May 8, 2024

"Across the country, power companies are increasingly using giant batteries the size of shipping containers to address renewable energy’s biggest weakness..."

"... the fact that the wind and sun aren’t always available.... When power companies first began connecting batteries to the grid in the 2010s, they mainly used them to smooth out small disruptions in the flow of electricity.... But power companies also use batteries to engage in a type of trading: charging up when electricity is plentiful and cheap and then selling power to the grid when electricity supplies are tighter and more expensive. In California power prices often crash around midday, when the state produces more solar power than it needs.... Prices then soar in the evening when solar disappears...."

From "Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity/They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly" (NYT).

86 comments:

Achilles said...

This is so abusively expensive only the government could think it was a good idea because they just take other people's money to make it happen.

People that vote for this are just fucking stupid.

The future is nuclear. Period.

Enigma said...

Be green! Don't mine the earth for coal and oil, mine the earth for the chemicals needed to make large batteries the size of giant batteries.

Doh!

Wince said...

Okay, take out the power station...

Thank you!

RideSpaceMountain said...

And most of the lithium in them comes from open-pit mines in Africa worked by children. Where the hell are the masked green peace activists now? [crickets chirping]

narciso said...

its a challenge to get the paragraph entirely wrong that way

Original Mike said...

Behind the paywall, but I'd be willing to bet the ranch there'd no analysis of the feasibility of installing enough battery backup to power the grid.

Old and slow said...

Stupid, expensive, and unnecessary. Other than that, it seems like a pretty great idea. Ever see a lithium evaporation pond? We're going to be needing a LOT more of them. Rare earth metals and copper mines are also a sight to see.

Original Mike said...

I drove through a windfarm last Sunday. Mile upon mile of motionless windmills. There was no wind.

OldManRick said...

You should read the Manhattan Contrarian's analysis of how many batteries are really needed. In many ways, he has replaced USS Clueless as the rational voice of engineering on the internet.

For example:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-4-27-a-shockingly-inept-report-on-battery-storage-of-energy-from-the-iea

Leland said...

If you think burning oil is bad for the environment but giant shipping container size batteries are a great option; you are virtue signaling your low intelligence.

But yeah, lots of batteries will be needed for alternative energy to continue to provide power on cold dark winter nights. The good news is presswatchers.org can function on really tiny batteries, like AAAs.

The Drill SGT said...

it's a scam. batteries provide minutes of power, when days are needed

n.n said...

MWh? GWh? Clouds? Seasons? Dust? Water?

Rare earth elements as in sparsely distributed.

Environmental hazards from toxic resource recovery to non-renewables reclamation.

Labor and environmental arbitrage.

Intermittent and unreliable energy production.

Carbon processed precursors to a Green infrastructure.

That said, green drivers, gray-cum-black technology, spread the Green blight on land and sea.

Kirk Parker said...

Achilles,

The future is only *mostly* nuclear. You still need peaking power, which nukes are no better at providing than any other form of steam turbine generator.

John henry said...

We see and hear a lot about the artisanal mining in Africa by Kids . I wonder what percentage of lithium is mined that way

Africa has a number of large open pit mines and by large open pit I mean a mile or so across with huge haul trucks constantly running up.

We never hear about them we only hear about the kids

We should worry about the kids we should worry about this artisanal mining but I wonder why it's going on it doesn't seem like it should be needed.

John Henry

Joe said...

EV battery fires go big!

Original Mike said...

Behind a paywall so I can't check, but I'd be willing to bet the ranch that there's no analysis of the feasibility of grid-scale battery backup.

Dave Begley said...

Any mention by the NYT of the cost for these batteries?

Steve Hayward and John Hinderaker of Power Line and, I think, Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian have run the numbers on batteries and it is an astronomical number to buy batteries that would really be useful.

CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world. And I've recently decided to get in on the scam with a retail solar company. Next up will be federal income tax credits for me. I'm tired of knowing what the scam is and not making any money on it. I plan on making some money on it just like the liberal elites do.

Aggie said...

