There has finally been the breakthrough in renewable energy we have all been waiting for. Many small incremental advances have been happening all along which has make this final, vital, critical breakthrough possible and many more will be made which will fine tune the system but we are over the hump.
The price of solar and wind have become less expensive to install and operate, kW for kW than a coal fired power station. In fact, it is now less expensive to build and operate a mega wind or solar farm than to operate an existing coal fired power station. To put the cherry on the top, when you start to build a wind farm or solar farm, each unit you install starts to generate electricity and produce revenue. A new coal fired power station has to be complete before you see your first return.
And the chocolate sauce on the bottom is that if you have to do maintenance or repair, you do one turbine at a time while the rest continue to generate power (money). A coal fired power station has to be taken out of production for maintenance.
But the weak point of renewable energy has always been that you are generating power when you don't need it and need it when you are not generating. This has now been solved.
Of course you always could have installed a huge battery bank of, say, Lead acid batteries. You could have used those large units that the phone companies use to keep the power running no matter what the power generation companies are doing. These were the batteries that were much beloved by early adopters of renewable energy. The phone companies would sell off the used ones that still had quite a bit of life in them.
The problem was that they degrade, need quite a bit of maintenance and are expensive. They are also heavy although weight is not much of a problem in a static application. The total life cycle cost of lead acid batteries made them a non starter for a commercial unit. No other battery came out to be financially feasible either.
There was and is one sort of energy storage system that is economically feasible despite a cycle efficiency of about 75%. That is Pumped Storage. You pump water into a high reservoir when power is in excess of demand and run it back down through a generator when you need more than you are generating in other power plants. However, most of the possible sites have been taken up and we need still more peak shaving plants (peaker plants) to take care of short and longer term peak demand.
The classic short term peak demand story that everyone quotes is in the UK in the intermission in a live broadcast of a foot ball game. Everyone heads for the kitchen to put on the jug (turn on the electric kettle). Demand spikes and the power distribution company must be ready to cope with this demand. Otherwise you would have brown outs all over the UK. If your electricity model is a commercial one, you must then pay whatever the peaker plant demands for this excess electricity. Even if you are a totally government run operation, you will have had to build peaker plants that most of the time are not earning their keep. You have tied up a lot of tax money in a facility that runs intermittently.
So what is this breakthrough and why is it a breakthrough. I am talking about the Australian Lithium ion mega-battery. It has a capacity of 100 mWh (mega Watt hours) and is owned by a wind farm in South Australia. But why is it a breakthrough.
It Is On Line To Return Revenue Equal To It's Full Capital Cost In A Tad Over Three Years!!!!!
Economics trump all other considerations. Economics is more powerful than all of our articles and placard waving demonstrations. It even trumps venal politicians who are in the pocket of 'Big-Coal' and will try anything to scupper anything that interferes with their ill gotten gains. If it is economic (makes bags of money for the owner) it will be adopted.
You might ask, how does a battery that doesn't produce any electricity; that only stores electricity, earn money. Well there are a number of ways. Here is one just related to the way the electrical grid operates and one related to the fact that it is owned by a wind farm.
First we have peak shaving. When the demand comes in, the power distribution company has to supply more electricity. Either it has to build a peaker power station or has to buy electricity from an existing peaker power station. If you are a supplier of power to other companies, If you own a mega battery, you have the perfect solution for supplying peak power to other companies. If you are a distribution company that owns a mega battery, you no longer have to pay these high prices to other companies. You have power stored in in-house.
All this would hold true even for a company that just owned a mega battery but no renewable energy generation capacity at all. They would buy power when it was cheap and sell it when it is expensive.
For a renewable energy company with a solar or wind farm, it is even better. You have built this expensive unit but have to feather your wind turbines or simply not send the power to the grid when the wind turbines or solar panels are generating. With a mega-battery, you can store the excess power, making best use of the generating capacity of the farm and sell it when there is a demand.
All this points to an interesting economic fact. The early adopters of mega-batteries will get huge returns. Who has ever heard of an investment that returns almost a third of it's capital cost in a year. When everyone has mega batteries, this advantage will disappear. The batteries will still be great money earners but not at this stupendously, ridiculously high level.
I love the cherry on the top and there is one in this story too. When you start up a peaker plant, it takes time to come up to capacity. In the mean time the voltage and phase fidelity in the grid suffers. With a mega battery, the response is in terms of milliseconds so both the phase and the voltage remain true. This is a huge advantage for electronic devices which do not respond well to fluctuation in voltage or in the sine wave of the electricity.
So what is the story behind this mega battery. Elon Musk of Tesla made a twitter comment regarding Australian power generation and was taken up by an Australian millionaire to put his money where his mouth was. He took up the challenge.
