Pumped-storage hydropower is a mature storage technology that has traditionally been used to shift power generation from production periods with low prices to periods with higher prices (i.e., energy arbitrage). In the United States, PSH is by far the most common form of energy storage. In 2019, 42 PSH projects provided 22,800 MW of capacity with an average usage factor of 10.4% compared to utility-scale battery storage capacity of 952 MW with a usage factor of 4.0%. Battery storage capacity in the United States more than tripled in 2021, growing from 1,438 MW in 2020 to 4,631 MW, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Of course this does not take into account duration of storage, just existence. Battery storage tends to have 2-4 hours of capacity, Pumped storage usually starts at 8 hours minimum
Great video. A grandfather clock is a good case for energy storage. It works because the low consumption of energy just needs enough to move the hands of the clock that is almost nothing. But the size of the weight in a grandfather clock is many times larger then the clock workings gears hands etc
No matter what system you choose, there are hoards of financiers and opportunists who will manipulate the system to their advantage. Case in point, Enron.
Batteries are more like time-machines than sources of power. It starts by requiring enormous amounts of energy to fabricate. Then require energy to charge. Then - at a different time - provide almost 100% of stored power for use. In total, you spend a fortune in energy, so you can optimise the time (and form) for using the energy.
Nice talk. I enjoyed it very much having worked in companies that do ESS with lithium and also do automobiles. Then an Iron air battery, finally ending up at a SMR company in Alameda. I'm going to stay far from chopped liver smoothies. Lol. Nice piano Mark.
I grew up right next to Northfield Mt Pumped storage in MA, some family members worked on it during construction. It was built at the same time as Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant that unfortunately the Vermont hippies voted to close down..
the mongols won because they had artillery (torsion not gunpowder) and were absolutely brilliant at logistics, could send their units on separate roads and meet 1000 km away on the appointed day, and because they scouted the way ahead (unlike the wind turbine producers who can't seem to be able to test their new turbines) not because they had horses
Shrinking transistors makes them require less power to switch and be able to switch faster. Nand flash is based on nand gates built using resistors and transistors which can be shrunk to incredibly small sizes while keeping the ability to represent data. Everything that is not about data processing or representation does not improve by shrinking the way data does. A data representation is fundamentally about representing details in the smallest least energetic way. A battery is different since it is a device created to store energy where the goal is the opposite of that of a data representation favouring the ability to store and transmit large amounts of energy.
This is a horrible interview. What are you even talking about? There's no direction, no clarity, and a strange conversation seemingly between friends with inside jokes that only you two understand. It's unfortunate.
Concrete as energy storage doesn't work for two huge reasons 1: Water costs 1 cent a ton. Concrete costs a lot more than 1 cent per ton 2: A pump and a pipe between two elevations can move vast amounts of water per second. A crane moving a concrete block can only move a couple up and down over maybe a minute or two. Vast difference Both of those mean it won't work
Two years on is now marked by steady solar and battery development with cost reductions. I am glad that you brought up nuclear as a base load of last resort. I will concede this may be needed along with other special purposes. Of course evil fracking applied to deep geothermal generation could compete with nuclear. Also, the rate of battery technology development has great potential. Lithium based megapacks for base storage will hopefully be improved upon. Bottom line, the combination of renewables, storage, and distributed generation is the future.
Very interesting, nice! Decouple is really very well done! I’d like to see a simple model that presents the different storage methods - silly or not - and shows the capacity, price/MWh, etc next to one another. And if natural gas is a kind of storage (which it is, I agree), that should also be included, along with parametrized / quantised pros and cons. For example: a score that characterises ‘greenness’ or ‘environmental hostility / friendliness.
You touched on it but did not clarify very well are buffering batteries. I think buffering batteries vs grid storage batteries are not at all clear to folks.
