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Alternative Energy Storage Stocks: Review and Outlook
The lower capacity factor of wind and solar is well understood. From what I've seen it is taken into consideration in the energy plans that call for ramp up of both solar and wind.
For instance it would take 300 MW of wind to equal 120 MW of coal power. But the wind power is cheap and clean and needs no fuel ever. No mountain tops blown off, no billion gallon spills of toxic coal fly ash sludge.
Solar thermal (CSP) with heat storage designed to run all night would have the same capacity factor or nearly the same as a coal plant.
Many CSP plants probably won't be designed to run all night, partly because it's not considered necessary.
John Lounsbury
Your dream may come true.
"I have been daydreaming about a hybrid photovoltaic-thermal generating system. "
www.businessweek.com/g...
article on Zenith Solar - Israeli company making consentrated PV systems that also make and capture heat.
An interesting and ambitious proposal, and an excellent overview of solar thermal can be found at TREC. They plan to build solar thermal plants and HVDC lines in North Africa, the MidEast, and possibly southern Europe.
The plants will provide electricity, usable heat, and desalinization of sea water for Europe, North Africa and the MidEast.
Read about here:
www.solarserver.de/sol...
More on CSP at these links:
www.salon.com/news/fea...
climateprogress.org/20.../
www.altenergystocks.co...
solarsouthwest.org/
Here's a list of solar thermal companies.
Abengoa Solar
Acciona Solar
Ausra
BrightSource Energy
Iberdrola
Solar Millennium
Solar Reserve
Sener
SkyFuel
eSolar
Solel
Torresol
Stirling {Stirling and Infinia use a sterling heat engine instead of steam turbines.}
Infinia
Sun Power(not the PV company)
Solar Thermal projects in U.S.
from Green Wombat website:
"Stirling has moved to silence the naysayers by filing a license application with the California Energy Commission for its first solar power plant - the world’s largest - a 30,000-dish, 750-megawatt project to be built 100 miles east of San Diego on 6,100 acres of federal land controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. (A energy commission licence application - an extremely detailed and expensive document; Stirling’s runs 2,600 pages - is considered a sign that a project has the wherewithal to move forward.)"
"Solel last July signed the world’s largest solar power deal when it agreed to supply California utility PG&E (PCG) with 553 megawatts of green electricity to be produced by a massive solar thermal power plant to be built in the Mojave Desert"
Ausra is building 175 MW plant near San Luis Obispo CA
Brightsource has had 900MW approved by power companies for the Mojave Desert
This is spread over 2 or 3 plants.
Acciona Solar 64MW plant Nevada Solar One pilot project.
There are 355MW of CSP pilot plants running since the late 1980s and early 1990s in Mojave Desert. (without heat storage)
Abengoa Solar's 280 MW parabolic trough project with 6-hour molten salt storage in Arizona.
Florida Power and Light (FPL) has filed in California to build 250MW plant Mojave.
Yes, FPL has seen the light and is now in the solar thermal business in other states.
In Spain, Solar Tres, a 17 MW central receiver design with 15 hours molten salt heat storage is underway. It will run 24/7 will generate 110.6 GWh/yr, equivalent to 6500 hrs of full-load operation or a 74% utilization factor.
"The same acre can produce 10 times as much energy from wind as it can from corn ethanol, 180,000 miles per acre per year. But both corn ethanol and wind power pale in comparison with solar photovoltaic, which can produce more than 2 million miles worth of transport per acre per year." www.ecogeek.org/conten...
To be fair, wind actually only uses a tiny percentage of the land it is sited on. It can coexist with agriculture. But CSP is not intermittent, on the other hand.
Alternative Energy Storage: It's All About Price vs. Performance
"I truly wish there was somebody out there with a public company that focused on ultra-high efficiency storage like pumped hydro, compressed air, molten salt and all the cool stuff that people far smarter than me are working on"
There is a public company working specifically on molten salt energy storage.
United Technology's Sunstrand Rockedyne division has developed advanced molten salt sytems for solar thermal plants. They have also started a new solar thermal company, Solar Reserve, to use this technology.
I believe they intend to sell the technology to other solar thermal companies as well.
"The new hybrid systems for cars are expensive, costly to maintain, and have no return on their investment. Additionally they do not reduce the “green house” gases"
PHEVs are said to double the efficiency of even a Prius. A car with IC engine that would normally get 25mpg, would achieve 100mpg overall. That cuts emissions drastically.
