Batteries Are So Last Year: Meet the Game-Changing Ocean Energy Storage Systems Taking Over
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
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Ocean energy storage is a broad category of a whole heap of different methods of generating and/or storing energy in the open ocean. It’s an area that has recently experienced a huge surge of interest, with probably dozens of new startups in the space in recent years, mostly still at very low technology maturity.
The companies that I’ve seen developing ocean energy storage systems pretty much all use one of three operating principles: pumped hydro, gravity and buoyancy.
In this video I'll talk about how each of these energy storage principles works, and mention some of the companies who are trying to commercialise each type of ocean energy storage.
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Bookmarks:
0:00 Intro
01:19 What is Ocean Energy Storage?
01:35 Operating principles behind ocean energy storage technologies
01:42 Pumped Hydro Systems
02:14 Ocean Grazer
02:44 FLASC
03:05 StEnSea
03:35 Gravity Systems
04:04 Ocean Hydro
04:42 Buoyancy Systems
05:35 Thanks to Brilliant for sponsoring this video!
06:30 The “why” of ocean energy storage - potential issues with going offshore
08:55 The case for having ocean energy storage
10:30 Potential synergies between generation and storage offshore
10:59 Rosie’s thoughts on ocean energy storage
12:36 Outro
Sources:
IMFBlog - Falling Costs Make Wind, Solar More Affordable
www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles...
Create Digital - Pioneering wave energy project named year’s best
createdigital.org.au/pioneeri...
Clean Technica - Wave Energy Converter Disguised As Boat To Solve Sticky Salt Water Problem
cleantechnica.com/2022/10/03/...
EMEC - PRESS RELEASE: GAME-CHANGING TIDAL ENERGY PROJECT APPROVED FOR CHANNEL REGIONS
www.emec.org.uk/press-release...
International Hydropower Association - Pumped hydro
www.hydropower.org/factsheets...
Gravitricity
• Gravitricity Technolog...
Energy Vault
• Energy Vault: Gravity ...
Companies:
Ocean Grazer
oceangrazer.com/
• Ocean Grazer - Ocean B...
FLASC
www.offshoreenergystorage.com/
• FLASC Animation
• FLASC - Offshore Energ...
StEnSea
www.iee.fraunhofer.de/en/topi...
[add the paper from testing here]
Ocean Hydro
hw.energy/energy/
• The Game Changer - Oce...
SinkFloatSolutions
sinkfloatsolutions.com/
This video was sponsored by Brilliant - Наука та технологія
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Instead of building a bunch of storage 3:15 at the bottom of the ocean each with their own pump and turbine. Why don't you just build a natural reservoir on a hill near the water. Pump water with excess solar and wind into the resevoir and use gravity through a turbine to generate electricity at night. Beats building and maintaining artificial storage devices at the bottom of the ocean with pumps and turbines. Think of the maintenance. A lot easier and cost effective to do it on land than on the bottom of the ocean.
Regarding the buoyancy storage concept, why waste energy to drag the flotation device to the bottom? It seems like you could develop a system vastly more efficient by venting floatation gasses at the top of the cycle, and using compressed gasses or chemically generated gases at the bottom of the cycle to regain buoyancy, like a submarine. This might even be efficient enough to generate energy instead of limiting the system to energy storage. I understand the need to store energy created by other means for future use but the buoyancy system seems like a better candidate for energy production.
You don't need to have the winch gear on the seabed, just anchor a pulley down there, run the cable around it, and have the winch gear on a floating platform.
Great overview. I think the "not in anyone's backyard" is a very large factor in locating storage in the water. Also the ocean as very large heat sink will make compressed air storage very efficient. sharing the cable with the wind turbines so the together they can be a stable source is a great idea.
Hmmmm. Tragedy of the Commons: Not only is it not in anybody's back yard-it is in everybody's back yard.
Don't bother putting it anywhere near Right Whales-unless of course you want to heap more blame on the lobstermen, and other regional equivalents, for stuff in the water that isn't their fault. Frankly, I can't see most of these faring any better against oodles of abandoned fishing gear left in international waters by factory fishing ships than the whales.
The trouble with dissipating your heat into the sea for CAES is that there's no easy way to recover it when you go to re-expand the gas. CAES systems that store that heat for later are more efficient round trip. 🤓
@@serversurfer6169 Exactly. Efficiency comparison were nice. I remember compressed air wasn't that efficient..yeah, because it heats when compressed? Why would you want to loose the heat energy??
@@Hukkinen edit: oops wrong vid.
I think ventilated solid reservoirs from seacrete (seawater mineral accretion, biorock), with reversible water pumps, would be better.
Maintenance costs for anything under the sea is approximately 50X than cost on land. Obviously,this will vary on the complexity. Salt corrosion and fouling are the main issues and then the environment in which you fix them is very hostile ie sea state ,temperature and weather above water. You also have the time down for the facility to get back on line. This is why hydrogen generating platforms are being installed alongside the offshore wind farms where availability is far easier to maintain.
also grit abrasion in joints of moving parts, plus there's a news-media 'worry' about whales getting shredded.
Hi Leslie, extremely interested on where that 50x comes from. I completely agree that it's massive in comparison to onshore. Do you have any references I could have a look at?
