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South Australia statewide electricity blackout. 10

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I've just caught up with the links to the ARES Rail Energy Storage Scheme. My first thought was to check the calendar - but no, it's not April 1. Then I wondered why on earth you would consider this over technologies such as Pumped-Storage Hydro?

Thinking about it, though, I guess I can see the logic in the right circumstances - the technology would work where you have limited gradients (steel-wheel-on-rail doesn't work well on steep grades), plenty of horizontal space but limited elevation to play with, limited amount of energy storage requirement - and no suitable water / dam sites.

However, where there is a suitable elevated water storage site above a lower pond, it is hard to see how this technology could compete with Pumped-Hydro for capacity (scale) or efficiency.

E.g. the Ares Nevada project is looking at 50 MW / 12.5 MW.hr capacity (15 minutes storage at full capacity). Existing Pumped-Storage schemes are already in the multi-GW range, with tens of GW.hr storage (i.e. able to run at full capacity for hours, not minutes), and with round-trip efficiency > 80%.

 
JH, there are also many places in the world where water is simply not available, and if there isn't already a dam with a power house nearby there is that cost also.
I just think that ARES is a cleaver way to look at things. Use existing well proven technologies and rearrange them.
Scaling up to a few GW and 8-12hr run time is just a matter of more stuff, not new tech.

I have seen the 80%+ number sited for PHES many times, but I have never found the original analysis. The only ones that I have found assume that the original electrical power is free, a stranded resource, and they only account for the hydraulic energy. Even then I find it hard to believe that a motor-pump-pipe-pipe-turbine-generator would only total 20% loss.


= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
 
Where pumped hydro was built in conjunction with a nuke plant to provide nighttime load for the nuke plant the input power may have been assumed to have a lower cost than free.
 
@EdStainless:

Re: 80% round-trip efficiency for pumped-hydro storage - believe it, the figures are real, and proven many times, over many operating plants.

Hydro-electric generation efficiency runs at over 90% for large scale plant and large electrically-driven pumps can achieve similar efficiencies, but there is a slight loss of round-trip efficiency for a system which has to operate in both generating and pumping modes. Frictional losses are small in a typical plant, because the penstocks are usually kept quite short (e.g an ideal plant has the upper and lower storage ponds very close to each other, with the plant located directly below the upper storage), and flow velocities are kept within manageable limits.

Of course, there's still the cost of transmission to / from the grid (a lot of the most efficient schemes look to co-locate the storage near the intermittent generation plant), O&M costs, costs of capital, etc, but for energy efficiency when you need to store a few GW.hours of electricity, there's not much that can touch pumped-hydro at the moment.

 
And as for the assumption being that the source power is free - the whole idea of storage is to store energy when it is available at lower cost / greater supply than the demand, and release it when the demand exceeds the generating capacity. Benefits include the ability to capture fluctuating energy sources (wind and solar for example), run thermal plant at design rating (when it operates at maximum thermal efficiency) 24 / 7, rather than running at reduced rating / reduced thermal efficiency at times of lower demand, etc.

Also - don't underestimate the capital benefits of reducing the amount of installed base-load generating plant that you need to build. It can be much more economical to build and run 1 GW (say) of base-load plant continuously (operating at maximum thermal efficiency), together with 0.5 GW of storage (say) to account for the peaks, rather than building 1.25 GW of base-load plant, and cycling it from 0.75 to 1.25 GW to match demand.
(Made-up numbers, just used to illustrate a point.)

 
The link didn't work for me so I googled

south-australia/diesel-generators-promised-in-plan-to-save-sa-from-summer-blackouts-cant-run-at-full-power-on-hot-days/

output degradation due to ambient conditions should be known to the power company, the reporter just seems to sensationalize their "discovery".
 
byrdj,
You have to expect sensationalism from the press. That's what they do.

But the story continues to be that South Australia is in dire straits because of their dependence on renewables, and their failure to plan. Thus they have to depend on measures like diesel generators, not the preferred option for generation for big cities.
 
YES, I was narrow sighted in my comments. I see their dire straits. AND I have a gut feeling the US is not far behind.

the phrase diesel generator is misleading. they appear and reported to be Combustion TURBINEs, that will be intially fuel with diesel. this types of units are being extensively built in the US. they could add a boiler to the exhuast and a steam turbine and have a very popular plant arrangement
 
Whatever temporary measures they adopt, it was all avoidable. Australia has plenty of coal and gas, but there is green resistance to using coal fired generation, and green resistance in the southern states to more gas production in their backyard. So when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, they have power shortages.
 
Elon Musk has completed his first major battery project in South Australia:

Tesla Delivers the World’s Biggest Battery—and Wins a Bet

CEO Elon Musk had set a 100-days-or-it’s-free deadline for completing the Australian project


John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
I wonder why the Greens would resist using coal fired generation?

Dik
 
I still remember fondly Geo Bush jr's plan to reduce emissions by "Sequestering coal".
The text of that speech was on the White House web site.


Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
green's believe coal fired generators are dirty, particulates I think are the worst; and I suspect they think "clean coal" is an oxy-moron.

SA's problems are not founded in an inability to plan, but rather in their ability to believe in their plans and their predictions, and themselves.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
 
If it's not GREEN then it must be DIRTY.
Coal causes CO2 emissions. That's not green so it must be dirty.


Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
Today it was announced that the SA government has bought (as opposed to leased) the diesel fuelled backup generators that have just been installed. All hail the green revolution.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
Much easier to be "green" when you're warm or cool as the season demands, and comfy :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand
 
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