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41 comments on API Energy IQ Game and Blogger Call

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Gail the Actuary on August 17, 2008 - 1:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I will agree that the questions are chosen to make the points the industry wants to make. In my article last year, I laid out what those points are.

I think at least a few of those points really need to be made. There is a real problem with scaling up renewables, based on all of the science we know today. There is simply not enough biomass to replace more than 20% of petroleum use (and none of other fuel use--we can perhaps scale up using wood for utilities, but to do so will cut back the ability to replace 20% of petroleum).

We can make rules saying that a certain percentage of utility fuel must come from renewable sources, but there are very serious limits as to what can be done. If we don't want to destabilize the grid, we have to add storage capacity at the same time we add wind and solar capacity. Even if we restrict our analysis to electricity, renewables don't amount to much right now. This is my graph from my post a few days ago The Path from Petroleum Shortages to Electricity Shortages.

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joule on August 17, 2008 - 5:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Gail -

I've always liked the way you've identified and discussed the key energy issues in a clear and even-handed way.

I would certainly agree with you that setting a certain goal for 'renewables' in terms of some arbitrary percentage of total electrical power generating rate is but a shallow political expedient that totally ignores the many real world problems surely to be encountered in causing such to actually come to pass.

I also think that not enough people in power understand the interconnectedness of all the many problems.

You can't meaningfully talk about the mass use of electric cars until you address generation and transmission capacity. (Who is going to make the extra electicity needed, what are they going to make it from, and how are they going to get it to the user in a dependable manner?)

And you can't talk about a massive increase in electricity from solar or wind until you figure out a way to provide sufficient storage for what are inherently intermittent energy sources. (There is probably some critical fraction of total generation rate, beyond which solar and wind will simply destroy the operability and dependability of a regional grid.) Thus, unless the problem of large-scale energy storage is resolved in a cost-effective manner, solar and wind will never get beyond a relatively small percentage of total power generation rate.

One of the main goals of the two competing factions in US presidential policitics is to convince the voters that their particular faction has the correct 'answer' that will painlessly make our energy problem go away if only they are elected. Saying anything less is a solid 100% guarantee for losing the election. That is why I will ignore everything that is said about the 'energy issue' till the next president is in office. (And even then, I might not pay too much attention.)

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aviator202 on August 18, 2008 - 1:25am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Here's one point....WE CAN ALREADY STORE ENERGY from SOLAR and WIND!!!!!....I can't believe you can't figure this one out....A percentage of the wind farm or solar farm is devoted to running an electric motor that runs an electric pump that will pump water uphill to fill a reservoir...then when the wind is calm or the sun goes down we have (wait for it)...TAAA DAAHHHHHH !!!! Hydroelectric power!!! Who would have thunk it?????? A SIMPLE and ELEGANT solution!!!!! Psssst!!! Guess what??? In a way, we ALREADY do this!!!...You know, in your hometown, that BIG teal water tower...Maintain city water pressure so you don't need to run electric pumps...GAD, Why can't you guys think of these things???....Sheesh

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joule on August 18, 2008 - 7:35am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

aviator202 -

First, do you have any idea of the required volume and height of a water reservoir capable of storing say 24 hours worth of the output of a 100 MW power plant? Clue, it's pretty damn big. So, that municipal water tower you're talking about could only store a very small amount of electrical energy.

Second, on the premise that it's hardly economically feasible to build mountains and put reservoirs on top of them, exactly how would you go about builing large pumped storage systems in a place with flat terrain, such as Kansas or most of the areas in the immediate vicinity of the Great Lakes?

Of course pumped storage works, but it's feasibiliy is highly location-specific, which is why you don't see that many pumped storage systems.

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x on August 18, 2008 - 9:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

To my way of thinking the storage of wind produced electricity is not an issue if wind is given priority in usage. Other fossil fuel, hydroelectric or nuclear facilities should be reduced when there is ample wind available.

The savings in other forms of energy are the de facto storage mechanism.

For example, the water does not have to be pumped uphill, just don't let as much through the dam when wind is available. Then let the saved water flow though the dam when the wind dies down.

Fossil fuel saved by wind is in effect stored wind energy to be used to fire up plants when wind is inadequate or the demand exceeds wind availability.

Nuclear plants are harder to shut down but their out put can be scaled back during high wind availability. The saved nuclear fuel is the stored energy derived from wind.

It's just a matter of looking at things a little differently or maybe from outside the box.

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tuj on August 18, 2008 - 10:18am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"Nuclear plants are harder to shut down but their out put can be scaled back during high wind availability. The saved nuclear fuel is the stored energy derived from wind."