Furthermore, it's estimated that a PHEV would achieve a life of car cost equal to gasoline cars, even with gas at $1.75/gallon. I doubt we will see prices that low for the majority of the next 10 years. Probably twice that at least. That would amount to substantial savings over the life of the car.
The emissions would be even lower if the PHEVS are NG powered, as well as having even larger life of car savings due to lower fuel costs. Having said, that, I still think there are serious flaws in Pickens' plan.
It's much more efficient use of Ngas to burn it in power plants and power cars with the electricity. This has to be weighed against the lower cost of NG over gasoline or diesel, and the fact that the U.S. has better domestic supply of NG than oil. If we really have enough Ng, then Pickens' plan may serve in transition to EVs, as PHEVs would also do.
The biggest argument for PHEVs over EVs in the near term, IMHO, is that people would be much more inclined to buy a car without range limitations, particularly if they are one car families, who want a one size fits all car.
"BTW I share your agnostic position on global warming; the more I hear ignorant politicians and their followers rant about it, the less I believe in it."
Couldn't disagree more.
The ranting of the deniers repeats arguments endlessly that have been thoroughly disproved for years and decades in some cases. And it is plain to see that most deniers are blinded by political ideology to the point where they will believe Sean Hannity over tens of thousands of climate scientists. That side of the argument is based on belief almost exclusively. Sure there are uncertainties in the science, but deniers believe nonsense, like that a scientific theory isn't valid unless it is 100% proven.
Where are the skeptic climate scientists who are not funded by the fossil fuel industry?
Where are the scientific papers at the AGU meeting that disagree with the consensus?
Or the EGU meetings? They don't exist.
Deniers believe that global warming stopped ten years ago, which is blatantly false, and only seems reasonable because of cherry picking data points like the huge anomaly that was the 1998 El Nino, and the huge anomaly that is the current La Nina cooling.
Anyone who can read a stock chart can see that the warming trendline has not been violated.
Some deniers still claim that the greenhouse effect is disproven by laws of thermodynamics.
Yeah right.
They take 100 arguments with no scientific basis and add them up with 2 or 3 relatively reasonable arguments and think they are making sense.
Heartland Institute couldn't get a single climate scientist in Texas for their list of "experts" who disagree with AGW theory, even though there are dozens if not hundreds of climate scientists in Texas.
Their 4 experts?
policy analyst
energy expert
petroleum engineer
emergency physician
This is typical of all the lists of skeptics the deniers claim.
The Oregon Petition and the 32,000 "leading scientists" that the VP of GM talks about? Jokes. The 32,000 includes the Oregon Petition, which was a phony hoax, started by a guy who believes the industrial revolution has improved biodiverstiy on earth and that the more CO2 we pump into the atmosphere the more wonderful life on earth will be.
Right!
Alternative Energy Storage: It's All About Price vs. Performance
www.altenergystocks.co...
Alternative Energy Storage: It's All About Price vs. Performance
A problem with Pickens' plan is that burning natural gas in a power plant is a far more efficient use of the gas than burning it in cars.
And wind isn't a good match for replacing gas plants which are not intermittent. Also, it makes much more sense from an environmental perspective to phase out coal plants and let the gas plants run. Use solar thermal with heat storage for replacing coal base load.
There is an interesting article on energy storage and transmission at:
www.altenergystocks.co... #comment-106183
The article talks about how much grid balancing can be done with smart transmission, making the point that it is even more important to establish the new improved grid, than to develop storage solutions.
We obviously need both as key elements of an improved electric infrastructure, but I found the article interesting, offering a perspective I hadn't heard before.
You mention Active Power's and BeaconPower's flywheel potential.
How to compare them? Which is a better investment?
"So what we really need to do is get up in the morning, go to work and solve the problems of today with the tools we have. If we do that consistently, tomorrow will take care of itself."
Well said
The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008
You are completely misinformed about climate change. The scientific consensus is overwhelming. And getting stronger. The number of skeptic scientists is shrinking from a tiny number to an even tinier number.
www.logicalscience.com.../
I get my info from the websites of actual climate scientists, you should do the same.
