Katoomba Monthly Temp average set to be SMASHED!!! AGAIN!!!

[FenceFurniture]

Here is a really good overview of the current state of battery developments of many types.
Future batteries, coming soon: Charge in seconds, last months a

[rwbuild]

There's a Simple Way to Store Renewable Energy, And We Already Have The Technology
Lithium Glass batteries move to next stage

[FenceFurniture]

The Pumped Heat looks interesting Ray, although the first thing I wondered about was the efficiency, and sure 'nuff, it's low at 50-70%, but there are a number of upsides to the tech, it seems.

[FenceFurniture]

This is an excellent example of its resistance to destruction:
YouTube

Do watch the two vids on Nikola Tesla - very interesting indeed (especially to see what a ripoff Edison was):
YouTube

[Bushmiller]

From the 11th Feb:


This is Sophia Wang's company:
Mineral Carbonation International
(keep in mind that the launch video is now 6-7 years old)

Why you no wissen? (and with thanks to Benny)

Brett

I was talking about extracting CO2 from the flue gas. Sophia Wang is talking about extracting CO2 from air.

Regards
Paul

[FenceFurniture]

Brett

I was talking about extracting CO2 from the flue gas. Sophia Wang is talking about extracting CO2 from air.

Regards
Paul

"to advance the pilot program towards industrial applications by taking CO₂ from raw flue gas as a CO2 capture process path from cement and steel industries as well as fossil fuel energy generators."

and also at the 1:20 mark in the vid.

Now I don't know exactly where they are up to with that but I get the impression they are more or less ready to go live.

In any case, surely the point is that it doesn't matter where the CO2 comes from (exhaled and inhaled as it were), as long as we have zero nett emissions. For example if we belch out CO2 in Millmerran, and inhale it in some other place, it shouldn't matter too much should it? One would think that wind/turbulence/air currents would mix things up at some point anyway. I suppose it would be better to inhale it closer to the exhalation source, but....

[ian]

Ian, my latest electricity bill lists 15.74 kWh/day as typical three person home consumption. This would equate to ~ 25 kWh/40 hours. Where did the 600 kWh figure come from? Allowing say 70% drawdown as feasible for Li-ion, I would have thought a 40 kWh battery would suffice, an order of magnitude lower?

Hi Mark
I've looked again at my numbers -- you are correct, I'm an order of magnitude out with my maths.
A 40 kWh should suffice for two nights plus a cloudy day. Three nights and two cloudy days would push you up towards a 60 kWh battery.

Revisiting my maths,
As of 2019, Li-ion batteries cost about USD $139 /kWh. So a 60 kWh battery (good for powering a "typical" 3 person home for about 3 days) might cost somewhere north of USD $8,000. In that context, an AUD $5,000 subsidy is a very significant subsidy -- but like many subsidies it does nothing for the 50% of Australians who rent or live in unit blocks.

By 2030, Li-ion batteries "could fall to as little as USD $76 per kWh". That's something like AUD $7000 using today's (Feb 27, 2020) mid-market exchange rate. So certainly doable -- just need to address the issue of equity for renters and people living in units.

[FenceFurniture]

.. but like many subsidies it does nothing for the 50% of Australians who rent or live in unit blocks.
So certainly doable -- just need to address the issue of equity for renters and people living in units.

Yeah, I was thinking that at the time I was proposing it, but not forgetting that there is still a considerable investment by the owner in the battery (and panels). Anything to save building a new CF PS if we can avoid it (for international political reasons as much as anything alse).

[ian]

a Tesla Powerwall 2 has 13.5kW usable in the battery, which to me would indicate that that is what you can draw out of it. Whether or not that is enough for most families is unknown (to us, as non-users), but I still don't understand the need to cover 40 hours usage, be it at ~16kW/day or several hundred.

Brett
40 hours roughly equates to 2 nights plus an intervening cloudy day.

In part I thought we were tossing around ideas about how the "grid" could be supported by home battery storage.

A Tesla Powerwall 2 will struggle to get a family though a single night without a user actively turning off appliances.

