Renewable Energy Storage: No Wind, No Sun, Now What?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ค. 2024
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Solar panels and wind turbines are great, so long as the sun shines and the wind blows. But what if they do not? Well, then we store the energy. But how? In this video I explain how high the risk of a cold, dark, and windless period is -- the "cold Dunkelflaute", and what energy storage we need for intermittent renewables.
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The figure I show at 1 minute 49 seconds is from this report: www.irena.org/publications/20...
The estimate from the German Weather Service that I mention at 2 minutes 46 seconds is here: www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemi...
The figure I show at 2 minutes 53 seconds is from this paper: www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/20/...
The paper about the reliability of solar and wind which I discuss at about 3 minutes is this: www.nature.com/articles/s4146...
The paper I mention at 4 mins 40 seconds is this: www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/20/...
The data for installed storage capacity I show at 6 mins 10 seconds is from here: sandia.gov/ess-ssl/gesdb/publ...
www.sciencedirect.com/book/97...
The paper with the estimates for carbon dioxide emissions from storage is here:
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es50...
The estimate for the carbon footprint of lithium-ion batteries is from here:
www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/...
And the Swedish report that I mention at 16 mins is here: www.ivl.se/download/18.14d7b1...
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
00:00 Intro
00:31 The Dunkelflaute Problem
07:07 Energy Storage Options
14:04 Carbon Footprint of Energy Storage
16:59 What Do We Learn From This?
17:32 Sponsor Message
#science #environment #climatechange - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I have a story I wish to share that does not relate to the main point of this video and is relevant only tangentially to one part, but I think that people who watch Sabine’s channel might be glad to hear it.
It concerns flywheel energy storage. I used to work at a facility in the northern US which had undervoltage release mechanisms, meaning that whenever the incoming grid voltage dipped below a certain value even for a moment, as was often the case when a thunderstorm came through the area, the system would shut down. If that happened, it would take as long as an hour to restore the system to operation.
Later, while still with the same company, I moved to a similar facility located in Florida, the thunderstorm capital of the US. Before moving there, I thought to myself, “Oh boy, that facility is going to have a lot of interruptions.” Fortunately, the facility designers though of that and they included a flywheel UPS (uninterruptible power supply). The way it works is that the incoming grid power does not directly power the equipment. Rather it is used to power an electric motor which drives a shaft that 1) rotates a flywheel, and 2) rotates the rotor of a secondary generator that actually does provide the power to the equipment.
The benefits of this system are twofold. First, the output of the secondary generator is much “cleaner” than the incoming grid power, meaning the output THD (total harmonic distortion) is much lower than the incoming THD. Second, and more germane to the topic at hand, if the incoming grid voltage does momentarily dip below the acceptable level, the energy stored in the flywheel is sufficient to drive the secondary generator through that dip and no undervoltage releases are tripped. In fact, in the worst-case scenario of a total blackout, the energy stored in that flywheel is sufficient to drive the secondary generator until the on-site backup Diesel generators kick in.
If you read through my comment so far I want to thank you for letting me nerd out.
With a conventional fossil fuel grid the implicit flywheel storage of all the moving machinery in the power stations is quite significant and does a good job of stabilising short term fluctuations.
I hadn't heard of a flwheel UPS - nice solution to the problem.
I first saw this setup at a data center in South Florida. The reliability engineering was impressive. They had multiple power lines from independent substations feeding their very large flywheel UPSes, which I was able to see. They also had contracts with fuel vendors to provide continual supply to their generators...even by helicopter, if I recall correctly.
And all that was over 15 years ago!
@@andrewharrison8436 Quite right, In England in 2019 Two large power stations, Hornsea One Ltd (co-owned by Orsted)(wind) and Little Barford (operated by RWE) (gas) did not remain connected after a lightning strike, local power fluctuations tripped most of Network Rail South East and the public network. Took about 6 hours to restore power. Lack of short term frequency resilience usually provided by rotating generators was a major contributor. UK is claiming some days have 50% + green energy production which does not have the resilence provided by rotating machinery.
Just an interested bystander, that is a great story with an ingenious solution.
The differential equations for storing kinetic energy as rotation in a flywheel are of identical form to those for storing magnetic energy as current in an inductor. Once you spin them up it’s hard to get them to stop and if you try to stop them instantly the force builds up explosively. It’s only natural they compliment each other when they act so similarly.
I live in a country with a small energy grid, only 50.000 people (faroe Islands) with no cables to other countries to buy or sell electricity. We are building a pumped storage plant where we use excess power from windmills to pump water from one Lake to another. They estimate a yearly production of 60 GWh/year when finished. I think this is a good solution for us. A nuclear powerplant would be too big, I think for such an isolated and small country this is optimal🤷🏻♂️🇫🇴💪🏻.
A small modular reactor might work for you if you needed it, but sounds like you won't; you've got the lakes and wind is probably pretty reliable for you... at the moment 😕
@Wonderin'Aloud I took Sabine’s suggestion to share the conditions in my area to illustrate that different solutions are best for different places. Sorry to have wasted your time, first reading my irrelevant comment and then for you writing a reply..
@@michaelmicek lot of wind and lot of rain.. hydro and wind is the future here, and if that disappears because of climate change, I am ok with that..🤪
Calm down dude... @Wonderin'Aloud was just pointing to the fact that there are so many countries with
So they're thinking to use the windmill's power to pump the water to a higher elevation when the wind is blowing, and then use the higher elevation water to run hydroelectric generators when it's not blowing? Is that right?
That's actually not a bad idea.
I mean, there's an enormous number of losses in that process, but they really shouldn't matter, much, because at least you're storing the energy in some way that won't wear out in 7 years, like batteries. (I understand the piping and pumps and reservoirs would have to be maintained, but it's still not a bad idea.)
What does your island use, now? Diesel generators where they bring the diesel in on ships? I guess maybe LNG with the same generators would also work, so you'd have two sources of fuel.
50,000 people uses, maybe, what? 250MW at peak times?
This would be interesting to follow to see how their plan with the reservoirs works.
"Unlike me water has a high heat capacity"
Sabine killing it as always.
Sabine is 90% water !
@@tuberroot1112 How so?
Dude, I saw CöldDünkelflautte open for die Glühbirne on their Toxic Fist tour in '17.
Long time metalhead, first time commenter: the heavy metal umlaut works best if the word *doesn't* originally have umlauts. Motor doesn't have an umlaut, nor does motley. Or spinal, for that matter. "It's like a pair of eyes, you're looking at the umlaut and it's looking at you." Cöld Dünkelflaute totally works.
Coërcion is not coöperation!
Les canoës, dhë Parc Güell, naïve, preëmt
Nuclear is not an option because it creates waste and is always a risk, particularly if there is a war, cough cough Ukraine, cough cough.
The Spanish have come up with a solution
Make jet fuel from electricity, water, carbon dioxide and sunlight. The jet fuel could be used to drive generators when power is needed.
@@PWBERRETT The efficiency of that is pretty close to zero. Hydrogen is the more reasonable option in that regard.
@@christopherellis2663 Looks very "Dutch" to me, English abandoned diacritics a long time ago.
@@PWBERRETT The Spanish solution you speak of produced about a liter of jet fuel per day. Do you think this will be enough to fly even an ultralight plane?
The way Sabine delivers the Cöld Dünkelflaute line with a straight face... it breaks me every time 😂
Dunkelflaute is my new favourite word 👍
The beauty of your videos is the clear, concise way you give information and the (not so) subtle way you express your opinion on something. No pie in the sky dreams. Just reality and what can be.
Liquid air storage has a potential bottleneck when it comes to re-expansion. I was a facility manager for a semiconductor tool manufacturer that used a lot of LN2. We were constantly fighting to keep the heat exchangers de-iced to keep up the N2 flow. For something like energy storage, this is a non-trivial concern. You'd need a LOT of heat exchanger surface to keep the pressure up.
So build your plant with a lot of heat exchange area? Like if it's your job to do the thing then design it to do the thing.
From what I remember of Highview Powers liquid air battery is that they capture also some heat. When you liquefy air, you need to dump heat somewhere and if you capture the heat, you can then re-use it to expand the LOX and LN2. The process is naturally always going to produce more heat, so in theory you never have a shortage of energy to drive the expansion, if you can store the thermal energy properly. That is essentially the challenge of liquid air energy storage.
You would think all that cooling would be useful! Just it isn't being used. What was your air-conditioning doing?
@@peterbreis5407 yes, but that’s a matter of the right product at the right place and time.
Compressed air storage uses heat recouporators to capture the heat on the way in and recover it on the way out.
