Will Solar Power Outshine Oil in the Near Future?

[NTL2009]

I'm conceiving of a dedicated hydrogen farm whose sole function is to split water and then sell the hydrogen to utilities as opposed to an afterthought operation tacked onto a solar or wind farm that is designed to feed electrical power directly into the grid. ...

I guess I'm missing why you would want to do this?

If you use PV to split hydrogen, you take that loss, and then take a ~ 50% loss in converting that He back to electricity. So as long as there is demand on the grid (no excess PV), it is better to just feed the grid (inverter losses and some small, local transmission losses, < 10% ?).

Just because it would be used more often? - that sounds like that old joke about losing money on every product sold - "but we make it up on volume!".

 

[zoobyshoe]

I guess I'm missing why you would want to do this?

It's a business to make money.

If you use PV to split hydrogen, you take that loss...

I assume you mean the energy loss. There's more energy in the sunlight than you can convert to either electricity or hydrogen. Of the two, you lose more converting it to hydrogen because you're converting it twice. That sounds bad, but, if you're in business to make money, the goal is to get more money for your product than it cost you to make it. You want to cover your costs, and make a healthy profit on top. If you can accomplish that, it is immaterial whether you are doing an especially efficient job of converting free sunlight into a product. The inefficiency of the conversion only matters to the extent it threatens the goal of paying your bills and making a profit.

...and then take a ~ 50% loss in converting that He back to electricity.

This is the utilities' problem. I assume they are already not doing any better than this converting natural gas to electricity (according to your previous post, the inefficiency lies in the kind of turbine used, not the fuel), so it's immaterial to efficiency which they burn. The inefficiency of how they burn it is out of your hands just like the inefficiency of how they burn natural gas is out of the hands of the frackers who mine it and sell it to them.

So, if you make a profit producing and selling hydrogen to a utility at a price they consider competitive with natural gas, you have a success.

 

[zoobyshoe]

My utility bill came today and I just opened it. Included was a notice of a request to increase rates. That's very common, but I was surprised to see that in this case the rate increase was in part to contract for storage batteries. The notice was simultaneously posted online, so here it is:

https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/documents/1453262800/FINAL-S1710023-NewElecResourcesContract.pdf

So, San Diego Gas & Electric is, apparently, getting serious about storage, and they are going to plow ahead and go with batteries. Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about the kind of battery installation they're looking at, how big it would be, where it would be, etc. But it looks like it has to be big enough to shift a lot of power from one time to another.

It says it would amount to a System Total rate increase of 0.6%. They could have tacked that on without saying anything and I'd never have noticed.

 

[NTL2009]

It's a business to make money.

I assume you mean the energy loss. There's more energy in the sunlight than you can convert to either electricity or hydrogen. Of the two, you lose more converting it to hydrogen because you're converting it twice. That sounds bad, but, if you're in business to make money, the goal is to get more money for your product than it cost you to make it. You want to cover your costs, and make a healthy profit on top. If you can accomplish that, it is immaterial whether you are doing an especially efficient job of converting free sunlight into a product. The inefficiency of the conversion only matters to the extent it threatens the goal of paying your bills and making a profit. ...

True to an extent, but unlike the classic chicken-farmer-theoretical-physicist joke, business does not exist in a vacuum. Even if you can convert this excess energy to sell, if it costs more than your competitors, you won't be able to sell it, and there can be no profit with no sales.

... I assume they are already not doing any better than this converting natural gas to electricity (according to your previous post, the inefficiency lies in the kind of turbine used, not the fuel), so it's immaterial to efficiency which they burn. ...

So, if you make a profit producing and selling hydrogen to a utility at a price they consider competitive with natural gas, you have a success.

Sure, but consider that the earlier source said it was challenging to achieve 30% conversion rates of kWh to Hydrogen. So that hydrogen has to cost over 3x what the PV kWh cost. How can you make money producing kWh if you start with a fuel that costs 3x what you can sell that kWh for? And then you lose another 60% in re-generation? Obviously, an amount of Natural Gas to produce a kWh must cost less than what a utility sells a kWh for, and at 30% efficiency in the turbine, the NG would need to cost less than 1/3rd of that kWh price. Which makes solar converted Hydrogen 9x the price of NG. That's a tough sell, no?

 

[NTL2009]

... So, San Diego Gas & Electric is, apparently, getting serious about storage, and they are going to plow ahead and go with batteries. Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about the kind of battery installation they're looking at, how big it would be, where it would be, etc. But it looks like it has to be big enough to shift a lot of power from one time to another.

It says it would amount to a System Total rate increase of 0.6%. They could have tacked that on without saying anything and I'd never have noticed.

They are probably required to notify you of any rate increase, regardless the amount.

But shouldn't the time-shifting batteries produce a savings? If not, why do it? Hmmmm, perhaps the alternatives to providing that peak power were more expensive, so this increase would have been worse w/o the batteries? But is demand increasing on that grid (I thought demand had stabilized somewhat)?

 

[zoobyshoe]

They are probably required to notify you of any rate increase, regardless the amount.

