The Next Big Opportunities in Energy Storage
Now. I'd like to introduce today's, featured presenter, William play, wilt. Way is a assistant. Professor, in the Department of material science and engineering and, a, center fellow the Precourt, Institute for, energy at Stanford University. Fessor. Troy has, received numerous honors including, the Mrs, outstanding, Young Investigator award. In 2018. The. Volkswagen, BASF, science award electrochemistry. In 2016. Camille. Dreyfus teacher scholar. Award in 2016. And many, others. In. 2012. He was also named as one of the top 35. Innovators. Under the age of 35 by. Mi t--'s Technology, Review, he. Received his BS in Applied Physics MS. And PhD and. Material science from Caltech, prior, to joining Stanford. In 2012. Now. I'd like to turn the floor over to well. Thank. You Joe for the introduction, and it, is my great pleasure to give. You a brief. Presentation on, the, future of energy. Storage so. If you look at the costs of lithium-ion, battery for example since. 2010. Has declined by almost 80 percent and the, trend is only increasing, on. The. Other hand if you look at the cost of generating electricity, renewably. That, cost has even gone agonda, even more for, example for wind electricity since the 80s has gone down by 90% and, for. Solar that, has gone down by 99, percent, in. The past two decades and if. You combine the, decline costs, of storage, and, generation. Of renewable electricity that. Leads to two very, interesting question. The. First question is in the sector of transportation. So. What are the remaining research. Development, needed to, fully electrify. And convert. Our internal, combustion, engine fleet to, electric, vehicle and a. Greater question and a bigger challenge is for the grid so. Can we combine, this. Low-cost, renewable, electricity, and low, cost storage and. Compete. On cost. With conventional, electricity, generated. From, you will purely. Up cos so these are the two question I'm going, to try to, give. Additional, details I will discuss, them both from, a business perspective and, also, a technology, perspective and, let me just state the take-home message which. Is you, have to look at the problem, both from the business, side and the, technology, side so I'll go over some details in the next 45 minutes. So. Let me start with a. Plot. Showing you, the tremendous, growth in v's this. Is plotting, the millions, of vehicles for, the past eight, years from 2011, and projection. Into 2019. And you, can see we sold our first million, electric vehicle in 2015. Then. The second million 2016. And now, we have sold over 4 million passenger, EVs, and within, the next year we'll add another million to that the. Numbers are big but they are very small compared, to the global industry of 1 billion vehicle, so that tells you some, of the opportunities, going forward in, terms, of fully electrifying. And I don't think I have to highlight the importance, of battery technology for. Transportation, so. I think most people can appreciate the. Growth abhi B's perhaps. A harder. Problem. To see is how, energy. Storage is impacting. The electrical, grid and here. I'm showing you the, global installed, capacity. For. Renewable, generation so, this is showing in green for wind and in, yellow for solar and you can see over the past 18. Years the, increase, in this capacity. Of wind, and solar has just been enormous, now. We're approaching approximately. 1 terawatt, of installed. Capacity for. Wind and solar so the electricity grid is changing. Very quickly and, one. Of the key challenges how, does the grid cope with. The, generation, of what we call variable, electricity, so these are not, resources. Which is available all the time the, Sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time so. How, do we think about. Change. In the grid to accommodate, for this variable generation. Of electricity is one of the key just going forward. So. Let me talk about energy storage. In the context, of the electricity, grid these. Are plots showing. The. Utility. Scale energy. Storage, installation. That is forecasting. From, 2017. All the way to 2026. And here. On the Left we're. Looking at the. Energy. Storage. In terms of utility and on the right it's the installed. Capacity. For.
Distributed, Energy storage so, utility, means very concentrated so these are power plants tile energy, storage technology, and on the right these, are distributed or a home based or. Business. Based energy storage, and I, won't get in the details of this plot which is being distributed over many. Countries but. The key aspect, is the trend energy. Storage is going to grow very, rapidly both. At the utility, level and at the distributed, level and the. Reason is actually quite straightforward, one. Easy way to deal with variable. Generation, of electricity, is to. Be able to buffer, it with, energy storage technology, such as batteries. So. One of the key driver for. Energy, storage is policy, and. Being. Here at Stanford let me start with California. So there are several very notable, policies, that is driving, the. Investment, in this area for example the, mandate to have 1.8, gigawatt, of installed. Storage. By 2024. And more, recently to, go completely carbon-free. Electricity by. 2045. That would just announced, two months ago you. Can see similar initiatives, in the policy, area in. Arizona New, York Massachusetts, Texas. And many, places in the US and globally as, well in. The US the, state-level policy, it is currently what's driving, energy storage, on the grid level and this, is going to be a very, significant. Factor going, forward in the growth of the industry. So. Let me give some specifics. On battery, technology, battery, it is not the only technology that can be used for grid storage I will talk about a variety of them. Later in the webinar but. Just show you one example this. Is for battery based technology, and you're basically seeing almost, zero installation. In capacity, prior, to 2010, but. Because, the cost of lithium-ion matter has gone down so much you, can see that the declining, cost is almost matched with, the installed capacity which, is really taking off since 2010, as well this. Is a great start. But we're still very far from, matching this to the one terawatt, generation, capacity I showed earlier from. Solar and wind so this highlights the challenge, we have to deal with and I will talk about a little bit some, of the technological and the business drivers, behind. Getting. The storage capacity to, match up with that of generation. So. Let me talk a little bit about the, application of, energy storage in the context, of the grid so we can all appreciate how energy storage can help with transportation in, terms of electric vehicle, the. Grid is a much, more complex. System, and you. Can think about the. Utility. Of, storage, into, context, of the duration, of storage so how long do you have to store electricity for, in, order to tackle some, of these various, applications. And what, we send applications, each application. Has a revenue, associated, with it so, this is driving some of the technical economic, behind. Storage, on for, example whether utility. Companies will incorporate, storage or not or do they go with traditional. Means of providing, electricity, for, example through, natural gas power plants so. Let's start at the bottom, on. The level, of seconds, you, have things, like, startup. Of the grid so you have to provide some initial energy if the grid was down and you have to restart it the. Second one is frequency regulations. If you look at your electricity, output it is very stable okay but that. Only happens when demand and supply of electricity are perfectly, matched and sometime it is difficult to match it so you have to have some amount of buffering so, that your electricity, will come out at the right voltage, in the right frequency, so 120, volt and 60 Hertz in the United States then. You go on to minutes, so, these are what's called, so, to accommodate for variations. In the grid you have to have electricity, that you can provide on. A reserved basis, under ordered minutes then, keep moving up you have what's called peak shaving and this, is corresponding to the fact that there are demands, of electricity, that is high and low in the day and when. The demand gets too high this. Puts a lot of stress on the system on the grid so being able to shave that peak, to, decrease the peak requirement. Of electricity from. Conventional, sources it's important, and, then if we move up even more in the purple box we talk about curtailment. So this is where there, is so, much renewable being, generated for example from solar wind you. Can't use it all and if, you can't use it all you have to start either, dumping, the electricity, away or you have to think about basically. Curtailing, it and this, is a significant. Revenue loss for. The electrical, electricity. Grid companies as well and. On the very very top right you have seasonal, or long-duration resource, shifting I'll talk a lot a little bit about this as well so you have different, outputs. Of electricity from solar throughout. The year so we are have high solar output in the summer and lower solar output in the winter but, the demand is actually somewhat.
Uniform So, being able to shift the ability, to shift the electricity, between seasons. Could, also be very important, and another important, source of revenue and, if, you look at this plot from left to right it ohso shows you how. Important. It is dependent. On the penetration, of renewable, so when the Renewable penetration, if, you want it to be a hundred percent you, have to talk about seasonal storage but, if you only wanted to be ten percent then, maybe we can get away with just peak, shaving. So. Let me show you one example of. A. Typical. One-week. Electricity, generation. Here, so, here we have green, it's the generation of wind and we. Have here, in, yellow at the top line that is the total electricity, load so, if you look at the green here from left to right you can see it's highly variable it, can be almost zero at times and it can be very large at other times and if. You look at the low profile, the, up-and-down week. Reflects a cyclic, demand. Of the day higher. During, the daytime and lower during nighttime and, where. You have a peak demand and, low. Wind output, is where you have to, provide electricity from, something other than wind and this is where we turn up our, natural. Gas power plan and on. The other hand if you have a high, supply below demand this, is where we have to curtail, which, means that the. Grid electricity. Grid companies are paying wind. Farms to basically turn off that wind turbines because, they cannot take the electricity, and that, sometimes can result in negative pricing. So, the grid companies, are paying for. Electricity. Not, to be generated, and. If you look in the middle of the plot I'm highlighting two potential. Areas. You can for example shift. The, resources, so right, around say here February 24th, at a, noon. You have high wind generation, and then, at, midnight, you have low wind generation so, if you can move the electricity, around by, that 12. Hour I started that 20, 36, hour period, that can also provide, additional revenue, to the, great companies. One. Other application is frequency, regulation this. Slide, is showing quite a bit but let me just tell you that, regulation. In frequency, happens, on a very fast time scale so this is typically on the order of seconds, and so. These various plot basically, shows how. Effective. It is to. Match the, frequency of, the electricity, to the, between. The demand and the supply on, the top, right you have a case where you have battery based buffering, so the two curves are matched perfectly, so, there's no lag behind between. The, supply and demand but, if you go to say something like a hydro, storage so this is using water, by pumping up the hill and down you have a slightly, greater mismatch, because, of the lack time in providing, the electricity and then.
If You look at a turbine. Base combined, cycle on the very lower, plot there, you can see that, the. Lack is even greater so, the tells you that the ability to maintain a, very, stable grid has to do with how fast you're, able to buffer the electricity, and battery. Provides, a really good way to do so and this, can directly. Generate, revenue, for. The electricity, grid. So. Here's one example many, of you might have heard about the. Installation, of a 100, megawatt. 129. Megawatt, hour battery system, in Australia that. Was installed by Tesla, in, 2017. The, main application. Of this battery system which is based on looking around batteries, is to, provide for, frequency, generation, which means it's used to, buffer the electricity, so, that the frequency is held constant so. 100, megawatt or 121, megawatt hour is not a very big number but. It is very, exciting. To see even, a small installation. Like this can have a substantial, impact on. The. Type. Of storage used, for, frequency regulation. So, if you look at the right the. Plot. Of the first bar. Shows, you q4. In 2017. Right, before the installation of this, battery system you, can see battery, was a very, small percentage of, what's. Used for frequency regulation, of the grid and is mainly, powered. By coal, and, hydro. Okay, so you're using coal and water to, provide the buffering needed to regulate the frequency, of electricity. In Australia but, just. The next quarter so three months later you, can see battery, grew from about one percent to, over ten percent as the. Mean to regulate, the, frequency. Of electricity so, a small, installation. Like this one can have a huge impact and this is for, Australia. As a country, so. This is very exciting to see how, a small battery system, can, have such a large impact for. Frequency. Regulation. Another. Application, that I alluded to earlier is, peak shaving so let me get in some detail here so, peak shaving basically. Reflects, the mismatch, between the, consumption, of electricity, and the. Generation, of electricity and. Here. Because, the generation, of renewable electricity is, variable, you. Have to buffer the, differences, between the two, so. One application of, peak shifting s as follows you have the top of the demand at about. 6:00 p.m. this is when everyone goes home turn, on electricity. Maybe turn on the AC if, you're in the summer in the southern states in the US and at, nighttime for example, the electricity, demand is much lower so. One idea is, that you, can generate. Excess. Electricity. When. You have lower, demand, and shifted. By about 12 hours to higher demand one. Particular, application. Could be in, storing. Wind electricity so when often blows at night so, if you're able to store that basically. You can charge, your battery, at night and then you discharge, the battery during the day when the demand is higher this, will lessen the demand on the. Electricity in the peak hours so the ability to shave, this peak can, stabilize, the grid and make, it more economical, for the grid to be operated. So. One example of this peak shaving is the. California duct curve some. Of you may have heard this in the popular, press the, duct curve basically shows, you the shape of, the. Generation. Of non, renewable electricity, and how. It varies throughout, the day so. If you look at the plot on the left it is showing you the, generation. Of electricity. From. Non-renewable sources, okay so these are primarily, your natural gas power plants in California for a typical spring, day and, the. Curve on the top in grey is the actual, in 2012, and as, you go down it shows you the prediction, to, 2020. And the, prediction, was made in 2013, so. You can see that because, the solar insolation was still quite low back in 2012, so. Your, generation, of non renewable electricity, is fairly flat during the day. But. As time. Went on the. Solar installation. Increased, in California, which means you're outputting much, more, renewable. Generation during. The daytime, and as, that renewable, generation went, up that, means the generation, of conventional. Electricity, from natural gas and others have, to go down okay, and that's why from. 2012, to 2015.
