Posted on 01/19/2022 6:40:28 AM PST by devane617
Last year saw Australians install rooftop solar like never before, with 40% more installed in 2021 than in 2020. Solar system installations now make up 7% of the energy going into the national electricity grid.
Alongside the greater uptake of utility-scale solar (such as solar farms), this means cheaper and cleaner electricity is fast becoming a reality, putting the country on track to meet international climate targets.
But such a dramatic surge in solar output also poses challenges for Australia's power system for two main reasons.
It results in increased periods of large oversupply when weather conditions favor solar energy. This leads to energy being wasted due to the need for solar curtailment—when a solar system shuts down or stops exporting energy to the grid to counter the energy spike.
On the other hand, there is little solar generation during peak demand hours in the morning and evening. This requires more expensive generators to run.
These are huge problems from a market operations perspective, as the pressure on the system may result in blackouts and disruptions. It also creates large price swings for retailers, which then can increase costs for consumers. As a result, we may see it become more expensive to decarbonise the national energy market.
They do it at Niagara Falls and it works great.
Lots of Freepers just can’t stand progress. There is a difference between an immediate problem and an impossible problem. This is an immediate problem that needs fixing, but not impossible to fix. I’m sure everything went smoothly when we created the electrical power grid in the 20’s-50’s.
“Solar makes a lot of sense if you are living in a desert like the Aussies.
“But to be useful you really need battery storage which are about $10K....”
The battery storage devices are called electric vehicles.
And there are some of you that were wondering where the electricity to charge the electric vehicles was going to come from.
Ford will allow your EV truck to power your house.
IMHO long term energy storage has two somewhat promising solutions. 1) Battery storage getting cheaper and better, and 2) hydrogen storage (creating hydrogen with an electrolyzer powered by solar during excess power days, then later using the hydrogen gas to make electricity when solar is down).
I could see the two working together (batteries for short-term storage and hydrogen for long-term storage).
The catch is that hydrogen storage would be hard to do decentralized (at your home, not the big gubment Dims demanding power companies do it). Maybe if you put the hydrogen tank underground and you have a large yard away from the house (I do) it'd be safe. But it has to be decentralized or it's worthless like all other "green" energy projects.
My home solar and battery system is much more efficient than any utility's solar system because mine wasn't designed to meet some regulations to avoid some fine or get some stimulus or be good PR or whatever. Mine was designed for my family's energy habits in my house's situation with a cost/payoff analysis that fits my financial plan. Of the few people who put solar onto their house, most people do it with those efficiency demands in mind just like I did. That's why I think decentralized green energy is the only way to go with it.
My solar system currently produces about half of all the power I need in my all-electric house. When my solar system pays for itself in 10 years (assuming a 3% inflation rate for power rates and 3% inflation rate for the natural gas rate I'm avoiding by going all-electric) I'll still have 9 years left on the warranty for my batteries and 15 years on my solar panels. On the months that my power bill and HELOC bill (where most of the money came from for this project) combined is lower than the $310 I used to spend on both power and natural gas, I put the extra I save into a small investment account (why pay down the HELOC early when plain mutual fund investing gets a much greater return than the 2% interest rate of the HELOC, kind of like some people don't pay extra on the mortgage but instead put that extra into investments). When my power bill + HELOC is more than $310 I pull what I need from the solar investment account. That keeps me on a steady $310 per month "energy" budget like I had before going solar and all-electric. Basically I'm not trying to cut on costs so to speak as much as I'm using it as a hedge against runaway inflation -- particularly the energy cost inflation the Dims are putting onto us.
If I keep doing that for the 19 years of my warranty for my batteries, that'll mean 9 years of growth in the solar investment account after the solar system has paid for itself. Assuming a 10% inflation rate it'll be about $70K to $75K when it's time to replace the solar batteries. That's more than twice what my solar system cost (3 times that after the tax credit).