Great video. What is energy? I'm not too sure, but if E = mc2 then maybe everything is energy. More importantly to human needs might be the question, what is usable energy? Usable energy is energy that humans can potentially make use of to do work. Of course just because something can potentially be used by humans to do work doesn’t mean the engineering challenges needed to harness that work can be overcome, or that the rewards (work done) are worth overcoming those challenges. For example a dyson sphere can harness a lot of energy from the sun, but we aren’t anywhere near being able to overcome the challenges involved. More down to earth might be harnessing (for human use) more of the solar energy that comes to earth. This also has a lot of engineering challenges hence the discussion of energy storage. What is energy storage? Energy storage means ‘storing’ usable energy in some form that can later be retrieved by humans to do work. Usually the term energy storage is understood to mean human involvement in the storage of energy so most would not be inclined to count things like fossil fuels. Interesting concept though, perhaps a new term such as ‘natural energy storage’ would be better to describe the concepts involved without risking any confusion. But anyways, in regards to the issues of wind in solar that this is really all about. With a lot of money, and its corresponding resources, maybe some places can use batteries to balance the daily variations between supply (of wind and solar), and human demand (when people on the grid want to use electricity). While it might be possible, it isn’t easy. Especially for wind which is really chaotic. Solar is easier, but weather like clouds, and snow, can also be a problem. Then there is the issue of the materials needed for all these batteries. It would take a very lot of materials, then leave the challenge of recycling all of them later. Then there is the issue of seasonal variations which your video addressed. I don’t see how lithium batteries can solve these seasonal variations, especially in places like Germany which get a lot of snow during the winter. Anyway, great video. Keep up the good work.
In cold climate areas the most practical energy storage is storing heat. Houses can be heated by electricity. Nighttime nuclear capacity can be stored in hot water heating or in solid concrete floor mass. That is a reliable way for household heating. Battery storage of electrity in individual houses is not a viable option because of material availability, cost, maintenance, replacement cost and safety considerations.
I think that people who work 3rd shift who are sleeping while their cars are soaking up all of their extra solar energy makes sense. But the sorts of people who buy EVs, typically work during the day and are salaried. Meaning they likely don't charge their car when they produce the most solar energy.
Thanks Mark and Cris. The interesting idea on energy storage is indirect energy storage not talked about in the video. How it works is when the wind is blowing, and the sun is shining that supplies the grid with power. The gates on the hydro dam can be closed stopping the water going to the turbines that would generate the power not required because of the power supplied by wind and solar. no need for pump or pipping water uphill behind the dam. so when the sun is not shining and there is no wind the gate s on the Hydro dame can open to generate the power that was stored. 10% approximately of the power to the grid can come from wind and solar without storage and without causing instability to the grid. A study suggested that 14% of the grid in Manitoba and Quebec because of all the hydro dames in these 2 Canadian provinces. The same can happen in Hoover Dam, solar can supply power to the grid when the gates to the dame can close storing power. One can see the bathtub rings around lake Mead because low water levels.
One can imagine the storage capacity of lale Mead look at the area of lake Mead times the level of the water presently and the elevation level of the top of the bathtub rings.
I liked the video. Surprised that there was no reference to nuclear solar salt thermal storage? Nearly 100% efficient and 33 times less cost than lithium batteries.
In Italy they have pumped hydro storage. Apparently they pump it up at night using cheap off-peak electricity from Austria and use it to generate expensive „green“ electricity during the day.
I really enjoyed this interview as an intro to energy storage, with a plethora of tangents, which honestly is how most of my conversations go anyway. I'd like to see see a follow up on storage alternatives, especially molten salt thermal storage. Is this feasible or just another giant hanging lead weight?
When you heat the salt with high-temperature nuclear reactors, it's by far the cheapest, most efficient method of energy storage and you never need more than about 8 hours worth.
Does not exist and not really practical if it did. Since you also need additional steam handling, parallel turbine(s), additional transformers, and additional transmission. Probably the most expensive and impractical method that could be done.
Talented guy this Mark Nelson ! thanks Chris for the podcast ... Smil-esque, who i credit as being the godfather of this most recent injection of materials/energy sanity (although he does seem to continue supporting REs w/o reviewing the second and third order thinking of their reliance on fossil gas and it's implications. ps ... curious why mark didn't discuss salt storage particularly nuclear generated storage or solar scs ?
Of course, the best solution as usual is high-temperature nuclear that is optimized to run at a constant output 24/7/365 and load follows with cheap thermal storage.
And since NONE of that exists, and does not actually work if it did, and even if it did and could work . . . it would the most expensive mess . . . EVER. So, ummm. no. Probably not.
@@philtimmons722 TerraPower starts construction in June so, ummm yeah. Terrestrial Energy starts construction in 2028 and Thorcon Power starts a prototype next year. So, ummm. yes, probably so.
