So, i was wondering in my spare time, the issues around renewable energy , and its biggest problem for large scale adoption, storage. As we know, renewable are pretty much seasonal (solar decrease significantly in winter), or can have long lull periods (up to two weeks for wind).
So i was thinking, batteries are pretty much non-economical, right? We're talking about 400$/ KWh, which is absurdly high, not to talk about how many would u actually need to power the world. There's nowhere enough cobalt for one, for all those batteries, and there's also no known way as today to recycle those batteries, so they're not really "renewable" as of today.
So what can we do to store at a lower price? Well, turns out the most used energy storage system on the planet by far today is Pumped Hydro Storage, which is like 99% of the energy storage of the world today. Basically, it's hydropower, but instead of rain, it's surplus eletricity from a solar or wind array that pump water uphill the dam, and then the dam turbine generate back energy, at an amazing energy efficiency of around 80 to 90%.
What an amazing and ingenious system you would think! Yeah, turns out however, when you do the calculation, that you need a LOT of water and a LOT of altitudinal difference to store energy. At the scale we're talking about carbon free, it's not actually doable (more than 200 TWh for a state like the US, you can try to calculate for fun how much water you need and at how much altitude with the E=mgh. If i'm not mistaken, we're talking about draining the great lakes to sea level amount, and then there's the issue of transmission ). It seems too complex and costly (still the cheapest option as of today). So i though, what about those projects that talked about a 100% renewable transition? There have been several in the latest years, guidelines on how to get to 100% renewable in 2050.
You'll see in those guidelines that the only possible way as we know today, to have a 100% renewable energy sector is hydrolisis generated H2 and adding CO2 to produce methane (which is carbon neutral).
You know the efficiency of that? It's ... abysmally low, in the 10% range (for heating is 30%). Not to say that you'd have to either rebuild all cargo ship and factories to run on methane instead of gasoline , OR convert methane to synthethic gasoline, a process whose efficiency i do not know of, but i'd hazard is in the 30% range. Not only that , but you'd have to get the Carbon from somewhere, and NO, getting it from the atmosphere is not a realistic option.
What about thermal energy factories with Carbon capture storage? Search on specialists forums around the web, and you'll see that most engineers consider the thing either unviable (energy costs) or simply dumb. I admit i've not read on it, but if basically no one is considering it there is probably a reason.
Current energy storage systems are basically all unfesably costly. The alternative is the end of the world , you'd say, and you're totally right. But here's the problem. Political feasibility. For example, you could actually drain the great lakes as a way to store the energy needed, as they're about the same order of magnitude. Is it worth to drain the great lakes to sea level for this? How much are we talking about as an enviromental cost? It's a complete destruction of an ecosystem for our energy needs , like i can't even fathom how much of the biome would be lost over it, not to talk about changes in the local climate. This is basically the one realistic possibility that we have to solve the energy storage problem. Sure, the projects would be immense, an engineering feat unprecedented in the history of humanity, but in line of theory, doable. The same i can't really say for batteries or other proposed energy storage system that we know of or are being proposed today, unless we get to discover a battery that cost 10 times less than today's batteries and are made out of materials abundant enough to get the whole world working on those.
The other possibility? Having about 40% of the world baseline power being nuclear. At that point, the amount of energy storage you'd need would decrease drastically, by a factor of 10 or more because of how energy demand work, and you'd be carbon free. You'd still have to create synthetic gasoline from CO2 for planes and ships, and you'd have to basically have a power battery in every home and car. But that's POSSIBLE. That's actually a thing we can see and do now. It's a huge endeavor, but we can do it. With time, you could feasibly phase nuclear out, with eventual energy storage revolutions, or fusion energy in the late XXI century being possible. Instead we're on a path to self destruction. The "solutions" of today for emissions are not real solution, we're talking about being 2-3 orders of magnitude off in term of actual solution. We're gonna crash full speed against a climate crysis with consequences we can't really solve.
You know what's frustrating as shit to me? That if we invested in nuclear power we could have got to a 0 emission goal as soon as the early '10 of this century, and this was a study about Germany which INCLUDED creating synthetic gasoline for all transporation needs. You know what that mean ? That climate change would have been a non-problem. If most of western countries were carbon neutral by 2020, it would've meant that lifetime emission would've been significantly lower, and climate change would probably NOT EVEN BE AN ISSUE. We could be talking about how moving away from nuclear, and enjoy a life with no smog in cities.
