The researchers ran simulations based on varying levels of battery and electric car storage. Electric cars, which could be tapped during daytime hours to help meet peak demand, provide the cheapest storage option since most of their costs would be absorbed by their owners, Kempton said.
"But with cars, you run into resource constraints," Kempton said. "It's not like every person in PJM is going to have five electric vehicles."
He added, "With wind and solar we don't see the same kind of constraints."
While most analysts believe the world can -- and, if the worst effects of climate change are to be averted, must -- transfer to a predominantly renewable-based energy economy, the role of fossil fuels as backup power supply is still hotly debated.
An article in the Los Angeles Times this week cited several sources as claiming that upscaling renewable would need to be met with a corresponding rise in traditional fossil fuel power plants in order to ensure baseload power supply.
According the University of Delaware study, a large enough system of renewable energy generators could feasibly fill its own reliability gaps. "In our 99.9 percent scenario, we found that, in four years, only five times would you need to bring fossil-fuel plants back online to ensure power supply," Kempton said.
Rather than build new plants, a few of the coal or gas plants offset by new renewable supplies could be kept online to provide that backup power, he said.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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34 Comments
Add CommentI'm not sure what in France Lamar is on about, but I think he's peddaling something and I think this is not the forum for that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo the numbers in this article really make sense? Is 72 GW a realistic test of this strategy? Doing a little research, I find the current installed electrical generating capacity in the US is about 1100 GW, so 72 GW is far from accurately representing 1/5th of the US electrical grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf 99% reliability requires about a 3x generating capacity, we would need ~ 3500 GW of renewables to replace current total US generating capacity. Not counting hydroelectric capacity in current renewable base, we currently have about 40 GW, so we would need nearly a 100 factor expansion of renewables.
If we're going to be serious about a conversion to renewables, we have to have the scaling right to understand the size of the endeavor.
There´s no mention in the article about load management, other than the car battery option. With comprehensive grid load management, the reliability might be even easier to achieve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisoldvic #4
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...and any discussion of load management should include the costs of it:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Germany_faces_multibillion-Euro_grid_bill-1212127.html
It would be interesting to know if costs like this are factored into the Delaware model.
Invest a decent sum in liquid fluoride thorium reactor and it might replace fossil fuel fully, with the added benefit of burning radioactive waste. It is only waste if you do not know how to use it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only reason that renewables are on the grid is that the massive stabilizing force of fossil fuel fired plants are able to smooth out the shocks of the renewables turning off and on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more renewables that you place on a grid, the more unstable and unusable the grid becomes. Eventually it will collapse; it simply cannot handle the power turing off and on all the time, anymore than the circuits in your house can handle having the air conditioner, the fridge, the heater and the stove turning off and on at the same time.
Furthermore, claiming car batteries as storage is asinine. This would only work if all of the people decided not to drive their cars anymore. If they did that, why have cars? Silly,naive and ignorant of the way people live.
So what do we do with renewables? They may have an important role at point of consumption generation. Many homes could conceivably be designed to "get off the grid" if the cost of renewables was to drop low enough. I'd be interested in that myself if the cost wasn't presently 25% or more of the value of my house.
Long distance transmission of renewable power is counter-productive. Why do eco-alarmists insist that we limit our food consumption to only locally produced food to minimize our carbon footprint, but then ask us to buy green power produced thousands of miles away?
Oh yeah, because the eco-alarmists are not engineers, the are NGO activists. Real solutions mean nothing to them as that is not how they get paid.
Instead of dumping the overload why not use it to pump water uphill, then during times of under power allow the water to turn generators and buffer the load. It's not super-efficient but if the power's going to be dumped anyway, then store in an easily used manner other than batteries. Sure there'd be losses from the applications through thermodynamics but it would not be generating greenhouse gasses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRetention of dams is a sticking point but everything is a trade off so use existing structures which already have generating capacity.
