Energy Storage - actual usable capacity

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
43,887
Location
'Stralia
Some of you have been following/contributing to my
South Australian Energy Experiment It's the anniversary of that state achieving zero emissions for a few hours in being completely blacked out.

South Suatralia has been bouncing around with trailer mounted GTs, and the like.

A new (for Australia), proposal is nearing fruition.

Pumped Seawater Energy Storage passed feasibility stage

Quote:
An Australian-first seawater pumped hydro project proposed for South Australia has passed a major milestone with an initial feasibility report finding no “show stoppers” to the development.

The facility would be located at Cultana in the Spencer Gulf and would be capable of generating 225MW of electricity and 1770MWh of power with eight hours of storage.

The study, conducted by EnergyAustralia with support from Arup and the Melbourne Energy Institute, will allow the project to proceed to the next stage of planning, including engineering design, planning approvals and more detailed financial modeling.


Given Oz's population centres, and availability of coastline, it should be a winner...and not just because it's my employer doing it (We do power walls, redback to augment personal solar)...this is just a rational, chemistry and specialty element free way of storing energy, and restoring inertia to the grid.

Already there are some green rumblings about salt water dams above the water table...
 
Given where the Oz one is located, it certainly won't be this pretty...

ICOLD_okinawa_3col.jpg


Okinawa Yanburu...30 MW decommissioned in 2016 due to financial difficulties.
 
Originally Posted By: A_Harman
Will the strategy be to use renewables primarily to pump the water into the reservoir?


It's essentially an arbitrage machine...

South Australia has installed huge volumes of renewables, predominantly wind...they sell their electricity into the market at -$1,500 per MWh (meaning that they get to generate first), then they get paid the maximum price of any traditional power that gets called up to meet the total demand...e.g. this morning, South Australia has a $45.20/MWh (4.5c/KWh)...it's saturday morning, they've got a demand just under a GW, and 371MW of wind blowing.

During the week, they sat at $10, even -$25-30 (that's where the thermals go out of business)....

Afternoon peaks are around $300/MWh, as that's clearly where the volume is needed.

So this scheme will buy power in the cheap times (market forces dictate that will make the off peal "less cheap"), and sell it into the peaks.

When solar hits hard, and the noontime prices are $0...that's when the system will shine (no pun intended)
 
How is the cost vs AC ice storage?

I would imagine distributed ice storage for air conditioning would be the best solution for duck curve flattening and in theory should be cheaper than a giant salt water tank (plumbing corrosion and measures to prevent salt water seeping into water bed). It would also be much easier to scale gradually from small to big capacity, rather than an all or nothing big water tank.
 
Last edited:
I'm watching this keenly, as your present experiment in South Oz seems to mimic the disaster that gets heralded as not being one that is Denmark's wind market. Highest rates in Europe at almost 50 cents per kWh retail, and on the odd day, they generate significantly more than what the country needs, the majority of the time, they import the bulk of their power from their coal, nuke and hydro-electric producing neighbours. Ultimately, they generate only ~35% (though that was higher in 2015) of their power domestically from this, and pay those rates for that privilege.
 
OVERKILL, problem is that you can replace 1,000MW (nameplate) of thermal with 1,000MW of wind, and only get 30-35% of the same power output over a 24 hour period.

And when the wind DOES blow, push the thermal out of the market into negative territory.

To get the same available output over 24 hours needs 3,000MW of wind, or 4,000MW of solar, and somewhere to store the electrickery...even free electrickery in Musk's world is a 25c/KWh round trip...3-4 times naeplate, plus storage gets you to 40c really fast.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top