The Energy Transition and technologies

[Street Pharmacist]

So Europe is faring quite well with regards to electricity production. Despite the early fears of a coal resurgence, most of it is still sitting there unburned.



On top of that, 2022 saw wind and solar eclipse natural gas for electricity production (not capacity!)


They estimate that fossil fuel power generation will drop by 20% this year which is frankly unheard of.

Source:

https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors...-are-now-dead/

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

They estimate that fossil fuel power generation will drop by 20% this year which is frankly unheard of.

But how much of that is from residential and industrial demand destruction from extraordinarily high electricity costs?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by accord1999

But how much of that is from residential and industrial demand destruction from extraordinarily high electricity costs?

Certainly some is from demand destruction, as much as 8% in the last 3 quarters of the year. Mild temperatures certainly also helped. But even if that goes back up, the renewables are still coming on at a fast pace and should help. The biggest issues coping with the gas shortage was expected to be that a 1 in 500 year drought left hydro way down and nuclear was simply not reliable and many plants were shut down for repairs. In the end, a combination of solar adding 50GW, strong winds, mild temperatures, and demand destruction left coal plants at less than 18% capacity. The nuclear that was down plus some hydro coming back on will really help

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

[…] and nuclear was simply not reliable and many plants were shut down for repairs. […]

You should dig into that more. I know it’s a popular dunk the soft pathers are using, but France passed laws in 2015 that aggressively shut down nuclear output and caused maintenance schedules to be deferred. Lazy and stupid policy is more appropriate than nuclear was unreliable.

France burned more wood in 2022 than any point since 1948. Sick.

The EU buying assloads of gas meant that many others went without in the same time period. But they don’t don’t, do they?

[Street Pharmacist]

I don't know what a "soft pather" is, but I'm aware of EDF's deferred maintenance boondoggle. But in reality, half of the reactors were unavailable when they needed them most. I'd still say that's unreliable.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I don't know what a "soft pather" is, but I'm aware of EDF's deferred maintenance boondoggle. But in reality, half of the reactors were unavailable when they needed them most. I'd still say that's unreliable.

If lack of reliability is a choice then it reflects on management and not the technology.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

France burned more wood in 2022 than any point since 1948. Sick.

Wood is an interesting one; it's obviously not great for dense populations, but it's a totally reasonable rural option

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/1...carbon-neutral

I'm not sure this analysis accounts for the opportunity cost of losing a ~decade of mature carbon capture, but you can easily catch up by planting more trees. Of course you also have to consider the decomposition benefits to that local ecosystem, but from a pure carbon standpoint it's not a terrible choice...at least at the local level.

The idea does not scale well:

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/no-burn...imate-friendly

Though this article does not consider the natural decomposition side, and I'm not sure how common the example they cite of a company clearcutting exclusively to make wood pellets is...if we accept that some level of clearcutting is inevitable for other purposes, then using the waste matter for pellets/etc probably isn't the worst idea, and you can't necessarily attribute the soil disruption/other impacts to the pellets.

Of course wildfires is another consideration in forestry management...do the local ecosystem benefits outweigh the rapidity of carbon emission without any other useful application of the resource? Probably a bit of a wash considering that natural decomposition alternative. Some clearcutting and burning the brush may not actually be as awful as it seems, though I'm sure there are several other variables to consider.

[Street Pharmacist]

I was simply saying that this winter it wasn't reliable. That's it . And it wasn't. Yes there were poor choices made to get them there.


Switching gears, "baseload" as a concept is changing as demand response and virtual power plants are really showing promise.

Basically, ever since we started harnessing electricity we've been matching production exactly to consumption. As electricity demand goes up, production must follow exactly. For those that don't follow this stuff, I'll explain quickly. In order to not fry all the components of the distribution and transmission network, electricity must be kept at a pretty constant frequency. If you produce more power than is being consumed, frequency goes up and wrecks stuff. If production is too low compared to demand, frequency drops and fries things too. This has meant that very smart people like DoubleK always have to walk a tight rope in making sure all these things work in harmony. It also means you have to plan your grid to be able to produce enough electricity to meet the highest demand point. Typically, that happens in the early evening as people come home and turn on their TVs, start the ovens, etc. Then demand falls dramatically overnight. The current grids therefore are usually set up to have big inflexible generation for the constant "baseload" demand, and some flexible, or dispatchable, generation for the "peak" demand to be ramped up or down as needed.