You're Seeing the formation, of the. Site profile, of a duck which, tells you that you, are needing less electricity, during the day because you have more solar electricity, to work with what. Problem, does this give you well. You, have to shut down the. Generation, of non renewable electricity. During the day and you, have to turn it back up right, around 4:00, to 5:00 p.m. when. The Sun is beginning to set and that, gives you the neck of the curve and if. You look at the number here we're, talking about the ramping, of approximately. 10,000, megawatt, over, a three, hour period. This. Is a tremendous, challenge and as a stress, on the grid and. This. Was the prediction back, in 2013. How. Good were the predictions, not. Very good in fact what, we are today. We're. Already way past the, 2020, projection, in terms of the DA curve so we're very close, to, the bottom of this curve which means we are shutting down a tremendous. Amount of conventional. Electricity generation, during. The daytime and we have to turn it back up over a three, hour period, and the, plot on the right just shows you how much, ramp, we're talking about 10,000, megawatt to, put some, context. 10,000. Megawatt is half of the Australia grid so in California we have to turn up electricity. That. Is equal, to half of the grid utilization. In Australia, so, this dot curve it's a tremendous. Consideration. When it comes to technologies. That can mitigate the darker. Let. Me show another example, of curtailment. So, this is a projection in, 2020. For the Western grid in the United States showing, how various. Form, of electricity. Or. Various, forms of generation, for. Electricity so at the very bottom you have nuclear so. That is very steady. Over time so it doesn't vary, so. The power plants are running uniform, Emily then. You have coal and hydro. So, you can see coal actually, goes down during the day and the reason is very simple. The. Grid. Company, turns off coal first because, has the largest carbon footprint, and the reason you turn off coal, is because. During the day time you have, the increase, in solar and that is captured, in yellow, there so, this essentially, shows you, the, different, types of electricity that is being generated day. Today, and if. You look at the very very top, there. You can see curtailment. So there you have so, much electricity, that, you couldn't, turn off enough, of the coal, and other, conventional. Generation, so, that you have to curtail the renewables, by paying the. Renewable. Generation company, not to generate, to turn off their, resources, and this is a hit on the. Economics. Because, the grid operator are paying money to the renewable, generators, and the, renewable generators, are not able to generate the revenue they, originally, wanted to generate when they install the equipment so, this shows you how, dynamic the, grid is it's really incredible, to see the, ups and downs of various.
Generation. Of electricity, throughout. Just, one, day. And. As. Another, example of resource, shifting. These. Plots, are showing, you the, resource, and demand, profile, on the left for California and, on the right for the United States for, the entire year ok, so, you can see the, demand it's fairly. Flat ok, in California, is fairly flat in the u.s. is a little, bit less. Flat and that is the or the, orange curve there but, what is very interesting is. If you look at the, renewable. Electricity, so that's in blue, on the left and on, the plot on the right is separated, into both wind and solar. In purple, and yellow respectively. And there. You, can see a significant. Mismatch you can see that we have more, generation, during. The summer month and less, generation. Over the winter month so, the opportunity. Here is can. We align. Our, resources. With, our demand, by shifting. Electricity. Around, seasons. So can we take some of those electricity. Generated, in the, month of May, to August and, we, can shift that to. The. Consumption. In. The, winter, okay. So, this is something that, is not yet possible but. Seasonal. Shifting, of electricity is a huge opportunity and, as that commented not earlier if, we want renewable. To penetrate, the grid completely. We, have to tackle this challenge. These. Are a few more plots of simulations, so. What this is plotting, it's basically, how, much capacity over, building we need one. Means no over building and two. Three four means we have to over build the, solar and wind by a certain amount and the, x-axis, is showing, you the, amount, of renewable, penetration. So zero means no renewables. And hundred means completely, renewable. The. Black curve. Shows. You the. Amount, of. Over. Building if you. Have only, have. No storage and as, you go to the lighter green curve it shows you what happens if you have storage one, day for. Day and one. Month so, as you, increase storage. Then. You, get to decreased. Amount, of over, building, of solar and wind and the, reason is simple if you don't have storage and you want a certain amount of renewable penetration. That means you have to have more, than you need so then you can generate enough solar and wind when. The Sun is not shining or. When the wind is not blowing but. If you have storage, then, you're able to shift the resources around so. That even, when the Sun is not shining and, the wind is not blowing you. Can still use, the renewable, and that decreases. The amount of over, building that, is required and it's. Very interesting to see, the. Various cases the, top curve shows, you what happens if you purely have solar ok, because, solar is intermittent. On the daily basis, this, highlights, the, importance. Of storage. So if you want 50% penetration, of solar, in the United States that, means you, need to have storage without it you can only get to approximately. 50% penetration. When, it becomes impossible to supply and this is simply reflecting. The fact that the Sun doesn't shine at night but. If you look at the bottom cases, if you go to 50/50. Mixture of solar and wind the. Curve shifts to the right which means for, a given amount of penetration, you need much less over building and this reflects, the fact that wind is intermittent. On a different time scale it's intermittent, on a day, several. Day basis, so if you mix just the right amount of wind and solar you're, able, to, have, less. Over, building for a given amount of penetration and, if, you go to a hundred percent win on the bottom that also showcases, as well but, regardless. Of what scenario, you consider, you. Need PAP storage, in order, to reach high. Degree of penetration, of renewable. Electricity. In. The grid system. So. Now let me talk about the, alternatives, so, we talked a lot about the various, application. And the business need for, storage whether it is seasonal. Storage. With there is daily storage or peak, shaving. Energy. Storage, is not the only way to do it there are a lot of competitions. That. Is already available today, and probably. One of the most attractive alternative. Is natural. Gas pker, plans so, a peak or basically, reflects the fact that these natural gas power plants are not turned on all the time it, is turned on when, the demand of electricity, increases. For example, around 3 p.m. when, the generation, of renewable goes, down and this. Is basically showing you the cost, of electricity. Per. Megawatt. Hour shifters so this is talking about if I have to move one. Megawatt hour of electricity around. For, a certain amount of time what. Will be the cost and you can see actually.
Technology. Like, lithium, battery is high. On this plot okay. And using. A, natural, gas peaker plan is actually very, cost, effective. This. Is based on today's cost, of lithium-ion. Battery technology, but, look at the same plot on the right in. 2030. The projection, is that lithium ion battery will actually, become less, expensive. Than, natural, power natural, gas power plants so, this is showing you the importance. Of continuing. To push the cost of battery technology so. That it can compete, with other ways, of shifting, electricity, for example through peaker plants on cost. Okay, and I want to emphasize this one more time is that, for something. As enormous. As the grid Technic, anomic is the principle, driving, force you have to think primarily, about cost. So. Now let's get into the technology aspect. So. If we want to shift energy, around whether it is on the order of an, hour. Three. Hours a day, or. Across. The season, there, are many, different, metrics, that must, be satisfied, at the, same time and this. Plot here shows you, just a few of those, metrics. And I'll walk you through from, the top starting. With calendar, life so, calendar, life basically tells, you for a particular energy. Storage, technology. How. Long can you use, it for it doesn't matter how many times you use it it's just a. Calendar, so is it ten years twenty, years and this determines, the cost. Of electricity, that, is amortized. Over the lifetime of the technology. Going. Around, in, the clockwise fashion the next one is cycle life so this is how many times you. Can cycle the battery so, if you're storing electricity, on a daily basis then you will need to cycle at about 300 times in a year if. You're doing frequency, regulation, like the Australia, example I showed earlier then. You're doing multiple cycles or tens of cycles a day. The. Next one is energy cost, so this is basically, looking at how much does it take to store a certain amount. Of energy so. This would be the dollar per kilowatt hour that have shown earlier, the. Next one is energy density, so this is how, heavy the, technology, would be giving. An amount of energy stored the. Next one is power cost so this is looking at the cost, of delivering electricity, at. A certain rate so, for those of you not familiar with energy and power. In the context of an electric vehicle energy, tells you how far you can drive the car so that's the range and the, power basically, tells you how fast you can either charge the car or, how fast you can accelerate, the car so their costs, associated, with both. Keep. Going clockwise fashion ramp, rate so this is reflecting. How fast you're able to charge, and discharge the, particular energy storage, technology, so, we talked quite a bit about the, duct curve so that particular, application, will require you to be, able to charge and discharge energy, storage technology, over hours but. If you're talking about frequency regulation, that period, can be quite a bit shorter as well.
Round. Trip efficiency this, is basically, telling you how, much of the electricity, you put into the technology you can actually get out so, we're a hundred percent round-trip, efficient system that means every bit of energy you put in you can take out and this also determines the, cost of storage as well. Safety. Is very important. You. Want to have an energy storage technology. That is safe, over. The lifetime of the system and this applies. For both large scale utility. Installations and, also home, or transportation. Temperature. Range is important, we have many participants here, from different parts of the world sometime. He gets very hot in the summer sometime it gets very cold in the winter to, have a technology. That perform, over, the broad range of temperature, and those, of you who have electric vehicle can appreciate the fact that in the winter months then, your performance, is decrease for example, for looking around battery and that highlights, one of the weakness of that particular technology, and the, final one is the volumetric energy density so, this is how much you can store per size okay. So, that in combination, with the gravimetric, energy density, basically. Tells you how big and how heavy, the, particular technology. Has to be the. Challenge, with energy storage technology, is that you have to satisfy. Many. Of these at the same time and the, plot in the middle basically shows you two example, technologies, in which you, don't have complete. Meeting. Of all the metrics okay, so, there's no silver, bullet and depending. On the application. You can weigh these metrics, differently. So for example for transportation. Graph. The metric and volumetric, energy densities, are very, important. But. For grid application to, Canada, life is very important, so. As I will talk about in the next 10, minutes or so is really, thinking about what. Use, case you, would like a particular technology, to. Serve and depending. On the use cases the, technology, will. Be different, and there is no silver bullet so, this is why we need a wide, range of energy storage technology, to, meet the different type of applications, that we have.
