[HN Gopher] A battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant
___________________________________________________________________
A battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 185 points
Date : 2024-01-10 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.canarymedia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.canarymedia.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.kapoleienergystorage.com/
|
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32718968
| tcbawo wrote:
| This is nice to see. However, one aspect of the green energy push
| that puzzles/irks me is the tendency to outsource carbon
| pollution. Citizens of Hawaii might be carbon neutral for energy
| production, but they are importing goods and services produced by
| carbon emitting countries/states. We are lucky that economics of
| green energy vs fossil fuel-based energy are continuing to look
| better and better. A climate change win is a climate change win.
| But I guess we just can't let ourselves become complacent and say
| that we've already done our part because we let other countries
| do our polluting for us.
|
| Edit: to clarify, I was not referring specifically about the
| provenance of the battery with my comment about exporting
| pollution. For example, Hawaii imports cars, electronics,
| building materials, and has a large tourism industry that relies
| on airlines.
| kabanossen wrote:
| True but we should also celebrate successes like this. If we
| wait acknowledging progress until all emissions are replaced we
| miss the good deeds that happen.
| thom_thumb wrote:
| It would be nice if the whole world would transition away from
| fossil fuels all in lockstep, but that's just not realistic.
| The energy transition is going to be/already is very uneven.
| It's going to happen first in the places that have a strong
| desire to lead and the financial and the natural resources
| (e.g. abundant sun) to enable that. Hawaii happens to fit all
| those criteria.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The country leading the renewables transition right now is
| China. Since they're also the country that (not
| coincidentally) builds everything, outsourcing goods
| manufacturing to them seems like an okay bet, for the climate
| at least. (And yes, I know they're building coal, but their
| emissions are still set to peak because they're building more
| renewables than industry can consume while paying to idle
| coal plants.)
| graemep wrote:
| Why are they building coal plants if they are not going to
| increase their coal fired output?
|
| My guess is that their motive for moving to renewables is
| more to reduce their reliance on imported oil and gas
| (vulnerable to blockade in the event of war). Maybe they
| will reduce oil and gas and increase both coal and
| renewables use?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Theyr rebuilding, newer, cleaner, more flexible plants as
| in the Chinese system the coal plants need to perform the
| same role as gas plants in areas with easy access to gas
| i.e. running intermittently at low capacity factors.
| davidw wrote:
| Something I see so much in local politics is that things
| don't all happen in a nicely coordinated fashion like one
| might want. Say, building some denser housing with more
| transit. But people telling you to wait until everything
| lines up 'just so' most likely want neither. Things happen in
| fits and starts in the real world.
| bluGill wrote:
| I find it interesting that places like Iowa, Texas, and
| Kansas are leading the transition in the US despite none
| being places anything thinks associated with
| environmentalism. While states you might expect to care are
| way behind. Hawaii has had expensive energy all along and was
| an early installer of wind, but somehow is still way behind.
| jakewins wrote:
| This is true and important - but subtle and easily
| misunderstood as simply outsourcing emissons .
|
| There is a fundamental pollution that occurs in a coal plant:
| its purpose is to combine carbon and oxygen to produce heat and
| CO2.
|
| There is no such fundamentals in producing a lithium cell or a
| solar module.
|
| We are bootstrapping this carbon free energy system from our
| existing energy system - so of course, emissions abound - but
| once bootstrapped, it perpetuates without fossil fuels.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Not really: batteries and solar need to be replaced more
| often that coal plant. The current and foreseen material
| sourcing, production and logistics for solar and batteries
| rely on a ton of steel which needs... coal! Coal-free steel
| already exist but is much more expensive, and will very
| probably remain expensive for a long time.
| slashdev wrote:
| The quantity of carbon emitted here matters
| breischl wrote:
| > Not really: batteries and solar need to be replaced more
| often that coal plant.
|
| The design lifetimes are on the same order of magnitude,
| and the components of the coal plant need
| overhauls/replacement as well. It's not that different.
|
| And notice that the coal plant needs a continuous supply of
| fuel, whereas battery/solar are one-time costs. That's a
| big difference anywhere, and any even bigger one in Hawaii
| where you have to ship the coal in.
|
| >production and logistics for solar and batteries rely on a
| ton of steel
|
| Totally unlike coal plants, coal mines, and coal shipping.
|
| > Coal-free steel already exist but is much more expensive
|
| If we can't do everything, perfectly, right now, then we
| should definitely do nothing at all. That's much better,
| and totally how all technology development works. /sarc
| bluGill wrote:
| What the "production and logistics for" for coal need? I
| used to live near a coal power plant, there were several
| long trains per hour of coal going to that plant. Now I
| live near a wind farm, and while in construction it had a
| few semis per hour - maybe as much as trains to the coal
| plant - but that wind farm is complete and will run for a
| few more decades with very little traffic, while the coal
| power plant had that many trains per day every day for all
| the time it was in operation. (it is now shut down)
| mckn1ght wrote:
| My mind goes to the question of what chemical byproducts come
| out of the manufacture of batteries or PVs. Maybe it's not
| CO2, but something else. Maybe it's easier to deal with. And
| maybe it's a good tradeoff, or just in certain quantities,
| but if so what is that tipping point? I don't know where to
| look for this kind of information.