This is what happens when your energy policy provides the wrong incentives. So, instead of creating new infrastructure to address aging and growth-related shortfalls, take the tax break and install a battery - and then hope that the unaddressed existing power generation can charge it during off-peak hours, so that we can now depend upon it for peak-shaving. The shortfalls that are due to aging infrastructure or rampant population growth and well-known, well-forecast - and ignored. New & Shiny Batteries!

This, instead of building new plants that actually create a new supply of energy. In Texas, we are 3½ months away from the hottest month - September - and ERCOT is already warning about electricity shortfalls soon. Awesome.

n.n said...

Yes, nuclear provides large capacity base load power, which does not require supplemental coverage. It generates electricity with large turbines that provide stability without batteries in large-scale land use (environmental blight). Then there is CCGT that are both scalable and weather independent, without the environmental hazards of Green technology.

Iman said...

Sweden leads the way with nuclear…

Two-eyed Jack said...

The Drill SGT says: "it's a scam. batteries provide minutes of power, when days are needed"

In other words, these are just small batteries the size of large batteries.

John henry said...

I think this is the same article I saw Monday it's a bullshit article.

the reporter doesn't even know the difference between MW and mwh. the capacity of a battery is measured in mwh.

1 mw discharge for 1 hour is 1mwh or 1,000kwh

The article never says how many mwh are installed. Does it?

I like the idea of batteries. they can have a lot of use in a utility grid to stabilize loads, is the need for peaking turbine and more.

But they are expensive. To make solar power a viable alternative we need at least a week of battery backup. Some say more. 1-2 months.

Right now backup capacity is measured in minutes

John Henry

n.n said...

windfarm last Sunday. Mile upon mile of motionless windmills. There was no wind.

No wind or rather drivers that occur outside of the operational range of safe, sustainable, and/or profitable. A Green blight upon the land and sea from recovery to reclamation.

Duke Dan said...

Literally the same as how hydro electric would work in pumping water back up hill at night, usually to take unused nuclear baseload that would otherwise be sent to ground.

Original Mike said...

"it's a scam. batteries provide minutes of power, when days are needed"

It's even worse than that. Months are needed to deal with long stretches where grid demand exceeds power production. It's impossible.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"We should worry about the kids we should worry about this artisanal mining but I wonder why it's going on it doesn't seem like it should be needed."

It's going on for the same reason diamonds or African timber are harvested so inefficiently - an economic niche for those willing or needing to make a quick buck. It's all about scale, tribal chieftains and African potentates aren't interested in boosting efficiency when their methods involve people they consider worthless.

Think of Longshank's line from Braveheart: "Arrows? Arrows cost money. Use up the Irish. The dead cost nothing."

TobyTucker said...

Article paywalled so I don't know the details. I would think you'd need a goodly number of these batteries (depending on how much you depend on solar) and I rather doubt a giant battery comes cheap. Not to mention they'll need to be regularly replaced as they lose efficiency after a certain number of charge/discharge cycles. (Can they even be recycled?)

The plan almost sounds good but I don't know how the economics work out. Sure, you'll have electricity available when you didn't before. but haw expensive is it? Hmmm... does that even matter when you're going "green"? You're saving the Earth!!!

Dave Begley said...

The Drill SGT is correct. It costs a fortune to have battery storage for any length of time.

Sebastian said...

From the article:

"But batteries remain too costly to replace many of the larger gas-burning plants that provide steadier power day and night.

“You don’t want to necessarily build a system where you’ve got batteries to suck up every last megawatt-hour, because that’s a pretty expensive system,” said Meredith Fowlie, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Today’s lithium-ion batteries can only deliver power for two to four hours before needing to recharge. If costs keep falling, battery companies might be able to extend that to eight or ten hours (it’s a matter of adding more battery packs) but it may not be economical to go far beyond that, said Nate Blair, an energy storage expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

That means additional long-duration storage technologies could be needed. If California wants to rely largely on renewable energy, it will have to handle weeklong periods where there’s no wind and little sun. Another challenge: There’s far more solar power available in summer than in winter, and no battery today can store electricity for months to manage those seasonal disparities."

In the end, of course, the green transition will require coercive rationing.

John henry said...

Solar power and most wind is generated as DC and must be converted to A for the grid, usually by solid state inverters.