Assuming solar costs are the same then (that's pessimistic since at least so far the solar stuff is like computers: much better year after year without the cost going up by a lot) then I'll be able to replace my old system with twice the solar panel capacity and five times the battery storage capacity plus add to it two 10kW propane powered generators that I would use only one of on average of about 1.5 hours per month (the 2nd generator would be a backup) and I could be energy independent if I wanted to. Basically, in respect to the article's main point, I wouldn't be one of the ones demanding power when it's tough to provide while at the same time not helping pay into the power to help fund the power plants on days I have good solar. If something like hydrogen electrolyzer/storage is feasible by then I might incorporate that into it.
But that's me using my solar advantage of living in the south to help me prepare a long-term financial hedge in case the control freak Dims keep doing with energy what they've been doing and promise to do even more of. And that's without it impacting my budget because almost all of this is paid for with a low interest rate HELOC that my solar system in the first year is making the payments for. Obviously as the HELOC is paid down, the minimum payment goes down too and eventually I won't have a month at any time in the year when my solar system isn't paying for itself. When that day comes, every month will be a month the solar system is giving me "free" money to invest.
By the way, that's without putting excess power onto the grid to get "paid" for that. That's a scam. They'd pay me about $8.50 per month on average this past year, but charge me $67.51 (including 4% tax) per month just for the privilege of participating in the buyback program.
NOT is about to commercialize power storage at half the cost of pumped hydro.
https://www.solarpaces.org/mit-proposes-pv-to-discharge-energy-from-2400c-silicon-thermal-storage/
You can also go in the other direction to cryo temps. Carnot efficiency is all about Delta T for those who took college level physics.
“Highview Power’s liquid-air energy storage (LAES) technology — which has been proven in the field at a 5MW/15MWh grid-connected pilot project near Manchester — is able to store huge amounts of power for months at a time in any location, and at a far cheaper price than any other energy-storage system.”
Solar is getting so cheap by the watt that it makes sense to vastly over build as in 4 times the needed capacity which is economical since solar is already the cheapest power humans have EVER come up with. The IEA has all the data proving this hundreds of pages in its report Google it it will be the first result.
This is what happens when you over build solar and curtail it on purpose.
A much better choice once you over build solar and wind is to flip the energy landscape from supply bottleneck to demand bottleneck. This means to have huge amounts of demand that can be turned off and on in the time frame of minutes to seconds gigawatts worth. Having cheap H2 electrolysis by the gigawatt would work perfectly. Power lines are sized to take peak demand loads during the late afternoons they have surplus capacity at all other times it’s a myth power lines need to “cool down” over night or in the mornings they are sized and rates for that afternoon peak I’m in the power industry it’s a well known fact that the grid is underutilized during the mornings and late evenings just looking at the demand curve can confirm this.
Electrolysis capx is around $900 kw as of today This is falling fast just like solar capx collapsed with mass production. $231kw is nearly here with a clear path to $200kw at those prices even a capacity factor of 30% which over build solar would have on a yearly basis makes H2 gas from that curtailment power under $1 kg one kg )2 has slightly more btu than one US gallon of petrol. Toyota and Mazda both have cars that burn hydrogen in testing at high efficiency much better than petrol engines nearly twice as efficient due to the fast combustion of direct injection J2 gas at high compression ratios that petrol could never withstand. In the OTTO cycle compression ratio is king the higher the better the OTTO cycle is commonly referred to as spark ignition cycle that virtually every petrol fueled engine uses today.
Look at Texas demand curve in real time the idea is to turn that sinusoidal curve to a flat line by filling in the valleys with H2 electrolysis loads that can be ramped up and down to match the underlying demand curve thus running the grid flat out at its best max design point. Oncor would be ecstatic they get paid to transfer power not make it and if you filled in the demand valleys that would double their profits without a cent spent to upgrade the grid the capacity is already there sitting idle at night and mornings and early after noon...wind power peaks at night and solar peaks noon to late afternoon you are seeing a pattern I hope.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
Just today there is 20,000+ gigawatts between peak demand and the valley Texas grid is sized for 100,000+ gigawatts peak thats what the total capacity is in summer winter is around 85,000 oncor powerlines must be sized for the summer peaks and they are. This means at any given point in those valleys 40,000+ gigawatts can be sent to on demand usage such as H2 electrolysis having low capx electrolysis machines is the break through since it’s now economic to not run them 24/7 but only run them when you would have to curtail solar or wind due to lack of user demands by over building solar and wind which are CHEAP by the $/mwh you fill up that demand valley with what would be curtailed RE sources it’s going to happen it’s not if but when as solar beats every other power source ever made again the IEA has the rock solid proof of this.