So. This, is my personal, view and cost. Of vacation, of energy, storage. Technologies, I divided, them by the physical. Storage, mechanism. So, going from the left we have electromagnetic. These. Will be technologies. Such as super capacitors. We. Have thermal. Storage so this is storing energy in the form of heat, this, is most notable, in. The form of molten, salt that is used for concentrated. Solar power whereby, you, concentrate. Solar light and you generate heat and that he can be sort by heating something up like a molten salt the. Next one is, probably the most the. One that has received the most amount of attention is electric chemical and, bet. The poster child of electrochemical storage is lithium-ion batteries but you also have a wide range of other battery, technology, LED acid, flow. Battery and so, forth, further. On the right we have mechanical. And. The poster, child for mechanical, is palm hydro storage so you take electricity, you take water and you pump it up the hill that's, how you charge, up a palm hydro system and then, water it goes down the hill this is how get electricity, out you can do this not only with, water that you can use air as a medium, and you can also use other things as. Well. Masses. Rocks even by moving up and down the hill and the, final one is chemical, so. We have the opportunity, to take, electricity, and generate. Chemicals, such as hydrogen, and then, we can combust. It subsequently, and then, to make electricity, again so, these are the various, aspects, I don't, have that much time today so I'll only briefly, highlight, a few examples, but, I would like the audience to appreciate the, wide range of technologies, that be investigated. Today at universities, National, Labs and Industry. To, try to get this work at the scale I alluded, to earlier in, my talk. So. Let me look at the installation. Capacity. By energy storage by. Far. The. Technology. Of, preference. Today is pump. Hydro ok, an, overwhelming. Amount of energy, today are being stored by pumping water up and down.
If. You look at other forms, of storage thermal. Electric. Chemical or other it's very small it barely shows up on the plot on the left and the. Plot on the right basically, shows a blow-up of those, three things ok it's just technology, other, than pom hydro so there you have a significant. Participation of thermal, storage so. Storing energy in the form of heat lithium-ion. Battery is the. Biggest one now in the, electrochemical area, and you also have other installation, in mechanical, for example, storing. It in compressed, air or by, turning. A wheel around and spinning, it. The. Opportunity for, the future is. How. Can, we develop different. Technology, to. Reach the same level of economy. As pom hydro, and ultimately, to. Exceed it and the reason why pom hydro, has limitation. Is because. Is geography, dependent. And water, resources, always a consideration, as well. But. Let me get right into lithium ion battery this is something that has really captured the, attention. Of the public in the past decade, because of the, rapid. Explosion. Of electric. Vehicles, a battery. Technology, is actually fairly straightforward. You are shuttling. Atoms. Such as lithium between. A low energy reservoir and a high energy reservoir so, in a manner of speaking this, is not very different than, palm hydro except, the energy, carrier, is not water and pumping up a difference. In height but is really a, lithium. That is being pumped around a difference, in chemistry, between, the two side of the battery which we call the, negative, electrode, sometimes, it's called the anode and the, positive electrode sometime, called the cathode so, the ability to move this. Energy carrier lithium, around the two electrode, is. How, a battery works. One. Of the most attractive, thing about a battery is how inexpensive. It has become so if you look at the table on the top right it shows you the various. Parameters. For the technology, currently, we are looking at greater than 2 gigawatt, if it's dock capacity, typical. Duration now based on the economy is about 2 1 to 4 hours for grid and. As already serving the need of electric vehicle, the lifetime. Is about several, thousand, recharge cycles, and the can normal life could be on the order of about 10 years round. Trip efficiency is, very high about 90 percent of the electricity you put in you can take it out the, cost is extremely. Attractive, today for transportation. But, it is quite, far from what is needed for the electrical, grid I didn't, get into the economics, of the grid but, if you want to have a, significant. Penetration of, electricity. Storage. Using. Battery you, need to look at. Significantly. Under $100, per kilowatt hour for, diurnal. Storage meaning across. Date. And. If, you want to look at say, storage, across several days or, a week you, need to reach about $20 to kilowatt hours so we're still about 20x, off to. Reach in that goal so new technology. Is certainly needed and. Probably. What, is most, impressive in looking amount on battery is the. Scaling, exercise. That we have went through so. The plot on the left shows, you the dollar per, kilowatt hour on a battery pack, level, has. Gone from over a thousand, per, kilowatt hour just, in, 2013. To. Now. Slightly. Anticipated. To below $100. By 2025, and approaching. $50 per kilowatt hour so, this is extremely attractive, as the cost goes down new. Applications. Will come up so as the cost down then you can store electricity, for longer periods of time for, example for the electrical grid and the, cost of transportation. For EVs will also go down as well and the. Cost decline. Will, be matched with growth, in the, installed capacity and, that is what's shown on the right and, is truly exciting to think that the lithium-ion battery, market. Should. In the next ten years reach. Over, one trillion dollars worldwide. These. Is a plot showing you the, companies. Which, are involved in manufacturing, lithium-ion battery a majority.
Of These companies are in China some of them are in Korea and elsewhere. In, the world as well and most. Company. Have been announcing. New capacities, of this plot as already outdated and, we're, seeing numbers even large today in order, for the, industry, to meet the demands for transportation. And increasingly. For grid storage application, for, lithium-ion batteries. So. What is the ultimate limit, of the, cost of lithium-ion battery, so I showed a projection, down to 70. And $50, two kilowatt hour so, fundamentally. What sets, the floor of the, cost of battery, technology is, the. Material, cost so this bar. Shows you the projection, of costs from 2015, to 2025. So, you can see the. Cost of manufacturing the. Cost of assembling, the batteries into a pack will, continue, to go down but, the cost of the material. Will not decrease, dramatically. So. The material, costs will set the cost floor so, basically, if, you look at the projection, going forward to 2025. The. Material, costs will dominate, the cost of the battery pack. So. This is showing you the trend, in the elemental, cost, this. Is the. Sum of the three expensive. Component, and batteries of cobalt nickel, and lithium, and you can see because of the rise in demand you, have now a sudden rise in cobalt, price over the past few years and this, is going to be a significant. Constraint, so, one opportunity, is can, we design new battery chemistry, that, do not use these expensive. Elements, and this will be one pathway, toward. Lowering. The cost for which is set by the material, cost. Another. Thing to think about for batteries, is cost. That is levelized, by, the, lifetime, so, the, cost, I've been showing so far is level. Wise only, by the energy, so dollar per kilowatt hour but, different battery technology, have different lifetime so. For transportation. We, need maybe a thousand. Cycles so, if you think about a a car, with a 250. Mile range 1000. Cycle means it's a two twenty, two, hundred. Fifty thousand mile and that likely exceeds, the lifetime, of cars in most use. Cases but. For. Grid application we need much more we need thousands. Or ten thousand, life a cycle, life and when. You start dividing. The, cost by the lifetime, the equation, changes so. For example this plot shows you, different, technologies, in, terms of the. Cost per, kilowatt hour and the cycle life some. Of these technology, are not used in, transportation. Today because. The energy density isn't, high enough but, if, your primary consideration. Was not the energy density say, you build a big, battery system, in the desert or elsewhere, then, you have to actually worry about cost more, than the density and the plot on the right that shows you once, you level, wise the cost by. The cycle. I of the battery then, different, winners, emerge, so, the present, technology we use today are actually, fairly high, in the levelized cost because, you are achieving you're trading the, lifetime, of the battery for high energy density but. For certain use case like the grid you may want a lower energy density but, a much longer life time and there are new chemistry's, out there that can potentially deliver. That, combination, of metrics so this is something else to think about too in terms, of developing, the right chemistry. And the right technology, that, will hit the, needs of the market. One. Other application that. Is emerging as Second Life batteries, from electric vehicles, so, as we, have more and more electric, vehicles in a market, eventually. Will have them coming off electric. Vehicle maybe they won't be, good, enough for, transportation. The ranges too short but we can still take them out and use them in grid application for example by, using them to buffer, electricity, for, solar. And these. Simulation. Basically, tells, you that by, the, beginning of. 2020. We, will begin to see significant. Amount of battery come off electric, vehicle, and this second, life use of batteries, represents. A very large market as well and economics. Is not fully understood and there's a lot of opportunity, in thinking about how, do we effectively, take batteries out of electric vehicles, and, repurpose. Them for other applications, such as the grid. So. I'm out of time today so maybe I would just say a few more words I, didn't. Have time to get into the specific. Technologies. Here the, take-home message here is there are a lot of different, technology, and each one of them will have a different. Metrics. It will not meet all the requirements there's, no silver bullet, R&D. Is ongoing for everything, I'm showing you here and more, and let.
Me Stop with this take-home. Message here. Which. Is looking, at the big opportunity. My. Opinion, is that we, cannot work on technology without, considering. The business, needs, and the use case so, I spent about half the talk talking about the various, use cases how. The, grit. Companies, could be using battery to generate revenue. We. Can be looking at transportation as, a way to replace, internal, combustion, engines we talked about the economic. Behind it on. The right hand side we have the technology, I only talked about electrochemical, today but there are many more and really. It is about matching the to finding. The right technology, for the specific. Business cases and, identifying. The need to, further develop, technology, to meet certain techno, kanami goals and I think this is what is needed to, really see. The. Tration of renewable, electricity and, the. Role that energy. Storage will play so, let me stop here and thank you very much for listening now, we have a few minutes for Boyle. To answer a few of your questions. All. Right so the first question is. What. Are the challenges to recycling, batteries, at a large scale and, what. Are the associated. Environmental. Impacts how. Does technology. Reducing. The. Environmental, footprint. This. Is a very. Loaded question on my say-so let me answer the last question first the. Environmental. Footprint, is not an easy question to answer you often you, know see and you know on, the. License placing, this is a zero emission, vehicle, that. Is not entirely true it depends on how the electricity was generated and, it also you, need to think about how much emission. Went into, making, the technology so. Here at Stanford elsewhere, folks, are doing analysis. On the lifecycle. Footprint. Of these technologies, so as you compare, different. Technology, you have to think about what is the emission, that went, into the, extraction, of the raw material, the, manufacturing. And the assembly, of the technology, and that have to be considered there's no simple answer and one, can simulate, what the carbon. Pay by time you, would have for a particular technology so definitely, battery, it is not a zero emission technology, if you consider the lifetime. The. Other aspect, from. The, listener. Is recycling. This, will be crucially. Important, it will be a huge industry and let, me comment on from two perspective, first is economics. So, recycling, will only be done if its economy, lay viable, and he, will be economically, viable for example, when the raw material, cost goes up so, people will be developing. Ways, to recycle the batteries so that can be sold so, if you think about the budget for recycling, it's basically how much you get paid for.
The Material, that you extract, on the. Engineering side recycling. Is very interesting, when. You think about recycling you think about boiling. It down to the fundamental, building blocks maybe extracting, COBOL again that's the most expensive element, in a battery but, this is very challenging, so, one big opportunity, could be can. We recycle. Battery without having to, reduce it down to the original, make up of the battery can, we for example think about rejuvenating. A battery or regenerating. A battery as a, way of recycling, and reuse are supposed, to deconstructing, the battery and one, else I have to think about the safety of recycling. So how do you take a part of the battery safely, and how, do we design battery, for, recycling. So can we design. It with recycling, in mind so, the form factor already, allows easy recycling. This. Participant, wrote California. Recently announced, for partnering solar panels, and all new homes beginning, in January, 1st 2020, what. Are your thoughts on the effects of over generation, potential. Curtailment. The. Over generation, is, already, there so as I showed in the duck curve we, have to ramp up you. Know half of the, Australia, grid in, 3 hours in California, this is how, significant. The problem is, so. This. Is only going to get worse and. Storage. Is an, obvious, answer but let, me discuss it briefly what, companies, say. For example in California PG&E. And Southern California cenar doing so. There are a lot of legacy, power. Plant based on natural gas and. One. Way to do it is to simply power, up the natural gas power plant the hardware. Is already there they're not being fully utilized, so. That is the easy way. Battery. Based technology, or other technology, is important. As well but, currently. The investment, needed to. Get that up and running basically, the capital, expenditure, needed is enormous. So, looking, forward I think, one thing that the. Policymakers. Should consider is as we, mandate more, and more renewable, electricity, generation, we, must also create, policy, to, give incentive, to more storage, and we're seeing this already for example in California we have this self generation, credit, that, give. Several. Thousand dollars to homeowners to install, battery. System, at, home so, these are sort of complementary, policy, that we look at I didn't, really mention the policy, aspect today but that's another huge opportunity, is to think about the rural policy, in terms of shaping how. Renewable, technology, included, generation, and storage, would, be deployed. Thank. You, last. Question. How. Can I get involved in you know this field especially. In. Power. Yeah. I think this is also a very difficult question, to answer I. Think you have taken the first step. Energy. Storage is extremely. Complex, and it, is rapidly, evolving it changes, by the month there are new technologies emerging, all the time so, my, recommendation would, be to get caught up by.