| irrelative wrote:
| While I'm sure some chemical byproducts come out of that,
| it's important to note that hydrocarbons assuredly make
| some really nasty stuff along the way [1]. I also wish
| there was a way to more easily compare these things, but
| the misinformation around environmental data is really next
| level. General, consider thinking about renewable
| infrastructure as more of a stock that accumulates vs
| fossil fuel usage which is a flow.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If it makes people happy, it must be destroying the planet!
|
| I have no idea what kind of destruction it does. But it's
| an alternative for making people miserable to the point
| where it's an stochastic genocide, so it must be bad
| somehow.
|
| Yeah, I see lots of people saying exactly the same,
| completely seriously, both online and live. What goes on
| those people head is beyond my capacity to comprehend.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > I have no idea what kind of destruction it does
|
| This is really all you had to say, but since it doesn't
| really add to the discussion, my recommendation would
| have been to avoid replying at all, especially
| considering the rest of the content...
|
| > genocide
|
| IME, the people that throw out buzzwords like this about
| every issue they come across are some of the most likely
| to perpetrate it, given the opportunity.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I think there's a lot of institutional skepticism in
| general. Like the game is rigged, and alternative things
| are secretly nasty and fueled by ulterior motives. This
| is not surprising, perhaps it's even warranted.
|
| What's really irks me is the other side of the coin, the
| things that get a "free pass," like (for instance) fossil
| fuels and their entire production chain. I see a lot of
| squabbles about the negatives of various energy tech, and
| somehow the order of magnitude difference between that
| and fossil fuels is brushed over, not to speak of oil
| companies' clear manipulation of public opinion.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you burned the oil in a wind turbine you would get
| enough electric to make up for not having that wind turbine
| for about 10 hours. Similar for the blades, if you burned
| the inputs you have days of power. The turbine is expected
| to last for 20 years and so while it isn't zero
| environmental cost compared to alternatives it is so much
| better we may as well call it zero.
| standeven wrote:
| One way to measure this is energy stored on energy invested
| (ESOEI). It answers how much energy is stored over the
| lifetime of the device compared to the energy required to
| build it. Lithium batteries come in at around 32.
|
| This isn't bad, but pumped hydro is way better (704). And
| both options are way better than the ongoing drilling and
| mining and combusting required for fossil fuels.
| owlstuffing wrote:
| >way better than the ongoing drilling and mining. . .
|
| Lithium isn't mined? Producing large/scale lithium
| batteries involves large-scale pollution.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I assume the batteries came from China. In 2023 China installed
| more solar energy capacity than the rest of the world combined.
| dralley wrote:
| Unless Hawaii was mining their own coal beforehand, I doubt
| they're losing anything here.
| mathrawka wrote:
| Two days ago there was a storm that damaged some generators and
| left the batteries very low that they resorted to rolling
| blackouts, as there was not enough electricity for the island.
|
| https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/update-rolling-oahu-outages...
| Arrath wrote:
| Oh hey that's why my power went out!
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| It doesn't coincide, as the coal plant shut down in 2022, more
| than a year before this storm.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| It literally did not coincide at all, given that the coal plant
| in question closed in September 2022.
| s0rce wrote:
| That seems unrelated to the batteries, couldn't a storm damage
| the coal plant?
| fuhcghxd wrote:
| The storm didn't damage the batteries, the storm just caused
| a needfor the energy larger then what the batteries could do
| TOMDM wrote:
| > The utility also requested "black-start capability." If a
| disaster, like a cyclone or earthquake, knocks out the grid
| completely, Hawaiian Electric needs a power source to restart it.
| The Kapolei batteries are programmed to hold some energy in
| reserve for that purpose. Plus Power located the project near a
| substation connected to three other power plants so the battery
| "can be AAA to jump-start those other plants," Keefe said.
|
| Anyone who has played enough Factorio knows just how important
| that can be.
| zorkian wrote:
| Yeeeep. I usually end up creating isolated grids with circuit
| networks and banks of capacitors to make it so the power
| production (and fuel production to feed it) can never shut
| down...
|
| Dyson Sphere Program (an amazing factory builder game, if you
| haven't tried it) has similar problems -- but no circuit
| networks. I haven't yet figured out how to make a robust power
| generation system that doesn't rely on just alerting the
| operator that something is going wrong...
| foobarian wrote:
| Getting offtopic but I found Mindustry to be a super fun
| variation of Factorio due to the more adversarial campaign.
| brink wrote:
| Did energy prices go up as a result?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Here's a graph of Hawaii's power prices.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS49F72610
| SECProto wrote:
| Note that graph seems to have no data between 1986 and 2018
| dgacmu wrote:
| This was a little buried, so surfacing some #s that seemed
| interesting to put this in perspective:
|
| - 565 MWh of storage capacity
|
| - 185 MW of instantaneous power delivery capacity
|
| - $219M of financing for the project
|
| Hawaii's residential electricity price is roughly $0.415 per kWh
| vs a US average of $0.162.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/global-bess-deployments-to-e...
|
| Start where electricity is expensive and/or the revenue you
| steal from thermal generators (grid support mentioned,
| synthetic inertia, black start capability, etc) supports the
| economics, and work your way down as battery costs decline and
| you force thermal generators to become uneconomic due to
| compressing their runtimes. Think in systems.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Yup, absolutely. Places with high energy costs due to being
| geographically isolated / without a lot of local energy
| resources have always struck me as some of the best initial
| places for solar+battery.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Add to that a place that is close enough to the equator
| that there are no drastic seasonal shifts in PV production.