Wrong: you do not throttle nukes. You run them 100% and throttle back everything else, and that includes wind. Base coal gets throttled back to min-load at night, but nukes stay near 100%.

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tuj on August 18, 2008 - 10:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"(There is probably some critical fraction of total generation rate, beyond which solar and wind will simply destroy the operability and dependability of a regional grid.)"

Yup. Its about 20% non-firm generation comprising the gen-stack. At that point, without storage or highly responsive generation (read combined-cycle or ct's), your ACE goes to hell. Funny thing is, if you back non-firm generation with about 20% storage, and it becomes about 98% firm.

As for pumped storage, building the equivalent of some of our big existing pumped storage facilities is on order of about $1 trillion dollars for about 2.4 GW of instantaneous capacity. Storage is the key, and there are other storage forms that will work that are in development (mainly batteries).

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Aniya on August 18, 2008 - 9:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi tuj,

Thank you. It sounds like you have a lot of information and experience. Maybe you could write up an article on storage?

Has anybody looked at pumped storage capital costs, i.e., looked at the whole picture you're describing? How to get the 20% for each region?

ACE stands for - ?

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Gail the Actuary on August 19, 2008 - 12:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I think it may be quite a bit less that 20% in the United States. Our grid seems to be is less good shape than that of some other countries. I keep running into comments that we are already nearly maxed out in terms on the variable power we can put on the grid. I know that in Hawaii, I heard a speaker from the electric company talk about that issue for Hawaii (which is admittedly a small state). In my article about the grid, I quote Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates as saying:

Until now, wind developers have piggybacked on existing wires, says analyst Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. But after wind energy soared 45% last year, spare transmission capacity is depleted. Wind power generates more than 1% of U.S. electricity.

The issue he quotes may not be so much variable power as total transmission line availability.

At a web seminar on concentrating solar power, this issue was also discussed. One speaker said that the only way he thought solar power could be used for the grid in any significant quantity was if

1. Separate zones were set up for solar power generation, probably in the desert.
2. A group of companies each set up their generating units there, using various technologies.
3. Enough storage was built to appropriately time-shift the supply to when it was needed, and even out
the variability.
4. Transmission lines were built for the whole group.

I am sure that with this package arrangement, the cost is much higher than most people have been estimating. They have generally only considered the direct transmission cost.

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Engineer-Poet on August 23, 2008 - 1:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You can't meaningfully talk about the mass use of electric cars until you address generation and transmission capacity.

I've always wondered if there was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.  I wonder no more.  You are proof positive that some other planet has brought forth a people with minds like our own...

because you sure couldn't have come from Earth and believe that.

The generation and transmission issue has been at the center of EV systems analysis for years.  As just one bit of proof, I offer this paper from 2001, Integration of Electric Drive Vehicles with the Electric Power Grid -- a New Value Stream.  Grid-charged vehicles have been investigated for helping to stabilize the grid, supply power to assist with demand peaks, and time-shift demand.  A more recent study found that existing generation could supply 70% of the vehicle fleet.

unless the problem of large-scale energy storage is resolved in a cost-effective manner, solar and wind will never get beyond a relatively small percentage of total power generation rate.

The solutions are right under our noses.  A/C load is highly variable, but the solution is to make ice when power is available (it stores for months with reasonable insulation).  The aforementioned vehicle batteries can be used to shift demand to any time of day that they are plugged in.  We can store energy as compressed air.  We can even (gasp!) store up biofuels until the sun and wind aren't adequate, and use them as needed.

Yes, the grid needs billions in improvements.  We can get those billions by using electricity to cut our spending on petroleum.  If I use 5 kWh/day for a car and charge it at 500 W average during off-peak hours, I would increase off-peak (base load) demand by 500 W and peak demand not at all.  This power consumption might displace 0.8 gallons/day of gasoline at $4.00/gallon, or $3.20/day.  If base-load demand costs $3000/kW and 2¢/kWh marginal cost, but the added base-load generation displaces peaking power at 10¢/kWh marginal cost, the cost/benefit looks like this to me:

Capital cost $1500
Daily interest cost @ 8% $0.329
Daily fuel savings ($3.20)
Daily marginal cost of power $0.10
Daily peaking cost reduction
(over 4-hour peak)		 ($0.20)
Net daily cost (savings) ($2.97)

These numbers are just a SWAG, but a level of savings which would pay back the capital expense in ONE YEAR is worth looking at even if reality is only half as good.

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41 comments on API Energy IQ Game and Blogger Call

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