@3:00 just need to point out a small correction. Power plants do not want to overproduce not because of profits, but if they are producing more power than needed the frequency of the power starts to increase. If the frequency gets more than half a Hz off of 60 then protection systems start to engage which can shut down lines, cities, or plants.... Very bad things. For the record I work in Electrical Transmission in a grid control center.
@@joescott There is much people don't know about the complexity of the grid. But I love the show and it is very popular with the engineers I work with. If you didn't live 3000km away I would invite you to the control center for a tour.
We are literally 2 months away from 2022 and we still haven't solved these problems due to the lack of political will. We have actually moved backwards into denying science...and vaccines.
3:23 that was the first time I've heard anybody other than me say that. You can't imagine how good it feels to hear anything other than alarmist bs or denial.
Well it's still an understatement. The planet will be fine. It always was and animals, plants and fungi will always have a few species that survive(see that big space rock that presumably was responsible for one of the mass extinction events). We as humans won't be fine tho. At least most of us.
Perhaps you should convert your stored chemical energy into heat. I think we should invent the "Home Flatulator"...just back up to the funnel, and the small compressor sucks in your "output" and compresses it into mixed hydrocarbon fuel.
I am an electrical engineer that have worked with several of the technologies that you mention. I have to say you did a very good job with this video, Joe! However, I think you forgot to mention the biggest energy storage we have by far: regular hydropower. Even if you can't reverse the water flow and pump the water, it is still a huge amount of energy that is stored in the large reservoirs and it's ready to be used at any time. Obviously you need a sizable amount of hydropower that can be powered down when solar and wind powers up, otherwise you still have the problem of excess energy that can't be stored.
But as the Cities grow, they use up the flowing water as well (Lake Mead is a good example). Transmission loss means the plants need to be close to the cities, and poor city planners see the nearby water as a water source instead of a power source.
&Roger Everett ... Yes. I third your second 😂. Flow battery dedicated video please 👍 ARES gravity “Train Storage” video please 👍 Loved this video Joe. Great work (like always)
Lithium Ion may be fine for light weight energy density solutions, but we can definitely find cheaper grid-scale energy storage solutions and I'm glad you pointed a few of these options out. I'll add Molten Salt Batteries as an additional possibility that deserves a mention as well though.
About the flywheel storage system, you have to see it as the supercapacitors of the powergrid. As you said, their energy density is quite low, but their main advantage is that they can provide huge amount of energy in a very short time without degrading the storage.
@@hynjus001 Isaac is generally looking far further into the future than Joe, asking the big galaxy-spanning questions rather than concerning himself with down to Earth matters.
Years ago, my Dad had a little place up at Smith Mountain Lake. We always marveled at the fact that the lake had daily "tides". The lake would gradually fall about a foot each day, and then miraculously rise back up overnight. We were aware that they were using the lake as a "battery" for electrical storage, but were blown away by the magnitude and scale of what was happening electromechanically each and every day. Still kind of mind blowing.
You missed a really cool one: *Pumped hydro with concrete half spheres under water* - lakes or in the sea. When there's excess power a pump will remove the water, leaving just a vacuum with some steam behind. When you need power, the water will rush into the vacuum chamber again. A 30 meter diameter half sphere in 700 meter depth can store 20 MWh of energy with an efficiency between 75 and 80%. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelpumpspeicher
you can link the English one. and its not half speres, its full spheres en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Energy_at_Sea They store about 66 GJ with an energy density of 4.67 MJ/m³ which is about twice as good as a battery. The biggest advantage being that it can store energy for a long time. However as you can see in the wiki article you wont make a lot of money from it, specially if you use it as a long time storage. And this is the main problem with most storage solutions. We won't solve the storage problem until there is some redistribution tax on electricity that helps paying for storage.
@@ghostridersinthesky21 As much as I love writing and art, I did the same thing because, while I do want to have artistic endeavours in the future, I don’t hate myself.
