Visitor Publish by Willis Eschenbach
I stay up on the prime left of the map in Determine 1, in Northern California between Santa Rosa and the Pacific Ocean. Down the coast on the far aspect of San Francisco from me is Monterey Bay, and the city of Moss Touchdown.
Monterey Bay is legendary for fish and fishing as a result of there’s a submarine canyon that runs all the way in which in to the shore at Moss Touchdown. This brings within the deepwater currents with a great deal of vitamins, which feed a wealthy marine ecosystem.
Half a century in the past, I fished commercially for 3 years in Monterey Bay, two of them fishing out of Moss Touchdown. There was an enormous outdated energy plant in Moss Touchdown that was the pal of everybody who fished these waters, as a result of it had two large chimneys. We fished nights, not days, and at any time of the night time, it was infinitely comforting to see the rings of crimson lights on the chimneys, seen from all around the Bay. They marked house, and land, and security. Listed below are the stacks throughout a full moon.
Now, fifty years later, the facility plant is shut down however the chimneys nonetheless stay, mute obelisks of an earlier time. You’ll be able to see their shadows within the higher proper of this aerial view of Moss Touchdown.
And what are the white bins up on the tip of the shadows of the chimneys? They’re one of many topics of this submit. These make up one of many largest battery installations on the planet. It’s comprised of lots of of Tesla Megapack batteries. It shops on the order of seven.3 gigawatt-hours of electrical vitality (GWh, or 109 watt-hours). Right here’s a photograph from the bottom.
So … what’s to not like about lithium megabatteries?
Effectively, the very first thing to not like is value. The Tesla Megapacks value about $327 per kilowatt-hour of storage, an enormous quantity. And with lithium costs skyrocketing, that may solely go up. So constructing them at grid-scale is stupendously costly.
Subsequent concern is environmental harm. Lithium mines will not be very fairly and are harmful to the atmosphere with out particular procedures … procedures which might be unlikely to occur within the international locations the place lithium is mined.
Subsequent concern is security. Right here’s a current story
Second battery malfunction in lower than 6 months reported at Moss Touchdown energy plant
7:11 PM PST Feb 14, 2022: MOSS LANDING, Calif. — In Moss Touchdown, firefighters responded to a different battery meltdown on the Vistra Vitality Storage Facility Sunday night time, after they arrived roughly 10 battery racks had been melted.
It’s the second incident on the plant within the final 5 months alone.
Firefighters say the 2 incidents ought to present a studying alternative to make any wanted changes or enhancements.
One concern is that this plant goes to get larger.
A Tesla Megapack prices about a million {dollars} … and ten of them went up in smoke. That’s an costly “studying alternative”.
And a remaining concern is lifetime. Lithium batteries can solely be cycled a sure variety of instances earlier than they put on out and have to be changed.
With that record of the problems with lithium batteries as prologue, people that know me know that I’m very skeptical about new applied sciences. I’ve seen tons and plenty of “gorgeous breakthroughs” introduced with nice fanfare that by no means made it off of the drafting board.
However immediately, I got here throughout an vitality storage expertise which may really work. Right here’s a drawing of the thought. It’s being developed each privately and by the Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory (NREL). NREL calls its incarnation of the expertise the “Enduring” system.
ORIGINAL CAPTION: In a brand new NREL-developed particle thermal vitality storage system, silica particles are gravity-fed by electrical resistive heating components. The heated particles are saved in insulated concrete silos. When vitality is required, the heated particles are fed by a warmth exchanger to create electrical energy for the grid. The system discharges in periods of excessive electrical energy demand and recharges when electrical energy is cheaper. Picture by Patrick Davenport and Al Hicks, NREL.
TL;DR Model: Electrical energy is used to warmth sand. While you want electrical energy, the recent sand is used to boil water to drive steam generators for electrical energy.
So why do I believe this one is feasible? A number of causes:
First, it is rather low cost. As an alternative of utilizing costly lithium for storage, it makes use of low cost silica sand. This brings the associated fee down from the $327 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of lithium batteries to an NREL estimated value of $2 – $4 per kWh. And even when the ultimate value is thrice that, it’s nonetheless just a few p.c of lithium battery value.
Subsequent, it’s secure. Sand can’t catch on hearth. Lithium can, and does, and could be very arduous to place out as soon as it begins burning.