But shouldn't the time-shifting batteries produce a savings? If not, why do it? Hmmmm, perhaps the alternatives to providing that peak power were more expensive, so this increase would have been worse w/o the batteries? But is demand increasing on that grid (I thought demand had stabilized somewhat)?

The reason I posted it is because it illustrates that grid storage by battery is already viable.

It could be I wasn't reading carefully, but earlier posts in this thread gave me the impression people didn't think it could be done yet, or that it would be prohibitively expensive. It looks like it can be done and that the cost is peanuts as far as any individual on the grid is concerned. This should make a huge difference in how anyone regards the future of solar.

 

[NTL2009]

No, I don't think we can say that at all As you said earlier: "Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about the kind of battery installation they're looking at, how big it would be, " So for all we know, your 0.6% rate increase is to shift 0.0000000000000006% of the capacity for one minute. It might just be a small, trial system to collect data.

We need more numbers to say anything, but the general info out there is batteries are a very expensive method, even for a few hours of demand leveling.

 

[gleem]

We need more numbers to say anything, but the general info out there is batteries are a very expensive method, even for a few hours of demand leveling

The Mira Loma battery storage system usess198 Tesla Powerpacks to store 80MWhrs. It is a project by Southern California Edison to store excess energy to sell at a later time. Two 10KW units each with 198 powerpacks for a total battery cost of $18.6 M retail. Not included is the cost of power lines to connect to the grid and equipment to raise the battery voltage to transmission line levels. It just came online in January. It only took 88 days from ground breaking to commissioning.


http://insideedison.com/stories/inn...ra-loma-substation-allows-for-more-renewables

The batteries can charge when there is more renewable energy than demand, and supply that energy to customers during peak hours. This enables greater use of clean energy technologies, such as residential solar, and will help California meet its energy and climate change goals.

The California Public Utilities Commission directed SCE last May to expedite the use of energy storage connected to the grid to mitigate for the loss of natural gas storage at Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon. The Mira Loma Battery Storage Facility was commissioned by the California Independent System Operator just 88 days after groundbreaking.

“This was unprecedented fast action on the part of the CPUC,” said Michael Picker, the commission’s president. “And we are once again stunned by the battery industry to meet our needs. This is another example of progress,” he added, congratulating all the participants.

Battery energy storage is also being evaluated to improve the reliability of SCE’s distribution network, and support the integration of distributed energy resources, such as residential solar systems. And as the technology improves, efficiency can only get better as the costs come down.

“Energy storage projects like this one play a role in California’s clean energy future,” said Payne. “They are also part of our mission to safely deliver reliable, affordable and clean energy to our customers.”

 

[zoobyshoe]

The Mira Loma battery storage system usess198 Tesla Powerpacks to store 80MWhrs. It is a project by Southern California Edison to store excess energy to sell at a later time. Two 10KW units each with 198 powerpacks for a total battery cost of $18.6 M retail. Not included is the cost of power lines to connect to the grid and equipment to raise the battery voltage to transmission line levels. It just came online in January. It only took 88 days from ground breaking to commissioning.

Fantastic! Notice the SDG&E price raise is asking for $235 million and that seems to include the extras not included in the above $18.6 M. Seems safe to suppose SDG&E is doing this in reaction to SCE having done it so successfully so fast, but now I want to know the capacity of the SDG&E project as compared to SCE's. Unless the extras actually constitute the bulk of the cost, it looks like SDG&E is planning a larger capacity storage. What do you think?

 

[gleem]

At $235M I think it is much bigger. Do you have any idea of how much area they are building on.? The MIra Loma facility is onn1.5 acres but the batteries take up less than 1/2 acre and actually I do not think that the rest of the equipment fills up the remaining space.

I see SDG&E is heavy into battery storage, they put one on line in Feb. a 37.5MW 150MWhr . They are taking bids for a 83.5MW facility. No estimate of cost though.

 

[zoobyshoe]

At $235M I think it is much bigger. Do you have any idea of how much area they are building on.?

The one you found they already put online in Feb is in Escondido. A smaller one was also put in El Cajon.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/sdg...um-ion-battery-storage-online-in-cali/436832/

The MIra Loma facility is onn1.5 acres but the batteries take up less than 1/2 acre and actually I do not think that the rest of the equipment fills up the remaining space.

The Escondido site is loosely described in the link below: "When Utility Dive visited San Diego in early October, the AES facility was little more than an empty industrial lot next to a substation — a site chosen for its easy access to the bulk power grid." There's no mention of the actual size of the lot, though.

I don't know where the next one will be put, but the lot size might not be informative. At any rate, it seems these installations don't take up much space at all and finding suitable places to put them is not problematic.

I see SDG&E is heavy into battery storage, they put one on line in Feb. a 37.5MW 150MWhr .

Here's an article about the building of this one:
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/ins...gest-lithium-ion-battery-storage-faci/431765/

The reliable life of these batteries seems to be only 10 years, if I'm reading that article correctly, so these projects are something like very large proof-of-concept experiments. They're going with what's available to see how it plays out, it seems, and learn how to proceed. It mentions the Escondido site was built with empty battery docks where more batteries can be dropped in if they decide to expand. On the other hand, they have money and plans in place in the event they decide to "decommission" at the end of the contract.

