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America's grid battery revolution.
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- čas přidán 16. 08. 2024
- China is often held up as leading the way in renewable energy, but it's actually the USA that has most enthusiastically embraced battery energy storage to help stabilize the electricity grid, and in some surprising locations. But is it all about the noble effort of decarbonisation or are we seeing some market profiteering here?
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In Texas one big factor was the winter freeze of 2021. The governor blamed it on renewables not doing as advertised,when a report came out that most energy the state had during that time were renewables. The reason was gas lines broke cutting service to millions.
Abbot was and is a fool. Why that state elects him as a governor when he has so messed up the energy grid, as well as other failures, speaks to the level of knowledge of so many voters in that state.
The news blamed it on renewables as well. But then again their ads are pai by fossil fuel companies.
Yeah, Practical Engineering made a very good video about it. Wind turbines are not winterized, because it's no freezing weather there. Gas lines also; the water vapor in the gas freezes into an interesting sludge blocking the pipes. Even the coal plants reduced capacity because the coal piles freeze.
The lines didn't break. Water in some of the lines combined with the gas to creat methane hydrate, which clogged up the lines.
There was also a program, administered by a private company, where companies were paid to shut down their facilities during power emergencies. That private company signed up some pipeline companies, which shut off natural gas pumping stations during the emergency reducing the fuel available to homes and generators. Some plants had to shut down due to insufficient fuel.
Add to that many power plants weren't winterized, and got shut down by cold weather. Including a nuclear power plant.
Both nuclear plants in the state, Comanche Peak SW of Fort Worth and South Texas Nuclear SW of Houston, have their turbines and generators out in the open.
Comanche Peak is in Tornado Alley and South Texas is right on the Gulf coast where we get hurricanes.
Texas politicians can be counted on to be in the pockets of the ff industry
One experiment happening in California now is the Virtual Power Plant. Individual homeowners with solar and batteries volunteer to provide their batteries during an emergency load reduction program event or ELRP. They are rewarded with $2/kwh for providing a part of their battery between the hours of 4 PM and 9 PM. All residences may choose volunteer, choose how much battery they will give, as well as whether they will participate in any particular event. It works out well for those that invested in batteries and should help prevent rolling blackouts during hot weather events.
I’m in a VPP in New England. I get at least $750/year.
Understand that I have no use for the global warming crowd but I am building my off grid solar system. My plan is to generate and store one days worth of electricity per day. On cloudy days I will use the grid for back and when the grid is down I will use one of my two tri-fuel generators to charge the batteries for Up to 5 hours max per day. I calculate that I can save enough in eectricity costs in 10 years to pay for my system. That is pretty cheap insurance to cover for another extended grid down occurrence.
Regarding solar, wind and battery storage in Texas, it is 100% that installing it is profitable. It's probably the best indication that the transition is actually going to happen because policy here is not driven by what is best for the environment.
It's ultimately a question not of how much renewable power you produce, but opf how much power you need to run the state. For every GW of demand, you need the ability to store that power over a longer period of time, said period to be determined by the conditions in your state.
Generally, however, we are talking weeks or maybe months of storage required, if you want to run your entire state on renewables.
1 GW stored over the period of a single week requires 7*24*1 = 168 GWH
I have no idea how much energy a state like Texas requires to keep running, but just with this one example you can already see that 40 GWh storage are nothing. We are talking TWh of energy storage required, probably in the 2, mabye in the three digit range. Anything else is not "energy storage", but rather "grid stabilization".
@@Alexander_Kale I just think that going from basically zero a few years ago to what they have now is interesting.
@@Alexander_Kaledo you have a reference for your claim that you'd need up to a full month of battery storage for 100% of demand? I can see there being months where the total energy producible by renewables is significantly less than demands, and perhaps a week or two where production is near zero, but in the great majority of cases there will still be some production, and batteries will only have to make up the difference until production ramps back up.
That's just my thinking about it though, and I'm open to correction. I'd like to see a real, detailed analysis by an unbiased expert before drawing firm conclusions though.
Wind and solar can NOT power the grid. They do not provide needed 50-60 hz to keep grid from collapsing. That's what happened in Texas.
@@AlarKemmotar the @alexander_kale number reads very much like the meme that 83% of facts are made up on the spot.
At the school district that I work A private company installed huge parking lot solar canopies and they've recently installed huge Tesla storage batteries
to back up the grid.
parking lot canopies are such a no brainer I truly dont understand how they aren't everywhere
@@deaththekid416It’s a capital intensive project to trust the driving public not to destroy. Much harder for a drunk driver, or a distracted teenager to get up on a roof.
they should install BEV chargers there.
@@deaththekid416 generate energy, shade cars so they arent infernos when you get into them. Win/Win
@@Dontreallycare5 a very low threat level.
I work in Software for Powin Energy. We are building some of the worlds biggest battery systems in the USA, AU and Europe. Most lithium based systems are designed to provide power for 2-4 hours. The industry is getting good at spreading out renewable power over the day with these systems. Long term energy storage for seasonal usage is still a bit away.
Hydro dams are seasonal storage
Look up what the total global potential for hydro storage is - not enough suitable sites in the whole world
Don't have worldwide figures, but plenty of off river sites in Australia.
Switzerland is starting to utilise electric car battery capacity to store excess generated power and return it back a off peak times.
One advantage is that the batteries in most cars, most of the time are sitting doing nothing.
This is good news! Always wondered why there has not been such an initiative and/or demand for EV batteries to have this sort of capability built in. Some EV manufacturers have the V2G (Vehicle to Grid) function - but not all. Apart from the technical hurdles to make things work smoothly - there is battery pack degradation to consider?
I had a quick look at the 50x car V2X project done by the car sharing company Mobility - with Honda Model E cars. Looks promising!
Just a reminder to those in the US, until 2030 you can get a tax credit of 30% on home battery installations. The credit is non-refundable, i.e. you can only use it to reduce your tax, not get it in cash. You should also check to see if there are credits or low interest loans available at the state level or from your utility.