English isn't the only subject for which you have to write papers.. I wrote papers for every single subject I took? Including STEM. STEM doesn't save you from doing research and communicating it.
@B. Rippy @Basement ScienceE oh yeah the metal i could be wrong on its been a few years ive been there. I must have remembered totally wrong. But all sources on wikipedia lead to redacted pages from JET so i cant check which type of alloy.
@12:19 The Horndale power reserve in South Australia was a 129 MWH power reserve with a max power output of 100 MW, it is worth noting that in November 2019 this power system was upgraded to 195 MWH storage with a max output power delivery of 150 MW! I love your channel @Joe Scott :D
Half of the time, I live in a place in central Europe where they have streams at almost boiling point. Yet there is very little usage outside of large scale agriculture. It makes no sense at all. Mainly it is a legislative issue.
I love how whenever hydro is mentioned in the environmental impacts of flooding big areas with water quickly get brushed aside. Yes. Hydro is AMAZING source of power and energy reservoirs... but it is a major disturbance to the natural ecosystem of an area.
Still far better than burning carbon or millenniums of radioactive waste. To be in line with your thought process, we should petition for the extermination of the human race, which is the real core issue here. No matter what we do, we have a dramatic impact on the environment. Us not being here would truly solve the problem.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your videos send my wife straight to sleep. She loves your voice, she finds it soothing. I love the content, i get the knowledge she gets the much needed sleep... win win. As usual amazing video, so well researched and a joy to watch. Keep em’ coming.
I enjoyed the tour of the current state of various energy storage systems. I'm familiar with a pumped storage facility near where I went to university. However, the video frames the problem incorrectly in a few ways, which is important because a friend who edits a renewable energy science journal mentions that any near term storage solutions won't be adequate for 100% renewables, like California has mandated. Wind and solar aren't just temporally variable (intermittency), they're spatially variable, and that's an opportunity. Visualize a weather map of a continent. Somewhere on the continent it's the right speed of wind for power production, and during the day, somewhere it's sunny. An American study showed that wind generated by farms spread over a thousand mile diameter were as reliable as a coal fired utility boiler. (A UK study showed that over a 25 year period, the UK was producing commercial wind power 100% of the time.). And a commercial DC electric line has been carrying electrical power 1000 miles from British Columbia to Los Angeles for decades, with 10 to 20 percent losses, so transmitting electricity that far efficiently is a solved problem. A combination of storage and of transmission from where it's sunny or windy to where the power is needed, is more likely to succeed than storage alone, even with foreseeable improvements in storage. Why rule out overproduction? The costs of solar and wind have been plummeting for a good decade, and continue to drop. The cheapest, most effective solution may be some combination of storage, transmission, overproduction and occasional natural gas.
The British use of wind power is only going to increase massively from here on. When the new larger turbines get to be built that's only going to increase. The turbines stretch out across the sea and over the horizon. They talking about the plan as far back as the nineties. On my street alone, there are solar panels on roofs from one end to the other. We have had national pumped hydro power storage since before I was born. It can be done if you make them do it.
ARES is basically the same as the potential energy mass storage system Joe talked about with the mine shafts. Except less efficient and more visible and exposed to the elements and idiots who throw shit in the way. Also much like the mine shafts, completely dependent on there being elevation change / mine shafts near by. Battery is the only realistic way forward. It has the smallest footprint and least likely to explode. Compressed air is basically fracking but with higher pressures. Any mass-driven storage is basically a potential natural disaster (floods, train derailment, snapping cables, etc.). Hydrogen meanwhile is just inefficient and basically combustion. Oxidation is combustion.
It's less efficient than any of the systems mentioned because of rail friction, less scaleable and the3 amount of energy stored is tiny compared to the amount of land needed.
@@sth128 "Any mass-driven storage is basically a potential natural disaster" There's nothing natural about such energy storage methods. Potential disaster? Surely. Natural, nuh-uh.