So now I'm really looking forward to your new video entitled, "Rosie's top 10 fundamental rules for renewable technology development"
In an offshore setting, the "m" the "g_n" and "h" are all relatively free (as in speech and beer). This might negate the "all other things being equal" clause :)
My first thought -- before I watched the video -- was that it was going to be about electric batteries that take advantage of (deep) ocean conditions such as salinity, temperature, or pressure to enable options that are not available on-shore at STP. Your video is a good reminder that energy storage is broader than electricity storage.
Arthur C Clarke suggested using the thermal difference between tropical ocean surface water and ocean depths to generate power. Especially applicable to Sri Lanka where he lived, and many other island nations.
OTEC. The thermal efficiency is atrocious but some versions can be used to generate fresh water and bring micronutrient rich cold water from the bottom of the bottom of the ocean to the surface.😅
@@Stroporez Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion ( OTEC)
@@Stroporez why does efficiency matter? Solar panels are at best 20% efficient but they're sold as fast as can be made because they're *_effective!_*
@@alanhat5252 The lower the efficiency, the bigger the plant has to be per yield. The bigger the plant, the higher the costs tendentially.
And in case of OTEC: You have to pump cold water to the surface, which costs energy. If efficiency is too low, you don't get a net yield at all.
A short term energy storage that is simple to implement and takes up very little room is flywheel storage. Beacon Power have had a couple of 20MW plants going for more than a decade and with the space they take up and how they work they can easily be put underground or could even be integrated into structures like wind turbines or solar arrays.
Working in water has way more going against it that what it has going for it.
REALLY well constructed review. I like the fact that you don't just dive into exciting news. You've correctly identified real-world challenges and balanced these against future development, competing technologies and the big picture balance and needs. Bravo! I look forward to more!
Yes. She is an engineer. We need people who think like that. Way too many flakes out there.
I think you are extremely talented to transfer engineering concepts to non-engineering people. #awesome 👍
Thank you for reaching an omni-approach to ocean energy storage.
The aspect no one talks about is capacity x cost. Do you need grid capacity x 1 hour? X 24 hours? X 1 week? For longer durations, very quickly, even dirt cheap storage become astronomically expensive. At that point, it is cheaper to build significant excess capacity in different regions and trade via HVDC lines instead, with perhaps 1 hour of buffering.
Really great technical overview of new innovative energy opportunities. Superbly spoken Rosie. Learnt alot. Thank you.
I'm a bit sceptical of underwater storage given the harsh environment it feels like it will prove difficult/expensive. But we'll see I guess.
they're still bringing up centuries-old items from the sea bed, it looks to be less harsh than the air. The surface where the waves are is indeed truly harsh but that's not necessarily the environment being discussed.
@@alanhat5252 items in the sea (material depending) are generally badly corroded or covered in marine life. Thats a much tougher problem to deal with cleaning/maintaining than the air.
Putting any motor under seawater at pressure sounds like a maintenance inferno that will never be overcome.
Such an informative video, thank you so much. I’ll be sending this to my friends. A great opportunity to get up to speed on a variety of technologies, with a very realistic view. This is among my favourite channels! Be well.
This underwater stuff reminds me of the wave generator that failed just off the coast at Port Kembla. It rusted up and was abandoned. "The sea was angry that day my friends" Tell em they're dreamin !!!
like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.
Love that idea ! I've been thinking of that for a long time and have some ideas ! Very sustainable and constant !
Thank you for covering this! I can't believe I missed it!! 😅💜
To me, pumped hydro and gravity storage seems far more sustainable than any sort of battery technology. Batteries are great for phones, but kinda silly for grid-scale backup IMO. The main issues with pumped hydro are with siting. Steep elevation changes are uncommon, and rarer still near space suitable for large reservoirs. Add in NIMBY concerns, and it caps the total storage available with surface hydro pretty effectively. We've already flooded a lot of valleys to make reservoirs, and people aren't particularly eager to flood more. 🤷♂
Right now, the US has about 555 GWh of pumped storage online. Fraunhofer estimate that an additional _75,000_ GWh could be stored in StEnSea modules off the coast of the US alone. Over 800,000 GWh worldwide. No valleys to flood, and they're made of concrete, steel, and copper. I don't see how anything else really competes at such scales.🤔
If you look at it from the right angle, you can think of buoyancy storage as a kind of pumped hydro where the volume of water being moved is the ocean water displaced by the buoyant object.
Very Good Point.
The Depth of the Oceans Offers Advantages for Gravity Generation.
Congratulations on your baby!
Why not use a river with a floating object attached to a generator that spools out a line while producing electricity? You could add some sort of drag wings to increase the pull on the object, then fold them in when retrieving the object using the generator as an electric motor (powered by renewables). If it was a straight section of a river, you might be able to run a mile downstream or more. Just a thought.. It's an on-shore option.
Less corrosion with fresh water than with salt water.
Why not run of river hydro.
Combine boyancy with compression. Have a raft or barge which gets pulled underwater by motors. But you could also have multiple air bags/cells in the barge to vary the strength of that boyancy. If the barge is already under than you could pump up additional bags to increase the stored power.
Love engineering videos with well grounded experts. I'm just starting my profession as an RF and microwave engineer but I love renewable energy engineering. Thanks for your inspiring and awesome videos!
Can you look up Aurora Hydrogen and let me know what you think? They say they can use microwaves to turn methane straight into hydrogen and solid carbon.