Glad to hear all this news. I didn't realize battery storage was going so well
Yea the media is pretty careful not to report the facts on solar, wind, battery and EV
Well fossil fuel propaganda does control US media.
Your ignorance ain’t your fault
because are media doesn't report it they waste time on conservative lies and propaganda
It isn't.
Didn’t notice you mention one of the great benefits of grid-level battery storage…quickly supplanting the need for peaker plants which could be dirty. Even if filled with non-renewable excess power, they may be filled from more efficient sources (ie. cleaner) avoiding inefficient peaker plants. Proud of the revolution in my Texas home!
Ray,
grid level is not an accurate term, it seems to indicate the impossible, i.e. battery storage can make up for intermittency and remove the need for fossil fuel generation. This is not reality.
Peaker plants can be replaced to a degree by battery storgae but those plants do not run that much, they are a source of readily available power when the demand peaks over and above what is supplying a grid.
So as such they have little effect on CO2. What is essential to any grid is dispatchable generation, which renewables are not, to keep it in load and supply balance and provide inertia and reactive power which renewables lack. These essential plants will be with us for decades, and yes, they are usually fossil fuelled.
Until the fact that the only non CO2 readily availpable grid power is nuclear we will use fossil; fuels for electrcity for decades to come. Renewables and batteries just incresae cost to the consumer and negatively impact business.
@@iareid8255well when you look at his graph for California, it is about half already. If they ramp that up with more hydro, it should remove the need for gas.
As the contribution of gas gets smaller, its cost will get increasingly higher, so make batteries even more favourable.
Of course California is blessed with lots of sunshine, other locations require different solutions
Mark,
Hydro is excellent, but needs water and California is a hot state. It's hydro generation varies tremendously but on a dry year is only capable of less than 10%, so not a reliable source.
You have, I think, closed a nuclear plant prematurely. That makes no sense.
Batteries are not a complete replacement for gas generation as gas provides several functions that solar and wind do not. It is conrollable so balances supply and demand. It provides inertia, reactive power and short circuit current level input.
Batteries can also do that but requires additional equipment and additional capcity adding to cost.
I would say that California is blighted with a lot of solar, it is a dreadful way to supply a grid, a third or fourth rate generator.
It's output is very variable, depending on sunlight and it has none of the technical requirements for a grid genertaor and also is iintermittent.
Who in their right mind would connect a lot of solar to a grid?
Californians pay a very high price for your Governor's obsession with CO2!
Are you also proud of Abbott who does everything he can to hinder renewables and *not* fix the grid as they were advised to do after the 2012 disaster?
Texans will never stand for new technology decreasing Texas' carbon footprint or reducing the use of fossil fuels. Any Texas battery storage facilities doing that are only a short-term money saving device, helping to fund building up the fossil fuel-battery infrastructure. Once that is in place, the renewable sourced batteries will be repurposed, crippled, or shut down. Oil money is still king in Texas, and Texans wouldn't have it any other way.
This so encouraging. Love these updates.
Thank you very much for your work sir. Politicians should have a listen
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
It’s not politicians that are stopping a carbon tax. Americans, particularly Texas really really really want to drill for gas.
I work for one of the world's largest solar module and battery storage manufacturer, here in the U.S., and 100% support Pres. Biden and the great work he and his admin. are doing to promote and help fund massive solar + BESS growth. We'll continue to see solar + BESS until ALL gas and coal are gone.
The inflation reduction act wasn't genocide joe's achievement, joe brandon was still signing oil permits by the dozens.
how delusional can you be?
@MrPetermc199 nope. Tesla only exists because of all the sweet sweet socialism for corporations.
Or until Donald gets elected ....
The big winners are going to be developing countries who import fossil fuels for electricity. Deploying solar and storage will quickly save a lot of foreign exchange. Vietnam for example is now adopting storage systems at gigawatt scale.
Well here's a daft idea:- Subsidised EV connection points at work places, shopping centres etc so that they can absorb the middle of the day glut of solar. If you have solar at home what you feed into the grid is deducted from what is put back into your car at work. Then when you drive home reconnect your vehicle to grid car and use it to reduce the peak load demand in the evening / over night. That way you are reducing the cost to the consumer and the number of batteries they need to buy. So daft it might just work.
Excellent idea but without the profit motive I can see it being sidelined
Very true! In addition to the lobbying issue, if oil subsidies were eliminated and the playing field was leveled, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
O$g is subsidized 11million PER MINUTE across the globe
behold the power of corrupt lobbyists for corrupt corporations.
Nigeria did just that.
Fossil fuel subsidies are the cornerstone of free markets
@@bobsinhav 🤣
This is great news. And will only get better as more LFP battery production expands, and then even more as the even cheaper Sodium ion batteries become more ubiquitous.
Once again Tesla is in a leadership position as they are brilliant in their approach to production at scale
the question is, if sodium ion batteries will get cheaper and when. they probably will be cheaper after production has been scaled up, but probably not by a lot. there is still a difference of about 20% in energy density compared to lfp which means that you need 20% more of all the battery materials for the sodium ion battery.
that means that the price difference per kWh will not be that much. but maybe other metrics like longevity or cold performance at -20°C might be better.
there are many other methods as well: pumped hydro, compressed air, gravity batteries.
@@stefanweilhartner4415 Na-ion is already on par with lower-grade LFP in $/W and the manufacturing costs will get lower. Of course, LFP will get cheaper too. High-quality 305 ah LFP cell now costs less than medium-quality 280 ah was worth in 2021.
The major factor is increased safety of Na-ion chemistry vs LFP. It won't vent with gaseous hydrofluoric acid, vaporized organic electrolyte or other nasty stuff that can easily catch on fire. The discharge curve, however, is a downside.