AC generated this way has a different wave form from AC generated by a rotating generator. Getting them to work together requires some tricks. Not difficult but takes money and proper design.

A turbine generator has tons, sometimes scores of tons of rotating mass. This "flywheel" inertia means that changes in load don't affect it rapidly.

Batteries and inverters have no flywheel inertia making them sensitive to load changes.

This can be and is dealt with. But no one ever talks about it.

As the ratio of nonrotating ac to rotating ac increases it will get harder to deal with.

John Henry

Rusty said...

Oh good lord! How much more money are us taxpayers going to be asked to waste in the name of "renewables"?
Nuclear power is safe, reliable and available 24/7/365.

Original Mike said...
"I drove through a windfarm last Sunday. Mile upon mile of motionless windmills. There was no wind."

"And every one of those unmoving windmills require electricity to keep their systems at optimal temperature. So a net waste of electricity. Not to mention all the oil it takes to lubricate all the mechanical sysytems.

rhhardin said...

Mr. Wizard 1950 : "Tomorrow, Timmy, we'll make battery acid."

gilbar said...

giant batteries the size of shipping containers

and how much is that? enough to charge how many EVs? 5? 10? 2?
also..
If you've got a hundred acre field FULL of shipping containers FULL of batteries...
How BIG a fire would that be?
How much rare earth metals would be needed to be bought from China to make?
(of course, China will make the batteries (and the shipping containers) too)
seems like the Whole Green New Deal is a GREAT DEAL... For China

Jim Howard said...

As usual Texas leads the way in grid stabilization with large battery storesge plants. We have two of them with more on the way.

We didn’t get to be number one in the United States renewables and number five in the world by hiring a whole bunch of lawyers, and only a few engineers to create our renewable energy system

We did have the shit scared out of us two years ago when we had 100 year freeze that took down a big chunk of our electrical grid generation capability. There was no wind and very little sun, and the waterside of one of our four near nuclear reactors froze.

When that happened, the grid frequency of 60hz dangerously low. All the generators in an electrical grid have to be synchronized to the same frequency a sudden unexpected drop in grid frequency can cause a cascading effect where the whole grid could potentially go black, requiring weeks or months to synchronize

The purpose of our battery plants, and again these are huge installations, it’s to hold the grid frequency steady when unexpected generation failures occur.

The battery plants can only power a small town for a few hours, it can’t back up a whole grid. But what I can do is smooth out the existing generators to avoid the very dangerous black start collapse if several generators go off the air and more or less the same time.

John henry said...

I understand lithium batteries for cars where a high power density is required.

For stationary backup why not use lead-acid? Weight and size should not be an issue. Cost of lead acid is about half of comparable lithium batteries.

It's a proven technology, easily recycled.

They also don't catch fire.

(unless it is the old style that generates hydrogen when charging. Those do blow up when a spark is present. Ask me how I know)

John Henry

gilbar said...

Aggie said...
rampant population growth

THIS is the Great Unspoken Elephant in the room..
A new Nuke plant (or coal plant) will provide service for 50 years, or MORE.
What is the world population going to be like in 50 years?

gadfly said...

In the absence of extensive tests on large grid batteries, the “foundation” of safety design in the grid battery industry is making tweaks in response to real-world incidents. . . They include a system in Surprise, Arizona, that in 2019 caught fire and later exploded, after fire suppressants mixed with the burning batteries, turning the warehouse in which they were installed into a pressure cooker. Nine first responders were injured. Two years later, near Geelong, Australia, a fire broke out during testing at what was then the world’s largest battery installation, a collection of Tesla Megapacks, the EV maker’s grid storage product. High winds spread the flames from one Megapack to a neighboring device, and the blaze took four days to put out.

Mason G said...

From the article:

Today’s lithium-ion batteries can only deliver power for two to four hours before needing to recharge. If costs keep falling, battery companies might be able to extend that to eight or ten hours (it’s a matter of adding more battery packs) but it may not be economical to go far beyond that, said Nate Blair, an energy storage expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Some companies are exploring solutions. In Sacramento, a start-up called ESS is building “flow” batteries that store energy in liquid electrolytes and can last 12 hours or longer. Another start-up, Form Energy, is building a 100-hour iron-air battery.


