What a bore, there I was thinking this was going to be an article about all those new "Green Jobs", or "Green Technologies" we hear so much about, that are just around the corner.

Sadly no, just some hyperventilating web searcher who has cobbled together a number of disparate snips from various sources. (Yes we know we need better batteries.)

No solutions, but more puff of solar and wind power and how wonderful they are after a comment about how they are almost on parity with nuclear and coal sourced electricity, and no reference how the author reached that conclusion.

Why does the renewable energy sector see fit to spin or as others have suggested the true translation of that word, to bullshyt, all the time?

I don't think the King Island battery can be judged as a success; the high cost of electricity on the island was cited as a reason for the closure of some businesses there. However I believe Tasmania has significant potential for pumped hydro energy storage. Simplified wind turbines on the coastline could generate unregulated power to drive variable speed motors at nearby hydro dams. Those motors would pump water back up to the lake and gently refill the dam. Often the wind is still blowing when river flows are low.

The problem with vehicle-to-grid is firstly I think the cars will be too expensive with limited range and secondly they need to be 'online'. It's hard to see huge car parks with millions of cars connected to sockets. Those people could have taken the bus instead. If a safe (cool and low voltage) compact battery could be made that stores say 10 kilowatt hours then every house could have one. Combine that with roof covering thin solar film and there would be less need for new power lines and large generators. The cost would have to come way down from present prices however, from say $20,000 to $2,000 per house.

Gosh, whose pie-in-the-sky should we choose, the renewable lobby's or the clean coal lobby's?

One (serious) question: if the storage is based around presumably non-renewable materials such as lithium, should it really be classed as "renewable"?

A good summary of the present state of affairs in electrical storage, Jon.

What seems to be overlooked is "end-use storage"- that is, making more of the final product while the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Examples include refrigeration, airconditioning (heating and cooling), desalination, electric car battery charging etc. The only technology required is (presently available) smart metering, which is connected to electric power suppliers, signalling that supply is up or down.

Obviously this technique can't be used for all purposes, but close analysis will reveal that there is a lot of electricity demand that doesn't require a very steady supply (as lighting and many industrial processes do). Further, some of the end uses could be modified to enhance the opportunities of fluctuating supply (and cost). For example, increased heat and "coolth" storage in houses and offices by increasing thermal mass, extra insulation on houses, offices and refrigeration,etc.

A problem that we face is that we are still thinking within the paradigm of constant fossil fuel electricity and our systems are designed around this assumption.

The future must have a diversity of solutions. Storage batteries are one of them, end-use storage is another. Straight-out conservation is very important- if we can reduce demand , then new possibilities open up.

The challenge we have as Jedimaster says to get away from the paradigms of the last century. We are in need of a strategy change. As he says, and I'll repeat it 'til I bore the pants off you dear reader, the major thing we must do (and know how to do) is reduce consumption.

My local Bunnings has three 20,000L rain water tanks that collect roof run off and they water their garden section with that and I daresay more. Just one simple example.

We could even paint our roofs white........

As for this storage question. It is isn't confined to solar and wind electricity but large scale solar thermal plants - and there we have promise in storage. As for the commentator who thinks this is all spin, think again. Hot rocks and salt are there as storage agents, but not of electricity but heat. Right now we have solar thermal plants providing useable steam for turbines to generate electricity. We have adjunct solar plants running side by side with coal and gas, giving the back up during the day when demand is higher (hot sunny afternoons). Somebody might offer the comparison between the cost of storage between hi-tech batteries and salt. My suspicion is that salt would be cheaper.

If you are dismissive of the need for R&D then you may as well stick your head in the sand and wait.

I admire Jon's optimism about electricity storage being "within reach". Industry has been working on this problem for several decades. There is progress but it is very slow with some real physical hurdles.

Electricity is not like widgets. Widgets can be stored cheaply as widgets. All you need is a big enough storage area for the amount of widgets you need to store.

Electricity cannot be stored as electricity in any quantity. It has to be stored in some other form (for example chemical or kinetic energy). So you need a double conversion process from electrical energy to some other form of energy and then back to electrical energy. This is going to be expensive however you do it.

At last the wind and solar advocates are recognising they need storage if they are to become mainstream. But expensive storage will actually be the undoing of "grid parity" for variable renewables like solar and wind. When Jon talks about grid parity for wind he isn't including the cost of storage or (in its absence) the cost of additional traditional backup generation capacity.

Oh and we actually need to store billions of watts (GW), not millions as Jon suggested - even in little old Australia.