At any rate, from all this I agree that the one I got the notice about is going to be even larger than any built so far.

 

[gleem]

The reliable life of these batteries seems to be only 10 years, if I'm reading that article correctly, so these projects are something like very large proof-of-concept experiments.

Have you noticed that they have a smaller 2MW system using flow batteries. These batteries are expected to have a much longer cycle life. They are bulky but quite suitable for a fixed installation. This system is definitely experimental. They are still underdevelopment so improvements are possible.

 

[NTL2009]

The Mira Loma battery storage system usess198 Tesla Powerpacks to store 80MWhrs. It is a project by Southern California Edison to store excess energy to sell at a later time. Two 10KW units each with 198 powerpacks for a total battery cost of $18.6 M retail. Not included is the cost of power lines to connect to the grid and equipment to raise the battery voltage to transmission line levels. It just came online in January. It only took 88 days from ground breaking to commissioning.
http://insideedison.com/stories/inn...ra-loma-substation-allows-for-more-renewables

It seems like the numbers could work (though my assumptions may be way off). If we say that the difference between peak power and off peak power was $0.20/kWh (reasonable?), and that they could store and dispatch the full 80 MW-hrs everyday, that would be $16,000 per day, so @ $18.6 M would be paid back in ~ 1200 days, or 3.3 years. I see that the Powerwall is warranted for 5000 cycles, so that's ~ 3800 cycles within warranty, or another ~ $60M gain over its life?

They may have got a better price from Tesla at those volumes, but those numbers didn't include other infrastructure costs, so maybe a wash? Losses may increase with battery life, but my biggest ? is the peak-non-peak price delta. If that averages only $0.10 at the wholesale rate, the payback doubles, but even that could be attractive (what's the scrap value of old Lion batteries?).

But it also seems they use these for grid stabilization, I think that means very short terms load changes that other generators can't respond to, maybe on the order of fractions of a second, kind of like a big capacitor on a DC supply? I have no idea how to put a price on that, so maybe these serve dual purposes?

Have you noticed that they have a smaller 2MW system using flow batteries. These batteries are expected to have a much longer cycle life. They are bulky but quite suitable for a fixed installation. This system is definitely experimental. They are still underdevelopment so improvements are possible.

Yes, everything I've read seems to point to other battery technologies for grid use. Lion has the weight and size advantage required for mobile applications, a grid application is all about cost over useful life, and safty with so much concentrated energy.

 

[russ_watters]

It seems like the numbers could work (though my assumptions may be way off). If we say that the difference between peak power and off peak power was $0.20/kWh (reasonable?), and that they could store and dispatch the full 80 MW-hrs everyday, that would be $16,000 per day, so @ $18.6 M would be paid back in ~ 1200 days, or 3.3 years. I see that the Powerwall is warranted for 5000 cycles, so that's ~ 3800 cycles within warranty, or another ~ $60M gain over its life?

That's fine for storage of conventionally generated energy, when you are a utility trying to generate when it is cheap and sell when it isn't (or to avoid installing a new power plant).

But the problem with solar+powerwall economics is that it is backwards. The whole point of conventional energy storage is to generate energy and store it when you otherwise could only sell it cheaply because you don't need it (at night) and resell it for more money when you do need it (during the day). Or to avoid building a new power plant. Storing solar takes that and flips it over, buying high and selling low by storing energy that could be sold at its most expensive and using it or selling it at a time when the energy is cheap anyway. It's a huge money loser, not a winner.

There isn't any way around this problem; it is inherent to the fact that solar power is only produced during the day. That's why solar installation economics that don't include the cost of the backup generation source or battery (plus having quadruple the kW capacity that you need at peak times) are misleadingly low.

The government can play whatever economic games it wants on the residential scale, so long as residential solar remains insignificantly small, but whether it is residential or commercial that eventually has enough capacity to matter, the fake economics is going to give way to a real problem. I suspect that's why, as has been pointed out, 5-7% appears to be the wall for solar so far: it only works economically if you use/sell all of the energy at the peak and don't store it.

And I'll say again: if someone wants a high solar fraction, fine. Everyone gets to have their vision of how they want reality to be. But that doesn't mean market economics can provide that reality for you. And even if you (the generic "you" - not you specifically) are ok with paying exorbitantly for your dream to become real, you should have your eyes open to the fact that you probably could have had a similar dream become a reality much faster and cheaper.

Which takes me back to:

It's a business to make money.

I assume you mean the energy loss. There's more energy in the sunlight than you can convert to either electricity or hydrogen. Of the two, you lose more converting it to hydrogen because you're converting it twice. That sounds bad, but, if you're in business to make money, the goal is to get more money for your product than it cost you to make it. You want to cover your costs, and make a healthy profit on top. If you can accomplish that, it is immaterial whether you are doing an especially efficient job of converting free sunlight into a product. The inefficiency of the conversion only matters to the extent it threatens the goal of paying your bills and making a profit.