100 hours? So- four days then, maybe sometime in the future? Where I live, there are times in the winter when we go for a week or two without seeing the sun. This winter, there was a stretch where, in a month and a half, there were maybe six sunny or partly sunny days. And there was practically no wind. What then?

In situations like that, batteries won't be enough. Another power source is needed and it's going to be fossil fuel or nuclear generated. And if you're going to keep these power plants around for when solar/wind/battery power isn't available, why not use them all the time and not waste money building a duplicate (but inferior) generating system?

I'll add another vote for Manhattan Contrarian if you're looking for understandable (for non-ee's) articles on this topic.

Jupiter said...

I am prepared to believe that the people hired by the NYT are so stupid and ignorant that they actually believe the tripe they print. It's a stretch, but I gather they mostly hire from the Ivy League.

Achilles said...

Kirk Parker said...

Achilles,

The future is only *mostly* nuclear. You still need peaking power, which nukes are no better at providing than any other form of steam turbine generator.


Over the next decades the amount of power that goes to things like house utilities will fall relative to other things. Variable demand will fall.

The reason electric vehicles will fail for a decade is because demand for electricity to train Machine Learning algorithms is going to eclipse everything else. A lot of people and smaller companies are going to train their own agents and this means electricity.

There is currently an arms race in the Financial sector to train the best Trading Algorithms. All of the non-Algo traders are getting wiped one by one.

Electricity will become the king commodity much the way oil is now.

I foresee private electricity generation exploding as municipal providers are overwhelmed.
Electricity generation will decentralize and people who spend their own money are going to use the cheapest methods. The big data processors like Google and Microsoft have moved huge operations to a town called Quincy, Washington because it is a desert where they can use evaporative cooling and ~2 cent/kW hour electricity prices.

The cheapest method from installation to operation is going to be thorium salt nuclear most likely in places where hydroelectric is not an option. I could see generators being built next to coal mines and nat gas mines as well.

Richard said...

Batteries are one of the least environmentally friendly technologies. Why don’t the environmentalists complain about the harm they do to the environment? For the same reason they don’t complain about all of the birds that are being killed by the wind farms. Environmentalism is just a smokescreen for their real purpose - gaining power and being able to control the populace.

iowan2 said...

Last week the WHO radio evening drive time guy interviewed an electrical expert.

The Nations generation capacity is going to fall drastically short. EV cars? Nope.

AI data centers. They are on the books to be built, swamping the US capacity to generate electricity

This is a good point to remind everyone. IF ACGCC was real. As has been the message for over 30 years, we would have been building Nuclear power plants. By today 70% would be nuclear, the rest water, wind and solar. almost nothing from fossil fuels

That has not happened. ACTIONS not words, inform my opinions.

Sebastian said...

"EV battery fires go big!"

They may be small batteries the size of big batteries, but at least the fires will be big fires the size of big fires.

CJinPA said...

In the end, I think the move away from fossil fuels will not entirely succeed, but will produce plenty of benefits. The catcalls don't acknowledge the benefits of trying.

RJ said...

On-site fuel reserve storage in a gas plant costs a tiny fraction of what these gigantic, expensive, and improbably weak battery arrays will cost, and has a much longer lifetime.

Howard said...

Most lithium comes from South America and Australia and it's mind using machines. Ride Space Mountain is probably thinking about Cobalt or maybe diamonds.

There's a shit ton of lithium all over the world.

Maybe think of listening to Elon Musk at other times when he's not just praising the Orange Anti-Christ.

Yancey Ward said...

As John Henry points out just about every single article or working paper supporting grid batteries mix up power units with energy units, and I am beginning to suspect that it isn't ignorance but is rather a way to avoid the ugly necessity to cost out the needed number of grid batteries to even provide electrical energy for a few days without sunlight or wind. Mixing them up this way allows one to write that X number of batteries can provide the entire power requirements of the electrical grid generators, but this power supplied has defined no time requirement, so that power from the batteries can be required from 1 second to 1 month or more. If X batteries only supply the required power for 1 hour, then it takes 24X to supply that power over a day, 168X to supply the required power over a week, and 720X to supply that power over a month, etc.

