DrawDown Bookclub #3: Future Energy Storage More Fascinating Than First Appears
Greetings friends, dust yourself off grab a virtual seat and point your browser to meeting #3 of the DrawDown bookclub. Stuck in a hurricane? Waist-deep in debris flow mud? Dodging wayward driverless cars? All the more reason you should read the next two chapters and join this week's discussion!
I. Review
II. Reading #1: Energy Storage Utilities, page 32
III. Reading #2: Energy Storage (Distributed), page 34
IV. Next Readings
How boring does energy storage sound? It just sits there. It's a backup player. It holds stuff.
What we found in this week's chapters on "Energy Storage (Utilities)" page 32 and "Energy Storage (Distributed)" page 34 was more elegant, attractive, and mobile than we ever imagined.
But since we see some new members this week, let's review where we've been.
I. Review
In our first two meetings of DrawDown bookclub, we read about diet, the virtues of vegetables and the CO2 emissions of red meat production. It remains counter-intuitive to many bookclub members that red meat affects climate change. While we don't grow our own food yet, which Michael Pollan reminds us is a very social activity, a wild supplementary story in New York magazine showed us just how difficult growing food is. It's now excruciating for some members to discard food.
Between bookclub meetings, with diet-modification-as-climate-change-minimizer on our minds, we did find a flip-the-recipe technique on one of the food blogs that cuts food waste: See-Saw your cooking habits. See: read recipes, note required ingredients, shop, load the pantry, cook, enjoy. Saw: inventory pantry ingredients, look up ingredients in cookbook index, follow index to a recipe, don't shop, cook, enjoy.
Meeting #2 couldn't convince us to go vegetarian but introduced us to a compromise: flexitarianism, where beef is never the largest portion in any meal. Salads - lots of salads with a little chicken or fish thrown in is how we're eating these days.
Last week's chapters introduced us to a fascinating larger-than-a-garden, smaller-than-a-farm food growing system popular in Jakarta: a "multistrata agroforest." It grows food in layers - ground and tree crops. These home gardens can take root on slopes and require very little energy to maintain. One multistrata agroforest can trap and hold as much CO2 as many non food-producing forests of the same size.
Onward - let's discuss this week's chapters.
II. Reading #1: Energy Storage (Utilities) page 32
Who cares about energy storage! We're already eating less steak and chuck, we're marching today to outlaw assault weapons and our seacoast home is falling into the rising ocean.
We don't care but we committed to hosting a bookclub. Let's read on!
Eleven thousand years ago humans shifted from a paycheck-to-paycheck hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture. That's where energy storage began. (Really?)
Utilities first delivered electricity to paying customers in San Francisco in 1879. Texas and Germany followed San Francisco. (Doesn't sound right - we'll wikipedia those facts later.)
2018's inflection point: traditional energy sources (here "traditional" means sources popular in the last 150 years, fossil fuel energy sources) produce power independent from time of day, sun and cloud position, changing wind or ocean currents. The tradeoff is these more traditional, steadier energy sources also emitted CO2 into the air, and in the case of coal, dug CO2 right out of the ground. (Burying coal can actually draw down CO2 - but that's a side subject, not mentioned yet in this book.)
Greener, cleaner renewable energy is more subject to nature's whims. For example with solar, your home can draw electricity as long as the sun is out - which takes us back to a 1878 lifestyle. We can't have that.
Traditional power providers guesstimate how high to turn up the nuclear or coal-fired power plants (medium or medium high we assume) and keep them running, because "conventional power plants cannot be turned off," DrawDown says.
Traditional power providers throw excess unused energy away. Until now they could afford to.
So traditional power is steady. But occasionally, unforeseen events drive the populace to consume more energy than usual - such as heat waves which drive us to flip on air conditioners.
Peaker Plants - Traditional: Natural Gas
Power companies know they need to meet these excess energy demands. Instead of "whacking up" the nuclear plant from medium to high -- a fluctuation which would put stress on the nuclear plant and take too long -- power providers will fire up a more expensive backup source, a "peaker plant" typically fueled by natural gas.
Natural gas-powered peaker plants can increase energy output at a quick climb. But natural gas is not renewable. And some renewable energy peaker systems can power on more quickly than natural gas peaker plants.
These newer storage-peaker plant hybrids sound either quaint or luxurious, and very clean. Like something you'd see at an expensive weekend spa for the super rich.