@@chapter4travels Got me laughing now. Like "1/2 Price! Buy Today!" Since the typical SMR, model etc. produces 1/2 to 1/4 or less . . . it is no bargain at all. Meanwhile, we do have pricing on New US Conventional == Vogtle. $35 Billion is the current number. This is Most Expensive Generation EVER. And of course NONE of this can have any practical Thermal Storage (other than for Thermal Loads), because additional electrical production for daytime peak would require additional Steam handling, Turbines, Generators, and Transformers, for just occasional use -- making this most expensive boondoggle even MORE expensive. Gates, etc. is there to get his sunk money back from this silliness, and ride the Federal Welfare Grants.
Excellent interview thank you. A question re lifting and dropping large masses - what about using tides to lift and drop large masses (say decommissioned oil tankers full of concrete)?
Dropping a concrete block, size 1 cubic meter, distance 1 km, produces about 25 MJ of potential energy. France uses 445 terawatt-hours, or 1.6 exajoules per year. That means you'd have to raise 64 billion blocks, 1 km in order to store that. Even just storing 10% of that, at 6 billion 1 cubic meter blocks, doesn't seem realistic. The fact that he starts talking about feelings in intuitions is giving me some bad vibes from this channel. That's never a good response to skepticism.
Storage can be seen as the attempt to manage the gap between base load and peak. Now.... what if you would completely abandon the idea of managing access electricity with the focus on re-using electricity? And instead you would dynamically run bitcoin miners who convert the exess into MONETARY ENERGY for the majority of time in which peak load isn't needed for the grid? I am sure there are many other dynamic ways to use excess energy.
Not bad. Getting close. Idea you are probably heading towards is called Aligning Time-of-Use with Time-of-Production. The present case is that the night is surplus from over-built Coal and Nukes to the point that we are giving it away for free, just trying to find a customer. The near future case will more likely to become daytime surplus, as the US and world are mostly building Solar PV, now, and old Coal and Nukes are shutting down with fewer new being built. Many loads can be "time-shifted" into the surplus production times, and cancel most need for any storage,
48:47 “mining enough lithium,” at current rate is will take around 680 years worth of mining to replace all the vehicles. The solution hopefully will be solid state sodium batteries.
Isn’t the definition quite suitable to apply? You must produce the energy for later use. I’m not convinced that the “raw” energy in uranium and natural gas is applicable. Only situation is the pressure energy in compressed natural gas is produced, and shall/can be used later in a gas turbine.
The wind is going to have a field day with large blocks and cranes. None of the experiments worked. Using solids in gravity storage is just really silly.
I was really looking forward to this masterclass on storage but in the end I was left rather disappointed. The conversation was too convoluted and sloppy to be of much use ... It would have been better to concentrate on fundamentals and some of the key technologies rather than focusing so much on batteries and esoterics. Direct heat storage systems were not discussed at all. Power density and energy density were not discussed in a way to impart understanding to someone who is not from the energy sector. In any event interesting conversation albeit of limited value. PS Tesla MegaPack $2,000,000 for 1.9MW/3MW-h or roughly $700 per KW-h ---- a real "bargain"
Mark Nelson needs to think through his 'love' of combining heat storage with nuclear power plants (NPPs) Using NPPs in combination with heat storage is insane. The unavoidable efficiency losses in the '3-circuit' heat exchanger set-up and the substantial extra capital cost and waste of materials and resources effectively decrease the NPPs capacity factor. Every wasted $1 spent on electricity generating technologies and any loss in efficiency inevitably affects the poorest in society the most. The raison d'être for Bill Gates's Natrium is ethically tainted by profiting from the craziness of dysfunctional wind and solar power plants (WASPPs). Natrium stores reactor heat when these ridiculous technologies produce too much electricity and prices crash. This then allows a Natrium operator to [inefficiently] return that heat to electricity and charge the higher prices which prevail when demand ramps up and/or 'the wind don't blow (often) and the Sun don't shine (every day). So, as is always the case, the greatest disservice of 'propping-up' high prices, makes the poorest disproportionately poorer. Instead, NPPs can operate at 100% availability and load-follow both diurnal demand and the crazy patterns of WASPP generation - almost instantaneously when combined with electrolyser plants for the manufacture of greenH2. That's 2 revenue streams for 100% of all the available time. For the future decarbonisation of all sectors of energy use, greenH2 manufacture is as vital as generating low-carbon electricity. To load follow electricity demand, NPPs and electrolyser plants are the best combination. Electrolyser plants are low cost ($300/kW--->$200/kW) and suffer no technological issues from rapid load changes (electricity input to the process). The overall efficiency losses from this combination will be miniscule. However, the manufacturing rate of greenH2 from cold electrolysis is only 18 kg/MWh and should only be used for load following. For seasonal load following - with the computer power available - the total of combined plants for base load to peak load demand can be optimised and planned outages for maintenance and refuelling should be possible in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. By 2050, net zero targets can only be met by the supply of vast quantities of greenH2 to decarbonise transport, heating/hot water, industrial, etc sectors. As it can only be produced from low carbon electricity, it means many (double to treble) the numbers of dedicated NPPs will be needed. As publicised by NuScale, LWRs can deliver steam at 850°C steam to high temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE) plants and the production rate of greenH2 jumps by 50%, to 27 kg/MWh. 0.9 MWh of greenH2 energy comes out, for every 1.0 MWh of electrical energy that goes in. This is surely the future of an energy system that eliminates the burning of fossil fuels and prospects of a 100% nuclear/greenH2 world becomes ever more possible exciting with the deployment of SMRs, such as GE Hitachi's BWRX-300, on the horizon.