Subsequent, it’s scalable, and it’s low cost to scale. Add extra insulated tanks of sand and also you add extra storage capability.
Subsequent, it may be constructed on the websites of closed coal-fired energy crops. All of the infrastructure is there—practice tracks to usher in the sand, generators, turbines, substations, transmission traces, and the like.
Subsequent, it doesn’t require any new or unproven expertise. We all know easy methods to warmth sand, and easy methods to construct boilers and steam generators, and easy methods to do all of the issues proven within the drawing above.
So will this be the key expertise that units photo voltaic and wind unfastened to make an precise distinction in the actual world? As a result of so far, photo voltaic and wind ain’t doing diddly squat.
Appears uncertain that it’s going to change issues that a lot. Storage is just one small downside with solar/wind. A a lot bigger downside is that a lot of the electrical energy from solar/wind is used instantly, and so there’s not so much left over to place into storage. Subsequent, each applied sciences require harmful/uncommon/toxic supplies, are short-lived, and are arduous to recycle. Plus, wind generators bloodbath raptors, for a curious cause mentioned right here.
And there’s one other huge downside … there’s not plenty of photo voltaic/wind vitality there to reap as a result of it’s so unfold out, and most of the good websites are already in use. So this storage expertise might assist on the margins, however received’t be a revolution.
Nonetheless, sand storage would nonetheless be helpful for load balancing on the grid, and needs to be fast to ramp up and down to satisfy variations in demand.
There’s already a Finnish firm that’s commercially testing the expertise. It’s known as Polar Evening Vitality, they usually’re utilizing the warmth immediately, not for electrical energy, for district-wide heating of cities within the far north. Right here’s their take a look at set up:
Retailer warmth in the summertime when it’s not wanted, and launch it within the winter when it’s wanted … works for me.
Anyhow, that’s the excellent news for immediately … yeah, I do know that in comparison with the continued world lunacy it ain’t a lot, however it’s what I’ve obtained.
My finest needs to all,
w.
PS: As all the time, I politely ask that once you remark you quote the precise phrases you’re discussing. This lets us all know precisely what and who you might be responding to, and it avoids countless misunderstandings.
Technical Observe: I ran some numbers to see if this all pencils out … looks as if it does. R pc language code and outcomes under. Traces beginning with “[1]” are the pc output. Something on a line after a hashmark (#) is a remark.
(us_electric_consumption = 3.9e15)# watt-hours Wh
[1] 3.9e+15
(moss_landing_battery = 7.3e9)
[1] 7.3e+09
(enduring = 26e9) # enduring storage, watt-hours Wh
[1] 2.6e+10
(ca_electric_consumption = 280e12) # Wh
[1] 2.8e+14
(sf_electric_consumption = 5e12)# Wh
[1] 5e+12
(ny_electric_consumption = 51e12)# Wh
[1] 5.1e+13
(enduring/ny_electric_consumption*secsperyear/3600/24) # days of NY Metropolis provide [1] 0.19 (moss_landing_battery/ny_electric_consumption*secsperyear/3600/24) # days of NY metropolis provide, Moss Touchdown Battery
[1] 0.05225152
(degrees_temperature_swing = 900) # °C
[1] 900
(sand_specific_heat = 800e3) # joules/tonne/°C
[1] 8e+05
(storage = degrees_temperature_swing*sand_specific_heat) #storage joules/tonne
[1] 7.2e+08
(storage_whr = j2wh(storage)) # storage wh per tonne
[1] 2e+05
(tonnes_needed = enduring/storage_whr) # tonne
[1] 130000
(sand_density = 1.6) #tonnes/m^3
[1] 1.6
(volume_needed = tonnes_needed/sand_density) # cubic metres
[1] 81250
(tank_num = 5) # variety of tanks
[1] 5
(cube_side = volume_needed^(1/3)) #metres per aspect
[1] 43.31196
(cube_side_per_tank = (volume_needed/tank_num)^(1/3)) #metres per aspect
[1] 25.32899
(cube_side_ft = m2ft(cube_side)) #metres per aspect
[1] 142.0993
(sand_per_ton = 40) # sand value, $/tonne
[1] 40
sand_cost=tonnes_needed*sand_per_ton
paste0("Sand value = $",format(sand_cost,huge.mark=","))
[1] "Sand value = $5,200,000"
