The World's Largest Battery Isn't What You Think
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 เม.ย. 2022
- Exploring the world's largest batteries. Old tech could still be the future of energy storage. Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. Because of the intermittency of renewable energy like wind and solar power, storing large amounts of electricity is a necessity for the decarbonization of our energy system. However, we still don't have enough batteries to compensate for renewable energy slumps across the planet. When thinking about the biggest utility-scale energy storage installations, a huge cylindrical lithium ion battery powered light bulb may go off in your head. But what if I told you the world’s largest battery taps into water rather than lithium? Can an old technology, even one still learning new tricks, be the answer? Let’s see if we can come to a decision on this.
Corrections:
7:04 Clarification - $100/kWh is the build cost.
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What do you think about leaning into older technology like pumped hydro for solving our energy needs? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership.
If you liked this, check out This Battery Breakthrough Lets EVs Charge in MINUTES th-cam.com/video/48vPgAPtkJg/w-d-xo.html
pumped hydro is laughable if you are not a small island. literally not enough hills in the world, it just doesn't scale. The resources required to build it out are too great. We should focus on scaling battery technology of different kinds, lithium iron phosphate being the current front runner, and battery technology in general, not just the ones around today, are only going to improve with time. Compressed air and especially hydro is only going to get less attractive as battery tech develops, environmentally and fiscally...
What about just raising/lowering an array of bigass rocks on cables, or similar heavy solids? It's not limited by height, can be geared, doesn't evaporate or leak or explode, is cheap and available anywhere.
If you want to get rid of oil and coal but you don't want to switch to nuclear then you're not serious about solving the problem and should be kept out of political leadership.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlough_Hill#The_pumped-storage_scheme
Desalination plants need to change a lot.
Ok so the brine needs to stop being dumped back in ocean.
So have them up a hill a little way away from the ocean and all the brine should go through a turbine to make energy.
Then the brine should go to a heated dome made of glass and heated by the sun or a medal 1 thats heated by some of the energy made by the brine.
Why you ask well we collect ocean salt by dumping ocean on land and letting it evaporate.
So 1 it will reduce land use for ocean salt.
2 you get more salt.
3 you stop killing wild life.
4 you can collect some of the fresh water thats evaporated.
5 the extra land it helps save from normal evaporated ocean for salt.
6 the extra land can now have wild life plants and increase o2 and reduce some pollution.
Thoghts.
Seems like desert pumped Hydro would benefit from adding floating solar panels which help reduce evaporation and keeps the panels cooler.
I think that maybe the water can lower the life expectancy of the solar panel and the variation of water level can create problems
@@celopretto if the panels aren't wet, but floating, how would that affect them? If the panels float, they would also go up and down with water levels.
That sounds like a good idea. Make even more use of the given surface of land.
The heat caused could increase the water temp which would speed up evaporation wouldn’t it ?
@@tallguy2882 The water is exposed to the sun anyway, I don't see that much difference in temperature.
This definitely reminded me of an article by low tech magazine where they talked about using compressed air for home energy use. It's always interesting to see what we can do with older tech to deal with modern problems
some amish use it to power some pneumatic engines
I remember low tech magazine also talked about hydraulic tech: small machines that ran on water pressure. It's fun to imagine an alternate world where every home is hooked up to high pressure air and water mains instead of electricity. They could probably use them for heating too.
And look at some auto manufacturers using it to help spool turbochargers at low engine rpm for better throttle response and an improved powerband.
Use air in a gutsy pneumatic drill, in the summer. In a shipyard outside in Winter, Cool. Ice formed on it as the air exhaust, warm from use in the drill, attracts the cold to the surface. Cold loves heat, heat loves cold. Sun heats us, while in its radiance, but cold of space, drags that heat out of Earth for night time cool. If we get over heat, in day , we get opposite at night. Energy in at Polar attraction, not in our control. Overheat Earth, big ice melt. Balance need to restore from outside input. Just like batteries give and take the balance must be kept.Cloud is not in our control too. So can we do,anything but make money?
2:06 "...which is the distance traveled by the water from the upper pool to the turbine."
I know you said earlier it's an elevation change, but I would still modify this definition a bit for clarity:
"...which is the VERTICAL distance traveled by the water from the upper pool to the turbine."
Being two pools of different area, the elevation change wouldn’t be constant, average elevation change would have to consider Volume and evaporation. It’s a moving target ….
Tasmania in Australia is putting in a pumped hydro system so it can become “the battery of the nation”.
Also the snowy river scheme in New South Wales is also supposedly becoming pumped hydro as well.
@Hill Valley Snowy has long had pumped hydro. Snowy 2.0 is a large expansion.
Tasmania has lots of hydro, kinda its thing, and why they built aluminium refineries there . It could possibly convert a large proportion to pumped. Drawbacks are the 370 km of undersea cables are limited in capacity, expensive to expand and have proportionately greater losses for servicing peak demand.
It could however take the increasing mainland daytime excess and store a greater proportion for greater production of aluminium , hydrogen and ammonia the rest of the day.
BTW, Moss Landing just, as in a few days ago, got a second LiON system in production. This one is run by PG&E instead of Vistra. Around 250 MWh.
Just like our current methods for energy sourcing, our strategy for energy storage will and should be diverse. While Im a huge fan of it, pumped hydro is very limited in terms of Geographical constraints. It seems like the stars have to allign for pumped hydro to be effective, large elevation changes, close enough to populated areas, and a viable source of water. Considering the location and scale of these systems the construction costs are very high.
What I really enjoy is how energy storage can be in many different forms: chemical, mechanical, gravitational, thermal, pneumatic...ect. Whether it be conventional batteries, flywheels, raised weights, water, molten salt, or pressurized thicc air, there are plenty of options for price range and scale for these systems.
Well said. The solutions should and will be as varied as the locations of the storage facilities themselves. This is by necessity.