I heard about ocean domes being used to store energy in the ocean which I guess is similar but different and thought they sounded like a very simple solution… at least in theory. So it was good to heard about Ocean Batteries and know they are still kicking even if in a prototype phase. Also it was good to get your take on this given your perspective on ocean based projects. I’d also be interested to hear how they plan to deal with things growing on it.
thanks for the honest assessment.
I am glad to see an energy storage device that could be used in Florida.
Seems that since we can over-produce electricity during the day, the easiest thing to do would be to break down water into H2 and O2 and store those underwater in big bags or in drilled wells. The H2 O2 could be burned in conventional power plants (with some mods / mixing) to recover the energy at night. No pollution. Known technology. No batteries.
That’s hydrogen storage, and it wasn’t mentioned because it falls under “don’t put something offshore when you can put it onshore”. Why would you store it in bladders underwater vs in tanks?
Also, hydrogen internal combustion is very inefficient. I don’t know the values for turbines without google, but for ic engines it’s in the 30-40 range. You’d use hydrogen fuel cells instead.
The combination of electrolysis, storage and combustion would waste around 80% of the original energy, so we would be better off using other means.
The roundtrip efficiency for hydrogen EL plus conventional gas turbine is quite low, you’d struggle to get anywhere near 60% even with the best of tech (90% for electrolysis and 64% for a modern CC gas turbine, discounting compression, piping and storage losses). Fuel cells don’t help here much either as their efficiencies are not all that fantastic.
Hydrogen production via EL is more suited for ammonia and other feedstock applications where CH4 is currently used.
The round trip efficiency for various compressed air/gas and pumped hydro is much higher.
When it comes to capex costs, there could be some discussions had but gas turbines and electrolyzers aren’t cheap either.
@@valdisandersons129 Verses storing energy via pumping water (limited locations), lifting mass (very inefficient/unproven), sinking/floating devices, ...?
@@tsbrownie If you look at the video it addresses the issue around limited hydro storage locations. All you really need is a 100m+ elevation difference between the two water pools. Pumped hydro roundtrip efficiency is about 80% for modern installations, compressed air is in the 70%ish range. Even green H2 producers are not seeing H2 being used much as an energy storage solution. There are loads of issues with burning H2 in a turbine still, even if the efficiencies could be improved upon and embrittlement solved on the cheap. One of the issues is the higher combustion temps causing more NOx emissions that have to be addressed, going with lower temps reduces NOx but efficiency tanks so you have to use more complex turbines to keep the efficiency up, that's more $$$.
We will need H2, lots of it, like gigantic amounts but it'll be mostly used as feedstock for ammonia, ethane/ethylene and other chemical industry processes that are using CH4 currently to get H2 for those same processes.
Brilliant! Thanks for the amazing! Working on something even better!!! Releasing soon!!!
Did you really do a “Boom?” Fantastic. Thanks for all the efforts you put into your shows. They are the thinking person’s videos.
What about Ocean Thermal Systems, the idea has been around for a century, using heat difference between surface & deep water. Seems perfect for the north of Australia, could you do a video on it? Also, a video on Gelion's new zinc bromide gel batteries.
Very cool insights!
Hi. Yes I agree why build offshore when you can build onshore. Here in the UK coal mines are now being or have been shut and the potential to use the disused shafts for gravity generation is compelling. I have heard some work is already being done in this area. There are also flooded disused quarries which could potentially be used however I am not sure if the depths would provide sufficient water pressure. I am convinced small local generation might be the answer in the future.
Indeed. Have heard that too. Any technology that can use 'stranded assets' as opposed to building everything new from scratch is bound to be worth a look...
Take the full volume of these underground spaces and shafts, multiply with the average height difference between the space and the surface. Assume to fully fill it with air or water. Calculate mass*height*g. You will probably find that the gravity storage is quite limited and very costly to extend (more and deeper underground space needed).
So, it would be nice to see some analysis around putting pressure vessels above ground vs. under water where maintenance costs are much larger, and cost impact of operating in a salt-water environment. Pressure vessels are pressure vessels, it doesn't matter whether they operate below or above the ambient pressure.
Rosie, since I have a College summer background as well as some full time years both onshore and offshore in the oil "bizness", I have to agree with you thoroughly as regards costs and operations- anything in the water cost three to four times more than it cost on land, and then the storm comes. I do have a question on ocean storage schemes- have any been tried where there are larger tidal depth swings, as on the Cornwall Coast of the UK, I think they have one place where a30 foot low to high tide occurs; my thought has to "load" the cell when the waters are shallow and costs low and get the energy after the tide increases the bottom pressure and inflates your stored energy. It was a thought anyway. FR
If you have a tidal barrage and pump extra water in at high tide to create a head, then run the water out through turbines at low tide, the extra head more than pays for the energy cost of pumping the water in at high tide.
@@clivemitchell3229 That was what my question was running too. Thank you for the pointer! FR
They have been experimenting with tidal in the Bay of Fundy for a long time. As Rosy alluded to or stated, working in the challenging conditions and *designing* for the mechanical loads has been the issue. Many systems just broke when exposed to the currents during tide exchange. I haven't checked for years as to how it is going. I only heard about it because of the environmentalists having the fish equivalent of bird strikes for on shore wind generation.
Congrats on the new baby!
I have another idea.
Connect Queensland to Western Australia via a HVDC link, with stubs connecting SA and the SUN CAble.
This link will allow Solar power in WA afternoon to lengthen the Eastern States Solar day. Likewise, Solar from Qld in the morning can lengthen WA's solar day. Thus reducing Storage needs.
