'Water batteries' could store solar and wind power for when it's needed

[hunter]

The San Diego County Water Authority has an unusual plan to use the city's scenic San Vicente Reservoir to store solar power so it's available after sunset. The project, and others like it, could help unlock America's clean energy future.

Perhaps a decade from now, if all goes smoothly, large underground pipes will connect this lake to a new reservoir, a much smaller one, built in a nearby canyon about 1100 feet higher in elevation. When the sun is high in the sky, California's abundant solar power will pump water into that upper reservoir.

It's a way to store the electricity. When the sun goes down and solar power disappears, operators would open a valve and the force of 8 million tons of water, falling back downhill through those same pipes, would drive turbines capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity for up to eight hours. That's enough to power 130,000 typical homes.

--more--

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1126523766/water-batteries-could-store-solar-and-wind-power-for-when-its-needed

The proposed plant would have a storage capacity of 4,000 megawatt hours (14,400 gigajoules) and would add to California's already robust capacity to stabilize the electric grid by moving water around.

This plant will further compensate for daily variations in solar and wind power. Unfortunately, like all battery schemes, it has nowhere near the capacity to deal with longer solar and wind outages, outages that last days or weeks.

Pumped storage projects like this are the least expensive sorts of batteries we can build and have the smallest environmental impacts but they will not enable solar and wind power to displace fossil fuels, especially natural gas, as California's primary energy source.

The only real threat to the fossil fuel industry is nuclear power.

[2naSalit]

1. Used to live about twenty miles from...

San Vincente reservoir, you can see it from Hwy 67 (northbound) between Rancho Bernardo and Lakeside.

Heard this story yesterday and thought it was a good idea, hope it works. San Diego is so f'ing huge, it's like LA now.

[TigressDem]

2. But how much better to run clean and then have fossil fuel as a backup?

To run clean and reduce pollution makes sense for a human populated world.

As a backup, fossil fuels could still have a place without destroying the planet.

The rest of the world is already ahead of us on these ideas.


Spanish island using Wind and Hydro.

https://www.powermag.com/a-spanish-islands-100-wind-and-water-power-solution/



AUSTRALIA has SOLAR HYDRO and sheep... why not?

[hunter]

6. Aside from giant environment destroying hydro projects...

... renewable energy has proven itself incapable of displacing fossil fuels to the extent required to "save the world."

The experiment has been done, the data is freely available.

You can draw a circle around any amount of solar or wind energy, any amount of battery or hydrostorage, and any number of "typical homes" as an energy unit, and calculate the cost of a reliable electric supply without fossil fuels.

What you'll discover is that adding additional solar or wind capacity has diminishing returns before it hits even 50% of the total energy supply, and that the problems are much the same at any scale, from a single cabin in the woods to an entire regional power grid.

A single guy in a cabin can cope when his batteries are drained, but that's not the case for a modern city.

A wealthy person can build a reliable energy system and claim "self-sufficiency," maybe with a huge solar array, expensive batteries, and a backup diesel generator fueled by canola oil he grows himself, but that expensive system is not scalable to all eight billion of us, and isn't actually any kind of "self sufficiency" because it still depends upon a functional industrial civilization beyond the property line.

People may argue that "perfection is the enemy of the good" but that's not the case here. If everyone on earth adopts hybrid gas-solar-wind energy systems the world still burns. The idea that batteries could eliminate the need for fossil fuels is completely ludicrous.

Fossil free energy schemes don't just have to work for affluent people, they have to work, as Greta Thunberg notes, for the 3 billion people who use less energy, on an annual per capita basis, than a standard American refrigerator.

[TigressDem]

7. There are problems to be solved. YES. However, giving up without even trying is not going to help.

There is enough potential solar power in the Sahara to meet world demand 4 times over, but the heat ratio of dark panels vs light color sand causes problems for example.

https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-in-sahara-could-boost-renewable-energy-but-damage-the-global-climate-heres-why-153992

BUT scientists are learning to repurpose used silicon from solar panels into heat harvesting materials to generate even MORE electricity from the excess heat.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/old-solar-panels-into-heat-harvesting-electricity

COMBINE the two and the excess heat becomes yet another source of power while siphoning off the problem heat.