The article is good in one sense in that it is a roundabout acknowledgement of the major limitations of renewable technology. Even when, say, a wind turbine is working at full capacity the electricity networks still have to back it up with conventional power - that is, have a gas turbine spinning away in the background - at perhaps 80 per cent of the wind turbine's output, simply because they have no idea when the wind will change.
The only known way of storing power on the scale required to offset that problem is a pumped hydro facility - basically a dam and hydro electricy facility with a lake below it. Water can be pumped up to the dam when the wind is blowing then let out when it fails.
All the rest of the technologies mentioned in the article are either pie in the sky, or fantastically expensive, or both. Litium-ion batteries in each home, big enough to make a difference to domestic power needs? Another set of Lithium batteries in the family car which should be recharging every day, rather than adding to national power net?
Further, nothing has been set up, and there are no studies to indicate the effectiveness of all this. Its straight speculation. Meanwhile we are going to be locked into a bizarre policy of mandating that 20 per cent of our power must come from renewables by 2020. Govenrment policy is renewables is expensive and will do next to nothing to reduce emissions. It is madness.

It is not madness when we run out of oil and the coal reserves are not as high as people think.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Peter A - have you got a big enough food supply for when the Oil runs out?

The site assumes that nothing new will be found, It dismisses Nuclear power as only dependent on Uranium, what about Thorium, what about reusing radioactive waste?

Instead of using all the taxes raised by CPRS to fund stopping CO2, which by that websites reckoning doesn't matter anyway, we use the money to develop better nuclear facilities.

I personally blame the green movement and their shrill alarmism in the 70s for the AGW we have today as they essentially left us with no alternative but coal power. (sarc of course, I don't believe in the "A" of AGW, though happily accept GW)

I am still waiting for them to admit they were wrong and apologise for that, and to ensure us that this time, the world really will end.

OK, enough frivolity, I note the site pushes emergency freeze dried food, (up to two years use by date too!), isn't it interesting that there is always someone ready to help out regardless of the circumstances? In this case it's US survivalists, also called extremists by some and to call them quirky is a kindness.

We would still need new batteries with nuclear power, but don't need a new source of base power, so pumping water from lake to reservoir is unnecessary.

If we had listened more closely to the green movement in the 70s (actually the 60s) then perhaps we would not be in the mess we are in now. Overpopulation, environmental degradation, River Murray problems etc.

There are no commercial plants to use nuclear waste or thorium.

Where is all the uranium to come from to supply all the generators needed with present day designs. And if we had built plants in the 70's then we would now be close to peak uranium as well as oil.

Nuclear waste disposal has still not been solved, UK still has no depositary neither has the USA.

Pumping water is a problem as we have already used most suitable sites for building dams on and water is used/allocated for other purposes - drinking, irrigation.

Peter A. - sorry but nope to all of those concerns. To forecast an end to energy reserves of all kinds requires ignoring a lot of history. The size of coal reserves, for example, is more likely to vary with price than with use, and that is just one of the many, many, problems with this form of doomsaying.
As for overpopulation.. okay, house prices in Sydney are high but does that count as overpopulation?
In any case, even if the doomsaying is correct, wind energy will simply make no difference, as it is largely ineffective. Wind towers will only be useful if (and its a big if) we becoming truly desperate. Until then they remain a sop to green voters. They exist to make them think the government is doing something..

Taswegian,
Isn't king Island soon going to be powered by wind backed up by thermal graphite blocks? Use excess electricity to store as heat in the thermal graphite block and then release to drive a steam-turbine later on. Cheaper than diesel.

These blocks are even better for solar thermal as the BLOCK sits up the top of the tower, storing the sun's heat directly meaning the storage is part of the normal process anyway! Far more efficient than "draining off" some liquid salt (which by the way is also another great way to store the suns heat).

http://www.lloydenergy.com/heatstorage.htm

RPG, you haven't read widely enough, speak to some energy economists. Wind IS coming down. Coal could peak in 2025, driving up coal prices worldwide. The concerns about Co2 mean we have been pursuing alternatives that are clean and green LONG before we would have because of fears of depletion, because depletion actually hits FAR earlier than the average Aussie realises — not when it "runs out" but when it peaks, or half way through the stuff! So grow up and apologize to us for trying to push the most expensive form of electricity ever invented, nuclear! Also, you seem to have chosen the MOST expensive of the expensive...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor

[quote]The breeding of plutonium fuel in FBRs, known as the plutonium economy, was for a time believed to be the future of nuclear power. It remains the strategic direction of the power program of Japan. However, cheap supplies of 'off the shelf' uranium and especially of enriched uranium have made current FBR technology uncompetitive with PWR and other thermal reactor designs. PWR designs remain the most common existing power reactor type and also represent most current proposals for new nuclear power stations.[/quote]

Cheaper nuclear may be on the way, but it will take some serious time. We don’t have that time! Solar thermal with backup and wind will be orders of magnitude cheaper by the time nuclear is “reasonable”, if ever!