"It seems like the stars have to allign for pumped hydro to be effective,"
Wind generators are often located on the tops of hills in coastal areas. So you have a hill (Head) and lots of water (the sea).
Low Head Pumped Hydro near a Solar plant is likely to be a good solution too, even if the instillation cost per MW stored is not as good as high Head installations, they may be better than Lithium storage.
They don't need to be "close enough to populated areas," any more or less than the power generators that they are using to pump the water.
The only thing with storage is it is only good for peaks when usage is high and you need a boost. It is worse if you are using fossil fuels to refill said storage.
Interesting topic and pleasant presentation. There's still a recurrent problem with units here such as at t=576 "Projected Li-ion capacity increase = 28GW/year". KW, MW and GW are units of *power*, for example the instantaneous output from a storage plant. KWh, MWh and GWh are storage *capacities*. GWh/year is an annual increase in power storage capacity. Any given storage plant needs rating in terms of three things, power eg in MW, capacity eg in MWh and storage efficiency as a %. Sorry for the nitpick!
Yes, but it is an impportant 'nitpick'. What costs most money is the amount of energy stored. Pumped hydro the cost of getting volume and head is high. Adding more pump.generators is relatively lower.
@@keacoq that and the infrastructure to go with it. Pumped hydro’s great where you’ve already god hydro. But batteries have a small advantage in being wherever you put them so less to connect it. Still hydro might hold the lead
Came here to say the same thing, although you need to watch the use of lower case k for kW too ;) The difference between energy and power is missed by a lot of people, kWh is ugly as a unit of energy.
@@Freshbott2 yeah, that's why we use batteries in space, you can't use a dam in free fall, but you can if you have gravity and ground, if you can build a 100 story building you have a potential for power storage, make a ring of interconnected skyscrapers and you have a dam anywhere (on solid ground) you want or dig a pit and have that same drop in elevation,
Hydro can be built literally anywhere on earth, including in the middle of the ocean, it's just more cost effective near a "natural" drop in elevation.
And unless the technology (or practice) has shifted Li-ion batteries use cobalt from child labour mines in African war states to feed their wars (but don't quote me on that, since i could be wrong).
I always notice this too, yet I have never said anything. Luckily he uses dampers and damp instead of dampeners and dampen.
"storing energy out of thick air"
This was awesome.
There is a pumped water storage system in operation on the Canary Islands. Been working for years, pumping water up when they have excess wind energy, powering the island's needs when the wind dies off.
The Kinzua Dam in PA does the same thing. It uses excess power to pump water into a holding pond during "off-peak hours." During peak hours, the water is allowed to flow down and generate electricity.
Great video Matt!
I think we need to maximise the use of the simpler solutions that you covered along with other low tech ones in order to save lithium and other materials that have to be mined and processed for more important uses. Processing all those elements requires a lot of energy and comes with a lot of environmental baggage.
I agree, lithium ion batteries should be saved for cars and other mobile items.
These facilities have their own environmental cost. They typically use gigantic amounts of concrete, and displace wildlife.
There is no silver bullet (except perhaps fusion), we need all types.
total agree.
@Johnny Rebellion no, because I don't like to ignore inconvenient truths.
@@morosis82 Without any doubt there always will be an effect on the plannet. Just wondering what the "hidden" effects are but I doubt that (pumped) hydro has more effect than mining rare minerals considering toxic polution in the proces of contstruction and operation.
I must say, your channel is awesome.. I wish you could do more content on other issues.. I know one man can only do so much... I for one thank you for your time and efforts...
personally I am a fan of the iron/salt water batteries in combination with graphene capacitors. It's simple, elegant and can work pretty much everywhere. and the materials are both cheap and abundant. graphene capacitors are still struggling to be mass produced though.
especially since we need to remove salt from sea water as climate change hits us, salt can then be used for that instead of killing the sea life like it does in the middle east
Even without capacitors, power density scales with energy density. Plus, you can use sodium as a direct replacement for lithium as far as processing goes. Finally, it's incredibly stupid people are using lithium in stationary storage unless they're looking ahead and using as a means to hoarde it while it's cheap and sell at a premium, replacing it with sodium, in the future when it's absolutely critical for mobile applications.
@@EnthalpyAndEntropy I think you hit the nail on the head.
@@nates9105 I thought it was the opposite. The polar ice melt is adding too much fresh water to the ocean.
@@gbladewarrior6884 pretty sure they were referring to the local effect of desalination plants on the local ecosystem and not a global effect but I find it interesting that the overall dilution of salt in the ocean might be a problem to but I wonder about that because at the same time humans also have massive ocean salt harvesting operations. I wonder why there aren't salt harvesting operations in every location that their is a desalination plant seems like an obvious thing to use the brine for.
For western Canada, pumped hydro is an easy win. Even here in Alberta, the local reservoir is/has been made into a pumped hydro system.
As a bonus, this established reservoir has some decent fishing along the canal to the plant, and the reservoir itself is a popular camping spot, with room for water sports.
Plus Alberta has the most sunny days and wind, so you’re a renewables powerhouse
Yeah, important that you mentioned other uses. Sometimes the water stored can even be used as drinking water when not just operating in a closed loop.
I absolutely love your take on pumped hydro. It seems that every time I point out on social media that niche solutions aren't the answer, I get a lot of hate. A lot of peoples have yet to figure out that viable solutions need to be scalable to industrial scales.
Love this vid! It shows well how there is no "silver bullet" for energy solutions. sometimes, many, low-efficiency and low-impact solutions are more feasible and less detrimental than one high-efficiency and high-impact one.
Pump hydro would be perfect if you could use it a bit easier, is there anything against putting solar pannels over the water?
Building and maintaining a solar farm over the water seems like a challenge. Especially the building. If they are high enough above the water, you could significantly reduce the thermal load on the water (and evaporation) would be another plus. Another person asked and got a reply saying that solar absorbs too much heat and would worsen evaporation, which would be true if the panels floated on the water, which seems like a silly way to build it.
