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Gas peaker plants are storage. Well, half of it anyways. Utilities here in Germany are quietly (because that kind of business works best when not everybody is doing it) ramping up electricity to hydrogen converters everywhere. But not for the 1990ies vision of a full "hydrogen economy" complete with fuel cell cars that don't work and whatnot. They just use them to convert cheap (sometime even negative cost, hence the desire to not inspire too much competition) electricity at peak supply times to hydrogen that they push into the existing gas grid that has a huge storage capacity by itself (think months of national demand). That network is currently carrying mostly natural gas, but it used to carry much higher fractions of hydrogen back in the age of coal gasification. If you can work with natural gas, chances are that you can work with a conservative blend of natural gas and hydrogen with very little extra investment, very much unlike pure hydrogen concepts.

(Also, utilities are building a lot of heat storage capacity, so that their cogeneration plants can be freely dispatched according to electricity demand, with the district heating function completely decoupled, even on the seasonal scale)

That is really fascinating. Is the hydrogen conversion something that's happening so quietly that there's nothing on the internet about it? I can't find any sources at them moment.

This Wikipedia entry has some details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas#Power_to_hydrogen

https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-electr...

Still not deleted by the new administration! It was near the top of Google results for "electric to hydrogen."

I haven't invested in the infrastructure because electricity is not my business.

If it were my business, I would still be at the mercy of giant incumbent competitors, and any dollar I spent on common infrastructure would benefit them more than me. They could then use that advantage to slowly force me out of the business.

The largest firms have the most to gain from improvements in the industry's infrastructure. So the onus is largely upon them to make such improvements. In many cases, there is only one firm with significant pricing power--the natural monopolist--and everyone else in their territory has to dance to their tune. They're the only ones capable of improving infrastructure, aside from a government.

The pricing power is the only way for a firm to afford projects that are neither profitable nor a competitive advantage. The only point for everyone else in the market to having firms with pricing power is so they can undertake those projects that benefit everyone in the long run.

If you're not going to improve the industry, there is no advantage for everyone else to allow you to remain as the natural monopolist. The logical thing for them to do is to seize your capital by force and transfer it to someone who might do more with it (but might do less).

A natural monopoly does not mean the same firm will always have pricing power, but that the modal situation is that only one firm has it at a time. When natural monopolists are protected as de jure protected monopolies, yes it does prevent redundant investment, but it also puts no competitive pressure on the monopolist to remain the monopolist.

I would guess that electric utilities would make wiser decisions about infrastructure if they were less protected from competition. That introduces the risk that a particular market might not be adequately served in an economic dominance war that wipes out both incumbent and challenger, but I think those crises would be very temporary, and would likely invoke a government intervention less costly than protecting the monopoly in the first place.

We're talking about energy storage, are we not?

If you think that energy storage "makes money", build a small 10MW battery plant to supply a neighborhood or two. Buy electricity when its cheap, sell it when its expensive.

There's no "common infrastructure building" going on here. You own the batteries, and maybe you have to pay the big utility for some power-poles and comply with some basic regulations.

The fact of the matter is: these sorts of infrastructure issues are being solved by the free market all the time. Frequency regulation, long-term energy storage (which really is just ~hours) and such are commonly subcontracted out to smaller companies who own small plants from the big utility companies.

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> I haven't invested in the infrastructure because electricity is not my business.

Then do the next best thing. Buy stock in companies that are doing grid-scale energy storage across this country.

Sell it to whom? Your neighbors? In a lot of municipalities, there's no such thing as "selling it when it's expensive" because the only customer is the utility, and the utility is only paying wholesale rate from solar / alternative energy customers.

It may be an option in some places, but at present, I think you'd lose money under your current plan in a lot of places, and are unlikely to have neighbor-customers in many of the remainders.

> If it were my business, I would still be at the mercy of giant incumbent competitors, and any dollar I spent on common infrastructure would benefit them more than me. They could then use that advantage to slowly force me out of the business.

> The largest firms have the most to gain from improvements in the industry's infrastructure. [Large monopolistic firms are] the only ones capable of improving infrastructure, aside from a government.

Under deregulated energy markets in the US, common infrastructure (specifically the transmission grid) is placed under the control of a non-profit Regional Transmission Operator or Independent System Operator. In practice the transmission lines are built and maintained by private for-profit companies, but their profits are fixed by regulation and they have to ask the RTO/ISO for permission to do basically anything.

The point of this restructuring was to break up monopolistic control over the transmission grid so that new, small generation or distribution companies could join the transmission network at a fair hookup cost. Additionally, it helps deal with the issue of who pays/profits from improvements to common infrastructure.

http://www.energysmart.enernoc.com/regulated-and-deregulated...

Why didn't I make the investment? Because I am a private citizen and not a public utility... Utilities are able to rate base their investment and get a guaranteed rate of return on the investments they make. This rate base system is part of the reason why they often make costly and unnecessary investments in >$1B nuclear plants or expensive substations rather than in cheap energy efficiency measures or distributed solar. We have the technology to help mitigate renewable variability and could deploy it if we wanted to. Utilities just chose to drag their feet and not invest heavily in deploying those solutions because the wanted to keep building the same stuff they always build and get the ROI.

> guaranteed rate of return

> We have the technology to help mitigate renewable variability and could deploy it if we wanted to.

Then build a company if you think its so easy. From my view: its clear that there are risks entailed and that the technology is far too expensive for widescale deployment.

But its a free country. If you really think that building a Lithium Ion energy-storage plant is free money, then build a Lithium Ion energy-storage center. There's no reason to blame other people for not seeing the world the same way as you.

