engstudent

Review of Energy Storage Market Forecasts

truthteller, I haven't actually read the full reports so I'm unable to analyse how they came up with their headline figures. If it was based on the flawed assumption that you need storage to integrate wind and solar, then I'm skeptical. Now if we can get to the point where we say you don't NEED storage but you can consider it as part of a range of options to manage variability, then we're making progress. In some cases storage may be the least-cost option however my assessment is that the marignal cost curve of storage is steep and that the other options - flexible generation, demand side management etc - are cheaper than storage.

Energy Storage is Not Needed for Renewables Integration

shorty_is_screwed, thanks for the link, however I'm a little underwhelmed by it. They require you to have a wind turbine or fuel cell to which you couple the wind turbine. If you read my last reply, you'll understand that I think that is an economically illiterate idea. In addition, the budget is a paltry $83 million. While Beacon Power and others are ticking along with a government funded MW here and a subsidised MW there, I've yet to see the large orders which would presage a storage revolution. John Petersen said the remarkable thing about a storage conference he attended recently was that there were no buyers.

I've no idea why PG&E have that programme but could it possibly be because the CAISO allows them to reclaim the funds through customer charges?

Energy Storage is Not Needed for Renewables Integration

truthteller, thanks for the links. I've been reading John's articles for over a year now, he's the reason I came to seekingalpha in the first place. I respect his analysis. He approaches the subject of storage from a financial viewpoint and will be the first to acknowledge that he is not a technical expert.

The people I want to be taking guidance from on this subject are electrical engineers. You'll note that Imre Gyuk's background is in theoretical physics. In the Christian Science article you reference, the CS monitor quotes the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' report. They also have a quote from a professor of chemical engineering. With respect, what would chemical engineers know about electrical power systems?

The statement from Arshad Mansoor (electrical engineer) is much more reasonable: "Storage will need to be part of our portfolio if going to 15 to 20 percent wind at a national level". No one is going to argue with that. To reach 20% of wind at a national level would require 300GW and the target the DOE have set for that is 2030. The US currently has 26GW. That does not suggest an imminent ramp up of storage. You'll also notice that David Bradwell says that sodium batteries are currently too expensive at $400/kWh.

Furthermore, the head of energy storage at Sandia and chemical engineers in general have a vested interest in the future of energy storage since many of these storage technologies are chemically intricate. Sandia National Labs is a company owned by Lockheed Martin. How long would the head of energy storage last if he said the future for storage wasn't too rosy?!

There is an excellent article in the current issue of Power and Energy magazine. You can read it here: www.ieee-pes.org/image...

It was written by 11 people with deep knowledge of electric power systems. They included 3 senior NREL analysts, 2 professors of electrical engineering, a director of General Electric and the president of Renewable Energy Consulting Services. It does a much more thorough job of explaining why storage is not needed than I have done here.

They state: "The fact that “the wind doesn’t always blow” is often used to
suggest the need for dedicated energy storage to handle fluctuations in the generation of wind power. Such viewpoints,however, ignore the realities of both grid operation and the performance of a large, spatially diverse wind-generation resource."

The type of storage that the CS monitor article suggests - that you have dedicated storage for an individual wind turbine/wind site is a ridiculous waste of resources.

Regarding your second link, Steven Milunovich's (degree in management) opinion about lithium-ion batteries for GEVs may well be accurate, but that wasn't what I was discussing here.

If you read the above link, you'll realise that power systems are complicated and that they are not subject to superficial analysis such as wind=variable, therefore we need storage. I worked in a research group last summer run by one of the authors of the above-linked article and discussed the issue with PhD students specialising in the area. I also participated in a storage conference in November. You can find all the presentations here (www.sei.ie/Renewables/...). It was evident that investing in storage is a highly complex undertaking which involves modelling the future price of energy. Another point driven home was that storage destroys its own value. The more storage you have on the system, the lower the spread between peak and off-peak prices which erases the margin needed to profitably operate storage.

Thanks for reading.

EXIDE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE LITHIUM-ION ENERGY SYSTEMS MARKET?

That is a bit puzzling. As you say, I thought that lithium being too expensive and unreliable was a central plank in lead-acid proponents' arguments. To see Exide put a finger in the lithium pie implies any combination of the following:

(a) they are not confident lead-acid will dominate the market
(b) the prospects for Exide's lead-acid are not great
(c) they see synergies with the lithium-ion business
(d) they're hedging their bets

I'm actually going to Bolivia this week for a holiday. I'll be trekking across the Salar de Uyuni, should be great fun!

Energy Storage is Not Needed for Renewables Integration

Hi, Bushy. I agree, that's a caveat I should have added. Places like Hawaii and other small islands have different economics than larger systems. Seekingalpha is fairly US-centric so that's what I focused on.

Will Offshore Wind Growth Boost Rare Earth Demand?

Thanks Fr, I'm aware of your traumatic experience!! Clipper use NdFeB but are probably aware of the supply constraints if the abstract of this presentation is an indication:
(ewec2009proceedings.in...). I see they manufacture in Iowa, so presumably securing rare earths going forward is a concern of theirs. As they also are focusing on large wind turbines (>4MW), the problems associated with gearboxes would be amplified. This suggests they would have difficulty adapting to a rare earth shortage. Ideally companies should have parallel designs, one with and one without rare earths but that's expensive. Are you investing in Clipper?

