The Energy Transition and technologies

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

I seem to recall that the internal combustion Engine engine only operates at thirty five percent efficiency.



If there are copious amounts of cheap solar available, it might be financially feasable

Agreed, but that's a future issue and probably a ways off. The US just loaned a company half a billion dollars to use renewable hydrogen as seasonal storage:

https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-...-nearly-decade


But in reality, the economics only check out if we get to the "electricity is virtually free" stage, and here's why.

1) We need a few terawatts of new electricity generation to help electrify everything, so any new generation is just going to help try and keep up

2) We need renewable generation to replace current emitting generation

3) Any hydrogen made will be orders of magnitude more valuable to replace the current hydrogen used for fertilizer

[Whynotnow]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Devon Canada had a JV with someone on this (Suncor?? Can't quite remember). I worked with the guys a bit that did this project, and they never saw great results. Biggest problem was ferrous material in the soil (whether from the drilling process or otherwise) that would mess with the microwaves.

Or I remembered this all wrong, and I'm talking out of my ass. One of the two.

Recalling my days from production which was admittedly a long time ago nothing has ever worked but heat, these things have sounded good in theory and in lab tests but nobody has ever made it work in the field. They’ve been trying for 25 plus years under different names and the results have always been disappointing.

[DoubleK]

The other problem that isn't acknowledged is the sky high interest rates.

Nobody is building renewable generators with cash money.

That greatly affects the economics in 2023.

[username]

According to Accellware's website, their current commercial field test is going well, but no idea how feasible this is going forward


https://www.acceleware.com/projects/...ilot-test.html

[Fuzz]

Energy storage in the Alberta context

TC Energy is building a facility like this near Hinton, Alta., named the Canyon Creek Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Project, which is set to add 75 MW of "on-demand, flexible, clean energy" to the province's grid.

Other countries have built much larger facilities, such as Switzerland's Nant de Drance, which is capable of putting out 900 MW of electricity at any given moment and storing 20,000 MW-hours of energy in total — the equivalent of roughly 400,000 electric-car batteries.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...939655?cmp=rss

This is good info, as it shows, given our demand of ~10GW a day, that we could power ~1/11 of the grid for 20 days with the size of storage the Swiss have. Site C is about 1100MW, so that should put it into context that Alberta has no prospect for that level of pumped hydro. You also have to have "good days" to recharge the reservoir. It seems it can be a part of the solution in Alberta, but a small part.

The other interesting bit is ~400k car batteries of storage. There is talk of using EV's as grid storage, but I just don't see that vast number,(which could only use a fraction of the vehicle storage given it's needs of use as a vehicle) and that the pool of vehicles available at any given time will be lower than that you start to see they may be useful for providing small bits of power for grid stability in tight situations, but I don't really get the math on how they could be something of use or reliance in non-extreme cases.

Anyway, always nice to see some real numbers for these things.

[Doctorfever]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Energy storage in the Alberta context

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...939655?cmp=rss

This is good info, as it shows, given our demand of ~10GW a day, that we could power ~1/11 of the grid for 20 days with the size of storage the Swiss have. Site C is about 1100MW, so that should put it into context that Alberta has no prospect for that level of pumped hydro. You also have to have "good days" to recharge the reservoir. It seems it can be a part of the solution in Alberta, but a small part.

The other interesting bit is ~400k car batteries of storage. There is talk of using EV's as grid storage, but I just don't see that vast number,(which could only use a fraction of the vehicle storage given it's needs of use as a vehicle) and that the pool of vehicles available at any given time will be lower than that you start to see they may be useful for providing small bits of power for grid stability in tight situations, but I don't really get the math on how they could be something of use or reliance in non-extreme cases.

Anyway, always nice to see some real numbers for these things.

I was thinking about the hydro reservoir system. Really cool. If I was wanting to do something like that I would have the reservoir pump electricity fed by solar panels and/or wind turbines that are off the grid. That way the system will essentially charge itself during the “good days” and you send electricity into the grid during times of need.

Really cool concept all in all.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Energy storage in the Alberta context

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...939655?cmp=rss

This is good info, as it shows, given our demand of ~10GW a day, that we could power ~1/11 of the grid for 20 days with the size of storage the Swiss have. Site C is about 1100MW, so that should put it into context that Alberta has no prospect for that level of pumped hydro. You also have to have "good days" to recharge the reservoir. It seems it can be a part of the solution in Alberta, but a small part.

The other interesting bit is ~400k car batteries of storage. There is talk of using EV's as grid storage, but I just don't see that vast number,(which could only use a fraction of the vehicle storage given it's needs of use as a vehicle) and that the pool of vehicles available at any given time will be lower than that you start to see they may be useful for providing small bits of power for grid stability in tight situations, but I don't really get the math on how they could be something of use or reliance in non-extreme cases.

Anyway, always nice to see some real numbers for these things.

