I once had a sweet, brown pit bull mix named Thembi, who had impressive musculature and a magnificent nose. Often on our walks, I would feel the leash go taut and know she’d sniffed out something tantalizing, likely a squirrel or a rabbit. She would snuffle excitedly, muzzle to the ground, tracing her quarry’s skittish […]
If we want to build a stable 100% renewable energy electrical grid we need backup power station for when there is no sun or wind.
Right now coal and gas power stations are mainly used but renewables option are limited.
Hydro can help to an extent but the locations and power output are limited, battery storage help to smooth production but it’s not enough for seasonal variation.
Nuclear could work perfectly but I’m losing hope on trying to convince people that a bit of nuclear would help to each a 100% renewable energy grid.
The last option is biomass, it can be vertuous is the wood resource is well managed or terribly damaging for the environment if not.
Do I think biomass power station are needed of we want to transition.
If we want to build a stable 100% renewable energy electrical grid we need backup power station for when there is no sun or wind.
These are known as “Peaker” plants. Their purpose is to come online very quickly when loads increase or production drops, and to go offline again when loads drop, or production increases.
Nuclear could work perfectly but I’m losing hope on trying to convince people that a bit of nuclear would help to each a 100% renewable energy grid.
Nuclear is an excellent option for a base load plant, but it is terrible for a peaker. Nuclear generation is extremely slow to adjust. It can’t be ramped up or down quickly enough to match a daily load curve, let alone react to rapidly changing weather conditions.
What is most needed is “demand shaping”. Our current model assumes that consumers will take whatever they want, whenever they want it, and the onus is on the power companies to ensure power is always available. What we need is to provide a means for consumer products and industrial processes to understand and adapt to power availability in real time, so that they can play an active role in adjusting demand. A water heater (with a mixing output to maintain a constant output temperature) could be told to superheat its stored water to just below the boiling point during the solar peak, then shut off until the following day. If it’s a cloudy day with no major solar peak, it maintains a much lower, consistent temperature throughout the day.
Desalination, hydrogen generation, and a variety of other industrial processes can similarly ramp their operations up and down to match their demand to available supply.
Biomass is probably best utilized as feedstock for Fischer-Tropsch synfuel production, which effectively functions as long-term grid-scale energy storage. Basically, it is a synthetically-produced fuel suitable for gas turbine engines like those used in aircraft or grid-scale peaker plants. The Air Force has certified its entire fleet to operate on synfuel, it’s just not currently cost effective relative to petroleum due to the massive energy inputs required. But, those same energy inputs are becoming available as solar peaks begin to pose a problem for energy providers.
Would love to see nuclear base load just used for inefficient process when in surplus. Inefficient hydrolysis to make hydrogen for fuel cells, pumping water around for water stored energy generation, and such.
There is energy efficiency, and cost efficiency. It doesn’t really matter if the energy efficiency of a process is low. If it is using energy that we couldn’t use for much of anything else, it can be cost effective.
10MWh of energy is 36 seconds worth of output from a smallish 1GW power plant. Battery storage is a huge way off viable for anything other than smoothing out daily cycles of wind and solar.
A 1GW plant takes up 832 acres, which would be 12 hours of power with 10MW of storage per 0.7 acres, or 120 hours with a high density 100MW configuration.
Smoothing out the daily cycles is exactly what we’re discussing: absorbing the excess during peak and using it to power through the troughs.
No the discussion is on making a 100% renewable energy stable grid. There are three levels that need to be managed for this, the daily cycles, (mostly of solar being unavailable at night), the yearly cycle of solar giving more energy in the summer and wind more in the winter (generally) and the meso scale of weather.
The first can be probably sorted with storage with work. The second mostly balances out if you have a mix of solar and wind luckily, but the third does not have a solution at the moment, there isnt a feasilble way of managing a 10 day strech of dull still days in winter without firing up a large amount of gas peaker plants. Even with your proposed 800 acres of high density storage (of a currently not fully proven type in Na batteries) per small powerplant, a vast amount, would give 5 days worth of storage which wouldnt be enough to cover the once a year, once a decade etc poor weather condiditons.
