Nov 05 2008
The Future: Distributed Energy Production and Storage
Production of energy is currently the realm of large corporations, which have centralized facilities that, typically, burn fossil fuels. The obvious side effect, is that while burning fossil fuels creates energy, it also creates carbon dioxide. Approximately 85% of our worldwide energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels. About 6% comes from nuclear, and the rest is “renewable” energy, with the largest slice of the pie coming from hydroelectric.
Addiction to Fuel
Bryan Lawrence has pointed to a presentation titled Western civilisation’s “energy normality illusion”. In it, they rely on Hubbert peak theory to project future carbon dioxide emissions. Their projections are far below even the most conservative of the SRES projections. In fact, they go as far to say that the “IPCC scenarios are impossible” [emphasis in original]. Some of the figures are also available on The Oil Drum with explanatory text.
I think this is the most telling figure. My interpretation is that there is a certain amount of combustible material in the ground. And in the absence of a cheaper form of energy, we will continue to dig up and burn it to maintain our standard of living. If emissions are regulated, this pushes the peak to fossil fuel combustion to a later date, but the same amount of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
The solution is to provide a cheaper source of energy.
Renewables and Infrastructure
In the presentation, Kjell Aleklett and David B. Rutledge argue that peak oil and peak coal will provide constraints on how much carbon dioxide will eventually be emitted into the atmosphere. However, even though their emission predictions are lower than the IPCC, they also point out that we cannot wait to mitigate the eventual effects of warming.
Delaying crash-programme of conversion to renewable energy means that the energy to do this later will not be available and so it will never be done (pain now means much less pain later).
This is extremely important. We must make the transition from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable economy for the simple reason that there is a finite supply of fossil fuels. Eventually, they will run out. When that time comes, we as a society need to already have the infrastructure in place to transition to a new source of energy. But as the above quote suggests, doing so will not be cheap. Speaking as an America, we have a dreadful inability to look into the future and make decisions that will be good for us in tens or hundreds of years instead of right now.
This lack of foresight leads to infrastructure problems, such as the catastrophic collapses, monumental projects after years of neglect, and the use of a dam as a thoroughfare creating a security nightmare. But in a time of “no new taxes” it’s no wonder that we don’t have enough tax dollars to adequately address infrastructure needs. The United States Interstate Highway System hasn’t had significant change since Eisenhower instituted it in the 1950s.
Possible Solution?
Given that many Americans are opposed to large-scale government intervention of any kind, the solution must be at a smaller scale – it must be locally governed. The federal government must play a role, and for that reason will upset many. We must develop distributed energy production and storage. Right now, we have no way to store energy. The energy used to power my laptop as I write this was produced almost the same instant as it was used. This lack of storage capacity has implications for the future of our energy infrastructure.
The biggest problem is that if we want to switch to truly renewable energy such as solar or wind (and I see no viable alternative, as biofuels will just delay the problem), we need some way to store that energy produced during periods when supply is greater than demand to be used later when demand is greater than supply. There would obviously be no solar production at night, so if we want to switch to a solar-based energy infrastructure, we’d need a vast storage system.
A Solar Energy Example
Solar has several problems; the most worrying are that it is extremely variably from day-to-day, and non-existent at night. For instance, at this very minute there is a solitary cloud in the sky that is blocking solar radiation from the sun to the spot where I am sitting. However, in a few moments that cloud will move and I will again be basked in the electromagnetic energy from our sun. And there we are.
If I were a solar panel, I would not have produced electricity during the time when the cloud was between me and the sun. But my laptop has a battery, which would have provided me with power until I was again able to get primary production from the sun. This simple illustration shows that individual implementations of solar power are not a viable solution.
The good thing about solar power is that it is extremely reliable on large temporal and spacial scales. If we average the amount of solar radiation received by the whole of the Earth’s surface this year, it will be very close to the amount from last year. If solar power is to be viable, it must cover a large area to be insusceptible to local changes in weather.
Batteries
Solar energy, while currently not as cheap as energy from burning fossil fuels, is still cheap. The problem of variable power production due to changes in the weather can be compensated for by the implementation of solar panels over a large area. But this does not solve the problem of storage. We have the capacity to store power – in small amounts. That’s exactly what AAA batteries do, or really any other kind of battery.