Panels over the water is a good idea. I think the only requirement would be to make sure there is always enough water in the upper reservoir to make sure the solar array stays floating? I guess you could argue that even if a floating array ran aground, it may not matter if it was designed to handle that scenario. Whether the array is floating or the array is not floating and was a structured canopy, the only hurdle would be the extra cost to build it. There should be no reason why either scenario wouldn't be physically possible. Like so many other things in this world, cost is the limiting factor.
These solar panels covering the reservoirs could also help with the problem of evaporation rates of the water, especially in the desert locations. If you had floating solar panels or a canopy of panels on or over the reservoirs, that would reduce evaporation and minimize the need to refill with more water, which you would eventually need to do.
Not a bad idea!
In fhina they has had much success with solar installation on water even on sea water.
Efficiency is improved due to cooling by the water and less water get's lost due to reduced sun exposure.
@@lukew1383 Floating Photovoltaic is already pretty common in asia and produced in large scale facilities.
@@jmacd8817 the pannels would have floaters, with would also serve as a heat insulation between pannels and water, I guess
This video flowed really well. Steady stream of information. Really spun my understanding of how energy storage works.
So thank you for posting this video, as I had not really thought too about these methods of producing and story energy, and so I find this to be quite interesting, and a real eye-opener too. Cheers!🥂
I was interested about 10-15yrs ago with salinity ponds, 2 different layers of salinity captures solar heat during the day and even can work when the top is frozen. Pumps move the hot water into heat exchanges and use gases that expand to drive a turbine.
Another CAES was being looked at in Germany with tanks deep in water the air is pushed into these containers for storage and released to drive turbines when required. Sounded good if near deep water sources (ocean/lakes).
Gravity batteries are also interesting using old mine shafts holding a large concrete block which is on a motor generator at peak times its released and generates power when grid is underutilized its pulled back to the surface.
I live next to the second biggest water battery on the (states) region, it's in Michigan attached to our biggest lake really close to it, and nobody even realizes or talks about it much (huge amounts of power needed to 'charge it' is the reason we do not have more) But at night it does make more energy than it uses (but again it required lots to keep going)
I used to drive past that all the time! I hope to tour it eventually
Yes! I’m so excited you’re talking about this. There’s one in WV and it’s so smart and neat. There are even hypothetical storages that would be closed so that the water wouldn’t evaporate in desert climates. (Obvs that was before I finished watching your vid lol)
You mentioned high demand being during the day and low demand at night to refill the reservoir. But wouldn’t that be the opposite in a world of renewables? Solar would have to fill the reservoir during the day
actually if your av use is x kwh in 24 hours, you need to install solar system double that capacity.
No expert here but if the capacity of the reservoirs is enough, it can run the turbines during the day as well as pumping water back up: then at night the usage is low enough to run from whatever water was pumped during day.
This is why solar probably shouldn't be used to fill up the reservoirs. Solar works best during the day when electricity demand is high. So it is best for solar to go straight into the grid rather than routing through a water reservoir first.
However, wind still blows at night.
The best zero-carbon combination is pumped hydro and nuclear. During the night is a great time to use nuclear power to fill up the reservoir since it is difficult and inefficient to completely ramp down nuclear power at night.
@@TheGeeoff great point! I agree. I guess an alternative could be a hydroelectric damn nearby to power the filling if the reservoir lol double water power
Finally, I have been waiting for you to cover this old battery system. GREAT option that needs to be pursued more often in my opinion.
I really love watching all of your alternative energy/storage videos!
Glad you like them!
Matt, your powerfully-presented presentation puns pack a pretty impressive punch, as such improving your persistently pleasing presentation is practically impossible. Your persona and presence are a plus and you’re persistently on-point. Props. *applause* 👏
Perfect!
Plentiful Props!
Proposterously poignant!
You only mention the power (Watt) of these systems. How about the energy capacity (Watt-hours). There are also different markets for different response times. A bit simplified, if you can provide the power after 1 min of request you get more money from it than if you provide it in 30 min. So many of these systems are designed with very different purposes in mind.
There's plenty of fresh water, but just like our power grids, the distribution system is becoming insufficient.
Agreed. Several metrics, ways to model cost. Several market niches (value). Don’t forget construction time, location. And it’ll all change when coal / nuclear baseload generation taken out. Plus "electrify everything" changes demand profile.
Distributed battery storage changes everything. No extra transmission infrastructure required!
Just a not to say that the video has been updated. I now say power output instead of capacity where appropriate.
@@UndecidedMF Nice, thanks for making it more clear.
I proly learned about this from this channel but power grids have problems with shutting down and coming back on line due to buffering issues. This technology seems very well suited to provide a gentler demand curve.
He said that hydropower takes 15 minutes to turn on. I suspect this is going from pumping to producing electricity which is a complete reversal.
Once pumped hydro is producing power at a slow rate then I believe it is very quick to ramp up to full power. So it really is fantastic for balancing out the grid!
Another very informative video by @matt ferrell :) I always forward your videos esp. since your evaluation is usually more holistic and better thought off.
Pumped hydro is a great energy storage device. There's a reason we have used it for so long already.
A technology I was expecting to at least see mentioned here but did not was Redox Flow Batteries. It for sure is not even close to the largest battery operating, but has some great potential. They mainly utilize vanadium now, which limits their availability as vanadium is hard to get your hands on, but work on an organic compound replacement for vanadium is in progress, and should really open up some doors when figured out. These will help solve the "chemical batteries only work well for up to 4 hours of discharge" issue, and allow chemical based batteries to compete with pumped hydro on that front. It will be interesting to see where this technology ends up falling in the plethora of storage options.
I had never considered compressed air as a viable energy storage device and it was cool to see that application here.
Also check out Ambri molten metal batteries. Made from dirt to be cheap as dirt. Not yet in production, but lots of promise.
@@grizzlygrizzle I'll have to check them out. Sounds like some promising tech. What are the dirt bricks made of specifically? I've seen something like these briefly but didn't know enough about them to mention them in my comment.
