If you’ve been reading this blog lately, you know that the mythical transition to an energy future of pure “green” wind and solar electricity faces a gigantic problem of how to provide energy storage of the right type and in sufficient quantity. To make the electrical grid work, the wildly intermittent production of the wind and sun must somehow be turned into a smooth flow of electricity that matches customer demand minute by minute throughout the year. So far, that task has been fulfilled largely by natural gas back-up, which ramps up and down as the sun and wind ramp down and up. But now governments in the U.S., Europe, Canada and elsewhere say they will move to “net zero” carbon emission electricity by some time in the 2030s. Natural gas emits CO2, so “net zero” means that the natural gas must go. The alternative is energy storage of some sort.
Clearly, it is time to start figuring out how much energy storage we’re going to need, and of what type. Indeed, it is well past time to start figuring that out. If our government were even slightly competent, and also serious about “net zero” electricity by 2035, it would by this time have long since put together detailed feasibility and cost studies and demonstration projects showing exactly how this is going to work. Naturally, they don’t have any of that.
So how can this problem be addressed? One approach, discussed multiple times previously on this blog, would be to collect detailed data on hourly electricity usage and also hourly production from existing wind and solar facilities, and use that data to create a spreadsheet that will reveal information like how many gigawatt hours of storage will be needed, how long the energy must be kept in storage, over what period the energy will be discharged, and how much this will likely cost. Examples of such exercises have been reported multiple times previously here, most recently, for example, in this post of January 14, 2022.
But if that’s how you would approach this problem, then you don’t think like a progressive. To get some insights into the progressive approach, we turn as always to the New York Times. The Times has not up to now devoted a lot of its precious time and attention to this energy storage issue, but it so happens that they broached the subject in a substantial article that appeared yesterday on the front page of the business section, headline “Energy Fixes Exist. But They Need Money.” (The online headline is different.). The bylines are Eshe Nelson and Adam Satariano.
You can get the gist from the headline itself. The high status people like Times reporters and government functionaries have decided that the planet must be saved; and they assure us that “fixes exist.” It is now up to someone else to put up the money so that the low status people can do the menial task of working out the details.
The Times articulates the problem as follows:
The problem: how to make wind and solar energy available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even if the sun is not shining or the wind not blowing.
And how do we know that the “fixes exist”?
Solutions are available if given a financial boost, experts said.
Aha! — It’s the usual Times resort to the famous un-named “experts.” None of these experts are either named or quoted in this piece. Nor is there any mention of such issues as how many gigawatt hours of storage might be needed to back up the U.S. grid if powered only by wind and sun (the calculation in the January 14 post came to about 250,000 GWHs), or of how much that might cost, or whether batteries that can do the job can be produced, or are technologically feasible, to store energy for months on end and discharge it over the course of more months. Instead, we learn, for example, about the travails of Jakob Bitner’s battery company, VoltStorage.
VoltStorage needs “significantly” more money to develop its new battery technology, Mr. Bitner said. In 2020 and 2021, the company raised 11 million euros, or $12 million. Now, it is trying to raise up to €40 million more by this summer. “Even though we had great early-stage investors from Germany and Europe that keep supporting us, it becomes very hard to raise the tickets we need right now,” Mr. Bitner said, referring to individual investments.
So if this company and its technology are so promising, why aren’t investors lining up for the chance to put up money? According to the Times, it’s because those stupid venture capitalists have turned their attention to making a quick buck on the latest worthless fads, while the planet suffers.
Venture capitalists, once cheerleaders of green energy, are more infatuated with cryptocurrencies and start-ups that deliver groceries and beer within minutes. Many investors are put off by capital-intensive investments.
Could it be that the smart investors take a look at these proposed new battery technologies and immediately realize that they cannot deliver the necessary storage at affordable cost, or that they cannot meet the tests of being able to store energy for months and discharge over the course of months? Those possibilities are not mentioned here. After all, “experts say” that “solutions are available.”
And what do these “investors” say when confronted about their hesitancy to invest in new energy storage projects? You won’t be surprised:
[I]nvestors say government policy can help them more. Despite climate pledges, the regulations and laws in place haven’t created strong enough incentives for investments in new technologies.
What “government policy”? Well, to start, the government needs to suppress the existing industries that produce the carbon emissions:
Industries like steel and concrete have to be forced to adopt greener methods of production, Mr. Boni, the 360 Capital founder, said.
And as in essentially all Times pieces, it’s only a question of time before we get to the demand for government funds to subsidize the project:
For energy storage . . . and other large-scale projects, the government should expedite permitting, cut taxes and provide matching funds, said Mr. Fadell. . . .
Don’t worry, in New York Times world the government has infinite money.
“but green tech wouldn’t just fix the planet, it would actually create jobs and make everyone better off!” — people who have already lowered our GDP by trillions of dollars
These are people who actually believe that having 10 people do a job that 3 people could do, is a good thing.
The newyork times or whatever is just pipe dreaming and so are its readers . .
You have a few choices: 1) Chemical storage, 2) Gravity storage, or 3) Thermal storage.