| mbostleman wrote:
| I worked on a solar project a number of years back that was
| one of the first that was actually independently
| financially sustainable. It was in west Texas in an area
| that had a highly distributed population and very hot
| summers. So the existing energy sources were already higher
| than normal and had the added dimension of spiking demand.
| Perfect environment for solar to be competitive.
| myself248 wrote:
| Can you clarify your usage of "thermal" here? Most everything
| except photovoltaic is thermal.
|
| In the US, we usually name the heat source -- coal, natural
| gas, nuclear -- even though these are all thermal in
| operation. And the word 'thermal' does not show up in any of
| those when we talk about them.
|
| The only time the word 'thermal' shows up in US usage is with
| the 'geo' prefix, and I can't imagine compressing the runtime
| of a geothermal plant, it's the perfect base-load plant. Are
| we talking about different things?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Coal, oil, or fossil gas are traditionally considered
| thermal generators. Burn, make water hot, make water do
| work.
|
| Examples: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aelectricitymap
| s%2Felectri...
|
| https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-
| contrib/b...
| singhrac wrote:
| I think you're being a bit pedantic, actually. I work in
| power systems in the US (though not an expert) and the term
| thermal being used to refer to coal, gas and nuclear, with
| the latter a bit flexible, is very common. For example,
| it's very common to say "thermal systems provide inertia".
| myself248 wrote:
| In following the Ukraine war, I've come to understand
| that in certain usage, 'thermal' always implies 'nuclear
| thermal', almost like a euphemism rather than a useful
| descriptor that includes other forms of thermal.
|
| So I think it's a terrible term in general and it's much
| more useful to describe the fuel, that's all I was asking
| for.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| So estimating the lifetime of the battery at 5000 cycles and
| lets say round trip efficiency at 95% we end up with $0.082 /
| kWh. (EDIT: originally I claimed $0.074 which is wrong) that
| the battery adds.
|
| So I'm guessing in the long run this will considerably lower
| the cost of electricity on the island as adding PV capacity is
| much cheaper than keeping a coal plant running and this battery
| allows to install much more and use the energy at night. Not
| sure whether Hawaii has much wind power but it would seem to be
| rather windy place.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Are you assuming zero cost for the power to charge the
| battery?
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| No. This is additional on top of energy production. Energy
| production cost was already in the base price quoted. The
| energy consumption will be roughly the same unless the
| price changes dramatically.
|
| But this allows more PV generation to be put in which is
| the cheapest way of producing energy.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| The windy side of Maui has a bunch of wind turbines.
| zizee wrote:
| Can you explain your logic a bit more? I'm struggling to
| understand how you calculated the $0.074, and what you are
| saying it represents.
|
| Edit: I suspect your calculations just represent depreciation
| over the batteries lifetime, which is only one of the costs
| involved.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| The capacity of the battery is 565 MWh.
|
| The cycle life of these kinds of batteries is about 5000.
| Meaning they get about 5000 charge and discharge cycles
| before their useful life is over. It could be 2000 it could
| be 10000 and the definition of useful is also dependent on
| application.
|
| So in it's lifetime this battery can store 5000 * 565 =
| 2825000 MWh
|
| The cost of the system was $219M.
|
| About 5% of energy is going lost due to inefficiencies.
|
| $219M / (5000 * 565 * 0.95) = $81.6/MWh = $0.082 / kWh.
|
| I am sorry for calculating the efficiency incorrectly in
| the original post.
|
| This does not take into account the maintenance cost.
| zizee wrote:
| Thanks! No need to apologise, it's fun to run the
| numbers.
|
| On top of maintenance costs we probably need to account
| for finance costs (5% interest rate means repayments of
| 100mil over 10 years) and the fact batteries don't tend
| to ever get charged/discharged 100%.
|
| Presumably if you built this you'd want a bit of return
| on your investment, so you'd have to charge more on top.
|
| TBC: I think these batteries make economic sense (even
| more so if coal/petrol had externalities baked into their
| costs), but we don't want to oversell things
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| That's close to my guesstimates of about $0.10/kwr. So I tend
| to believe it.
|
| The important thing is battery storage is competitive with
| peaking plants over a period of hours. And lowest cost when
| it comes to short term supplies on the order of seconds to an
| hour.
|
| Also the logistics of containerized batteries is great. You
| need a place to put them and a grid connection. And nothing
| more than that.
| hokkos wrote:
| rountrip is closer to 85% and you have to add the power
| electronic, also the graph is cell cost of
| module/pack/gigapack and security systems...
| dalyons wrote:
| Hawaii, a remote island in the middle of the pacific, pays less
| than the 2024 pg&e prices for the bay area. PG&E are the worst.
| testfoobar wrote:
| What powers Hawaii at night?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Plenty of oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Hawaii
|
| Coal was only a small percentage of the energy mix in the last
| decade.
|
| Can we move on from the tired old "haha idiots forgot about
| night time" slam on renewable energy yet?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Can we move on from the tired old "haha idiots forgot about
| night time" slam on renewable energy yet?
|
| Not likely. Identity politics never goes out of style.
| reocha wrote:
| That is not idpol
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure it is. The side that complains about "identity
| politics" engages in plenty of it. Being anti-renewable
| is one of those identity bits - from rolling coal to
| Trump thinking windmills give you cancer.
|
| See also: "cancel culture"
| bequanna wrote:
| Well, it's a bad argument made that way, I agree.
|
| But let's at least be honest about the necessity to massively
| overbuild intermittent sources (and expensive storage) to
| provide reliability when we compare $/MWh.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| An honest discussion of that should probably include the
| ecological and health impacts of coal, and the ongoing
| dramatic decline in cost to add new solar/wind capacity.
| It's cheaper even factoring in variable production, and
| this battery project is part of how you address
| intermittency.
