Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low renewable generation is going to require still orders of magnitude more batteries. I suppose there's enough lithium in the ground for this, but elastic demand and dispatchable generation are probably going to be part of the equation for economical reasons.
1. There are also functioning batteries without lithium, for example with salt, which are now already being tested in Swiss and German households and bring some advantages compared to lithium batteries. Not least the price. One should always remember that the lower energy density is a problem for an electric vehicle, but it doesn't matter if we install a battery in a cellar. Here, the energy density plays a subordinate role because there is enough space.
2. Would it make more sense to talk about *energy storage* in general instead of just batteries (which are by definition chemical energy storage) Kinetic, chemical, thermal and so on. Lithium ion batteries should not be considered for back-up alone. We definitely need more choices and we have them, mostly with today's technology and definitely easier and faster to develop and install than any new nuclear reactor technology.
3. You need different types of batteries short term storage, medium term storage and long term storage. There are different concepts for each use. Batteries, compressed air storage, pumped storage, thermal storage as well as power-to-x systems are able to absorb the increasing summer power from solar, autumn wind, etc. and make the energy available again in the short term, medium term or seasonally shifted. Examples:
1. https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/445597
2. https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/meilenstein-in-der-energy-transition-scientists-at-the-tu-dresden-build-unique-energy-storage (German)
3. https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/hybrid-and-storage/thermal-energy-storage-with-etes-switch
"The SCCER has proven in numerous demonstra- tions that storage technologies are essentially available and usable. Now it is necessary, above all, for political decisions to be taken in the inter- ests of a coherent energy policy in order to re- duce the regulatory obstacles that currently im- pede or make impossible the economical use of energy storage. This can guide business models and investment decisions necessary to advance the technologies developed in the SCCER and bring them from the laboratory into the ultimate energy system of the Energy Strategy 2050."
maybe you meant this one?: https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/meilenstein...
... did you use a tool to translate your text from German -> English and the tool did also translate the url...?
However, sb. tried to access this url in Nov 2021, but it did not exist back then aswell: https://web.archive.org/web/20240216101723/https://tu-dresde...
Many of my texts and links are from the years 2019-2022 when I was researching for various publications on renewable energy. Most of them, unfortunately, without DOI links. I didn't check them before I uploaded them here. And I would have so much more that it would be enough for an entire book.
> Pumped storage is by far the largest-capacity form of grid energy storage available, and, as of 2020, the United States Department of Energy Global Energy Storage Database reports that PSH accounts for around 95% of all active tracked storage installations worldwide, with a total installed throughput capacity of over 181 GW, of which about 29 GW are in the United States, and a total installed storage capacity of over 1.6 TWh, of which about 250 GWh are in the United States.
I recently visited this one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianelli_Power_Plant
"A lot" is probably subjective, but the two best known global estimates are Hunt et al. (2020) [1] from IIASA and Stocks et al. from ANU re100 (who incidentally also have some interactive maps [3]) which with different cost targets put potential at 17.3 and 23 PWh respectively, which works out to about 2 MWh per person. For comparison, for the past decade, the US ahs consumed about 13 MWh of electricity per person per year, down from a peak of slightly under 14 in 2000 and 2005. With very high levels of electrification, that could potentially rise to 24 to 28 MWh per person per year, or 8 or 9 PWh/yr for the whole country. Total primary energy use is a lot higher, around 90 MWh per person–year or 30 PWh total, this is because both not everything could be practically electrified and the things that could easily be electrified tend to be much more efficient when done electrically. Energy efficiency is also usually assumed to increase slightly in general.
The US specifically is actually above the world average at about 4.5 MWh per capita according to the ANU team's estimates. That's 1.5 PWh per year roughly. In any case, I would expect that there is likely to very likely sufficient potential in most (if not all) grids for pumped hydro to be a significant part of medium duration energy storage (if not all of it), though whether it actually would depends on the costs of other technologies as well.
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14555-y
I find the concept compelling as it is incredibly simple but it hasn't yet been proven at scale.
I live in CA (Bay Area) the solar people just wandered up to my front door to "sell me" the other day. I do want to go solar in light of my PGE bill.
The sales guy was super sharp and addressed one of the concerns I had (I have an unusual roof) and we got very nerdy.
Because PGE has time dependent pricing, their model is to use battery to not only power the house in these windows but dump back to the grid during them too (and charge off solar when power is cheap).
SO an independent installer is pitching a system to me (the end consumer) in response to the market price conditions that are going to push "more battery" for "peak demand" into the market.
Now do the economics of that system and their sales pitch make sense? I dont know, Im still crunching those numbers (and they are some hard numbers to figure out), but at first blush im inclined to say "yes" cause fuck giving money to PGE.
*: Easily half of the cost is the installation labor. If you can DIY at least parts of it, you can get decent ROI.
Those with homes with solar are going to end up saturating the grid (duck curve) to the point where renters can buy batteries and "coast", through the peaks of power cost.
There is an "electric home" rate plan that has three periods per day: off-peak, partial-peak, and peak with three rates. This can apply to a home with batteries, where you can shift your load to different periods. The spread can be up to $0.22 per kWh in summer and up to $0.04 per kWh in winter.
There is another rate plan with two periods per day: off-peak and peak. The spread here can be up to $0.09 per kWh in summer and up to $0.03 per kWh in winter. This is a typical plan for homes without solar nor batteries and with moderate consumption. This plan has two pricing tiers. A lower rate for consumption up to a "baseline allowance" and then a higher price after that. This allowance is summed over a whole billing period, in contrast to the time of use variations each day.
The above discussion do not include any net-metering, so you never sell power back to the grid. You just optimize your load during different hours of the day. With a currently available net-metering plan, PG&E will pay for excess power only around $0.02 to $0.04 per kWh.
Also, it seems PG&E distinguishes a "paired storage" net metering system, and requires special metering to track the solar generation that goes into the battery versus recharging from the grid. They will only credit solar production delivered back to the grid, and not off-peak grid energy reflected back during peak hours. So, I'm not sure why some posters seem to be talking about this arbitrage scenario.
For context, the actual per kWh rates are around $0.36 to $0.65 in the different seasons and rate plans. So these peak price differences may range around 5% to 25%. There isn't any of the wild fluctuation or negative numbers we've heard from other energy markets.
As a rule of thumb, the capacity will be a few hours worth. So if the power rating is 14 GW, maybe that will be 60 GWh of capacity.
That's almost enough to smooth over the most regular fluctuations in solar power: the day-night cycle (especially when you remember that demand drops at night). Not close to being economical for storing power from summer through to winter.
A source [0]: > The most common grid-scale battery solutions today are rated to provide either 2, 4, or 6 hours of electricity at their rated capacity
[0] https://www.energysage.com/business-solutions/utility-scale-...