Solar Farms along this East-West HVDC link can generate Huge amounts of solar power. There are also , I beleive, excellant wind resource along this path also.
There are numerous battery technologies which don't need Lithium and other expensive metals. Al-ion cells (GMG) , Sodium-ion, plastic ....... and so on. I think at least one of the new battery technologies will end up being cheaper and easier than pumped hydro and other mechanical batteries.
At the ACP offshore conference last year in Boston, we learned that offshore wind has really starting here in the US. At ACP in Providence last week we could see that offshore wind is growing and trying to figure out how to actually build the 74 GW of committed projects including the recent BOEM offer for 4.5 GW of offshore floating wind in CA. We have some work to catch up with Europe but China was the dominant player worldwide in 2021 with nearly 14GW of offshore wind commissioned. The Atlantic coast has good wind and shallow water with the Georges Bank but maybe the deepwater of CA will prove an advantage for energy storage.
Love your pragmatic approach.
Stensea is one of the technologies i've been keeping up with and wondering why they are taking soo long. I live at Lake Constance so this is something that is dear to me.
Another great video!
Dutch proud 🥰 I spoke the people at a Dutch energy fair two weeks ago. Up to 78% efficiency is pretty good, a way better than H2
I've had an idea for using ocean pressure differences to drive desalination for years. I thing this could be coupled with off shore wind farms, using excess generation to make clean fresh water.
Amazing video!!!
Thanks for all the work to get this info to us. Your optimistic outlook helps a lot!
i guess my thinking would fall in line with the sinkfloat approach. a hull with heavy weights - seems like there would be less to go wrong and economical. I would think the storage/construction cost would be exceptional.. What am I not seeing?
Probably worth noting that the StEnSea Fraunhofer project was first tested not in harsh ocean water but in Lake Constance on the southern border of Germany. Makes sense though.
Being a 'DOUG', I was doing a lot of hmmmmms 🤔 as you discussed the technologies in the first half of this Rosie...... Then you pretty much nailed my hmmmmms 🤔 in the second half. As ever, very interesting and educational. Thanks. 🙏
I’m old enough to remember when PV grade silicon was in short supply. Dozens of alt solar tech was put forward. Mirror dishes with sterling engines. Trough mirrors. Fresnel lenses. Mirrors with x,y heliostats focusing on towers of molten salt. Thin film PV. Combinations of the above.
None really took off afaik. PV supply caught up and panel prices got cheap. Static beats moving. If you have to spend a single hour maintaining a $100 panel you’ve doubled its cost.
Hate to be negative nancy, but my money is on LFP cells, maybe sodium. It’s because they’re small, the iteration time is tiny, the learning curve Wright’s law factor will be high.
KISS, imho.
It's like my inversion table !
Great! I also wonder, if old coal mine areas might use a similar technology for underground gravitational (potentialkinetic) energy storage systems additionally to mountain areas where water bassin storage systems are rare but helpfull..
With the Buoyancy generators, could they put a cable wheel wieghted to the sea floor & run longer cables to shore with the winch situated there to make maintenance easier?
I understand why we are looking seaward to place energy production but I always worry about the extra cost involved in being in a more hostile environment. Sure you can have bad weather onshore as well, but at sea, your installation above the surface is being hit by wind and waves. There is also the issue of installation lifespan due to the corrosive effect of seawater. I suppose we don't really have the luxury of only picking the easy routes for clean energy. I recently watched a post about a stored energy system that uses carbon dioxide stored in an inflatable dome at ambient temperature that is then pressurised with excess renewable energy this is stored at around 70 bar pressure at ambient temperature again. When generation is required the high-pressure liquid is reformed into high-pressure gas using the stored heat from when it was pressurised and the gas turns the turbine to generate electricity. The Co2 then returns to the storage dome. I like it because it is a closed-loop system and all the infrastructure and components that are used to make it a current tech used in other industries. It is as simple as you can get it.
For the buoyant method, using a gas (air?) would have an issue to correct for heat loss/heat required as the gas compresses or expands. What are the prospects of using a liquid, less dense than seawater, say liquid methane? The upper chamber would keep the methane under pressure.
I’m sure I saw a video on that, heat generated during air compression, is stored in insulated water vessel, and used to reheat the chilled air on the expansion cycle, saving ~30% on energy losses
@@Froggability Yes, but is the other ~70% worth going after? The downside of using a fluid as opposed to gas is it would require larger chambers to attain the same lift. Also, if air is the working fluid, then you only need one chamber to contain the fluid(gas). Air would require conditioning to remove particulates and principally water as you wouldn't want condensates accumulating in the bottom chamber. IOW engineering studies are needed.
So many better ideas for non mobile batteries that won’t need rare minerals for the battery. Have much hope for just the current/tidal/wave potential let alone the wind aspect
I live in a prime area for wind farms. Lots of wind and very low population. Farmers and ranchers would welcome it with open arms. Problem is the cost to build the lines to get the power to the grid is said to be prohibitive. It has me thinking we have only plucked the low hanging fruit with wind.
Hi Rosie! Have you had the chance to read about the CO2 battery developed by Energy Dome? It's been successfully tested and implemented somewhere in italy and is being deployed in USA
Thanks
Given the limited number of pumped hydro sites (unless they look at seriously at pumped, seawater hydro.) and the obvious limitations of Lithium ion set ups, I think this has a real shot. Hopefully they will have learned from those who went before. If you llok at Britain's plans for an offshore grid, which I can see many countries emulating, at least in part, these systems would be perfect.
