[z_rex]

I work in the power generation industry. The large scale introduction of Battery Storage is going to be a game changer for renewables since it will allow overproduction during the day to be stored for the evening peak. I think the current fad of peaking plants is somewhat overblown, as the average large scale battery storage system will not face the issues with starting reliability that can be present on large gas turbine power plants, which not only affect the grid but can be very expensive as a failed starts consumes large amounts of fuel to no effect. In the end, this will drive carbon-producing power capabilities to largely only run during the night when solar is out of service.

[Gibbon1]

Thing I harp on is the logistics of battery installations are fantastic in about every way.

If you have a couple of brown field acres of land next to an existing substation you can just buy and install containerized batteries. And you don't need specialized contractors to handle the job either. Pour concrete pads, forklift operators to take batteries off the truck and put them on the pad. And then standard HV techs to hook them up.

And the permitting and environmental review is nil. Go ahead try and get a pumped storage system permitted somewhere.

A fun one. Three gorges dam. You could replace the whole thing with solar and batteries for the cost it took to build it. And the area covered by solar panels would be the same as the lake behind the dam. Except you can put the solar panels on some ecologically and economically low value land where ever.

[nine_k]

This is cool. The sheer amount of mater required to build hydro storage should not be underestimated.

Another win is that you can put something below the solar panels, even grow shade-preferring plants below them. This is being done in many places. Otherwise it could be a storage area, a light industrial facility, a shopping mall, even a sports field. And for all the battery storage you can afford, of course.

[Gibbon1]

I think the answer for some area's is sheep. They can graze under the panels and don't chew on stuff like goats.

There is a whole interest in agrivoltaics as it's become apparent that the land under the solar panels remains productive. In the western US there is a lot of completely unproductive land to put solar panels on. But in the east and midwest being able to continue to use the land for agriculture is a win.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/agrivoltaics-solar-and-agr...

Random thought about fallow land under solar panels is the soil probably absorbs carbon over time.

[timschmidt]

Also car parks. Shields the cars from weather, and provides power right where you want it for charging. Can even aid guiding rainwater runoff to avoid contamination with petroleum products. And reduces the amount of heat absorbed by giant swaths of black asphalt.

[DrBazza]

Why can't anywhere that has significant elevation should just pumped storage of water during the day and use hydro on the way back down?

[mariebks]

I’m not an expert on this topic, but I think it comes down to cost and scalability. You have to construct a new project with custom specs for the exact site you’re on, and the permitting for a large environmental change is another drag. For large scale batteries, they all are a somewhat complex power electronic wrapper around mass produced battery cell cans or pouches that can be dropped anywhere. The cost declines of batteries are undeniable and are not stopping anytime soon.

[jopsen]

Not to mentioned all the dirty cheap second hand batteries becoming available as electric cars are scrapped.

For grid storage second hand batteries might be fine. If taking them out of a scrapped car is feasible.

[dzhiurgis]

No grid operator going to mess with scrap batteries. Even for home player new cells are so cheap that it's not worth messing around with used ones (esp when considering liability and insurance). Might work in third world countries tho who have even more appetite for reliable power.

[jeffbee]

Grid battery deployment is faster than EV market penetration in the USA. This is not something that can siphon off a fraction of EV batteries. It is a huge market in its own right.

[simfree]

What would be considered ruined Leaf EV batteries that have significant range loss (20% to 50% degradation, for a car that went around 60 miles with a full battery) are being used to cover peak load right now in California and have been used to do so for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqlOlqK_ot8

2nd life use cases for cheap, mass produced batteries like this are more common than you think.

[jeffbee]

But that isn't a mainstream case. It's notable for being weird. The 1000x larger Moss Landing battery facility just uses new, off-the shelf BESS units from LG.

[Timshel]

Because there are fewer places than expected where it really makes sense. Was discussed in an old video of Practical Engineering: https://youtu.be/66YRCjkxIcg?si=PXArfkXkbCODeSAF&t=290

[bryanlarsen]

Australian National University has identified 616,000 potential locations: https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/

[Timshel]

Interesting but it appears to only take account the topographic feasibility of the project.

The first location I looked at (link is not working :(), it relies on building two dams on rivers (which is something we tend to do less not more) and would flood some houses ...

And there is supposedly a price estimate, but it's just an A, B, C, D or E ranking could not find some costs to make comparison with battery storage for example.

[toomuchtodo]

Batteries installed on concrete slabs are easier and cheaper, there are only so many places pumped hydro is feasible.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Batteries can also be installed basically instantly, with storage being added incrementally. Unlike a years long project of constructing a hydro battery before it enters operation.

[dzhiurgis]

NZ recently scraped Lake Onslow seasonal hydro storage. My estimate it was about 100x cheaper per kWh when compared with Powerwall.

[toomuchtodo]

Can you provide background and/or context as to how and why this decision was made?

[dzhiurgis]

New government (that Elon Musk himself congratulated) has terminated tons of projects and rolled back some laws:

- Removed EV subsidy

- Scrapped Lake Onslow seasonal pumped hydro storage

- Removed generational smoking ban (made it to 18yo like most countries)

- Gave 50% discount to heated tobacco products (aka IQOS)

- Gave a tip whose projects will be fast tracked

- Reduced housing insulation minimums

- Terminated new inter-island ferry project to replace aging ferries (tbh this one was getting out of proportion)

- Reintroduced tax interest write-off for landlords who rent their houses

- Removed free school launches for poorest country schools

Their goal was to end government spending, but giving $2b+ to countries richest people seems opposite.