Antimatter should've gotten the most insanely expensive idea award. Cost of producing 1 gram of antimatter : $62.5 trillion (USD). Even so, it's an extremely appealing approach. It gives us unlimited opportunities to panic and yell with a Scottish accent (like Scotty from Star Trek). "Capt'n, I d'not think the engines can take any more. They're gonna blow! "
We need dilithium crystals 😄
Storage is tricky too
The real issue isn't even the cost. It takes a ton more energy to create antimatter than it would give us back.
Use Higgs Boson to make things less heavy (for less work) or heavier (for example to use gravitational energy). Or a graviton maybe🤷
I like nonsense too.😀
I sense some skepticism. See, the problem with the CERN peeps is that they haven't yet bothered to reverse the polarity. Just do that and, like, endless power man. If it's good enough for Scotty, it's plenty good enough for me!
Sabine, there is pumped hydro solution without mountains: *shallow sea pumped hydro.* 10 km perimeter gravitational dam in 100 meter deep sea, could store up to 108 GWh of energy...
Good thinking! A variation on this could be to somehow take advantage of the high latitude tidal △.
@@Hippiekinkster Yes, when tide overlaps with demand cycle. Also, that same dam construction, could be used for wind turbine placement around and sea surface within "accumulation" *(it is more like depletion, because pumping would evacuate water from it)* for floating solar panels.
Energy, both generation and storage is a much more complicated issue than I ever thought🤯
Best idea I heard so far for Germany is to build large hollow sqheres at the bottom of the sea or lakes that are equipped with turbines which generate power if the water above fills the sqheres thus generating electricity. If energy has to be stored, then the water will be pumped out of the sphere. So we have pump hydro system without the problem of finding an appropriate location. But even better: in Germany we have the 'Hambacher Loch', a huge area where coal has been removed and now there is a hole which is about 450 m in depth. The idea is now to build these spheres at the bottom of this gigantic hole and then fill it with water. Calculations seem to show that this could solve the storage problems mentioned with 'Dunkelflaute' for Germany completely. (Distribution problems with the grid not taken into account). Industry (RWE) is interested and I hope that they will realize this project in the near future. Whats nice about it: no 'rocket science' required and first projects in the 'Bodensee' already showed that it works well, no 'bad surprises'.
This is a very interesting idea. Can you share any white papers or links to read more?
I have been re-educating myself this last decade, and during this time I have found you on various platforms. I'm international, thus understanding many cultures, disciplines, sciences....and here express my gratitude to you for taking the time to expand my knowledge with a humor I have not often encountered. Vielen Dank, for giving freely. 👍😎
Modern flywheel storage uses large flywheels, in vacuum, with magnetic bearings. Storage losses are about 2-3% per month, which is pretty good. Cost is somewhat better than lithium batteries.
Alaska uses a lot of flywheel storage for load balancing. Due to the large distances involved, there are a lot of micro-grids instead of one large grid, so power has to be balanced locally.
Not just "pretty good", rather illusional. 2-3% per hour is more realistic. And it's not cheaper than batteries, but faster than batteries and cheaper than capacitors and for that reason preferred for load balancing.
What are costs per kWh?
@@artuselias That sounds plausible for normal flywheels, but high for a magnetic-bearing flywheel in vacuum. Wikipedia mentions one from 2013 that claims 5% per day, but the source is a TH-cam video in German, so I can't evaluate its credibility.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_storage_power_system#Energy_loss
@@danwylie-sears1134
The researcher in that video is credible, but that number is meaningless without context. They are talking about superconducting bearings.
Here is a real-life example of a magnetic-bearing flywheel in vacuum:
www.bves.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/FactSheet_mechanisch_Schwungradspeicher.pdf
Self discharging rate is about 5% per hour. Investment cost is estimated at 6000 € per kWh.
Decreasing one without increasing the other one is hard.
@@artuselias Exactly! Flywheels are terrible for long-term storage. Their energy density is s***, but their power density is great.
Stumbled upon your channel recently, I absolutely love it. Hard facts delivered with british humor and phlegm are totaly my thing. Thank You! ❤
Thanks Sabine, I have been anti nuclear energy my whole life. I’m 61. I’m also an Australian Green Party member, where, ‘Nuclear’ is a dirty word. I believe that nuclear energy is our best hope to produce enough energy to power everything and is do-able right now. Thanks for the information and the clear, concise way you present it. Cheers.
Another awakening Greenie... Watch Germany and California to know where this is all going.
Actually, it's not really doable like you think.
It takes a long time to build a nuke plant.
Fact is, you can build a lot more energy output of every type of renewable for less money, and in a lot less time than nuclear. Not to mention companies can't get insurance for a nuke plant.
Sooooo, we the people bear the costs if anything goes wrong.
Pay attention now.
We have to pay for all the bad that might happen, while the company makes a damn good profit, that it gets from us.
Nuclear accidents are quite common. We've been pretty lucky so far that we've only had 3 bad ones.
And BTW, chernobyl, 3 Mile island, AND Fukushima we're all caused by the same thing.
Humans making stupid decisions.
Three Mile Island had an actual problem. The computers were doing what needed to be done to shut it down safely. Humans decided the gauges were wrong and jumped into the middle of it.....
Chernobyl happened only because humans decided it was a good idea to run the riskiest test they had, at the absolute worst time to do it .....
Fukushima only happened because a room full of supposedly intelligent and educated people thought it would be a great idea to place a nuclear plant right in a combination earthquake AND tsunami zone.
Not only that, but they thought it would be just a great an idea to place the diesel powered backup generators, and their fuel supply, right down on the ground.....
We aren't remotely ready for nuclear. Not because nuclear is dangerous, but because humans make too many mistakes.
If your goal is to get off FF, nuclear is the slowest way to do it....
Not to mention that with nuclear, you're either going to have to store energy, or keep using natural gas peaker plants.
Nuclear only works as a "baseload" power source. The amount of electricity used, and where it's used changes drastically throughout the day and night. (Seriously, look up how much we have to move FF made electricity now)
AND since the most expensive renewable, with nighttime energy storage, is cheaper than the cheapest FF(and FF are cheaper than nuclear) I don't see a long-term place for nuclear.
Never mind that even the new nuclear requires about 500 years of waste disposal. We have absolutely zero experience storing dangerous things for hundreds of years. That will be expensive, dangerous, or both, depending on what we do over that 500 years .....
ALSO, renewables, while being cheaper, than everything else, provides massive jobs.
Right now in America, 63% of electricity comes from FF. That 63% gets us a little under 900,000 jobs
Solar is just 3%(2.7% actually, the charts all round to nearest whole number) of electricity production, yet it provides just over 500,000 jobs...
Multiply that 3% energy by 21 to get the same as fossil fuels, and you get 10.5 million jobs.... For less money.
Of course, things don't multiply quite like that. So we could probably only expect 8-10 times more jobs(4-5 million) for solar.
@@lordgarion514 Wow, couldn't make it past the first chapter of your book to realize the rest must be nonsense as well. China and South Korea have been building them in four years. Many other countries have been building and using small modulator reactors for many decades in two years or less for millions not billions.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk
You just like making shit up.
Smr have not been used for decades.
And I know how long it takes to build a nuke plant. AND you can build more renewable power, in less time.
And those small ones that cost millions, not billions?
Yeah, they tiny little things. If you multiple the power up to a full size nuclear plant. It's still billions.
And no matter what the smrs cost, renewables are still cheaper and provide more jobs
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk
And when I say smrs haven't been used for decades, I'm talking about on land.
The US Navy has been using them for decades on ships.
AND they cost billions.
It's a shame that the opponents of nuclear energy seem to have won by spreading irrational fear. Even if one accounts for all the nuclear radiation released by 3 Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl, and it was summed, the total amount of leaked radiation is miniscule compared to the radiation thrown up into the air by fossil fuel burning.
True but this shouldn’t be a competition between green technologies. We all lose if nuclear is sidelined because then fossil fuels and climate change win.
The thing is, nuclear can be made nearly 100% safe if it's produced with thorium salt bath reactors. It can't even melt down, due to its design.
western companies can not compete with Russians this is the main reason why west abandon nuclear power
It is indeed completely irrational. Some people are scared to death of nuclear power, because it *could* release radiation, but couldn't care less about radioactive particles in coal, or the fact that natural Uranium decay releases radioactive radon gas into the low atmosphere.
Thorium reactors literally can't go into meltdown. They're 100% safe.
Despite the fact that you didn't even say "Einstein" even once, it was still a really great video. Thank you!
you mean Einshtein
You can use ein stein for gravitational energy storage.
😄 she needed to explain where the 25 TWh figure came from.
That guy again?
@@alexeiboukirev8357 I believe multiple steine would be better, though.
Flow Batteries are also interesting and deserved a mention. Although you did mention Flywheel Energy Storage which is great!