That's a lot of "if" that assumes the economic viability of the idea instead of investigating it. The inefficiency problem was already mentioned, but the storage problem I discussed above is additional. This hypothetical company would be much better off selling the solar power to the grid during the day (when it can get more for it) and buying coal or nuclear power at night (when it is practically free) to make hydrogen for cars.

Of course, if you use the hydrogen to replace natural gas in power plants...well, hopefully you can see the circular logic problem there: your economics would be best buying hydrogen fueled electricity at night and using it to make hydrogen to sell back to the company making the electricity...and just leaving the solar farm to directly supply the grid with electricity. Hopefully you can see that you can't turn a profit by selling back to someone a quarter of what they just sold you.

 

[NTL2009]

That's fine for storage of conventionally generated energy, when you are a utility trying to generate when it is cheap and sell when it isn't (or to avoid installing a new power plant).

But the problem with solar+powerwall economics is that it is backwards. The whole point of conventional energy storage is to generate energy and store it when you otherwise could only sell it cheaply because you don't need it (at night) and resell it for more money when you do need it (during the day). Or to avoid building a new power plant. Storing solar takes that and flips it over, buying high and selling low by storing energy that could be sold at its most expensive and using it or selling it at a time when the energy is cheap anyway. It's a huge money loser, not a winner.

There isn't any way around this problem; it is inherent to the fact that solar power is only produced during the day. That's why solar installation economics that don't include the cost of the backup generation source or battery (plus having quadruple the kW capacity that you need at peak times) are misleadingly low. ...

Agree completely. The discussion of batteries brought up the time-shifting economics, but that is very different from what this thread is about - the future of solar.

Just another way to look at the issue of solar economics and excess - picture a solar installation that is sized such that it comes close, but never quite creates a surplus that it can't sell. And let's say this installation provides a good ROI, based on selling every kWh they produce. Any incremental solar additions will create excesses, so the ROI on that incremental addition will be worse than on the initial installation. So that will be a hard sell to an investor. I think it is best to look at it that way, rather than on averages, because investors will be looking at it exactly that way. Solar will be built out incrementally, and when you hit that increment that creates excess, the economics get worse.

Considering the cost of storage, and the round trip loses, solar is going to need to be that much cheaper than other sources used during low-sun hours before it makes economic sense. And it's hard to pay off capital when it is only used a few hours, and not every day, and maybe not for weeks/months.

And short term storage means you still need to keep all your peakers on-line, just in case of a longer term (days/weeks) low solar output. So no savings there.

 

[mfb]

If we say that the difference between peak power and off peak power was $0.20/kWh (reasonable?)

In Germany right now: 4 cent/kWh if you are lucky, 2 cent/kWh are more likely. More only in rare cases. Here are graphs. I don't expect that it is too different in the US.

Week 17 has negative spot market prices from a lot of wind and sunshine. April 30th 13:00 solar and wind were nearly sufficient to power the whole grid, the conventional power plants were running at low power and a large power was exported.

Solar power tends to smoothen the market price. If the sun shines, it handles the daily peak nicely. The conventional power plants have to be ramped up in the morning and in the evening. The problem arises when it is cloudy everywhere and not windy (e.g. all of week 3): You need a lot of backup power with conventional power plants. Storage for more than a week is impractical.

 

[zoobyshoe]

There isn't any way around this problem; it is inherent to the fact that solar power is only produced during the day.

By "this problem" you mean storage. Yes, wind and solar won't go anywhere unless the storage problem is solved. In my mind it is the sort of problem that is eminently solvable.

You like nuclear, but, in my mind, nuclear is doomed based on what you said in another thread a year or two ago, which was that we only have 50 years of nuclear fuel left at the current rate of usage. Breeder reactors would extend that by a fantastic 100x, but no one seems to be seriously working on that for some reason. You said that the future of nuclear depends on how the fuel we have is used in the next 50 years: once they run it through a conventional reactor it is unsuitable for any other use. If there isn't, right now, a serious effort to convert to breeder reactors, what is the point to putting any eggs in the nuclear basket?

That's a lot of "if" that assumes the economic viability of the idea instead of investigating it. The inefficiency problem was already mentioned, but the storage problem I discussed above is additional.

When you start out on something that hasn't been done before, you first explore if it can be done with what's already available. If it can't, then you start asking what you need to make it viable. New systems don't spring to life fully formed: there are always apparently insurmountable problems to overcome. Blah, blah, blah: you know this already.

This hypothetical company would be much better off selling the solar power to the grid during the day (when it can get more for it) and buying coal or nuclear power at night (when it is practically free) to make hydrogen for cars.

There are no hydrogen cars to speak of at the moment. No market there. There are, however, utilities all over the world that need fuel, and that is a very stable market.

Of course, if you use the hydrogen to replace natural gas in power plants...well, hopefully you can see the circular logic problem there: your economics would be best buying hydrogen fueled electricity at night and using it to make hydrogen to sell back to the company making the electricity...and just leaving the solar farm to directly supply the grid with electricity. Hopefully you can see that you can't turn a profit by selling back to someone a quarter of what they just sold you.