@@ThatOpalGuyhowever, these solutions and Na-ion all suffer from much lower energy efficiency than LFP. That being said, I don’t believe LFP is a sustainable technology at this scale and I’m looking forward to other solutions like flow batteries, nickel hydrogen (see Enervenue), iron air (see Form Energy), and more!
Thanks for updating me & everyone else.
You're welcome
I plan to retire at 62 in another country outside the US that is free, safe and very cheap with a high quality of life. I could fully just rely on only my SS if I wanted to when that times arrives but I'll also have at least one pension, a 403 (b) and a very prolific lnvestment account with my Abby Joseph Cohen my FA. Retiring comfortably in the US these days is almost impossible.
I know this FA, Abby Joseph Cohen Services but only by her reputation of being a former employee at Goldman Sachs; even though she's now involved in managing portfolios and providing investmnt guidance to clients. I have been trying to get in contact since I watched her interview on WSJ last month
@@FerdinandoAmbrosanio
Well her name is 'ABBY JOSEPH COHEN SERVICES'. Just research the name. You'd find necessary details to work with a correspondence to set up an appointment.
I went from no money to lnvest with to busting my A** off on Uber eats for four months to raise about $20k to start trading with Abby Joseph Cohen. I am at $128k right now and LOVING that you have to bring this up here I went from no money to lnvest with to busting my A** off on Uber eats for four months to raise about $20k to start trading with Abby Joseph Cohen. I am at $128k right now and LOVING that you have to bring this up here
I went from no money to lnvest with to busting my A** off on Uber eats for four months to raise about $20k to start trading with Abby Joseph Cohen. I am at $128k right now and LOVING that you have to bring this up here
What country you moving too? I'm headed to Thailand or the Philippines in 4 years.
Storage is agnostic as to source. So as solar and wind is installed the arbitrage advantage will flip. That will accelerate the decline of fossil fuels as that happens. That is what California has shown and what some of the Texas plants are staring to show. Storage in near Urban areas are very susceptible consumer solar and associated VPPs so that part of the IRA will begin to play out more and more.
Sad part in Texas is there is no worthwhile net metering programs. So it's hard to justify letting someone else use arbitrage to make massive amounts of money on the power you send very cheaply back to the grid.
@@playlist5455 Don't send it back to the grid the. Local battery storage is much more efficient anyway. Store it onsite or use it onsite. With net metering under siege & likely to go away, it's time to install excess capacity storage on site.
@@playlist5455 if you use the grid, you have to pay for it. that is only fair. but still, there are still viable options to make sense of having a home battery. but the most important thing is to have a dynamic price for getting and selling energy. charge your home battery when electricity is cheap, use it's energy when electricity is expensive.
add solar, let the computer do the trading if you have too much energy from solar.
charge you car first if you produce too much energy.
@@playlist5455just have a think - net metering is you selling your excess electricity to your electricity supplier for the retail rate, and with no option for them to decline. Had they that option, they could have sourced that electricity at a wholesale rate (or generated it themselves).
It's sure a nice scheme (for the customer), but ultimately unsustainable.
@@playlist5455 Net Metering was never going to last, and is slowly dying in most states. The grid must be funded somehow.
In Spain we have lots of molten salt storage, and much more could be installes. No need to import costly solutions.
Is that mostly for solar thermal?
Concentrated solar I believe.
Molten salt unfortunately is junk
@@w8stral why..
@@alicequayle4625 Horrifically #1 inefficient and #2 Extremely high maintenance costs and #3 extremely high start up costs making the power cost higher than that of Nuclear.
Oil subsidies are at $US 9.000.000.000.000.
(International Monetary Fund Numbers).
So, instead of co2 pricing, why not remove the subsidies?
This is more than $US 1.000 for every human on earth!
Its very interesting that the United States also subsidizes the fossil fuel industry to such a large amount. I think not many people know that fact, and that many governments around the world do the same. We are going to see greater battery developments as the auto industry ramps up E.V production.
Globally it's subsidized 11 million dollars PER MINUTE
Nigeria ended those subsidies. People there now look for other sources of energy because FF are so expensive.
@@jimthain8777 that's very cool about Nigeria considering their history with Shell and the delta.
Exactly what is counted as a subsidy here? Typically figures like that are derived from some model where assumptions are multiplied by guesses. So in most cases the absolute number doesn't mean all that much, especially if neither a timeframe nor geographic reference is included ...
Plug in batteries are now starting to get to market in Europe. you just plug in the battery into a standard socket, connect a app and you are done. Power in/output is limited to 800W with a capacity of 2.5kwh. But these things mean no planning permits, and electricians install etc. and ppl can backup their own solar really easy. Prices are close to a tipping point. So where home solar really took off first now these home batteries can be installed in a day. If all homes with solar would install such small battery it adds up to a massive capacity. And because it is local it reduces the stress on the grid.
People have no idea the scale - the breadth and depth - of the revolution that is about to transform how energy is generated and used.
The whole concept of the grid can and will be rethought.
What will be important is for people to be very vigilant watching the regulators and planning commissions and such, to avoid having the existing utility monopolies getting their grubby hands in control of everything to maintain their grip on everyone's pocket books.
Plug in batteries are super dangerous if you don't have a transfer switch, if they back feed into the wall.
If it's just a long running UPS, though, that's fine (and very common for computers and medical equipment.)
Overlooking the matter of feeding back into the mains w/o switching hardware, a household outlet here in the US can only handle 2400 watts. 120V x 20A. Not exactly big time.
@@frequentlycynical642 our batteries are hooked up through 240v so the 2,400 watt limit is not reality.
@@user-ei3ml8jo1s Still only 4800 watts.
Thank you for making these videos! Your you-tube channel gives me hope for humanity.
Thank you. Glad you like them!
Fossil fuel subsidies have increased by 31% in 2023 -2024 in the sun drenched country of Australia.
Tax free Profit for international oil & gas corporations are ongoing, while
Indigenous Aboriginal communities are prevented from installing renewable power systems on their reclaimed Homelands ...