I think flywheel storage would be good for at charging stations. Those flywheels can send out a lot of power quickly and keep on cycling all day every day for decades without issues. Batteries work too but they dont have the same cycle life as a flywheel.
I enjoyed your analysis. And many thanks for the useful information.
I have achieved 100% energy independence over 2 years ago. I am now on full Offgrid solar, disconnected from the power grid and the system is self sustainable, enduring the challenges with rainy, cloudy cold winter without issues.
My energy storage solution relies on LFP batteries.
The key towards achieving a working solution is to plan your capacity based on the worst case scenario. This means not just oversizing the solar, the battery capacity, but more importantly optimise how fast you can charge your batteries.
In our solution, we utilise 120Ah LFP batteries that are capable of accepting a 1C charge (120A) and providing 2C (240A) discharge. If you connect these in parallel, 10x of these will be capable of accepting 1200A charging current. In our setup, we have 16x of these, providing a theoretical 1920A max charging current at 14.2V. But in real life, dealing with such high current puts extreme demands on busbars and cables.
Based on current technology, my setup is based on the Victron Lynx, which has a 1000A busbar system.
The batteries are grouped into 4x groups of 4x, essentially 4x parallel battery banks, to split the current load. Each battery bank is serviced by a 500A flexible busbars. So if you combine these 4x you still get around 2000A. By having a very capable busbar system, the high current conductors run cold and efficient. We have independent temperature sensors on all 4x busbars system to monitor.
This extraordinary high current capability allows the deployment of multiple Victron SmartSolar units (we have 8x in this setup), each capturing solar energy for strategic groups of solar panels, which are placed/angled specifically to capture solar energy during a specific time of day and season, factoring the change of incident angle over the year and season. With a high multi-zone solar capturing setup, we don't need complicated solar tracking. The solar energy is captured efficiently by each group over the day without creating a single peak in the output, instead it provides a sustained output plateau we are aiming after. And due to the very high current capability of the busbars, there is no throttling required by the solar controller. Although we have set DVCC, it never engages. This means whatever short bursts of sun or cloudy diffused solar we get, we can totally capture these. This is important factor in winter survival for solar set-up. And we deployed Solar panels with the highest efficiency, the Sunpower Maxeon 3 400w panels, 16x of these. They perform extremely well even under cloudy and rainy conditions. And surprisingly, in winter as the temperature drops, the output voltage actually increases. You get more power in colder temperatures. And cloudy days does not necessarily means lower output. Actually under diffused sun you can still get pretty decent output, factoring the lower temperatures. And they go on for longer hours in diffused sunlight.
Based on our observations, our LFP efficiency is not bad at all as we tracked the energy we put into the battery and the energy we get out. LFP has an energy efficiency around 96 to 99%. We are seeing the 99%, which is pretty impressive. We only have a enter minimal compensation factor in the Victron BMS controller. And we only cycle our batteries between the 70% and 100% SOC. Leaving a high margin for contingency. This further increases the lifespan of the LFP battery as we are utilising shallow Depth of discharge.
Just as general guideline, on the worst days with crappy stormy weather, we get around 1/5 or 20% of the max daily average power. In winter, with slight rain, typically this is more like 30%. On cloudy days, this is around 50%. So if you plan and build according to the worst case 20%, a 5x oversizing (on both panels and battery) is probably the safer bet for a more robust solar power system with LFP storage. 😇👍 This means the design guidelines should be based on the worst weather, to ensure your solar panels should still be able to bring in sufficient power to cover your minimum energy needs. And obviously this value would be different for everyone and different regional climate.
I run our ebikes and e-scooters off our Offgrid solar. And the ebike combined with the escooter covers 99% of our travel needs. So i hardly ever use my car that has a petrol engine these days. It has been put on solar charger to maintain it's battery health 🔋😂
And i strongly believe if everyone makes a concious effort, they are capable of making a significant reduction on their carbon footprint.
We have proven that this is perfectly possible. And it's not like i don't have to travel far to be able to have a ebike as a viable commuting option. I still need to cover 60kms on my ebike travelling round trip to /from work. But surprisingly this doesn't take much longer than the public transport or even car when factoring traffic conditions. It takes me just under an hour to cover my 30km trip. So it is not like ebike solution is time consuming. On the contrary we would say it is not only as time efficient as public transport but way healthier solution. 😉👍
Sounds impressive, but can the average worker possibly afford such a system as you outlined?
"We have proven that this is perfectly possible." where you live and with the money you have!
Thanks! It's good to see some _real_ estimates on how large this problem is (and the pros and cons of the solutions), and not just the handwaving I normally encounter.
IMO, it is a great to hear Sabine conclude that nuclear power "is a really good idea". The entire program to end nuclear power in Germany should be a case study in governmental malfeasance. Recent polls seem to indicate the German public is now more favorably disposed to nuclear power than before the Ukraine war recapitulated certain eternal truths. However, the government apparently is still clinging desperately to the hope that wind and solar are the answer to the energy problem, and climate change mitigation, if only the storage problem were solved. It seems that abundant nuclear power from new designs would make the scramble for an energy storage solution much less relevant.
Except for nuclear.
There is two things misleading in this video:
1. Renewable energy is such a small portion of the whole energy mix and the same for energy storage, BECAUSE most energy comes from fossile fuels. Renewables are not bad, but existing energy networks are made for constant Power supply aka fossiles.
2. Nuclear energy has a really high energy yield. Yes. But please, tell us the solution to how to store the waste for the next billions of years, instead of completely leaving out this part of the discussion.
@@seppwurzel8212 I don't think either of those things were misleading at all. In particular, the nuclear waste issue is one of the most overblown scaremonger tactics deployed against it. It's really not that difficult to dig a deep hole below the water table, load in the waste, then cover it up. Norway is already doing it. It seems difficult here in America because of politics, not technical issues.
Further, even that isn't really necessary. Nuclear waste is SO SMALL by volume that storing it onsite in dry casks (as is being done today) is actually perfectly safe and viable. Even better would be to reprocess it and reuse the fuel because modern nuclear reactors are so inefficient that they only use a small amount of the available power. Next gen designs leave behind fuel that is much more thoroughly consumed and is less than 1% of the already small volume currently produced AND most of the nasty long-lived stuff is consumed. There's also a reprocessing step for the existing fuel that can allow it to be reused for newer gen reactors once they're online. It's not super-economical yet as I understand it, but it could make onsite storage make sense as this stuff could be reused while the stuff that's been buried might be gone forever if it's already been filled in.
If you spent all day hugging a nuclear power plant, you would get less radiation than taking a airplane trip.
@@brianmulholland2467 And then there are the newer Molten Salt Reactor designs that are immune to the dangerous catastrophic failures like we've seen with the old style water cooled reactors. (see Chernobyl) Also, if we use Thorium instead of Uranium, then we have enough "fuel" on hand to power the earth for thousands of years.
Thank you for always making science fun, easy to comprehend and endlessly entertaining! Love you, Sab!! 💜🐼💜
Lol, if you think she makes it easy to understand, the opposite is true. She is a living abstraction, can't make anything clear.
@@laurenth7187 I disagree. And if that's how you feel, why do you patronize her channel?? Now THAT'S an abstraction.
@@EhrisaiaOShannon Sick burn. Couldn't have said it better.
Indeed!..Thanx Sabine for delivering this informative podcast on this crucial topic. @ Elon Musk; pls HIRE this superb German scientist for the coming decade; she can save you a lot of time on all kinds of innovative solutions you might ponder on! As for the energy discussion. The entire discussion about fossil fuels and storage can be solved by a global switch to Thorium LFTR nuclear energy as China is doing coming decades. There is enough Thorium on the Earth surface (no need to mine) to power the entire Earth cheaply for 3000 years. Norway has plenty of Thorium to cover all of Europe for centuries. With all this power you can produce unlimited amounts of hydrogen as storage for planes and ships. Next additional solar can complete the mix for households and EV's. The entire discussion is SOLVED. Why don't we do it? Long terms waste issue? no! Thorium radioactive waste is only a fraction of a nuclear power plant and has a halftime of merely 500 years as opposed to 10.000 of current uranium waste isotopes. Safety issue? nope! LFTRS are inherently save by design. Technology issue? Nope! We already had a working Thorium power plant at Tennessee Oak ridge in the 1960's!. It seems we have completely lost our minds by not even discussing thorium but instead wasting billions in dreams of unnecessary nuclear fusion. Time to wake up all NGO's who only are advocating woke GINO (green in name only) society disrupting solutions, leading to current increased dirty coals and wood burning energies. Again we have a choice. Fosil fuels can be a thing of the past within a decade if only we embrace Thorium. period.
@@laurenth7187 huh? What did you not understand?
I like how you teach, it's easy to understand your arguments, the technical details, just really fun to be taught by you.
