OT: 'Photon Farming' in California

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 4:21:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 04/08/19 08:21, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

That would justify charging at the company car park, since the
installation cost per socket would be cheaper.

But if there aren't parking spaces at work and it can't
be charged at home, where can you guarantee charging your
car?

You can't. So the UK is stuffed when it comes to EVs.

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 3:37:34 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 19:59:46 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 7:35:14 PM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:52:32 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:42:09 PM UTC-4, amdx wrote:
On 8/3/2019 10:44 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?


Pump water!

I saw a web page showing about 94% of US energy storage is hydro, about 24 GW. Of the other 6%, thermal and battery are about 700 MW each.

So they call ordinary hydro 'energy storage' ;-).

In practice this is just a dam that can store river water for at least
one day. No hydro is used during the day, when solar is available and
the water is driven once through the turbines during the night. No
low efficiency pumping back involved.

It should be noted that the day consumption is larger than night
consumption, so that less water needs to be stored in the dam.

They use both pumped hydro. Why would you think it's not?

Pumped hydro, electrolysis+fuel cell, battery charging and discharging
is really a bad idea from the total system efficiency point of view
and can be less than 50 %.

Don't know where you got your number. I read 80% is a typical number, about the same as regenerative braking on my car.

Storing water in a dam above a hydro plant during the day and run it
through the turbines only once at night will have a good system
efficiency (90-95 %).

*If* you have enough water flow. In that case it is likely there is already a generating station there. Pumped hydro only requires enough flow to replenish the evaporative losses.

Charging a EV battery in real time when cheap power is naturally
available makes sense, since the battery would anyhow need to be
charged and it is discharged only on the road when the car is off-line
from the grid.

Currently there is enough solar generation in California so the power curve has a minimum at mid day. It is going to take a lot of car charging to offset that. Utilities often have programs to encourage efficient use of electricity. I wonder if they would be interested in promoting EV charging at work?

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 15:01, Rick C wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak
load to use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for days at a
time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output. X% of the
time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas turbines
on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we get our
energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you install X
GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of conventional plant. The
renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to discuss whether the cost of
such "idle" conventional plant should be added to the cost of the wind
plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time. If you
want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving, let someone
else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the lowest cost
solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil fuel plants the
capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs. Remove the fuel costs and
the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Again, you are unwittingly myopic - and inaccurate.

Note the key phrase "not economic", and please explain this
news from last week....

The German utility giant RWE will close its last UK coal plant
after the coming winter, leaving only four remaining coal plants
powering British homes.

RWE will close the Aberthaw B power station in south Wales at
the end of March 2020 after half a century generating electricity
from coal.

“The reasons given for the closure are economic – the plant has
rarely run over the last few months,” said Kelvin Mawer, a
regional officer at Unite. “However, the decision to close has
come a lot earlier than expected.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/01/german-utilities-firm-rwe-to-close-its-last-uk-coal-plant-in-2020

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also these
have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For biodiesel, there
can be issues with bacteria and algae growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no need for
it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates that "the market"
needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

Agreed, the UK energy industry is screwed up beyond belief.

Political/economic ideology is the core reason.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 14:56, Rick C wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 4:21:31 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 08:21, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

That would justify charging at the company car park, since the
installation cost per socket would be cheaper.

But if there aren't parking spaces at work and it can't
be charged at home, where can you guarantee charging your
car?

You can't. So the UK is stuffed when it comes to EVs.

Not just the UK; many other countries are in a similar
position.

Will you now stop claiming variations of "EVs are easy"?
I doubt it.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 15:54, Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/08/2019 15:01, Rick C wrote:
On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk
wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation.
All
of it doesn't need to power every car.  The idea is to take
the peak load to use for something that can be scheduled to
suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for
days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output.
X% of the time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas turbines on
those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we
get our energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW)
adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you
install X GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of
conventional plant. The renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to
discuss whether the cost of such "idle" conventional plant should
be added to the cost of the wind plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time.

Yes they do. Otherwise they won't work when you need them.

You have to still employ the people who know how to operate and maintain them to
keep them in a state ready to use. All of this costs real money.

If you want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving,
let someone else up front.  Given enough time renewables will be the
lowest cost solution, even with the backup generation.  For fossil
fuel plants the capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs.
Remove the fuel costs and the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Eventually using fossil fuel will be more expensive than renewables but that
point is still some way off. Natural gas is still very cheap.

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but
also these have issues with long time (month, years) storage.
For biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae
growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no
need for it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates
that "the market" needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed.  Better get used to it.