You all make good points. I wish this article would have actually stated the costs of implementing these various levels of reliability, including their geo-spacial requirements. Also I agree with Shoshin regarding using electric cars as backup energy. Would ANY consumer really want to give electricity back to the electric company and risk not being able to jump into your car at a whim and go? As it stands right now, it takes 8 hrs to charge a car to make a 60 mile trip (ie to work and back), does anyone really want to chance having an empty tank?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPumped water storage has been done for a while at some places. Tom Sauk in Missouri is a good example (just disregard the environmental disaster associated with it).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShoshin, I think you're disregarding the fact that more renewables added to the grid actually helps balance out the on/off switching that you are referring to. That's really the main thrust of this piece's argument, so you may want to go back and re-read it. This is why the argument was made to have three times the estimated draw requirement as a backup. If you have 30 plants of comparable production , but you only need ten of them to meet demand, then you don't need to worry about the sun shining or the wind blowing at 20 of those locations. It's not incredibly complicated, it's just a different way of finding a solution to the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCharles H, you're exactly right that we should at least try to recoup some of that excess power, and uphill pumping is a good way to do it. I think the main problem is that there are only so many locations where this is a suitable solution. Still, it's worth investing resources in as a way to help balance loads and store energy. Even a small increase in pumping efficiency would make this storage method much more feasible.
"UE was well-aware of the catastrophic results likely to occur if the UR (Upper Reservoir) was overtopped by over-pumping" so it seems as though the operation of the reservoir was incompetent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDam failure from incompetence isn't new but having water stored all over the country could be beneficial.
I knew that this was not new but the idea of dumping clean energy is a really bad idea when the alternative is to burn fossil fuel. I've used battery back up before and worked very well but it's expensive and bulky.
The biggest obstacle will be water-rights and not dams.
I'd be interested to know how much the operation of municipal storage tanks cost. You know, those towers all over the Midwest and the South. Municipal water requires treatment which has a price as well but the water would not be required to be treated twice. There may be other complications of allowing flow for generation but there might be other solutions to dams. How long is Hoover Dam going to be useful before it fills with sediment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like the idea of having excess capacity with renewables; this looks like a good a start to getting rid of a lot of carbon dioxide.
The wind powered generator we used for a couple of decades always put out more power than we could use and it was mechanically buffered to prevent over-charging the batteries. We went without wind at night only two nights every three years and the batteries easily covered us during that period. The wind generated power starting at 10AM and continued through the night. Made in Australia in the 1970s.
Water was pumped at the site via an Aeromotor which is technology that's over 100 yrs old. It was incredibly cost-effective too.
Strictly speaking, the article you mention doesn't refer to load management alone, but to a smart and modernized grid. Some of those upgrades will need to be done even in the absence of "smartness": things wear down and become obsolete. The money mentioned in the article isn't needed tomorrow, but during the period of time from now to 2030.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's just an investment decision like any other, which needs to take into account more than just the total cost: the total benefit is the real goal...
"It's just an investment decision like any other, which needs to take into account more than just the total cost: the total benefit is the real goal..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly! Until green energy becomes cost effective, it will only be implemented sparingly. In other words, the cost of coal and gas has to become high enough to justify investment in other energy sources. There should be a rigorous analysis completed that tries to determine these numbers, and determine a date so that reasonable goals can be set.
I did note the issue of overcapacity. However, I still believe that the solution is flawed. Think of it in terms of energy density; ie., how much power can be liberated from, say, a 1 cubic foot volume. Fossil fuels contain large amounts of energy that can be turned off and on at will. Renewables contain zero stored energy and can only be turned off at will, not on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBalancing loads on a renewable grid will be like balancing the tire on your car while it's moving by randomly throwing small weights at it. Some may stick, but you don't know where, others will be falling off, then jumping back on randomly at different weights.
I doubt that more is better. In this case, more is less.
"Exactly! Until green energy becomes cost effective, it will only be implemented sparingly. In other words, the cost of coal and gas has to become high enough to justify investment in other energy sources. There should be a rigorous analysis completed that tries to determine these numbers, and determine a date so that reasonable goals can be set."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing to disagree with here, provided that the costs are real costs (including the environmental ones). Otherwise, we'll be living off the capital instead of the profits.
