Ran out of gas but depleted battery got me home

[ThudnBlundr]

We don't have grid scale batteries, and maybe never will have on the scale needed. They are not a panacea, anymore than I'm suggesting that fuel cells and electrolysis are a panacea. They are all part of THE answer, not simply AN answer in themselves. Please recognise that rather than being fixated on one technology that you think is the answer to all of the planet's problems.

There is a grid-scale battery in Australia that has saved the grid there millions already.

I'm not "fixated on one technology" - where on earth do you get that idea. What I am interested in is the physics behind the hype. So I pointed out that Hydrogen is woefully inefficient. Fossil fuels are even less efficient: the ICE in isolation peaks at 30%, but is often well below 10% - the rest of the infrastructure only adds inefficiency. So rather than being "fixated on one technology", you could say I'm fixated on cost and efficiency.

 

[ChrisMiller]

There is a grid-scale battery in Australia that has saved the grid there millions already.

No there isn't. There's a 100MWh (soon to be 200MWh, apparently) battery setup in S Australia, specifically to help stabilise their grid - because they have too much wind power and not enough thermal generation capacity, which caused the whole state grid to fall over a few years ago. The UK uses about 30GW (40GW to manage peaks) so would need 200 such stations to provide an hour's capacity. To cover for four cloudy, windless days in winter (not exactly unknown) we'd need 20,000 such stations. File under "never going to happen"'.

 

[greendwarf]

The simplest way of storing surplus energy is to push water up hill - to drive turbines on the way back down.

 

[ChrisMiller]

The simplest way of storing surplus energy is to push water up hill - to drive turbines on the way back down.

True, and it's also one of the most efficient means of energy storage. The largest such power station in the UK (and still, I think, in the world) is at Dinorwig near Snowdon. It can produce just under 1.8GW for a little over 5 hours, for a total capacity of 9.1GWh (when it was built in the 80s, the idea was to cover sudden surges in demand, like millions of kettles being switched on at half-time in the Cup Final), ~50x greater than the upgraded Aussie battery setup I mentioned. So 15 to 20 Dinorwigs could power the UK grid for 5 hours - 3 or 4 hundred would be needed to cover for those 4 cloudy, windless, winter days. Grid scale energy storage is hard (effectively impossible with current and foreseeable technologies).

 

[greendwarf]

And presumably you could get G-d to do the initial heavy lifting by installing water turbines into rivers?

 

[ChrisMiller]

River power is a good solution if you can combine low population density with lots of fast flowing rivers (i.e. mountains). Sweden is the poster boy for this, with its electricity coming from 40% hydro, 40% nuke, 12% wind, 8% other. It's a non-starter in England (and most countries), our rivers aren't sufficiently large and fast-flowing to generate more than a rounding error in our total energy requirement.

 

[greendwarf]

Even if you use the windfarm approach of lots of micro energy turbines?

 

[mellobob]

River power is a good solution if you can combine low population density with lots of fast flowing rivers (i.e. mountains). Sweden is the poster boy for this, with its electricity coming from 40% hydro, 40% nuke, 12% wind, 8% other. It's a non-starter in England (and most countries), our rivers aren't sufficiently large and fast-flowing to generate more than a rounding error in our total energy requirement.

Environmentalists don't like hydro power. Dams prevent fish migration and upset other parts of the river's ecology. Many are calling for the removal of hydro dams so the rivers can return to their "wild" state.

 

[ChrisMiller]

There are two different basic types of hydropower. You can dam an existing river valley (like the Hoover in US or Three Gorges in China) to create your power-generating 'head' artificially; or you can use something more closely approximating a large mountain stream, with little or no dam needed (an extreme example being at Niagara Falls). The former incurs the wrath of environmentalists for the reasons you mention*, but that's not where most of Sweden's (or Norway's or Switzerland's or Scotland's) hydro power comes from.

* and others: the vegetation in the drowned valley decays and releases CO2 and methane, not to mention the vast amounts of concrete required, which is very carbon-intensive to manufacture. Further many environmentalists don't really want a solution to their putative problems, which are a disguise for their real purpose, which is to 'destroy capitalism' or (in extreme cases) reduce the global population by an order of magnitude. The evidence for this is that If they really wanted to reduce CO2 emissions, they'd be campaigning for fracking and nuclear power, which most of them abhor.

 

[mellobob]

The evidence for this is that If they really wanted to reduce CO2 emissions, they'd be campaigning for fracking and nuclear power, which most of them abhor.

I think that nuclear is the only way we're going to solve all the problems of climate change.