Nuclear's ONLY future is in space.

An interesting one, particularly the bits about the use of opportunistic storage from idle batteries. However, the article was merging three separate issues:
1. Compact, high tech storage required for cars and transport.
2. Cheap, small scale storage that might allow houses to take advantage of cheaper off peak (Peak was 70% higher than off peak for my last bill) and allow the potential cost savings from using DC power.
3. Large, very cheap storage required to convert solar and wind to base power.
Technical development is not required to allow the use of pumped pumped storage linked with wind or molten salt heat stroage linked with solar thermal. What is stopping large scale use of these technologies is that all renewable electricty can be used as made.

Eclipse Now
As has been pointed out, wind is almost totally ineffective at the moment due to the lack of large-scale power storage. The costs you believe are coming down don't take into account the fact that about 80 per cent of a turbine's output has to be backed by conventional power stations - unless there is some sort of large scale storage - which there isn't. Every power network that uses renewables (apart from hydro) in the US and europe has to back it with conventional power. One of the points of the article is that there are ways of overcoming this problem, however the solutions proposed are all impossibly expensive. So if you have a more cost-effective soloution to this wildly acknowledged problem lets hear it. Otherwise, sorry, if you agree emissions are a problem the solution is gas and nuclear (you need both for a network) and that's it.

I am always amazed at the ability of greenies to state with such conviction BS along the lines of:

Because of "xx" technology it will be possible to store / generate electricity much more cheaply, and thus nuclear power is not necessary.

All renewable generation is very expensive and un reliable. Likewise energy storage is expensive and inefficient (with the exception of pump storage schemes). Even the newer ones whilst much better than ever before are orders of magnitude away from being able to compete with nuclear let alone coal.

The new generation nuclear technologies are being developed, and can use the waste of the gen III reactors, so build the gen III reactors now rather than putting all your green house gas reduction eggs in the basket of a technology that might emerge.

A solar thermal/molten salt heat storage system stores heat before electricty generation so the only extra cost is the heat storage system. The non-toxic molten salt mix is stored in large tanks at atmospheric temperature hence the cost of storage will not be particularly high.
At present, the demand for large scale energy storage is very limited because most power grids are able to use all the clean energy produced. This situation is likely to last for quite some time given someof the ideas mentioned by others in this post.

The Shadow Minister is right. Gen4 nuclear might be a logical part of the system at some point in the future. However, I can't see the point of going ahead with gen3 while we wait for gen4. Smarter to wait until gen4 has proved itself and then see how it stacks up against the developments for other technologies.

The ultimate Power Generation System would have to be Ocean Currents.

One location example would be Montague Island about 12 nautical miles out from Narooma here the Continental Shelf almost meets the Island .
The current is so strong shipping almost clips the Island on the Northern end on their way from 100 fathoms plus to 60 fathoms to get out of Northeasterly Current thereby saving tons of fuel per hour on their journey north .

A canyon in the continental shelf approaches Montague Island from a NE aspect and I could imagine this feature could provide a very secure anchor point for a huge submarine type water turbine that would be submerged below Shipping in use then surfaced for maintenance .

Tiz never as easy as it looks.
Windpower may be getting close to parity with base load stations.
However something that many do not take into account is that the year
long average for windpower is about 25% of design output.
In other words you have to build infrastructure that is four times the
capacity of the average output.
Windpower is a victim of the fall in output is proportional to the cube
root of the wind speed.

Likewise using spare capacity to make hydogen has been given up as a
bad idea. It is just too difficult to store and to stop it leaking.
This means for vehicles that you just cannot park them anywhere but in
specially designed premises.
Also distribution is a problem, four times as many tankers are needed
to deliver the stuff.
Then there is the fuel cell problem. No one has yet made one that has
a 1000 hour economic life. But more like 10,000 hrs is needed.
The bus manufacturers gave it away for that reason.
ERoEI raises its ugly head as well.

Ultra capacitors look promising, but cost might be a problem.