The problem with "environmental costs" is that its found nowhere on a utility company's ledger, it is both difficult to quantify and manage. Money drives business not the environment. We need to stop fooling ourselves into believing otherwise. I have seen my local utility's "carbon offset plan", and its laughable to see that they bought farm ground, leased it for farming, and claimed it was offsetting the carbon of the neighboring power plant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study is just another Greenie schlock renewables hype analysis, based on completely ridiculous assumptions, that destroy every conclusion that was made. As usual, the analysis was done by people with zero qualifications in the field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo these morons want to take Wind @ $10k to $20k per kw delivered energy, add Solar @ $20k to $60k per kw, add some storage and long distance transmission to that and triple overbuild to make up for intermittency (which it won't).
So minimum $60k per kw delivered energy for their fantasy energy scam. Let's see per capita energy consumption it the USA is an avg of 11kw continuous. In Canada it is 15kw. So for a family of four that is 44-60kw. Now at $60k per kw that = $2.6M USA or $3.6M in Canada spent every 20-30yrs for each family. Well I don't know about you but I can't afford to spend $3.6 million every 20 or 30 yrs just for my Energy share. What a nutty plan.
These type of Renewables Pixie power schemes have been presented before, and torn to shreds by REAL power engineers. For some honest, serious analysis of the extreme difficulty and cost of using Renewable energy:
This analysis is for the more reliable than Wind, Solar Energy in one of the best locations on Earth, Australia:
bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-solar-realities.pdf
"..Solar power is totally uneconomic and is not as environmentally benign as another lower-cost, lower-emissions option – nuclear power. Advocates argue that solar is not the total solution, it will be part of a mix of technologies. But this is just hiding the facts. Even where solar is a small proportion of the total energy mix, its high costs are buried in the overall costs, and it adds to the total costs of the system…
The capital cost of solar power would be 25 times more than nuclear power to provide the NEM’s demand [$2.8 trillion for the least-cost solar solution with backup versus $120 billion for nuclear]. The minimum power output, not the peak or average, is the main factor governing solar power’s economic viability. The least cost solar option would emit 20 times more CO2 (over the full life cycle) and use at least 400 times more land area compared with nuclear (not including mining; the mining area and volumes would also be greater for the solar option than for the nuclear option)…
Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy, but these additional costs must be carried by others.."
bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/
A more reasonable Renewables plan by Jacobson is analyzed here, even that just doesn't work:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/
So triple over-build to mitigate intermittency, just a ridiculous idea. Why not just build the much cheaper Nuclear instead, and skip the triple expensive overbuild and super-pricey triple or quadruple oversized transmission lines? Sometimes it seem like Greenies believe power transmission is free. Just the latest B2H 500kv transmission line of 310 mile length has a 30 yr levelized cost of transmitting intermittent Wind of 27 cents per kwh.
Just the cost of the power transmission trunk lines to supply Australia with Wind & Solar energy is $180B vs $120B to supply all of Australia with Nuclear Energy - skip the long distance transmission.
And excellent analysis of Wind Energy, high costs, intermittency, storage difficulties and extreme expense for Australia:
bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/13/wind-and-carbon-emissions-peter-lang-responds/
The extreme costs of supplying Wind Energy, by a REAL Electrical Engineer not a "marine scientist":
masterresource.org/2011/07/connecting-dots-wind-costs/
Anthony Watts rips apart this phoney study which "..made me laugh out loud when I read it for the sheer disconnect with reality..":
wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/10/a-lo-press-release-on-renewable-energy-from-wishful-thinkers-at-the-university-of-delaware/
On transmission costs, there are some chickens coming home to roost with the German renewable experiment:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Germany_faces_multibillion-Euro_grid_bill-1212127.html
Some think even these costs are an underestimate.
dwbd: thanks for the wattsupwith link, but it's correctly:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/10/a-lol-press-release-on-renewable-energy-from-wishful-thinkers-at-the-university-of-delaware/
Even taking the model at it's face value, 99.9% reliability translates as about 9 hrs./yr of blackout. It's unlikely to be uniformly distributed, so some stores and households can look forward to losing freezers of food, or if you're in an elevator at the time.....Even if it's not complete blackout, particularly industrial consumers (2/3 of the total) are often very dependent on the stability (ie. no fluctuating voltages) of supply.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact the German experiment, even before it's really got underway, has led to a boom in the purchase of emergency generation equipment (sorry!: it's in German):
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-87737177.html
Has the cost of consumers having to have failure coverage been factored in?