Hi, Sabine. Have you spent any time researching recent developments in geothermal energy extraction and conversion, such as deep, closed loop systems? I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on that subject.
Me 2!
I love your sense of humor and style of teaching/ relaying this information here. Much love, care and blessings to you and your family and channel. 🥰
Thanks so much, best wishes to you and your family in return!
You really are a joy to listen to. It's impossible to know when a zinger is coming and your accent is lovely.
@@SabineHossenfelder
I like humor about silly ideas too but shouldn't good storage humor come with some facts about the best solution to the energy problem - namely fast reactors? With fast reactors, there's no need for wasteful energy storage. Fast reactors are by themselves storage because they can deliver energy in a market where demand fluctuates from minute to minute. The fuel is also the most renewable that exists. There's enough uranium 238 for the whole world long after the earth is no longer inhabitable, ten billion years into the future. Fast reactors also offer to burn all the radioactive material leaving no waste. What is silly Germany waiting for? The green lunatics to take control over the country? Why are you not making yourself the spokesperson for fast reactors being the primary energy source? If not you, who?
@@SabineHossenfelder This video is great, and geeky humor helps in delivering complex facts! What I like the most is that it is hints at more favorable evaluation of why Nuclear Power is so compelling comparing to previous "is nuclear green", which showed "glass is half empty" view, with several questionable sources. Scientists do evaluate facts and also change minds! In the energy storage field there are many startups, ideas that are very controversial. For example Gravity energy storage (the concrete block towers) shown in video is most certainly scam aimed at exciting investors. It is not exactly "theranos" kind of thing, because science of E=mgh is clear cut, but impracticality and materials needed to make it work are so unreal that I cannot believe that it can be sustainable. Quick calculation shows that 1ton of mater pulled up by 40m can store only 0.1kWh of energy, while 1ton of water heated/cooled by deltaT of 70C stores some 81kWh of heat/cold (and we need heat and cold in many places in the world). Gravity storage is only for places where delta h exist naturally as well as access to water and minimal building/engineering is needed.
@Nathan black do you mean like using a heat pump to heat out of the ground
Thank you Sabine for yet another informative video. If pressed I would have guessed that a Dunkelflaute was a musical instrument with a deep bass sound. Something like a bassoon.
I thought it was an opera by Mozart.
@@frankupton5821 No, that’s Die FlauteMaus. More recently covered by Meatloaf.
@@frankupton5821 Its a German heavy metal band.
LOL
@@frankupton5821 Yeah, that was the working title but he was told it was too sombre so he changed it to Magical. Runaway hit.
I found the video informative. I had worked at several pumped, storage hydro units in the USA. Also, I had been at the McIntosh site that was mentioned in the video. The unit is actually a gas turbine with an electric machine between a compressor and a turbine with a combustor chamber. During storage the electric machine is clutched to the compressor and separated from the turbine. Air is pumped into the ground for storage, and this is done when the grid load is light, usually at night and on weekends, while the cost of electricity is low.
For generation, the electric machine is clutched to the turbine and separated from the compressor. The compressed air from the ground is mixed with natural gas (the fuel) in the combustion chamber to develop the power for the turbine. The idea for this design was an economic one to save on the cost for burning fuel required for compressing the air of a conventional gas turbine.
Having revisited this vid for a context fresher... I am reminded of just how much of a treasure you are. :-)
If you have considered doing updates to existing content, I vote for an energy storage update (and a practical antimatter vid/update) :-)
*Why you don't have 10M subs is a depressing reminder of how few people are actually interested in understanding the world around them.
DUNKELFLAUTE! You just made my day. Thank you for this word. 😀
And it ruins my day. Alone the need to talk about this in 2022 is the ultimate sign that german politicians are f**ing up the whole country by woke Idiotism...
You know the Germans, always helpful... 😄
Great word. And not limited to Germany. Here in the Pacific Northwest we get them too. One I kept track of last winter was eight days of dead calm and heavy overcast. The solar panel on a remote tank level transmitter put out 1/14 of its summer time rating, and the days that time of year only last for 8.5 hours, and you probably lose another hour at each end due to horizon clutter and haze.
And it's cold of course. So my all electric house takes 60 kWh per day (yes I have a heat pump) and you can do the math to find the combination of PV panels and batteries to get through that.
One of the pleasures of travelling to German speaking countries is to hear and see words like Dunkelflaute. Of course, being Australian, I have appreciated this ever since I saw the word “Ausfhart” on an Autobahn sign.
@@gregessex1851 "Ausfahrt" 😉
This is an issue with storage that is often difficult to get across. With 24 hours worth of storage, solar and wind can fully cover maybe half the year. With 2 days of storage we get another 3 months, leaving 3 months worth of problems. With 4 days we still have 6 weeks of problems. With 8 days of storage that drops to 3 weeks. With 16 days of storage that drops to 1 week. I'm not using real data, just illustrating the asymptotic nature of the storage problem. Because the cost equation makes implementing 16+ days worth of storage untenable,. let alone any more. The sweet spot for utility-scale storage is somewhere in the 7-day range.
But this whole problem changes when we add a little base-load back in, and that's the part that I think most people don't understand. With just a small bit of reliable base load, the storage requirements are cut in half. And with a bit more, they are cut in half again. It is possible with just the addition of a modest bit of nuclear to make renewables the dominant energy source on the grid.
But adding base load back onto the grid has its own problems. Right at this instant, base load is not a good fit because there is no steady demand. Everything is on a daily cycle and base load sources such as nuclear have real problems cycling that often. It just isn't economically workable. But once batteries are able to bridge 24 hours, that whole equation changes... then batteries can charge during the day, discharge the rest of the time, evening out the generation requirements. In THAT scenario, base load winds up being economically sound again. Not only economically sound, but having base load on the grid at that point greatly reduces the additional storage required to make the grid reliable 365 days a year... from several weeks worth of storage to just one week worth of storage.
Good points. Now, if the base load capability can be partly to largely replaced by slow, "old" simple, cheap tech, like sand batteries, etc, then things look very promising.
At the margin, having a lot of high tech, fast, flexible, LI, etc. batteries is needed. But for the multi-day storage, we can be far more creative and really help the overall cost base for green energy storage.
Essentially you'd have renewables whenever available, nuclear to support long-term dips in generation like the off-season, and storage to cover both daily fluctuations in demand and up to roughly week-long dips in generation (which also buys nuclear time to adjust.)
If that reliable baseload power is advanced nuclear, you don't need intermittent electricity sources in the first place. It can't be our current nuclear tech, it would have to be the advanced reactor design that are in the licensing phase. They will be no more expensive than a coal plant and safer than our already safe reactor designs.
@@chapter4travels I agree that we should use as much nuclear as we can, however right now it's hard enough to stop people from decommissioning nuclear, let alone switch to a full-nuclear grid. I'll settle for some.
@@Racnive If the goal is to replace fossil fuels, then we have to wait for advanced nuclear because wind and solar can't replace fossil fuels, they can only make them more expensive. If the goal is to feel good about ourselves, then wind and solar are wonderful. Crazy expensive, but wonderful.
I just have a minor thing to add here which should be taken into consideration regarding the CO2-emission estimates for renewables+storage.
The estimates are usually based upon a snapshot of the respective industrial processes of which are involved in making of the used materials and products etc. In other words they are relevant for this moment in time as many of said industries have not yet undergone a "renewable transformation" (for a lack of better words). This transformation will look different for different industries, for example in steel manufacturing there's an inherent CO2 emission process through chemical reactions, which is now being adressed by using hydrogen instead.
Many of these industries are electrical intensive as well, meaning that the current emission ranges are based upon the current electrical grid composition. So, in different places of the world, different final emissions are to be estimated. It is also vert important to mention here that in a scenario where we rapidly expand renewables + storage, we can therefore expect the final emissions of the products used to be lower and lower as there is a synergistic effect. Increasing the storage and renewable capacity leads to lower usage of fossil fuels which leads to lower CO2 emission when creating the products used for renewable generation and storage.
Tell that to the people under the topcomment
Brilliant Sabine! You shine like the sun spreading light and understanding. Well done.
If somebody made a "Sabine out of context" super special, there's be hours of material by now. I love it!
24 TW/h!!!!!!!
Yeah this has the energy of a potential collab with ElectroBOOM!
fUUUULLL bRIDDDGE rEECTIFIAAA!!!
Peter principle lives!
One of the key takeaways when you are looking at all of the costs of producing, storing, distributing and using energy is that energy efficiency is crucial.
O yes, I agree! Problem is, high-level decisions are mostly based on ideology and not on the facts.
When the wind stops and the sun is hiding, you need base load power… better have something in reserve…. Nuclear, biogas, Ethanol, coal….or a big ass pumped hydro dam pair….