Learning More about the technologies, we have today and continue, to follow it there, are many startups. Here. In Silicon Valley and elsewhere pursuing. The development of energy technology. But, I think as people, who are interesting, the technology, you have to be able to assess it so, what, market. Is the technology addressing. What, are the economical. Driving forces, were, the val ability, of scaling, up right you hear a lot of popular press and a lot of hype around say, battery technology, but, I think one important, skill to have is to be able to look at the technology and say okay this, is really going to have an impact as scale. Or. This is hard and I think this is one of the things that you. Can try, to learn for example from. Our program here, great. Well thank you so much everyone. For joining us we will be sending out a copy of this presentation. Within. A week and thank, you all and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day, thank. You. You.
2018-12-21 03:29
@derfreak , i totally agree. gehard schröder was a good canelor who had long term plans for example to stop nuclear power step by step. after cdu won, they destroyed all the plans of schröder, because its expensive and short term solution politicans dont do expensive things. after hiroshima angela merkel made a big show telling the people that cdu have the great idea now to quit nuclear. merkel is a show maker.
This could easily have been titled "The Next Big Opportunities for Lithium Batteries". In terms of "do it now", re-powering existing hydroelectric locations for pump-back is obvious, it's way cheaper than building pumped storage from scratch. For some unknown reason, Norway seems to be the only place that's figured this out? As a rule, the use of thermal storage is much cheaper than batteries, California's duck-curve could be solved with ice storage instead of electricity in the evening. In cold climates off peak thermal storage is also cheaper than batteries.
The absurd consequences aren't over, the path Germany has announced to shutdown coal and nuclear involves much more natural gas, which is hardly a sustainable plan. I agree that the French have done very well with nuclear.
Chemical energy storage is very promising....it allows for long term storage and regional distribution....it's not limited to hydrogen or methane either...I'm surprised other options weren't mentioned....my favorite being Ammonia currently. Many of us are proposing it as the next wave of the hydrogen economy.
Very informative and accessible talk, thanks
Nice informing video. Thanks! Where can i can the presentation from ? I'm a student and working on a project at the moment and would like to use some information.
Nice informing video.Thanks! Where can i can the presentation from ? I'm a student and working on a project at the moment and would like to use some information.
An interesting presentation in which the audience was expected to bring an electron microscope to see the small letters on the screen. Unfortunately, I forgot mine.
well, i have to object here, because the energy policy in Gernanyhas been again in favor of the electricityy companies, thata wehy the price for electricityy is so high in Germany. The grid stability instead is very high due to solar and wind energy production and measures of buffering which came along with it. The high price on the other hand for kwh is an opportunity and driver for private investments, cause PV and storage cost per kwh are significantly cheaper than electricity from your provider. So the key to renewable energy is the focuse on private initiative instead of business models for companies, nuclear just cant compete anymore in overall costs as well assecurity. Its a dead end technology, especially when you considr all over costs( which will be paid by the state and not the producer
100% renewable energy worldwide isn’t just possible, it’s more cost-effective than existing system https://www.salon.com/2017/12/23/100-percent-renewable-energy-worldwide-is-not-just-possible-it-is-more-cost-effective-than-existing-system_partner/
+IncognitoTorpedo - There's no need for electricity, the duck curve is caused by air conditioning, use stored ice instead of the air conditioners. This is already done for large installations, it just needs a neighborhood or household implementation.
How do you efficiently and cost-effectively recover electricity from ice?
I think his dismissal of Pumped Hydro Storage is wrong. Batteries are great for frequency regulation but for large scale storage PHS - is cheap, has a very long calendar and cycle lifetime and can store energy for months with little loss. A report on 530,000 with the ability to store 100x + needed energy. https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-worldwide
Doesn't address power to gas projects. Many underway in Europe.
Thx for the informative lecture. But it would have been more enlightening, if there was an overview of the alternatives to storage for balancing the grid. Such as interconnecting grids worldwide or smart water heater tanks they or businesses that shift electric demand based on rates just to mention a few options. Since it was a little misleading, since the increased demand for storage could be offset by other alternatives. Or just focus on batteries witch was the main focus of the lecture.
+N C - wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_storage_air_conditioning
+Doug Mcdonell The type of relatively low temp thermal storage (ie chiller units) you're describing. Would be very relevant to augment HVAC systems. But would be very inefficient as a substitute for batteries, based to the principle of Carnot heat engine cycle.
1st add fees and taxes to decrease negative externalities (ie such as pollution) so the cost from coal power plants should go up. 2nd since the grid has to be balanced electric rates, need to reflect their marginal value (ie based on supply and demand) the issue would be resolved. Many innovative alternatives would compete for the cheap off peak rates. Not even mentioned in this post, like interconnecting grids worldwide or smart water heater tanks they or businesses that shift electric demand based on rates... Solar and wind supplier will have deal with lower rates during off peak periods... but increasing fees on less clean alternatives and increased uses for the off peak rates moderate the rate differences and will actually increase the overall efficiency of the grid.
Iain Reid Hi Lain , thanks for your responds, i will have a look in your suggested documentary, and I will try to refind the documentation I am basing my statement on .( I think it was from the Fraunhofer Institut / Germany) As far as I reminder correctly Germany is buffering the grid by decentralized batteries, so the grid is way more stable than f.e. France who are 75% nuclear
joerg, Srelu this is incorrect? "The grid stability instead is very high due to solar and wind energy production" Wind, in particular, is very destabalising for the grid and reduces grid security, greater the percentage of grid supply comes from wind, the less secure. This has been well documented by various engineering bodies, not least this German study by :- Professor Harald Schwarz, Chair of Energy Distribution and High Voltage Technology at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, PV generation is fairly useless in the U.K. and similarly Germany as it produces power at the wrong time and having to add storage is an additional cost and is prohibitively expensive expensive when considered on grid scale.
Very interesting presentation, thank you!
Proper pricing structure is a good start. Many fervently believe in capitalism (ironically they often don't believe in evolution...), until it's their business that gets out competed by something better :-) Some utilities see solar as a threat to their business and are trying to stop it.
+zapfanzapfan Bottom line is as long as there is a proper pricing structure in place, demand will shift in a myriad of ways to be in balance with the supply...Isn't the power of capitalism amazing?
I guess I'm old school but I wouldn't let anyone else "drive" my car :-) Yepp, heating water is a perfect sink for overproduction of electricity. With a large enough and well enough insulated tank it wouldn't need any power at night.
+zapfanzapfanNice fantasy but EVs, especially with AV functionality will become more likely to be used in car and ride sharing services during work hours than just charging...While appliances like (hot) water heating tanks are far numerous and practical candidates for time shifting their demand (load) on the grid...
If enough people charge their electric cars while at work during peak PV production that could make use of potential over production and if they use some electricity from the car at night to power their house that could cut the evening peak. Also, load up the washing machine and dish washer and program them to run around noon. It'll be an interesting shift, electricity used to be more expensive during the day and cheap in the middle of the night because the base load kept running at night. With more PV that will be reversed, electricity will be cheapest at noon, at least in the sunny places of the world.
But the duck curve is not just caused by AC...
i quit watching at the 8-minute mark due to the fuzziness of text on the charts. unreadable
You included a lot of emphasis on lithium technology. This relies on expensive chemicals and danger. The future for lithium batteries it's not the best choice. Your first category of energy storage was electromagnetic or ultracapacitors. They do not use expensive materials they're not dangerous when discharged and has the best long-term lifetime. The other energy storage categories are limited for their own respective technology. If you were to present the best possibility for future energy storage, would that be ultracapacitors?
zapfanzapfan I agree with you, the presentation was an “interesting” academic perspective; although, I found its lack of imagination notable. We are currently witnessing a replay of a century old conflict between innovators, like Nicola Tesla, who had actual solutions to global energy production, and those like financier, J. P. Morgan, who saw Tesla’s “free energy” technology as a threat to the “capitalist” economic model. As a result, technologies that might have otherwise been “scientifically” evaluated for their economic usefulness, got “shelved,” and today patents get sequestered for “national security.”
+zapfanzapfan adding solar adds complexity and risk to utilities... so why would they want more solar??? ...and look at that price for electric in germany....
Ultra capacitors are useful when you need high power density, but they have poor energy density. That is, they're like a small bucket with a large hose attached, while batteries are a large tank with a smaller hose attached. As such they only really have niche applications because they can't hold that much energy.
Definitely. I live in Tasmania, Oz, which is uniquely placed to expand our existing storage hydro (we are 100% renewable already state wide from hydro and wind) to acting as a PHS facility for the rest of Oz, via undersea cable, as we have so many hydro lakes at variable altitudes and low losses to evaporation due to a cooler climate than the mainland. Apart from PHS, the non-lithium mega battery research already done suggests that giant liquid salt or other mega batteries will become economically viable in the near future, as will hydrogen to ammonia conversion storage, using renewables to generate hydrogen via electrolysis...not a particularly efficient process, but if it costs less than natural gas, oil or coal, who cares?
Thanks for the lecture, it helped reinforce several ideas I've had about energy storage and in fact you have showed that we really missed an opportunity in 2015. But since we have been missing opportunities since about 1990, what else is new. All I will say is Windyday concept.
Really nice talk, but would have been easier to follow if he'd used a pointer. Also, consumer battery storage incentive is a complementary policy not a complimentary policy.
Yellow Vests fought against BEVs friendly initiatives like a higher gas tax (so it not green movement) and France uses nuclear energy so has little need for batteries for its grid...And guess how much Germany pays for electric now? So a have fun pretending a Yellow Vests like movement in Germany would be for adding the cost or more alternative energy and batteries to the grid... Energy Storage is just one option to use more wind and solar but it wont be free and ranting "Fossil Fuel lobby" conspiracy theories is just irrelevant.... BTW all interest groups have a lobby and the Germany nuclear energy lobby failure to keep the industry alive shows how weak and useless they can be while the tiny solar lobby won. Now Germany is paying the high cost for getting rid if nuclear energy...so who really won?
Actually Germany never embraced battery production and this has been what has been holding back the Grid. Another problem is letting the Swiss do the accounting, since they will always find a way to make you pay. Germany and Swiss schools were the leaders in battery technology, but with the Fossil Fuel lobby taking over academia, we have a generation of students that will have to unlearn the lies they were taught. Yellow vests are on the right track but I think we need a WW2 approach to ramp up battery production for Europe since you are well behind China. North Volt will be too little too late. I call this the Windyday Concept, and this lecture proves that it could have been possible.
According to the chart at 39:40, LIB will fall to $200 by 2025. But Tesla is already claiming it has much lower costs -- near $100. As I understood it that was the pack cost.
What consideration is given to the recycling of batteries to resupply the manufacture of Li ion?
The news stories I have seen were from Hawaii and the southwest. For ex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2L8SkeCFtw That particular story was 4 years ago, maybe things have changed.
+zapfanzapfan what US utility? Or do you think it's all conspiracy of all US utilities? to stop.... solar?
I was referring to the utilities in the US that are trying to stop people putting solar panels on their roofs.
+Buffalo BottleCraft Correction the solar variability power is just one of the many reasons storage can be useful...
The whole point of the original presentation is adding storage to help offset the variability of solar.
Put load frequency control on the hydro electric dams and store the water for future use. This would allow the use of the American infrastructure of dams that are government owned to produce more than just generating electricity.