Another couple of far superior analysis' show the serious problems and high costs of Renewable Intermittency, using the Australia example:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/
Comparing the cost of Nuclear vs Renewable Electricity generation for Australia:
oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf
"..The nuclear scenario is roughly 1/4 the capital cost, 1/3 the cost of electricity, and 1/3 the CO2 abatement cost of ..Scenario 1 - Baseline (i.e. gas turbines running on biofuels).
Furthermore, the nuclear scenario would provide a reliable electricity supply whereas [renewable] scenario would not..
Of the four renewable energy scenarios considered, the fourth would provide the best reliability and least cost electricity. It's CO2 emissions are 2.8 times higher than with the nuclear scenario.
The estimated capital cost of the additions to the transmission and distribution networks, needed for the renewable energy scenarios, is $107 billion for Scenarios 1
to 3, $67 billion for Scenario 4, but just $6 billion for the nuclear scenario.. The cost of the additions to the transmission and distribution system for the EDM
baseline scenario is nearly as much as the total capital cost of the nuclear generation component, $115 billion, of the nuclear scenario..."
And these Renewable scenario's are based on gas turbines to make up for intermittency not the much more expensive overbuild, long distance transmission and H2 storage.
Check out the output of the University of Delaware's 2MW wind turbine in real time:
www.ceoe.udel.edu/lewesturbine/
Right now it is putting out 24.3kw out of the 2000kw rating with a 9 mph wind. Wonderful, got to luv that green energy.
Update on the University of Delaware's Wind Turbine, the wind is now 7 mph and the turbine is putting out 0 kw, most likely actually using power to keep the electronics, heating & deicing powered up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author promotes 'dumping' excess electricity when demand is lower than supply.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomething NOT mentioned is the potential to use excess electricity to generate Hydrogen and Oxygen from water.
Save the Hydrogen, and burn it to generate electricity during periods when demand for electricity is greater than supply.
peteb :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgenerating hydrogen by electrolysis and storing it IS part of the Delaware scenario:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121210133507.html
- "using hydrogen for storage, we can run an electric system"
But a large part of the energy is lost generating and burning the hydrogen.
And over at the wattsupwith link, some people who seem to know about it say that storing hydrogen is an absolute nightmare : as the smallest molecule, it easily escapes through the walls of containers.
Problem with that is you have electricity to H2 stored at high pressure = 50% efficient. H2 back to electricity maybe 50% efficient. So 25% round-trip efficiency. You've just taken the most expensive energy Wind & Solar, and tripled that high expense with overbuild and now you want to multiply that by 4X to store it in H2. What you are talking about is TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, revolution, massive unemployment, anarchy, mass starvation. A crazy idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBusiness is booming now, the 2000kw wind turbine is now putting out 137kw @ a brisk 11 mph Wind. Woo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNobody knows the real costs in co2 emissions of building, decommissioning, mining for fuel, and waste disposal for either a nuclear or fossil fuel fired thermal generating station. That doesn't even consider the cost of nuclear accidents, and non-co2 pollution of of the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe power losses of long distance power transmission of about 10% with very high voltage DC transmission lines is acceptable if you have power sources that are cheap like hydro electric peer from remote places. In Manitoba our hydroelectric power costs the consumer ~$0.07/kw/hr. The dams that produce most of the power are 300 miles away. So, although the power losses are significant, the total cost is still very cheap.
If you team up renewables like wind and use the hydro reservoirs to store energy produced by the wind farms, there is no excess energy to be dumped other than the excess water going over the spillway.