There is actually no safer place than "underground" for storing explosive things, first of all the ambient conditions are more stable and controllable and maybe more importantly the scary things are deep and far from humans
Even if some H2 managed to leak out, it is not going to find enough oxygen to explode with unless someone decided to store O2 down there. Of more concern is if whoever is running the place decides to go overboard with the compressed air storage, as eventually the rock would give out and apparently Romans used that as a mining tool: Dig a tunnel sloping down, then a shaft up and a chamber in the middle of a mountain they want to remove. Then you let a lake empty into the tunnel, filling it so that the water pushes the air into the chamber, where it can't get out. Eventually the pressure rose so much the mountain cracked open. Spain used to have more mountains but they had gold in them that Romans wanted...
Hey Joe, I have a question you may find interesting to research: When are humans expected to evolve into a new species? Meaning do scientists agree on a common threshold after which we become homo sapien neosapiens, and have any (reputable) experts speculated about when that may occur? Thanks for the awesome channel!
Jeff Mathers I read ppl think autism is the next step in brain development i.e. Wrre getting less able to communicate with each other less trapped in our own brains
not joe, not a scientist either, but I could guess we won't the advent of modern medicine messed up with our species' ability to adapt in response to environmental pressure, we no longer need to be born fit to survive naturally until reproducing age in order to pass on our genes and while that's obviously great at the individual level, our right to live is no longer determined by random odds it also means the 'drive force' of evolution, natural selection, is no longer affecting us as much as it used to and while yes, there are other 'forces' that also play a role in the gradual change of a population that can potentially lead to speciation (which is the arbitrary line we draw to say one group of a population have become a new one: when the individuals can no longer produce a fertile offspring), like sexual selection for instance all of them, just as natural selection, do operate on the scale of dozens to hundreds of generations before speciation can occur and in the past dozen of generations of our species, we've more then doubled our life expectancy due to modern medicine, among many other factors our 'man-made change' operates lot faster then evolution, so if we ever 'became another species', my bet is that it'll rather be through our own doing and not standard natural speciation that has putted us on this world ps: sorry the bad english, and the lack of sources, I'm just procrastinating
That "Gravity Battery" is honestly the most ingenious thing I saw in this whole video, it's so simplistic and simple I'm actually very shocked I haven't thought of it before let alone people a hundred years ago, that seems like it would've been one of the first sources of nocturnal power to ever arise in history yet it hasn't, at this point I think we've moved past the stage where that would be useful to powering our large scale civilization or even the consumer market but I'm shocked that that wasn't one of the first primitive steps to getting us where we are today, very fascinating
Thanks for giving us the low down really quickly so people who want to talk my head off to try to sound smart to impress me end up allowing to get annoyed by them instead, so I don't get my ear chewed off. I'm really thankful for that, even though it's past thanksgiving. It's ok to be late to the party lol
I'm happy to see - though we are still lacking so much - we have come so far, and so many good ideas have been discovered and utilized - especially by the Energy Sector, along with governments! It is almost as if - someone has begun to realize that there are no profits to be obtained by an extincted civilization!
The Adelaide battery has been awesome in smoothing out the flow of electricity. It reacts faster than a power plant can, which means that it gets to sell the high cost power. Then if renewables arent available it tops up with cheaper low demand coal based power. It is apparently so good at this that at first it wasn't getting all the revenue it could have until systems were put in place.
