Will BALDIES Save The World?
I just had to use this new acronym, I’ve just found on the Internet.
BALDIES are Build-Anywhere-Long-Duration-Intermittent-Energy-Storage.
Climate Emission Killer: Construction Begins On World’s Biggest Liquid Air Battery
The title of this post, is the same at that of this article in the Guardian.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Construction is beginning on the world’s largest liquid air battery, which will store renewable electricity and reduce carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants.
These are a few points from the Guardian and other articles on other web sites, including Wikipedia.
- The size of the battery is 250 MWh.
- It can delivery up to 50 MW of power. which translates to five hours at full power, if the battery is full.
- If it was already working, it would be the ninth biggest battery of all types, except for pumped storage, in the world.
- It will be built at Trafford Energy Park near to Carrington power station.
- It will be double the size of the largest chemical battery, which was built by Tesla in South Australia.
- It is being built by a company call Carlton Highview Storage, which is a joint venture between Carlton Power and Highview Power.
- It should start commercial operation in 2022.
- The installation of the battery is an £85million project.
- The Government have chipped in with a £10million grant.
Some reports say, this could be one of four of Highview Power’s 250 MWh CRYObatteries to be developed by the joint venture.
I will add some observations of my own.
Carrington Power Station
This Google Map shows the site of Carrington Power station.
Note.
- Flixton station is in the North-East corner of the map.
- Irlam station is on the Western edge of the map.
- South of the railway between the two stations, there is a large industrial site, that sits in a bend in the River Mersey.
This second Google Map shows an enlargement of the site.
Note.
- Carrington power station in the middle of the site.
- Large amounts of brownfield land.
- The Manchester Ship Canal passing to the West of the site.
Wikipedia says this about the design of Carrington power station.
The station is a Combined-Cycle Power Plant (CCPP), using natural gas to generate 884MW of electricity. The CCPP uses both a gas and a steam turbine together, to produce up to 50 percent more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant. The waste heat from the gas turbine is routed to the nearby steam turbine, which generates additional power. Carrington consists of two CCPP KA26-1 units. At operating design conditions, each CCPP unit generates 442.3 MW net output. The station generates enough power to meet the electricity needs of one million homes in the UK and began commercial operation on 18 September 2016.
Wikipedia also says the following.
- The plant has an efficiency of 58%. Is that good for this type of gas-fired Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station? 64% seems to be about the best but Carrington is better than the about 50% possible with a conventional gas turbine plant.
- Much of the heavy equipment for the power station was brought by barge along the Manchester Ship Canal.
- The station is also a combined heat and power plant, capable of providing nearby businesses with steam, if they require a supply. This could be useful to a Highview Power CRYObattery, as a low-grade heat-source is needed to recovery the stored energy by warming the liquid air.
Given the following.
- There is space available near to the power station.
- A 250 MWh CRYObattery would probably fit in a size smaller than two football pitches.
- Carlton have permission to build another CCGT at the site.
- Carrington has a very good electrical connection to the grid, as nearly all power stations do.
- Heavy components can be brought in by barge on the canal.
, it would appear that the area would be a good place to site the first gr-scale CRYObattery.
Conclusion
I think siting the first grid-scale CRYObattery close to Carrington power station at the Trafford Energy Park, fits together well and I could see more CRYObatteries being installed in the following types of location.
- At existing power stations.
- On the sites of demolished power stations, that still have good grid connections.
- Where interconnectors and power from offshore wind connects to the grid.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Drax Group install a system at one of their sites, as a CRYObattery could help cut their carbon-emissions.
Developer 8minute Says More Than 24GWh Of Batteries Included In Its US Solar-Plus-Storage Pipeline
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
What caught my eye was the 24 GWh!
When you consider that the biggest battery in the UK is Electric Mountain, which has a capacity of 9 GWh, 24 GWh of batteries is a large number!
It will need a lot of solar panels to keep that amount of batteries brim-full.
This is a sentence from the article.
The company’s projects include the Eland Solar & Storage Center, which will comprise 400MWac of PV and 300MW / 1,200MWh of battery energy storage, currently under construction in California’s Mojave Desert.
Those are big numbers against the UK’s largest solar park at Shotwick in Wales, which is just 72.2 MW.
NEC Pulls The Plug On Storage Integration Business
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on GreenTechMedia.
It doesn’t appear that building grid-scale lithium-ion battery storage is a licence to print money!
And NEC bought the business from a bankrupt company!
Portugal’s Delayed 700MW Solar Tender With Storage Option Launches
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
According to the Wikipedia entry for Solar Power in Portugal, Portugal had 828 MW of installed solar power in 2018.
So 700 MW will almost double the capacity.
Note that if they had the same amount of installed solar power per square mile as the UK, Portugal would have 3 GW or 3,000 MW of installed solar power.
Newcomer Broad Reach Power To Deploy Increasingly Large Battery Systems In Texas
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the introductory paragraph.
US-based independent power producer (IPP) Broad Reach Power has said it will build 15 projects in Texas in 2020, each of them just under 10MW / 10MWh, with construction on six of them set to begin this summer.
The article then goes on to describe the electricity industry in Texas and where the battery storage fits in.
It’s all a far cry from the Texas portrayed in soaps like Dallas.
Wind Power In Texas
Wind Power in Texas has its own Wikipedia entry and this is the first paragraph.