Gospace said...

Kirk Parker said...
Achilles,

The future is only *mostly* nuclear. You still need peaking power, which nukes are no better at providing than any other form of steam turbine generator.


Peaking plants aren't needed if the baseline plants are sized for maximum load. Actually, projected max load plus 10%. Always good to have spare capacity.

But that's how engineer's think, not bean counters. Bean counters hate spares and extra capacity. Not needed! Extra expense!

Big Mike said...

I have a large, south-facing roof. I plan to mount solar panels on it when batteries become small enough and cheap enough that I can store up extra power to use at night. Democrats and self-described environmentalists keep advocating ever more demand on the US power grid, and the same Biden administration that pushes this puts no effort at all into adding generating capacity, load carrying capacity, or hardening the grid. I’m 77 and the day could certainly come before I kick off when those who don’t have some means of powering their house with the grid totally down will freeze to death in the dark.

Joe Smith said...

"In California power prices often crash around midday, when the state produces more solar power than it needs.... Prices then soar in the evening when solar disappears..."

My energy prices are insanely high.

PGE asks us to NOT use electricity from 4pm to 9pm when it is more EXPENSIVE.

That does not track with the above statement.

stlcdr said...

I notice, at home, I have more batteries than power tools designed to take those batteries.

The batteries just sit there doing nothing most of the time, but then need a lot of them in one go. They are expensive batteries, often 2 to 3 times the price of the tool.

Of course, this ignores scalability, and small batteries are different from big batteries, but just ignoring realities for an agenda makes it solely a political one.

Simply, a person should be able to calculate how many batteries (in any shape of form as one chooses) it would take to power their own house for a single day. It's a lot more than one thinks.

loudogblog said...

Just what the environment needs. Gigantic packages of dangerous toxic waste that will have to be disposed of in about eight years.

Static Ping said...

There's not enough battery capacity available to make this a feasible solution except in limited situations. Wind and solar power are unreliable sources of electricity, and there are not enough batteries, even theoretically at max resource extraction, to make this work on a national scale. If you want a stable electrical grid, you need fossil fuels, hydroelectric, and/or nuclear, unless you happen to live next to a volcano and have ample supplies of geothermal available.

The New York Times is gaslighting you.

Ampersand said...

Climate and energy journalism are pervaded by scientific illiterates. The power of that journalism is magnified by our incompetent educational system.

effinayright said...

CJinPA said...
In the end, I think the move away from fossil fuels will not entirely succeed, but will produce plenty of benefits.

The catcalls don't acknowledge the benefits of trying.
***************************

Name them.

Mason G said...

"Environmentalism is just a smokescreen for their real purpose - gaining power and being able to control the populace."

This is the end game. The people pushing this "green energy" crap don't care about the fact it won't be possible to replace ICEs with EVs. They don't intend that most people will be allowed to own a personal vehicle and travel as they please. You'll live in your 15 minute city sardine can- err... multi-family housing, I meant to say, and go where your betters permit you to on mass transit which will run on a schedule they (not you) will determine.

Aggie said...

@Gospace said @ 11:31: "But that's how engineer's think, not bean counters. Bean counters hate spares and extra capacity. Not needed! Extra expense! "


Bean Counters think in terms of cost, because that's what they measure. Engineers think in terms of value, because that's what they design for, and try to deliver.

A Bean Counter will never understand the invoices he doesn't see, that never get written when an Engineer makes a value-based choice. The two principles don't intersect. I can't count the number of times I've tried to explain this to Bean Counter types. Sometimes, it sinks in.

You know you've achieved a success in Value Engineering when something that you've completed has so few problems, that you never hear anything about it from the Operations team.

tommyesq said...

Giant batteries the size of small tanks of gas...

minnesota farm guy said...

Small nukes are the answer. Anything else is B/S.

Pillage Idiot said...

Original Mike said...
I drove through a windfarm last Sunday. Mile upon mile of motionless windmills. There was no wind.

5/8/24, 9:28 AM


Non-stem major Democrats, "We can solve that problem with a battery the size of a shipping container. P.S. Math is White Supremacy!"

Greg said...