Tax breaks aren't subsidies.
@@andrewhotston983 They are. Any government action that is designed for you to operate your business at a greater gross profit because its seen as a benefit to the nation is a subsidy.
Another great video well worth my time. Thank you Sir from us folks in Florida who appreciate a logical rational discussion of current issues
You are very welcome :-)
An idea for an episode: I live in the Portland Oregon area, and there's a hydro electric plant just up the Columbia River called Bonneville. (technically two plants) Ten glorious turbines in a gigantic room, the river roaring outside, yet none of them were operating during my visit. The guide explained that the plant shuts off the turbines when cheaper electricity is available from other sources. I couldn't imagine a scenario where hydro would be more expensive except maybe solar, and I'm not aware of any vast solar fields anywhere nearby. And not even one turbine running? ...but then I'm not an expert on the US Pacific Northwest power grid. Could you please take a look at the power economics of this area to find out how this seeming contradiction could be possible? It seems implausible that we'd be gushing out so much power that we'd have to shut down a hydro plant in order to cope. Thx!
"Cheaper" makes zero sense. Maybe the idea was to fill up the dam so that they could make more power at a time of higher demand?
Spot power prices can be negative during the day if there's a lot of solar and not a lot of storage. And then you might as well stop your turbines and save the wear on them, I'd think.
If you have a dam, then it can make sense to accumulate water when there's a surplus of electricity on the grid, then use the stored water to make power at other times, like incognito said.
Lotta wind generators along the Columbia and nearby.
@@mitchskinner174I believe this is the case and when it is, we should charge all LiON batteries we can but also then take any excess and generate H2 for longer duration storage and for aircraft which are quickly moving that direction.
Yes, we have hundreds of wind turbines on the Oregon side, among the wheat fields. Generates a whole lot of power.
Seasonal needs for fisheries may also dictate how much water is used for the turbines in Bonneville, on a given day.
Good to see coverage of this--it's depressing how many people seem oblivious to how grid scale storage is changing the energy landscape.
I live in the American southeast and inevitability I get to hear about all of these great advances taking place elseward. What I am looking at is the issue of structural (organizational) rigidity. Investor owned utilities (IOU) seem reluctant to promote technologies that challenge their bottom line.
The Australian electricity grid is 1million km and $1million per km to rebuild.
So it's value is $1TRILLION.
Plus generation plants.
As you know, economic investment assets need cash flow.
$100sBILLIONS in cashflow each year, grid investors need dirt cheap electricity to sell to the millions and millions of customers.
Every day of the year.
The grid is rented to the customers.
If half switches to big house battery, the remaining customers need to pay twice as much to maintain grid cash flow.
@@stephenbrickwood1602
Some utilities are promoting virtual batteries where they help customers install batteries in exchange for letting the utility to use the batteries during peak periods.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 One has to ask why are we doing what we are doing. I believe that a renewable energy based electrical grid will be decentralized. That is as opposed to the past centralized carbon-based system. There are investors on both sides of this issue. Here in the USA our grid has been underfunded and ignored for a long time, but the investors of IOU's got their profits. Now, the consumer can also become a producer. I am sure we can find the money. Capitalism is based on risk.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 OR you get rid of the stupid legislation that forces power companies to pay too much for small scale solar power generation. That does not help the equation.
solar is still way cheaper than anything else to install and run.....
But like the USA Australians are lovers of hydrocarbons and would rather accelerate the sinking of their big cities beneath the rising sea then sort their issues out.
Well done - I now live on hill because I worked out that we were not doing enough......
Perhaps you could get a boat.
@madpete6438 How to explain the situation is difficult. People have limited understanding of all the facts.
Including the solutions facts.
Grid electricity needs a grid to millions of customers and daily cash flow, basically.
With rooftop PV shading the hot roof and a BV with OVERSIZED battery parked 23hrs every day, then grid electricity is not needed every day the sun comes up.
This terrifies the grid and generator owners.
$TRILLIONS in assets and no cash flow.
A little fossil fuel heating in winter weeks is nothing.
Petroleum for the petrochemical industry and road building and the remaining ICE vehicles as they disappear will be a permanent part of our economy.
Offgrid in the suburbs will be universal.
The next 20years will be complicated.
Continue the excellent output you have provided to us "consumers" regularly. I look forward to your vlogs weekly. Thank you!
Such a basic electronics concept finally applied to the grid: capacitance.
longer term capacitance 😉😁
A better term would be "Capacity", but still, you're exactly right.
@@vincentrobinette1507 I think he meant capacitance as in the feature added to a circuit to balance power demands when one adds a capacitor.
@@archstanton_live In which case he'd be mistaken.
@@yerocayea, I don’t capacitance is the thing here
Spot on! The UK needs to stop messing about with Nuclear future projects, and install wind onshore and Grid based battery storage. Also mandating all car parks and buildings to install solar PV if new or upgraded requiring planning consent. Suddenly moving power pricing from gas pricing to real cost!
Got some good news for you about Starmer's first week in office. Budget for Nuclear is very low and de facto ban on onshore wind has been lifted.
@@bellshooter I see nuclear as base load, renewables as top ups with batteries and the turbine replacement system that has also been reported to cover peaks
@@gtubbs6974 Why? Nuclear has it's own set of problems(It needs a fuel that has to be mined and processed, the logistics of moving and storing the spent rods, the logistics of transporting the new rods, the exclusion zone, the massive cost and time necessary to build a reactor, the fact that you need a bunch of people to sit on their asses monitoring the rector at all times etc. etc. etc.), so why bother building them at all when what they can do, solar, wind, and batteries can do as well?
If you put solar panels in the area equal to the size of the exclusion zone, you can make more power than the rector itself.
@@yomanyo327you are referring to old and outdated nuclear technology.
Every power station requires so people to monitor and operate.
