OT: 'Photon Farming' in California

Worth a try!

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom
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What will we do with gigawatts of power that peaks mid-day, only on good days?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Reply to
John Larkin

Push it into batteries or pumped storage. You get about 85% of the energy back.

Australia is thinking about using it to generate liquid hydrogen which we'd then ship off to Korea or Japan. You only get about a quarter of the energy out at the destination, but the energy density is a whole lot better than batteries can offer.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

If you have hills and water, push the water uphill.

Here we don't have enough hills and while we have plenty of water, it flows downhill too fast

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Shades of Oroville :(

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Use it.

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

Well, we do have some hills sixty miles away from the central valley. I doubt that mass energy storage is economical; certainly batteries aren't.

Solar makes little sense; natural gas fracking is in financial trouble in the US because it has been so successful that there's a glut of cheap gas. If we have to build NG plants to power us up when the sun don't shine, may as well run them 24/7.

Wow, that does look familiar. Water is evil stuff.

About time to re-read The Nine Tailors.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Pump water!

Reply to
amdx

Except the cost of solar is currently competitive and still dropping. Why pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss money out the window?

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Pumped storage certainly is econmomic(al). The problem in the UK is that there is far too little capacity to see us through lulls in wind production.

The energy we would require to see us through such lulls is 1200GWh.

Our current pumped storage capacity is 30GWh, and some of that is earmarked for "black starts".

We could plausibly get up to 400GWh, but 1200GWh seems difficult.

If /all/ our vehicles were electric and we didn't have to worry about keeping them topped up for use as /vehicles/, then that would be sufficient.

Source:

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pages 189-203, or chapter 26 at
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Note the plaudits from /everybody/ from Big Energy to Big Greens and Big Politicians.

Yup, it kills many many people in many interesting ways.

Don't like DL Sayers; she was to fawningly snobbish for my tastes. Peter Wimsey succeeded where the local plod failed because he had the right breeding. Ugh.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Doesn't it also coincide with peak aircon loading in the USA?

Pumped storage is very effective for storing a chunk of energy if you have a pair of suitable lakes at very different heights and the water to go in them. The latter possibly being in short supply in California.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

1 GWp should be good for charging 100 000 EVs.

Alternatively, if you have a great demand for fresh water, run a desalination plant a few hours each day.

Reply to
upsidedown

Electrical energy storage will be the next *big* thing to get into, rather like the quantum leap in battery technology that one day *will* be made.

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Cursitor Doom

Summer peak usage is late afternoon when people are returning home as well as retail and businesses are still open... same as UK and most places. I p osted links to curves showing this a while back.

Solar peaks literally at midday.

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

I saw a web page showing about 94% of US energy storage is hydro, about 24 GW. Of the other 6%, thermal and battery are about 700 MW each.

Someone here posted a link once to a wireless charging company in the EU th at was also into battery storage. Rather than use expensive Li-ion cells, they were using very low cost second hand batteries. Seems there are many applications where they are swapped out periodically while still functionin g. I seem to recall they would get another 4 years out of them in this app . The cost is something just above scrap value. I expect there are a lot of usable batteries like this, but don't know if it is potentially GW.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Then charge EVs during midday.

Of course this require charging infrastructure in places were cars are parked during midday, such as on company parking lots. This is not hard to organize.

Reply to
upsidedown

So they call ordinary hydro 'energy storage' ;-).

In practice this is just a dam that can store river water for at least one day. No hydro is used during the day, when solar is available and the water is driven once through the turbines during the night. No low efficiency pumping back involved.

It should be noted that the day consumption is larger than night consumption, so that less water needs to be stored in the dam.

Reply to
upsidedown

What is this "sun" of which you speak?

Yes, it is...

As usual, you are basing your statements on what is familiar to you. And it just ain't as easy as you think.

The city where I live deliberately restricts the number of car parking spaces at work to *much* less than the number of employees, so as to encourage use of public transport. I believe other cities have similar policies.

Nearly a *third* of car-owners in the UK have no off-street parking, as they live in a flat or a terraced house. That makes it effectively impossible to charge an EV at home.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

They use both pumped hydro. Why would you think it's not?

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

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well as retail and businesses are still open... same as UK and most places. I posted links to curves showing this a while back.

Yes, I think at this point it is a given that the UK will not be joining th e rest of the world in reducing carbon emissions any time soon. So just as sume we are not talking about the UK when we mention these sorts of thing.

BTW, I'm sure there are businesses somewhere in the UK that aren't squeezed by the local government this way and have adequate parking. Even then it doesn't matter really. You didn't say they have no parking. You said they didn't have enough for everyone. So that still means there can be chargin g at work. The thing being discussed is using the peak solar generation. All of it doesn't need to power every car. The idea is to take the peak lo ad to use for something that can be scheduled to suit the supply.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Do the most energy-wasteful parts of processes that have multiple phases. Like, concentrating CO2 for deep-well return to lithosphere.

Plants have synchronized entire LIVES to hot/sunny versus cold/dark parts of the year, for 'economical' use of their resources.

Reply to
whit3rd

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