Could even put water underground and bleed off more heat to that storage system, insulate it so that the water retains the heat then use it for power creation (steam if need be).

Solving the problems in a way that doubles and triples the energy production, while addressing negative impacts is easier with solar or hydro because the off products are less toxic than using fossil fuels.

Hydro plants have even built fish ladders to allow salmon to continue to use their historic breeding grounds.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/fish-ladder.html

THERE ARE CREATIVE SOLUTIONS IF WE LOOK FOR THEM WITH CLEAN ENERGY.



AND we might have to learn to live in smaller homes.

There is a whole Tiny Home Movement where people are able to meet their energy needs by decreasing them and using solar, wind or geothermal or some combination of the group. Many keep option for hook up to city mains for water and sewer, maybe even electric in case of emergency. But if you can get 80% of your electric free and have a state that is working with renewable energy also, things are improving.

https://comfyliving.net/tiny-house-statistics/


Many people using solar panels on average size homes are sending energy back to the system, so I don't know where your statistics are that it doesn't work.

The initial start up cost is an issue for many.

And the heat generation issue should probably be addressed going forward and since you can use recycled solar panel silicon to bleed off excess heat and pour that into the system as electricity as well, then use water batteries to hold on to heat for energy or like the holding ponds as hydro power you get so much energy generation that all those people who don't have it can benefit.



MINNESOTA COULD have already been running on WIND energy but our grid wasn't capable of handling it, so many times the farms were dormant.

https://energynews.us/2021/10/21/in-minnesota-old-power-plants-could-be-the-on-ramp-for-new-wind-and-solar/

https://cleangridalliance.org/minnesota-wind-energy




SO HERE IS A LOT OF RESEARCH THAT PROBLEMS EXIST BUT CAN BE SOLVED.


WHERE IS YOUR PROOF THAT ALL HAS BEEN DONE AND WE ARE GOING TO BURN ANYWAY?

[hunter]

9. "Net metering" is an accounting trick, not a means of energy storage.

The excess solar energy my neighbors push onto the electric grid from roughly eight o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon simply isn't as valuable as the energy they pull off the grid at other times, especially from four o'clock in the afternoon to nine o'clock in the evening, which is when our local electric company asks us to conserve. That's when the gas power plants ramp up to full power, the pumps on California's water projects throttle down to minimum power use, and the generators on hydro-storage projects spin up.

California already has most of the renewable energy and energy storage infrastructure people celebrate, installed and running at gigawatt levels. There's solid data on how these interact with a normal electric grid.

Many of these are functionally equivalent to the technologies you mention and this real world data can be used to evaluate other proposed renewable energy schemes.

You can get a rough look at California's electricity data here:

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

The daily solar curve is always prominent.

The people with the smallest environmental footprints tend to live in urban communities and don't own cars. That doesn't have to be Tokyo or Manhattan style tiny apartments.

We ought to be restructuring our cities to make them attractive places where car ownership is unnecessary. Tiny houses, granny flats, etc. can be part of that equation.

Unfortunately, fish ladders don't work.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_on_us_dams_are_not_effective

When it comes to wind power, Minnesota's electric grid "wasn't capable of handling it" for lack of energy storage options. Minnesota doesn't have any mountains conveniently located next to existing reservoirs or large scale water transfer projects.

Even if Minnesota did built large scale storage schemes renewable energy wouldn't be capable of displacing fossil fuels to the extent we'd be "saving the world," same as California.

Here's some data on Minenesota's electric grid:

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-MIDW-MISO

You can use that same site to explore carbon intensities worldwide, including California.

None of this means we shouldn't be getting rid of fossil fuel plants as best we can.

The nations with carbon intensities below 100g tend to have very substantial hydroelectric resources or rely on nuclear power.

[TigressDem]

10. One big piece of the puzzle forgotten by most....

Utilities used to be owned by the public, not private companies.
The objective was to get the energy to the public in an efficient and self sustaining fashion... IE should pay for itself

WHEN utilities got PRIVATIZED it reduced the incentive to find solutions that did NOT make PROFIT for shareholders.
HAVING "not enough" energy at some times and selling excess across state lines etc became a shell game.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913

AND multiple clean energy projects have been scuttled by Energy Companies who don't want to lose their profit margins.


