Tesla runs an entire island on solar power
engadget.com
engadget.com
One of the toughest things to overcome is that lithium ion batteries have a limited lifespan (although it's improving) and the cost for that life span compared to alternatives is pretty high, so the economics aren't great. Yet.
The environmental hazards, both in manufacturing and disposal, are not insignificant either[1].
With all that said, li-ion represents our best bet for future tech advances that have minimal environmental impact, especially for space travel.
Eventually. (But if I was a VC, I'd be investing in cleaner and more efficient ways to utilize petrochemicals in the near/mid term.. maybe looking at non-burning tech; whatever happened to fuel cells?)
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environmen...
Toyota is actually coming out with a hydrogen fuel cell car: https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/
Hydrogen is looking like a dead duck, at least as an automotive fuel. The Mirai costs about the same as a mid-range Tesla Model S. I know which I'd rather own.
PS: This also simplifies the problem to: Can you make and store hydrogen for a lower cost than natural gas.
That is an important consideration, but on a national level it may still be useful as redundant capacity. If your hydrogen tanks are fill up over months when production is vastly above demand, and only used in very rare situations then it might still be viable. At that point it's more a question of economics then thermodynamics.
However, the standby generators which use this hydrogen are a more direct comparison in cost and efficiency terms.
I suspect this is one of the reasons the powerwall makes so much sense for Tesla. The battery comes out of a car and then they re-sell it to go into somebodies house.
There is a start-up in Melbourne working on this model as well. http://www.relectrify.com/
> The Tesla Energy batteries will supply a 52 MWh utility-scale energy storage system in order to help KIUC meet evening peak demand, which typically occurs between 5:00 pm and 10:00 pm... SolarCity said it would charge the utility 14.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for power from the batteries in a 20-year arrangement
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/19/solarcity-deploy-tesla-...
edit: looks like Oʻahu is getting flywheels: http://amberkinetics.com/amber-kinetics-and-hawaiian-electri...
It's too bad Tesla seems all-in on batteries even for large-scale storage projects.
SpaceX is doing the same: use one rocket motor on booster and upper stage, and mass produce it. In contrast Ariane uses three different motors on one rocket.
The additional benefits of batteries over flywheels however is that utility-scale energy storage can be achieved with a wide range of battery quality. What I mean by that is that say, for example, a batch of batteries doesn't pass QC to make it into the Tesla cars by virtue of having only 85% of their desired capacity. They can still be used in energy storage facilities.
Same goes for used battery packs from Teslas that have degraded to 70-80% of their original capacity over the years. I surmise it's quite more efficient to use these packs for grid storage than to recycle them right away. Space is probably not a huge constraint for them, so it's not a big deal to use packs that operate in the lower capacity ranges.
Think of it as a big energy storage cloud like Backblaze's storage pods. They mix and match consumer grade hardware, but because of scale and redundancy, they can get away with it and still provide reliable storage.
Same goes for energy.
I'm not quite sure what the scales are for flywheel manufacturers compared to Tesla's gigafactory, but they're probably at least an order of magnitude smaller, plus flywheels generally can't be used as the main source of power in cars or portable electronics, while Li Ion cells can.
In the case of that Island I assume what they need is that over longer timeframes they have enough sun and can store the oversupply of electricity for a relatively long time, because the occassions when there isn't enough sun are rare.
Flywheels with air-bound rotors on mechanical bearings do, flywheels with vacuum-bound rotors on magnetic bearings don't as most of the losses are frictional.
If you have batteries, they can come online as fast as a flywheel.
This article talks about the issues a bit: http://www.zdnet.com/article/does-flywheel-have-a-future-in-...
When you consider it, most of our roofs are unused, and would make an ideal location for tiny panels + battery packs. Similarly new blocks of city development can be planned around a central panel+pack with housing surrounding it.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1FyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1613&l...
Same with places prone to radical weather. Or just anywhere that doesn't get a lot of sun (the farther you get from the equator, really).
Because even if we get solar panel cost down in the next few years, it is still going to be expensive and need a fair amount of maintenance. And if that doesn't offset the cost sufficiently, it isn't worth it
Believe me, I want clean energy and do think solar should be exploited where it is reasonable (same with wind) and wish we would at least use cleaner sources where it isn't. But studies/experiments like this tend to rely on best case scenarios and corner cases and often just don't take economics into consideration.
Are they good as proof of concepts and PR? Yeah. But they still aren't that representative.
My point was more in balancing out the common misconception of "Let's just put a solar cell on every roof".
The initial reason for this was that to get electricity from the grid to them was going to cost _lots_ of money. Solar is an important part of their mix - the Hebrides get a a good chunk of sun in the summer (and long days too). They've been a case study for a number of similarly isolated communities - either islands or other locations far away from existing electricity infrastructure.
Making batteries more efficient (and cheaper), and making each of the renewables mix more efficient and cheaper will make this possible for more and more communities.
Renewable, but mostly as hydro.
Things are easier when you have large hydro (relative to your needs), Iceland's electrical production has been 100% renewable since 2008 (and was 99.9% renewable before that) because they have a ton of hydro (80% of total capacity), and a fair amount (and growing) of geothermal (geothermal is 2/3rd of their energy consumption but the vast majority is direct use for heating, not electricity generation). And note that ~70% of Icelandic electricity generation is solely for aluminum production.
> Three hydroelectric generators produce electricity from running water. The biggest hydro above at Laig on the west side of the island is 100kW, with two smaller 5-6kW hydros on the east side.
> Four small 6kW wind turbines below An Sgurr
> 50kW Photovoltaic array producing electricity from the sun.