some comments. 1. Pumped hydropower, the transformation loss is about 20 to 25%, in addition, you need a lot of space and it also costs quite a lot, as you also mentioned within your vid. So maybe in US it could work, but in smaller esp. flat countries not really. So only for Germany (I'm for there), we would need more than 400 big ones, costs about 500 Billion EURO. We currently have 13 and already run out of space to build new ones. 2. As you mentioned, but in addition, together with pressed air, it could cause massive problems with the ground stability up to earthquakes. 3. All storage is common that they are more or less expensive and often currently in a pilot phase. So we need costs decline and larger scales. 4. Battery isn't such a good idea despite that they would min. double the engery prices easly. 5. Some of this storage we must consider a more or less risk for serious damage when something went wrong. Have you ever seen a Batterie of an E-Car burning? Its' going up to 2000 Celsius. 6. Overalls my current best guess is that it will take min. 1 decade to bring technology to a state where we are able to install it in larger scales we need to an acceptable cost. And another decade or even two, to install them in our countries. As you mentioned we really need a lot of this kind of storage. Maybe we have fusion power at that time as well.
There have been hydrogen cars for more than 20 years now. BTW hydrogen explosions are not very dangerous overall because its so light whereas propane will sink and surround you then burn up from there. Hydrogen is already escaping and trying to escape higher. Hydrogen is really where the future of energy lies. The only issue is making the supply chain. Hopefully the oil companies will see this and step in. They're sure hurting now.
@@johnpossum556 The issue is the energy it takes to generate the hydrogen in the first place. Electrolysis isn't very efficient. You still end up with the question of how to produce that hydrogen. I agree with you that fuel cells are far superior to Li-ion batteries for things like cars. I'm all about 4th generation nuclear for electricity production.
I think the most exciting ones are the liquid metal battery (because it's cheap, safe, and lasts basically forever) and Eduard Heindl's gravity storage. Heindl's concept is different from the one in this video in that it uses ginormous (100-250m radius) hydraulic pistons excavated out of the bedrock and sealed with cement on the outer surfaces, with a rolling seal between the outer wall and the piston. There are two advantages to this concept: 1) a doubling of radius increases the capital costs by 4X but increases the storage capacity by 16X, meaning much lower costs as you scale up; 2) you can use existing pumped hydro equipment but without needing any elevation differences; and 3) it's much more robust than a cable-based solution--cables wear out fast when they're constantly raising and lowering tons of weight, but water never wears out.
The Picture of the pumped hydro plant at 6:05 is the Herdecke plant in Germany. Guess what: On the white spot right to the big building are today three 40-ft shipping containers containing EV-batteries for 7,6 MW and 7,8 MWh of storage (Either the picture is old, or the white spot are these containers mashed into pixel jam...). Since a pumped hydro plant can only react to frequency drops within minutes, these storage units can bridge the gap reacting within milliseconds. This is actually a cool combination of a variety of storage methods mutually overcoming disadvantages of both.
You need to check how much we produce in NZ. We could have done it but we have geothermal and renewable plants where scaled back about 30-40 years ago as gas was just so much cheaper. New Zealand is no longer Clean as it was just so much cheaper to pollute it
General Harness yeah I know, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t pursue renewables further but then again NZ isn’t the wealthiest country due to it not being much more than a tourist destination.
3:01 It's not about finding the minimum amount to produce to maximize profits. It's about finding the minimum per product not total production (total production actually increases more than necessary in many cases). Big distinction and clarification and it's part of why this system that you give a thumbs up to is exacerbating the very problems you are struggling to solve.
Christian you clearly dont know what boomer means. generally speaking you should only use a word if you know what it means because when you misuse words you look really dumb and people make fun of you behind your back.
Yesterday my son asked me, 'What if there wasn't fire?' It made me think about all the things we can do by simply burning things... this video was very timely.
A large percentage of household energy use is for heating water. And, every water heater with a tank is an energy storage device that can be used to reduce load during periods of high electricity demand.
@@Chobaca I did say excluding islands. Rats and snakes we carried with us did ravage island species and kill hundreds of species for those islands. But human caused extinction has only taken 9 species on large land masses. While we are on the topic, I'd say human life is more valuable than other species anyway, but it's important to conserve ecosystems while we are still connected causally with them.