[ian]

If you went back to the turn of the century the stations that delivered the base load tended to be large coal fired power plants. They tended to be large and they tended to be modern. It was simply that the most modern and largest had efficiency and economy of scale on their side. Back in 2000, 34% efficiency was considered good. Today 38% (Millmerran is around that figure) holds that position and there are talks of more modern plants exceeding 40%, although I don't know how many of those are actually around. I just did a search and the most efficient is the John Turk Jr plant in Arkansas: A 665MW ultracritical coal fired at 42%.( America's only ultracritical plant. Australia doesn't have any.)

now I'm dredging my memory, but I recall that the maximum theoretical efficiency (Carnot cycle) of a steam engine -- i.e. a coal powered power station -- is 43%. I sort of remember the graph, but not what was on each axis.
So John Turk Jr at 42% is pretty close.

[AlexS]

Hi gents, I haven't dropped out of this discussion, but it's now in the phase where I can get much more from it than I can contribute. I never realised there was such a wide range of expertise here. Thanks.

[ian]

I had been giving this some thought and I am probably as guilty as any in my perception of exactly what constitutes "baseload" or a "base load station." Your Wikepedia definition nailed "baseload," but a station's role is slightly different and I think you are right in that it is changing, albeit slowly.

Today any power plant that can produce cheap power at any time of the day could occupy this position irrespective of size. And there's the rub. For the moment there is nobody that can do this. Wind power can, providing the wind is blowing. You could argue that similar restraints apply to fossil fueled stations too. The rain could bring us undone as WoodPixel so irreverently suggested and restrict coal supply, but in principle that is under our control while the likes of wind and the sun are beyond our control.

Hydro storage and battery storage could meet the requirement of power at any time but fall down on the cost requirement. So for the moment we are back to solving that issue or......doing without .

But not "any power plant".
as mentioned previously, the grid has to maintain supply stability to prevent a state-side black out. I'd content that in the current

In the "olden days" this could be done using an inertial generator located inside a large power station. Unfortunately I forget what these inertial generators were called, or even if they are still installed in power stations.
Since the advent of SA's Tesla battery, grid stabilisation -- at least in SA -- has been achieved by using the micro second response rate of the battery.

the inherent variability of wind and solar rules out both sources.
A largish gas turbine could be started and stabilised using the grid and then, using "smart" electronics, take over the grid stability issue, but such a generator is still producing CO2.

I believe the issue is spinning momentum. Really big generators -- say 500 MW size -- have momentum in spades

[ian]

In any case, surely the point is that it doesn't matter where the CO2 comes from (exhaled and inhaled as it were), as long as we have zero nett emissions. For example if we belch out CO2 in Millmerran, and inhale it in some other place, it shouldn't matter too much should it? One would think that wind/turbulence/air currents would mix things up at some point anyway. I suppose it would be better to inhale it closer to the exhalation source, but....

the problem with this scenario is that "the magic unicorns" pulling CO2 out of the air are also reducing the quantity of Oxygen left for everyone to breathe.

It maybe not much of a problem -- then again it could be significant. Our physiology is fairly finely tuned to the % of O2 in the atmosphere.

[FenceFurniture]

In part I thought we were tossing around ideas about how the "grid" could be supported by home battery storage.

A Tesla Powerwall 2 will struggle to get a family though a single night without a user actively turning off appliances.

Maybe I haven't been as clear as I could be, but I'm just talking about reducing the demand on CF Base Load - not replacing it altogether for each user with a battery. And to repeat again - this would be part of the transition, until BL can be delivered by a properly "clean" or at least "much much cleaner" system, such as Hydrogen or whatever it turns out to be.

Basically trying to find a way through the looming deficit of BL without building CF.

Turn off a few appliances? Not such a bad idea anyway. They could start with the idiot box screen (in whatever format).

[FenceFurniture]

the problem with this scenario is that "the magic unicorns" pulling CO2 out of the air are also reducing the quantity of Oxygen left for everyone to breathe.

It maybe not much of a problem -- then again it could be significant. Our physiology is fairly finely tuned to the % of O2 in the atmosphere.

CO2 is 0.042% of the atmosphere (and rising ), and O2 is 21%, so 500x more O2 than CO2. I dunno what the ratio of O2 to CO2 is with the MCi process, but I very much doubt it would in the order of 500:1.

Think of it in terms of how much O2 would have been used up in Black Summer - reckon that would be stacks more than the MCi process (gasp...wheeze....cough...help I need air ...)