We still want to do lots of distribution, but it'll be for reliability reasons rather than cost.
1: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
Challenge is getting the pricing model correct for such ancillary grid benefits to make it worth it for developer to build.
Pumped hydro is one of the better options but it has the ecological impact of just building new hydro power but less great economic impacts because the water level is less stable for people to live beside.
There’s over 280 million cars in the US, assuming on average that’s ~75kWh each we’re looking at ~21 tWh worth of battery storage. Meanwhile the average daily electricity use in the US is currently only 11 tWh. Of course that increases in a 100% EV world but EV’s are generally quite flexible demand.
PS: Solar power plants are often built to store ~50% of their daily output in batteries. It’s currently economically viable because that’s released at peak demand and thus peak prices, but with how quickly battery prices have been falling they will soon be viable even for normal nighttime prices.
How many years do you have to go back before "just roll out lots of solar" was the silly hippy-dippy answer that all the sophisticated commenters who got their information via unofficial fossil fuel PR laughed at?
Remember when solar was the big problem that no one had a solution for? Turns out we did.
The future of energy is a lot of solar and a lot of batteries. Some other stuff will be involved but those two will do lots.
We're already at the point where new build pumped hydro doesn't make financial sense unless you have other needs for a big pile of water. Solar and batteries will beat it.
https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-increas...
https://lorenz-g.github.io/tesla-megapack-tracker/
(on a smaller scale, to date, Tesla has deployed Powerwalls and Powerpacks at more than 50,000 sites worldwide; their Lathrop, CA facility is ramping to manufacture 40GWh/yr of capacity)
Competition is already there - its next how do you deploy your development costs for winning those assets.
These are targeting 8-10 hours of sustained power when needed.
edit: Just re-read your comment I assumed you were implying high frequency trading as a bad thing - though it might have been to help non-energy people understand.
Industrially smelting aluminium, making hydrogen, heating water, desalination.
Not that I'm saying storage shouldn't be part of the mix.
Bring on the sodium ion grid storage! Also, I'd think California has the terrain to do pumped hydro storage.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...
This is why the EU has plans to build out a large hydrogen transportation and storage grid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_curren
> The Changji-Guquan ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission line in China is the world’s first transmission line operating at 1,100kV voltage. The transmission line traverses for a total distance of 3,324km and is capable of transmitting up to 12GW of electricity.
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/changji-guquan-uhv...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...
Losses can be compensated for with...more renewable generation.
(note that the above distance is roughly the distance across Europe east-west, distance across the US is a bit more, but you don't need to pull east coast generation all the way to west coast load centers or vice versa)
The cost of a hydrogen pipeline is only slightly larger than that of a methane pipeline of the same BTU capacity, even though the energy value of a hydrogen molecule is considerably less than a methane molecule. That's because hydrogen has considerably lower viscosity, which reduces pumping costs.
Thanks for the insights, its not something I really thought of before.
I don't think that. Some gas and oil companies have, via their lobbies, produced content that implied this is true with articles that complain about the various processes over the lifetime of a solar panel that produce waste, but I think even they have refrained from making the claim that it's almost as bad as gas.