The brits have a better idea. Since people here cannot be bothered to open a look and read and comprehend a skill seriously lacking here I’ll do the heavy lifting here are the key points.
“grid-connected pilot project near Manchester — is able to store huge amounts of power for months at a time in any location, and at a far cheaper price than any other energy-storage system....
For a 100MW system, we are already touching [a levelized cost of storage (LCOS) of] $100 per MWh....
By comparison, a new pumped-hydro plant would have an LCOS of $152-198 per MWh, with a comparable lithium-ion system costing $285-581/MWh, according to analyst Lazard.....
With a new gas-peaker plant having a levelized cost of energy of $156-210/MWh, and wind power at $30-60/MWh (according to Lazard), it may already cheaper to balance the grid using wind-powered liquid-air storage than fossil-fuel technology. ...
THIS IS THE BIG POINT>>>>>
And if the LAES system is “charged” using wind power that would otherwise be curtailed, the wholesale price of that power would be close to zero.
“
The same would apply to curtailed solar the cost of curtailed power is effectively zero since it is use it or lose it. The true cost is distribution tariff and capx over the lifetime of the asset both of which are small under one cent per kwh for capx and depending on the power regulation in who owns the lines the distribution tariff. In Texas the commercial oncor tariff is 2.6 cents kwh you can make massive amounts of stored power or H2 for $26 mwh in electron costs.
“I’m sure everything went smoothly when we created the electrical power grid in the 20’s-50’s”
Ok, switching gears and going along with you premise...We are still moving cargo/freight the same exact way we have since the covered wagon—excluding air—that we did over a hundred years ago. Trucks and trains. There are so many technical advances yet I rarely hear of an innovator looking at improving the movement of cargo. Why? Why not highly automate the rails and have autonomous rail cars that move around the country as baggage does in an airport—automatic switches to provide new course to final destination. I don’t get it. We have examples of backward progress all over our lives.
Two words: labor unions
Automaton is kryptonite to labor unions. They have deep pockets and corrupt politicians in them. Will not see automated bug rigs, automated trains and certainly not automated shipping nor dock work.
Just store the excess electricity in large buckets until needed.
How about large tanks of crushed Granite or basalt which is literally dirt cheap.
They hit on the same point, it’s all the same math. Build out 3x to 4x solar and put cheap energy storage right next to it this allows you to now send 24/7 dispatchable power from that asset just like any other power plant. $19 MWh in storage costs is a true game changer that’s 1.9 cents per kWh with grid solar at under 4 cents kwh you are now cheaper than gas turbines even with $3 MMBtu gas which won’t be seen again probably ever this says nothing of a $25 per ton co2 tax which the EU already has and we will have at least that much in carbon tax here before this term is up.
““One of the totally obvious use cases is solar farms, because even in very decent areas with high insolation, they have a really terrible use of their electrical infrastructure for the simple reason that for half the day, on average over the year, there’s no power going through their transmission lines.
“If you placed these types of storage systems decentrally, behind the meter at solar farms you could have three or four times the PV capacity on a given transmission network and supply 24-hour solar PV. This would not only solve the problem of variability, but would also help reduce your investment in grid capacity.”
He adds: “The variability in solar PV is so predictable, the sun comes up every day. For wind, it’s somewhat different, because winds can be calm for several days at a time. And it is a little more difficult to solve that completely with storage — you’d need much more than one-day [of storage] capacity for wind. Still, one full day of storage goes a long way towards mitigating the challenges of variability.”
“The battery storage devices are called electric vehicles.”