We probably are. Not only has the generation kit been allowed to get old and
decrepit but older plant is still being retired on schedule but the proposed new
build is running well behind schedule or not at all.

http://www.powerstations.uk/coal-countdown/

Plus a moron elected as Prime Minister by a bunch of senile delinquents in the
Tory Party dedicated to jumping off a Brexit cliff for Halloween.

What could possibly go wrong?

It would be easier to enumerate what could possibly go right

 

[bitrex]

On 8/3/19 12:44 PM, Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?

That's what car radiators are for, to efficiently turn your gas money
into heat to eject into space

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 15:36, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 04 Aug 2019 06:56:38 -0700, Rick C wrote:

You can't. So the UK is stuffed when it comes to EVs.

Why are you and Sloman constantly bashing the UK? Some online equivalent
of penis envy?

How would you know? You have finally admitted you
don't live in the UK.

Slowman's comments tend to be based on knowledge.

Rick C's comments tend to be based on ignorance stemming
from myopia.

I'll refrain from mentioning what your comments are based on.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 04/08/2019 15:01, Rick C wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation.
All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take
the peak load to use for something that can be scheduled to
suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for
days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output.
X% of the time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we
get our energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW)
adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you
install X GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of
conventional plant. The renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to
discuss whether the cost of such "idle" conventional plant should
be added to the cost of the wind plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time.

Yes they do. Otherwise they won't work when you need them.

You have to still employ the people who know how to operate and maintain
them to keep them in a state ready to use. All of this costs real money.

If you want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving,
let someone else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the
lowest cost solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil
fuel plants the capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs.
Remove the fuel costs and the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Eventually using fossil fuel will be more expensive than renewables but
that point is still some way off. Natural gas is still very cheap.

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but
also these have issues with long time (month, years) storage.
For biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae
growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no
need for it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates
that "the market" needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

We probably are. Not only has the generation kit been allowed to get old
and decrepit but older plant is still being retired on schedule but the
proposed new build is running well behind schedule or not at all.

http://www.powerstations.uk/coal-countdown/

Plus a moron elected as Prime Minister by a bunch of senile delinquents
in the Tory Party dedicated to jumping off a Brexit cliff for Halloween.

What could possibly go wrong?

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 06:43:39 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:22:25 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

Scaling up the system to a much larger system (California) with
current technology and unit costs could prove disastrous to the Tesla
company.

At least some technological advances would be needed to bring the unit
costs down and then make a profit on a large system using current unit
selling prices.

At this time Tesla can't take on any truly massive battery projects as they need all the batteries they make to build cars, around 25 GWh per year.

Or how fast Panasonic can produce those small (less than 10 Wh) 18650
batteries. Those are just a little bit bigger than an AA cell, so you
need a huge number (thousands) of them in series and parallel to reach
the 100 kWh single car capacity. The proposed replacement 2170 is only
has slightly more capacity.

I just wonder why they do not make really big Li-ion cells.


>Are Li-ion batteries really needed for power buffering? Can't lead acid batteries be used? The telephone company seems to have used them successfully for many years. Li-ion are used for transportation because they have a much better energy to weight ratio.

The ABB 40 MW BESS unit in Fairbanks Alaska used NiCd in 2010, not
lead acrid. Perhaps there are some reason.

 

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 06:52:39 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

Storing water in a dam above a hydro plant during the day and run it
through the turbines only once at night will have a good system
efficiency (90-95 %).

*If* you have enough water flow.
In that case it is likely there is already a generating station there.

In that case the generators are most likely selected for 24 h
operation. For solar backup operation, you would need to add
generators for 12-18 h operation, improving water ducts etc. for a
greater peak flow. However, you have to be careful not to cause extra
erosion in river banks.

Pumped hydro only requires enough flow to replenish the evaporative losses.


Charging a EV battery in real time when cheap power is naturally
available makes sense, since the battery would anyhow need to be
charged and it is discharged only on the road when the car is off-line
from the grid.

Currently there is enough solar generation in California so the power curve has a minimum at mid day. It is going to take a lot of car charging to offset that.

Charging one million EVs is going to need a few GWp.


You only have a steep peak at midday if all panels are aimed directly
towards south (peak at 12:00). Build some farms aimed towards SSW
(13:30) , SW (15:00) or even WSW (16:30) to handle the afternoon peak.
Adjust those figures for exact longitude and daylight sawing rules.

Roof mounted solar panels are aimed at more or less random directions,
so they do not cause a steep peak at noon.