Golf carts are a great example of using stored energy as a useful transport mechanism. The good thing about golf carts is that their batteries can provide power for a long time, as a typical golf game will take longer than 4 hours. The problem is that they are limited in speed. As the speed limit is increased, the time the batteries last decreases quickly.
We need better batteries.
Completely electric cars are the solution to the storage of energy. Whenever they were not in use they would need to be plugged into the grid. In periods of excess production, their batteries would be charged to be used when there was excess demand. Everyone would have one or two power plants in their garage instead of having just a few large power plants for an entire city.
Conclusion
Fossil fuels are in limited supply, and therefore there is a need to change our energy infrastructure to a different source of power. The most logical source of power is directly from the sun. There are currently major problems which limit the implementation of solar photovoltaics, but these can be overcome with significant investment in new infrastructure. The problem of energy storage will need to be solved, and the proposed solution is to use personal batteries as a distributed communal storage device. This solution to the energy problem is independent from the consequences of the CO2 problem.
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14 Responses to “The Future: Distributed Energy Production and Storage”
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“Completely electric cars are the solution to the storage of energy. Whenever they were not in use they would need to be plugged into the grid. In periods of excess production, their batteries would be charged to be used when there was excess demand. Everyone would have one or two power plants in their garage instead of having just a few large power plants for an entire city.”
Having heavy batteries that are part of what they have to power to move around does not make a lot of sense. Size car batteries to work for moving cars and install extra batteries in the garage if you need or want to use household level storage for electricity. Using the grid to distribute excess household or individual building level energy production (many non-residential building types that are minimally used or not used at all on weekends and holidays). Unless you think we should eliminate the grid, then let’s use it rather than putting heavier batteries in our cars requiring more household level energy production and not taking advantage of the asynchronous demand at household level and non-household building level during peak generation — mid-morning to mid-afternoon when the sun shines.
Sounds good, but hydrogen still makes more sense for energy storage.
First it softens the economic impact of transition. Most existing engines can be powered by hydrogen providing a clean interim fuel for the millions of IC engines that will be around for decades.
Second, hydrogen storage systems have greatly improved over the past decade. HDPE lined ultra high pressure storage cylinders provide enough stored energy for vehicles to have normal range and performance truly needed in the US.
Third, fuel cells are much more versatile power plants for high efficiency hybrid vehicles. Fuels cells can now be made without platinum catalyst greatly reducing cost.
I would not be so quick to dismiss bio-fuels. Algae has huge potential and pilot projects have shown that 15,000 gallons per acre is obtainable. In the event of cap and trade, algae offers industries a CO2 mitigation option that can reduced CO2 output by nearly 50%. This will effectively guarantee that algae production on a large scale is in the future.
With respect to storage, heated liquid storage has been proven effective and highly efficient for concentrated (not photovoltaic) solar power. Pumping water up into a tower will almost certainly prove effective and highly efficient for wind power (it’s been used for decades in hydro-electric), and perhaps for concentrated solar power.
The flaw in the argument is that fossil fuels will remain cheap up until they are about to run out and then spike. That makes no sense. Fossil fuels will gradually increase in price over time and this will make alternatives naturally more viable - especially as technology evolves.
It is also a mistake to assume that ‘green’ technology will not come with it’s own constraints. For example, modern solar panels and batteries depend in rare earth elements like indium and hafnium. Limits on the availability of these resources could be a devastating as limits on the availability of fossil fuels.
That is why we should tie our hands by denying ourselves access to important energy sources.
Something doesn’t add up. Is the argument implicit that the carbon that was in the atmosphere in the paleo past is now tied up in more carbonate rock than in past geologic ages, so isn’t in coal beds so can’t be released into the atmosphere rapidly?
I’d like to see the books balance on this. I have the odd worry that someone’s pitching the idea that there’s no reason to limit burning fossil fuels because there can’t be enough to warm up the planet.
We heard that a few years ago arguing there was “not enough petroleum” to cause a problem when all burned, and that was wrong because they weren’t counting coal.