No. You buy some land and some solar panels or wind mills and you use them to take advantage of the completely free sunlight and wind to make hydrogen which you sell to the utilities. Your expenses are the land and equipment, your employees, your taxes, etc, all the usual business expenses, except for fuel. The whole thing is predicated on the electricity you make yourself being cheaper than what you'd buy from the utilities. How could it be cheaper? Obvious: they have to pay for fuel and you don't.

There's the additional consideration I mentioned to NTL2009 earlier that, when splitting water you use your electricity as DC directly out of the PV cell or windmill. If you sell it to the grid, you have to put it through an inverter first, which creates losses and is an additional bunch of equipment you have to pay off.

So, you are in the business of hydrogen farming, not electrical generation. Why? Because the utilities need storable fuel and the point of your business is to exploit that need. The argument, "You could make more selling electricity directly to the utilities," is pointless because you are choosing to exploit a different market (or, more accurately, a different need of the same customer). Starbucks decided to sell coffee and not liquor, despite the fact you can mark up alcoholic drinks way more than coffee. Coffee is the market they decided to exploit. You go into a business, you commit to a market and never mind worrying you could be in something else more lucrative.

However, the hydrogen farm idea is moot since it looks like they're committing (for at least ten years anyway) to the battery storage alternative. I just wanted to address those of your objections that seemed based on your not having understood the proposal.

But the problem with solar+powerwall economics is that it is backwards. The whole point of conventional energy storage is to generate energy and store it when you otherwise could only sell it cheaply because you don't need it (at night) and resell it for more money when you do need it (during the day). Or to avoid building a new power plant. Storing solar takes that and flips it over, buying high and selling low by storing energy that could be sold at its most expensive and using it or selling it at a time when the energy is cheap anyway. It's a huge money loser, not a winner.

Don't know where you're getting these ideas. According to the article I linked to above:

Once in operation, the two AES systems will combine to provide 37.5 MW of power for four hours on a nearly daily basis. Because the batteries count toward the utility’s local capacity requirements, that stored energy will replace fossil fuel generation otherwise deployed to meet peak demand in the evening.

“It's going to act like a sponge,” said Hanan Eisenman, SDG&E spokesperson. “Let's say the middle of the day you have overproduction of solar, you just soak that up with the battery and then you got the evening peak usage time at 5 p.m. ... we can release it at that time.”

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/ins...gest-lithium-ion-battery-storage-faci/431765/

So, these battery installations will collect and release the energy all in the high demand time. It's not being sold in the middle of the night when the price drops to peanuts. The idea is to carry over from the day into evening when the sunlight wanes to unusability, but everyone is still using a lot of electricity.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Also, by the way, notice the interesting errata at the bottom of the article:

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the AES project is expected to be the largest lithium ion battery storage facility, though there are larger battery arrays of different types. The Kyushu Electric Power Co., for instance, earlier this year installed a 50 MW, 300 MWh sodium-sulfur battery facility that went into service in March.

The Japanese are also exploring battery storage.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/ins...gest-lithium-ion-battery-storage-faci/431765/

 

[NTL2009]

In Germany ... April 30th 13:00 solar and wind were nearly sufficient to power the whole grid, the conventional power plants were running at low power and a large power was exported. ...

When I see these headlines, that some country "powered their grid 80%-100% with renewables for the day", while good news, I suspect that is "fuzzy math". Someone here will please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Here's my thinking:

Germany, for example, has a grid that is interconnected with the grids of other nearby countries. So when we talk about these issues of excess solar/wind, it isn't just the German grid that can absorb Germany's renewable production, their extended grid can absorb it also. And Germany can draw on that grid when their renewables aren't producing what they need. The German grid isn't limited to Germany's borders.

So I think the "fuzzy math" is, the headlines use Germany's consumption as the denominator, and Germany's renewable production as the numerator, where they should be using the renewables/consumption of the entire grid, regardless of political borders - electrons do not need passports. So while Germany may have offset their consumption with their renewable production for a day, if all their neighbors did this on that same day, I don't think their grid could handle it. What would the number be if we included the entire interconnected grid?

Does that make sense? It's kind of a micro view of a macro issue? It also means it does not scale to the US - I doubt that Canada and Mexico are in a position to share a very significant % US of power back/forth over our borders. When you look at the entire grid, I think those same, solar & wind will create problems for the grid at fairly low average % of production.

Also, some of those 'renewables' may not be so variable, but are also questionable in terms of their environmental impact. I can look it up, but I think some significant % of "renewable energy" in Europe is from burning wood or other plant products. Is this a positive for the environment? Even though claimed to be carbon neutral, I've read reports that it takes so long for the replacement plant to absorb what was burned, that it can be negative for decades. A tree takes years to grow to harvest, but is burned in seconds - sounds a little like burning oil, (a topic for another thread I suppose).

Accurate, or not?

 

[NTL2009]

By "this problem" you mean storage. Yes, wind and solar won't go anywhere unless the storage problem is solved. In my mind it is the sort of problem that is eminently solvable. ...

I don't think that is true at all. Wind and solar seem to be fine up until they are creating excess. Up to that point, no storage is needed, so no problem - that is where they can go (not "won't go anywhere"). We still need peakers in place to handle the variability, so we need to see if that is economically viable if we actually need to add peakers to add solar/wind (I think they are low enough at this point to accommodate with our present infrastructure?).