>Utilities often have programs to encourage efficient use of electricity. I wonder if they would be interested in promoting EV charging at work?

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:54:45 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/08/2019 15:01, Rick C wrote:
On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation.
All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take
the peak load to use for something that can be scheduled to
suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for
days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output.
X% of the time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we
get our energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW)
adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you
install X GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of
conventional plant. The renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to
discuss whether the cost of such "idle" conventional plant should
be added to the cost of the wind plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time.

Yes they do. Otherwise they won't work when you need them.

You have to still employ the people who know how to operate and maintain
them to keep them in a state ready to use. All of this costs real money.

Yes, there is always some expense. The major cost is the fuel. So they are not *so* expensive to idle.

If you want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving,
let someone else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the
lowest cost solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil
fuel plants the capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs.
Remove the fuel costs and the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Eventually using fossil fuel will be more expensive than renewables but
that point is still some way off. Natural gas is still very cheap.

So is solar. It's not "some time off" that solar and wind will be the cheapest energy source... even with storage.

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but
also these have issues with long time (month, years) storage.
For biodiesel, there can be issues with bacteria and algae
growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no
need for it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates
that "the market" needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

We probably are. Not only has the generation kit been allowed to get old
and decrepit but older plant is still being retired on schedule but the
proposed new build is running well behind schedule or not at all.

http://www.powerstations.uk/coal-countdown/

Plus a moron elected as Prime Minister by a bunch of senile delinquents
in the Tory Party dedicated to jumping off a Brexit cliff for Halloween.

What could possibly go wrong?

Like the US doesn't have it's own, similar problems.

--

Rick C.

---- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
---- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:36:40 AM UTC-4, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 04 Aug 2019 06:56:38 -0700, Rick C wrote:

You can't. So the UK is stuffed when it comes to EVs.

Why are you and Sloman constantly bashing the UK? Some online equivalent
of penis envy?

I'm not bashing the UK. I'm acknowledging Tom Gardner's claim that solar and wind power aren't practical in the UK.

--

Rick C.

++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:41:37 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 04/08/19 15:01, Rick C wrote:
On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak
load to use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for days at a
time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output. X% of the
time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas turbines
on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we get our
energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you install X
GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of conventional plant. The
renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to discuss whether the cost of
such "idle" conventional plant should be added to the cost of the wind
plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time. If you
want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving, let someone
else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the lowest cost
solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil fuel plants the
capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs. Remove the fuel costs and
the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Again, you are unwittingly myopic - and inaccurate.

Note the key phrase "not economic", and please explain this
news from last week....

The German utility giant RWE will close its last UK coal plant
after the coming winter, leaving only four remaining coal plants
powering British homes.

RWE will close the Aberthaw B power station in south Wales at
the end of March 2020 after half a century generating electricity
from coal.

“The reasons given for the closure are economic – the plant has
rarely run over the last few months,” said Kelvin Mawer, a
regional officer at Unite. “However, the decision to close has
come a lot earlier than expected.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/01/german-utilities-firm-rwe-to-close-its-last-uk-coal-plant-in-2020

I'm not going to try to connect things that aren't connected.

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also these
have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For biodiesel, there
can be issues with bacteria and algae growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no need for
it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates that "the market"
needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

Agreed, the UK energy industry is screwed up beyond belief.

Political/economic ideology is the core reason.

Ok, sorry about that. You can always move.

--

Rick C.

+++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 11:04:10 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 06:43:39 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:22:25 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

Scaling up the system to a much larger system (California) with
current technology and unit costs could prove disastrous to the Tesla
company.

At least some technological advances would be needed to bring the unit
costs down and then make a profit on a large system using current unit
selling prices.

At this time Tesla can't take on any truly massive battery projects as they need all the batteries they make to build cars, around 25 GWh per year.

Or how fast Panasonic can produce those small (less than 10 Wh) 18650
batteries. Those are just a little bit bigger than an AA cell, so you
need a huge number (thousands) of them in series and parallel to reach
the 100 kWh single car capacity. The proposed replacement 2170 is only
has slightly more capacity.

I just wonder why they do not make really big Li-ion cells.

Likely because they need a lot in parallel to achieve the current and power needed.

Are Li-ion batteries really needed for power buffering? Can't lead acid batteries be used? The telephone company seems to have used them successfully for many years. Li-ion are used for transportation because they have a much better energy to weight ratio.

The ABB 40 MW BESS unit in Fairbanks Alaska used NiCd in 2010, not
lead acrid. Perhaps there are some reason.