@@lukew1383 -- They are not scalable downward for portable devices, the smallest ones I saw in the videos being the size of the smallest shipping containers. The guy who developed the technology said that the best way to make batteries as cheap as dirt was to make them from dirt, but he was referring to his using cheap abundant metals, one of which is antimony. Anyway, the battery consists of one layer of the lighter metal above a layer of the heavier metal, separated by a layer of calcium chloride: three layers that are kept molten at high temperatures. They stay separated by gravity.
-- They are designed to store intermittent energy like solar and wind at a scale from residential to grid-level. When a "failure" occurs, the battery cools and the metals simply solidify, and all that's needed to "repair" them is to get them up to temperature again. They are infinitely rechargeable, and the charge-discharge cycles refine the metals to higher purity than in the original battery. I believe the company is still working at the venture-capital level, but apparently they have a demonstration set-up at some office park in AZ or NM. Apparently they are working out appropriate methods for manufacture at this point. The company is located in Marlboro, MA. I have some business near there, and I'm thinking of dropping in to see what I can find.
-- There are a couple of videos on YT about them. Just type "Ambri batteries" in the YT search bar.
@@grizzlygrizzle Thanks for the info. I'll check them out.
I wonder if the underground compressed air could also do some sort of geothermal process to get even more energy, or at least use geothermal to heat/cool buildings nearby
This is what I was going to say. Even just warm earth or compost should add a huge boost.
With a geothermal spring nearby giving higher Temps to stored air. That could be pretty interesting. Old faithful here we come.
@@texasslingleadsomtingwong8751 I don't think that putting an underground compressed air reservoir anywhere near geothermal springs would be a good idea. Consider the subsurface structure! I would think that you'd want a fairly geologically stable area to build in.
@@jrkorman I would also like to consider if adding points of failure is worth it
Gotta say I'm not super impressed with compressed air. It's not very efficient and it is quite finicky.
Just saying.
I used to live About 25 minutes from the Bath County pumped Hydro facility on nice summer days their discharge pond was nice to swim in had sand beaches and they filtered the water 💦 very clean set up Good for the environment to they created a good ecosystem around the plant
Matt, love the vids and your content. Have you run across any pump hydro research on a small sale, like individual home level? Keep pumping out the great content and stirring up new ideas!
I was wondering the same thing! Pumped hydro would be ideal for homesteading or off grid folks because of it's simplicity. There's a video of a homesteader who gets his electricity from a stream using a washing machine motor but that's the closest thing I've seen. I will look into some more to see what I can find.
Here's a video of a guy doing it with a barrel on his roof: th-cam.com/video/CMR9z9Xr8GM/w-d-xo.html
A science TH-camr built a pumped hydro system on his 2-story single family house, using a 30 gallon oil drum on the roof and one at ground level. Sounds like a great idea right? If you do the math, you realize it stores as much energy as... one AA battery. Our intuition is way off. Pumped hydro needs scale - a lot of scale!
Awesome detail Matt. Thank you.
Glad you liked it!
@@UndecidedMF Honestly man, I want to puke every time someone parrots petroleum-co marketing divisions ignorantly regurgitating "green energy" the second solar or wind gets brought up into anything. Such garbage. Solar and wind are literally worse than fossil fuel power plants - please god do some actual research. Look up all the mining (the mines are often in parts of the world powered by coal power plants - and require a ton of power - while running huge mining equipment on diesel - and dont forget about toxic and radioactive runoff and ridiculous annihilation of surrounding local ecosystems - and they require a ton of mines for all the different rare earth metals required for manufacture so multiply this whole list ten times over) / shipping (diesel trucks) / refining (more CO2) / shipping (diesel trans-oceanic container ships) / manufacturing (more CO2) / more shipping (diesel trucks) and then complete lack of recyclability all while bulldozing 1000's of acres of wild habitat for a pitiful 25-year (ish) lifespan on the intermittent / tiny power source with trash energy conversion efficiency "power plant" - "green energy" - disgusting idiocy.
Also, wtf happened to Occam's razor? Like we're supposed to get excited over $100 / kWh energy storage? orrrrr we could just use $0.01 - $0.02 / kWh (lifespan adjusted average) for Nuclear Power - which is literally the cleanest, safest, most reliable, cheapest (and subsequently most profitable) energy source known to man - which, for some ungodly reason everyone seems to have completely forgotten is a thing?! - No energy storage necessary... With plant lifespans that are currently running 80-120 years and conceivably indefinitely... Look up the same lifecycle information for mining / manufacturing of lithium ion batteries while you're at it - and then,
please PLEASE do a video at least presenting the counter-arguments to solar, battery and wind power and present the latest developments in Nuclear technology - the public NEEDS to be made aware.
Suggested: start here:
th-cam.com/video/c1QmB5bW_WQ/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/cbeJIwF1pVY/w-d-xo.html
I think lithium ion should be treated as the scarce resource it is. Using it for large scale grid applications seems weird given how limited its supply is.
What a terrific analysis and comparison of the three most well-understood electricity system energy storage technologies. The efficiency of your analysis of these technologies is likely about as close to 100 percent as anyone can manage. Thanks.
Pumped hydro is under used . Covering the water storage would be helpful , also storing and creating at the same time would be useful
I almost feel like we're too new into Lithium ion battery tech, to be diving in trying to use it for large scale power storage, considering the pace that new tech advances keep coming out. like with Battery Streak's new cathode tech for instance, that one new factor could dramatically change how they function as a large scale storage. Pumped hydro is absolutely a solid plan, my only issues with it are things you aren't really able to control like evaporation or weather conditions. I also quite like the Hydrostor solution, I just hope they plan to add those black balls on the reservoir in order to combat evaporation and plant growth. It kind of feels like we're on the cusp of some really big changes in terms of cleaner power, we just really need the people who call the shots to dig their heads of the sand and listen to the experts, and not just the ones waving stacks of money in their faces.