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Tiered Water Reservoirs
This system sounds very clever, and we'll let the book explain:
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Rail - The Bright Side of Sisyphus
This system's storage leaks no energy at all, though storing it costs about 15% of the total energy captured. It's so intriguing we're trying to locate a photo of it now running in Nevada (UPDATE: News video of Nevada's ARES energy storage system here.):
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Molten Salts
Molten salts can store heat captured form solar photovoltaic arrays (solar PVs) and can hold energy for five to ten hours. Sounds like a spa - bath salts, molten salts, clean air, healthy air.
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Batteries, Lithium Ion
"By 2021 Los Angeles plans to take its natural gas peaker plant offline, replacing it with eighteen thousand batteries that will be charged by wind power at night and solar in the morning, while energy needs are low."
And dozens of startups are working on batteries for the future.
This chapter was fascinating. And a bit long. Don't worry - the discussion for the second chapter is much shorter. As we've learned: talking energy storage means two things - holding, and delivering. And now we understand why climate skeptics say "the problem with solar and wind is storage." Aside from natural gas or coal, energy wasn't stored much at all!
III. Reading #2: Energy Storage (Distributed) page 34
This chapter focuses more on power delivery than storage. It begins by saying we're going to retain and even produce more energy at the endpoint - such as solar panels over a home, or even a tiny panel to power a streetlight.
I'm skeptical here - large power companies will not want to give up revenue sources or control. Won't there be resistance, perhaps corporate-sponsored laws against providing your own power? The book mentions "grid independence." How will Pacific Gas & Electric or Southern California Edison feel about grid independence? On the other hand, PG&E and SCE are no dummies. They're keeping themselves indispensable, in the loop, and part of our energy solutions as we transition from carbon-based sources to renewables.
The next part of the chapter talks batteries, which have been expensive, but are getting cheaper to produce in terms of kilowatt-hours.
"What's a kilowatt-hour?" asks the very sharp, science-competent novice. "Isn't it obvious?" replies the learned.
No it's not obvious. We did some side research to really grasp the concept of a kilowatt-hour, which we list in "Further Reading" at the end of this post.
The rest of the chapter uses kilowatt-hours to show that once-expensive renewable storage systems are getting much cheaper. Presumably because manufacturers are refining their production processes.
This is the first disappointing chapter in our DrawDown bookclub. It was a mish mash of storage vs. delivery vs. dollar expenditures. And then it was over.
IV. Next Readings
Let's read "Microgrids" page 5 and "Industrial Recycling" page 160 to discuss next.
Now we can rejoin the real world and, with this new knowledge, ask how Puerto Rico is rebuilding its energy grid.
See you next week!
<- Meatlover's DrawDown Bookclub #2: Can We At Least Have Fish? | DrawDown #4: MicroGrids and Industrial Recycling ->
-------------
Further Reading:
A kilowatt-hour:
A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy. A unit comprised of three quantities: the number of watts, the duration of time, and the monetary cost.
Say you turn on a 1-kilowatt lightbulb (a thousand-watt lightbulb.) You power it various ways, through the grid, from an offline battery, or Gilligan pedaling his power-producing stationary bike.
- Running the lightbulb from the grid just for an hour costs $.02. That's a two cent killowatt-hour.
- Powering the lightbulb for an hour from an offline battery cost $100.00 for the battery. Assume it's a battery that will power this lightbulb for 100 hours and is not rechargeable. That's a one dollar kilowatt-hour.
- Powering the lightbulb from a human-pedaled stationary bike connected to a friction-generating power converter costs minimum wage, $10 per hour, plus the cost of the bike and converter. The bike lasts thousands of hours. That's roughly an $11 kilowatt-hour.
View a video demonstration of Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) newly patented (2016) and running now in Nevada: greentechmedia.com.
Catch up:
I. Review
II. Reading #1: Energy Storage Utilities, page 32
III. Reading #2: Energy Storage (Distributed), page 34
IV. Next Readings
How boring does energy storage sound? It just sits there. It's a backup player. It holds stuff.
What we found in this week's chapters on "Energy Storage (Utilities)" page 32 and "Energy Storage (Distributed)" page 34 was more elegant, attractive, and mobile than we ever imagined.
But since we see some new members this week, let's review where we've been.