New Gen 4 molten salt reactors such as the design by UK company Moltex are designed to produce power at a rate cheaper than coal. More importantly they can also consume older spent nuclear waste and are vastly safer and cheaper to build and operate.
Solar and wind are the least energy dense sources and so require massive amounts of resources to produce large amounts of power; nuclear is the highest energy density form and so requires the least amount of resources to generate power!
Energy consumption is increasing so we need more ways of producing power, especially long duration base load; lithium based grid batteries are expensive, have limited capacity and have a too short a life expectancy due to the limited cycles that current batteries can undergo. Not to mention the vast amount of lithium needed. Alternative battery technology like Flow batteries or that produced by US Ambri Power would be better.
In Australia, we're having a hamfisted go at a pumped hydro scheme, called Snowy 2.0, that is meant to have a 2GW capacity, for 16 hours. However, the tunnel boring machine for the headrace is stuck in some soft, then some hard rock, so we're now behind by 2 years, and overbudget maybe 4 x with it. This is throwing the whole idea of pumped hydro in Australia into doubt (mainly driven by the RW shock jocks and usual Murdoch & adjacent filth-spewers), even tho we have over 60,000 potential and feasible sites for projects, small and large. Even if only 20% of these were developed, by the time the big batteries we are installing have reached the end of their service lives, we'd have peak power storage for half a century or more.
I really wish more would be made of the smaller sites, rather than only ever building massive projects. While smaller can be less efficient, it can also have many benefits (such as taking advantage of existing situations).
Ah drilling. Always the great unknown. I got about a dozen over 20 years for little holes to put cheap elevator stuff in, all supposedly $200K all in and ended up like a hospital they found they were undermining the building after trying to get a hole 60 feet deep removing several times the wet sand that could be in that collapsing hole. Estimate from geologist was $250K to pump grout in to stablilize and abandon the project, re-start with a holeless elevator. Canada Post Office had a small budget they had to spend before Year End, not enough for a nice new elevator, so they tried a quickie hole re-bore to use up their budget, ended up at Christmas postal emergency time with concrete feet thick found at the hole bottom, they basically spent their little budget changing it to something slightly less durable than they started with ready on December 24th, another one work stopped several days when hydrogen sulphide was detected, and on and on like that.
175 hours, not 16.
Ideally it should have been 10 times the size and been good for 20 GW for 17 hours, but as it stands, the capacity is 350 GWh
@@grindupBaker Thanks for the insights...
Thank you excellent presentation, especially the charts you provide
We got rid of that gimmick of a PM in Australia, thank god, when the coal fired power station went out in Queensland the batteries in South Australia, 2000Klms away kept the lights on.
The new primary frequency response rules really helped as well, Queensland was even able to reconnect to the national grid after the event via nothing more than an automatic relay.
Spot on, Thank you!
Cheers. Glad you liked it :-)
I love your videos Dave, they generally leave me feeling more hopeful. With regard to this grid battery storage an important factor is the life of these batteries? and what is the situation for recycling the old ones and replacing them with new ones? This information is rarely included in these sorts of videos and it seems very important.
Remember way back when we just said this was going to happen? Now it's happening
Great video, keep them coming please
Will do.
Excellent video, as usual. Thanks.
Excellent analysis - there’s some hope!
love your videos. but please distinguish between capacity (gwh) and power (gw)
i came for the topic, I stayed for the voice quality and clarity
Very good quality video update of situation; Thank You.
Excellent, as usual.
Here in Australia very few people had bought a battery as part of a solar installation. We did back in 2019 but our 10kw/h 34 solar panel installation cost around $14,000AUD but the 13kw capacity battery cost $12,000. The ROI on our solar set up was under 4 years but the ROI on the battery was about 15 years.
This has started to change and we now have an electricity provider (Amber Electricity) where you can pay the market rate and they will even draw from your battery to the grid when there is a price spike. So you no longer need to have solar yourself but the battery can charge from the grid during the day when energy is often just a couple of cents per kw/h and discharge when the rates can be as high as several dollars per kw/h (albeit in short spikes). The depleted battery can even be charged back up again overnight when rates are low for discharge in the early morning peak before solar comes onstream. This is all algorithmically calculated by Amber so you don’t have to manage the process (however their system is a bit buggy at the moment in my experience).
The ROI on solar has lengthened considerably because feed in tariffs are now typically 5c compared with 20c per kw/h when our system was installed and they are expected to end completely in the near future. Indeed, Amber actually have negative pricing on solar feed in and encourage customers with solar not to export to the grid at all so rooftop solar may wind up being wasted unless there is domestic battery back up installed in the near future.
This does also take the ROI on a battery down considerably and there are presently some government incentives available for them. Indeed we are approaching a point where I might recommend a homeowner consider not installing solar at all but install batteries instead. The market is definitely moving in that direction too.
Annoyingly though domestic battery set ups have remained stubbornly expensive to buy so the upfront cost is prohibitive for most people.
Acid gel lead batteries are much cheaper than lithium batteries. I think we overlook the older technology too much.
The rooftop solar won't be wasted because while you don't get paid to export it, neither are you importing power, so there is an implicit "payment". The waste would come if your solar always produces significantly more power than the house can use, and at the same time while producing power the export rate is normally negative.
That said, I feel that having at least some local capacity is becoming a no-brainer now, and would strongly suggest anyone considering panels to also get a multi KWh battery. In fact, there are some benefits now to having a battery without local solar panels!
@@somebloke3869 Maybe so but I assume you would need a lot more space. Are they straightforward to set up and how many cycles would you get from them?
@@somebloke3869 They do not discharge below 20% well. They are heavy and capacity is very limited. Life is shorter than competing Sodium Ion.
Not good value.
@@madpete6438 weight doesn't matter as much and they will last forever if you are willing to pay to have then reconditioned.