I'll be citing some sources later now i have to go and i mostly wanted to rant.
So i was thinking, batteries are pretty much non-economical, right? We're talking about 400$/ KWh, which is absurdly high, not to talk about how many would u actually need to power the world. There's nowhere enough cobalt for one, for all those batteries, and there's also no known way as today to recycle those batteries, so they're not really "renewable" as of today.
So what can we do to store at a lower price? Well, turns out the most used energy storage system on the planet by far today is Pumped Hydro Storage, which is like 99% of the energy storage of the world today. Basically, it's hydropower, but instead of rain, it's surplus eletricity from a solar or wind array that pump water uphill the dam, and then the dam turbine generate back energy, at an amazing energy efficiency of around 80 to 90%.
What an amazing and ingenious system you would think! Yeah, turns out however, when you do the calculation, that you need a LOT of water and a LOT of altitudinal difference to store energy. At the scale we're talking about carbon free, it's not actually doable (more than 200 TWh for a state like the US, you can try to calculate for fun how much water you need and at how much altitude with the E=mgh. If i'm not mistaken, we're talking about draining the great lakes to sea level amount, and then there's the issue of transmission ). It seems too complex and costly (still the cheapest option as of today). So i though, what about those projects that talked about a 100% renewable transition? There have been several in the latest years, guidelines on how to get to 100% renewable in 2050.
You'll see in those guidelines that the only possible way as we know today, to have a 100% renewable energy sector is hydrolisis generated H2 and adding CO2 to produce methane (which is carbon neutral).
You know the efficiency of that? It's ... abysmally low, in the 10% range (for heating is 30%). Not to say that you'd have to either rebuild all cargo ship and factories to run on methane instead of gasoline , OR convert methane to synthethic gasoline, a process whose efficiency i do not know of, but i'd hazard is in the 30% range. Not only that , but you'd have to get the Carbon from somewhere, and NO, getting it from the atmosphere is not a realistic option.
What about thermal energy factories with Carbon capture storage? Search on specialists forums around the web, and you'll see that most engineers consider the thing either unviable (energy costs) or simply dumb. I admit i've not read on it, but if basically no one is considering it there is probably a reason.
Current energy storage systems are basically all unfesably costly. The alternative is the end of the world , you'd say, and you're totally right. But here's the problem. Political feasibility. For example, you could actually drain the great lakes as a way to store the energy needed, as they're about the same order of magnitude. Is it worth to drain the great lakes to sea level for this? How much are we talking about as an enviromental cost? It's a complete destruction of an ecosystem for our energy needs , like i can't even fathom how much of the biome would be lost over it, not to talk about changes in the local climate. This is basically the one realistic possibility that we have to solve the energy storage problem. Sure, the projects would be immense, an engineering feat unprecedented in the history of humanity, but in line of theory, doable. The same i can't really say for batteries or other proposed energy storage system that we know of or are being proposed today, unless we get to discover a battery that cost 10 times less than today's batteries and are made out of materials abundant enough to get the whole world working on those.
The other possibility? Having about 40% of the world baseline power being nuclear. At that point, the amount of energy storage you'd need would decrease drastically, by a factor of 10 or more because of how energy demand work, and you'd be carbon free. You'd still have to create synthetic gasoline from CO2 for planes and ships, and you'd have to basically have a power battery in every home and car. But that's POSSIBLE. That's actually a thing we can see and do now. It's a huge endeavor, but we can do it. With time, you could feasibly phase nuclear out, with eventual energy storage revolutions, or fusion energy in the late XXI century being possible. Instead we're on a path to self destruction. The "solutions" of today for emissions are not real solution, we're talking about being 2-3 orders of magnitude off in term of actual solution. We're gonna crash full speed against a climate crysis with consequences we can't really solve.
You know what's frustrating as shit to me? That if we invested in nuclear power we could have got to a 0 emission goal as soon as the early '10 of this century, and this was a study about Germany which INCLUDED creating synthetic gasoline for all transporation needs. You know what that mean ? That climate change would have been a non-problem. If most of western countries were carbon neutral by 2020, it would've meant that lifetime emission would've been significantly lower, and climate change would probably NOT EVEN BE AN ISSUE. We could be talking about how moving away from nuclear, and enjoy a life with no smog in cities.
I'll be citing some sources later now i have to go and i mostly wanted to rant.