This system is fairly incompatible with variable renewable generation like wind and solar. Not only are wind and solar the cheapest form of electricity generation, they're also one of the lowest carbon intensive. The trouble, as has been written about ad nauseum on here, is that generation doesn't match consumption like we currently have. Most of the solar generation is during the day when demand isn't that high, and starts ramping down right as the peak of demand is starting. Wind in most places is strongest overnight and isn't consistent. This is why grid sized storage is often looked at in order to help match the output with the demand.

But what if demand was flexible? A concept called "demand response" has long been studied in small amounts by many utilities. Essentially, consumers give up control of some electricity demand to a utility or service to help flatten the peaks. Most commonly, this is EV charging. If you let Tesla control your charging times you can still plug in when you come home but let them decide when the electricity actually goes in so you still have a "full tank" when you need it. There are other companies that you can give some control of your smart thermostat to. They'll use AI and weather forecasts to heat or cool your home a little early so it can ride through the peak without needing to use any electricity. In Europe there's also hot water control and other devices too. By doing this, it can dramatically alter the normal diurnal demand curves to take stress off the grid. All of this can be overridden at any time by the user, and compensation is paid to the homeowner for this service. In areas with very high power prices it can be quite lucrative for the consumer.

In Britain, a company called Octopus Energy has done this really effectively. Their customers love it because of the savings, and their bottom line is improved by not having to buy crazy expensive power on the wholesale markets at peak times. In a test done this past October, 200,000 household saved 108MW one night which is pretty remarkable. Another really neat solution is Ohmconnect that uses gamification of your power usage to provide financial incentives for power saving and sells the realized power savings to the grid without needing to actually control anything.

The other development that is making waves in this space is virtual powerplants. Essentially, controlling distributed energy storage to provide power back to the grid when needed. Tesla has been doing trials of this in California, and a German company called Sonnen has been doing this quite successfully around the world. For vehicles that can provide power back, this could be a really big source of grid energy. The real difficulty with this though is that in most jurisdictions the ability to sell power is restricted only to a monopolized utility that has zero incentive to do it.

[GGG]

I think all those techs still suffer from the peak load problem. You are being very hopefully that the grid is plugged in when you hit peak load. Some load shedding with dynamic pricing could work however you’d have to convince people that taking risk on variable rates and sacrificing energy use made sense.

I think utility scale storage is where we end up for meaningful base load over car batteries and AI. Things like compressed air generation with underground storage or underwater balloons filled with air

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think all those techs still suffer from the peak load problem. You are being very hopefully that the grid is plugged in when you hit peak load. Some load shedding with dynamic pricing could work however you’d have to convince people that taking risk on variable rates and sacrificing energy use made sense.

I think utility scale storage is where we end up for meaningful base load over car batteries and AI. Things like compressed air generation with underground storage or underwater balloons filled with air

I don't think you need to be that hopeful. Population dynamics are very predictable. Yes a person is unpredictable, but the population isn't. With proper incentives people will absolutely do it. I'm less certain on vehicle batteries though because of life cycle issues. The small amount used and the slow rate of charge probably wouldn't affect the life of the battery but I'm not sure too many will be into risking that. The bigger one will be distributed home storage I think and I don't see why that would be a problem.

In order for any of these solutions to work though you'll need dynamic pricing and incentives to match

[Torture]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think all those techs still suffer from the peak load problem. You are being very hopefully that the grid is plugged in when you hit peak load. Some load shedding with dynamic pricing could work however you’d have to convince people that taking risk on variable rates and sacrificing energy use made sense.

I think utility scale storage is where we end up for meaningful base load over car batteries and AI. Things like compressed air generation with underground storage or underwater balloons filled with air

Those technologies don't solve peak load, but they go a long way to helping out with the peak load problem (especially as we bring on more demand to electrify everything). Sure it will still be a challenge, but if we incentivize people to shift some demand later we don't need that base load to be quite as high.

It's not a matter of utility scale storage vs load shifting, we will need both.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Torture

Those technologies don't solve peak load, but they go a long way to helping out with the peak load problem. Sure it will still be a challenge, but if we incentivize people to shift some demand later we don't need that base load to be quite as high.

It's not a matter of utility scale storage vs load shifting, we will need both.

And I think it's really becoming apparent that the solutions will really vary by location. For example, Australia has the highest distributed solar penetration in the world and it's still growing. Same with distributed storage. I doubt that will be the same in BC as sunlight isn't all that plentiful and hydro is huge. The UK has enough wind to support 27% of all power needs and rising, but solar isn't likely to dominate. That means the storage needs to be more longer term and less overnight so the solution may look different.