Lithium ion batt has been around since 91……
@@juliangulian1032 so new tech then as stated above
I could not agree more! @Fenthule Even though lithium-ion technology has been discovered for multiple decades; it would suggest our ambitions to use lithium is still very new; in regards to implementation on a large scale. Perhaps Lithium wasn't meant to be scaled that high in the first place. I'm happy with the lightweight battery in my phone. But we can definitely use other combinations of technology and use much much cheaper materials to accomplish the energy storage density humanity craves and so desperately needs!
The real problem isn’t how new the technology is, the real problem is that we’re already nearing the limit of what we can do safely with lithium power storage.
There’s only so much energy you can store in an element and the more you pump into said element (or compound) the more likely you are to cause an unstable reaction.
That being said, there are cheaper, more powerful batteries out there, but they just can’t be used in places where lithium are because it’s easy to explode.
@@coltenhunter2000 Very interesting! :D
Learned something new. Thanks
Glad to hear it!
I also find the idea of using the sea as a pumped storage facility very interesting.
Damming of an area and drain it. Draining it below sea level (by pumping) gives the same energy potential as filling above sea level, but is far less risky, because a dam failure refills the emptied area, instead of causing a massive wave.
The seamless, off the cuff translation between Imperial/American units & metric -is appreciated.
One combination of Pumped Hydro and CAES that might also be a path forward is Oceanic CAES. Like Hydrostor, air is compressed and stored deep under the water. Not only do you have a lot more real estate to work with, you don't have to dig any tunnels/caverns. It has its own challenges to be sure, but its struck me as a compelling possibility.
Genius. Near coastal underground compressed air already have a water reservoir for free! gr8 :)
actually the storage vessel becomes the limiting cost. like pumped hydro storage needs land, water, and favorable topography, compressed air is expensive to store.
@@janami-dharmam One of the nice things about OCAES is you don't need super high tensile strength containers, because you're storing the compressed air in an environment with an equal hydrostatic pressure. The biggest concerns for a lot of proposed projects are ocean current forces, and the buoyancy of caused by displacing the water. One solution to that I've seen is to make containers out of large concrete castings that can be set on the ocean floor.
I was thinking the same thing, could possibly be cheaper than digging the hole for the air tanks, and building the reservoir. Tanks could be built on land and then lowered into place. I do see salt corrosion being an issue, but there are some big lakes that could serve
@@tnegras99 Corrosion would definitely be a factor to watch out for. I've wondered if this would be a good application for either recycled plastics, or an application for the "electric reef" biorock system. Both have the potential to side step or at the very least mitigate corrosion.
I gotta say that I got a real charge outa this video.
Me too. Now I'm pumped. 😉😁
Hey Matt! It is incredible how your videos are becoming more and more interesting as time passes by. This video is one of your best in my opinion. I left Discord. Sorry for not being around your channel anymore. You are a great guy, always answering even when people are not friendly. Still uncertain of why this channel is called "Undecided". 😆 Congrats!
Shoutout to the seagull at 9:02!
Great video as always!
I would love to see an update on flow batteries. They take up a bit more space, but I was under the impression that they are reliable and far cheaper per unit of stored energy. There is even a company that makes shipping container batteries that use salt water (or something close to it) as the electrolyte.
A flow battery system is complex, with pumps, tanks, flow meters, pressure gauges, heaters, heat exchangers, etc. I is very prone to leakage.
Besides compressed air storage, air can be chilled to liquid form. Cryogenic air is stored at low pressure and is not at risk of explosion. This might be an even better method of energy storage.
Cryogenic air can explode easily. If there is any flaw in maintaining temperature, it go boom.
@@xeridea no, not really. There are problems, but explosion is not one of them.
Outstanding video, Matt. Your central point is both valid and logically elegant, in that fashion doesn’t belong in the field of energy. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for your time, great job and information!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
One quirk that seems to be emerging with the current energy market - where large amounts of solar (and dometimes wind) are available, it's often cheaper per kWh to pump uphill during the day, when solar is available, and slowly release the upper reservoir overnight.
We are starting to live in the age of solar.
Spell check?
It's a great puzzle... But if not the intent click on the three dots in the corner and select edit. Then systematically click on the words which need spelling correction.
@@mntbighker I'm guessing it was typed on a cell phone... I had a phone that was terrible at spell check 🤷
@@mntbighker douche check?
@@RogueOntheRoad click on the three dots in the corner and select edit. Then systematically change the words that make you sound pedantic.
This topic really gets me pumped up!! Great video as usual! Thanks Matt!
Ha! Thanks, Trav.
Very good presentation; full of information. Thank you.
Thanks for your update on pumped hydro and compressed air storage alternatives for addressing the storage needs for peak power times, particularly for integrating more renewable energy into our electrical generation systems. Cost comparisons between energy storage alternatives are very dependent on the duration of storage, whether the duration of the peak is for a few seconds (for voltage/frequency control), minutes, hours, days or even months at a time, like seasonal loads. Can you please try to qualify your cost comparisons accordingly, so we can better appreciate that different technologies might be more advantageous for these different duration peaks. Otherwise, you may leave us all more confused rather than better understanding the alternatives in this crucial, rapidly developing arena, particularly for better utilizing more renewable solar and wind power generation in our overall energy picture.
how about covering these water reservoirs with solar panels? solar panels would protect water from evaporation and water humidity would prevent solar panels from overheating. a win-win, no?
Yes! Floating solar over all of the upper reservoirs, big batteries because they already have massive grid connections. And the research I've done shows most pumped hydro projects only run at around 50% of rated capacity. So you could pretty easily ad floating solar, batteries, maybe even wind turbines to these existing projects. Without having to upgrade the grid infastructure already in place.
As the reservoirs for hydro projects are also often on hundreds of acres of privately leased lands, so little chance of nimbyism interfering with setting up the wind turbines. Then they should look at upgrading the damns turbines and software to more efficiently use and distribute the energy. I bet most existing projects could get 25-100% increase in total energy output. 🤔
Yes. They are doing that. In michigan it's already done. With the second largest battery which I live near by. It's a giant facility by lake michigan.