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-
| fo...
| gottorf wrote:
| I don't know where that linked dataset is from, but
| almost every claim I've seen for the LCoE of wind/solar
| being lower than any fossil fuel source excludes the cost
| of energy storage. Latest estimates[0] put solar and wind
| roughly at par with combined-cycle gas plants, but
| without the cost of addressing intermittency.
|
| Plus, it would be probably unwise to extrapolate the
| current downward trend in costs for the relatively new
| technology (meaning early in its marginal cost curve) of
| utility-scale solar and wind that it would continue to
| get much cheaper.
|
| The two factors combined would suggest that current
| energy policy in Hawaii is likely to result in increased
| costs for the consumer down the line.
|
| [0]: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_gen
| eration....
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I don't know where that linked dataset is from
|
| Scroll down a bit under the graphic.
| https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth (which
| has some more dramatic charts, and a lot of explanation)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 2019 numbers: https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/lcoss-
| text.html
|
| California has contracts with 8 Minute Energy to buy
| energy from their solar+storage plants for 4 cents per
| kWh.
| breischl wrote:
| Lazard LCOE 2023 puts solar PV including storage as cost
| competitive with natural gas CC plants.
|
| The very first chart puts solar+storage at $46-102/MWh,
| with gas at $42-101/MWh.
|
| https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-
| cost...
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Do you think batteries stop working at night?
| martin1b wrote:
| So, they shut down a coal plant to rely on...another coal plant
| for power generation. How exactly did it 'replace' the last coal
| plant?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| What? No. They're replacing it with solar generation.
|
| > With 565 megawatt-hours of storage, the battery can't
| directly replace the coal plant's energy production, but it
| works with the island's bustling solar sector to fill that
| role. "We're enabling the grid to add more clean renewable
| energy to the system to replace the energy from the coal
| plant," Keefe said.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Given the small area of the islands and the less-than-flat
| terrain, I'm surprised they went solar. Have hydro turbines
| been considered?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Hawaii is not known for its rivers.
|
| You don't need flat terrain for solar. China is papering
| over entire mountains with panels. https://www.reddit.com/r
| /interestingasfuck/comments/sd88u7/s...
| bobim wrote:
| Impressive and frightening. Trying to patch an ecological
| horror with an ecological horror.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| What other coal plant?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Hawaii is powered by good old oil. Battery did not replace a
| power plant. Thanks.
| carabiner wrote:
| Powered by Tesla MegaPacks. Just insane how much value Musk has
| brought to the world.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Too bad he's jumped the shark these last couple of years.
| lukev wrote:
| I was curious so I looked it up. Currently, geothermal energy
| provides 10-15% of Hawaii's energy needs. Given that it's highly
| volcanic, it seems like this could be increased.
|
| For comparison, geothermal power accounts for over 50% of
| Iceland's production.
|
| Curious if the differences are physical/geological, or some other
| reason.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Most electrical consumption is on an island two islands over
| from the volcanoes. Probably also geological: hot springs are
| not really a thing in Hawaii.
| bix6 wrote:
| Easy, just move the volcanoes
| gumby wrote:
| Sounds so simple but in this case the volcanoes _are_ the
| islands.
| breischl wrote:
| Good news - the volcanoes are already moving!
|
| Bad news - they're moving at a geological pace, and away
| from most of the state's population and power demand.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If I were living on an island with a volcano, I'd put
| "moving at a geological pace" under the "good news"
| category.
| myself248 wrote:
| Easy, just move the power demand. Make it super cheap where
| it's naturally occurring, and a wizard, er, the market will
| solve it!
| d6e wrote:
| Run an underwater hvdc line like the uk does
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Sounds expensive
| nicoburns wrote:
| I believe underwater lines are typically not that
| expensive (compared to other major energy
| generation/transmission projects). It's actually much
| easier to lay a cable in water (just drop it in) that it
| is over land (where you either have to construct pylons
| or dig a trench).
| senkora wrote:
| It does seem like it would be possible to lay a cable to
| transmit the power from the Big Island to Oahu. My reference
| for that is the plan to lay a cable to transmit power from
| Australia to Singapore.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Nobody is arguing that it is not possible
| aliowejrlaiwej wrote:
| Good god. The comments on this thread are the worst I've seen on
| hacker news.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| So you decided to add your own that contributes nothing of
| value whatsoever?
| gwright wrote:
| The main problem with replacing a fossil fuel plant with
| renewable + batteries is finding a battery system that can hold
| energy over a sufficiently long period of time and has enough
| capacity to replace solar/wind when it is dark and calm.