... No. You buy some land and some solar panels or wind mills and you use them to take advantage of the completely free sunlight and wind to make hydrogen which you sell to the utilities. Your expenses are the land and equipment, your employees, your taxes, etc, all the usual business expenses, except for fuel. The whole thing is predicated on the electricity you make yourself being cheaper than what you'd buy from the utilities. How could it be cheaper? Obvious: they have to pay for fuel and you don't.

There's the additional consideration I mentioned to NTL2009 earlier that, when splitting water you use your electricity as DC directly out of the PV cell or windmill. If you sell it to the grid, you have to put it through an inverter first, which creates losses and is an additional bunch of equipment you have to pay off. ... .

You are really missing some of the basic economics and physics involved. If what you say was all there was to it "PV solar doesn't pay for fuel", that would be the end of it, but it's not. PV is expensive, those costs need to be paid for over the life of the PV system. That's a real cost that must be recovered in the $/kWh.

Again, what you are suggesting is to take electricity that costs $X/kWh to produce with PV, and convert it to something that has a much lower value (due to conservation of energy and conversion losses), and takes an additional investment in equipment (that needs to be paid for over its life). Please do the math with the estimates supplied - how many kWh will be produced compared to the kWh that went in?

And if you think the excess PV kWh is 'free' because it would be wasted anyhow, go back to my earlier post about incremental purchase of PV. Investors will not be adding PV to a grid unless there is a payback, and that payback is reduced when you start adding excess solar. They either won't invest, or they will be able to accept that the return will be lower due to not being able to sell their excess, or sell it at a lower price (because any storage/conversion system will have losses/cost, so they have to pay less for the source kWh.

You might as well suggest a business model where you buy brand new automobiles, and sell them for scrap, and brag about the money you collect from the scrap dealers, and that the scrap will be used to make more new cars so it is sustainable! This is what you are doing - you are taking a high-value product (kWh), and turning it into a lower value product (hydrogen) to make less of the same high value product (kWh) you started with. It makes no sense.

 

[russ_watters]

You might as well suggest a business model where you buy brand new automobiles, and sell them for scrap, and brag about the money you collect from the scrap dealers, and that the scrap will be used to make more new cars so it is sustainable! This is what you are doing - you are taking a high-value product (kWh), and turning it into a lower value product (hydrogen) to make less of the same high value product (kWh) you started with. It makes no sense.

I like the analogy. But sticking with Starbucks:
It's like having Starbucks make coffee, freeze dry it, sell it to Dunkin Doughnuts for cheaper than they could sell it to the customers, who then rehydrates it and sells it for retail price.

You take a high value finished product (coffee/kWh), convert it to a low value raw material (freeze dried coffee/hydrogen) and then sell it to someone else for less than you could have sold it directly. They then use it to make less of the high value product than you started with (coffee/kWh) to sell at the same price you could have sold it in the first place! Same result: it makes no sense!

 

[zoobyshoe]

I like the analogy. But sticking with Starbucks:
It's like having Starbucks make coffee, freeze dry it, sell it to Dunkin Doughnuts for cheaper than they could sell it to the customers, who then rehydrates it and sells it for retail price.

You take a high value finished product (coffee/kWh), convert it to a low value raw material (freeze dried coffee/hydrogen) and then sell it to someone else for less than you could have sold it directly. They then use it to make less of the high value product than you started with (coffee/kWh) to sell at the same price you could have sold it in the first place! Same result: it makes no sense!

How can you say it makes no sense? There are actually economically viable freeze dried coffee manufacturers out there because there is a market for freeze dried coffee. As long as you are making a profit, your business is a success.

You got one important thing wrong in your analogy: you aren't Starbucks; you aren't selling end product cups of coffee directly to customers yourself. You don't have any of that overhead to support, no retail outlets. You are a coffee plantation and the only thing that leaves the plantation is freeze dried coffee. You make coffee and freeze dry it, and you need equipment and people for that, but you are not paying for the coffee beans. In this analogy, they essentially grow wild everywhere and are free for the taking: sunlight and/or wind.

 

[russ_watters]

How can you say it makes no sense? There are actually economically viable freeze dried coffee manufacturers out there because there is a market for freeze dried coffee. As long as you are making a profit, your business is a success.

You're changing the analogy, zooby: retail stores do not buy freeze dried coffee to sell at starbucks prices. Jeeze, this shouldn't be that difficult! This is like a failed perpetual motion machine attempt, but using both energy and economics. It is a closed loop (kWh in -> kWh out), so anything you add to the process reduces its efficiency and increases its cost (or if it worked...see the examples of perpetual income, above). So someone has to take a huge loss on the deal. You're just handwaving/assuming the "as long as you are making a profit..." part instead of thinking about where the profit comes from.

Try it with numbers: Say you make 1 MWh with your solar plant. Here is what you can do with it:

Option 1: Sell it for $40 (assumed retail value of the energy)
Option 2: Convert it to 667 kWh (gross) of hydrogen and sell it to a gas turbine plant owner for $4.42.