Otherwise you fall into this kind of fantasy
"Scientific skepticism is a healthy thing. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge, improve their understanding and refine their theories. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and yet eagerly, even blindly embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog, study or 15 year old that refutes AGW"
www.skepticalscience.c...
"The global warming is a hoax believers don't understand the difference between informed opinion, uninformed opinion, misinformed opinion and totally ignorant opinions." from comments posted by LeeAnnG
gristmill.grist.org/st......
And here is who is fooling you
www.desmogblog.com/sla...
"But few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change. Few have been so coldly calculating and few have been so well documented. For example, Ross Gelbspan, in his books, The Heat is On and Boiling Point sets out the whole case, pointing fingers and naming names. PR Watch founder John Stauber has done similarly exemplary work, tracking the bogus campaigns and linking various pseudo scientists to their energy industry funders."
"This is a triumph of disinformation. It is a living proof of the success of one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world."
more links that tell the truth from actual climate scientists
environment.newscienti...
scholarsandrogues.word.../
gristmill.grist.org/sk...
scienceblogs.com/illco...
www.realclimate.org/
Climate Change from Climate Scientists
The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008
Your numbers on how much wind is required to equal that from coal are way off. It takes less than three times as much wind to equal a constant supply like coal, not twenty times like you said.
So what? It's still cheaper, cleaner, and requires no fuel ever.
Clean coal will cost about 16cents /kWh when we have clean coal in 10 to 20 years.
Wind is about 1/4 the price and can be built now.
Lets clear up a misperception. No one is advocating tearing down all our coal or nuclear or gas plants without first replacing them with renewable energy. Coal will be phased out over time.
Our coal plants are old. Most are over 40 years old.
They just won't be replace with new coal plants.
Someday, clean coal may be a reality, but until you can remove the mercury and other pollutants as well as capturing and sequestering all the CO2 , it is not clean. We have lots of coal, so if in the future, we figure out how to use it wisely, it isn't going anywhere.
Same for new nuclear tech. Maybe it will be safe and will use thorium or whatever in the future, but right now it is not a good near term solution. We can flat out build solar and wind quicker, cheaper and with no worries about safety or pollution, or fuel.
John Peterson who writes articles here about storage solutions said that when we reach 15% renewable energy, storage will become an issue. We are a long way from that.
He said it had become an issue in Denmark, but Denmark has 20% wind power already.
Plus, wind and solar compliment each other to a certain extent because the wind generally blows more at night when PV is not generating.
The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market
Found this Green Car Congress website
www.greencarcongress.c...
An analysis and comparison of what are the best choices for low emission vehicles.
The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market
The Sixth Revolution: The Coming of Cleantech.
haven't read it all but very interesting.
Related articles on climate solutions and what it will take
to reduce carbon emissions enough to prevent the worst case scenario for climate change.
An Introduction to Core Climate Solutions
climateprogress.org/20.../
which is based on this 2004 study published by Science magazine. You will notice that in 2004 solar thermal wasn't considered, but thinking has changed since then, as the first link shows.
Science magazine article on Stablilization Wedges to solve global warming carbonsequestration.us...
also:
www.nature.com/climate...
climateprogress.org/20.../
It should be noted that it will take tremendous effort to keep CO2 at or below 450ppm by 2050, while many scientists say we should reduce emissions till we lower CO2 to 350ppm from the current 380ppm
It was 280 ppm at the start of the industrial revolution.
At 450ppm we will still face major problems from climate change.
How Will Temporary Decline in Oil Prices Impact Energy Sector?
"Maybe this is why Obama is not saying much about Nat gas as an alternative fuel for cars? If so, then this would even further add to the advantage of battery assisted cars."
I had the same thought when I first heard of Pickens' plan. NG PHEVs even cleaner than gasoline PHEVs. Then I read the article below at climate progress which basically says:
The problem with using natural gas for cars instead of in power plants as T Boone Pickens suggests, is that it isn't a very efficient use of the gas, compared with using it in power plants. It is more efficient to make electricity which is then used in the cars. And if we are trying to eliminate carbon emissions, it's coal plants that should be phased out, since they're much dirtier. And how will wind which is intermittant take the place of gas fired peaker plants? Not that I want to discourage wind development or HVDC tranmission, but this is maybe a case of the right ideas for the wrong reason.
climateprogress.org/20.../
In regard to PHEVs or EVs, what about the idea of power companies buying the batteries for grid modulation and storage after they no longer will power the car. I've read that the batteries would still have quite a useful life left after they no longer will work in cars. The way the idea was presented, was that the price of the battery would be discounted when you buy a car to account for it's future use in the grid. How much that discount may be I don't know.