I. Review
In our first two meetings of DrawDown bookclub, we read about diet, the virtues of vegetables and the CO2 emissions of red meat production. It remains counter-intuitive to many bookclub members that red meat affects climate change. While we don't grow our own food yet, which Michael Pollan reminds us is a very social activity, a wild supplementary story in New York magazine showed us just how difficult growing food is. It's now excruciating for some members to discard food.
Between bookclub meetings, with diet-modification-as-climate-change-minimizer on our minds, we did find a flip-the-recipe technique on one of the food blogs that cuts food waste: See-Saw your cooking habits. See: read recipes, note required ingredients, shop, load the pantry, cook, enjoy. Saw: inventory pantry ingredients, look up ingredients in cookbook index, follow index to a recipe, don't shop, cook, enjoy.
Meeting #2 couldn't convince us to go vegetarian but introduced us to a compromise: flexitarianism, where beef is never the largest portion in any meal. Salads - lots of salads with a little chicken or fish thrown in is how we're eating these days.
Last week's chapters introduced us to a fascinating larger-than-a-garden, smaller-than-a-farm food growing system popular in Jakarta: a "multistrata agroforest." It grows food in layers - ground and tree crops. These home gardens can take root on slopes and require very little energy to maintain. One multistrata agroforest can trap and hold as much CO2 as many non food-producing forests of the same size.
Onward - let's discuss this week's chapters.
II. Reading #1: Energy Storage (Utilities) page 32
Who cares about energy storage! We're already eating less steak and chuck, we're marching today to outlaw assault weapons and our seacoast home is falling into the rising ocean.
We don't care but we committed to hosting a bookclub. Let's read on!
Eleven thousand years ago humans shifted from a paycheck-to-paycheck hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture. That's where energy storage began. (Really?)
Utilities first delivered electricity to paying customers in San Francisco in 1879. Texas and Germany followed San Francisco. (Doesn't sound right - we'll wikipedia those facts later.)
2018's inflection point: traditional energy sources (here "traditional" means sources popular in the last 150 years, fossil fuel energy sources) produce power independent from time of day, sun and cloud position, changing wind or ocean currents. The tradeoff is these more traditional, steadier energy sources also emitted CO2 into the air, and in the case of coal, dug CO2 right out of the ground. (Burying coal can actually draw down CO2 - but that's a side subject, not mentioned yet in this book.)
Greener, cleaner renewable energy is more subject to nature's whims. For example with solar, your home can draw electricity as long as the sun is out - which takes us back to a 1878 lifestyle. We can't have that.
Traditional power providers guesstimate how high to turn up the nuclear or coal-fired power plants (medium or medium high we assume) and keep them running, because "conventional power plants cannot be turned off," DrawDown says.
Traditional power providers throw excess unused energy away. Until now they could afford to.
So traditional power is steady. But occasionally, unforeseen events drive the populace to consume more energy than usual - such as heat waves which drive us to flip on air conditioners.
Peaker Plants - Traditional: Natural Gas
Power companies know they need to meet these excess energy demands. Instead of "whacking up" the nuclear plant from medium to high -- a fluctuation which would put stress on the nuclear plant and take too long -- power providers will fire up a more expensive backup source, a "peaker plant" typically fueled by natural gas.
Natural gas-powered peaker plants can increase energy output at a quick climb. But natural gas is not renewable. And some renewable energy peaker systems can power on more quickly than natural gas peaker plants.
These newer storage-peaker plant hybrids sound either quaint or luxurious, and very clean. Like something you'd see at an expensive weekend spa for the super rich.
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Tiered Water Reservoirs
This system sounds very clever, and we'll let the book explain:
"One option to store excess energy when it's around is pumping water from lower reservoirs to higher ones, ideally fifteen hundred feet higher. The water is released back down into the lower reservoir as needed and runs through power-generating turbines. Utilities pump the water at night, when electrical power is in surplus, and bring it down again when demand and prices peak. In an example, General Electric has teamed up with a German company to create energy when there is no wind. The project requires a sloping topography with four wind turbines working in concert to generate energy to pump water from a reservoir at a lower elevation to a reservoir at a higher elevation. When wind is lacking or demand is high, the water flowing downhill powers a conventional hydroelectric plant. All told, there are more than two hundred pumped storage systems in the world at present, accounting for 97 percent of global storage capacity. It is an opportunity that works when the topography obliges."