|
| In the studies I've seen the time shift required is on the order
| of seasons and the capacity required is cost prohibitive.
|
| It may be that the weather patterns in Hawaii are sufficiently
| stable that it makes it possible to remove the companion base
| load generation capacity. The article seems to hint at the fact
| that the total capacity of the coal plant was much higher than
| the storage capacity of the battery system:
|
| > With 565 megawatt-hours of storage, the battery can't directly
| replace the coal plant's energy production ...
|
| So it isn't clear how much capacity has been lost in this switch.
| They may also be other changes in the generation portfolio that
| aren't discussed in the article.
| gumby wrote:
| DoE has a development program called "Long Term Storage". IIRC
| "long term" is anything more than 12 hours.
|
| Seasonal sounds implausible to my, but it's not my area and I
| haven't worked in storage for over a decade.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Seasonal is possible, but I'd imagine scaling it is tough.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community
|
| https://www.planete-energies.com/en/media/article/how-
| does-l...
| gumby wrote:
| My problem with seasonal isn't the duration itself (though
| that's a challenge too). But if you're trying to shift
| seasonally you need not just storage duration but volume-
| duration too.
|
| That is, let's hypothesize a house uses 24 kWh per day,
| roughly the magnitude in California, 365 days/year (AC in
| summer, heating in winter). Power is from solar and wind.
|
| If you look at "duck curve" demand, you need a bit extra in
| the afternoon / early evening when there is higher A/C
| demand -- you can scavenge a bit more power in the morning
| (say 5 AM to noon) and discharge it in the afternoon (when
| the solar flux is high BTW), then do the same trick
| tomorrow. Call it 5 kWh. That's all the storage you need: a
| relatively small amount for a few hours.
|
| Could you hold that 5 kWh for four months? Maybe. Maybe you
| need to store 7 kWh to get 5 out four months later. Only
| it's not just 5 kWh for four months: that's 120 days of
| needing your storage, to produce 600 kWh...on a battery you
| then don't use much until next season.
|
| And that's just for one house. I don't see how seasonal
| long term storage works, except in a few weird corner
| cases. Maybe you store it as something else than protons,
| like methanol. But if you can build a better grid I suspect
| it's still better to export power from the Mojave to Bangor
| and the Mahgreb to Helsinki.
|
| I _am_ glad someone is thinking about this though!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think seasonal underground thermal storage is most
| interesting for somewhere like a remote community up near
| the Arctic Circle; away from grids, high seasonal
| variability in generation, etc. I don't think it's ever
| gonna be how you, say, run the whole European grid;
| there, a large geographic range of interconnected grid is
| more likely to be the answer. Cloudy in Germany? Spain's
| fine.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thermal storage is hamburger, hard to re-use, hard to
| transport. You need electrons.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > That is, let's hypothesize a house uses 24 kWh per day
|
| We're at approximately half that and it still isn't a
| tractable problem just for a single day, for the 1st week
| of January we used 88 Kwh and made 18.7 Kwh in solar,
| about 7.5 of which went to the grid (so would have been
| available to charge a battery). We'd need 4 times as much
| solar to get through the days and even then there would
| be days when there wouldn't be enough to go around.
| Making that work for a week would require 70 KWh of
| storage and a nameplate installed solar capacity of about
| 60 Kw, well into fantasy territory, it would never make
| sense from an economics perspective to set that up.
| You're looking at 150 to 200 panels depending on type,
| massive power infrastructure (your normal hookup will not
| even be close to enough for this) and a formidable array
| of batteries for storage.
|
| It won't happen locally for that reason, much as I would
| like to. The only thing we can do is to try to conserve
| even further but we're already close to what you can do
| with four people in one house, approximately 3 KWh /
| person / day, especially in the winter. Transporting that
| power from the excess in the summer would be an even more
| impressive feat. We still have 11 months of netmetering
| and then that's over.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Residential in general indeed isn't much of a concern.
| That can - even in Germany - be done by solar, wind,
| battery backups and geothermal.
|
| The more pressing problem is industry, which makes up
| about 44% of our electricity. Some processes, e.g. metal
| and glass smelters, absolutely require _years_ of
| uninterrupted power supply or need dozens of millions of
| euros and months of downtime to get repaired. Some, like
| electric-arc aluminium smelters, can handle a short-term
| load disconnect and receive a premium on their
| electricity prices for that. The utter majority however
| could in theory be suspended and resumed at will,
| adjusting to market prices and stability requirements...
| but the owners don 't like that uncertainty and workers
| don't like it either because they wouldn't get paid.
|
| Other large consumers like city lighting or advertising
| could in theory also be shut down or reduced during peak
| demand times. But as we've seen in the winter following
| the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this is politically
| untenable - people have grown so accustomed to the
| luxurious energy waste that they're (literally) willing
| to kill over it.
| soperj wrote:
| > when it is dark and calm.
|
| When is that in Hawaii?
| dylan604 wrote:
| What's the geothermal power potential in Hawaii? Seems like
| it would be a good source for it to me.
| sosborn wrote:
| The only island with active geothermal activity is an
| island without many people (compared to Oahu).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puna_Geothermal_Venture
| auspiv wrote:
| Equally important: how much would said geothermal cost?
| snakeyjake wrote:
| There is almost always wind in Hawaii.