@@dertythegrower do you happen to know the name of the facility?
Won't work. The solar panels absorb more heat than surface water, leading to more evaporation, not less. Also, as a similar issue was attempted with plastic balls, it made the problem worse and also served as a growth medium for algae, which increased evaporation, and lowered water quality.
@@Michelrs The pumped storage facility in Michigan is Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant. So I presume that is the one that is Sir Derty is referring to.
Matt. Love your vids.
In July you talked about the Ambri liquid metal battery. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get the TerraScale up and how well it works.
It’s just around the corner. . . Like Nuclear Fusion. . .
@@dewiz9596 Maybe. There is a notable lack of recent information on the TerraScale site/project in Reno.
@@danharold3087 They only started in 2021 at that site. so, at most they have a little over a year of data. They probably want a bit more. The other end is that it isn't a public company, they are keeping their information close to the vest - using it for more investment to be able to crack into more large places. This will allow the price to go down so that more personal options may become available.
@@dnoname8108 I'm a believer. I like what Ambri have developed.
Grand Coulee Dam is looking to do exactly that with Banks Lake, next to it. They have been doing it, to a degree for years, but they're looking at putting in a couple new big tunnels specifically for generation. Fascinating stuff, several billions in upgrades lately and still working on it. Keep up the good work, Matt! You rock.
Thank you for making this video, as storage really is a missing link in the renewable energy supply chain. It seems that many countries and regions have in recent years dramatically scaled up their renewable energy production but done nearly nothing in comparison for renewable energy storage leading to reliability and cost problems.
The issue with pump storage hydro is, you need a place for it.
You may be wrong about the plant going form off to on. It should less than a minute. 15 minutes may be getting to full power.
Gravity needs to charge up first xD
Even a minute means it should be paired with flywheels and batteries. Turbines are essentially flywheels it takes time to reverse momentum.
@@nustada not exactly. On the level of the grid a minute is not that much, when it comes to power consumption.
@@nustada I would assume there is no momentum reversal. If you want to store excess energy, you drive pumps pushing the water into the upper reservoir. I can't think of a reason for the turbines to be involved here, you don't want to generate electricity that moment and they'd only increase the power required to push the water up. thus, you use a separate waterway without turbines. In that case there's a standstill in the turbines, if you want to take energy out of the reservoir, you just open the floodgates and let gravity pull down the water and turn on the turbine from 0.
@@littlerave86 They use reversible pump turbines. And yes the momentum does need to be reversed. You don't generate energy by opening the floodgates, those are for wasting energy, from floods.
If you think momentum can instantly be reversed go stand in front of a moving train.
I hope that your GW stands for GWh and it's just a mistake
All of the GW vs. GWh are correct. I got too relaxed in my shorthand and should said "power output" instead of "capacity" when talking about GW.
Man I really want to see a retrospective video from you. One that checks the old most promising techs from your videos and see if they have gotten anywhere.
Great stuff, Matt. Always solid videos backed up with science.
Great job with this one! One thought on the matter: What is the efficiency loss of evaporation? I can see that placing the dams in a desert where the wildlife is effected less is a great idéa, but the evaporation must be huge!
One solution to the evaporation question is to cover the water surface with plastic balls, UV resistent ones, which do not impede boats or fish, but form an insulation and evaporation buffer.
@@linmal2242 or better yer, solar panels. You won't have boats sailing or fish living in the artificial reservoirs made in desert anyway...
@@Daddo22 Surely they can just make the hole small but insanely deep, like km's. That would work and also feed off the underground water tables...
@@Snook_ What's the cost of digging a deep hole? This is all about cost.
@@Daddo22 Well, the reason is that the reservoirs would need maintenance, which is why they need access. And birds go everywhere lol.
I didn't know they used reversible turbines. I always assumed separate pumps were used for pumping water up, because I assumed a different system is needed to optimize pumping than what is needed to optimize for power generation.
You could probably get more energy efficiency by using dedicated pumps for that, but you'd also be adding more and crucially different systems which brings additional manufacturing and construction costs as well as a separate logistics chain and maintenance costs. I assume it is overall cheaper to operate a facility with the reversible turbines doing both jobs.
Subbed. Great and interesting content. Keep them coming sir.
94% - that's an amazing figure. They used to run whole railroads that way. In Mexico starting in Cordoba and running up a big slope through Maltrata. I'm estimating about 50 miles. It was implemented in the 1920s and was gone by the time they introduced the longer, heavily tunnel encumbered alignment in use now about 1985. Now you would just build an enormously long, straight tunnel under the old line.
Some good ideas ....... and some crazy mixed in with them!
Water strorage power has long been used and is by orders of magnitude better than some of the kinetic storage (thankfully missed here) ...... but a liquid that is 2.5 times denser than water only makes sense if it is both cheap (and lets not forget water comes basically for free) and safe! Other than that just make the paddling pool at the top BIG! .... like Really Big!
As to the storage in disused mine and pumping from lower to upper levels .... How are you going to make it water tight? Normally in a mine simply stopping it from flooding is a major problem!
You do have to admit it is an old idea ....... Ozymandius used to do it!
Having too much water is a problem in a pumped hydro system????
@@gregbailey45 Not usually! They use overflow sluce gates ;o) It can all get more complicated when you plug your system into an existing water source (river) though. You need to account for flooding upstream! ;o)
I love your optimistic looks at the future. The real problem, ad I see it, is in convincing the general Population that the dumbest thing to do with oil is to burn it. . .
In the future it will be but we are not that that point yet. We need to let technology dictate the change not politics.
@@chasingliberty1776 how about survival dictating the terms?
Screw politics.
@@chasingliberty1776 The problem is that fossile fuel ditcates the politics (via legal bribery), that regulates the technology.