Of course, if we got beyond the politics and viewed our grid as an actual country rather than a series of individual fiefdoms BC and AB could work together to solve that problem, with benefit to both. (Cheaper wind/solar for BC from AB, storage for non-peak for AB)

[Fuzz]

TC Energy is building a pretty big one in Ontario.


https://www.ontariopumpedstorage.com/

[Lubicon]

Proposal for one in Crows Nest Pass as well. TransAlta has signed on as a partner in this one.

https://tentmountain-rex.com/

[Fuzz]

Interesting, running it with wind energy.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Proposal for one in Crows Nest Pass as well. TransAlta has signed on as a partner in this one.

https://tentmountain-rex.com/

Fun fact, this is one of the former open pit coal mining projects, lol.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Energy storage in the Alberta context

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...939655?cmp=rss

This is good info, as it shows, given our demand of ~10GW a day, that we could power ~1/11 of the grid for 20 days with the size of storage the Swiss have. Site C is about 1100MW, so that should put it into context that Alberta has no prospect for that level of pumped hydro. You also have to have "good days" to recharge the reservoir. It seems it can be a part of the solution in Alberta, but a small part.

The other interesting bit is ~400k car batteries of storage. There is talk of using EV's as grid storage, but I just don't see that vast number,(which could only use a fraction of the vehicle storage given it's needs of use as a vehicle) and that the pool of vehicles available at any given time will be lower than that you start to see they may be useful for providing small bits of power for grid stability in tight situations, but I don't really get the math on how they could be something of use or reliance in non-extreme cases.

Anyway, always nice to see some real numbers for these things.

A couple of things to note.

One, any single storage facility today could provide 9% of the entire grid for 20 days is massive. Nowhere will survive with one or two storage facilities and Alberta will require more than most. The two things that will make Alberta more resilient that continues to be ignored are demand flexibility and efficiency. The biggest driver for both of those are high peak prices which Alberta had and will continue to have.

Alberta is unique because only around 6% of demand is residential and 8% commercial. The industrial and transport sectors are absolutely massive. This means any contribution by residential demand flexibility or storage demand response will have a hard time filling the gap. The big unknown is how much efficiency can be gained in the industrial sector. If power prices are high, there'll be a significant incentive to decrease demand. How much is technically feasible I have absolutely no clue

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

A couple of things to note.

One, any single storage facility today could provide 9% of the entire grid for 20 days is massive. Nowhere will survive with one or two storage facilities and Alberta will require more than most. The two things that will make Alberta more resilient that continues to be ignored are demand flexibility and efficiency. The biggest driver for both of those are high peak prices which Alberta had and will continue to have.

Alberta is unique because only around 6% of demand is residential and 8% commercial. The industrial and transport sectors are absolutely massive. This means any contribution by residential demand flexibility or storage demand response will have a hard time filling the gap. The big unknown is how much efficiency can be gained in the industrial sector. If power prices are high, there'll be a significant incentive to decrease demand. How much is technically feasible I have absolutely no clue

Yes, it is, but it also outlines the challenge storage has, and backs up the idea that "going green" for Alberta can't be done on intermittent sources and storage alone. We'll need NG with CCS, or nuclear.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Yes, it is, but it also outlines the challenge storage has, and backs up the idea that "going green" for Alberta can't be done on intermittent sources and storage alone. We'll need NG with CCS, or nuclear.

I'm not disagreeing, just stating that even if it was easy to do in Alberta, pointing out that one facility could at most do 9% for 20 days doesn't really prove anything. The issue for Alberta is they don't have that many suitable locations

[Fuzz]

Well ya, exactly. It was an example of the biggest(or one of) and what it could accomplish. And even that wouldn't be enough to get us through the winter doldrums if we cut too much NG.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Torture

Fun fact, this is one of the former open pit coal mining projects, lol.

It's a great use for a former industrial site.

This one is interesting. Tent Mountain is an old mining site that was shuttered in the 1980's after 35 years of mining. There was a proposal to re-open it but that was abandoned and now this is the only portion of the project that may proceed.

[Fuzz]

I wonder if circulating the same water for years through all that coal tailing is going to make it very contaminated?

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Proposal for one in Crows Nest Pass as well. TransAlta has signed on as a partner in this one.



https://tentmountain-rex.com/

Don't see this project happening. The grid connection is cost prohibitive at that location.

[Street Pharmacist]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1695058199450202163

[Fuzz]

Counterpoint:

World oil demand is scaling record highs, boosted by strong summer air travel, increased oil use in power generation and surging Chinese petrochemical activity. Global oil demand is set to expand by 2.2 mb/d to 102.2 mb/d in 2023, with China accounting for more than 70% of growth. With the post-pandemic rebound running out of steam, and as lacklustre economic conditions, tighter efficiency standards and new electric vehicles weigh on use, growth is forecast to slow to 1 mb/d in 2024.

https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-mark...rt-august-2023


Seeing that massive drop in investment while consumption rises makes me think I should be buying O&G stocks. A lot of this expansion is just that we are consuming more and more. It's good that some of that new consumption is fueled by solar, but we are still increasing petro usage. Long way to go.