|
| In late winter/early spring sometimes the trade winds get
| "funky" and there will be days where there is absolutely no
| wind at all and it is a little eerie.
| itishappy wrote:
| There also is no upper bound on the maximum time, just a lower
| and lower probability. Like with flooding, there's a recurrence
| interval.
|
| An hour long blackout may happen once a week.
|
| A day long blackout may happen once a year.
|
| A week long blackout may happen once a decade.
|
| (Numbers have been made up to illustrate the point.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100-year_flood
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The problem is that is non-tropical regions, in winter you
| get less sun and long periods (3 weeks is routine in European
| winter) with no winds so you need to be able to supply enough
| power for a very big amount of time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| There has never been a 3 week wind drought recorded on the
| North Sea. Wind droughts on cloudy days are even more rare.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| not three, but 2022 saw a two week period of wind drought
| in the north sea.
|
| This was well documented.
| gpm wrote:
| The same is true of other types of energy production... like
| when France lost 50% of it's nuclear simultaneously...
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220902-france-to-
| restar...
|
| Ultimately every technology has some unplanned downtime, and
| there will always be a risk of too much not generating
| simultaneously.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > In the studies I've seen the time shift required is on the
| order of seasons and the capacity required is cost prohibitive.
|
| Another option is too build some kind of overcapacity with the
| renewable so that you can avoid using the battery and recharge
| it even when the whether is not optimal. It doesn't work if the
| weather isn't stable enough[1], but for Hawaii I would be too
| surprised if it was viable.
|
| [1]: that's why solar + wind in northern Europe is a dead end
| like what we're seeing with Germany: in winter here we have
| very little sun and weeks long periods with practically no
| wind, so you'd need to have something like 10x solar if you
| wanted the overcapacity strategy to work, which also make
| things prohibitively expensive.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| We don't know if 10x will be prohibitively expensive going
| forward. It can also enable new kinds of uses of electricity
| we don't have today, offsetting the cost of build-out.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Germany can do it with a combination of wind, solar,
| batteries, and hydrogen.
|
| The green hydrogen is crucial, to deal with Dunkelflauten and
| to some extent seasonality. Germany has ample salt formations
| for cheap hydrogen storage. At the site I linked elsewhere in
| these comments, the solution for 24/7 power from RE is nearly
| doubled in Germany if green hydrogen is omitted.
|
| Germany is suffering now from the decision to pay for the
| 2009-2012 solar builds using long term high rates. When that
| ends (2032?) the costs should come down a lot. Building out
| solar now should be much less expensive.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > so you'd need to have something like 10x solar if you
| wanted the overcapacity strategy to work, which also make
| things prohibitively expensive.
|
| In the short-term, gas backup for such scenarios (which are
| relatively rare, and during which renewables will still
| operate at some non-100% fraction of the required energy)
| seems like it might be a reasonable option: we could probably
| get to (pulling numbers out of thin air) 95% renewable
| generation or something that way.
|
| Longer term, we'll definitely need some kind of long-term
| storage though. Perhaps synthetic fuel driven by overcapacity
| renewables during peak generation times might be an option
| here?
| DamonHD wrote:
| Storage is useful at all sorts of scales, from microseconds to
| years. Interseasonal or even a dunkleflaute's worth is hard at
| the moment, though we manage it with heat and with (eg) methane
| already in places. It's happening. Plus we are getting better
| at moving demand to when energy is available.
| audunw wrote:
| Do you have any links to those studies? Because the ones I've
| seen indicate the exact opposite. You only need 2-3 days of
| storage or so at most.
|
| Tony Seba has some presentations on this topic. His argument is
| that renewables is getting so cheap that you can build so much
| that the minimum production covers all days with few
| exceptions. I guess that might assume some reasonable grid
| upgrades as well.
|
| Marc Z Jacobsen has some fairly detailed studies for going 100%
| renewables. He doesn't generally assume any improvements in
| technology, so his estimates are conservative. I don't remember
| seeing anything about seasonal storage.
|
| You may ask about colder regions. Seems like the solution there
| will be 1. Trash burning (getting common in Scandinavia.. you
| could even do it with CO2 capture as a power plant in Oslo,
| Norway is developing), with district heating 2. Geothermal for
| district heating 3. Nuclear for a bit of extra baseload (UK,
| Sweden and Finland are all building nuclear)
|
| Also keep in mind that to go zero-carbon, we need to make a
| hell of a lot of hydrogen, ammonia, e-fuels, biofuel/oil/coal
| (I just read news about a Danish company starting commercial
| operation of a giant microwave reactor that can efficiently
| make bio-oil/coal from sewer sludge).
|
| All these solutions will imply a lot of storage capacity. If
| you're making enormous quantities of hydrogen you're going to
| have buffers at both the production and consumption side.
| Production can probably be throttled if needed.
|
| I'm guessing that the hydrogen power plants we already have
| will also be kept around to serve as backup. There's some
| pretty serious talk about switching the natural gas pipelines
| from Norway to Europe from gas to hydrogen. First making
| hydrogen with carbon capture and storage, then green hydrogen
| made with off-shore wind.
|
| And off-shore wind is another thing that's getting more common.
| If you build really big off-shore wind turbines the production
| is very reliable.
