Storage is a big concern for intermittent renewable such like wind power. Perhaps AWE could mitigate this concern, above all if really high altitude winds are reached.
In this topic several storage means could be discussed. There is a topic about gravity storage. Below is a description of a thermal storage:
GridScale offers electrical energy storage of mid-term duration ranging from hours to weeks
The GridScale storage system is an industrialized and scalable technology for cost-effective thermal storage of electric energy. GridScale uses crushed rock as a low cost storage medium and offers high round-trip efficiency with no geological or topological constraints.
Yeah sure, we’re so smart we can just move past any details of how we will accomplish AWE, and pretend to effectively hypothesize how we will manage the grid once AWE becomes a major power contributor. Grid storage is really a separate challenge. So far, this sort of hand-waving-and-happy-talk “solution” seems to entail holes in logic and reasoning that would rule them out if fully understood. To me it amounts to idle brainstorming and really just giving up on the stated goal while becoming enticed with a convenient diversion that is probably another false trail.
While lithium batteries are only cost-effective for the supply of energy for short periods of up to four hours, a GridScale electricity storage system will cost effectively support electricity supply for longer periods – up to about a week.
However, the GridScale range covers both the 12-18 h duration required for day-to-day smoothing of solar PV, and the 3 to 7 days duration required for smoothing of wind power over gaps caused by low wind periods.
I agree there is no implemented AWES at utility-scale, and no credible promise for it. There is little chance that AWE will succeed without taking account of Power to space use ratio. But as AWE pursues to intend to be a major actor in intermittent renewable, the storage issue is relevant as for all existing intermittent renewables.
So this topic about storage is relevant. Is it the same for AWE?
Hi Pierre: Yeah he is a real inventor, who really understands how things work and who really produced useful devices, notwithstanding how the floating technology mentioned at the end of the article falls under my U.S. Patents. Anyway, yes, a good counter-example to the slightly-interested/curious people, randomly posting whatever pops into their inexperienced heads on the internet, as compared to these original “farmer with a welder” types who actually made real wind energy happen. Maybe it is lucky there was no internet back then(?)
A gravity-based energy storage concept that uses the height (above the seabed) of a floating platform on deep sea to store energy and that should work well in combination with AWE.
Thats not a bad idea at all. The fact you have one place on earth this would work very well is the challenger deep. Depending on scaling. It might even do well on the some of the deep sea oil rigs. That are due to be decommissioned. Then towed for scrap. You could scale up to have multiple unit working at the same time. The deepest trenches around the world average three miles deep. Average decent times are in hours. Definitely a design worth investing and investigating. If completely unmanned drop weight are present then and risk of stresses due to outside pressures at depth will be mitigated. It may also be possible to have a production facility on the rig itself. Exporting energy. Where required. I don’t know if anyone has tried this? but there is a certain bacteria which can be employed here. To transmit the electricity. It’s called geobacteria. it been has found at depth. And it’s really quite wonderful to watch a pulsating sea floor. I digress but you get the idea. It reminds me of gel packs from Star Trek. I suspect that you could make bio organic cables with them. Which would solve a lot of the issues of running a cables at depth. There also a bonus of higher wind speeds out on the open ocean especially where there typhoons cyclones and hurricanes. Honestly your options are endless.
This supposed “company” has what, 30 “employees”? Starting with: Lee King CEO, then Hannah-Forbes-Director-of-Fundraising. Yeah I’m sure “fundraising” is their actual “business”, if any. 30 Employees suggests they are burning through what, a couple million dollars a years just in salaries? Do they even have a real product? Mini water desalination kit - sounds good, but not a new idea, is it? Is it even more than a rendering or concept at this point? If you order one will you ever get it?
Do you see any explanation or diagrams for their supposed energy storage solution? Any discussion of how it works? And the reaction here is to say how great it is and let’s use it miles under the ocean. Any idea how to handle that much water pressure? The company jumps right into not only a “vertical-axis wind turbine” (which is THE number one symptom of a wind energy “Professor Crackpot”), but it looks like they have a rendering-only of some questionable (bad design) newbie-esque version of a vertical-axis turbine. Even choosing a screwed-up turbine, they had to screw it up even worse… (You can’t make this stuff up!) The underwater pumped storage idea is not new. Often mentioned in many circles. (Any working examples?) I do not see any details of what their idea even IS, let alone what would make their idea “better”. And I see no evidence they know anything about any of this, LET ALONE having ever built a prototype at any scale. Ohm by the way, their website says they are anti-science. Folks, this is exactly the kind of fluff/nonsense that has plagued AWE from the beginning, and other than noting that underwater pumped hydro for energy storage is a real idea, I think you can safely ignore everything else about this supposed “company”. Just more of the same old same old. The all-talk format. Renderings. Handwaving and happy-talk. Everyone is an armchair genius until it’s time to actually show something working…
"Solar and wind work well with a combined battery back up. Excess day energy charge the batteries and the batteries discharge at night.