Another question I've had is in regard to Tesla.
If Tesla can build a luxury roadster on a small scale, that competes in price and performance with an equivalant conventional Lotus or Porche, and has decent range, why can't this be done with a less performance oriented car that is mass produced on the scale that Detroit has, at a reasonable price?
Wouldn't the range increase with the lower performance expectations? We don't all need cars that go 0 to 60mph in under 4 seconds, nor do we need 130mph top end.
John- when you say PHEVs will cost $10,000 to $30,000 more, is that based on future mass production, or is it based on current costs at current production rates? And why is the spread so big between these estimates?
I am often skeptical when high cost are mentioned as game stoppers for technologies that don't yet enjoy economies of scale.
I'm not saying that's the case here, but I often hear this kind of argument, and it can be misleading.
Any thoughts on Phoenix Motorcars?
Sport Utility Truck and small SUV
35kWh Altair lithium titanate battery pack
torque = 590 ft pounds
range 130 miles - they are working on an expansion pack that will extend the range to 250 miles by 2009
charging - on board 6.6kw 220 volt plug in
for 5-6 hour charging. Also has a connector for 10 minute rapid charge which requires 480 volt, 3phase, 500 amp charging system.
It's the quick charge that I find interesting.
If there were 480 volt charging stations along freeways, it would be like stopping for gas.
They are aiming their marketing at fleet sales, farm and ranch job trucks, delivery vehicles etc, where range isn't a big concern.
How big is the market for city vehicles, delivery, taxis, job trucks for agriculture and industries, mining etc? Seems like these are the best applications for pure EVs at present, given the range limitations.
The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market
I had seen those numbers for parts of Germany and Denmark a couple of different places, but you may be right. I read somewhere that Denmark was selling windpower into Germany's grid in exchange for base power from Germany.
We could make a good start on building solar thermal which comes with it's own inexpensive energy storage.
For what it's worth, a report from the Western Governers Association said the industry is capable of building 13 gigawatts of capacity by 2015. They said once there were 4 gigawatts installed, the price should drop to less than 10cents/kWh and should continue to drop as the scale increased to 5-8 cents/kWh. There are already 2 gigawatts scheduled or already building in California. These aren't pilot projects- some are as big as 500 megawatts. The report also said 300 gigawatts could be built near existing transmission lines.
I gleaned the following from articles at Green Wombat
Abengoa Solar's 280 MW with 6-hour molten salt heat storage for Arizona Public Servic.
Ausra 175 MW plant near San Luis Obispo,CA (central coast)
building now
FPL has filed plans with California regulators to build a 250-megawatt plant in the Mojave Desert.
Brightsource has a contract for up to 900 megawatts in the Mojave desert. this is two or three plants.
eSolar, contract with Southern California Edison with 245 megawatts plant
Solel signed with PG&E (PCG) to build a 553 megawatts solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert
Stirling filed a license application with the California Energy Commission to build a 750-megawatt plant 100 miles east of San Diego
That's 2,753 megawatts total, if Brightsource builds only 500 megawatts.
3,153 megawatts total, if Brightsource builds 900 megawatts.
- assuming that all of these are completed.
BTW nice move in Exide today
The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market
This is an overstatement. For one thing Denmark has somehow managed 20% wind power already. Parts of Europe including parts of Germany and Denmark have 40% wind power. But here in America with tiny percents of power coming from these sources, this is repeated over and over by those opposed to renewable energy
The argument is too often used as more disinformation to delay shifting to alternative energy.
The statement doesn't take into account solar thermal with heat storage.
This technology can replace coal plants as base load power. It can also act as load following power. And storing heat is 20-100 times cheaper than storing electricity and much more efficient. In a way, solar thermal with storage is better than base load because it peaks when energy demand peaks, while also being able to put out steady power when the sun goes down.
Yes we need storage solutions but that isn't as big a factor as made out to be.
We have a long way to go before it is a fatal lack. With a tiny percent of power now generated by solar and wind in the U.S. there is a lot of room for growth before it is a major problem. For one thing, the statement doesn't take into account the use of solar panels to partialy or fully power individual homes either on or off the grid.