| chmars wrote:
| It's about 12 weeks in Germany:
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4dc8
| pfdietz wrote:
| To get a handle on this, I point people to this fun site
| https://model.energy which allows you to use historical weather
| data, various cost assumptions, and optimize for the cheapest
| combination of wind, solar, batteries, and hydrogen to get
| steady 24/7 power (which would be a drop-in replacement for a
| nuclear power plant, essentially.) By disabling the hydrogen
| you can get a handle on the cost bump for handling the storage
| with just batteries. In some places, that cost increase would
| be considerable (for example, Germany); in others, negligible
| (India).
|
| If you don't like the cost assumptions (they cite sources) you
| can tweak them and see how the optimum solutions change.
| beders wrote:
| Who paid for these studies? "order of seasons" - that can't be
| right.
| jltsiren wrote:
| This is not a new problem, and there is no silver bullet that
| will solve it. Just a long sequence of incremental improvements
| that will make the difference over decades.
|
| In the Nordics, the solution is primarily hydro + wind +
| nuclear, with cogeneration from district heating and industrial
| processes. Old-style power plants that generate electricity by
| burning fuels are largely obsolete, and the cogeneration plants
| are also phasing out fossil fuels. The solution is within
| reach, but it took decades to get there.
|
| Other regions will need other solutions.
| standardUser wrote:
| > So it isn't clear how much capacity has been lost in this
| switch. They may also be other changes in the generation
| portfolio that aren't discussed in the article.
|
| I understand why people are so quick to argue against batteries
| as a power supply when they are unproven in a given scenario. I
| think it's a narrow way of thinking that ignores everything we
| know about the progression of technology and devalues the
| skilled professionals actually doing this work, but I
| understand. What I don't understand is what compels a person to
| grasp at straws and pose speculative "what ifs" after a project
| is successfully in operation. What more do you need? Does it
| need to run fifty years before you're convinced?
| whalesalad wrote:
| Fun fact - the exhaust cooling tubes at that old plant dump out
| into the ocean and create a really warm environment that is rich
| in sea life and a very popular diving/snorkeling spot. It's even
| called Electric Beach. https://www.snorkeling-
| report.com/spot/snorkeling-electric-b...
|
| I lived there for a few years and tried to snorkel there - but my
| submechanophobia prevented me from getting more than a few feet
| into the water. Seeing those big spooky tubes scared the ever
| living shit out of me.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fe...
| paxys wrote:
| For me it would be less about spooky and more that I don't want
| to swim anywhere near whatever they are pumping out.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Ostensibly it is just warm water from a cooling system. Like
| a PC watercooling system, except the reservoir is literally
| the Pacific Ocean.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's clean water. They circulate ocean water through a heat
| exchanger to cool the steam condenser.
|
| Nuclear plants do the same thing.
| alex_h wrote:
| The Kahe (oil powered) plant at electric beach is still
| operational. The coal fired power plant that shut down is a
| little further south of there, closer to Barbers point.
| danans wrote:
| This is great. I also think Hawaii should explore the new
| enhanced geothermal systems (i.e. Fervo Energy) that can
| apparently generate baseload electricity even in places as
| geothermally inactive as the Midwestern US. Fervo was in fact
| part of the Hawaii-based Elemental Accelerator's cohort back in
| 2020, so this must be on their radar.
|
| Oahu seems like an ideal place to do this due to its seemingly
| higher geothermal activity (at least compared to other places
| that Fervo can operate), its limited land area, and its
| astronomical electricity prices.
|
| 1. https://www.higp.hawaii.edu/hggrc/fervo-energy-aims-to-
| incre...
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Batteries can't replace energy generation, it still needs to be
| generated to be stored. Though it does give you more control over
| how you generate the power.
|
| Fossil fuels are often used to generate electricity for
| batteries, which just moves the problem elsewhere. For example,
| you may be charging your EV with energy generated by a Coal
| plant.
|
| Similarly, outsourcing manufacturing often moves pollution from
| domestic to international. If a country heavily consumes goods
| imported from somewhere like China, they are part of the cause of
| those greenhouse gases. The pollution has simply been outsourced
|
| Not trying to make a specific point, but often people only think
| one level deep about these things.
| tw04 wrote:
| Right, which is why we have renewables to generate power. The
| coal plant was there to cover any potential power shortfall on
| overcast days or unexpected late night power needs.
|
| This is a mostly solved problem, it's just a matter of building
| out the infrastructure.
| mrb wrote:
| Read the article. They explain exactly how batteries can
| _replace_ (yes, replace) the coal plant. In short: renewables
| have a hard time matching real-time demand. Clouds come. Wind
| dies down. What do you do? So in the past they needed that coal
| plant to add extra generating capacity, when needed. But now,
| with the batteries, the battery can store the surplus of
| renewables not instantly needed. Then when clouds come or wind
| dies done, the energy flow reverses and batteries deliver this
| surplus, hence smoothing supply.
| audunw wrote:
| > but often people only think one level deep about these
| things.
|
| In my experiences the ones who care about zero-carbon and
| renewable energy have thought very deeply about these things.
|
| > Fossil fuels are often used to generate electricity for
| batteries
|
| Yeah, but renewables are already cheaper that fossil fuels in
| most cases. And charging batteries is one of the most flexible
| loads for a renewable grid. I don't care if I charge my car on
| monday or friday.