Sprinkle in some repurposed navy sub nuke tech in SMR’s tech for bonus load stability. :)
Wind, storage and back-up system designer for 100% renewable energy grids and microgrids with 24/7/52 power-on-demand! https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/wind-storage-and-back-up-system-designer
Pumped hydro for daily energy storage. For monthly or seasonal energy storage, produce hydrogen fuel gas by electrolysis of water. The cheapest back-up power is provided from biofuels.
No mention of this battery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiRrvxjrJ1U&t=16s
We need to start thinking more outside the box. Batteries aren't the only way to store energy. Solar Power Tower plants store solar energy as heat in molten salt tanks. This is 10 times less expensive than batteries. Also, fourth generation nuclear is looking a lot like a renewable. With these reactors, we have enough fuel to last hundreds of years. When that runs out, fusion reactors will power the planet for millions of years. And by the way, the best way to get rid of nuclear weapons - use them to make electricity. In fact, up to 10% of U.S. electricity today comes from decommissioned warheads. Solar and nuclear compliment each other. Nuclear is great at supplying constant baseline power. Solar output roughly matches our peak power demands during the day. Yes, we'll also need some batteries, mostly in sub-stations, with perhaps 2-4 hours of storage to help level out peaks. But this idea that we'll have enough batteries to store days worth of solar power when it rains, when you run those numbers, it just seems insane to me.
Tesla Powerwall 2 is $469/kwh. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall
@derfreak Atomic energy is waaay to costly. It is heavily subsidized in France. Or take a look at Hinkley Point in the UK. The operator got an /absurdly/ high price guarantee for the energy produced. For 30 years, IIRC. And then... what do you do with all the atomic waste? Pouring some of it in the sea, like the French do at La Hague?
the challenge is do power companies, citezens and govenrment have enough money for uniform mini grids/off grid solar, micro wind, bio gas, teg's, and super caps. which i think there is. how is it an ecomnical blow to power companies when they are just trying to collect money and not improve the world.
Pumped-storage hydro is by far the most economically feasible solution in large scale. It has not years not decades but over hundred years, the most mature engineering experience, no rare metal/elements invovled, simply steel and concrete based infrastructure building, and the MOST important factor is, steel/concrete lasts long long time, probably 100 or even 120 years life time, and need low level maintenance expense
Energy, like clean air and water, like education and the Internet, must be provided by publicly owned and operated utilities, not corporate business operations. These "human rights" of technology must be decoupled from the profit motive and capitalism. A corporation cannot "own" the technology essential to quality of life to people at such a fundamental level, much less withhold it for a price to be paid.
Storage is the challenge and the criteria of success are: economically viable, operates silently, emissions-free, no moving parts, long lifespan (decades.) Of course capable of storing solar and wind for days and weeks, absorbing over-generation, shaving peak demand locally. Right now, that's carbon-nickel ("lithium ion") and in the future, maybe liquid metal (Chem C or a Magnesium/Salt/Antimony.) Tesla: The problems with battery technology "today" are rare raw materials and complex/expensive/dirty processes limited to about $100/kWh and short (10 year) lifespans. Ambri: A purpose-built system grid storage technology using abundant raw materials achieving $75/kWh.
ANOTHER IDIOT who DOESN’T know the difference between megawatts and megawatt-HOURS!!!!!!
YOU also must have BRIBED your way into Stanford. TOO SMALL, IDIOT!!!!!!
We DON’T need to see your UGLY FACE throughout, DUMBASS!!!,
Could you ASSHOLES make the graphics EVEN SMALLER????
Dave Gish We should SHOOT EVERY ASSHOLE who drives a GAS GUZZLING SUV!!!!!!
I think it is unwise to assume that lithium ion battery technology will continue to dramatically drop in cost. Fortunately there are other battery technologies like liquid metal that show great potential for storing large amounts of energy at low cost. The weight of the batteries used for grid storage is irrelevant because they would be stationary.
Ambri has the answer for this problem.
The Germans have shown the world the wrong path--a useful and costly lesson. Right next door France has shown the world the right path. New nuclear power plant designs will revive clean energy around the world in the next 20 years.
+Kytsche Cost is not relatively high compared to the alternatives for long term energy storage therefore hydrogen is well suited as a secondary energy store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage For a primary energy store, more efficient pumped hydro or batteries should be used. Wildfires are burning the world's remaining forests to the ground too. Luckily, trees grow and forests recover despite being harvested and burnt every now and then. Radioactive nuclides pollute the environment in the long run.
The costs of long term storage of hydrogen are very high; also, it's an inefficient storage medium. Biofuel production is leveling the world's remaining forests. Renewable nuclear is the most environmentally neutral option in the long run.
readable on my 17" monitor
The best energy storage options remain U and Th. In future, deuterium may become the best option.
It's listed is an option at 34:07. It's a great option and underemphasized in the media.
Nuclear obviates these expensive, complex, utopian storage plans.
Methanol is another good option. But, I don't think storage will be as much of a problem as this presenter supposes. We will derive so much energy from renewable nuclear, that the storage issues of intermittent renewables will be minimized.
World never learns its "lessons" such as from "Three Mile Island" that lead to "Chernobyl" and then on to "Fukushima". To be continued apparently???? So thx for proving Einstein's definition of insanity, is still valid in some ppl...
Pack costs are below that showed in bar graphics, end of 2018 price was around 187$/kWh ( BNEF source) for automotive industry , minerals has decrease their price too: Cobalt price was 60% down and lithium 40% down
This presentation is from late 2018. Why isn't Liquid Metal Battery storage discussed, even as a theoretical possibility?
Why this attractive title ? Your informations are very common.
Pumped hydro is about 70% efficient, but the problem is not being able to choose your site. Unless you plan to build a 400ft high man-made hill somewhere east of Pleasanton (SF Bay Area), with a reservoir about 100ft deep, and wide/long enough to store the water, it's not convenient to drive electricity hundreds of miles to the Sierras to store the energy. Then, you have to get local residents to approve of the construction of such a large body of water and the man-made mountain.
+Eric Dew The irrational voter is indeed the root of the problem: uninformed, uneducated, disinterested, complacent and resigned to mediocrity and corruption. This is where I think the likes of @sensanders or perhaps evern @tulsi2020 need to "sell" their campaign and then follow up with the policies that would do the most good but would be least appealing (just because they're intangible or subject to other political campaigns and industry propaganda) ... this is exactly what Trump did -- repackaged Sanders' campaign messages then went ahead and did whatever the hell he was always going to do ... only hopefully an ethical, progressive US President would say "I'm cutting healthcare costs and starting a national jobs program" instead of arguing over minimum wage or solar power or single-payer. Sidestep all the typical "left" positions that voters have been trained to distrust, avoid the "tax-n-spend" and instead mimic everything Trump offered in 2016, without the racism, coal miner jobs (what the hell is that about, anyway ... coal miners don't want coal mining jobs, they want a safe, easy job with no black-lung ... like making solar panels or sticking panels on roofs.)
+Brighty McBrightface I don't disagree with you. All I'm saying is the citizenry isn't that rational. They vote irrationally (I mean, right?!?), and they will vote out candidates who advocate to do things with any sniff of risk even with a possible return of a high reward. So you get risk adverse candidates and office holders. But fear-mongering seems to work well to get them to do things, so wars and weapons procurement seems to get through. And lastly, once those risk adverse politicos get into office, they metastasize into even worse critters and are unwilling to rock the boat, unless there's a big payoff for them. Then, it's even harder to get things going.
+Eric Dew What risk? taxpayers take on trillions of dollars in unchecked risk for war, subsidizing failed banks, whole industries like corn and sugar ... US taxypayers take on 100% capital risk -- they only ever pay, they never get a return on investment, they just "rent" their country and die broke, leaving a pittance to their children, taxed at every possible transaction (now even taxing funds held in health savings ...) so there's no risk in energy, education, clean air and water ... these are trivial, tiny amounts of money, perhaps a few hundreds of billions for the US to make a phased migration to leave coal and oil only for applications which cannot move quickly (even those can be very quickly (say 10 years) replaced with turbine generator electric heavy industrial equipment and vehicles If there's risk, it's the risk of catastrophic collapse in the ecosystem if we get unlucky with species extinction and lose our food chain (which is now a statistical risk greater than just about anything other than war between India and Pakistan for example.) With China building a coal power plant every week for the next 10 years, the solution is not clean cars, it's hardline politics and diplomacy, not tariffs and trade embargoes...there's the risk factor ... any sitting US President since Nixon (especially including warmongers like Bush and Obama.) As I see it, putting solar panels on schools and public buildings is not risk, it's a jobs program, it's an infrastructure investment that reaps rewards (e.g. South Australia) and the risk is the unscrupulous corporations duping consumers into second rate equipment (e.g. unreliable inverters) or scam financing ...
I think the risks involved at the start may be best accepted by corporations if they get the rewards. Asking the citizens to bear the costs of the risk would be a non-starter. Citizens are extremely risk adverse, despite the fact that doing nothing is far more risky than doing something. But once the technology is settled, the utilities should be nationalized and costs be driven down to almost nothing. The problem, of course, is that no technology will be the forever perfect solution, so there's always an incentive tweak the existing solution to be even more efficient or even more productive. Well, there's no incentive to make those tweaks if there's no rewards for doing so. But, the evolution of technology does resemble the evolution of biology, and that means punctuated equilibrium. So we can expect many decades of using an existing technology with only minor adjustments, then then a disruptive change that makes a 10x (or greater) improvement or decrease in costs, then against stasis of this new technology with minor adjustments until the next punctuation. The desire to develop the next punctuation requires the capitalistic incentives to monetize the development.
Business will thrive lesser and there will be less competition, thus decrease in drive for technological advances.. everything has + and -..
Why should a utility pay operators for renewable electricity they don't use? Probably some government mandate. But those adding renewable capacity should be made to consider whether they can always sell their energy. Otherwise they may end up adding capacity that doesn't make economic sense. And, that would also give them the incentive to explore storage. If they can get paid either way, why would they bother with storage? I guess the higher evening prices are a factor there. But the totality of the situation doesn't justify a utility paying for peak power it doesn't use.
One of the biggest opportunities, rarely discussed, is addressing the demand side of the duck curve. Policies that encourage real-time pricing of electricity that provides an incentive to use electricity at different times can be quite effective. A great deal of demand on the grid is for thermal management, heating and cooling, that can have many hours of latency. Simply heating or cooling your home, or charging your EV, at different times of the day or week can really help smooth out the duck curve.
These advanced electricity storage technologies are only necessary BECAUSE we are choosing to use unreliable wind and solar. Therefore when we determine the cost of using wind and solar at greater than 10% of our needs, we need to factor in storage like giant battery farms. I would be curious to see a cost benefit analysis of 50% renewable vs. conventional, taking into account utility grid storage. I think conventional will still be hard to beat.
so where is the opportunities all he spoke about was power generation and storage
the reference to the battery storage and use in Australia at 15:18 growing by 10% he forget to tell you that Victoria shut down one power station That is why the 10% of battery growth
theres to be some 700,000 teslas in US by end of 2019? half of those would be the economical 3 with new longer lasting battery pack 1700 cycles... avg pack size of what 60kwh? so some 350,000*60kwh 21GWH. carbon free electricity is likely pointless. on cloudy days what are you going to do? you'd have to overbuild your battery so large to cover yearly trends (winter, storms etc) it would be uneconomical, 1 single powerplant kept operational across months may be able to provide enough power to a massive centralized battery during winter months to prevent huge amounts of batteries having to be installed to store energy from the summer months unless you just plan to run nuclear and hydro harder in the winter which I guess you could do
theres already some 25,000 GWH of storage in the tesla fleet, yes the older batteries probably arent the best or even the s/x but alot of the storage is now in model 3 batteries...the good new ones 80kwh 3LR battery is 7000$ to replace or less than 100$/kwh at .1$/kwh delta which you can beat in quite a few places the car can make 8$/day sitting still or 3k/yr the battery is good for 1700 cycles or 4.7 full years of use and it would pay off in roughly 2 years...with 60% of its lifespan left realistically most people would be HAPPY to use 90% SOC to 40% SOC daily to help power the grid....gives the 4$/day uses 1/2 of a lifecycle, helps get time value back out of the car, helps save emissions etc etc etc if you already have solar why on earth cant the car act as a powerwall? doesnt chademo/ccs support backfeeding? you're never going to find a cheaper battery than the one you already own sitting in your car wasting away to time (devaluation)
correction 25 GWH but still.
model 3 LR has 80kwh and costs 7000$ to replace, not to mention its effectively free as its just aging and devaluing while sitting there doing nothing anytime you're not driving it
any dam could have a 2nd smaller one built downstream and could be turned into pumped hydro easily enough...2nd dam would buffer output across day so that river didnt go dry. the further you put it downstream the larger your lower reservoir is, the upper reservoir of the hoover dam could probably power the entire country, only has to last 1 day and you just pump it back up at night with cheaper power, obviously you couldnt feasibly transport it that far but I dont get why anyold dam couldnt have a 2nd dam built and be turned into pumped hydro...everything needed is already there
We live on a torque converter.