[Street Pharmacist]

Some positive energy transition news:

-Solar and wind installations continue to be wary higher than anyone predicted, mostly in China. Total generation for just wind and solar in China was almost 2,000 TWh. For comparison, if China's wind and solar were their own country, they'd be the 4th largest electricity producer!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1625834819132309505


-battery storage is about to explode across the world, but especially the UK, where they've basically reached their wind capacity unless they get more storage. Really significant numbers here

https://twitter.com/user/status/1625836290519228425

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Torture

Those technologies don't solve peak load, but they go a long way to helping out with the peak load problem (especially as we bring on more demand to electrify everything). Sure it will still be a challenge, but if we incentivize people to shift some demand later we don't need that base load to be quite as high.

It's not a matter of utility scale storage vs load shifting, we will need both.

This is bang on. We absolutely will need more/better demand response/load shifting.

Part of my concern with utility scale storage is the siting of it.

The grid is starting to see congestion with all of the renewables locating in the same region (particularly the SE). Adding batteries to these sites further exacerbates that situation necessitating more transmission build.

[Street Pharmacist]

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or the EV thread, but I figured it's got potential ramifications for non-EV applications so I'm putting it here.

https://energy.economictimes.indiati...ttery/98209280

A joint venture between Chinese auto maker JAC and battery maker Hina is putting some sodium Ion batteries into a test vehicle with plans to put them in regular EVs starting as soon as 2025. This is quite a bit faster than most people thought it might happen.


Sodium Ion batteries have some major advantages:

-Waaay cheaper to produce, less supply bottlenecks
-Safer
-Charge faster without the damage Li batteries have
-Work much better in cold environments
-Greener supply chain
-Much better stability at high and low voltage vs Li batteries (can actually charge to 100% and discharge to zero)


A couple big disadvantages:

-Low energy density. High estimates for CATL's Na battery is 160Wh/Kg but it's probably lower (similar to LiPO4). This means you need more battery for the same distance as current Li batteries

-Low cycle life. This one is difficult because I see some sites claim with references that CATL's new Na batteries have longer life than Li batteries. Unless CATL has released some info I can't find they haven't said what the life cycle expectation is. It would be too bad if they haven't solved this because that's a deal breaker for both Evs and stationary storage. It'll be fine for two wheel vehicles and other motorized equipment, but for the major applications, life cycle is king. Even over cost and range

[Fuzz]

For comparison, Tesla's cell's range from 244Wh/kg to 280Wh/kg. But at the pack level(since you need to add in wiring, cooling, casing) it's 158-186. If sodium batteries need less cooling(or none), they may not be too far off. Particularly when you get to comparing cold environment range loss, they may even come out ahead in Canadian winters.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

For comparison, Tesla's cell's range from 244Wh/kg to 280Wh/kg. But at the pack level(since you need to add in wiring, cooling, casing) it's 158-186. If sodium batteries need less cooling(or none), they may not be too far off. Particularly when you get to comparing cold environment range loss, they may even come out ahead in Canadian winters.

The reason it caught my eye was specifically the cold temp ability for Canada.

These would probably replace the lithium phosphate batteries and even Tesla's are that high. It's not just the cooling issues for the lithium batteries, but the fire propagation suppression. About one in a million it so cells have a defect that can start fires so they put in stuff to stop it from showing cell to cell. You don't need that with the sodium batteries so I do think they'll eventually replace lithium phosphate in cheaper EVs

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

The reason it caught my eye was specifically the cold temp ability for Canada.

These would probably replace the lithium phosphate batteries and even Tesla's are that high. It's not just the cooling issues for the lithium batteries, but the fire propagation suppression. About one in a million it so cells have a defect that can start fires so they put in stuff to stop it from showing cell to cell. You don't need that with the sodium batteries so I do think they'll eventually replace lithium phosphate in cheaper EVs

Their competition is probably more likely lithium iron, as that has a lower energy density and is cheaper, but also even worse in cold. Premium EV's will still use Lithium phosphate, but I could see it displacing LiFe on lower models if it has the specs they say.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Their competition is probably more likely lithium iron, as that has a lower energy density and is cheaper, but also even worse in cold. Premium EV's will still use Lithium phosphate, but I could see it displacing LiFe on lower models if it has the specs they say.

Lithium iron is lithium iron phosphate....


Premium EVs will be using the NMC for some time though, because of their energy density and discharge rate

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Lithium iron is lithium iron phosphate....


Premium EVs will be using the NMC for some time though, because of their energy density and discharge rate

Right, sorry...brain fart!