@EngineeringwithRosie These are ideal to store long duration for a southern Greenland offshore wind farm connected to North America and Europe the UHVDC or superconductors. The wind hotspot there is very strong and connecting these via Iceland is not a huge distance and a great opportunity to make renewables supply 100% of electricity needs.
Offshore gravitational storage has a gigantic advantage over onshore gravitational storage, the height is practically free compared to building things to hold the media. The disadvantage besides the harsh environment is that sea water reduces the potential with a little bit over 1 kg per liter, but that is far from a deal-breaker. Height is the big difficulty for gravitational storage.
Buoyancy storage seems kind of, "not clever". The potential is the difference in density between the buoy and seawater, which is not bad, but nowhere near worth the issues that will come from exposing the buoy to varying pressures. If the buoy is flexible, buoyancy will decrease rapidly with depth, if it's rigid, it has either got to be extremely tough, or let water in. Unless, the buoy is pressurized, but then it has to be able to handle that pressure, besides making it expensive it becomes difficult to achieve good buoyancy for its volume, and cost. Also, it has to be based on the sea floor, which severely limits its practical potential.
I think offshore pumped hydro should be evaluated by comparing it to worst case onshore pumped hydro, which is digging a hole and use the excavated masses to create a hill. Sure, height is much more difficult to achieve, but that is easily compensated for by increasing volume. I don't think systems like ocean grazers has the potential to be even close to as "good" as worst case onshore pumped hydro. If that system is "only" 1000 times more expensive per unit of volume than digging pumped hydro storage, you still need to go a kilometer down for every meter of height difference you have in the dug pumped hydro system. Without calculating having used a excavator, and worked with concrete, I highly doubt that those tanks ocean grazer propose would be "only" 1000 times more expensive per unit of volume than digging ponds, even considering you need the volume in both ponds.
As always with energy storage, the value of the energy retrieved from it during its financial lifetime must be higher than it's cost, including the value of the energy that goes into storage. As all these system essentially are kind of variants of gravitational storage, the potential capacity is that wonderfully easy to calculate, with minor added factors that needs to be considered. That means the cheapest/easiest per unit of capacity is likely the best, any need for complicated expensive and or delicate parts more than the simplest and cheapest possible solution automatically makes a system worse.
For a buoy, how about a bag of light oil?
@@b43xoit That addresses the varying pressure. Not great buoyancy, but beats uncompressed air in a flexible balloon from fairly moderate depth. Also, that eliminates losses to compression heat. Downsides are you could get about 300 kg of buoyancy per cubic meter of oil, which means a very large volume is needed, which makes it expensive and adds practical problems.
I like the idea of oil, not that I think it would be very practical all things considered, and I definitely don't think it can make buoyancy storage become as good as gravitational storage. But oil definitely has potential advantages for buoyancy storage. Advantages of air in a balloon is that it can be made very cheap, and if the air escapes there are no environmental side effects, or huge costs to replace the air, the empty balloons are easy to transport and just fill with air at location. Cost per unit of energy retrieved from storage is absolute key, there is no lack of solutions that technically can replace fossil fuels, the challenge is to to it in a economically viable way.
Is it viable to build in the buoyancy anchor points and incorporate them with future pumped hydro during the construction phase?
Rosie
Do you have information about the
BOLOTOV Vertical Axial Wind Turbine WRTB
Wind generator vertical as "Iasos III F"
Is this a good alternative?
I agree lots of these projects will ended just in funding and prototype. Offshore is such a challenging environment for construction and maintenance these don't make sense just for storing energy. I think better if we can use existing sort of storage, hydrogen generation, or even linking continents for energy share.
Just seen and watched your video on SMRs … you’re nearly a convert!!!
You discussed underwater storage. I am wondering what the state of underwater generation is? It seems like there is a only half-hearted research into what seems like a very reliable potentially large source of energy (especially where there are large lagoons like carlingford lough in ireland, or the straits of gibraltar). What’s stopping us doing underwater windmills?
To me, it seems like opportunities for onshore pumped hydro are quite limited, given that they are basically prime recreational areas and will be subject to NIMBY pressures. If you've got offshore wind turbines, you've already got the visual pollution occurring, and little additional struggle to site offshore storage. However, I doubt that storage of wind generated power will ever be cost effective. Given the extremely long time that you need to store energy to smooth out wind droughts, it is unlikely to be cost effective compared to coal fired backup. A coal pile could sit there for years, although it would be challenging to keep equipment maintenance costs within reason. It makes more sense to adapt industries to deal with wind droughts. For example, use wind power to drive fertilizer production, which only needs to average out over a year, and is relatively cheap (albeit dangerous) to store in solid form.
Buoyancy storage idea: Don't use a lot of energy winching the balloons back to the bottom, just let most of the air out and wind the cable up as they sink. Then, using air compressors mechanically driven by the wind turbines to refill the balloons while they're on the bottom. This way, you skip the generator / motor losses in the pull down phase. There is however, the energy loss from the compressed air losing heat and volume as it cools in the water, which might make this less efficient than generators and motors.
If you are going to charge the system with compressed air, you might as well use the same method when you discharge it.
@@b43xoit not true.