More people need to get involved with Energy Storage...This should have happened decades ago. I believe research at the University level and investment strategies for private firms needs to happen. Any research, of course, will have to be long term in thinking, I still believe that there are alternative sources of energy that have yet to be discovered. I think this is a more serious problem than is given priority today. What do you all think?
See the book, Carbon Free and Nuclear Free
Phil Engen Very true. For example a heat pump water heater connected to IFTTT, you can store heat when advantageous.
The best technology we have today, is renewable and batteries. That’s not only the future, it’s also the present. Most new installations are renewable and batteries. Furthermore, they are more cost effective and create 3 times more jobs.
Energy technologies are continually developing. Until something better comes along we will make use of all that we have available.
Johnston Clark It’s already done. Renewables are cheaper for new installations. Data is here, proof is here, but it will take time until dumb people can accept they are wrong. It’s difficult for humans to change their minds. Good luck!
Richard Roberson More water flow in the winter.
Richard Roberson Chademo and CCS might support it, not sure. But it will come, probably pushed by Tesla for powerall and solar PV. In CA we have a good utility supervisor and I feed the grid at 30c and buy it back at 12c.
Richard Roberson To be more correcter (sic) it’s GWh, not GWH. H means Henry, h means hour. Agreed, huge potential. Have you watched « autonomy day » last week? Fascinating how fast we are progressing. Delocalized, decentralized generation and storage, super flexible. And when the battery life is over in the EV, then second life as stationary battery. Tesla already optimizes their production, best batteries for model 3, and the rest for stationary. And what even cooler, we’ll have millions of supercomputers inside model 3. For example can be used for cancer research.
ttystikk rocks True. But one advantage of using unified technology is the simplification of supply chain. For example Tesla separates their batteries during production. Best batteries go to model 3, highest priority. The other batteries go to stationary. And when the EV batteries are decommissioned they have a second life as stationary.
Eric Dew Pump water from the bay all the way to Yosemite?
Eric Dew Sorry for the misunderstanding. I did use a wink wink symbol, and the precise name, hoping you’d get the joke. I was making fun of the armchair engineers.
+Redwood Madrone Hetch Hetchy is our drinking water reservoir. I don't think we want to pump into it water that may not be as clean and pristine as what's in the Hetch Hetchy.
Eric Dew What about we pump the water back to Etch Etchy? ;-)
Jeff C Concrete dams have also drawbacks and don’t last that long. But otherwise you have valid points. Don’t fall into the trap of « rare materials ». Look up what it takes to produce concrete and you’ll change your mind, if you have some chemistry and thermodynamic knowledge.
Brighty McBrightface I switched to solar and Nissan Leaf a while back. I love it. I’m glad I didn’t wait. I felt so happy when I decommissioned my propane tank :-)
+Redwood Madrone I think it makes sense for Tesla to prioritize the cell quality-assurance output to the vehicle batteries ...I'm sure all vehicle performance criteria are far above stationary applications like the Powerwall ... nobody is going to turn on their microwave and say "dammit these are second rate cells!" I'm installing a modest Tesla Powerwall solution now (still waiting for solar pricing) and I'm sure it will be "junk" inside 10 years. The lure of perpetual procrastination distracts from the "just do it" benefits of solar and battery for residential consumers. I'm sure my net cost could well be lower if I just wait and become a late or mainstream adopter, but that's the mistake of thinking there's a way of knowing. We've seen such a dramatic reduction in solar costs, and now battery costs, there has to be a point when cost is not the overriding factor and the individual consumer becomes willing to take a step forward and do something, to pay for the advantages without being frozen, perpetually waiting.
True. But one advantage of using unified technology is the simplification of supply chain. For example Tesla separates their batteries during production. Best batteries go to model 3, highest priority. The other batteries go to stationary. And when the EV batteries are decommissioned they have a second life as stationary. So, the residual cost is much lower.
Dave Gish It’s written complement, not compliment. There’s already a huge nuclear fusion reactor which produces many GWh each day, much more than all other reactors combined. And it’s located far enough in space, no issue with waste products, it runs autonomously. That’s the best and only power plant we need, as it also feeds the trees, produces O2, tides, waterwheels, etc...
M Detlef Save bullets, we will price them out. Remove subsidies to fossil fuel. Make people pay the real price. Pollutants give asthma to little girl, but we all pay for her lifelong illness. Polluter should pay. Personal responsibility.
Travel to any big dam. Go to their information center, and all this will be explained. Seriously.
Nope. Both of you guys are wrong. One advantage of using unified technology is the simplification of supply chain. For example Tesla separates their batteries during production. Best batteries go to model 3, highest priority. The other batteries go to stationary. And when the EV batteries are decommissioned they have a second life as stationary. So, the residual cost is much lower.
It’s like the price of wheat. Ton in the field, or in the pastry? Anyway, prices drop some fast, it’s like the expansion of the universe.
Mark Orcutt Done. Now we’re waiting for the influx of material. Those batteries are so robust, we still don’t have enough volume to recycle. But when they finally need recycling, we will be ready. It might take another 10 years before we have enough scrapped batteries to recycle. Regular people became so dumb they call AAA to change a flat tire. So they forget that us engineers put people on the moon with computers smaller than an iPhone.... engineers rock!
Lawrence Francis Thanks. Those typos irritate me too.
One advantage of using unified technology is the simplification of supply chain. For example Tesla separates their batteries during production. Best batteries go to model 3, highest priority. The other batteries go to stationary. And when the EV batteries are decommissioned they have a second life as stationary. So, the residual cost is much lower.
Eric Kosak Have you watched « autonomy day »? Audience was expected to bring a DVR to slow down the speakers super fast speech. They were lost!
IncognitoTorpedo They put ice in their margaritas, drink, and feel energetic.
That’s the funniest comment thread. Armchair engineers ...
+Redwood Madrone Issue is, "you don't even know what you don't" and get a new phone... https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucekasanoff/2018/03/21/you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know/#5711eb34573d
N C I’m sorry, I think I lost you here. Can you please clarify your issue?
+Redwood Madrone Seriously??? Since you were shown to be incorrect about the original cost projections of nuclear power...Your only retort is a fallaciously ad hominem attack based on "marginal cost" that you apparently know nothing about and other irrelevant tangential ranting .... .google is a great way to gather facts... but it's a poor substitute for wisdom or the maturity to accept that one has made a mistake..good luck obtiaing that wisdom or the maturity one day...
N C If you don’t know what marginal cost mean, then you don’t have basic Econ knowledge. That’s worrisome. So google that up. Then google the cost of Fukushima thus far. Building and decommissioning a plant? How many years? Storage cost per year per ton? Today? What about in 100 years? Or 10k years? That’s the tricky question, future pricing stuff in 10k years.
+Redwood Madrone BTW just copy and paste into a browse if the link wont open
+Redwood Madrone prima facie case contradicting "Atomic energy was never meant to be cheap"... marginal cost of energy based what parameters?
+Redwood Madrone I have no pretense to have any skills. But my background is in econ and engineering...
N C Can’t open the link on my phone. Is it about the marginal cost of energy?
N C I wish I had more artistic skills. Theater for example. But unfortunately I’m just skilled at science. What about you?
+Redwood Madrone https://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2016/06/03/too-cheap-to-meter-a-history-of-the-phrase/
+Redwood Madrone Did u major in drama? Or is it a social media thing?
Conenion Atomic energy was never meant to be cheap. We developed it for political and military reasons. But otherwise, besides the engineering feat, it’s the stupidest method of energy production.
N C One tragic number. We will need to have a crew actively cleaning Chernobyl for many years to come. The cleanup effort will last longer than humans have been on this planet.
N C Agreed. Luckily those strange people commenting on YouTube are insignificant. Globally, we are towards renewable energy, and those people can only whine, they don’t matter. However, it’s fascinating to see how loud the « anti clean energy » people are. Very loud.
Install PV near use, for example rooftops and parking lots (where the PV also shade the parked car). Install storage nearby, to reduce energy transport. Use existing EV fleet as extra storage (sink/source).
+Redwood Madrone yes you are quite the great communicator. You start with your assumptions about other people that are wrong, they proceed to lecture the great unwashed masses with your condescending tone, then when your argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny you appeal to a higher authority to shut down your opponent rather focus on the merits of the argument. You are the reason that people are sadly rejecting science.
Philip Andrew Watch this, maybe it would help. It’s an 18 min talk about battery chemistry, also from Stanford. https://youtu.be/OY2C_SshyeQ What I meant with efficiency is system wide efficiency. Moving water and storing energy through gravity is not as stupid as using heat, but the most efficient way to store electricity is in electro-chemical form. We often think of « grades » of energy, heat being the lowest quality. Moving millions of tons of water through a pump and up some pipes works, but it is a crude system. Storing energy close to the demand is more refined. Using the existing EV fleet is even better. SW solution.
Philip Andrew Ask a swimming pool manager how much water they lose each day. Or think about how we produce table salt...
Philip Andrew Dude, it’s frustrating to read YouTube comments. So much facepalms. I’m used to a different quality of brains, you wouldn’t last long around here. You have some potential, but you only look at snippets, not the whole picture. I don’t want to go back and forth, I’m giving up. Please talk in person with someone who has built stuff and hopefully they can help you understand. This is the wrong medium for such topics.
Philip Andrew Yes, I’ll get back to you when I have my Nobel prize, although it will be in a very different field. Recycling batteries will be a piece of cake. And we have time to get the process in place, there’s not yet enough batteries needed recycling. Like every process, we will get there. As I said before, we sent people to the moon and back, so let us engineers take care of solving problems, and you chill out, no need to shout « fire ».
+Redwood Madrone pumped hydro is a closed cycle so you are not loosing much water as the same water cycles every day. The small amount lost to seepage makes its way into the aquifer for agricultural and human use. If its a hydro upgrade to pumped hydro there is only a small incremental loss due to increased evaporation. Energy density is irrelevant when you have cheap land, sufficient water source and the appropriate geographic landscape.
+Redwood Madrone for stationary grid energy storage the main game is not efficiency but levelised cost of storage (LCoS) $x/GWhr. If that cost becomes low, we dont care if it has low efficiency. Come back and talk to me when you have your Nobel prize.
+Redwood Madrone of course pumped hydro wont be used everywhere in the world. But were it can, it is be far the cheapest solution. Even though Lion batteries prices are coming down, they are not a panacea either. Many ivory tower scientists and engineers ignore the fact that Lion battery recycling centres have had catastrophic fires that once started can't be put out. And they disperse toxic cobalt throughout the urban population. Not sure I want a massive fire accelerant sitting in my home either.