We've had solar panels on our roof since late 2017 (we're in Utah, USA). We're connected to the grid; so surplus goes to the grid and we pull from the grid when the panels don't generate enough to power our house. Over the course of time, we've sent twice as much energy to the grid as we've pulled. Our power company currently has incentives if you install a home battery with the ability for the grid to pull from your battery to balance the grid, as needed. The idea is that if the grid experiences an outage, supposedly there would always be enough power left in your battery to power your home through the outage. Unfortunately, the cost of the batteries is very high, even with the subsidy. At this point, we probably cannot afford to add a home battery. But, if the incentives can get somewhat better, we'd be pleased to join the program.
This is far more interesting than a football game
That's really not hard though. Watching paint dry is more interesting than football.
@@-_James_- True enough
Nah, roughly equal
Another brilliant video presented so well
Very interesting! Can I ask - why are people using GW here, rather than GWh? Surely it's stored energy capacity that matters at least as much as power output?
Good question. Grid batteries are characterized both by their maximum power (GW) and by the amount of energy (GWh) they can store. When someone just says "GW" alone, I never know which they really mean.
I too am confused and would have expected GWh. Can we even understand "battery storage" to refers to power output. Couldn't it equally well refer to the ability to load the batteries?
At the moment, grid scale batteries are pretty small compared to the total demand, so they're mainly used for frequency stabilisation, and other very short term needs. As a result their power output is more important than their capacity.
@@robinbennett5994 Makes sense. Thanks for the reply.
Well, the fact is , we need both figures. Obviously peak Power is important in relation to immediate demand, but knowing how long it can run is crucial. So Energy storage is important too.
But I suppose we have to trust the people who produce and disseminate these stats to know which they're talking about?
Fabulous information.
Thank you!
Very positive news, thanks!
I’m looking forward to get some serious batterij at home somewhere 2027
It’s really getting cheaper here (Netherlands)
2027 is a good year for that. you will easy get double the storage capacity compared to today. probably also very easy to scale up.
Just a feedback. Not sure if it happened in older videos as well but many graphics were vabeling today, which made them quite irritating to read.
thanks... channel is great
This is great news. Thanks 😊
Thank you. Excellent episode
Thank you for the commentary.
I live in central Texas.
There is a solar farm going in near me that must cover at least 1000 acres.
I drove through on a county road and some fields are already covered in panels.
From the road I could not see any storage systems.
I am sure they are there.
Just saying we could also do nuclear power. Cuz one of the problems again is the intermittency problem with renewables. Now some of that is fixed with batteries/off grid storage. But having a good baseline would help and with the off-grid storage we could provide even more power more cheaply and the power companies can still make a big buck
Another super interesting, easy to watch, production. Hope to meet you in San Diego.
Thanks for another informative video, Dave. The Hornsdale battery is still charging on in South Australia, in spite of our foolish previous PM, Scomo. Saul Griffith, is our Australian champion of Electrify Everything, architect of the US, inflation reduction act. We now have a number of large scale battery projects including the Waratah Battery at Lake Munmorah, which will play a significant part in the closure of the Eraring coal fired power station, one of Australia's largest.
California has been using pumped hydro for energy storage since at least the 1970s.
Yes, and it is not expanding significantly. The only country that is significantly expanding pumped hydro is China, which is able to do so because they have a command economy without a significant Green aspect of their politics.
Scotland is doubling its capacity
@@johnbinnie5697 Scotland has ample appropriate geography. Pumped hydro (where geographically available) will likely remain one of the most economic forms of energy storage.
Those have been around since 1950s. The question is how to retire them and return the water mexico badly needs
California is having trouble with hydro power now, due to years long drought and rising demand for water. Hoover Dam water levels almost dropped below the intake ports [?] before massive rains refilled that Lake Mead and others [last year?].
Great video, thanks 🙏🏻
A battery that's not paired with wind/solar just reflects the wider grid generation - as wind and solar get even cheaper, and more is installed, they'll automatically use that
Also, I wish you wouldn't quote capacity in MW. The amount they can deliver is MW, the much more important number is MW hours. A capacitor that can deliver 100MW for a second wouldn't be much use to the grid - 100MWh 1000MWh battery would be very helpful.,
Thanks for the information
Great to see the take-up on grid-scale batteries, Thanks, I really enjoy your videos
However, I still think much works needs to be done to make power storage a lot cheaper. While Tesla's Powerpack system works, it uses quite expensive lithium-ion batteries. I'd like to see a lot more power storage based on large-scale liquid air storage or molten salt batteries, since the power stored doesn't need to be "instant on" when storing power generated by renewables.
Love to see more batteries installed down here in AZ, where the sunshine is plentiful, and blistering...
Also, I'd love to see a deep dive into this Sakuu Metal-Free Battery Cell that Sandy Monroe was looking at. This stuff looks legit
The Tesla Mega Plant Shanghi facility once at full capacity will produce 80 GWH of battery storage. 100 GWH of 4680's can produce 1.3 million cars. It's Lathrop Calif. facility produces 40 GWH at capacity. These 2 plants will make enough batteries for 1.56 million cars. Battery storage is growing at 150% yoy. Battery Storage is going to be bigger than the car business real soon.
Even if you charge battery from a coal plant, it still can be environmentally good. Coal plant following load may drop efficiency significantly, meaning more emissions per kW. If you smooth its load for 24h using batteries, you may actually reduce emissions.
thank you. keep going. hopefully you reach some minds
Very glad I came across this channel, nice to hear the practical and positive side of what we've done to help deal with climate change, along side the big picture stuff. Big picture is pretty bleak, because what we are doing isn't enough...but hearing this side of things makes me believe it's possible, we just need to get governments to actually take things seriously.