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Rail - The Bright Side of Sisyphus
This system's storage leaks no energy at all, though storing it costs about 15% of the total energy captured. It's so intriguing we're trying to locate a photo of it now running in Nevada (UPDATE: News video of Nevada's ARES energy storage system here.):
"Nevada is experimenting with energy storage by rail. Here, where there is no water, gravity can still be enlisted. The system takes its cues from the myth of Sysphus, forever pushing his boulder up a hill. When power is abundant, mining railcars freighted with 230 tons of rock and cement are sent up to a rail yard three thousand feet higher. The railcars are equipped with 2-megawatt generators that act as an engine on the way up. On the way down, a regenerative braking system converts rolling resistance to electrical power."The technology at the core of those two peaker solutions is more than a century old. The rail can remain parked for a year without losing power. The reservoirs will leak some power through evaporation. And both peaker systems power on faster than natural gas-peakers.
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Molten Salts
Molten salts can store heat captured form solar photovoltaic arrays (solar PVs) and can hold energy for five to ten hours. Sounds like a spa - bath salts, molten salts, clean air, healthy air.
Peaker Plants - Renewable: Batteries, Lithium Ion
"By 2021 Los Angeles plans to take its natural gas peaker plant offline, replacing it with eighteen thousand batteries that will be charged by wind power at night and solar in the morning, while energy needs are low."
And dozens of startups are working on batteries for the future.
This chapter was fascinating. And a bit long. Don't worry - the discussion for the second chapter is much shorter. As we've learned: talking energy storage means two things - holding, and delivering. And now we understand why climate skeptics say "the problem with solar and wind is storage." Aside from natural gas or coal, energy wasn't stored much at all!
III. Reading #2: Energy Storage (Distributed) page 34
This chapter focuses more on power delivery than storage. It begins by saying we're going to retain and even produce more energy at the endpoint - such as solar panels over a home, or even a tiny panel to power a streetlight.I'm skeptical here - large power companies will not want to give up revenue sources or control. Won't there be resistance, perhaps corporate-sponsored laws against providing your own power? The book mentions "grid independence." How will Pacific Gas & Electric or Southern California Edison feel about grid independence? On the other hand, PG&E and SCE are no dummies. They're keeping themselves indispensable, in the loop, and part of our energy solutions as we transition from carbon-based sources to renewables.
The next part of the chapter talks batteries, which have been expensive, but are getting cheaper to produce in terms of kilowatt-hours.
"What's a kilowatt-hour?" asks the very sharp, science-competent novice. "Isn't it obvious?" replies the learned.
No it's not obvious. We did some side research to really grasp the concept of a kilowatt-hour, which we list in "Further Reading" at the end of this post.
The rest of the chapter uses kilowatt-hours to show that once-expensive renewable storage systems are getting much cheaper. Presumably because manufacturers are refining their production processes.
This is the first disappointing chapter in our DrawDown bookclub. It was a mish mash of storage vs. delivery vs. dollar expenditures. And then it was over.
IV. Next Readings
Let's read "Microgrids" page 5 and "Industrial Recycling" page 160 to discuss next.Now we can rejoin the real world and, with this new knowledge, ask how Puerto Rico is rebuilding its energy grid.
See you next week!
-------------
Further Reading:
A kilowatt-hour:
A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy. A unit comprised of three quantities: the number of watts, the duration of time, and the monetary cost.
Say you turn on a 1-kilowatt lightbulb (a thousand-watt lightbulb.) You power it various ways, through the grid, from an offline battery, or Gilligan pedaling his power-producing stationary bike.
- Running the lightbulb from the grid just for an hour costs $.02. That's a two cent killowatt-hour.
- Powering the lightbulb for an hour from an offline battery cost $100.00 for the battery. Assume it's a battery that will power this lightbulb for 100 hours and is not rechargeable. That's a one dollar kilowatt-hour.
- Powering the lightbulb from a human-pedaled stationary bike connected to a friction-generating power converter costs minimum wage, $10 per hour, plus the cost of the bike and converter. The bike lasts thousands of hours. That's roughly an $11 kilowatt-hour.
View a video demonstration of Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) newly patented (2016) and running now in Nevada: greentechmedia.com.
Catch up:
- March 01 DrawDown Bookclub is Here!
- March 09 DrawDown Bookclub #1: Reading 'Why Bother' Was a Wise Choice
- March 16 Meatlover's DrawDown Bookclub #2: Can We At Least Have Fish?