I guess you guys don’t know about government subsidies either. There is a reason they give them out because the they are not as efficient right now. And if you really believe AOC and think the world is going to end in less then 10 years then there is no you debating you as you are a crazy person in need of mental help.
Thanks Matt !
Please show more about compressed energy storage
I wonder why the video doesn't mention the capacity for any of the systems even though the title seems to suggest that it's about comparing the size of the battery. Instead it only looks at the power output of the batteries.
The Bath County Pumped Storage station has a capacity of 24,000 MWh
The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station has a capacity of 40,000 MWh
At their rated power, both would only be able to run for about 11 hours, so it looks unlikely that pumped storage is currently used for seasonal storage either.
For comparison, Tesla's Hornsdale Power reserve is now at 193.5 MWh and the largest Lithium-Ion battery storage system currently is the Gateway Energy Storage at 250 MWh.
Personally I'm not so sure that we need seasonal storage either. Both wind and solar are at about 3 cents/kWh now, so a combination of installing overcapacity, connecting grids across a country/countries and storage with current batteries or water in the range of days or weeks seems plenty and already affordable with todays technology to cover our energy needs.
This needs to be way more up in the comments!
Of course one can compare the maximum Power output of a plant but when i talk about batteries i usually wanna know how much Energy it can hold. The max Power Output is relevant too but... yea.
Thanks for checking the numbers. I briefly tried to find them, but didnt dig into it. I am really confused as of how they did not check this great flaw when making the video.
I would have loved to hear more about the ecological aspects of the outlined solutions.
This video is familiar, here we have Purulia pumped storage project just an hour drive away. Thanks for bringing such videos.
Excellent point about the latest ideas not necessarily being the best.
Cost and time to bring online, Matt. PuHS is very capital intensive and takes years to bring online.
LFP, or even a less material expensive cell, is likely going to win the role of storage. Large battery packs can be brought online soon after the cells are manufactured. The storage facilities can be spread around creating more grid stability for neighborhoods and minimizing power distribution lines.
There is also synergies with electric filling stations for EVs. Thing is people will want fast charging cars, and stations that will do this need some storage, otherwise the cabling costs and grid effects will sink them. So i predict ultra fast charging station will serve as miniature load balancing and storage for the grid. And these will employ some type of electrochemical battery. Presumably the same kind as other grid storage batteries will use for economical reasons.
I think the future is bright for manufacturers of stationary grid batteries, decades of growing demand is guaranteed. I believe tesla will come out new battery solutions soon for only this market.
Lithium is NOT an unlimited resource, soon or later we will run out of it.
@@mhmdnazel1
Everything is limited. But we won't run out of lithium.
Do a bit of research. Find out how much lithium there is in the Earth's crust (including the oceans). Factor in recycling.
@@kistuszek
I think you've got it right.
BTW, Tesla is already installing very large battery storage system. Most are being used for peak shaving which is where the largest profits are found. But Tesla has already installed some pure storage systems.
This will not be a Tesla-only business. Making LFP cells is not hard to do and we should see a number of companies around the world getting into the mass storage business.
Knew it was going to be water. Elevation is a great way of storing energy.
Yes, I went into this video as "no way it's not hydroelectric", so I felt disappointed. Should stop falling into this kind of click bate!
Your videos are so professional and well researched. Thank you
Glad you like them!
Great video Matt
For extra benefit: place floating solar panels in the reservoirs to generate extra MWh and to reduce evaporation!
No need to make them float (very responsive for maintenance) just have them fixed above the reseviour as a roof.
Also not clear that this would be a better use than putting solar panels in urban waste areas, eg as roofs over car parking where the power could be directly tied into the store that owns the parking lot.
And to have the hardest time possible to maintain those solar panels.
Nice thought but the negative sides outweigh the positive sides by a large margen.
What about pumped hydro with sea water? There are a lot of high tall coast lines that can work to produce energy with pumped hydro with a green first source like wind or solar. I'm thinking in something like Espejo de Tarapacá in Chile. But high coasts lines are all over the world
Ireland was evaluating this also
Desalinate it first. Desalinated water needs to be placed in a dam or river to make it drinkable.
Saltwater destroys everything. You'd be surprised how many problems putting a turbine in salt can give.
@@fairhall001 the idea is to produce energy, not drink the water. To produce energy the salty water return to the ocean
@@antoniousai1989 yes, is the big problem to be solved. But maybe with enough maintenance and replacement, with the correct materials that not corrode, etc, the project could be feasible.
Great video Matt. I love how much research is gone to make this video. Keep up the good work.
Much appreciated!
”You cant store the energy in thin air, but you can in thick air” -Matt Ferrell 2022
8:00 the process seems pretty wasteful and minimally energy dense even if they cycle the compression multiple times to get higher pressure during times of excess demand. An important difference between compressed air and hydroelectric like you said is efficiency, the compression and release causes a lot of waste heat due to the expansion and compression of the gas as well as the inherent inefficiency from the limited capability to capture escaping compressed air and the lower efficiency at lower pressures (though the water resevoir seems like a clever idea to solve that last part, that provides extremely little energy storage compared to the system as a whole). But I imagine the bigger cost savings with batteries is lower operating and maintenance costs. Hydroelectric may get a pass due to its simplicity and its ability to use existing environments, but compressed air seems like it involves far too many moving parts and infrastructure (which would be fine if it produced energy itself like fuel burning plants, but if its only buying and reselling power like energy storage is supposed to then its operating on slim profit margins already).
Compressed air with a trompé like the ragged chute trompé could be smart but you would need to use the cold for something first.
I agree that compressed air is over-hyped.
I live in Canada and I heard that we tried it in my city a few years ago. However, I haven't found anything more about it in the last few years. So my guess is that it has been abandoned. Versions of pumped hydro are just so much better for the long-term.