One of the takes aways for me was that we need to use geothermal storage to heat our home rather thatn using electricity or hydrocarbons... oh and go nuclear!
@@surrealsurrealism Actually just a simple old fashioned hydroelectric dam works as storage - when the grid has wind or solar it winds back and then winds up when it isn’t. It’s renewable energy too.
@@guybuller1358 Actually you could go geothermal to heat your home tomorrow - drill a 100 to 200m hole in your backyard and drop a coil of tubing in it. The ground heat will be sufficient to heat a moderately well insulated house.
Sabine has the ability to understand what we need to know. I will have to watch this many times to let the facts sink in. It would be helpful if she could publish “cheat sheets” for each video with the salient numbers.
I loved the video! Your comparative costs are very informative, but I believe the energy units in the comparisons should have been megawatts instead of kilowatts.
Thank you for the ever-informative, non-apologetic load of science made accessible. IMO, you're the #1 pop-science source out there
It's pop, but it's from the canon of physics and engineering, as Sab's fans know. Carl Sagan would be proud!
is she really unintelligent enough to believe in the man made climate change hoax or does she go along with it to help her own popularity on youtube?
this video is not informative, its not even disinformative, its plain deformative. it deformed my opinion of her. look its all crushed and broken now.😫
How about an energy storage that also is the motor the energy stored runs? A wind up (like a toy but with way much more winds of many interconnected spiral springs of high torque) motor stores the energy in the springs and when released turns the motor directly from the same mechanical entity as that which stores the energy. No need for heavy noxious chemical battery or weighty separate electric motor. No long charge times either. A high torque high rpm winding station could wind up such a motor in a minute.
@@termination9353 You may want to look up applications of flywheels: energy "stored" with angular momentum.
@@brucegoodwin634 But I'm not talking about the use of any flywheels. Just simply the unwinding of a spring through it's axle and geared to turn the wheels. What flywheel? Maybe a flywheel can be included to increase the efficiency or allow the vehicle to coast longer with the motor off or something.... but what i'm talking about is strictly the spring tension motor compared to an electric motor and battery.
Excellent video with the conclusion is that we must seriously consider nuclear power.
Thanks Sabine.
Agree
How about an energy storage that also is the motor the energy stored runs? A wind up (like a toy but with way much more winds of many interconnected spiral springs of high torque) motor stores the energy in the springs and when released turns the motor directly from the same mechanical entity as that which stores the energy. No need for heavy noxious chemical battery or weighty separate electric motor. No long charge times either. A high torque high rpm winding station could wind up such a motor in a minute
There's a thing I havent heard any one discuss. Wind pattern changes resulting from climate change. Thanks for your "just-a-thought", Sabine.
It would be interesting to revisit this topic regularly in view of the fact that batteries, even though they have been around a long time, are still a rapidly developing technology in which the cost is consistently decreasing. Particularly since Ulike vehicular batteries, weight and volume aren’t as critical.
You read my mind!
I've been wondering about this for weeks and finding very few answers. Thank you Sabine 😍
A typically thorough examination of this conundrum. Thank you.
Excellent presentation sabene.Problem of power storage requires more creative ideas.Happy to see how much has already happened
You are the gold standard for your explanation Sabine!
That's cool, expect that her explanations are false. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 What about you tell us the truth now?
@@badouplus1304 What good would that do for you? You are a smitten kitten without a single skeptical fiber in your body. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 Wow, from one quick question, you seem to know everything about me now. From your answer, I will conclude you are a troll.
@@badouplus1304 Internet trolls are all the same, Dear. They went from failing in school to failing in life to failing online. ;-)
Almost any estimate for Energy Vault's efficiency will be overly optimistic. Yet another informative and well presented video, thank you.
yes agree, having nuclear combined with renewables is the best option. the way to look at nuclear is the way Sabine has, it is far cheaper than stored energy. It would be a great base load power.
Hm. That might lead to a decent amount of nuclear "shadow" power to jump in helping in a Dünkelflaute. Let's say 80%, just for the sake of it. Why not just add some more nuclear power plants and ditch the renewables with all their problems?
One of the main issues with nuclear power is that it is a restricted / contraversial technology.
* not every country has access to sizable uraniun reserves
* not every country has the technology and industry to refine and manufacture the fuel
* not every country has the political stability (both internal and external) to develope and use the technology
I would say that if your country has easy access to uranium ore, has the technology and has political stability, the investment on nuclear power could be the best option to work along renewables.
@@HELLO7657 Yes, that is interesting suggestion. Every country will have its own natural resources- but please have a look at Grid in FInland- baseload nuclear (now increasing finally with EPR starting), hydro electricity to balance and some significant wind to conserve water. Result is much lower CO2/kWH costs than Germany for example (Very cold, long winters complicate things still, but Nuclear as backbone is crucial for reliable and carbon non-intensive grid).
Nuclear far cheaper than stored energy. Not sure what kinds of numbers Sabine uses, but this is not true or only true for the near future.
Real costs for fission power are around 0.42€/kWh, forget about the numbers of a few cents.
Costs for stored electricity (newest tech) is around 15-30 cents, although many older storage systems are around 50-60 cents.
So the term "far cheaper" already today is not true. Cheaper maybe, but not "far". At least if you don't use the far overoptimistic numbers that float around.
@@johnscaramis2515 source of this numbers?
One item not mentioned is power dams. Dams can be used as batteries. Similar to pumped hydro just without the pumping. Use whether forecasts to predict demand requirement. Use the power from dam when other renewables are not available.
One of the early pumped hydro storage project (Tom Sauk reservoir) was built in the early 1960's about 85 km SW of St. Louis. The pumps were on during the night when the cost of electrical power was cheap. It generated power during the day when power was more expensive. The reservoir failed in 2005 but was rebuilt.
Niagara Falls has been pumping water at night since it was built in the 1950's. They're allowed to take a larger fraction of the water at night and in the winter when fewer people are visiting the falls.
@@bcwbcw3741 Pump it where? No reservoir.
Edit: oh, man made Beck Reservoir. 8 hours deep
The video didn't mention sodium-ion batteries, which could become very important in the future as the supply of lithium eventually dwindles and lithium-ion batteries become significantly more expensive. Sodium-ion batteries weigh about twice as much as lithium-ion batteries for the same amount of energy capacity, which makes them undesirable for cars, but the extra weight is not such a big problem for energy storage at homes and factories and power plants. Most importantly, sodium is much cheaper than lithium and the supply of sodium is practically endless.
Sodium batteries aren't really out yet. But a company is claiming they should be in production next year. And they plan on making an electric scooter with it.
But lithium isn't the biggest problem. Nickel, cobalt, and even copper are running into supply issues right now.
Not sure why, but almost everyone seems to think that whenever we switch from one thing to another, everything is either supposed to magically already be in production, or getting it into production shouldn't take more than a few weeks. If not, it's some horrible thing that's going to make it outright fail.
Fact is, people can want things faster than plants can be built to supply them.
It's natural. And people will have to wait.
We aren't going to switch in a year. We're not even going to switch in a decade. There's 330 million people in this country. That equals a LOT of stuff to build, and there's still a LOT of stuff to invent.
Modern cars didn't start off remotely like they are now. It took over a hundred years to get them to where they are. And people expect us to undo all that in nothing flat?
Same with our electricity production.
Can't bulldoze a coal plant today, and open a solar farm tomorrow morning.
Also, chemical batteries, of any kind, might be great for some things, but not for everything.
Wind farms are a good use f
Chemical batteries. Wind turbines make electricity directly, so storing it isn't expensive.
But thermal solar makes heat that it uses to heat water to make electricity.
It's better to store the heat as heat, and then convert it to electricity as needed. Or you can use the heat for something else, which is more efficient.
Lithium is extremely abundant, we will never run out of it.
@@jaredgarbo3679
Abundance of quantity, doesn't mean you're not going to have serious issues with getting enough.
Earth's crust is .002-.006 percent lithium.
We're not ever going to get that out. Ever.
Once we run out of decent sized deposits of much higher concentrations, it will effectively be gone as a resource.
@@jaredgarbo3679 add to which it is recyclable nowadays, at about an 85-90% recovery rate, if the people in the business are to be believed. And due to the value of the materials, I’d expect nearly 100% recycling rate of batteries, when feasible (ie not damaged in a fire etc.).
Thanks for another great video. My sitting next to me doing her own work comment about your clear and concise delivery. No nonsense.
In about 2005 I was part of a team for a project to be used by the Australian military. The system used various mobile radio towers and had to operate for 14 days on stored energy.
That was when I learned that Australia had stated that solar systems had to be prepared for up to 14 days of a lack of sunshine. Only happened infrequently but was unpredictable.
I also looked at various systems including hydrogen. Ultimately chose some lead acid batteries with a diesel generator that ran for a few hours a day.