Offshore Wind power in the North Sea using the most recent 15MW turbines will get 60% capacity factor and there is a pathway to 65-70% capacity factor with even bigger better turbines which are inevitable That means significantly less storage will be needed (vs the first generation wind turbines which were closer to 25%) The UK will have a 80% plus wind power grid by 2030 with little need for storage thanks to these high capacity factor turbines in high capacity factor locations
THE BLINKING! Chris, do you have dry eye? Are your lights too bright? Blepharitis? Take a minute and take care of yourself, Bud. The blinking distracts from your message. It makes me worry about your eye health and you neurological health. If you have a non-treatable condition like a tick, then I apologize for drawing attention to it. But if you can make a small lifestyle change and get relief? Your audience would be less distracted from your excellent content. From a subscriber and a fan.
Min 35; The battery storage 1: can be located close to the point of use 2: can continue to grow exponentially at the rate of battery material availability 3: the cost will drop by something like ‘wrights law’ as production scales up. The above industry is needed to electrify transport anyway. The limiting factor is industrial scale-up rate and raw material production rate.
Or for a tiny fraction of the cost and material needs we just use high-temperature nuclear to liquify salt as a thermal battery. The downsized reactor runs all-out 24/7/365 while the thermal storage takes care of load following. Build them anywhere in the world with enough fuel for billions of years.
This guy does not understand pollution. Tires create much less pollution than the gasses are pumped out the back of an ice vehicle. An EV is ever so marginally more than an ice vehicle with tire particle pollution.
Solar panels might get cheap enough, whereby the end user can overinstall solar panel to the point where even the worst winter week is covered by solar plus one days battery This might be possible because the saving is retail electricity price rather than wholesale If on site generation is possible it would be quite transformational Solar panels are cheap enough that when a few of my garden fence got blown over by a strong windy day I considered installing solar panels as fencing as the price was only $50/sqm compared to $30/sqm for a wooden fence and I'm pretty sure the solar panel would last multiple lifetimes of the wooden fence So, in theory a homeowner can install solar panels for near free if they repalce their fencing (as replacements are eneded) with solar fencing Likewise if housing was built from the ground up with a solar roof so the cost was minus the roofing materials it might again be nearly free Adding one days battery maybe just 10KWh would then allow a home to disconnect from the grid. That would be transformational And yes a cheap gasoline e generator as backup might be a good idea too simply becusde that qould be a very cheap add on to the above system
@chapter4travels Here in the UK homes use 30% of all electricity generated If electric vehicles displace gasoline cars then homes will represent 50% of all electricity consumption If over installing solar panels built into the fabric of a home (for example, solar panels as Garden fencing is close to free as the alternative of high quality wood fencing isn't cheap) plus a modest battery could supply 90% of a homes needs with the other 10% generated on site with a gasoline generator. Then you solve half of all the electricity needs of a nation and arguably make it a more secure system. For instance, in ukrane, the power infrastructure has been attacked, whereas if each home was independent like the above it wouldn't have any impact Businesses would be harder to self generate like this, but many businesses could be similar in that for example a school with all the roof as solar plus the boundary fencing as solar might also be able to go 90% solar 10% gasoline This works for a lot of energy consumption because solar plus battery at the end consumer saves not only the energy costs but also the grid costs and the grid costs are actually a better percentage of the retail price than is the eletricity generation costs
@@kaya051285 Without EVs electricity is only about 20% of total energy needs. 40% +/- is industrial heat. My point is that residential PV electricity is a small % of the whole and requires 10x the material input as nuclear. When you include overbuild and batteries it's more like 100x. Don't get me wrong, all of the electricity for my tiny house is from solar stored in batteries, I'm all for it but it's not a viable solution for a modern industrial society. Advanced nuclear solves all the problems using a tiny fraction of land and material inputs.