And to give them credit here's couple of good things that will definitely help property market:

- Ability to import abroad-certified building supplies (atm there's a building supply monomopoly)

- Ability to build up 60sqm backyard homes without consent

- Densification plans

[toomuchtodo]

Oof. Good luck over there.

[theptip]

There is zero chance that a mega-project like pumped hydro can be undertaken in the US in the current regulatory environment. NEPA review allows even clearly green projects like solar and wind to get bogged down in environmental review lawsuits. A project with major environmental impact like destroying an entire valley ecosystem to build a dam would be DoA.

[cogman10]

It's not just nepa. Citizens really don't like pumped hydro which negatively impacts it's ability to be deployed (you need local permits as well as federal).

Bear lake Idaho has been talking about putting in pumped storage since the 2000s. On paper, it's pretty much the perfect geography for it. However, various concerns from the impact on local fishing to the impacts on the lakebed have ground that process to a halt. It's a 20+ year project that's gone nowhere.

That's why I'm largely negative on pumped hydro. On paper it seems nice, in practice it's almost impossible to get off the ground. Batteries, on the other hand, take almost no effort to install.

[theptip]

Yep, agreed. We probably need new chemistries to get the seasonal storage potential of pumped hydro. But I’m quite bullish on batteries in general, it seems while folks have been gnashing teeth on how expensive they are, a substantial proportion of renewables installs in the US include 4-6H of battery capacity, which at least substantially helps with the duck curve.

[cogman10]

> We probably need new chemistries to get the seasonal storage potential of pumped hydro.

Yup. It might be possible to overbuild solar/wind to solve the problem (just need enough juice to offset the night). Won't be possible with current chemistries to have enough power to cover cloudy days or snow-covered solar panels.

> it seems while folks have been gnashing teeth on how expensive they are

This to me seems like a fixed perception based on outdated information. Batteries were quite expensive and required loads of rare earth/horrible chemicals to produce... 30 years ago when NiCd was fairly prominent. Now they are dirt cheap and due to get even cheaper with sodium ion coming to market. We are already manufacturing TWh of batteries yearly. Enough that we could theoretically have a full day backup everywhere in 10 to 20 years without any growth in manufacturing capacity.

[uyeieiii]

good. because if you are storing kinetic, better to use a flywheel or something with less environmental impact

[nullc]

Do the math on how much energy you can store-- the volumes required for meaningful amounts of energy are just mind boggling. So you don't just need elevation, you need thousand of acres of valley or crater that you can flood and people tend to get a little testy about geoengineering at those scales these days.

[grandinj]

Meh? Couple hundred meters of elevation and a hundred acres runs a city for day. Source - the city I live in which has this exact setup.

[nullc]

Indeed, but that is the scale you have to work at for it to be interesting... on the order of a billion gallons of water, if I assume it's 10m deep.

[riku_iki]

some existing example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianelli_Power_Plant

[redleader55]

> I think the current fad of peaking plants is somewhat overblown

Do you mean peak powerplants will become obsolete? As far as I know, in many places peak powerplants are hydroelectric, which in the future, aided by local batteries, will allow filling the reservoir lakes to higher limits and covering greater peaks - eg. malfunctions - which in turn will make grids more stable.

The big unknown, as far as I understand, is whether or not we have enough rare minerals to cover enough TWh of the daily peaks of energy-demands so we can have a flat daily curve. I'm sure in 10-15 years time the "renewables" will look a bit different than what we expect them today.

[adgjlsfhk1]

you can make batteries out of iron or sulfur. no rare minerals required.

[redleader55]

You are right: there are a lot of proposals at the moment trying to replace lithium. I'm hopeful, but let's wait until they are widely adopted before claiming victory. Let's not forget the carbon and environmental cost of such alternative batteries are not known because they are not mass built and mass deployed.

[adgjlsfhk1]

I think there is a fairly big difference between these examples. solar panels need pretty complicated semiconductors. Batteries on the other hand can be made by sticking 2 random metals in a jar with some salt water. since grid storage only cares about price per capacity rather than energy density, it seems unlikely for expensive materials to win out.

[Gibbon1]

When I read people talking about replacing lithium batteries I think of the decades of reading about material X replacing silicon in IC's and solar cells.

[timschmidt]

These are available for purchase from a number of companies in mass production today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery

[hinkley]

Won’t it also be useful for power transportation as well? Since batteries on the usage side of a bottleneck can peak shave and trough fill to levellize the load?

[DoingIsLearning]

> The large scale introduction of Battery Storage is going to be a game changer for renewables

Who are the major players in industry grade solutions for this?

Tesla? BYD? Hitachi? Siemens?

[infecto]

In Texas I have seen a lot of Chinese brands.

Sungrow and CATL as examples.

[DoingIsLearning]

But you meam they are doing consumer PV+battery installations, or actual battery systems for utility companies?

[infecto]

You asked about industrial players, I responded with industrial players I have seen.

https://www.power-eng.com/energy-storage/batteries/spearmint...

https://en.sungrowpower.com/newsDetail/2127/sungrow-supplies...

[DoingIsLearning]

Thanks, and thank you for the links. Very interesting to see movement in this direction.