The PV on my home in Puerto Rico paid itself in 7 years the solar water heater has over 34 years.
My electrical bill went from 144 USD per month and now is 5 to 7 USD per month and the system is more reliable than the centralized system which is quite sensitive to hurricane issues and outages."
Hi Pierre: Yes solar panels have been getting so cheap that they can pay for themselves in a few years. Especially if you can do your own installation, and especially if you don;t need to connect to the grid, for example charging your own car, solar is a great solution. But notice this guy did not say the batteries paid for themselves - in fact he didn’t even specifically say he had battery backup in your quote. He just said he had solar panels that paid for themselves in a few years.
Our 10 kW wind turbine here similarly reduces our electric bill to negligible levels. But I am lucky that a turbine installation was already in place when I bought this ranch, because otherwise it would have cost about $75,000 dollars. I paid less than that for an entire other small ranch that can be rented out, generating enough revenue to pay ten electric bills in perpetuity. Or the same money could be invested in a bond that pays enough interest to pay your electric bill, then you still get all your money back whenever you decide to cash out. I’m also lucky I know how to work o0n turbines and I have friends who are installers for this brand of turbine, because after 10 years, I’m on used turbine #3, with #2 sitting on a cart waiting for a hopefully affordable rebuild with used parts, so I’ll always have a backup. Solar is more reliable than wind. This is the best, most reliable small wind turbine brand, and yet is not immune to breakdowns or complete destruction. Then the expenses start with hiring a crane, then an expensive crew with the rare skills needed to take down and install these turbine that weigh over a half-ton. As they struggle to even loosen bolts at 120 feet in the air, the clock is ticking as the crane operator sits there making phone calls and eating sandwiches while charging big buck for every minute he waits for the crew to get anything done. In energy there is no free lunch. But if you are lucky, have some friends in the business, and some skills yourself, you might do OK trying to offset your bill. Storage? Anyone fortunate enough to be on the grid around here uses the grid for “storage”. Backup batteries at the home such as a Tesla Powerwall? It’s a big “upsell” when the used-car-salesmen selling solar get you to sign on the dotted line, but then you are stuck making payments in an expensive set of batteries you will seldom if ever use, that will age and become useless with time.
Buying household backup batteries for grid power outage is unlikely to be economic as the event is so rare.
There are a whole host of factors to balance which affect the value of battery functioning for domestic benefit.
This is a decent (44 min) run through of relevant factors to scope when choosing What is my ultimate Home Storage Battery - Is it better than a Powerwall or Givenergy? - YouTube
Lifetime services quoted around 20 + years because the charges are being managed competently
Part of the reason energy storage systems have trouble penciling out financially is the limited number of hours per day they can be used. They don’t perform both functions of un-creating electricity (charging), and re-creating electricity (discharging) simultaneously. And they don’t do ANYTHING most of the time. Usually the batteries are just sitting there. Say someone has a battery system to store up solar during daylight and releasing it the evening. Maybe it’s supposed to store two hour’s worth of power. So the expensive system sits all night doing nothing, stores solar electricity for 8 hours in the day, discharges for two hours that evening, sittiing idle for most of any 24 hour period. So storage has its own intermittency issues (capacity factor) with regard to the cost of the plant and how much use it can provide. Most conventional powerplants can be run all the time (24/7), making better use of the capital cost. Again, the storage system can only run less than half the time, and it has to split that use between charging and discharging, so it tends to cost at least double what the electricity originally cost. If renewable electricity is so cheap, why do we keep hearing how expensive electricity has become in Germany due to over-reliance on wind and solar?
Storage systems are the only ones who can «buy and sell» power. When you take coal/gas/oil out of the market, you will get fluctuations. And batteries will be worthwhile. How worthwhile will be sorted out by market forces, but initially maybe very lucurative. Like Norway just now, Im sure you could make a profit if that pricing persists
Just thinking about it a bit more, if an energy storage system can only provide power for two (2) hours per day, that is only 2/24 = 8.33% of the time. So it can only perform its ultimate function, providing power, for less than 10% of the time, yet it is an expensive power plant, with all the expensive interconnection infrastructure, taking up land, maybe a building, people paid to run it and even mow the lawn around it, all for a “powerplant” that can only find actual final use less than 10% of the time. Storage has always faced these economic realities, which is why, despite the possibility of time-of-use arbitrage for the last 100+ years, nobody ever found a sufficient economic case to build a storage facility.
Doug
You only arguing with yourself at this point.
This is time wasting - you either don’t pay attention to the point or just twist an argument from a skewed perspective.
Both the charging and discharging are valuable functions.
Your numbers are waaay out
Your pop fact on German energy markets - waaay out