1) Chemical storage is by far the best choice for most geographic locations. It doesn’t have to be a battery; it can be a combustible fluid or gas. In fact – fossil fuels ARE a form of chemical energy storage – we could just create methane and burn it. Batteries are just not scalable to the degree that is needed and need to be replaced every 10 years or so. They are also expensive.
2) Hydro is the best example of gravity storage, and for some geographic locations is an excellent choice. Other gravity storage forms do not look too robust or scalable.
3) Thermal storage has been suggested, but unless you are talking about geothermal and very few locations on the planet, it isn’t practical.
(4) There is also kinetic storage (inside the steam turbine) but that is really just for a short time allowing a power plant to gracefully exit from a Grid.
A lot of this can simple be avoided by building reliable energy generation such as nuclear. If you have enough reliable power generation plants and some pare capacity built in (like we used to have), the Grid becomes extremely stable. The best choice is to avoid building a lot of unreliable energy generation and now we don’t need energy storage.
I’ll go with your point #5.
Here in Alberta we have a grid that is 1.6x generation to load, ~11gw load to 17gw generation
But 3GW of that is wind and solar which is zero quite often, is 15% and dropping now
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
So ~ 1.3x of reliable generation gives cheap reliable power.
Contrast with Germany that has 2 generation grids, 70GW load to 225gw generation
And it’s unreliable and expensive as 60% of that is renewable crap.
Gravity based storage may be a cost effective solution.
Even where the land is flat for miles around?
I’m going with quantum singularity, those Kardassians are smart, always go with the snake people
Gravity storage might be cost effective, but it will never be more than a tiny niche player.
I sincerely doubt gravity storage will be cost effective in most places. You need a reservoir large enough it can be replenished naturally while maintaining an adequate level during low rainfall periods. Hard to find such reservoirs in most places. Otherwise you either run out of natural replenishment or you wind up having to capture some of the drawdown and pump it back up into the reservoir – a losing proposition as far as cost is concerned.
I was thinking of the people who propose things like hauling freight cars up a hill, then using the energy of them coming back down hill to turn a generator.
I too would be very surprised if such a thing ever turned out to be economical, but what the heck, stranger things have happened.
However given the limited amount of places where such things could be built, and combine that with the maintenance requirements for all that cable, they will never be able to store more than a tiny, tiny, fraction of the energy that will be needed to get wind/solar to work.
Wind and solar on an industrial scale are a non starter.
The US government did have infinite money until Vlad demanded RUB instead of USD for their oil and gas.
China is gradually moving to place CYN as the global currency. China would not want to be holding more US denominated assets that can be denied by sanction as the US has done with Russia.
These moves means that US cannot keep creating money and buying stuff in the global market place with US debt.
US current account is a train wreck and highly inflationary globally.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account
It is trivial for the US to create money but it takes energy and manpower to create solar panels and wind turbines in China that US must buy to make any inroads into their Net Zero fantasy.
The US government still does have infinite money. It just isn’t going to be worth that much after the death of Petrodollar. Inflation is simply the intrinsic flip side of near-infinite (in short term) money. Fiat money are always like this.
This is the essence of progressive green policy: outlaw everything that works and somehow a new solution will emerge. This is like claiming we will somehow all learn to fly once our legs have been cut off.
Of course by 2030 wind and solar will NOT provide all our electricity no matter how loud the progressives shout. Nuclear energy will still be around, providing base generation (24/7), and with new tech, may be pressed into moderate growth, if the progressives wake up from their woke dreams. Then there is hydro power, which is partially dispatchable, and hence, provides some “energy storage” in water reservoirs – not nearly enough, of course, but some.
Together with the inevitable residual natural-gas based power plants, those normal power sources, will greatly reduce the amount of energy storage required. There may be other small sources that can run on stored energy; e.g. fuel cells and hydrogen, although I would not invest in that. Dispatchable loads may also come into play: allowing your air conditioner or EV recharge to happen at the whim of the grid controllers, so as to shift various loads into times when power is abundant – all for a small reduction in price per kWh. Mind you, industry and commercial enterprises have so far not been keen to accept brownouts in return for reduced rates.
Then there are the other hyped energy storage media, such as pumped water, compressed air, hydrogen, heat storage, flywheels, etc. However, they all suffer from either low round-trip efficiency (hydrogen and air), or large capital costs. Combined with their low operating factor (< 40% of the time storing and < 40% releasing stored energy) means your stored power supply is expensive on a dollars per delivered kWh basis (both capital and operating). As far as I am aware, no other energy storage technology can match batteries for high efficiency, flexibility, and response time.
Ultimately, of course, reality will have its way. We will get more solar and wind, some large battery storage plants (but not terawatt-hour ones), some percentage dispatchable loads, and more nuclear (and maybe hydro?), but we will retain many clean gas-fired turbines, and probably more than a few other carbon-based power plants will continue operating after 2030. Perhaps by then the “climate change” screams will subside or become sufficiently subject to reason so that the push for “net zero” will fade or diminish.
In the end, reality always wins.