You could use electrolysis to create gas when the deflated balloon is all the way down. After it fills up with gas, you can increase the rpm with gears, once you inflate with whatever gas you can fill the balloons with? Maybe
Seems offshore energy storage doesnt make sense by itself, but possibly if some synergy effect is achieved. Like the floating offshore turbines, that need the anchoring and powercables anyway. Seems like a very small synergy! Am I missing something that would make the pairing of floating wind and sea storage cheaper or better?
Hej Jens. Synes du ikke også Rosie her er fantastisk! Rart med analyser fra den anden ende af verden! bh Jakob Ramlau P.s. Vil du mene at lidt offshore storage er relevant ifm de megalomane danske planer om kunstige energiøer?.... Det skulle man umiddelbart mene!!,..... Så man kan få mere strøm igennem kablerne eller spare på dimensioneringen. (Kabler er den helt store udgift ifm energiøerne...)
Mange tak. Konstant og god udnyttelse af dyre kabler lyder som et vind-win. Meeen da forbruget på land flukturerer skal strømmen så lagres igen på land.
My favorite forms of non-chemical energy storage are compressed gasses and insulated heat.
Compressed gasses can be stored in underground tanks or even in abandoned mines.
Heat can be stored in moderate to high density materials that are enclosed in insolated warehouses.
Both of these seem much more doable and easier to maintain than a lot of the alternatives I have heard of.
But I think we need to face two likely realities:
1.) There will be a limit to how much energy we can economically extract and store.
2.) We probably use way too much energy now. And if we are to have any hope of limiting human input global warming, we are going to have to find ways of seriously cutting back.
Need to lower birth rate.
The environmental and health costs would be a interesting exploration.
Sodium ion batteries are just entering production, and I gather their performance suggests that more expensive lithium will not be a problem for stationary storage.
Great summary! I still think the sand battery looks a lot cheaper and easier to maintain
Hi Rosie, I have a video request/suggestion for you - regarding geo-thermal. Like, there is a huge amount of heat under our feet, which we could redirect into our homes. But is that reasonable even? Like what's the physics behind it in the first place. I personally have some troubling thoughts that extracting that heat could be negative in the long-run, but also think that not using it (to some degree) could just be giving up its usefulness/advantage unnecessarily. Maybe you could/ want to give some insights and facts regarding our system "earth" heat-wise in long term perspective. A connected question I have, which might be unfitting and/or uneducated, how fast does earth-core cool off anyways, possibly relative to the suns heating up/expanding? Could it be useful to extract some heat to prevent us frizzling? ... Some fact-based guidance regarding the usage of geo-thermal would be very appreciated :) Cheers.
I have had much the same thoughts. Butterfly effect of removing heat. How easily is it replaced? They are still discovering where the heat comes from and relative amounts.
How much of the weather changes are massive changes in the water cycle due to rapid expansion of hydro generation due to removing volumes of water from the cycle into reservoirs?
What will be the long term effect of removing energy from the winds?
What about rapidly growing fields of solar panels preventing that radiation from getting to the ground? Will that affect geothermal?
I absolutely want us to find a solution, just not do the "out of the frying pan into the fire" thing us humans typically do due to "lack of imagination" as they are starting to call it.
Perhaps the bouyancy energy storage, could be a way to repurpose the HOLLOW giant windmill blades from decommissioned windmills, which are nearly indestructible and nearly impossible to recycle, and modify them as floating pontoons that peak energy production can be stored with, by pulling these repurposed items down into the sea, and then letting them float upward to propduce electric power, when the winds aren’t blowing?
Geothermal must grow
Axial flux permanent magnet generator vs Dobly-fed induction generator which is better for wind turbine? Please Reply
This video was GREAT, thank you!
I felt there was a bit too much advertising, to be honest, but nice job nonetheless.
Couldn't I normally expect you to be honest?
At 12:37 you note slow development of tidal energy but from my bystander's perspective sitting in England what I'm seeing is that the holdup is political not engineering.
Tidal-flow seems furthest along & the tech is really mature given that the device is basically a submarine at anchor, the only part that's necessarily less than a century old is the exact profile of the impeller & even that would still be reasonably productive with a century-old design.
The last I heard there's a tidal-flow device that's been running off Pembroke in Wales for decades but it was hauled ashore for maintenance several years ago & central government has been withholding funding for years so it's just sitting there rusting away, they also withheld funding for the 2nd of the pair so it was never built.
Also in Wales is a utility-scale tidal-range generator in Swansea Bay, it seems that it's fully-designed, permissions & public approval obtained, funding found & ready to be built but at the last minute central government stepped in & shelved the whole project without, as far as I know, any reasons being stated.
I really don't understand it, there's TeraWatts of free, predictable & reliable energy sitting there waiting to be tapped & we've had the technology to do it for a century or more.
I'll have to do a video on tidal soon! I think there have been a lot of small to medium sized engineering challenges with tidal, and you're probably right that if it had been better financially supported all of those engineering issues could have been solved by now. My personal opinion is that we're very close to having some commercial tidal energy, but I don't think it will ever be a significant global source of energy as there aren't that many suitable locations.
Something that doesn't get mentioned as much as it should be is the energy fluctuations in the grid due to renewable power .
Compared to the old way of doing things such as 24/7 coal and gas fired power stations that run continuously with very little instability when compared to the current wind and sun powered systems .
Renewable power generation has so much on/off power at all times of the day and night with varying voltages that grid stabilisation has become very difficult .