Good point. A family with solar power on the roof and an EV in the garage can be entirely energy self-reliant.
That is a future that conservatives should be dreaming about
“But such a dramatic surge in solar output also poses challenges for Australia’s power system for two main reasons.
It results in increased periods of large oversupply when weather conditions favor solar energy. This leads to energy being wasted due to the need for solar curtailment—when a solar system shuts down or stops exporting energy to the grid to counter the energy spike.
On the other hand, there is little solar generation during peak demand hours in the morning and evening. This requires more expensive generators to run. “
Of course nobody could have predicted that!
I’ve come to the conclusion that liberals are totally incapable of connecting dots. Cause and effect doesn’t exist for them.
The government should round up those people who installed those solar panels and put them in camps. They already have the procedures in place along with recent experience.
Maybe they could convert it to petroleum and store it in the ground.
Perpetual motion. It doesn’t work.
Better yet would be for a small conservative community to form a electric co-op and then buy either of the two energy storage techs I just posted either is economic today with the hot rocks being the cheapest at $19 MWh round trip. The smallest size would be 5MWh worth of storage that’s enough for about 20 homes of 3000 sqft which are all electric for 7 days more if you only need night time consumption with the homes themselves supplying day time solar with the surplus stored in the co-op. People would buy in for a share of the capx and be entitled to that much of the storage capacity if they used less it could be put up on a local and closed digital market place for others in the co-op to buy should they need more than their purchased shares worth or the excess could be sold to the outside power grid on behalf of the co-op with the profits shared with those who didn’t use all their capx shares worth it gets really interesting and profitable for a group like that and it encourages the owners to produce more and use less.
You can do exactly this power to gas tech is already being used in the EU. AUDI is making synthetic natural gas and running cars on it.
You can turn surplus wind or solar to SNG and inject it into a storage cavern or plan has well to store it for another day.
https://www.powermag.com/why-power-to-gas-may-flourish-in-a-renewables-heavy-world/
As soon as electrolysis machines cross under $400 kw in capx off peak H2 is cheaper than gas from the ground. Add in carbon tax and it’s already cheaper in the EU in windy or sunny places.
There is a giant thermonuclear reactor that showers the entire surface of the planet in one hour hundreds of thousands of times the energy used by little humans. Less than 5% of the surface area of the Sahara could power all of humanity’s energy usage at a western standard of living with 8 billion at that standard of living the Sahara gets 300+ days of sunlight per year. The issues have never been the volume of energy that giant fireball gives us it’s now to store it and move it to where it is needed on a 24/7 basis. That technology is now available and the transition to what was always going to be humanities future is underway. There is not enough fossil fuels for 8+ billion to live at USA standards of living this says nothing of the ecological catastrophe of burning all that coal which you would have to burn every scrap of coal everywhere and still not have but a few decades of USA standards of living for 8 billion oil would be gone in 20 years or less with consumption levels that high. The only reason fossil fuels can keep up right now is only the USA and EU use those levels add in Africa,Asia and India and the planet runs out fast. We would need four earth’s in resources to live at USA standards of living for 8 billion with fossil fuels it’s not going to happen the numbers are just too high in people and still growing. There is enough solar with wind to back up at night for tens of billions of people and conveniently it’s spread out over the whole surface of our world. Small fractions under 2to10% of each of these deserts can power their respective continents. The Sahara covers Africa and th EU, the Gobi covers Asia, the great Australian desert that’s self explanatory,and North America has four deserts anyone would the chihuahuan,Sonora,Mojave,or great basin deserts 5% or less powers all of North America 24/7. South America has the Atacama the driest place on earth in places it’s been centuries since rain or clouds for that matter. In any of these deserts the days of sunlight is 300+ with most 330+ you would need 30 to 60 days worth of storage or better yet over capacity by 3 x and make methanol,ammonia or methane from CO2 or N2 in the air for extended periods of clouds those three are also idea transportation fuels two are liquids at room temp the other is pipeline or cryo friendly.
All solar power has to be 100% backed up by reliable power generation sources. They can’t change that.
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