When at home I wanted some energy storage I thought about a concrete weight. A simple calculation told me how impractical it would be.
This is really good, Sabine provides an excellent presentation for a very busy subject that does not lend itself to simple answers. The details can get to be overwhelming if you try to BS your way to The answer.
7:43 In a drought you only have shortage on fresh water. The US has enormous potential in pumped salt water. Wich might even help with the drought situation.
Huge thanks for this video! This is the topic I've been awaiting for very long, extremely informative.
Lithium-ion is currently the only battery-type we produce on large scale since it's the most energydense and thus perfect for laptops, phones and EV:s but im looking forward to sodium batteries or other types of batteries built for grid scale where weight and size are not as important as cost.
Lead acid batteries work just as well for grid storage. They can store more power per unit volume than lithium batteries but are just much much heavier.
But that is irrelevant unless you plan on moving them.
Ive been following you for a while and I have always liked your videos. But you are getting progressively funnier, literally made me laugh out loud a few times.
Once we get V2G sorted out, which is little more than a standardization issue, we'll get a large amount of lithium battery storage without having to buy or house any batteries at-all.
You did not mention liquid metal batteries. There is the US company Ambri commercializing them. They are supposed to be cheap, durable and scalable. Unlike for lithiu, the materials are ubiquitous and cheap. Oh, and they don't explode. 🙂
Glad to see Sabine is not like the average German person saying "Nein danke" to nuclear power
Owh, Germany has problems whatever they choose it seems. They are dependent on both Russian gas, _and_ on Russian enriched uranium. -.-
But I can agree that the choice to go heavy on gas instead of their existing(!) nuclear power plants is sad.
There are several practical problems with nuclear energy in Germany
Actually the mindset changed. Up to 70% are now for an extention of the current last 3 Nuklear powerplants here. But the ministery of economics is in the hands of the green party and their idiology make them blind and they are against it and let the topic propably slide until it's too late and then they say: "it's too late"!
Yes indeed. Her video on "is nuclear green" was rather controversial for me- made from perspective of "glass half empty" and with choice of sources quite controversial (antinuclear stance). Not very bad in most parts, but rather from negative side. Not one person should be forced to "love" nuclear power, but negating how useful it is to reduce/ged rid of fossil fuel is plainly wrong. It is not like we have luxury of infinite money, infinite time and infinite materials to solve climate crisis and Fossil fuel dependence(supporting putins terrorism in short).
I'm all for nuclear power with a few caveats:
a) Has to be failsafe design rector type in case of natural disaster or left alone due Ruzzia/Whoever on the doorstep threatening deliberate nuclear disaster.
b) Waste management and cooling not reliant on natural resources that can be interrupted by man or nature.
c) Reactors of types unsuitable to create weapons grade fissile materials.
d) Put more research into molten sand/thorium rectors to handle the corrosive issue, uranium won't last forever either.
Thank you for this, love your videos! I never understood why "solar ponds" weren't investigated more. Only ~15-17% efficient due to the low temperature, but cheap to build and operate with built-in energy storage due to the thermal mass. The Beit HaArava test facility in Israel operated up until 1988 using an area of 210,000 m² (~52 acres) to produce 5 MW. That's not too different from a solar farm.
An excellent video and highlights very well the issue concerning energy densities of the respective sources.
It would be interesting to include Lithium IRON batteries in the mix. I use these in my home solar system to store about 10 kwh. They have a much longer life then regular Lithium Ion batteries. I think your videos are great. Thank you.
Also Sodium ion batteries.
I also expected her to mention lithium iron phosphate, since we're talking about grid storage.
Batteries. Bruv
Cheap as well. More in the $100/kWh on the pack level right now, certainly not 400 and, because of massive production increases, will continue to drop in price. I think the main thing holding Lithium batteries back right now is scarcity.
Also flow batteries.
My take on this: Instead of storing pure hydrogen, you can store ammonia. The neat thing is that not only we alredy have infrastructure for handling, producing and storing it, it can in principle be used in gas turbine generator.
Assuming electricity to ammonia efficiency of 70% and ammonia to electricity efficiency at 50%, we're talking about 35% effective energy storage.
Looks bad, but then we can use waste heat from turbine to make hot water for heating, getting back most of the energy spent during summer
My only concern is the safety record of ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer industry is pretty horrible so I hate to think about it on the scale of energy storage
Hydrogen itself dangerous, they can explode or burn too hot. But Ammonia is 10 times more dangerous as it can kill by just breathing.
oh what a great idea, this is like the predecessor of energy storing in "biomass" and an even better idea is storing it directly in compacted biomass........
Ammonia combustion has a host of problems, like NOx. It's still necessary for agriculture and other industries though and we need green production of it regardless. There are some interesting ammonia fuel cell designs too.
How about an energy storage that also is the motor the energy stored runs? A wind up (like a toy but with way much more winds of many interconnected spiral springs of high torque) motor stores the energy in the springs and when released turns the motor directly from the same mechanical entity as that which stores the energy. No need for heavy noxious chemical battery or weighty separate electric motor. No long charge times either. A high torque high rpm winding station could wind up such a motor in a minute.
I'm wondering how pressing this issue really is... We probably realised a fantastic achievement when we use renewables ~90% of the time. Even if it takes a bit longer to scaleup storage, then we'll just need to use gas for those periods.
In any case this probably isn't a good reason to put the brakes on increasing renewables.
Sabine, you are considering cost of production and supply from the power plant. Distribution to residential power outlets is by far the largest financial cost. In California, for every 3 cents of power production at plant, we spend 21 cents in distribution. Even if nuclear costs 2 cents to produce, it still costs 23 cents to buy in California, as compared to 24 from coal. However, when we use lithium batteries, the distribution cost is negative to individual consumer. The net cost of electricity comes down to minus 2 cents. Marginal cost is even lower at -6 cent a unit.
Great video! Good balance between sharing information and humor.
I had a conversation with an engineering student when I was going to school in Germany in the 1970s. Nuclear power had a big PR problem at the time and had come to be demonized by some sectors of society. His view was that, sure, there is a problem with nuclear waste. But it's easily quantified and with appropriate technologies and sufficient political will, is pretty easily managed. CO2 from fossil fuel burning was in his view the far larger threat and one that's not nearly as easily quantified. The intervening decades have proven him right.
CO2 is beneficial to plants, therefore to us, and has no effect on the climate. Learn some science. Did you even know that the whole idea of the "carbon footprint" was made up by BP and other oil companies? No, thought not. They developed and pushed the idea to turn government eyes away from what they're up to, to blaming the general public. Nobody actually has a carbon footprint, it's a scam, follow the money, especially Al Gore's "carbon offset" scam. I know I'm wasting my time. As Joseph Goebbels proved, the more you repeat a lie, the more the gullible (everyone who believes the lie of Anthropogenic Climate Change) seem to accept it as the truth. It's a real shame that Sabine seems to believe the lie, she's supposed to be a scientist. Your friend was an engineering student, which has nothing to do with climate, and it was his view, not a fact.
On the other hand, a couple of rockets targeting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and all the good intentions about nuclear waste storage become meaningless.
Yes, they have. Unfortunately, no one convinced in the 1970s of the folly of nuclear power can be convinced to take another look at the technology.
also a big problem with nuclear fuel production, at least when is from uranium
@@jm-um1tx Nuclear plants are designed to handle that sort of thing. Of course, if you hit it with a nuclear bomb, that's different too. What happens if someone decides to do a missile strike against a hydro dam, do you think?
Thanks for the research and running the numbers!
About 20 years ago a Canadian Member of Parliament and her husband lived just north of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba. The nearest power supply was a couple of hundred km away. To install the poles and wires would have been $100s of thousands. So they lived off grid with wind and solar power. On top of electricity, installing a gas line for heat was prohibitive also. So you rely on a big propane bullet or diesel for the furnace.
That one year in December when daylight is short, the weather was heavy cloud and next to no breeze for a month. The batteries ran out of electrons, so a small diesel generator was used. So much for clean and green.
Next to the lake the humidity is high even in winter when the lake freezes over. Temperatures of -40°C are fair common overnight with daytime highs of -30°C. Frost over the winter will penetrate 2 to 3 meters, so earth berm and passive solar are of minimal help.
Dunkelflaute!!! That's awesome! I'm going to be adding that to my vocabulary and dropping it on people. What a fun word!!! Thanks Sabine!
Germany's decision to go completely nuclear free struck me as a very odd choice. Never made sense to me. There seem to be some "green shoots" of hope for nuclear here in the USA, but there's still a lot of fear around it. Hopefully that will change sooner rather than later.