More people died this week from poverty caused by climate change policy, than have died from climate change since Al Gore lost his election

Temujin said...

Of course everyone not employed by a state government or the US government knows at least 5 reasons why this Giant Battery Backup is not a solution for anything. At best it's an admittance- albeit a bad one- that solar and wind isn't going to cut it long term. Or, hell...come to think of it, it's not working in the short term either. I mean, literally nothing is running on solar and/or wind when you look at the scope needed to power the entire US, let alone megalopolises like New York/New Jersey, Chicago/Detroit, Los Angeles/San Diego, Washington DC/Baltimore, Dallas/Ft Worth, Houston, etc. etc.

Plus we're going to run out of poor black kids in the DRC used to dig up the rare earth materials for the Chinese mining companies and Chinese refineries to refine the necessary cobalt, lithium, etc. used in the batteries.

Seriously, if people want an alternate source of energy, we need to keep looking, working on something new. An actual answer. Not something Al Gore suggested, but something that actually works.

gilbar said...

in today's WSJ
After the Cold War, the West took a vacation from history. Now it’s urgent that we get back to work.
By Bjorn Lomborg

Rich countries, global institutions and the private-jet set haven’t always been obsessed with climate change. Their preoccupation began in the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War. That wasn’t a coincidence. The Soviet Union fell, communism was vanquished, and peace prevailed among major powers. As Francis Fukuyama brashly claimed, history had ended. All that remained was fixing climate change.

How naive. Time hasn’t been kind to the idea that climate change was humanity’s last problem or that the planet would unite to solve it

China is the world’s pre-eminent greenhouse-gas emitter and produced the largest increase of any nation last year. Renewables made up 40% of China’s primary energy in 1971. By 2011 they had fallen to about 7%, as coal use increased. Renewables have since inched up to 10%. Strong climate action could cost China nearly a trillion dollars annually. No wonder Beijing is dragging its feet.

This dynamic means that most of the world, particularly India and much of Africa, will continue to focus on becoming richer through fossil fuels. Russia and its allies will ignore the West’s fixation on climate change. China will simply make money from selling the West solar panels and electric cars while only modestly curbing its emissions

theCase said...

I worked at a large utility back in the 90s when we were installing giant capacitors housed in semi-trailers parked across northern Wisconsin. They would support the grid during transients caused by lighting strikes.

I'm guessing the batteries do the same thing over a longer period of time, only for minutes instead of milliseconds...

Paul said...

"Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity/They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly"

They are STILL BATTERIES AND HAVE TO BE REPLACED AND DISPOSED OF... DUH... HOW F*CKING STUPID!

And if there are earth quakes??? Acid leaks? And they have to be recharged to boot!

mongo said...

I'm surprised we aren't making more use of Shipstone (r) batteries. From a flashlight to the whole house, the Shipstone corporation powers all your devices.

H/T R.A. Heinlein

Kirk Parker said...

Gospace,

Nameplate capacity has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, which is the need of the generating facility to alter its power production on a moment-by-moment basis. At best, steam plants can be load-following, so far as I know. If you are aware of a steam plant design that can do genuine peaking, I'd love to know more about it.

Old and slow said...

Chemical batteries are a VERY poor method of storing energy, and that is not going to change. All the wishful thinking in the world can't make batteries a sensible option.

Yancey Ward said...

"There's a shit ton of lithium all over the world."

Sure, Howard, the Earth's crust contains a shit ton of lithium, as do the oceans, but that isn't the real problem, but you are probably too stupid to actually know that.

Mikey NTH said...

Ludington Pumped Storage is something. Water is pumped from Lake Michigan when power is cheap. When demand needs more power, water is sent back to the lake, providing instantaneous hydro power. When it is released it sounds in the control room like a herd of elephants. A giant "wet battery".

Mikey NTH said...

Ludington Pumped Storage is something. Water is pumped from Lake Michigan when power is cheap. When demand needs more power, water is sent back to the lake, providing instantaneous hydro power. When it is released it sounds in the control room like a herd of elephants. A giant "wet battery".

gilbar said...

Lithium batteries seem to have Huge drawbacks. As do Lead Acid batteries, As do MOST batteries.
HOWEVER!

