As you likely know, on April 22, 2021 the “United States” “set a goal” of reaching “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.” You know that because on that date (Earth Day!) President Biden issued a press release so announcing, although the document does not inform us how Biden was able to commit the “United States” to such an ambitious goal by the device of a mere press release, without any sort of affirmative action from the Congress, let alone any consultation with you.
Previous posts here have noted that there is a rather gigantic obstacle to achieving the goal of “carbon free electricity,” namely the need for vast amounts of energy storage to transform wildly-fluctuating intermittent generation from the wind and sun into steady 24/7 electricity supply. For example, this post from January 14, 2022 reported on calculations by a guy named Ken Gregory as to how many gigawatt hours of storage would be needed to balance a fully wind/solar-supplied grid for the United States assuming consumption at 2020 levels. (Mr. Gregory’s calculation was in the range of 250,000 GWH, with a cost in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.) And this post from March 27 reported on various jurisdictions (California, Australia, New York) hurtling toward a “net zero” future without ever bothering to calculate how many GWHs of energy storage they would need or how much it will cost.
But clearly the people committing us to these goals have to know that a fully wind/solar and fossil-fuel-free electricity future requires lots of energy storage. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that wind and solar produce nothing on a calm night. And indeed, if we look around at what our government is up to, we find considerable activity on the energy storage front. But there is an almost complete disconnect between, on the one hand, current efforts of small research grants and pilot programs to investigate which of various new technologies might work, and, on the other hand, a multi-hundred-trillion dollar total transformation of the entire energy economy that will supposedly be accomplished within the next 13 years using technology not yet invented let alone demonstrated at scale.
Here are just a few examples of what is currently going on our there in the energy storage world:
- The federal Department of Energy has a big program going on called the Energy Storage Grand Challenge. An article from Energy Storage News, September 24, 2021, gives a comprehensive update. Central to the program will be constructing a new research center where various alternative strategies for what they call “long duration” energy storage will be investigated for feasibility. Thus it does appear that they have at least figured out that to make a wind/solar-supplied grid last through a year, you are going to need storage that can hold thousands of GWH of charge for many months on end. Lithium-ion can’t do that. But ESN notes that not only do the “long duration” technologies not yet exist, but the research center to investigate them doesn’t exist yet either, nor has construction begun. From ESN: “The DOE is also helping to get a US$75 million long-duration energy storage research centre built at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is expected to open by or during 2025.” So maybe we can start this basic research some time around 2025.
- And what potential technologies will be investigated? In the same article from ESN, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm weighs in: “Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm famously expressed a view earlier this year that flow batteries are “good for grid storage,” and these enthusiastic words appear to be carrying over into action.” Hey, Secretary Granholm went to the Harvard Law School, so that makes her at least as qualified as I am to opine on what kind of storage the U.S. should acquire to store, say, 250,000 GWH of energy for six months. ESN reports that Granholm’s DOE has thus just awarded some $18 million in grants to four entities investigating various aspects of these hypothetical “flow batteries.”
- In the somewhat less mythical category, here is an article from ESN just out today on the subject of zinc batteries, with the headline “e-Zinc raises US$25m to begin commercial pilot production of long-duration storage.” You only have to read a little of this to realize how totally remote from the needed capabilities these technologies currently are. “The [zinc battery] technology is being touted as a means to replace diesel generator sets in providing backup power for periods of between half a day to five days. . . . That ability to discharge at full rated power for several days potentially would take it past the capabilities of other non-lithium alternatives like flow batteries. . . . However, e-Zinc is yet to move beyond the pilot stage.” The technology to discharge at full rated power for more than “a few days” is not even at the “pilot stage.”
None of these articles, or much else from the Department of Energy, will give you much clue as to how much the deployment of any of these technologies might cost. But doing some searching today, I have dredged up a July 2019 document from the Department, with the title “Energy Storage Technology and Cost Characterization Report,” written by K. Mongird and a bunch of co-authors. This piece attempts to make cost comparisons among a large group of potential energy storage technologies, and to give cost projections for each as of 2025. The technologies are sodium-sulphur, lithium ion, lead acid, sodium metal halide, zinc-hybrid cathode, and redox flow. The authors actually attempt an honest assessment of costs, including not just the capital cost of acquiring each type of battery, but also the costs for the power conversion system (converting from AC to DC and back), the “balance of plant,” and “construction and commissioning.” The cheapest of the technologies in this analysis is lithium ion at $362/kwh, with the difference between that figure and the less-than-$200/kwh that Tesla currently charges consisting of the conversion, BOP, and C&C costs. But keep in mind that lithium ion technology only carries about 4 – 8 hours of discharge capability.