EDIT: If building such companies isn't in your interest, then buy stocks in those companies that are working on energy storage. Like buy stock in ABB or something. Or maybe TSLA if you really think their Lithium Ion technology really is taking over the electric grid.

You can't actually start a power company and compete with say Dominion etc, as they are legal monopolies. You can't even buy one without regulatory approval.

Yeah, but you can start a solar plant to provide energy to Dominion / etc. etc.

https://www.dominionresources.com/library/domcom/pdfs/electr...

Or you can invest into companies that compete against Dominion / etc. etc. that focus more on renewables.

You can invest in renewable quite easily by purchasing your power from a company that supplies it. It doesn't even require capital or much risk. Often they also provide cheaper power than the big players. The one I use is cheaper, and they also donate money to planting trees, and protecting old growth forests.

Secondly you can invest your pension in ethical, and eco companies. Again, they often outperform others (mine has anyway).

Thirdly, you can live in a place which does not waste power. Or you can at least do quite a bit to reduce energy usage yourself.

Get a bike. You'll live longer, look better, and you'll not kill people with your pollution. Ya! for not being a murderer. Share a cargo bike so you can carry heavy things.

All things which normal people not wanting to take on utility scale investments and risks. Look at your outgoing expenses and see how you can select the providers. When millions of people do it, it has a very powerful effect.

Convince your city to also purchase renewable power. As an example, in Melbourne they used the purchasing power of their electric trams. They tendered out for a new renewable power plant to provide the power. With many urban people often voting 'Green', this is not a really hard thing to do or get support for.

Good luck!

> You can invest in renewable quite easily by purchasing your power from a company that supplies it. It doesn't even require capital or much risk. Often they also provide cheaper power than the big players. The one I use is cheaper, and they also donate money to planting trees, and protecting old growth forests.

Not an option in all states. But yes, this is an option for me that I've been considering. This strategy relies on the local municipal (or state) government on "deregulating" the utility companies. And also on the government to force the utility companies to buy energy from a variety of sources.

There's a lot of "political infrastructure", laws, deals, and agreements, that are needed to make such options a possibility. And it will do good to remember that the "option to buy renewable" isn't an option in many states.

I don't think Li-ion plants are free... My point is that there are situations when problems can be solved with efficiency/renewables/new technology or with building more traditional power plants and infrastructure. Utilities have tended to go the traditional power plant/infrastructure route because they know it and because they get a set rate of return on things they build and rate base. With the traditional utility model, they do not make much money if they make it easier for people to install solar on their house or if they incentivize people to switch to LEDs.

Those solutions didn't exist 10 years ago, and it takes ~10 years to get a lot of these projects started.

Because they did not invest in it. Becuase they fight it. LED was not invented in 2017.

LEDs were expensive.

From my experience, its "grassroot" old guys who just don't like the new "color" of LEDs. True, LEDs were invented decades ago, but the "proper color" ("Warm White") wasn't really available until recently.

Now that LEDs are the proper color for internal homes, people are beginning to use them. They're still far more expensive than incandescent bulbs, so a lot of people (who don't run the calcs on their electricity bill) still prefer the older bulbs.

>Then build a company if you think its so easy.

If I had a dollar for every time I saw a legitimate complaint about a complex system met with, "Well just reinvent it yourself from the ground up if you're so fucking smart," I'd be a rich man. It is not a constructive suggestion.

The problem is that there are plenty of energy-storage companies available for you to invest into on the Stock Market.

AES Energy Storage for example, is building tons of energy storage across America. And you can support them by providing investment dollars.

So yeah, building companies (or at least, helping companies that match your worldview) is quite easy in this Democracy. Instead of complaining about it, you should be elevating AES Energy Storage and other similar companies.

>Instead of complaining about it, you should be elevating AES Energy Storage and other similar companies.

No. I refuse to accept a standard of discourse where one cannot even point out a problem without having already solved it. There are many, many hard problems with complex systems in the world, and no person, much less a complete outsider, can hope even to begin to address more than a very, very small number of them even if they dedicate their life to the task. Saying "fix it or shut up" is asinine.

Well, if stopping people from demanding you solve a problem before pointing it out is so simple, why don't you go do it then?

...

I'm sorry.

In all seriousness though, it's a no-expertise-needed response that's meant to shout down people who are particularly clueless and disconnected. Perhaps we need a substitute response, like calling for an expert on the relevant field to decide whether the person is clueless or not?

It isn't just on the market or utilities. All of their prices are heavily regulated. Companies that produce baseline power are expected to make a set profit (no more or less) and the people lending them money and buying their stocks also expect a set return on investment. Any price increases have to be justified politically and the companies are expected to pay off previous investments and then return the majority of their profits to the shareholders. It is a case of an extremely conservative market being upended by rapid change.

And the kinds of investments the grid needs to move to a majority renewable system are very different from what was needed in the past. Many of the best wind projects, for example, are located out in the middle of nowhere and require large transmission lines to bring them to the places that use the electricity. The distributed nature of solar and wind require more interconnections to bring in power from locations that have an excess of sun or wind to those that need the electricity. It is more difficult to keep these diverse sources of power synced so that the grid transports a steady amount of power at the right frequency, and that also needs more and different investments than in the past.

It's not a simple matter of profit/loss, but of balancing a number of political considerations and a huge bootstrapping problem. I don't think any one company can handle this by itself.

Another way to deal with variable supply is to incentivize the demand to be variable along with it. This is done with variable pricing of the electricity. People will then find it worthwhile to adjust use of the elastic part of their demand to when electricity is cheaper - such as charging their car.