If we want to build a stable 100% renewable energy electrical grid we need backup power station for when there is no sun or wind.
Right now coal and gas power stations are mainly used but renewables option are limited.
Hydro can help to an extent but the locations and power output are limited, battery storage help to smooth production but it’s not enough for seasonal variation.
Nuclear could work perfectly but I’m losing hope on trying to convince people that a bit of nuclear would help to each a 100% renewable energy grid.
The last option is biomass, it can be vertuous is the wood resource is well managed or terribly damaging for the environment if not.
Do I think biomass power station are needed of we want to transition.
These are known as “Peaker” plants. Their purpose is to come online very quickly when loads increase or production drops, and to go offline again when loads drop, or production increases.
Nuclear is an excellent option for a base load plant, but it is terrible for a peaker. Nuclear generation is extremely slow to adjust. It can’t be ramped up or down quickly enough to match a daily load curve, let alone react to rapidly changing weather conditions.
What is most needed is “demand shaping”. Our current model assumes that consumers will take whatever they want, whenever they want it, and the onus is on the power companies to ensure power is always available. What we need is to provide a means for consumer products and industrial processes to understand and adapt to power availability in real time, so that they can play an active role in adjusting demand. A water heater (with a mixing output to maintain a constant output temperature) could be told to superheat its stored water to just below the boiling point during the solar peak, then shut off until the following day. If it’s a cloudy day with no major solar peak, it maintains a much lower, consistent temperature throughout the day.
Desalination, hydrogen generation, and a variety of other industrial processes can similarly ramp their operations up and down to match their demand to available supply.
Biomass is probably best utilized as feedstock for Fischer-Tropsch synfuel production, which effectively functions as long-term grid-scale energy storage. Basically, it is a synthetically-produced fuel suitable for gas turbine engines like those used in aircraft or grid-scale peaker plants. The Air Force has certified its entire fleet to operate on synfuel, it’s just not currently cost effective relative to petroleum due to the massive energy inputs required. But, those same energy inputs are becoming available as solar peaks begin to pose a problem for energy providers.
Would love to see nuclear base load just used for inefficient process when in surplus. Inefficient hydrolysis to make hydrogen for fuel cells, pumping water around for water stored energy generation, and such.
There is energy efficiency, and cost efficiency. It doesn’t really matter if the energy efficiency of a process is low. If it is using energy that we couldn’t use for much of anything else, it can be cost effective.
Battery power could entirely satisfy the need with the right quantity, it just hasn’t scaled up yet.
The typical coal plant takes up 0.7 acres per megawatt of power generation. 0.7 acres of sodium-ion batteries can store 10-100 MWh of energy.
10MWh of energy is 36 seconds worth of output from a smallish 1GW power plant. Battery storage is a huge way off viable for anything other than smoothing out daily cycles of wind and solar.
A 1GW plant takes up 832 acres, which would be 12 hours of power with 10MW of storage per 0.7 acres, or 120 hours with a high density 100MW configuration.
Smoothing out the daily cycles is exactly what we’re discussing: absorbing the excess during peak and using it to power through the troughs.
No the discussion is on making a 100% renewable energy stable grid. There are three levels that need to be managed for this, the daily cycles, (mostly of solar being unavailable at night), the yearly cycle of solar giving more energy in the summer and wind more in the winter (generally) and the meso scale of weather.
The first can be probably sorted with storage with work. The second mostly balances out if you have a mix of solar and wind luckily, but the third does not have a solution at the moment, there isnt a feasilble way of managing a 10 day strech of dull still days in winter without firing up a large amount of gas peaker plants. Even with your proposed 800 acres of high density storage (of a currently not fully proven type in Na batteries) per small powerplant, a vast amount, would give 5 days worth of storage which wouldnt be enough to cover the once a year, once a decade etc poor weather condiditons.
We have gigantic mountains, we could build the biggest and best pumped storage hydropower batteries in the world, and have nearly limitless storage.