Batteries and other new technology such as better switching and control circuits and rotating grid stabilizers can help with the issues that have appeared with the renewable energy boom pushing the existing grid system that was never designed for renewable power to the limit .
Did anyone say Pablo 💃💃💃
Buoyancy seems plausible as long as the only things in the water are the buoy, a pulley on the bottom and the rope.
I wonder if they could combine two systems, for example gravity storage inside the empty column of a wind turbine
What about storing air in a bladder anchored to the sea floor? That could then be used, with fuel, to spin a turbine.
It would be cool to have mix of heavier same and lighter than water and the structures were mixed with artificial reef for fish and bivalves
I guess these kind of energy storage will come up whenever floating wind and solar farms will became popular.
Well, as a lot of energy is lost in all that wires I actually thought that maybe the shaft of a windmill itself could store (for example) liquid CO2 . When needed it goes through a pipeline to a generator where it is transformed back to gas which is then pumped back to the windmill where the windmills energy compressed it back to liquid gas again.. basically, the whole system is a battery in itself saleable by the useable volume of the windmill. Liquid co2 as it is already liquid at ~1015 psi without cooling. What I think would be a quite good energy density. While still doable for pipelines. If too much one could think about LPGs. But them being flammable it’s maybe not as good idea….
There is another potential niche application that I call unsinkable ships. For example a country that might need to defend its coastline from invasion (e.g. Taiwan) could use offshore Windfarms both as a way to help produce renewable energy but could also use them as unsinkable ships (or probably better said, really hard to sink ships).
These might benefit for having this form of energy storage in that if the lines to the shore are cut by the enemy they still have a means of storing energy. Also if the wind turbines are knocked out they can still have power for long periods given the defense system mounted on them would not draw all that much power.
So maybe a Taiwan might be a potential customer for such systems, and all the more so given the latest climate where China seems bent on invading them. For one gets a double benefit, power genration in peacetime that also can serve a military application as well with little additional cost.
Any ocean storage needs to be implemented as nation scale storage, not individual systems on individual turbines, or even individual systems on individual wind farms. This makes it impractical, much easier to convert electricity to methane and then fill the existing natural gas storage tanks (main constituent of natural gas being methane), Europe has recently filled their tanks with enough natural gas to last the winter (hopefully!), the facilities are already there for storage and conversion into electricity or use in other ways, currently we are only missing the electricity to methane conversion infrastructure, and maybe some grid cables to route the electricity to the stores. A bit of inefficiency in the system will not be an issue once we have enough wind/solar to supply the nation through an average day, it can be made up for by adding a few extra cheap turbines/solar panels. The electrolysers and methane generators will become cheap as soon as the technology matures and they enter mass production, there is no way that building a nation scale ocean battery can compete.
Not sure that locating it 100Km off the grid is a good idea, for the UK, that would require installing 100Km of something like 40GW cable to connect it to the grid, and then a major upgrade to the grid to distribute it. Not cheap, we already have the infrastructure for handling methane.
The Brits, and their obsession with their out-of-date infrastructure and inefficient combi boilers SMH. Instead of accepting much more efficient options, such as heat pumps, results in some very crazy ideas..
@@nc3826 Definitely shouldn't be using gas for domestic boilers or cooking! As long as there is wind then electricity direct from the wind farm can't be beaten, and normally there will be wind for domestic heating since that should take priority over wind to storage. But if we want to store wind energy long term, we do already have the storage facilities, and conversion to methane may well end up the cheapest form of storage, maybe not the most efficient, but we don't want the most efficient, we want the cheapest.
No, the Brits are not obsessed with out of date infrastructure, we, along with Denmark, have led the wind revolution and then offshore wind revolution, the rest of the world is following Britain!
@@nigels.6051Sorry, but It's so comical, how most Brit commentators, on the Fully Charged channel. Tend to prefer out-of-date infrastructure, such as combi boilers fueled by inefficient hydrogen OR inefficient resistive heating schemes, instead of much more efficient and cost effective modern heat pump technology.
So what is the even more inefficiently produced, electric to methane gas needed for? That will produce various forms of air pollution. If not for combo boilers and stoves? It's unlike Germany, which still has an industrial heartland.
And yes, the rest of the world (or at least Euroland) is ironically following Brexitland, in using Danish offshore wind technology. Thank you Denmark.
@@nc3826 I agree with you about the heat pumps, some people seem to need some education, and I'm not sure the Fully Charged channel is the best place to get it!
Methane is a clean burning gas, and net zero if you make it from wind power. I imagine it's main use will be in gas turbines for occasional emergency/backup electricity production when there is almost zero wind, and maybe transport such as shipping and aviation, although currently aviation seems to need a further step to produce synthetic jet fuel. It is also the fuel the new generation of space rockets are going to be using. It could also be used in our current combined cycle gas power stations, but I doubt those will be economical long term since we will normally be running on wind and solar with a bit of hydro backup, otherwise we would not be able to generate enough methane.
It should really be Denmark that is thanking Britain, since it is us that has paid for most of their wind development, they have been a very useful resource! About time the Viking Link is completed so that we can share power as well as development, they are normally under a different weather system.