> Although the capacity of the scheme is around 184kW, not all renewable resources produce their maximum output all the time or at the same time.
I think this means that solar would provide 27% of their total coverage if everything was running at full capacity (which never happens). Long summer days with low cloud coverage at time of low wind makes solar an important part of their summer mix.
They're also experimenting with using solar on homes to heat water to see how much much less fuel they burn.
>The sun can be used to heat water instead of fuel. Solar panels are being installed by islanders on three homes on Eigg to test how much less fuel is being burnt, and how much money is saved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXe1hBvlylw
It has wind power, sea water sourced heat pumps, a little bit of solar, a test rig for underwater wave power, batteries that are used to relieve the peaks on energy transmission to the mainland and projects to increase electric car uptake to soak up excess energy production.
No, but wind energy does make sense and the UK already generates rather a lot.
>Believe me, I want clean energy
People say this but it seems rather easy for astroturfers to kill green energy projects in the UK based upon the flimsiest of pretexts (e.g Navitus Bay Wind Farm Proposal).
Do you want to know why so many of these initiatives fall apart? Because they get sold as pipe dreams. We'll just throw solar cells on every roof (what I was actually replying to) and free energy for all! Yeah! We'll power the entire planet! Disagree with me? Screw you, you are just working for big oil!
No. We need to be realistic. In some regions, solar is the bomb diggety. In others, wind can generate a lot of watts. And pretty much anywhere that has hydro or geothermal as an option do great. And in a subset of those, it is sufficient to handle power needs.
So sell it that way. Don't perpetuate the myth that we are "just about there" because that makes it an easy target. Explain that it is still mostly about supplementing power and lessening dependencies. Because pushing the former just leads to "Your proposal will handle about a quarter of non-peak energy usage. And it will take at least a decade until it might get to 50?"
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Also, you may want to consider reading other branches as most of your points (aside from the accusations of astroturfing...) were already brought up in other branches. And you'll see that I even praise the UK.
No.
I think when many people say "I want clean energy" they're not actually all that bothered.
That's how proposals like the one I mentioned get killed off. Oil/gas interests can gin up a tepid nimby backlash and with a nod and a wink get the government to kill them off in response, and the government pays no political price for it.
Meanwhile, a Chinese run nuclear project that makes NO financial sense gets government subsidies and fracking gets the go ahead largely because of who the Tories are friends with.
This is the reality of green energy these days: it's not market forces keeping it down, it's being kept down by active suppression of market forces.
>Do you want to know why so many of these initiatives fall apart? Because they get sold as pipe dreams.
Are you saying that the Navitus Bay proposal was a pipe dream?
>So sell it that way. Don't perpetuate the myth that we are "just about there"
Price per kwh-wise, we are already there: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/wind-power-now-the-...
The UK is surprisingly far north. It's always surprising to me what North American places line up with European ones. Luckily for northern Europe, they have lots of other renewable resources to make up for the lack of sunshine.
I think possibly your opinion on Solar is a bit too UK-centric, since it's already very competitive in other locations, particularly anywhere that air-con is commonly used since that electric load is correlated with solar activity.
Sure it does, this is a tired old anti-solar trope that gets sillier every time it's repeated. UK does fine. Germany does fine.
There's definitely a lot of room for growth for solar, but it's not a panacea. I'm looking forward to what we can come up with.
I wonder about the ecological footprint of the batteries though.
As far as mining, I think the biggest issues as far as cost go are getting Cobalt, which is primarily only found in the DR Congos', and then in Tesla's case, finding more Lithium in North America.
I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models.
Tesla's CTO is giving the battery packs a 10-15 year minimum service life.
> I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models.
Tesla plans a recycling line at the Gigafactory. Old batteries in, new packs out.
Neither of these assumptions is apply to grid-scale storage. For (2), you can install 30% new capacity and keep the old batteries in service. And for (1), the size of the battery storage is dictated by wanting to last 3 cloudy days... which rarely happens. So you might only cycle 1/3 of the batteries on an average day.
In reality, with somewhat deep discharges, the number is actually closer to 600-700, before experiencing significant capacity losses of ~15-20%.
At 2000 cycles, I'd imagine the capacity to be somewhere in the range of 50% of initial. Now that doesn't matter for utility scale, because you can easily keep that 50% pack in operation, as long as your total capacity stays the same (adding new packs), but for smaller scale, it's quite significant.
Look up Nissan Leaf range degradation and you'll see what I mean.
I hope they can pour money into technology which generates power from the rain[1].
As with everything the new technology starts out with low power. But my hope is that they increase that and you can generate energy all year round. Even at night!
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-pow...
Hawaii is at 6% solar power and climbing rapidly.
There is an estimated 2.55 × 10^10 kg potentially economically extractable lithium available on the Earth. At current extraction rates that's "gone" in 42 years. Fortunately, lithium is recyclable.
But Earth itself, no, your figures are way off. There is 2.3 * 10^14 kg in seawater alone.
Here's an excellent discussion with sourced facts and figures http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
There are 14,000,000 tonnes of identified reserves. There may be more, we just haven't identified them yet.
Estimates for the Earth's crustal content range between 20 ppm and 70 ppm. Using 20 ppm and the mass of the Earth's crust being more than 2 * 10^19 tonnes, it would be (20/10^6) * (2*10^19) = 400,000,000,000,000 tonnes of Li.
So although we'll only ever be able to mine a small fraction of that, I still think it's safe to assume that we are not capped at 14 million tonnes.
[1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Why-Lithium-Isn...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium
[3] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01496398608056148