It is hard to find much data on the details of such installations. I do know one company is using repurposed used lead acid batteries for energy storage on a small scale for offices.

--

Rick C.

---+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
---+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 11:45:08 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 06:52:39 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:


Storing water in a dam above a hydro plant during the day and run it
through the turbines only once at night will have a good system
efficiency (90-95 %).

*If* you have enough water flow.
In that case it is likely there is already a generating station there.

In that case the generators are most likely selected for 24 h
operation. For solar backup operation, you would need to add
generators for 12-18 h operation, improving water ducts etc. for a
greater peak flow. However, you have to be careful not to cause extra
erosion in river banks.

Pumped hydro only requires enough flow to replenish the evaporative losses.


Charging a EV battery in real time when cheap power is naturally
available makes sense, since the battery would anyhow need to be
charged and it is discharged only on the road when the car is off-line
from the grid.

Currently there is enough solar generation in California so the power curve has a minimum at mid day. It is going to take a lot of car charging to offset that.

Charging one million EVs is going to need a few GWp.


You only have a steep peak at midday if all panels are aimed directly
towards south (peak at 12:00). Build some farms aimed towards SSW
(13:30) , SW (15:00) or even WSW (16:30) to handle the afternoon peak.
Adjust those figures for exact longitude and daylight sawing rules.

Farms typically are tracking on a single axis. I never said there was a "sharp peak". Some locations pay you a higher rate to aim your solar cells SW instead of south.

Roof mounted solar panels are aimed at more or less random directions,
so they do not cause a steep peak at noon.

You are barking up the wrong tree.

The issue is not an imaginary "sharp" peak at noon. It's that the energy drops off later in the afternoon before the use peak is over. The resulting conventional demand curve has a sharp rise at that time.

https://longtailpipe.com/2017/03/08/california-distributed-energy-future/

--

Rick C.

--+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 15:41:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/08/19 15:01, Rick C wrote:
On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak
load to use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for days at a
time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output. X% of the
time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas turbines
on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we get our
energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you install X
GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of conventional plant. The
renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to discuss whether the cost of
such "idle" conventional plant should be added to the cost of the wind
plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time. If you
want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving, let someone
else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the lowest cost
solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil fuel plants the
capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs. Remove the fuel costs and
the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Again, you are unwittingly myopic - and inaccurate.

Note the key phrase "not economic", and please explain this
news from last week....

The German utility giant RWE will close its last UK coal plant
after the coming winter, leaving only four remaining coal plants
powering British homes.

RWE will close the Aberthaw B power station in south Wales at
the end of March 2020 after half a century generating electricity
from coal.

“The reasons given for the closure are economic – the plant has
rarely run over the last few months,” said Kelvin Mawer, a
regional officer at Unite. “However, the decision to close has
come a lot earlier than expected.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/01/german-utilities-firm-rwe-to-close-its-last-uk-coal-plant-in-2020


That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also these
have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For biodiesel, there
can be issues with bacteria and algae growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no need for
it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates that "the market"
needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

Agreed, the UK energy industry is screwed up beyond belief.

Political/economic ideology is the core reason.

Coal power is dying a natural death in the US, because fracked NG is
so cheap, and as a side benefit clean.

We can ship our unused coal to China and Japan. Gotta compete with
Australia.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 09:11:15 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 11:04:10 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 06:43:39 -0700 (PDT), Rick C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:22:25 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 20:13:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 2:41:00 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Odd that batteries are economical in South Australia

https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/

but not in California. It seems likely that John Larkin doesn't know what he is talking about - most likely he's been deluded by some anti-renewables propaganda.

Do we know that the Australia project was truly economical ?

Musk seems to be willing to take large losses on some small initial
projects and hope to be able to recover the losses of larger (future?)
projects.

Scaling up the system to a much larger system (California) with
current technology and unit costs could prove disastrous to the Tesla
company.

At least some technological advances would be needed to bring the unit
costs down and then make a profit on a large system using current unit
selling prices.

At this time Tesla can't take on any truly massive battery projects as they need all the batteries they make to build cars, around 25 GWh per year.

Or how fast Panasonic can produce those small (less than 10 Wh) 18650
batteries. Those are just a little bit bigger than an AA cell, so you
need a huge number (thousands) of them in series and parallel to reach
the 100 kWh single car capacity. The proposed replacement 2170 is only
has slightly more capacity.

I just wonder why they do not make really big Li-ion cells.

Likely because they need a lot in parallel to achieve the current and power needed.