The second cheapest here is the zinc technology, at $433/kwh. Recall that Mr. Gregory calculated a storage need of about 250,000 GWH for the U.S. to back up a wind/solar system providing just the current level of electricity usage. Multiply by the $433/kwh, and you get approximately $108 trillion. If you’re planning to electrify all automobiles and home heating and cooking, you can at least double that figure. And this is the technology where they are hoping to demonstrate 5 days of discharge capability, against a need of more like 6 -12 months.
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…”a multi-hundred-trillion dollar total transformation of the entire energy economy that will supposedly be accomplished within the next 13 years using technology not yet invented let alone demonstrated at scale…” using technology not yet invented That’s the best part. But then again they did that with cellulosic ethanol……
But, there will be no problem, none at all, as soon as we discover more stores of the magical unobtainium! 🙂 /sarc
On the bright stide, oil prices are doubled and the delivered cost of most engineering metals are up 50% or more just this last quarter. Expect greater increases in costs of lithium, as well as plastics and resins, wood, and mineral-based construction material. Whatever the plan was, now double the estimated cost for finished products.
Top-down conversion of something as complex as a worldwide industrial economy can’t work.
One of the first things a technocracy needs is ‘crats who understand the techno…these political engineers couldn’t design a milk carton.
Free Bubble Up and Rainbow Stew all around!
I’m assuming you mean technocrats since glittering generalities and free stuff is at minimum bipartisan.
They do not seem to have taken into account that to do any of these huge projects, projects on the scale of replacing everything we have manufactured and built over many decades, and doing it with things that are more expensive and hard to get and make, will necessarily take a healthy economy that is brimming with excess power and raw materials, as well as a carefully conceived plan for how to make it happen without destroying the economy that allows it to be done.
So, having as a first step the shutting down the means by which our civilization is kept functioning, which is of course a stable supply of plentiful and affordable energy, it will become not merely hard but impossible to bring about the long term goal.
On top of that, if that first step disrupts everyone’s lives and livelihoods, if that first step literally ruins everyone’s life, no one will care about the plan to replace everything anymore, even if they did to begin with.
People are gonna care more about some vague, distant, and highly dubious threat to survival and prosperity, than they do about the harsh reality of an actual, immediate, tangible, and definite threat to survival and prosperity?
No, they will not. No way.
And when that vague and distant threat is seen for what is really is…nothing but a scare story from people who have proven to be completely dishonest and untrustworthy?
We may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.
They are gonna save us, no matter how many of us they have to kill to do it.
Ken Gregory has a pdf of his work
https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Cost-of-Net-Zero-Electrification-of-the-USA-1.pdf
Checking some basic numbers used in his work it looks to me that he is right.
If anything, he is a bit optimistic, but good enough. My calculation was in 2012 and has similar numbers. US48 grid electrical average base load was 475 gigawatts in 2012. Seasonal and regional differences may be more constraining, certainly for estimated peak loads. Grid scale backup using any battery tech would be excessively costly, and is highly speculative.
Total installed electrical capacity was near 1000 gigawatts in 2012.
Calculate the cost of 250 nuclear reactors at 4 gigawatt nameplate. At 4 dollars per watt, the cost would be 1 trillion dollars.
Replacing the US48 grid with wind, solar, hydro with battery backup would be at least two orders of magnitude more costly than nuclear.
Certainly hundreds of trillions of dollars. That’s an insane number considering the entire US GDP is 20 trillion annually.
250 nuclear reactors are a sane proposal, But not essential. Just build what is needed BAU.
The Ken Gregory paper has much more detail. Well worth the time to read over.
Griff is actually making, unintentionally, a very valuable contribution here.
What strikes most commenters about Net Zero and the alternative energy component of it is the impossibility of the alternative energy.
The most important objections people raise are, one the impossibility of achieving the sheer scale of the wind and solar installations needed in the time specified. Two, the size of the storage needed to make wind and solar usable, given their intermittency. Three, the cost of the project taken as a whole.
So in reply to pieces and comments where these issues are made clear, and in which the project is shown to be an exercise in futility, something that simply cannot be done and will not be done, and which will only produce an enormous engineering, social and financial disaster, we might expect defenders to produce some quantified reasons for their enthusiasm.
We might expect it from the policy makers and governments who are proposing to implement it. But we don’t get it.
What we get from Griff is much more valuable however. He keeps voicing the consensus that underlies renewable enthusiasm and enthusiasm for Net Zero in the Guardian, BBC and Ars Technica. And that is the view that we should just do it. Abolish conventional generation, move to wind, and all will work out.