He said that he could supply a mega battery to this Australian wind farm in 100 days. If he could not, he would give them the battery for free. Of course, he met the deadline and the rest is history in the making. The thing is massively profitable. Incidentally, do you think that Scott Morrison or any others of the silly Australian politicians will recant their foolish words about a mega prawn, mega banana and mega battery and admit they were wrong. I don't think so. They are complete dinosaurs and should be voted out by the Australian people.
 |
| Reduction of the cost of wind power over time |
The price of solar and wind have become less expensive to install and operate, kW for kW than a coal fired power station. In fact, it is now less expensive to build and operate a mega wind or solar farm than to operate an existing coal fired power station. To put the cherry on the top, when you start to build a wind farm or solar farm, each unit you install starts to generate electricity and produce revenue. A new coal fired power station has to be complete before you see your first return.
 |
| Reduction in the price of solar panels over the years |
And the chocolate sauce on the bottom is that if you have to do maintenance or repair, you do one turbine at a time while the rest continue to generate power (money). A coal fired power station has to be taken out of production for maintenance.
But the weak point of renewable energy has always been that you are generating power when you don't need it and need it when you are not generating. This has now been solved.
Of course you always could have installed a huge battery bank of, say, Lead acid batteries. You could have used those large units that the phone companies use to keep the power running no matter what the power generation companies are doing. These were the batteries that were much beloved by early adopters of renewable energy. The phone companies would sell off the used ones that still had quite a bit of life in them.
The problem was that they degrade, need quite a bit of maintenance and are expensive. They are also heavy although weight is not much of a problem in a static application. The total life cycle cost of lead acid batteries made them a non starter for a commercial unit. No other battery came out to be financially feasible either.
There was and is one sort of energy storage system that is economically feasible despite a cycle efficiency of about 75%. That is Pumped Storage. You pump water into a high reservoir when power is in excess of demand and run it back down through a generator when you need more than you are generating in other power plants. However, most of the possible sites have been taken up and we need still more peak shaving plants (peaker plants) to take care of short and longer term peak demand.
The classic short term peak demand story that everyone quotes is in the UK in the intermission in a live broadcast of a foot ball game. Everyone heads for the kitchen to put on the jug (turn on the electric kettle). Demand spikes and the power distribution company must be ready to cope with this demand. Otherwise you would have brown outs all over the UK. If your electricity model is a commercial one, you must then pay whatever the peaker plant demands for this excess electricity. Even if you are a totally government run operation, you will have had to build peaker plants that most of the time are not earning their keep. You have tied up a lot of tax money in a facility that runs intermittently.
So what is this breakthrough and why is it a breakthrough. I am talking about the Australian Lithium ion mega-battery. It has a capacity of 100 mWh (mega Watt hours) and is owned by a wind farm in South Australia. But why is it a breakthrough.
It Is On Line To Return Revenue Equal To It's Full Capital Cost In A Tad Over Three Years!!!!!
Economics trump all other considerations. Economics is more powerful than all of our articles and placard waving demonstrations. It even trumps venal politicians who are in the pocket of 'Big-Coal' and will try anything to scupper anything that interferes with their ill gotten gains. If it is economic (makes bags of money for the owner) it will be adopted.
You might ask, how does a battery that doesn't produce any electricity; that only stores electricity, earn money. Well there are a number of ways. Here is one just related to the way the electrical grid operates and one related to the fact that it is owned by a wind farm.
First we have peak shaving. When the demand comes in, the power distribution company has to supply more electricity. Either it has to build a peaker power station or has to buy electricity from an existing peaker power station. If you are a supplier of power to other companies, If you own a mega battery, you have the perfect solution for supplying peak power to other companies. If you are a distribution company that owns a mega battery, you no longer have to pay these high prices to other companies. You have power stored in in-house.
All this would hold true even for a company that just owned a mega battery but no renewable energy generation capacity at all. They would buy power when it was cheap and sell it when it is expensive.
For a renewable energy company with a solar or wind farm, it is even better. You have built this expensive unit but have to feather your wind turbines or simply not send the power to the grid when the wind turbines or solar panels are generating. With a mega-battery, you can store the excess power, making best use of the generating capacity of the farm and sell it when there is a demand.
All this points to an interesting economic fact. The early adopters of mega-batteries will get huge returns. Who has ever heard of an investment that returns almost a third of it's capital cost in a year. When everyone has mega batteries, this advantage will disappear. The batteries will still be great money earners but not at this stupendously, ridiculously high level.
I love the cherry on the top and there is one in this story too. When you start up a peaker plant, it takes time to come up to capacity. In the mean time the voltage and phase fidelity in the grid suffers. With a mega battery, the response is in terms of milliseconds so both the phase and the voltage remain true. This is a huge advantage for electronic devices which do not respond well to fluctuation in voltage or in the sine wave of the electricity.
So what is the story behind this mega battery. Elon Musk of Tesla made a twitter comment regarding Australian power generation and was taken up by an Australian millionaire to put his money where his mouth was. He took up the challenge.
He said that he could supply a mega battery to this Australian wind farm in 100 days. If he could not, he would give them the battery for free. Of course, he met the deadline and the rest is history in the making. The thing is massively profitable. Incidentally, do you think that Scott Morrison or any others of the silly Australian politicians will recant their foolish words about a mega prawn, mega banana and mega battery and admit they were wrong. I don't think so. They are complete dinosaurs and should be voted out by the Australian people.
1 comment:
This is the same mega battery that has been fined $3million for not providing power when needed as they contracted and were getting paid to do?.
Post a Comment