Are Li-ion batteries really needed for power buffering? Can't lead acid batteries be used? The telephone company seems to have used them successfully for many years. Li-ion are used for transportation because they have a much better energy to weight ratio.

The ABB 40 MW BESS unit in Fairbanks Alaska used NiCd in 2010, not
lead acrid. Perhaps there are some reason.

It is hard to find much data on the details of such installations. I do know one company is using repurposed used lead acid batteries for energy storage on a small scale for offices.

Some technical information about BESS at
https://library.e.abb.com/public/3c4e15816e4a7bf1c12578d100500565/Case_Note_BESS_GVEA_Fairbanks-web.pdf

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 11:16:24 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 8/3/19 12:44 PM, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 17:15:00 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/08/19 16:44, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 3 Aug 2019 14:40:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

Worth a try!

https://tinyurl.com/y67eltrh

What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on
good days?

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley.
I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries
aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble
in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of
cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun
don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?


That's what car radiators are for, to efficiently turn your gas money
into heat to eject into space

Cars are to get me, optionally with other people and stuff, from place
to place efficiently and with minimum hassle. They do that very well.
They are not a problem that needs to be solved.

If people enjoy charging for hours and planning routes to accomodate
range limits and charging station locations, and shutting off heat and
a/c and lights as part of their game, and driving cramped, ugly cars,
and counting every penney they presumably save, let them have their
silly fun.

If the want to Save The Earth, they should forego heat and a/c and
vacations on airplanes. Stay home in the dark and sweat.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 10:12:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak load to
use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent
for days at a time when a blocking high pressure is over
the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind
output. X% of the time the wind output is less than X%
of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas
turbines on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't
care how we get our energy, provided the arithmetic
(technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that
if you install X GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW
of conventional plant.

That's not the case of we seriously revise our economies and
lifestyles, which is the actual bottom-line goal.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/08/19 17:02, Rick C wrote:

On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:41:37 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 15:01, Rick C wrote:
On Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 5:12:51 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 04/08/19 09:35, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Sun, 4 Aug 2019 08:06:08 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All
of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak
load to use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

We don't have sun, we have wind. But that is non-existent for days at a
time when a blocking high pressure is over the UK.

Rule of thumb from measurements of the entire UK wind output. X% of the
time the wind output is less than X% of peak output.

Hence for 3 days a year we expect ~1% of the peak output.

Unless you are a renewable purist, why not run some NG fired gas turbines
on those days that the wind production is low.

I am very much a pragmatist in these respects. I don't care how we get our
energy, provided the arithmetic (technical, financial, AGW) adds up.

The renewable zealots /really/ don't like considering that if you install X
GW of wind power, then you can retire 0 GW of conventional plant. The
renewable zealots also absolutely refuse to discuss whether the cost of
such "idle" conventional plant should be added to the cost of the wind
plant.

The idle plants don't cost extra if they aren't used all the time. If you
want preventing carbon pollution to be free, then keep moving, let someone
else up front. Given enough time renewables will be the lowest cost
solution, even with the backup generation. For fossil fuel plants the
capital cost doesn't dominate, it's fuel costs. Remove the fuel costs and
the remaining capacity isn't so expensive.

Again, you are unwittingly myopic - and inaccurate.

Note the key phrase "not economic", and please explain this
news from last week....

The German utility giant RWE will close its last UK coal plant
after the coming winter, leaving only four remaining coal plants
powering British homes.

RWE will close the Aberthaw B power station in south Wales at
the end of March 2020 after half a century generating electricity
from coal.

“The reasons given for the closure are economic – the plant has
rarely run over the last few months,” said Kelvin Mawer, a
regional officer at Unite. “However, the decision to close has
come a lot earlier than expected.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/01/german-utilities-firm-rwe-to-close-its-last-uk-coal-plant-in-2020

I'm not going to try to connect things that aren't connected.

Yes, we've noted that you don't like to connect inconvenient truths.

That's deceitful and objectionable.


For long time fuel storage a liquid fuel would be better, but also these
have issues with long time (month, years) storage. For biodiesel, there
can be issues with bacteria and algae growth, clogging fuel filters.

We don't have enough gas storage in the UK - the market sees no need for
it. Yes, that's a "Ford Pinto" attitude, and demonstrates that "the market"
needs to be controlled. But that's a heresy.

Yup, the UK is stuffed. Better get used to it.

Agreed, the UK energy industry is screwed up beyond belief.

Political/economic ideology is the core reason.

Ok, sorry about that. You can always move.

Where to?

Soon Europe won't be possible, I haven't got enough cash to buy
my way into Australia, and I don't fancy Costa Rica.