Philip Andrew Thanks for the info. Here’s an interesting article about Australia. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/03/26/pumped-hydro-to-triple-australias-storage-capacity/
Philip Andrew Listen at 35:56 Then think about the energy density. How many joules stored per pound? Moving electrons is much more efficient than moving water. But water also has other uses, agriculture and fire protection and drinking.
Philip Andrew Sure. Pumped water can make sense and be the best solution in some situations. But long term, decentralized battery storage is gonna be the main solution. Not the only solution, but the main. In Australia they gonna reach 100% renewable energy, and that’s great. Reaching that goal is wonderful. Near Stanford, the geography is different, and requires different solutions. Also, once we deploy millions of EV a year, we will have GWh of storage capacity available each year.
+Redwood Madrone I guess Australia's CSIRO doen't have any PHD's then as they and the Chief Scientist have backed the existing governments plan to build a massive to convert the existing hydro scheme into a pumped hydro scheme. It wont get Australia 100% of the way but it will go a long way.
+Redwood Madrone sad but true, transportation is a CON of PSH, especially in GigaWatt scale.
Philip Andrew What kind of engineer? Ruby or JavaScript? If you were involved in manufacturing stuff you would understand ;/)
Jeff C Now on a humorous note, if we’re talking about seasonal storage needs (not duck), we already have a giant planet wide PSH. The sun. Air humidity, precipitation, storage of water as snow.
Jeff C Listen at 35:56 Then think about the energy density. How many joules stored per pound? For water, Aluminum or battery
Jeff C If you build a new PSH in a new location, you need to transport energy there, resulting in waste. That’s why your 70% efficiency is not real world. If you combine a PSH with of near a hydro plant, then you’re very far away from demand, and far away from the extra source (daytime PV), so again transportation loss. But also, transportation capacity bottleneck during the duck “neck” when the hydro plant is running. To smoothen the duck, the storage has to be located near the duck’s “back” (afternoon PV farms) or near the demand location (big cities). On a side note, we also have energy regulation near hydro plants: aluminum electrolyzing (similar to battery) and computer servers.
Jeff C You want to argue that PSH is the best solution to address the duck curve? Well then, please don’t waste your time here, go get your PhD and write research papers and get peer reviewed and published. Funny how YouTube armchair engineers have grand ideas, but for find reason they stay in the dark and don’t get published.
+Redwood Madrone @Eric Dew To be precisely, the energy efficiency is around 70-80%, newly constructed PSHs are over 80%. I admit that the drawback of PSH is mostly the geological constrain, for example the west coast of US prone to earthquake may largely increase the budget. However I have to argue PSHs are the best economical and engineering level solution to the "duck curve" at present and in the following decades. People have kept been told carbon emission results in global warming, thus we need high renewable electricity penetration (solar/wind turb) in the future. Then we have to decide, either build PSHs, or power plants burning natural gas ironically, to compensate the duck curve. Those professors' forecast on cost decrease of Li-Battery/H-cell is way too optimistic, and their academic/research funding source is high involved in the industry makes it even more doubtful. Of course these high techs have so and so Pros, but in the long run, and if we consider the scalability and engineering feasiblity, high techs are still far from mass-implementation. and the last point, quite a lot of hydro infrastructure in US are getting old, this could be an opportunity for renewal and to build more PSHs in the coming decades with lower cost.
+Redwood Madrone I am an Engineer you fool.
Philip Andrew Nope. Not true. Please trust engineers, that’s what we do, solve complex problems. Regular people are so dumb, and that’s ok. What bothers me is when regular people make wild stupid claims instead of asking questions. Ask an engineer!
And pumped hydro has no toxic recycling nightmare (unlike batteries).
Eric Dew What about we pump the water back to Hetch Hetchy? ;-)
Kytsche Look up! Seasonal storage already exists through water storage. Sun moves water from ocean to higher elevation mountains, stores the water as snow, then increase the river flow during winter and spring. Then hydro plants.
The major challenge is seasonal energy storage. Hydrogen and batteries are completely inadequate to that challenge. A synthetic fuel like methanol might be an option if there is some irrational refusal to build nuclear reactors. This wouldn't be a matter of storage, however. The methanol option would entail production of methanol wherever the sun is shining (eg, Australia in January), then shipment of that fuel to the Northern Hemisphere to make up for its renewable energy shortage during the winter. There are no seasonal storage options that are remotely cost effective on a global scale. By the way, one of the types of dishonesty in Chueh's presentation is that he only looks at current *electricity* demand, not current *energy* demand--which is more than twice electricity demand. When total energy demand is considered, the seasonal energy storage problem is much worse than shown on his graphs at 23:10.
That's a fair point, but I think there is another point to consider. Perhaps there is, as you suggested, a government mandate for the payments. Perhaps, though, the reason is the need to encourage companies to invest in the cleaner technologies. As we - on a planetary / ecological basis - need to start being cleaner in our energy production as quickly as possible, it may be that whilst this payment system is (economically) wasteful in the short term, that it is seen as the best solution long term. I am not an analyst; not good with the maths necessary to back up this assumption, so I am not sure, but perhaps it is as I suggest above.
This is yet another Stanford video... I haven’t watched it, but the slide at around 2 minutes in is interesting. The energy density for gravity vs. electrochemistry. https://youtu.be/l6V7LQyZV6c
Philip Andrew I managed to stay away from the perpetual motion people. But I met a bunch of morons on chemistry and biochem videos, like people who think they understand protein folding. They don’t. Or high volume manufacturing. Or last week I had a weirdo claiming that RISC and CISC are the same, and RISCs are slower. —— PSH and battery are complementary. PSH is large scale, far away from towns, huge construction, maintenance cost, etc.. it’s a traditional centralized power plant requiring transmission lines and proper greasing of the water vanes. Imagine the challenge of reusing the same water, microbial and algae contamination, silt rubbing on the pump and concrete sand abrasion, impact on fauna and flora... that’s where people like me come in, because the devil is always in the details. Moving trillions of pounds of water back and forth in a reliable and durable manner is very difficult. That’s why most hydro plants are unidirectional. Battery storage is nimble, very fast to install, low maintenance, SW controlled, etc... In California our fires come from transmission and distribution lines. If we decentralize the grid we get less fires, less outages, more reliability. Every new house is mandated to have PV. Huge PV systems on parking lots, it makes shade for keeping the cars cool. Imagine placing batteries near hospital and critical locations. Batteries can come from manufacturing rejects (best batteries go to EV, the crappy batteries go to stationary). And second life for EV batteries. So, in some way, those batteries have already been amortized. Take Tesla’s plan: 1 million model 3 leased to customers, without an option to buy (pure lease). Then place the used cars (low cost) into a fleet of robotaxis, making $30k a year. After 500k miles, decommission the cars and put the batteries in stationary storage. Those batteries have already paid for themselves many times over! Long term, the EV fleet itself will regulate the grid. Millions of SW connected batteries. Just like computing, the embedded computers used for autonomous driving will be used for other purposes while idle (cancer research can use neural networks). When there’s a need, the robotaxis drive themselves to a connecting point to either absorb or give energy to the grid.
+Redwood Madrone yes that can be frustrating, and I was a little peeved too. YT comments can be the cesspit. At least you are not dealing with the perpetual energy people. Like football teams, many enthusiasts seem to have their favourite battery / storage technologies, making them unable to impartially assess the pros and cons for the various use cases. Even domain experts fall into this trap. Out of interest, currently how competitive do you think Li-ion batteries are compared to Pumped Hydro LCoS in terms of $/MWhr and do you envisage it will surpass it at some point. Clearly Li-ion have come down the cost curve significantly but still has a way to go. The flammability of Li-ion really is a concern for me. I have heard that Aluminium-Ion batteries may be a good substitute for Li-ion (in time ... early days) due to it having 2.5 times the energy density, low flammability and recent technical hurdles associated with electrodes degradation seem to have been overcome.
Philip Andrew I agree, I’m not very patient. But you should see the comments I read on YouTube. Just now there’s a guy who claims that because CO2 molecular mass is greater than O2, then the CO2 will naturally sink to the bottom and go back into the soil. He was so sure of himself. Another guy said « problem solved, just build a second dam for PSH under every single hydroplant ». That’s when engineers roll their eyes at the stupidity of the uneducated masses. In the real world, those people get discarded, we just reject them. But on YouTube they get offended and tell me I’m condescending. Ok. But if I wanted to play with the 49ers, they would probably reject me and laugh at me. That’s normal, isn’t it? We all have different abilities. You probably have an area of expertise where you’re smarter or more capable than the average. Do you have people telling you ridiculous stuff too? isn’t it frustrating? Or maybe your area of expertise is in communication, and you’re frustrated with my lack of patience ... ;-)
staninjapan07 Here we have so many free chargers, I charge for free everyday.
+Redwood Madrone I have a colleague who did precisely the same here in Japan. He commented that his Nissan Leaf costs so little to fuel (charge), that the cost can reasonably be considered as nothing.
Richard Roberson Oh, and FYI, PSH would be used to store excess renewable energy during the day, to use at night. Not during night.
Richard Roberson That’s why we have civil engineers. This is not a backyard project or a bathroom remodel, such project are complex and sometimes present challenges. YouTube crowd often believes in quick solutions and instant gratification. PSH is a valuable technology, but it’s not obvious. That’s why I recommend traveling and visiting such large infrastructure project, so you can get more info and an appreciation for their complexity. The visitor centers often have exhibits and rangers who explain all the different constrains.
+Redwood Madrone theres nothing stopping any day from having a 2nd built downstream and being used as pumped hydro. dams only make power currently and have no ability to use their already installed turbines to push water back up hill at night.
staninjapan07 Yes, exactly. But remember, the issue is that we don’t have stuff to recycle, because the batteries last so long. First inside the EV, then second life as stationary storage. It might take another 10 years before we need to recycle them. Although, the first generation leaf might need recycling soon, but the volumes are low.
+Redwood Madrone When you say 'done', do you mean that the technology/infrastructure required for the recycling is now (or soon will be) in place? I suspect you do, but I would like to check. Thanks. I think I heard Elon Musk comment some time ago that the batteries Tesla uses for its cars can be entirely (or almost entirely) recycled in the big Tesla facility (whose name I have forgotten) in the U.S.
The chart at 5:50 shows energy storage in GW (giga-watts) -- which is a unit of power. Energy storage is measured in watt-hours (or giga-watt-hours, or joules, or whatever). Maybe it's a typo? (Although he talks about giga-watts of storage as well.)
And if you speak French, this video is really good, it’s about storage as mechanical energy (water, spinning stuff, compressed air...) https://youtu.be/ECXJ5rTNi74
If you add the externalized enviromental costs, tax subsidies and asset protection costs by state militaries to basic hydocarbon fuel costs you'd find that renewables are easily competitive.
+Redwood Madrone thanks I'm familiar with battery chemistry and have already watched that one but thanks anyway.
+Redwood Madrone yes I am very familiar with the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project. It will allow Australia to dramatically increase its mix of cheap but itinerant renewable wind and solar power in the grid and curtail further growth in expensive gas turbine generators.
+Redwood Madrone My background is in Electrical and Electronics with a Masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Philip Andrew Here’s an audacious viewpoint: no need for dedicated storage breakthrough. https://youtu.be/Oo8iEL6SqgI Use leftover batteries, from manufacturing reject or second hand. And tie in self driving EV and parked EV. Maybe you’re too young to remember when we thought we would need “furling station” for EV where we would swap battery packs for fresh ones. It seemed like the best idea back then. Turns out it wasn’t necessary, we improved fast charging and capacity and hind charging. So maybe that’s the same for grid storage and regulation. Maybe we already have a better path in place.