Jimp, I haven't looked in detail at the different RE miners, I just followed Jack Lifton's articles which you've also read. As you know, heavy rare earths outside China are critical, so, ceterus paribus, invest there. Thanks for the link, that's interesting. While that sounds promising, it's still at the embryonic stage and would likely encounter difficulties, not least manufacturing, in scaling it up to the huge wind turbine level. The metric when comparing different magnets that's most useful is the maximum energy product. There's a nice comparison table here: (www.rochestermagnet.co...). This tells you the volume, and thus weight, required. Neodymium requires a tenth of the volume of ferrite magnets. Even with a 30% improvement in ferrite, that goes down to an eighth. That technology may well displace some neodymium in applications where weight and volume are not critical. However for wind the tower top mass is important and ferrite would likely be too heavy - although I haven't done the sums. Any more questions, fire away.

Energy Storage is Not Needed for Renewables Integration

Good comments, Victor. The point I was trying to get across was that storage is not NEEDED.

The question of whether storage is desirable NOW is subtle. If storage negates the need to build a new power line for a long time, then the time that saves from having to deal with NIMBYs is certainly worth considering. A further wrinkle comes from the fact that if extra backup plants are required for renewables then the emissions of these plants, with 20+ year lifetimes, may be considered to be locked in.

I don't think the economics are there for storage. If large scale storage becomes viable, though, then that would certainly accelerate the process of integrating renewables.

The main purpose of the article was to address the received wisdom that renewables need storage for integration because they are 'unreliable' and 'intermittent'. The same terms can be applied to conventional power plants if you actually look at today's system.

Many utilities dismiss renewables through the rhetoric that they are unreliable. Getting to 20% is a huge undertaking and can be done without storage so let's proceed down this path and then if storage presents itself economically, all the better.

You are correct to state the metric should be cents/kWh/cycle, oftentimes all you hear is cents/kWh. A great paper with up to date info on costs and technology may be found here: (www.sciencedirect.com/...)

Will Offshore Wind Growth Boost Rare Earth Demand?

Thanks Jeff and Thaidiamond. I hadn't really thought of wind turbines' impact on other commodities, I'll look into that. I'm aware that NdFeB could be used on land but I chose to focus on offshore because that is where the advantages are clear.

O&M is less expensive on land and thus the conventional gearbox and the heavier and bulkier direct drive synchronous generator can easily displace any neodymium if a supply crunch occurs. Offshore industries would likely outbid other sectors for any limited rare earth supplies because NdFeB is so beneficial.

Energy Myths for the 21st Century

Shale Gas: Firstly, I see no clarification as to whether that is recoverable barrels or just barrels in the ground. There's a big difference. If barrels in the ground, then recoverable barrels would be more like 13-50bn barrels.

In 2008 the world used 27bn barrels of oil (www.eia.doe.gov/aer/tx...). An extra year or two is nice but does not discredit peak oil.


On Sep 30 02:07 PM Shale Gas wrote:

> Read it and weep, peak oilers:
>
> "Brazil’s so-called pre-salt oil region may hold between 25 billion
> and 100 billion barrels of oil, the country’s cabinet chief said.
> "
>
> www.bloomberg.com/apps...;sid=alV_xoYg185c#

Energy Myths for the 21st Century

Firstly, I see no clarification as to whether that is recoverable barrels or just barrels in the ground. There's a big difference. If barrels in the ground, then recoverable barrels would be more like 13-50bn barrels.

In 2008 the world used 27bn barrels of oil (www.eia.doe.gov/aer/tx...). An extra year or two is nice but does not discredit peak oil.

Energy Myths for the 21st Century

Thanks for that Ferdinand, good stuff. I agree with the other commenters, I was waiting for the conclusion! I was also hoping for your assessment of oil sands and shales.

Climate Change and Corporate Disclosure: Should Investors Care?

Interesting article. I'm confused, however, because you post on seekingalpha yet appear to believe in global warming, is this true?!

The Need for a New Security in Rare Metals New Production

Good article, Jack. With Goldman and CNMC backing off, the danger of a shortfall appears that much more likely. How's progress with 'On the Green Road'?

I ran some figures on the potential use of rare earths in offshore wind:

seekingalpha.com/insta...

I'd be interested to know if the figures match with what you had in mind or any projections you may have seen.

The Energy Efficiency Paradox

Plan B, it's all there, in an excellent Wikipedia entry. Do you claim that the rebound effect of efficiency is greater than 100%? Or do you claim that overall, once faster economic growth is considered, that energy use increases? Do you have any sources as to the actual percentages?


On Sep 24 08:58 PM Plan B Economics wrote:

> Thanks! I didn't know that - I look forward to reading more about
> the Jevons Paradox.
>
> Here's the Wikipedia description: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
>

The Energy Efficiency Paradox

Energy costs make up a small proportion of most people's total expenditure, therefore they are uninterested in making savings. This is evidenced by the large amounts of houses with poor insulation. Investments like insulation have very positive net present values but people don't invest in them due to either (a) inertia, (b) lack of information or (c) lack of finance.

These obstacles can be obviated if, as is now happening, utilities step in. Certain states (22:www.stateinnovation.or...) have some form of decoupling utility profits from the amount of energy they sell. This incentivising of energy efficiency is clearly the way forward.

As for transport use, increased taxes and higher oil prices will definitely help. Your road transport evidence proves a correlation but not a causation. Your hypothesis is argued against here: (reason.org/blog/show/d...), here(features.csmonitor.com.../) and here (www.google.com/url?sa=...). While there is some rebound effect from increased fuel standards, it is small and decreasing. A doubling of fuel standards leads to a 7% increase in driving according to the second link. People just aren't that fond of sitting in traffic.

Increased standards on buildings and cars is the way forward because the market has failed in this regard.