The really cheap natural gas coming on line now makes even such renewable systems uneconomic. I hope that it replaces coal as the go-to fuel now, since it has the least co2 emissions of all the fossil fuels.
Pumping water uphill is a well-known method of energy storage and commonly used in many countries, with a decent efficiency between 75 and 80%, the trouble is the volume of water you need is very large, so that you can usually not store more a few hours of use, and the cost of building ends up actually quite large, there's a German project that was estimated at 700 millions Euro that recently ended up at 1.7 billions. To make that profitable, you'd better use it almost every day. If you build it to use it only a few times a year, it's just awfully expensive for the use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jimfromcanada : It's quite efficient to use wind power together with hydro electric power, but there's very few places that have a massive availability for more hydro electricity. At 3,3 inhabitant per square kilometers, Canada is one of the countries in the world with the lowest population density and one of those that has also the most water. The average in Europe is 30 times more, this means that the water that's falling never delivers enough energy to be significant with regard to the use. The US at 31 are already much more dry, and Canada alone will never provide enough hydro power for all of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"..Nobody knows the real costs in co2 emissions.. for either a nuclear or.. thermal.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUh, duh, yep they do. Its called full lifecycle emissions, if you bothered reading more and talking less you would find out all about it. And Nuclear has about the lowest full LCA emissions of ALL power generation.
"..power losses of long distance power transmission of about 10% with very high voltage DC transmission lines is acceptable if you have power sources that are cheap like hydro electric.."
Nope. The power losses are a percentage per unit distance, the amount is determined by economics, i.e. when the cost of reducing power loss = the value of the electricity saved that is optimal design. That means longer distance means proportionately higher cost and higher losses. Long distance transmission is VERY EXPENSIVE, and quickly reaches a point where it is more economical to just build a local power plant.
Hydro ISN'T cheap. New Hydro installations are running $6-13K per delivered kw. Newest Quebec is $7.3k/kwavg & Muskrat Falls in Nfld is $13.2k/kwavg. This approx double the cost of new Nuclear, with FAR higher environmental destruction, higher emissions and unlike Nuclear is exceedingly limited. Nuclear can supply our entire civilization's energy, Hydro cannot even come remotely close to that.
"..renewables like wind and use the hydro reservoirs to store energy produced by the wind farms, there is no excess energy to be dumped other than the excess water going over the spillway.."
?!? water being spilled IS energy dumped. EXACTLY what is happening in Ontario when the Wind is blowing, also Nuclear is being dumped both yielding ZERO CO2 & COST savings. A total waste of money. And what isn't thrown away is being exported at an avg price of 1 cent per kwh vs Ontarians are forced to pay 14 cents per kwh for the worthless Wind Energy, Wind is given pride-of-place on the grid by political edict. Just criminal.
Most Hydro is run-of-river and can't store significant energy. And you can't store river water willy-nilly, there are fish and other users, like canoeists & agriculture, that require the river to flow at normal levels.
And using expensive long distance transmission to store Wind is uneconomic. The lines need to be loaded up 24/7 to be economical. Not used intermittently whenever Wind is low. Much more economical to use precious Hydro or Pumped Hydro storage to store water during entire nighttime when cheap baseload Nuclear & Coal supplies energy and release the storage during the daytime peak. And that is exactly what they do.
There was no mention that long distance transmission would reduce redundancy requirements. The three options to get to a renewable energy based economy are (1) excess capacity, which is the basis of this article; (2) energy storage somewhere near the demand or supply; (3) a vast increase in transmission capacity coupled with some of (1_ and some of (2). Option #3 is the lowest cost option from a continental scale perspective, but the Balkanization of the grid makes it very difficult to implement...I certainly understand why Professor Willett limited himself to PJM.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUse excess electricity for heat pumps,shut major appliances off when there is no wind.Windmills can be shut off if the power is not required.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSir, I am engineer and researcher. I researched out endless power. only air and water rotation can produce power without fuel. This is world biggest research. power cost 400kwh/one$.www.powerwithoutfuel.in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo climate change. NO poverty. New physics is researched out. visit me. The thermodynamics is out of date.