Love your content! But I wanted to chime in and mention how much I dislike the shaky graphics. They make me motion sick :(
When you started talking about pumped hydro I initially thought you were having a well deserved dig at the massive failure of the scheme in Australia called Snowy 2.0. The Lib/National Coalition govt (think Tories and just as bad) decided that solar and wind were just a diversion from their massive fossil fuel donors and thought they would kill it with this huge Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro. Was going to cost a tiny AUD$2 Billion and would be ready for use in 2022. It quickly doubled to AUD$4 Billion and would be ready in 2024 then it was AUD$12 Billion and 2026 and the latest is still AUD$12 Billion and the completion date is 2028 but they've run into a bit of a problem boring out the tunnels that are needed and in the last 6 or 9 months have managed to move about 180 metres. They are considering getting another machine to start boring from the finish line to try and meet somewhere in the middle.
That AUD$12 Billion could have made some quite large wind farms, solar farms and a few large batteries. The Lib/Nats were voted out after nine *disastrous* years and have now decided that Australia with zero history of nuclear power is the way to go with 5 or 6 large Nuc plants and a couple of SMR which have yet to be proven and it'll get done in about 10 years. Some very clever people dis some estimates and came up with that in the long run this will cost the Australian taxpayer *AUD$600 Billion* to end up generating just *3.7%* of Australia's electricity needs. How much solar, wind and batteries would AUD$600 Billion buy? What's wrong with these clowns? 🤷♂
Excellent episode - BESS is clearly a huge growth novelty thanks.
After watching your flow battery video months ago, I went and invested in ESS. Redflow has the buildup issues like lithium batteries which made me go with ESS. The lack of fire risk, additional add-in costs (cooling systems), and scalability is why i think a flow battery system will take over the grid scale storage market.
Dave, How to explain the situation is difficult. People have limited understanding of all the facts.
Including the solution's facts.
Grid electricity needs a grid to millions of customers and daily cash flow, basically.
With rooftop PV shading the hot roof and a BV with OVERSIZED battery parked 23hrs every day, then grid electricity is not needed every day the sun comes up.
This terrifies the grid and generator owners.
$TRILLIONS in assets and no cash flow.
A little fossil fuel heating in winter weeks is nothing.
Petroleum for the petrochemical industry and road building and the remaining ICE vehicles as they disappear will be a permanent part of our economy.
Offgrid in the suburbs will be universal.
The next 20years will be complicated.
Thakks Dave for the concise synopsis of the current state of charge. 🔋 ⚡ 🌞
You're welcome :-)
SOLAR + BATTERY STORAGE is now Cheaper and Quicker to build and operate than any other power producing source. This means the cost of the electricity it sells will be the lowest. It also does not create Nuclear Waste (which is deadly for 10,000 years and we still don't know what to do with it). In Australia, solar panels with large battery storage systems are being built in one year and replacing coal fired power plants. This is lowering the cost of electricity, and being done all over the world.
Simply not true. Life span of solar panels and batteries? Ten years, twenty years????
@@andrewhotston983 Doesn't matter, they're 100% recyclable, every single solar panel and battery is a treasure trove of materials needed to build new(now more efficient with the advancement of technology) panels and batteries.
He said champing at the bit rather than Chomping! He got it right! Much respect!!
I've wondered why we haven't seen "block mini-grids" starting to pop up yet in some select areas of the US:
. Build a battery shed that can hold about 20 kWh per house on the block.
. Connect the grid to the battery hut.
. Get solar on all viable rooftops, which supplies the respective houses but runs also to the battery hut.
By sharing batteries, the total number of batteries needed will be lower (because each household's peak usage will not align).
The benefit is basically allowing the entire block to go "off grid" when necessary.
I'd run the numbers a couple of years ago for the Bay Area, because of its very high electricity prices, and it was about break even then. It is probably now quite profitable to do this. The calculations include buying a small piece of land in the block for the battery shed.
It seems like the challenges are:
- organizational, i.e. talking to enough people on a block to make it viable, and
- economic, e.g. how to make sure each home is paid an appropriate amount for each contribution the community battery and also pays the right amount withdrawn from the community battery.
This seems like a great econ PhD thesis with a clear pathway to creating a major business.
IMO, a place like San Francisco would be a natural place where community interest and organization could make it happen.
That's the future, basically, it's gonna take a bit of time(especially with the bureaucratic nightmare of regulations that companies have to work through) but eventually it'll be the standard all over the place.
Thanks for this information at such a granular level.
Given the shown global expansion of battery storage in the GW range it‘s interesting that Lithium prices are not skyrocketing. Obviously the growing demand can still be met sufficiently.
Thanks again, you help me believe we can make through this mess
I’m a bit confused Dave.
First off, I love your talks. I’ve been listening to you for some years now and sharing your convos w lots of my folks.
Seems to me like there’s a huge difference between day to day energy needs to recharge batteries, run highly efficient appliances, heat pump technology and …
Vs manufacturing :
Automobiles
Solar panels
Wind turbines
Airplanes
And so on.
This is a huge amount of energy that is not easily, if at all done with renewables. Embodied energy, as in the carbon footprint to manufacture all these elements is a huge unsustainable process. Unless I’m completely missing some simple math here.
I actually think you and I should chat. I’ve many bought acres on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.
We’re creating a “sustainable” in air quotes, beautiful farm with geo- benched green houses. Solar / battery systems,
I could go on for hours / days…..
Crazy times for sure. So few people seem to actually have a clue as to what’s actually coming down w the carbon footprint, crazy wars, etc…
It seems like you already know most / perhaps, of this.
Redistribution of energy resources across times of high/low use is much cheaper and more efficient for all parties concerned. BESS is cheapest and most efficient means. Tesla can make 40Gwhr of capacity per year per factory with many factories planned, and many other battery manufacturers are getting into the game. Cheers
Thanks for the battery storage education. Very interesting
Don't forget the heat/cold storage (hot water, sand). It's not used much and it has low capacity (in total) but should be used more because of its simple technology and simple recycling.
This is a great part of why I own Tesla stock.