But please spell it correctly: "Dunkelflaute". You don't want to spread misinformation, do you? 😉
@@zaphod333 Thanks! I have a shirt that says, "I'm an engineer" mispelled several different ways and crossed out concluding with, "I'm good with math." I can't even get my own language right! 🤪
Exiting nuclear makes sense if you know the 20 years of propaganda in (Western!) Germany beforehand.
Nuclear energy in Germany - is done. It will not change :-( There aren't any engineers left that could actually do it. We would have to relearn it.
@@justinahole336 Misspelling as a mission! That's consistent. You're justified then. :D
The phrase "site specific" is very useful. In general, the best option for both generation and storage will depend on where you are. The more options, the more likely your location will have resources/conditions which makes one of them a winner.
BTW: Energy density (either per mass or volume) is much less relevant for this topic.
one size fits is the mentality.
My biggest worry is that the energy production we think we need now will be very much under-estimated because of climate change. For example it's very clear we'll be running far more AC than we do now. Which takes up a lot of energy. And building, transporting, etc. those AC units will probably also create CO2. The droughts will probably mean we'll have no choice but to start doing desalination, an other bigger energy user. we will also be creating lots of climate migration and thus we'll have to build more homes, again more CO2
@@autohmae AC doesn't produce CO2 If you aren't using fossil fuels in the grid.
@@bozo5632 I meant for the production of them. The manufacturing process might.
@@autohmae Most manufacturing doesn't have to produce any CO2.
The McIntosh plant indeed does compress air for storage, but that air, when released, is mixed with natural gas for burning in a gas turbine to generate power. This does save energy (and reduce emissions) because less of the turbine's energy is used for the compression stage. This is (very loosely) analogous to a turbo charger being used to make a gas engine more efficient: you reduce pumping losses. It is not, unfortunately, as environmentally friendly as pumped hydro.
Excellent, love listening to a intelligent well educated professional
Antimatter energy storage seems exciting, but judging by a lack of antimatter weapons we won’t be having that any time soon.
Notice she didn’t mention a price for antimatter generation and storage. The exorbitant price of super capacitor storage she referred to would be paltry compared to antimatter. Just ask the folks over at CERN.
Compressed air is an extremely complicated energy storage system. The most efficient solutions have a way to save the heat generated during compression, and then use that same heat to heat the extremely cold air during decompression and power generation.
That is really key to make CAES viable, yes. Without it and using NG-powered heating systems on the discharge cycle, efficiency is rather meh and the carbon balance quite terrible. Could maybe use the heat from a nuclear plant, but then may as well use that NPP's energy directly instead of bothering with CAES :)
Liquid CO2 as the gas cycle has the benefit of not needing to be cooled to extremely low temperatures like liquid nitrogen/air systems. It can be kept at ambient temperature indefinitely without spending power to do so. It’s also easy to keep contained in a sealed system with almost no leakage.
@@hugegamer5988 you didn't understand me, the problem is that when gas is compressed, a lot of heat is generated, and vice versa, during decompression the gas cools down whole sistem - if you allow the heat created during compression to go to waste, the system will be terribly inefficient, because you will have to use energy for heating during decompression. (it doesn't matter which gas it is, this problem is present)
Think of a can with compressed air or paint, while you use it the can cools down terribly, if you don't warm it with your hands, the pressure will drop and you won't be able to continue working...
@@goranjosic I understand l. I have a masters in mechanical engineering and this is a high-school level understanding level video at best. The heat is captured upon compression and released upon expansion to increase the efficiency in both cases, and it is significantly less loss for the CO2 over nitrogen. Isothermal expansion isn’t efficient, it’s a free lunch you get when your environment has a ambient thermal reservoir or in this case, stored waste heat energy.
Dear lady, I am so impressed by the breadth of topics you cover and how well you present them!. Have you ever addressed our dependency on electric power in your "lectures"? Solar flares, Carrington event? It would be good to get a educated perspective. Thank you for your work :)
Thank you for this glimpse into realities
You have the best videos on understanding the challenges ahead of decarbonising! Great sense of humour!
Thanks for the analysis Sabine. Spot on, I agree 100%.
Unfortunately, many enthusiastic renewables supporters fail to acknowledge the storage issue. In particular as the percentage of renewables gets higher, cost of storage goes through the roof. Dirt cheap wind and solar are then no longer diet cheap.
Whilst I agree that the storage problem is underexplored, my response to the cost would be "so what?" Whatever the cost is it must simply be paid, one way or another, because the alternative is potentially irreversible ecological destrution. Renewables just aren't optional at this point; it's not a question of "if" but "how".
It's one of the most underestimed problems. Here in the Netherlands they push everyone to electric heating with heathpumps. I just installed solar panels last year and noticed how little they produce in winter. I will already have a 2MWh shortage in fall and winter and 2.5MWh over production in spring and summer. Moving to electric heating even with the high efficiency of heat-pumps will add another 3MWh shortage making a total of 5MWh I would need to store to become completly self sufficient. Maybe geothermal energy could help us through the winter, but progress is moving too slow in this area.
@@EdenLippmann "ecological destruction" as if CO2 is some kind of foreign alien poison? Wake up! Wake up!!
@@AndreVanKammen You live 1300 to a square mile there is literally no chance of you ever having a "sustainable" life. Meanwhile my people live 7 to a square mile and we are dictated under the same restrictions as you and sold the same environmental propaganda. It's very tiring you know. Maybe there is a limit to how much energy should be extracted from arbitrarily smaller and smaller areas of land.
@@tinfoilhomer909 Yeah, cause if I'm going to take advice from anyone it'll _definately_ be from someone who calls themself "Tinfoil Homer". Please, give me more of your no-doubt very _very_ well-informed opinions.
The comments about flywheel storage relate to a local supply during interruption so control of the power generating station is maintained. In the UK there is hydro plant with a constantly rotating generator to maintain network frequency. It is a virtual flywheel with the mass effectively of the reservoir of water. Sabine is talking about the massive projects like the Australian Snowy Mountain scheme. Also massively expensive in CO2. Norway had hydro but it was only sufficient before our massive increase in power consumption.
Thank you for making a good arguments about energy.. this chunks of knowledge are amazing..!
The tulip wind turbines are pretty good even at low wind but for my money, the advances in drilling (using heat beams) means geothermal is the right decision and will get better as the cost decreases. Some neat batteries coming, liquid metal batteries and such.
Next let's talk about electricity networks, 'cause they need to be adapted to modern usage as well - and they potentially can also be utilized to mitigate some of the issues we now have.
I believe the specific term of art here is “packetized energy distribution” rather like packetization of data that allows the internet to work. Not just a clever idea either. There are already pilot projects that have demonstrated remarkably sustained parity between increasingly fickle energy supply and energy demand, thus avoiding the need for energy storage at all.
There's not actually all that much to discuss. While the idea is conceptually fantastic, there's a couple of challenges that are probably too large to overcome in the foreseeable future:
1) Geopolitical instability. I think this is pretty self-explanatory, especially in the wake of Russia's disastrous invasion of Ukraine. There's just a limit to how many countries you can hook up without running into the threat of some dictator somewhere threatening to cut a multi-billion-dollar, essentially unrepairable and infrastructure-critical cable if they think it'll let them get their way. Or worse, them actually just cutting it out of spite.
2) Engineering and materials. The cables required to send enough power to matter over long enough distances to be worthwhile are absolutely freaking enormous. The recent North Sea Link cables are something like 5" in diameter. 720km of that. Two of them. The upcoming EuroAfrica link is almost twice that length and if I recall correctly (though I'm having trouble finding confirmation at the moment) is closer to a foot in diameter. That's a lot of metal. Not insurmountable (obviously, since these things exist and more being built), but definitely a lot.
And those are fairly "short" runs compared to trying to do something like connecting North America to Europe. We have enough trouble with the undersea communications links, and they're a fraction of the size we'd need to do a grid interconnect.
I guess we'll see though. Scientists and engineers tend to be very clever (and if we ever figure out high temperature superconductors, a lot of problems just go away). The geopolitical problems are likely the bigger issue over the long run.
Love your videos. You have a great sense of humor that makes your videos fun to watch while learning.
Good episode,and timely. Liquid air power storage has legs,and they are building it now. It uses off the shelf components,and liquefying air is a 100 year old technology,and is not site dependent. Efficiency is helped because the heat released by liquefying air can be stored,and used when the liquid air is used to power generators.
I agree. A previous commenter above said he managed a compressed air plant and mentioned specific problems including very high maintenance and huge heat exchanger area requirements. Are you familiar with this? I’d like to understand in great detail.