I really REALLY wish we would stop using Wh as a measure of energy. Throughout this video I kept wondering if "A 100 MW facility" actually meant 100 MW (which therefore says nothing about the actual amount of energy being stored) or whether is was a mistake and should really have been "MWh". Of course I presume Matt knows his units, but so often do I see even people who should know better use the e.g. "kW" and "kWh" almost interchangeably.
EDIT: Actually, I think Matt actually IS mixing up W and Wh. e.g. at 9:35 he explicitly talks about a "capacity increase" of 28 GW / year, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
Exactly. And when youtubers use units like kW and kWh (or something like MW and MWh) interchangeably, their credibility takes a hit and discourages me from wanting to watch their content.
@@grantgeorgia7168 this happens all over the world.here in Brazil it's the same thing..lol
It is also hard to know if it should be kWh or kJ, or that the difference between the 2 is even known by everyone allong the chain in the game of telephone that we are playing.
Watts is the size of the pipe, Watt-hours is how long the pipe can run.
Thank you so much for this comment. He definetly mixed the Wh and W up quite some times. I don't know much about him, but as an engineer, it makes me think he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Here at my university I never see people mixing them up. Except maybe first semesters
Love your delivery Matt! Keep it going!
Always love your videos! I feel a little smarter after watching each one. And they give me some hope for the future. Thank you Matt
That's awesome to hear! Glad you like them.
How does the moon's gravitational pull modify amount of energy stored?
Not much.
Random comment for channel interaction.
al go rhythms!
Really enjoy your content Matt. Thanks always.
Glad you enjoy it, thanks!
I had no idea about pumped water storage. Great video! +1
This channel is quickly becoming my favorite. I love how Matt does the deep-dive research.
A positive form of pump and dump. :p
Ha, clever
Ha! Nice one.
Also interesting is 'liquid air storage'. It's more complex than compressed air, but higher density, so probably suitable for different applications. There's a pilot plant running near Manchester, UK.
The project in Hatta -Dubai is not just a pumped hydro. It serves other benefits of conventional dam. Being a desert it rains very little. But when it does flash floods occur.
They have marked the natural run off streams and build 3 reservoirs at different elevation. So it stores water and energy, reduce flash flood and provide water for the city at the valley.
So it turns out that I knew exactly what the world's largest "battery" is. I would not have called pumped hydro a "battery". I was expecting to learn that some chemistry besides lithium was now the largest battery... The definition of a "battery" being "a combination of two or more cells".
chemistry is just specific niche of applied physics ;) it's always good to be able to generalize
The origin of the word battery comes from Latin which was originally used as a military term meaning a group of two or more forces working together. Volta used this term to describe a series of chemical cells that he invented that could store electricity. "Battery" has a wide range usages including assault.
Use an over supply of wind power to generate desalinated water, then pump it uphill. Australia's Great Dividing Range is close to the ocean and the water on the other side can run into a salinated inland and flow for thousands of kilometres.
Great video. Can you also take a look on thermal batteries. Specially thermal batteries that works over 100 Celsius.
I’m studying and working in natural resource and I don’t think you’ve done justice to the globes growing fresh water Insecurities. I’m not saying pumped hydro is a bad idea but many people think we need to start looking to conserve fresh water instead of finding ways to use it. Still love your stuff and it was a great video. I just wish you would have talked about that throughout the video.
I wonder if there's a pumped hydro solution for the end consumer.
Lithium ion's potential is that it can just fit in your home, or fill a whole farm... It scales linearly based on the demand requirements.
Can you have a two stage tower of some sort that's able to store enough energy for a single home?
(Pumped hydro - even using "R19" is not really feasible on a "per household" basis.. - towers are expensive, very tall ones are very expensive.)
Raising and lowering the home itself is probably the least expensive gravity option. lol
@@kadmow this is what I expected, I wonder at what scale it becomes feasible... Like one station for a small town, a neighbourhood etc etc
Obviously assuming they have adopted renewables as a collective
The problem with storage is how to achieve useful scale. For a day of household energy storage, say 30kWh = 100 MJ = mgh where g = 10 Hence need mh = 10E6. If height is 10m need lift a million kg or 1000 tonnes. That is the weight of a cube of water 10m each side, or three times the volume of a typical house. Think of a 20m tower (7 stories) with the footprint of a house, strong enough to have the top half or bottom half full of water.
@@keacoq . Ha Ha. Yes giving people numbers... A 10kWh LiFePO4 (LFP) or Li-Ion battery is achievable for a household. Lifting a house 30-50 metres up a tower is not...
"Storing energy out of thick air". I caught that. I like it. :)
EDIT: As for the rest of the subject, I feel like Lithium Ion storage overlooks a key consideration where Pumped anything shines: decommissioning and recycling. A mechanical pumping system is made of metal which can be melted and recycled using existing technology and without any exceptional environmental considerations. Lithium Ion is much more hazardous to dispose of at the end of its service life. You can also continuously improve the efficiency of a Pumped Hydro installation by replacing pumps with more efficient pumps as they're developed and come on the market. A lithium ion battery is what it is, and to improve its efficiency, you have to replace it completely.
Spent lithium batteries are still richer in content than actual ore from the ground. Musk and Straubel have both said they consider spent batteries as *rich ore* .
I totally agree about lithium ion batteries. They are not simple and wear down over time. What happens after 10-15 years?
Pumped hydro requires maintenance and the turbines probably have to get replaced from time to time. But the basic setup is very simple with virtually no maintenance apart from mowing the lawn.
@@companyman7128 Okay, so it sounds like you're saying LiON batteries are recyclable? What infrastructure exists to make that happen? How often does it need to happen to keep the power storage infrastructure in reasonably good condition, and what's the overall environmental impact of recycling batteries compared to manufacturing new turbines?
Very good overview. What about the use of sand as a heat storage medium?
Pumped hydro storage is a great way to store energy. When the snow in the mountains is melted in the spring, they could devert some of the water to resivours in higher elevations and use it to generate electricity during the summer season. By letting the water flow back down to the same rivers through generaters. It could also be used as floud mitigation.