|
| > For example, you may be charging your EV with energy
| generated by a Coal plant.
|
| This example is just completely irrelevant by now. Coal is
| dead.
|
| Even then, it's much better to move the pollution away from
| where people live, and where you have an opportunity to clean
| the exhaust gases. (if your country cares about those kinds of
| things). It's also more CO2-efficient, even when not counting
| future battery recycling.
|
| > If a country heavily consumes goods imported from somewhere
| like China, they are part of the cause of those greenhouse
| gases.
|
| Fair point, but in the context of batteries I'm not too
| worried. Both USA and EU are now pretty damn serious about on-
| shoring on near-shoring both material production and battery
| production.
|
| Also, we now have battery recycling at a commercial scale,
| which is far more energy and resource efficient.
|
| We WILL have a couple of decades where the green transition
| will be quite resource and carbon intensive. But as the first
| big waves of EVs and grid energy batteries start to get
| recycled that resource use will fall off a cliff.
| wilg wrote:
| I would say this argument is only thinking one level deep.
|
| If you charge your EV with a coal plant, is that better or
| worse than a gas car? (It's better.) Are EVs actually being
| charged with only coal power? (No.) Do we have the technology
| to replace polluting power plants? (Yes.) Are renewables
| cheaper than fossil fuels? (Yes.) Do gas cars have the ability
| to get more efficient as power generation changes? (No.) Do
| EVs? (Yes.)
|
| Does manufacturing overseas contribute to global warming? (Of
| course.) If you factor this in, how do US carbon emissions
| look? (They're going down, both total and per-capita.)
| cdnsteve wrote:
| This article never speaks to costs, as always with green energy,
| it's only green because the government funds it. How many years
| can a coal power plant last? How many years do these batteries
| last. What are the mineral inputs into these batteries? What are
| the inputs, costs and "renewable" properties of "green" energy?
| There are none. The batteries end up in toxic waste dumps. All
| the solar panels end up in the garage.
|
| Stop chasing vanity and use common sense for utilities. How has
| this impacted their key metrics like reliability, what happens if
| there is ash in the air for a month and no solar can be provided?
| They took a proven, reliable production system and turned it into
| the latest JavaScript framework. Good luck.
| audunw wrote:
| Stop making up non-sense that have zero basis in reality.
|
| The costs are fairly well captured in LCOE of these various
| sources of electricity. Questions like "How many year it lasts"
| is especially well captured.
|
| > How many years do these batteries last.
|
| For grid storage? Probably 1-3 decades. They'll have excellent
| battery management systems, chemistries that are optimized for
| longevity rather than energy density, they won't be fast
| charging/discharging, they'll probably never be discharged to
| 0%, mostly above 20% probably, which is also very gentle for
| batteries.
|
| My EV battery is on its 8th year now with very little
| degradation. That's with primitive cooling (air cooling), older
| battery chemistry and fairly many charge/discharge cycles,
| including many deep discharges, since the EV battery is tiny
| (27kwH).
|
| > The batteries end up in toxic waste dumps.
|
| Completely false. Battery recycling is already happening at
| massive commercial scale, and reaching near 100% recycling.
| From consumer products like Apple iPhones to car and grid
| batteries. Car and grid batteries are particularly easy to
| recycle since you get huge bulk of identical cells.
|
| Think about how insane it is to even consider this a
| disadvantage for batteries. How insanely many tonnes of coal
| will a coal power plant have burned in a decade? All that
| mining is gone forever. With battery materials mining, we'll
| eventually have enough materials for all the batteries we could
| ever need.
|
| > All the solar panels end up in the garage.
|
| Solar panels are a bit trickier, but that's also starting to
| ramp up at a commercial scale.
|
| EU is already well ahead with regulations targeting recycling
| of these things. And given what's already demonstrated
| commercially, there's no reason to think 100% efficient
| recycling won't be the reality in a decade or so.
|
| > what happens if there is ash in the air for a month and no
| solar can be provided?
|
| Over a whole continent?
|
| In France several of the supposedly reliable nuclear reactors
| went down at the same time a little while back. Huge amount of
| power went offline. They got by just fine with the help of
| their UK and German neighbors.
| loeg wrote:
| I thought Hawaii largely ran on diesel?
|
| https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=HI#tabs-4
|
| Coal was maybe 12% of their energy consumption in 2021. This is a
| good change but it's a long way from eliminating all very dirty
| and expensive electricity sources in HI.
| pengaru wrote:
| And here I thought Hawaii's fossil fuel of choice was oil
| imports...
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Call me cynical, but I think every state should keep at least 1
| coal power plant running forever to maintain skills and supplies.
| Coal is one of the most abundant natural resources in the USA. In
| national emergencies we can fall back on it, but not if we paint
| ourselves into a corner.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Hi cynical! Overhead is the sun - it is a massively more
| abundant energy resource than coal could ever be. It has run
| for billions of years and has at least one more left in it.
| Coal is a finite resource and not a very pleasant one to mine.
|
| Solar generation is generally quite dispersed instead of few
| monolithic coal plants.
|
| That's just solar. There is also wind and wave, geo-thermal and
| many more ways to generate electricity (power). That's
| diversification and that surely is easier to defend.
|
| I would suggest that relying on one power source is painting
| yourself into a corner and then drinking the paint.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| [delayed]
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