I’m happy to say that here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, our electricity mix: Nuclear 56.8%, Hydro 24.4%, Wind, 8.7%, Solar 2.4%, Natural Gas 6.3. I’d say that Angela Merkel made a serious error in planning to remove Nuclear Energy from the mix.
yes,i am glad to know that,can you please tell me the cost of it i mean the cost /kwh oeuf corse
This move was only based on emotions (Fukushima 2011) and a pending election in one of the biggest states of germany (Baden Würtemberg, made the first local prime minister of the green party). No science or wise thinking involved.
And what is your primary energy mix?
That's the grid. Energy use is much larger than the electric grid
Excellent video that puts the renewable energy into a proper context.
Energy storage really is the '3rd leg of the tringle'. Wind and Solar are well established, and are very economical sources of electricity. Without electrical energy storage, those intermittent renewable sources can only amount to ~20% of the energy portfolio, without creating instability in the grid. After that, they become more of a nuisance than a help, because of generating stations having to 'chase' the random extra power on the grid. They can't respond to sudden changes, like a portable generator with a governed engine.
Loved the video. THanks for talking about all the storage options in such a well organized way. Typical Sabine. What should be brought up is that with wind, solar, and storage we will soon get a situation where we have superpower when there is NOT Dunkelflaute. In other words, power will become incredibly cheap. We have already seen this in Europe where they were GIVING power away to ditch the extra power. I would LOVE to see a video on that Sabine. You are my favorite science educator. Thanks!
Well you are right; the problem is if we really expand the generation of solar and wind a lot (so that for example we are able to produce the total electricity used in Germany in one year), then we are talking about *extreme* superpower (5-10 times of what we need at a particular moment). This means power will not become incredible cheap: It means we have absolutely no clue at all what to do with this power. Prices either will get extremely negative (hey you take 1MWh: I will pay you 500 EUR if you do!) or we simply have to shut down all this nice solar plants/ wind parks. In the second case the problem then is, that we *do not* use the generation potential efficiently, which will in fact increase prices, at the time we do need the power.
So no: "Superpower" is not something I am optimistic about.
@@lundril I don't think switching off wind turbines and solar panels temporarily is an insurmountable problem. By my understanding they already do this. Over time, I think the economics will partially address this issue - anyone with an electricity-intensive but discretionary task (industry mainly) will shift processes around to cash-in on electricity when it's cheap.
Sabine, thank for your informational and trustworthy video. What annoys me, is that everybody is talking about reducing emissions from cars, but hardly ever speaks about pollution from burning wood in a stove at home. Very cosy, but it fills the whole neighbourhood with smoke, from which it is impossible to escape and which is intoxicating me which I really don't appreciate. Can you do a video about this subject?
This is so wonderful! I've tried to communicate all of this to people around me without all the nice numbers and graphs!
I will use this video as an aid in the future! Also I might strip some technicalities from my own little TED-talk because I think it takes away from the big picture.
I am so happy! :)
Note she is using outdated numbers to support her narrative.
@@MarcoNierop outdated numbers or not, when the differences are this enormous it is not just a matter of improving/building out. Also "fixing" something like the tilt of the earths axis is simply not doable.
I used to be hopeful and followed the advances in solar technologies very closely (multi quanta, piezo electrics at night, ...) but I've kind of lost hope for where I live. Further south it can/and was something for individuals - but it just doesn't scale very well when everybody needs batteries.
An alternative to storing energy is to optimize when we use the energy so it matches production capacity better. This is an area where there's lot of room for improvement, for example with central control of residential power consumption.
wonderful overview with concise numbers
Sabine, this is a really helpful summary however my point would be, if that generated energy would go to waste anyway (I’m talking about curtailed energy production when the grid is already in surplus) then we shouldn’t really worry too much about the efficiencies too much. Some storage is better than nothing. Dunkelflaute? Two days a year? Two days. Nuclear base load: get some SMRs set up. These can be built relatively quickly.
It's zero days a year if there is enough surplus capacity to support a hydrogen economy in addition, which would make chemical byproducts like fertilizer, synthetic aviation fuels and synthetic foods incredibly cheap.
very well done video. amazing how much energy we use, the comparison to antimatter shocked me a little.
i reckon if we do end up utilizing antimatter in our lifetime, it will be in an ultra-diluted form. like, think a ring of anti-particles spinning in magnetic field, definitely not a chunk of anti-steel.
Indeed. Like the difference between "No matter how do you store energy, just store it" and
"No anti-matter how do you store energy, just store it"
Thanks Sabine, how about next time on "The World Needs a Paradigm Shift on Nuclear"? The molten salt reactor deserves a revival from the 60's.
The optimal storage solution depends on the expected number of cycles per year. Batteries are really expensive for seasonal storage, but they are useful for storage on a timescale of a few hours. Therefore they work well in combination with solar in California an Australia. But Wind energy fluctuates on a different timescale and that requires a different storage solution.
a hardly popularized idea is to simply increase the size of produced renewable energy. if you increase production capacity over 100%, the need for storag drops dramatically. Depending on prices the optimum might be at 2x overcapacity
Excellent video that highlights some of the key energy storage problems in terms of overall capacity, cost and contribution to total carbon emissions. I'm sure there's huge scope for technological innovation over the next few decades to move all of those numbers in a direction that favours deployment at massive scale but I hope that policy makers will start to look at the nuclear option more seriously.
There are several developed countries that have already effectively decarbonised their electricity networks using nuclear (e.g. France) or a mix of nuclear and hydro (e.g. Sweden/Switzerland). These countries provide a template that other countries should be looking to follow while the key imperative is to reduce carbon emissions as fast as possible.
What do you think about the problems nuclear plants face during drought as currently examplified by France.
The template seems to be especially vulnerable to those droughts that are expected to become normal occurences in the future.
@@sualtam9509 the answer is to site nuclear power plants on the coast as much as possible. France's are mostly inland, which needlessly constrains their potential output, given France's Atlantic coastline. It might also be possible to gain the additional benefit of using the waste heat for desalination as a valuable drinking water supplement in times of drought. Of course such water would never enter the reactor and would simply carry away waste heat via a heat exchanger, with the reactor cooling loop being separate.
Yep that is the key to reduce carbon emissions as fast as possible. The only way to do that realistically ( without using perfect solution pipe dream thinking ) and try and get there anywhere near the time dead line, is to use NUCLEAR!! I just hope people start to realise this in time before it is to late!!
Because the nuclear option is not something you can just suddenly decide to support and get behind in the last few years before everything is dead! Just think about that!!
I hope people start to open their eyes at the enormity of the problem climate change poses, and that trying to use an elegant perfect solution to fix the problem is not the answer, when you have not time to waste!!
It is not only nuclear power plants that are constrained by low river levels in the summer, it is any thermal power plant, such a coal powered and gas powered electrical plants. They all need to cool down the steam they generate to power the turbines. Only the heat source varies: fission, gas, coal.
That being said, summer is not peak demand season for electricity in a country like France. So the constraint on production at least in a country like France is not a significant problem, at least for the moment.
We will need to deploy all sources of clean energy on a massive scale including nuclear as we not only need to replace coal and gas in electrical generation, but gas in heating applications which is a huge amount (probably equivalent to current total electrical generation), petroleum in land transportation, and coal and gas in industrial applications such as steel manufacturing, concrete production, etc...
The numbers exist somewhere, but the world will need to multiply current nuclear and renewable electrical power generation by a factor of 20 if we are to approach carbon neutrality. So electrical power storage will be key.
@@sualtam9509 build nuclear plants on the coast and dump waste heat into the sea. Cooling towers (evaporators) that use fresh water are not obligatory: they are just most convenient way to dump waste heat when you have large body of fresh water nearby, but you can make a heat exchanger that will transfer heat to sea water without any evaporation happening.
Not to mention that during winter nuclear plant can serve as a source of heat for a city and in that case "waste" heat will not be wasted at all.
Thank you for such a well articulated and informative summary of these issues we must deal with. You're a living legend, Sabine!
Why are you telling all of us that you are absolutely clueless about the issue? :-)
@@schmetterling4477 I have no idea how you came to that conclusion from my comment.
@@bluecheese1066 Because you said that Sabine's information is informative. To everybody who is actually informed she is a simple bullshitter. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 How about you post your own video then, mate, so we can all learn from your infinite wisdom. Paste a link when you've done it. Cheers.
@@bluecheese1066 I am not a bullshitter, kid. Absolutely nobody would watch an actually well researched video full of facts. The algorithm only promotes trolls like Sabine because that is exactly the kind of bullshit that your kind wants to see. ;-)
I WAS an Engineer Technician for a green energy R&D think tank. We built a CAES system using shipping containers to ease transport and deployment issues. It worked so well and was so efficient we scrapped that project and moved to thermal energy storage. That can is still being kicked down the road to this day but the death knell is on the horizon. So much that we moved on to carbon capture. ... and because of this I so too moved on but you should see our impressive stable of unicorns!!!
Excellent presentation of the options available.