@Redwood Madrone thanks I'm familiar with battery chemistry and have already watched that one but thanks anyway.
@Redwood Madrone yes I am very familiar with the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project. It will allow Australia to dramatically increase its mix of cheap but itinerant renewable wind and solar power in the grid and curtail further growth in expensive gas turbine generators.
@Redwood Madrone My background is in Electrical and Electronics with a Masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
@Redwood Madrone yes that can be frustrating, and I was a little peeved too. YT comments can be the cesspit. At least you are not dealing with the perpetual energy people. Like football teams, many enthusiasts seem to have their favourite battery / storage technologies, making them unable to impartially assess the pros and cons for the various use cases. Even domain experts fall into this trap. Out of interest, currently how competitive do you think Li-ion batteries are compared to Pumped Hydro LCoS in terms of $/MWhr and do you envisage it will surpass it at some point. Clearly Li-ion have come down the cost curve significantly but still has a way to go. The flammability of Li-ion really is a concern for me. I have heard that Aluminium-Ion batteries may be a good substitute for Li-ion (in time ... early days) due to it having 2.5 times the energy density, low flammability and recent technical hurdles associated with electrodes degradation seem to have been overcome.
@Redwood Madrone yes you are quite the great communicator. You start with your assumptions about other people that are wrong, they proceed to lecture the great unwashed masses with your condescending tone, then when your argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny you appeal to a higher authority to shut down your opponent rather focus on the merits of the argument. You are the reason that people are sadly rejecting science.
@Redwood Madrone pumped hydro is a closed cycle so you are not loosing much water as the same water cycles every day. The small amount lost to seepage makes its way into the aquifer for agricultural and human use. If its a hydro upgrade to pumped hydro there is only a small incremental loss due to increased evaporation. Energy density is irrelevant when you have cheap land, sufficient water source and the appropriate geographic landscape.
@Redwood Madrone for stationary grid energy storage the main game is not efficiency but levelised cost of storage (LCoS) $x/GWhr. If that cost becomes low, we dont care if it has low efficiency. Come back and talk to me when you have your Nobel prize.
@Redwood Madrone of course pumped hydro wont be used everywhere in the world. But were it can, it is be far the cheapest solution. Even though Lion batteries prices are coming down, they are not a panacea either. Many ivory tower scientists and engineers ignore the fact that Lion battery recycling centres have had catastrophic fires that once started can't be put out. And they disperse toxic cobalt throughout the urban population. Not sure I want a massive fire accelerant sitting in my home either.
@Redwood Madrone I guess Australia's CSIRO doen't have any PHD's then as they and the Chief Scientist have backed the existing governments plan to build a massive to convert the existing hydro scheme into a pumped hydro scheme. It wont get Australia 100% of the way but it will go a long way.
@Redwood Madrone sad but true, transportation is a CON of PSH, especially in GigaWatt scale.
@Redwood Madrone @Eric Dew To be precisely, the energy efficiency is around 70-80%, newly constructed PSHs are over 80%. I admit that the drawback of PSH is mostly the geological constrain, for example the west coast of US prone to earthquake may largely increase the budget. However I have to argue PSHs are the best economical and engineering level solution to the "duck curve" at present and in the following decades. People have kept been told carbon emission results in global warming, thus we need high renewable electricity penetration (solar/wind turb) in the future. Then we have to decide, either build PSHs, or power plants burning natural gas ironically, to compensate the duck curve. Those professors' forecast on cost decrease of Li-Battery/H-cell is way too optimistic, and their academic/research funding source is high involved in the industry makes it even more doubtful. Of course these high techs have so and so Pros, but in the long run, and if we consider the scalability and engineering feasiblity, high techs are still far from mass-implementation. and the last point, quite a lot of hydro infrastructure in US are getting old, this could be an opportunity for renewal and to build more PSHs in the coming decades with lower cost.
@Redwood Madrone I am an Engineer you fool.
@Redwood Madrone Hetch Hetchy is our drinking water reservoir. I don't think we want to pump into it water that may not be as clean and pristine as what's in the Hetch Hetchy.
@Eric Dew The irrational voter is indeed the root of the problem: uninformed, uneducated, disinterested, complacent and resigned to mediocrity and corruption. This is where I think the likes of @sensanders or perhaps evern @tulsi2020 need to "sell" their campaign and then follow up with the policies that would do the most good but would be least appealing (just because they're intangible or subject to other political campaigns and industry propaganda) ... this is exactly what Trump did -- repackaged Sanders' campaign messages then went ahead and did whatever the hell he was always going to do ... only hopefully an ethical, progressive US President would say "I'm cutting healthcare costs and starting a national jobs program" instead of arguing over minimum wage or solar power or single-payer. Sidestep all the typical "left" positions that voters have been trained to distrust, avoid the "tax-n-spend" and instead mimic everything Trump offered in 2016, without the racism, coal miner jobs (what the hell is that about, anyway ... coal miners don't want coal mining jobs, they want a safe, easy job with no black-lung ... like making solar panels or sticking panels on roofs.)
@Brighty McBrightface I don't disagree with you. All I'm saying is the citizenry isn't that rational. They vote irrationally (I mean, right?!?), and they will vote out candidates who advocate to do things with any sniff of risk even with a possible return of a high reward. So you get risk adverse candidates and office holders. But fear-mongering seems to work well to get them to do things, so wars and weapons procurement seems to get through. And lastly, once those risk adverse politicos get into office, they metastasize into even worse critters and are unwilling to rock the boat, unless there's a big payoff for them. Then, it's even harder to get things going.
@Eric Dew What risk? taxpayers take on trillions of dollars in unchecked risk for war, subsidizing failed banks, whole industries like corn and sugar ... US taxypayers take on 100% capital risk -- they only ever pay, they never get a return on investment, they just "rent" their country and die broke, leaving a pittance to their children, taxed at every possible transaction (now even taxing funds held in health savings ...) so there's no risk in energy, education, clean air and water ... these are trivial, tiny amounts of money, perhaps a few hundreds of billions for the US to make a phased migration to leave coal and oil only for applications which cannot move quickly (even those can be very quickly (say 10 years) replaced with turbine generator electric heavy industrial equipment and vehicles If there's risk, it's the risk of catastrophic collapse in the ecosystem if we get unlucky with species extinction and lose our food chain (which is now a statistical risk greater than just about anything other than war between India and Pakistan for example.) With China building a coal power plant every week for the next 10 years, the solution is not clean cars, it's hardline politics and diplomacy, not tariffs and trade embargoes...there's the risk factor ... any sitting US President since Nixon (especially including warmongers like Bush and Obama.) As I see it, putting solar panels on schools and public buildings is not risk, it's a jobs program, it's an infrastructure investment that reaps rewards (e.g. South Australia) and the risk is the unscrupulous corporations duping consumers into second rate equipment (e.g. unreliable inverters) or scam financing ...
@Redwood Madrone I have a colleague who did precisely the same here in Japan. He commented that his Nissan Leaf costs so little to fuel (charge), that the cost can reasonably be considered as nothing.
@Redwood Madrone I think it makes sense for Tesla to prioritize the cell quality-assurance output to the vehicle batteries ...I'm sure all vehicle performance criteria are far above stationary applications like the Powerwall ... nobody is going to turn on their microwave and say "dammit these are second rate cells!" I'm installing a modest Tesla Powerwall solution now (still waiting for solar pricing) and I'm sure it will be "junk" inside 10 years. The lure of perpetual procrastination distracts from the "just do it" benefits of solar and battery for residential consumers. I'm sure my net cost could well be lower if I just wait and become a late or mainstream adopter, but that's the mistake of thinking there's a way of knowing. We've seen such a dramatic reduction in solar costs, and now battery costs, there has to be a point when cost is not the overriding factor and the individual consumer becomes willing to take a step forward and do something, to pay for the advantages without being frozen, perpetually waiting.
@Redwood Madrone theres nothing stopping any day from having a 2nd built downstream and being used as pumped hydro. dams only make power currently and have no ability to use their already installed turbines to push water back up hill at night.
@Kytsche Cost is not relatively high compared to the alternatives for long term energy storage therefore hydrogen is well suited as a secondary energy store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage For a primary energy store, more efficient pumped hydro or batteries should be used. Wildfires are burning the world's remaining forests to the ground too. Luckily, trees grow and forests recover despite being harvested and burnt every now and then. Radioactive nuclides pollute the environment in the long run.
@Redwood Madrone When you say 'done', do you mean that the technology/infrastructure required for the recycling is now (or soon will be) in place? I suspect you do, but I would like to check. Thanks. I think I heard Elon Musk comment some time ago that the batteries Tesla uses for its cars can be entirely (or almost entirely) recycled in the big Tesla facility (whose name I have forgotten) in the U.S.
@zapfanzapfan what US utility? Or do you think it's all conspiracy of all US utilities? to stop.... solar?
@Buffalo BottleCraft Correction the solar variability power is just one of the many reasons storage can be useful...
@zapfanzapfan adding solar adds complexity and risk to utilities... so why would they want more solar??? ...and look at that price for electric in germany....
@zapfanzapfan Bottom line is as long as there is a proper pricing structure in place, demand will shift in a myriad of ways to be in balance with the supply...Isn't the power of capitalism amazing?
@zapfanzapfanNice fantasy but EVs, especially with AV functionality will become more likely to be used in car and ride sharing services during work hours than just charging...While appliances like (hot) water heating tanks are far numerous and practical candidates for time shifting their demand (load) on the grid...
@N C - wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_storage_air_conditioning
@Doug Mcdonell The type of relatively low temp thermal storage (ie chiller units) you're describing. Would be very relevant to augment HVAC systems. But would be very inefficient as a substitute for batteries, based to the principle of Carnot heat engine cycle.
@IncognitoTorpedo - There's no need for electricity, the duck curve is caused by air conditioning, use stored ice instead of the air conditioners. This is already done for large installations, it just needs a neighborhood or household implementation.
@Redwood Madrone Issue is, "you don't even know what you don't" and get a new phone... https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucekasanoff/2018/03/21/you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know/#5711eb34573d
@Redwood Madrone Seriously??? Since you were shown to be incorrect about the original cost projections of nuclear power...Your only retort is a fallaciously ad hominem attack based on "marginal cost" that you apparently know nothing about and other irrelevant tangential ranting .... .google is a great way to gather facts... but it's a poor substitute for wisdom or the maturity to accept that one has made a mistake..good luck obtiaing that wisdom or the maturity one day...
@Redwood Madrone BTW just copy and paste into a browse if the link wont open
@Redwood Madrone prima facie case contradicting "Atomic energy was never meant to be cheap"... marginal cost of energy based what parameters?
@Redwood Madrone I have no pretense to have any skills. But my background is in econ and engineering...
@Redwood Madrone https://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2016/06/03/too-cheap-to-meter-a-history-of-the-phrase/
@Redwood Madrone Did u major in drama? Or is it a social media thing?
where did you find the cost for ambri I have been to there website and have found very little info.
@Conenion It is the same way in America, where I used to live power went through the roof. We called it the great white elephant. We payed for it and most of the power was sent elsewhere.
Interesting talk, albeit I doubt that solar + wind + battery storage solutions are the right answer for the needs of a carbon free industrial nation, at least not solely. We in Germany face tremendous problems due to our fast (and costly) ramp of renewable power generation without having meaningful power storage capacity. This causes all sorts of problems, not only for grid stability but also electricity prices - we now pay the highest energy prices in Europe. One absurd consequence is that we are now also more reliant on coal and gas than before. Phasing out nuclear energy entirely is harmful to our CO2 balance and grid stability. Phasing out Coal and Gas should have been the priority in my opinion, advancing Generation IV nuclear power instead. At least from current results, the French strategy after the oil crisis in the 1970th seems to be the better approach from a cost / benefit to counter climate change perspective.