat’.
Almost nothing.
Even if it was in a mini reactor that supplied really hot steam to drive a small turbine.
the smaller the reactor, the less efficient it is, but also the less active cooling it needs, Under 250MW or so, once shut down by either moving the lumps of fissle material apart or dumpng neuton absorbers in between, the decay heat can be handled by passive air or water cooling
In the UK in winter, my space heating energy requirements are way higher than my electricity requirements. I’d take the plutonium without the generator!
238Pu isn’t fissile, it just has a short half-life (87.7 years) and thus produces a lot of power per unit mass via radioactive decay. By “a lot,” I mean on the order of 570 W/kg. So the 25 pounds mentioned would translate to 6,463 W thermal. That’s enough to be useful, though not too much to dissipate when not in use. By the end of its decay, it would have produced 7 GW-hr of heat energy, the equivalent of 877 tonnes of coal.
“But what about the nuclear waste?” would object the “Greens.” Um, the end of 238Pu’s decay chain is 206Pb – lead 206, a stable isotope. No nuclear waste, bud.
Xcel’s storage site in Colorado has 1,000 feet of relief from high to low reservoirs. There aren’t many places that have even that much relief anywhere, let alone near grid sources and loads.
I live in the Columbia River Gorge, whose dams and wind turbines are integral to the grid. They’re planning a pumped storage project, which is technically feasible: relief and proximity to the grid. But, as usual, no cost data provided.
Niagara Falls has a large pumped hydro system on the Canadian side. By design it was to be filled at night during low demand and used in the day to meet peak. Last I heard it was mothballed even though practically free due to forced legislated use of very expensive solar and wind in Ontario.
There are large pumped storage reservoirs on *both* the US and Canadian sides of the Niagara rivers. As Willis said, there are few suitable sites to build lumped-storage available AND developable in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Adam_Beck_Hydroelectric_Generating_Stations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses_Niagara_Power_Plant#Lewiston_Pump-Generating_Plant
Thanks for an excellent article Willis. It was full of surprises and startling comparisons. I notice that you omitted Unicorn Fart Storage from the lists of storage systems.
“I’ve been reading some folks’ claims about how batteries are the key to a bright green renewable future.”
Grid-scale batteries.
The wonder the world is still awaiting.
They got their political windmills.
They’re not reliable.
They got their political solar panels.
They’re not reliable.
They both need fossil fuel or nuclear backup to keep us torch-bearing peasants from “storming their Green Castle in the air”.
Tesla is building the biggest ever li battery storage facility for PGE in California. It will supply a huge 730 MWh over a four hour period. These people are just too stupid to talk to.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/07/29/pge-teams-up-with-tesla-to-build-a-giant-battery-s.aspx
Note the lack of cost data.