Through work of a founding member of the Rockefller Foundation, i have discovered a nearly unique ORGANIC LIQUID battery.. which not only has an energy density higher than Any existing batteries (Several Orders of magnitude higher!), it is ACTUALLY cheaper than Beer! (cheaper than just about ANYTHING)

This ORGANIC LIQUID battery is not rechargeable, but it doesn't NEED to be. When it is discharged ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is left but gasses...gases that ALREADY exist in the atmosphere;
In fact THE EXACT SAME GASES THAT ARE COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH RIGHT NOW!!!

About 70 pounds of this ORGANIC LIQUID battery will be enough to move your car OVER 30o miles.
And JUST WAIT! it JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!! You will be able to buy those 70 pounds ANY PLACE IN AMERICA!!

And HOW MUCH will this miracle cost you? about 35 bucks..
And JUST WAIT! it JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!! nearly Half of those 35 bucks will go DIRECTLY to the government.. FOR WHATEVER THEY WANT

try it! it's A GAS!

gilbar said...

And JUST WAIT! it JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!!
How long will it take you to install the 70 pounds of this Organic liquid battery into your car??
About 3 minutes.. That is NO TYPO not 30 minutes... THREE MINUTES

Achilles said...

theCase said...

I worked at a large utility back in the 90s when we were installing giant capacitors housed in semi-trailers parked across northern Wisconsin. They would support the grid during transients caused by lighting strikes.

I'm guessing the batteries do the same thing over a longer period of time, only for minutes instead of milliseconds...


This gets to the basics of energy storage and the limitations of electricity for energy storage. It is all a balance of Energy Density, Transfer Rate, and transfer efficiency. The other massive problem is direct vs. alternating.

Grids are run on Alternating Current because it is just better for that. Batteries are direct current. You lose 5-10% in that conversion going both directions.

But it gets worse as charging li ion batteries is about 85% efficient. And if the batteries are anywhere near freezing or below performance just completely goes to shit. If it gets to hot they have a tendency to start on fire. That is just what electron transfer does.

Going from solar/wind to battery you are going to be lucky to get 60% total. Then you get to go back.

The cost of using li ion for energy storage per mWH or $/mega watt hours is also just stupid compared to other forms of energy storage.

I am about 1/3rd of the way through the limitations on battery electricity storage.

It is all just really stupid. All of it.

John henry said...

The case

Power factor is the difference between KVA kilovolt amps and KW. In DC power they are identical KW is kilovolts times amps. In AC power there is a lag in the wave between the amps and the bolts that's called power factor. Capacitors are typically used to reduce that lag which is a loss and improve the power factor.

I suspect but obviously don't know that is what your utility was using capacitors for not storage of energy.

John Henry

Gospace said...

Kirk Parker said...
Gospace,

Nameplate capacity has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, which is the need of the generating facility to alter its power production on a moment-by-moment basis. At best, steam plants can be load-following, so far as I know. If you are aware of a steam plant design that can do genuine peaking, I'd love to know more about it.


All NG/Oil steam plants vary their output on a minute to minute basis as load varies. Coal does also, but are much more suited for constant power without much fluctuation. Nuclear falls somewhere between the two for load response. Closer to NG/oil then coal. Not difficult for them at all. No need for additional peaking plants if they're large enough. Peaking plants are relatively recent additions to the power grid. If you want to see just how fast a steam plant, nuclear or fuel oil, can ramp up or down, ride a ship or submarine one day going from all stop to ahead flank. Gas turbines can do the same. Diesel ships are a little slower.

Bringing them online to begin with is why other sources are suitable for "peak power" if you didn't build the baseload plants large enough to begin with. A gas turbine or diesel plant from cold iron to power production can be online within minutes when called for. From cold iron to power production for steam at it's fastest is a lot longer. We keep the boilers (for heat) where I work on hot standby. 10-15 minutes to have one producing enough steam to feed the facility. If we just kept a steam blanket on them and didn't keep them warmed up- considerably longer.