EVEN SO -- IF the excess energy got put back in for use by the community it was generated in, then it could bring down costs, be used for ENERGY ASSISTANCE programs and allow the "primary sources" that pollute more to be used less.




RE: Fishladders don't work, your example is a small study and it takes MORE than Fish Ladders to solve the whole problem

snip from your link:
Fishways on rivers in the U.S. Northeast are failing, with less than 3 percent of one key species making it upriver to their spawning grounds, according to a new study.

I saw this one working
https://www.scenicwa.com/poi/rocky-reach-dam-visitor-center

Same set up here
https://citybop.com/seattle/ballard-locks-fish-ladder

WHAT is Washington State doing differently? If you look at the ladders in the above two videos, they have been spaced very effectively to give fish a rest between each step up.

For another thing, engineers are working with tribal groups and studying all reasons affecting the success and failure of the efforts to remove the barriers fish face.

AND they are not getting enough funding to do what they know needs to be done as quickly as they need to for certain types of Salmon. BUT they also outline what it will take to fully get the problem resolved. IT MAY TAKE TIME, and that is rushing between our fingertips in some ways, but it does not mean that the entire project is a failure.

https://stateofsalmon.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/StateofSalmonExecSummary2020.pdf



MINNESOTA DOESN'T HAVE MOUNTAINS for the reservoirs. True, but we do have 10,000 lakes and if you are using underground heated water for storing excess energy that isn't being captured or used in Solar Farms or from roofs, you don't need the mountains.

BASICALLY, every specific environment needs to examine the needs and as we develop more and more means of making clean energy work, it will.


REDESIGN CITIES so we don't NEED CARS. I agree.

But we still need to move toward energy independence and save the fossil fuels for back up.

Between Wind, Solar and GeoThermal designs that use the Earth itself as part of the equation, we can be a lot more creative than we have been.


IRONICALLY, gentrification in the inner city is moving TOWARD people living in high rises with grocery, hair salon, pet store, restaurants and ATM's onsite so people don't have to leave home very much. In Minnesota, a lot of those are popping up around lakes that people love to walk around anyway and an old RR line has been converted to a "green way" for bikes.


AND ON THE MAP YOU GAVE ME... Canada is doing something right.

[hunter]

12. Canada, north of Minnesota, runs on a mix of hydro and nuclear power.

They've got some hybrid gas/wind capacity as well.

[TigressDem]

3. Demo of water powered by height

[Finishline42]

4. To your point about batteries

I posted in another thread about CO2 batteries that have gone from concept to test in 2 yrs. It will be a >>>
20-megawatt/200-megawatt-hour/10-hour duration facility

I will watch with interest. Lot of positives about their approach.

Story here >>> https://electrek.co/2022/06/28/worlds-first-co2-battery/

As you know, I don't share your view on wind, solar, transmission lines, and energy storage methods.

I think they all cut into the amount of time that a natgas plant operates which increases the cost. With the recent tripling in cost of natgas I expect utilities will be investing more and more into renewables which get cheaper and better.

[NNadir]

11. We'll add this to the other 5,000,000 "batteries will save us" internet hype sites that have...

...appeared in this century while the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide rose 50 ppm to well over 400 ppm, never to fall below in the lifetime of anyone now living.

One thing that's consistent about the people who defend the oil, gas, and coal status quo by hyping the useless solar and wind fantasy is that they know zero, absolutely zero about science or engineering, care nothing about the environment, and think we're going to mine our way out of the disaster they've done so much to cause.

It gets dumber by the minute.

So called "renewable energy" isn't "cheap." It's a reactionary scam, an expensive lie that's driving energy poverty all over the world, and in Germany, where they are disinterested in stopping the combustion of coal, killing people.

Anyone who can seriously read should be able to find that out in 50 seconds, not that this ever stops anyone from repeating these tiresome and delusional lies

Cheap my ass..

[TigressDem]

5. A similar plan puts an Oregon community on track for 100% emissions free by 2030

I think they could add WIND and with Dual RENEWABLES any excess could go to more storage banks that would be available in case of emergencies.


https://slenergystorage.com/project.html

[mitch96]

8. THIS makes too much sense.. then again "they" would opposes it... nt