The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008
Science magazine article on Stablilization Wedges to solve global warming
carbonsequestration.us...
The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008
You mentioned line loss over long distances.
That's why all the sensible energy plans call for new high voltage DC transmission lines or HVDC to bring power from solar and wind farms to other parts of the country. There is much less line loss with HVDC over long distances. Anything over 30 miles favors DC in fact. Don't confuse this with the use of superconductors that john s. gordon mentions in his comment.
Andy 1234 -you may be an engineer, but you are under-informed. The numbers have been crunched and these ideas are mostly well thought out. Solar thermal power plants with heat storage can act as base load power, as they produce a steady output of power even at night.
What's more, they can store heat 20-100 times cheaper than storing electricity.
They will be able to provide power at 5-8 cents a kWh once they are up to scale in several years.
They are fast to build and use ordinary building materials. So low tech we could have done it 100 years ago. They can be air or water cooled, and can even desalinize water at the same time, when water cooled. Molten salt is the best medium for storing heat. United Technology's Sunstrand/Rockedyne division has developed advanced systems for molten salt use. They have also created a new solar thermal company called Solar Reserve. There are about 10 companies I've heard of in solar thermal.
See the article in Scientific American that proposes building solar plants in the southwest, achieving 69% solar grid by 2050 and spending less in tax dollars over 35-40 years than we spent on the internet in the last 35 years.
One fourth or less than we now give oil companies in subsidies and tax credits.
www.sciam.com/article....
For more on solar thermal:
www.salon.com/news/fea...
climateprogress.org/20.../
solarsouthwest.org/
Combining centralized solar in the southwest with distributed power from solar panels all over the country will give us solar on a vast scale. Photovoltaics are within a few years of grid parity, not including the external or hidden costs of fossil fuels.
Wind is also much cheaper to build than coal or nuclear plants and about a third the cost of building nuclear. A recent govt report says we could have 20% wind power by 2030. Solar could be bigger.
Geothermal with advanced technology could be huge.
The costs of not switching to renewable energy far exceeds the cost of doing it.
In the U.S. with a tiny fraction of our power coming from wind and solar, we talk constantly about the "intermittency&qu... of solar and wind.
Meanwhile Denmark already has 20% wind power. Parts of Denmark and Germany have 40% wind power.
Yes we need more storage solutions, better battery technology etc. What people don't get is that we can make a big start toward renewables with current technology.
I would argue that solar is already cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the hidden costs of those. and wind is already cheaper without those considerations.
While there are several energy plans I've seen they all have the same elements. Solar, Wind, HVDC, plug in hybrids, biomass, geothermal, energy conservation and efficiency, etc.
I recommend reading the following articles.
www.setamericafree.org...
An Introductin to Core Climate Solutions
analyses and updates the solutions outlined in the Science magazine article on stablilization wedges below.
climateprogress.org/20.../
Science magazine article on Stablilization Wedges to solve global warminghttp://carbonse...
climateprogress.org/20.../
www.americanprogressac...
climateprogress.org/20.../
What makes it hard for renewable to compete with fossil fuels is the massive subsidies fossil fuels and nuclear receive.
See my comments on subsidies at yesterday's article on solar at Seeking Alpha
seekingalpha.com/artic...
Lithium-Ion Batteries and Centerfolds: The Final Chapter
If subsidies won't work, why are we giving the oil companies $84 billion a year in tax credits and other subsidies? The amount being debated in congress for solar, wind and geothermal combined is only $6 billiion annually. This argument simply doesn't hold water.
Coal gets about $3 billion annually and nuclear about $9 billion.
Many parts of our infrastructure were built with subsidies.
If intermittency is such a problem for the U.S., where we have less than 1% of power derived from solar and wind, why is it that Denmark has 20% wind power already?
Parts of Germany and Denmark have 40% wind power.
The argument about pricing of alternative vehicles doesn't hold water either. The difference in price is a difference in economy of scale more than anything. What happens to the price of PHEVs for instance, when they are mass produced at the rate we now mass produce conventional vehicles?
Plug in hybrids, while costing more than conventional cars, would pay for the price difference over the life of the car, in fuel savings. And that estimate is based on $1.50 gallon gasoline. And so another argument holds no water.