The ease (and glee?) with which you have just sounded the deathknell for the hydrocarbon cabal is pretty astounding.😍
We installed two Powerwall-2 batteries in 2018 to complement our 2012 installed 13.2 kW solar PV system, and can say unequivocally that it has been successful well beyond our expectations, and enabled us to operate as a microgrid for 8+ months of the year, while exporting our excess solar energy back to grid via net metering. We live in all electric home with electric heat pump and heat pump water heater and also charge our two EVs off our solar powered roof. No fossil fuel sources needed to energize our home and transportation.
Texas demonstrates exactly what one would expect from the homeland of big oil. Even so the news is very good.
For those of us still interested in domestic battery installation, the potential - largely untapped as yet-to turn domestic solar generators into a significant force in the energy revolution, the investment ploughed into new technologies on grid scale facilities should be paying dividends in people's homes. Prices are eye-wateringly high and competent installers are few and far between.
A revolution is called for in training of engineers and incentives offered to the cooperative organisations of micro generators online.
Perhaps a hidden influence here is the potential threat to existing power generators from the sudden loss of revenue if hundreds of thousands of people could not only generate but manage their own supply.
Investor owned utilities are worried about a death spiral-- as more people generate their own power, or worse, go off grid, the higher the rates have to be for remaining customers, which simply induces even more of them to go off grid.
Why is Sabine Hossenfelder telling people LFP batteries don't exist yet? Comes as a surprise to me, I'd better go check my ev is real or just an illusion.
I guess this is all kind of good news, but as someone who's been following this stuff for years it's kind of bewildering that all this is being done with li-ion batteries. You would *think* that some less energy dense but inherently cheaper to manufacture technology would have come along by now and started to eat into a chunk of this market.
Can't help but think all these energy dense li-ion batteries would have more decarbonization bang for the buck displacing ICE engines in cars, busses, etc., with some sort of flow battery or compressed air technology filling the niche for grid balancing where space is not at all a concern.
NMC li-ion is rarely used in the grid-scale systems nowadays. It's mostly the rejected LFP cells from the EV market.
@@mykolapliashechnykov8701 well yeah, the less energy dense LFP chemistry is for sure preferable for this application than the manganese/cobalt variations. But even still, LFP is used for cars so I kinda wish other technologies like flow batteries that are totally unsuitable for mobile applications could have taken up more of this stationary market.
I think grid scale storage will only be a small part of the storage picture - instead there should be more focus on local storage - Get grid tied storage like the enphase P5 system. They would be useful to reduce peak demands from each building and therefore reducing grid infrastructure costs. As more and more households increase power usage (EV's, Heatpumps, etc) and density of cities continues to increase in older areas with less infrastructure - it will be more critical to have local power for outage coverage and for reducing peak demands.
Transmission and distribution of electricity is a large component in end user prices. Present planning seems to rely on increasing the amount of transmission to support wind and solar. One idea worth exploring might be to locate battery storage close to the locus of consumers rather than at the generator. This would reduce the stress on the transmission lines. Maybe it will be economic to see battery storage being installed at old coal power stations, trickle charged by existing transmission lines.
In Australia we have wasted over 25 years of implementing renewables. The absolute non belief and total denial in climate change by the right wing coalition governments at both State and Federal level has left the country years behind where it should be. There has been a shift in right wing thinking by some but a hardening by others. The ones who have moved have mainly done so on cost, not global warming. The non movers are still claiming that there is no such thing as global warming as they watch their fields and forests burn. As it is becoming global overheating. Having said that there is one rightwing politician who is an avid supporter of the need to decarbonise. He has just been appointed by the now, left wing federal government as hair of the Climate Change Authority. A well accepted appointment.
Some few years ago the NSW state government had a habit of selling every state asset they possibly could. They sold a coal power station to a privateer for $1M as it needed updating. The same power station, still without updating was valued at $750 million 2 years later and is invaluable to the state power network. The network which users paid to upgrade statewide and modernise for future use put in perfect order to sell. They sold half. We now find out that the new super network designed by the right wing government and built at vast cost to the consumer, was not done with wind or solar on the roof or anywhere else thoughts in mind. It will now cost even more than before to make it solar compatible.
Looking at what is happening in Australia one would think that right wing governments across the world are a big stoppers of renewables. But we know this not to be so as a statement of fact. It must just be that Australian right wingers are stupid on a world regional basis.
Did some calculations and the (LFP) storagebattery will have a mayor role in the years to come. Believe it or not but this is actually the cheapest way to story energy at the moment. This will get an afterburner the moment SIO-ion is commercialised. Did check with CatL and Hina and they are working hard on it…. Storage is now
it could be that sodium-ion catched up in two years from now.
Depends if you're talking dollars per watt or dollars per watt hour capital, or dollars per watt hour marginal.
Very hard to beat pumped hydro in a good location for dollars per watt hour.
@@gasdivepeople always seem to forget that batteries have a short lifespan... 10-20 years, compared to 100 years+for pumped hydro.. plus a water reservoir for drought /irrigation
Batteries are non renewable, and the mining creates ongoing harm... Sure, some hydro installations have an impact also, but it's localized and one off
@@growtocycle6992 in the EU, a certain percentage of batteries has to be recycled. in NMC chemistries, the recycling is profitable. in lfp batteries it might be a bit more difficult to stay positive.
Something that would be a great addition to battery storage and wind/solar generating sites would be fly wheels to provide reactive power. It's not a big deal now, but will be more important as more turbines are disconnected from the grid. Or maybe we'll see smaller fly wheels deployed per neighborhood or in inustrial districts to absorb the frequency disruption by big and/or many motors.
Interesting , Thank You . We must use what Works
Only thing needed to solve duck curve is hourly pricing for energy. Open market will then handles the rest.
Suggestion: in the Battery vs Stored water chart you should include the water trend line too. Explain that the "flatter" line means it is growing slower.
All of this solar and water storage in the US is great!
The US specifically need to add East West high voltage transmission lines to get the power from the deserts and oceans to people farther away.