Making methane (CH4) is even more inefficient than just directly burning green H2 in a gas turbine. To make that happen you’d need to overbuild renewables even more. It’s not just a few turbines more, it’s a quite freakishly large amount of extra turbines. The UK alone uses around 746 TWh worth of gas every year, that’s about 85 GW of extra capacity at 100% roundtrip efficiency and 100% utilization of the turbines. With good off-shore siting we can get 50% capacity requiring 170GW installed, that’s around 11,334 of the latest and greatest off shore turbines (15MW). This is ignoring any and all conversion inefficiencies and system losses/leaks.
The SCOP of a heat pump is rarely going to go below 2.5 even if installed by a bunch of idiots. That’s helping the opposite way by requiring less overbuilding.
These systems could be used in inland lakes, such as those we have in British Columbia here in Canada.
Vehicle weight is an issue that the renewable energy folks don't seem to talk about...
Nordstream 2 was also a "Ocean Energy Storage System" - a lot of Energy was stored in that tube ... ;-)
The Artemis 1moon mission got away safely, one of the ground staff tightened up a packing gland before launching the SLS ......😂😂😂😎👍
With the music and the way Rosie comes across she sounds like an old CSIRO employee.....😎
I hope she will post something on UA-cam to let us know when she has the baby .
I never worked at CSIRO but my dad did, in the 80s and maybe part of the 90s. I used to visit his office when I was a little kid. I remember drawing on that old printer paper that had the holes along the edges, and even occasionally on punch cards!
@@EngineeringwithRosie Watched a program about Einstein a very interesting man and a patent clerk in his younger years.
The future is out in the engineering world for people who can grasp the practical uses of the things that are currently in use and change those machines inventions and device's and make them better or design something revolutionary.
Patents are given mainly for the application of idea's and inventions.
Got some great inventions up my sleeve.
@@EngineeringwithRosie My mother used to work at the club at Monash University in Melbourne .
I remember that printer paper fondly.
Get some version of Na-ion, flow or molten salt batteries to maturity hopefully without any contentious materials, then stationary storage for distributed network load stabilization will be a solved problem for places that don't have the luxury of geography able to support double-duty hydro for cheap storage.
pumped hydro is the most efficient of all large scale energy storage system. the rest are just ridiculously inefficient and expensive.
Liquid weight vs solid weight.
Isn't Pumped hydro a gravity battery?
Yes, it is.
Snowy Hydro 2 pumped hydro will store 350GWh at the 2GW rate.
Modelling shows Australia needs around 8-15 such storage systems to reliably meet its national energy needs in the decade 2040-2050 by using renewables alone.
Most of the systems being described here fall short by two to three orders of magnitude. They might have niche applications but at the scale of the national energy grid they are essentially a waste of time.
For Australia, the focus must be on large scale storage systems comparable in size to Snowy Hydro 2, and lots of them.
I think Snowy Hydro 2.0 well turn out to be an expensive load of cr*p and it is tracking well. I think it started at $2B they already said it will be a couple of years late so that's an additional cost blow out. Also when they were talking about the additional two year delay to 2027 they said nothing about the cost and nobody asked them about it either. The problems with Snowy 2.0 in comparison to Lithium batteries are these:
1) The Li batteries are off the shelf and Snowy has unknown challenges (well unknown before the delay to 2027).
2) Snowy 2.0 gives you nothing until it's 100% complete. A battery farm could be 100 MWH and you get a return on investment inside 6 months and then you can add to it.
3) 175 hours at 2GW is impressive and hard to match with Lithium ion batteries BUT the first 10 hours are really valuable and the 2nd 10 hours are valuable the 3rd 10 hours of storage is pretty valuable but now additional storage has far less value and so 20 hours of Lithium (or Sodium or whatever batteries) would give you most of the value of Snowy 2.0
4) Battery technology is advancing rapidly and Snowy 2.0 is moving slowly, the battery technology will almost certainly win
@@danielstapler4315 You need to do the sums taking account of 100% abatement for the Australian economy by 2050 allowing for population and economic growth as well as increased energy needs for global warming abatement (mainly cooling and desalination).
The amount of storage needed to support a 100% renewable solution when you do the modelling is in the vicinity of 3,500GW hours. This could be offset to some extent by an east west HVDC interconnector and/or a north south one. Nuclear can also offset storage.
3500GW hours is around ten to twelve Snowy Hydro. 2 projects.
The Hornsdale big battery is around 129MWhrs. It would take about 2,700 Hornsdale style batteries to provide storage equivalent to Snowy Hydro 2. It would take around 27,000 Hornsdale style batteries to meet the total energy storage requirement using Hornsdale style batteries.
It takes about .3Kg of lithium to store 1KWhr of energy in a lithium ion battery. A Hornsdale style battery contains around 40 tonnes of lithium. If a 100% renewables solution is pursued, it would take around 1,000,000 tonnes of lithium to build out Australia's total energy storage requirement.
Global annual production of lithium in 2022 was 130,000 tonnes. So to meet Australia's storage requirement would require eight years worth of global production. Even assuming global production of lithium quadruples in coming years there is still a huge problem with this approach because there are over 190 other countries all trying to do the same thing.
Simply put, it isn't going to work.
What will help get the job done are:
1. Large scale pumped hydro (eg Snowy Hydro 2 - around ten)
2. One or more east west HVDC interconnectors
3. Nuclear power (6 large plants or 15-20 small modular plants).
My bet is the small modular nuclear because they can be built in a shipyard, loaded on a barge and shipped to wherever needed as a turn key unit. They will be effectively leased as a 'black box'. When worn out or no longer needed they can be shipped back to the manufacturer for recycling.