Where load balancing between intermittent and constant power sources is a real problem in the USA is the Pacific northwest. Hydroelectric plants are great at producing large amounts of power at a constant power output, with load changes being handled by thermal plants. Roughly 40% of electrical power used there comes from hydroelectric plants. Washington State has an installed windpower capacity that exceeds it's usage- by a lot. If the wind picks up while the hydro plants are running full out- they've got a severe power management problem. And over the course of a year, that installed capacity contributes lee then 10% of Washington State's electricity.

Bunkypotatohead said...

The US could reduce its electrical power needs by sending 30 million illegals back from whence they came.

chuck said...

The amazing thing about batteries is how little energy they hold. The amazing thing about modern life is how much energy we use.

Supplementing electricity production with batteries is an old idea, Edison (Ni-Fe) batteries were used for that more than 100 years ago, but I don't know how common it was.

Rocco said...

gilbar said...
“Through work of a founding member of the Rockefeller Foundation, i have discovered a nearly unique ORGANIC LIQUID battery.. which not only has an energy density higher than Any existing batteries (Several Orders of magnitude higher!), it is ACTUALLY cheaper than Beer! (cheaper than just about ANYTHING)”

And over a long enough timeframe, it can be considered a renewable, too.

boatbuilder said...

What all of this seems to ignore is that, given the absolute fact that there are billions of gallons of that miraculous liquid which Gilbar describes available and ready for use by all of those benighted people less advanced than ourselves, (made cheaper by the diminishing demand in our enlightened regions), the focus on wind and solar (and even on nuclear and hydro) simply moves the evil CO2 production offshore. And the alleged problem is GLOBAL warming--not California or NY or Sweden warming. Is all that oil (and coal) going to just go away? Or just sit there in the ground?

boatbuilder said...

What all of this seems to ignore is that, given the absolute fact that there are billions of gallons of that miraculous liquid which Gilbar describes available and ready for use by all of those benighted people less advanced than ourselves, (made cheaper by the diminishing demand in our enlightened regions), the focus on wind and solar (and even on nuclear and hydro) simply moves the evil CO2 production offshore. And the alleged problem is GLOBAL warming--not California or NY or Sweden warming. Is all that oil (and coal) going to just go away? Or just sit there in the ground?

Achilles said...

Mikey NTH said...

Ludington Pumped Storage is something. Water is pumped from Lake Michigan when power is cheap. When demand needs more power, water is sent back to the lake, providing instantaneous hydro power. When it is released it sounds in the control room like a herd of elephants. A giant "wet battery".

Efficiency in this sort of activity is not good.

It takes way more energy to pump the water up than you get running it through turbines in the way down.

Just put some Thorium in a lead box or some natural gas in a tank and call it good. If you want to store water make a reservoir and catch rain.

typingtalker said...

Pumped hydro is already the cheapest energy storage technology in the world in terms of cost per installed kilowatt-hour of capacity. Total project costs range between $106 and $200 per kilowatt-hour, compared to between $393 and $581 for lithium-ion batteries, World Bank figures show.

Pumped Hydro Moves to Retain Storage Market Leadership

More at the link ...

mikee said...

The nice thing about these sustainable energy schemes is that the natgas and coal remains available under the Appalachians and everywhere else it sits, should we need to use them in the future. Same as the oil in ANWAR. It isn't going anywhere, and can be accessed 10, 50, 100 years from now. I understand there is also a whole lotta oil off California's coast, whenever exploitation is allowed, and easy to drill.

We don't need to wait for fusion tech. Give me small local fission nuke plants, thorium bed plants, buried liquid sodium plants, the technology exists. Stop making the juice from the plug more expensive with high-loss storage methods for renewables.

JAORE said...

Well then, problem solved.... dumb asses.

RJ said...

BIg batteries create big fires:

"A nearly two-week-long fire at a battery energy storage facility in California highlighted the risks associated with emerging battery storage technologies that are central to the clean energy transition.

Fire crews took 24 hours to “get a handle on” the flare that erupted May 15 at the 250-megawatt Gateway Energy Storage Facility in Otay Mesa near San Diego, reports Fox 5 News. Two days later it reignited—and then smouldered for more than a week."

www.theenergymix.com/battery-storage-fire-in-california-sparks-widespread-safety-concerns/