Wind power in Texas consists of over 40 wind farms, which together have a total nameplate capacity of over 28,000 MW (as of 2019). If Texas were a country, it would rank fifth in the world: The installed wind capacity in Texas exceeds installed wind capacity in all countries but China, the United States, Germany and India. Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state.
But then everything in Texas, is famed as being the biggest in the world.
Their installed capacity of 28 GW compares with 17.64 GW of installed wind power in the UK.
Solar Power In Texas
Solar Power in Texas also has its own Wikipedia entry and this is the first paragraph.
Solar power in Texas, along with wind power, has the potential to allow Texas to remain an energy-exporting state over the long term. The western portion of the state especially has abundant open land areas, with some of the greatest solar and wind potential in the country. Development activities there are also encouraged by relatively simple permitting and significant available transmission capacity.
The Wikipedia entry also says that in 2019, Texas had 4.32 GW of installed solar power.
By comparison, the UK has 8.1 GW of installed solar power. Who’d have thought that?
As Texas is 2.87 times geographically larger than the UK, if Texas had the same solar panel density as the UK, Texas would have an installed capacity of 23.2 GW.
The Need For Energy Storage In Texas
With all this installed wind and solar energy in Texas and its potential for expansion, there would appear to a massive demand for energy storage in the state.
Conclusion
What would JR think?
Lithium Battery Cell Prices To Almost Halve By 2029
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Lithium-ion cell prices will fall by around 46% between now and 2029, according to new analysis from Guidehouse Insights, reaching US$66.6 per kWh by that time.
The rest of the article contains a lot more useful predictions.
I will add a prediction of my own.
The drop in prices of lithium-ion batteries will surely result in a lot more applications, in the following areas.
- Battery-electric vehicles
- Battery-electric vans and buses and light-trucks.
- Battery-electric trams and trains
- Battery-electric aircraft.
- Battery-electric ships.
- Battery-electric tractors
- Battety-electric construction plant
Lithium-ion batteries will also be used in hydrogen-powered versions of any of the above.
The cost of lithium-ion batteries, will also lead to more applications in the following areas.
- Grid energy storage or as it sometimes called; front-of-the-meter storage.
- Heavy trucks
- Double-deck buses
- Railway locomotives
These could use a very large number of lithium-ion cells.
Conclusion
Because as yet, there is no alternative to lithium-ion cells for mobile applications, I think we’ll see grid-energy storage going to one of the alternatives like Gravitricity, Highview Power or Zinc8.
US Deployed 98MW / 208MWh Of Energy Storage During First Quarter Of 2020
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Research firm Wood Mackenzie has held onto its forecast that the US will deploy around 7GW of energy storage annually by 2025 and found that 97.5MW / 208MWh of storage was installed during the first quarter of this year.
The United States may be led by a President, who doesn’t believe in global warming, but individuals and businesses in the country seem to believe in battery storage and the benefits it brings.
This is an interesting paragraph from the article.
The overall deployments were also down in megawatt-hour terms: 208MWh in total was a 43% decrease quarter-on-quarter and down 34% year-on-year. Wood Mackenzie found that this was due to a majority of front-of-the-meter projects coming online being short duration energy storage. This meant that FTM storage accounted for 13% of Q1 2020 deployments in megawatt-hours but for 22% of the total megawatts deployed.
Front-of-the-meter storage is mainly used to maintain supplies, when demand is going up and down like a yo-yo in an area. Companies like Gresham House Energy Sorage Fund seem to be funding these batteries in the UK. Gravutricity, Highview Power and Zinc8 also seem to be targeting this market.
Conclusion
It would appear that the energy storage market is healthy on both sides of the Atlantic
Norway Announces $384.5m Clean Energy Fund To Aid In Covid-19 Recovery
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Power Technology.
These are the first one-and-a-half paragraphs.
Last week, Norway announced plans to fund a “green transition package”, investing $384.5m into sustainable power and infrastructure to help the country’s economy and productivity post-Covid-19.
The fund will be used to support a range of initiatives, including investments in hydrogen power and battery storage technology, building offshore wind infrastructure, and renovations to new and existing buildings, as Norway looks to reach the Paris Climate Agreement target of limiting global temperature rise to less than two degrees by 2050.
Perhaps we should follow Norway’s lead.
Explaining Gravitricity
Gravitricity is a simple way to store excess electricity, that is perhaps being produced by intermittent renewable resources like wind or solar power.
This is their explanatory video.
It may look simple, but how much energy can a typical system store.
The video says that depths can be between 150 and 1,500 metres and that the weight can be up to 5,000 tonnes.
- A quick calculation using Omni’s Potential Energy Calculator with 500 metres and 500 tonnes gives 681 kWh.
- But build a system in a four kilometre deep gold mine with 5000 tonnes and you could store 54.5 MWh.
- Perhaps, that is extreme, but you can understand why the South Africans are interested in the technology.
- Perhaps, more practically, we have some coal mines in the UK, where the winding shafts are around 800 metres, which with a 1000 tonnes would store 2.2 MWh.
These are practical amounts of power.
Gravitricity And South Africa
This article on ESI Africa is entitled Gravitricity Sets Sights On South Africa To Test Green Energy Tech.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Disused mine shafts in South Africa have been identified as an ideal location to test UK-based energy start-up Gravitricity’s green energy technology.
Remember that mine depths in South Africa are often measured in kilometres rather than metres.