...And the gas turbine owner uses it to generate 221 kWh of electricity, which he sells for $8.84.

So this idea:
1. Costs more to do because you need more equipment.
2. Provides the solar plant owner 1/10th as much income.
3. Wastes 78% of the energy.

Assumptions:
1. The fuel is 1/2 of the gas turbine plant's operating cost.
2. 67% electrolysis efficiency.
3. 33% gas turbine/generator efficiency.
4. The gas turbine plant owner isn't going to take the loss, you are.

You got one important thing wrong in your analogy: you aren't Starbucks; you aren't selling end product cups of coffee directly to customers yourself.

I know: the point is that you should be becuase:

You don't have any of that overhead to support, no retail outlets. You are a coffee plantation and the only thing that leaves the plantation is freeze dried coffee.

No, you're not, zooby: a kWh is a fully produced retail product, sold on a fully developed distribution grid. You're taking the retail product and instead of just selling it as-is, you are working it backwards into a raw material that can't be sold retail any more. Every time someone processes it, it costs money and you lose some of it. That's conservation of energy and money.

You make coffee and freeze dry it, and you need equipment and people for that, but you are not paying for the coffee beans. In this analogy, they essentially grow wild everywhere and are free for the taking: sunlight and/or wind.

This is the other huuuuuge error you keep making. You keep assuming as part of these ideas of yours that solar power is free. It is most decidedly *not* free.

Or if you want: it is "free" in exactly the same way that gold and oil are free: they are just sitting there in the ground for anyone to take out and all you need is the infrastructure to remove them.

 

[mfb]

You like nuclear, but, in my mind, nuclear is doomed based on what you said in another thread a year or two ago, which was that we only have 50 years of nuclear fuel left at the current rate of usage.

At the current rate of usage, at the current mode of usage, and at the current price. Uranium is a small fraction of the overall costs - if we run out of the easiest uranium ores we can take slightly more difficult ones, the uranium price goes up but the electricity price won't change notably. The amount of available uranium goes up a lot with increasing price.
Breeding, using rods longer and so on can increase the range as well.

So while Germany may have offset their consumption with their renewable production for a day, if all their neighbors did this on that same day, I don't think their grid could handle it. What would the number be if we included the entire interconnected grid?

Lower, but "the entire grid" is not a well-defined region. Transporting power over large distance is always associated with losses, the larger the distance the larger the loss. Technically Portugal and Finland are in the same grid, but that doesn't mean you can simply produce more power in Portugal and use it in Finland.
You can always shut down electricity sources if necessary, it just means the average electricity price tends to go up.

Europe has a roughly stable amount of woods in most places.

 

[zoobyshoe]

You're changing the analogy, zooby: retail stores do not buy freeze dried coffee to sell at starbucks prices. Jeeze, this shouldn't be that difficult! This is like a failed perpetual motion machine attempt, but using both energy and economics. It is a closed loop (kWh in -> kWh out), so anything you add to the process reduces its efficiency and increases its cost (or if it worked...see the examples of perpetual income, above). So someone has to take a huge loss on the deal. You're just handwaving/assuming the "as long as you are making a profit..." part instead of thinking about where the profit comes from.

Try it with numbers: Say you make 1 MWh with your solar plant. Here is what you can do with it:

Option 1: Sell it for $40 (assumed retail value of the energy)
Option 2: Convert it to 667 kWh (gross) of hydrogen and sell it to a gas turbine plant owner for $4.42.

...And the gas turbine owner uses it to generate 221 kWh of electricity, which he sells for $8.84.

So this idea:
1. Costs more to do because you need more equipment.
2. Provides the solar plant owner 1/10th as much income.
3. Wastes 78% of the energy.

Assumptions:
1. The fuel is 1/2 of the gas turbine plant's operating cost.
2. 67% electrolysis efficiency.
3. 33% gas turbine/generator efficiency.
4. The gas turbine plant owner isn't going to take the loss, you are.

I know: the point is that you should be becuase:

No, you're not, zooby: a kWh is a fully produced retail product, sold on a fully developed distribution grid. You're taking the retail product and instead of just selling it as-is, you are working it backwards into a raw material that can't be sold retail any more. Every time someone processes it, it costs money and you lose some of it. That's conservation of energy and money.

This is the other huuuuuge error you keep making. You keep assuming as part of these ideas of yours that solar power is free. It is most decidedly *not* free.

Or if you want: it is "free" in exactly the same way that gold and oil are free: they are just sitting there in the ground for anyone to take out and all you need is the infrastructure to remove them.

Point by point you seem to understand what I'm saying, so I can't understand why you don't see the benefit. So, one last effort: consider the movie theater/popcorn symbiotic relationship. The movie theater buys popcorn for pennies, pops it, and sells it for dollars. HUUUGGE markup. Still, the popcorn growers make money!

It turns out, movie theaters make their money on popcorn. The ticket prices won't pay their bills. They depend on the soda/popcorn markup to stay in business. It is not, therefore, in the interest of the popcorn growers to raise their prices because they'd just be putting their most stable customers out of business. (Probably not true anymore with the advent of microwave popcorn and the decline of movie theaters, but it certainly was true for many years.)