Now they say they’re counting coal and there’s not enough even counting that to warm the Earth enough to worry about?
Blastedly simplistic stuff. You do realize other people have thought about this stuff before.
A. The price mechnaism is well able to give a higher price for a good that will be in short supply in the future (and undrilled oil is extremely storable…where it is).
B. Beter batteries…mwahahaha. Why not just wave the wand and make fusion, Harry? Battery reasearch is nothing new…and progress very slow and incremental.
The world energy outlook spells it out reasonably clearly. If we carry on with FFs, we end up with more than 550ppm CO2 by the end of the century.
The executive summary is free and worth the effort. Short term, best solution is wind, longer term, probably nukes, but reducing need is still top of the list.
To mitigate against extreme climate risks we need to change the way we live and think of how we live, we need to resolve the global transport issue, and we need to find a better battery, for starters.
In Sweden we do not “store” energy, we vary production instead. Some 50 % of all elctricity is produced by nuclear power plants and 50 % comes from water power. The nuclear plants always work at their top capacity. Water varies from hour to hour, from day to day and (to some extent) from season to season to cover variations in consumption. When and if we get substantial wind power water power will play the same role.
http://tinyurl.com/6pcyvs
I liked this article on energy. I got it from someone under the subject: “Yay, free power”
Atmoz, read this and think about it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_rule
An analysis of what solutions it will take to reduce carbon emissions enough by 2050 to stave off the worst case scenario of global warming is at
Science magazine article on Stablilization Wedges to solve global warming
http://carbonsequestration.us/Papers-presentations/htm/Pacala-Socolow-ScienceMag-Aug2004.pdf
Joseph Romm’s series of articles at Climate Progress use the ideas from the above article and analyses and updates what are the best choices that we can start implementing now.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/10/22/an-introduction-to-the-core-climate-solutions/
Each wedge represents a solution that can remove 50 gigatons of emissions by 2050
in order to prevent CO2 exceeding 450ppm
They say we need about a dozen such wedges to do the job. A big one is conservation and efficiency- two wedges.
Solar thermal could be 2 wedges.
It wasn’t mentioned in the 2004 article at Science but has since gained attention. The three utilities in California have signed on for about 2 gigawatts of solar thermal already.
One gigawatt would power San Francisco or about 700,000 homes.
Hoover Dam is 2 gigawatts
“The obvious side effect, is that while burning fossil fuels creates energy, it also creates carbon dioxide.”
And this is a problem?
Myself and other plants like me need carbon dioxide. We describe it in variously uplifting ways; “golden”, “gas of life”, “fresh and pure”, “breath of God” to name a few.
With every leaf breath we take we feel a deep connection to our our ancestors as they come back to sustain us and our seedlings.
Please don’t attack our way of life.
If you do anything, please reduce the gases of Satan like Nitrous and Sulfur Oxides.
I can’t get around as I’m rooted in place and only rarely get access to the internet, so please consider my barkfelt pleas.
TCO,
Still cold outside. Soon we are going to have a negative global temp trend from 1995 to 2009 (or 15 years), based on RSS satellite data. What you once called wishful thinking will soon be reality.
I have been fond of the idea of solar power since I first played with it in engineering thermodynamics as an undergrad. I am very encouraged by the progress since then in photovoltaics. However I think the environmental problems associated with solar power are far larger than most people appreciate.
The manufacture and disposal of batteries create huge problems, not just lead acid batteries, newer types are generally worse pound for pound. I have talked to engineers who build and run landfills who contend batteries are already the most dangerous landfill problem. Any significant large scale use of solar power is going to make that worse by orders of magnitude.
Wind seems worse than solar, same limitations, worse impact, and so I am trying to make solar work in some unusual applications. Is anyone seriously trying to use solar power to generate hydrogen? It looks like a semi automated plant that runs when the sun shines could make good money.
Because of the storage problem with wind and solar power I think we should take a look at the possibility of handling most of the base load with new generation nuclear plants. I don’t know anyone who seriously contends anything is better than nuclear in terms of environmental impact per generated kilowatt hour.