@wheel-man5319 I was suggesting if solar panels got cheap enough that you'd overinstall the panels so even on the worst day you'd generate enough energy so you'd only need storage for that one night Solar panels have gotten cheap enough where they could displace other building materials For example a solar panel is now as cheap as good quality wood fencing so you could install wood fencing around your garden perimeter or you could install solar panels. More or less the same cost. The panels will also likely outlast the wood
Basic physics ..3kw electric input to any will generate 1kw electric... Battery working life.. 10 years .. easiest answer is smaller energy use .. smaller population ?? Easiest answer..economy based on exponential growth is based on expentiial energy .. the immediate problem is World Bank wants to retain the existing financial system .. and answers focused on this answer.. your discussions totally ignore the binding agreement of Paris climate agreement ... Binding agreement signed into by Joe Bidan
Take off your tin foil hat It's very possible to have a low fossil modern developed nation and that's the way we are going For example the UK was 12 tons CO2 per capita in the year 2000 and now in 2023 that figure is under 6 tons and is expected to drop to around 4 tons per capita in 2030
In today's energy/electricity discourse, energy within fuels should be disentangled from energy storage. It takes plenty of energy to extract fuels from the ground and present them in a useful form; that energy is never recovered, hence EROEI. If a nation chooses to store lots of fuels, it is not storing energy, it is storing energy security. In the main, energy storage today relates to load following of electricity demand as it did when Dinorwig was funded 40 years ago, well before wind and solar power plants (WASPPs) were allowed to dump their crazy, random forms of generation onto electricity grids. Now we need billions spending on batteries for millisecond responses to gusts of wind or clouds covering the Sun. And, because of WASPPs it gets crazy - mechanical gravity; compressed air; liquid air; flywheels; thermal; BEV batteries. Overriding all of these insanely expensive 'solutions' is the unavoidable use of gas fired backup plant to do the load following heavy-lifting. None of these crazy technologies will ever be capable of supplying the energy contained within the molecules of polluting hydrocarbon fuels. So, it's as obvious as it is inevitable that a non-polluting form of 'fuel' is the answer - and, the one and only form available is hydrogen. GreenH2 is truly energy storage in what can obliquely be described as a fuel. Hydrogen is not 'extracted' from the ground, it has to be manufactured. For it to be non-polluting it has to be greenH2, manufactured from emission-free electricity. The madhouse that is Germany, with high WASPP penetration, knows it hasn't the space or societal support to install enough WASPP capacity to manufacture enough greenH2 as backup 'fuel'; so, it's already committed to importing Moroccan and Australian 'sunshine', in the form of greenH2, for their power-to-gas-to-power (P2G2P) infrastructure. For every 100 MWh of electrical power fed into a P2G2P infrastructure, just 25/30 MWh of electrical power is returned. Germany is heading for fiscal ruin because of a singular political/societal decision to close down all of its nuclear power plants whilst committing to a net-zero future. Now, nuclear power plants (NPPs) manufacturing greenH2 to decarbonise other sectors of energy use - that’s a different story!
@@-LightningRod- I guess if you see fuels as essentially interchangeable with batteries that would follow. I've got to think about that idea... In some ways it feels right. In other ways I think it misses something vital.
@@-LightningRod- no we certainly don't. At least not directly. Which is why I'm not sure I see the gallon of gasoline equals a battery idea. If we were constrained to provide our own electric generation, then maybe.... Though in that case I'd hope to be near a natural gas pipeline and run my generator set using that energy source. Of course if I have to travel a long way to go to shopping or work then I absolutely want an ICE especially during the winter, though summer isn't a lot better if there's not a charging station where I work or shop.