If that analogy doesn't work, just drop the subject. It's hijacking the thread off the more important subject of the new battery banks in Ca.

 

[zoobyshoe]

But the problem with solar+powerwall economics is that it is backwards. The whole point of conventional energy storage is to generate energy and store it when you otherwise could only sell it cheaply because you don't need it (at night) and resell it for more money when you do need it (during the day). Or to avoid building a new power plant. Storing solar takes that and flips it over, buying high and selling low by storing energy that could be sold at its most expensive and using it or selling it at a time when the energy is cheap anyway. It's a huge money loser, not a winner.

Russ, you didn't respond to my response to this. You see now that your reasoning here is incorrect, right? The solar storage is to extend use into times when the sun is not usable but the electricity demand is still high and the cost still high.

 

[mfb]

Still, the popcorn growers make money!

Yes, because making popcorn is cheap. Making hydrogen from solar power is not. You propose to construct a machine for $10,000 that can produce a single serving of popcorn per year. Even without any maintenance cost, how can you expect this to be profitable, no matter how you sell this popcorn?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, because making popcorn is cheap. Making hydrogen from solar power is not. You propose to construct a machine for $10,000 that can produce a single serving of popcorn per year. Even without any maintenance cost, how can you expect this to be profitable, no matter how you sell this popcorn?

And this is the only objection that matters: can you produce hydrogen for less than the utility will buy it for? They're only willing to pay so much, can you produce it for less?

Your $10,000.00 serving is a gross exaggeration, but, according to what Gleem posted, the cost of solar produced H2 is two to three times more than comparable natural gas. At the current time with what's available, it wouldn't work.

 

[mfb]

And this is the only objection that matters

It is not the only one, it just the most obvious one.

If you can make more money by selling the electricity instead of fuel, where is the point in adding fuel production that increases your cost and reduces your sales?
If buying electricity is cheaper than setting up solar panels, where is the point in solar panels?

 

[Davy_Crockett]

Solar panels on residential rooftops is the worst way to utilize solar panels...workers will go to a new site every few days, deal with different roof slopes, gutters, dogs, fences, and on and on... for more deaths/injuries..

Falling off roofs is terrible. There is a whole industry of roofers though. Everyone with a roof needs to get it re-done every 20 years. It might as well get replaced with Solar tiles.

https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/solarroof

 

[rootone]

In my local town the traffic lights and similar have been updated to mostly utilize solar power when available.
Seems like a forward step.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If you can make more money by selling the electricity instead of fuel, where is the point in adding fuel production that increases your cost and reduces your sales?

Said this twice already: I'm not talking about adding hydrogen production to an existing solar electric farm. I'm talking about a dedicated hydrogen farm, which means you don't have more equipment, you have different equipment. Your cost is not increased, and you're not reducing your own sales.

If buying electricity is cheaper than setting up solar panels, where is the point in solar panels?

If it is not now feasible to make a profit making and selling storable hydrogen, you get to work figuring how to bring the cost down. That has been done about 4 billion times in the history of manufacturing: a thing that was once too expensive to profit from later became profitable. When I first saw a digital watch in the 1970's the guy who had it had paid over $200.00 (1970's dollars) for it. Now you can get one at the dollar store. The more you do anything the more you figure out how to do it cheaper.

One of the dazzling things about this new battery array is how fast they put in in. The article says that's because they had worked out the major bugs on several other smaller installations around the world in the past few years.

 

[mfb]

Said this twice already: I'm not talking about adding hydrogen production to an existing solar electric farm. I'm talking about a dedicated hydrogen farm, which means you don't have more equipment, you have different equipment. Your cost is not increased, and you're not reducing your own sales.

A dedicated solar to hydrogen farm costs much more than a dedicated solar to electricity farm (at comparable size). And chances are good a dedicated hydrogen farm would use electricity as intermediate product anyway.
You are avoiding a comparison, but if you actually have to invest money that is the comparison you would make. How much money do I get out for money I have to put in, and is there something that leads to more money at the same investment costs?

That has been done about 4 billion times in the history of manufacturing: a thing that was once too expensive to profit from later became profitable.

Some products get cheaper, but that doesn't mean everything gets arbitrarily cheap just because you want to.

 

[mheslep]

getting serious about storage, and they are going to plow ahead and go with batteries.

Getting serious with utility class storage (TWhrs) using batteries is an oxymoron. SD&E may be collecting more revenue from customers.

 

[mheslep]

...Europe has a roughly stable amount of woods in most places.

Germany, annual electricity generation from biomass (TWh):
2002: 4
2006: 15
2010: 32
2014: 45

2016: 47

Using 875 kWh electric per dry ton, and 40 dry tons per acre: roughly 53 million tons of dry wood per year, 1.3 million acres (5e3 km²) harvested per year.

IIRC, the above has driven up the price of timber in Germany so as to create a thriving black market in wood imported from harvests on protected land in Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere in Europe, wood is imported from the west:

All very 18th century. Soon to come: whale oil power.