Neither he nor the woke media have any idea how to implement it. In fact, one has the impression that the woke media has no writers who have ever implemented anything harder than changing a light bulb. And like Griff, when engineering reality is pointed out to them, they think its a reasonable answer in reply to point to speculative studies with very low chances of delivering prototypes decades from now.
What is worse is that ministers appear to have drunk the Kool Aid also. They are seriously proposing to abolish both the current automobile and current power generation without having any viable replacements to hand. Applauded by media and activists, and only criticized for not going faster.
What Griff does on every thread is exemplify the approach and the abilities that underlie this madness. They really do not understand that if you raise the demand for electricity by mandating heat pumps and EVs, that will increase the amount of generation you need. They don’t understand that you will have to have storage, huge amounts of it, and they haven’t even considered where to get it. They have not made any efforts to do prudent sizing or project planning, still less contingency planning to have a Plan B if things go wrong. They don’t have realistic costings for any of it.
And they have never stated the key thing: how much difference will it make to global temps, on their theories, if the UK (for instance) goes ahead with it?
Because that is the other point to take from Francis Menton’s pieces on this subject. Its not just the impossibility, and the prodigious expense. Its that after you have done all this, the effect on global temperatures will be zero.
China, for instance, is going to install this year about as much coal fired electricity generation as the UK has total generation from all sources. Next year it will install close to double that.
We have a political leadership which is in total denial of reality, getting information on a technical and engineering issue from a media which is staffed by liberal arts graduates who have never seen a project plan or a business plan or a scientific paper in their lives.
By putting this mentality on display every thread he posts in, Griff is actually performing an immense service. He makes clear the half wittedness that is guiding government, they really do have no idea what they are doing, and they really are going to take us off the cliff in the next ten years, unless somehow we manage to stop it.
Bravo, well said.
Better and in fewer words than my many comments.
EXCERPT from:
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
This article has five parts
Here is PART 4
Oversized Battery and Cost of Absorbing Midday Solar Bulges
This part shows, in very simple terms, the REAL cost of battery systems per kWh of throughput.
Very often there is much crowing about battery revenues, but not about the:
– Bank loan costs
– Owner’s return on investment
– Cost of subsidies
Assume for this analysis: Subsidies 45%; Bank Financing 50%; Owner Financing 50%
State governments require investors to have at least a 50% interest in such projects, i.e., “have skin in the game”
The battery primary purpose is to absorb a part of the midday solar bulge each day to avoid grid disturbances.
Some solar bulges are greater than others, which leads to an annual capacity factor of about 0.5
The annual throughput is about 1000 kWh x 0.5 x 365 cycle/y = 182,500 kWh/y
Battery system turnkey capital cost 1000 kWh x 1.25, oversize factor x $500/kWh, in 2025 = $625,000. See Note
NOTE: The EIA projected cost of $500/kWh for 2025 is assumed for this analysis.
The 2025 cost likely will be much higher, due to increased inflation, increased interest rates, and increases in materials prices, such as of Tungsten, Cobalt, and Lithium.
If the Owner hires someone to manage the project, that becomes a project operating cost
If the Owner decides to self-manage the project, that still becomes a project operating cost
Projects have many other costs during each year of their life
For analysis purposes, we will assume other costs at 15.00 c/kWh. See Notes
NOTE: Utilities that own grid-scale battery systems have the real numbers, which they do not make public, because they are “proprietary”
NOTE: The 15.00 c/kWh does not include the 18.40 c/kWh battery electricity loss. See Part 5
Payment to Owner on $312,500 at 9%/y for 15 years is $38,035/y, or 38035/182500 = 20.84 c/kWh
Payment to Bank on $312,500 at 6%/y for 15 years is $31,645/y, or 31645/182500 = 17.34 c/kWh
Project costs are 20.84, Owner + 17.34, Bank + 15.00, Other costs = 53.18 c/kWh of annual throughput
Project revenues are (Subsidies 45% of 53.18 = 23.93 c/kWh) + 29.25, battery services = 53.18 c/kWh of annual throughput
If project revenues are insufficient, the Owner has to: 1) get more subsidies, 2) charge more for services, 3) reduce costs
All these issues are hatched out with detailed spreadsheets, behind closed doors, to end up with a deal between utility and Owner, that can be plausibly sold to the lay public, various regulatory agencies, and legislators
As always, any costs not recovered by selling battery services are shifted from Owner onto ratepayers, taxpayers, and government debts.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-name-of-the-game-regarding-wind-and-solar