Thanks Joe, for yet again, another very informative, humorous & seamless production. I like how Joe acknowledges the negative aspects of reality yet focuses more on the positive, solution based perspectives...instead of an alarmist approach. It's much more inspiring. I follow independent journalists(Grayzone & others) for my news thus I am already alarmed. Joe's approach helps me to find balance & not act like a headless chicken. Way to go, Joe! \0/
I get my energy and heat from the biogas plant down the road... They store the energy in the form of silage in big bunkers. That along with solar panels and the wind turbines we have everywhere, means our entire region can easily run entirely on renewable energy.
At work we have a few concept ambulance that use solar and I was assigned one. We “post” in parking lots around the city and normally the unit would just run to heat and cool the rig. This would keep the batteries that also charge the batteries that run the box and lights. With solar we could shut off the unit and we can run things from battery and if the solar could not keep up for what ever reason the rig would restart on its own and shut off when it could. It was cool to be apart of the concept.
Whenever there are mismatches between supply and demand, such as shortages, it means something is preventing market mechanisms from working correctly. In this case, the regulators aren't allowing a large enough price difference between peak usage and low usage times. There will always be some level of price difference that will incentivize end users to shift their usage patterns to match supply, or purchase energy storage to save money for themselves.
Early on you say "anti-green people always say something like this..." When they are making correct points. They aren't anti-green, they are pragmatic. I don't know anyone that wouldn't love a safe, cheap, abundant, always available, renewable and zero emission energy source. Nuclear checks almost every box but that isn't good enough for the pro-green crowd. Checking all those boxes is incredibly difficult. Recognizing that doesn't make someone "anti-green".
Bryon Grosz I know someone that would hate a safe cheap abundant available renewable energy, anyone in the coal or oil industry, and unfortunately they have a lot more power than scientists who know what we need
So where do solid state batteries fit into this. Thats only 6 or 7 years away according to you. Low cost and sodium from the ocean is more abundant than that metal
Solid state batteries just improve upon the energy density of our current best, of Li-Ion, through its various advantages*. This means we should see vast improvements in portable technologies, EVs and plausibly enable things like long-haul Electric Aircraft. Depending on how cost effective the tech is - I wouldn't expect it to directly** play a large role in grid-scale energy storage, as, similar to Li-Ion, the strengths lie in weight and size reduction. The grid doesn't really need that, per se. (size and weight are fairly unimportant when you're storing things underground or in a field. Storage/discharge times and return of investment are.) I do expect other battery and storage technologies to play a larger role there, eventually (Li-ion is very cost effective atm, because we have spent a lot of effort making it so, as it's necessary for so much more) * - Solid state batteries have a better ratio of active ingredients, so, more of the battery is "doing battery things" for its weight. There are theoretically other advantages, like faster dis/charge, no flammable liquids and such, but that will be determined by the final products (as opposed to laboratory examples) ** - I say "directly" because I'm a HUGE believer in Vehicle 2 Grid tech and the important role it will play in the future energy mix. It's basically mandatory for renewable uptake imo
I kept hoping you would talk about flywheel storage and you did not disappoint me. The first time i heard about this method my first reaction was that I brought this up years ago when I found out about regenerative braking. Thank you for the interesting video.
Joe. I work for a utility company and I've never heard of this "Flow" battery technology. I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that, to be frank. But all the same, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do a video on this technology. I can't wait. Thanks and happy holidays.
Here in Sweden the oil company Preem is producing fuel from sawdust and other rest materials from the lumber industry. They produce in quantatiy an sell it at their gas stations.
There is tremendous potential for storing "low-quality" energy. This means thermal energy that is not hot enough to turn turbines. Like backyard thermal solar panels, to heat all your water and provide a baseline of home heating. I live in Southern California, and a large percentage of our household electricity usage is for hot water and heating during the winter months. But in winter, we usually have clear skies so we could store heat and then use it at night.
17:19 The 2020 battery study by the IEA states that by 2040, "nearly 10 000 GWh of batteries and other storage will be required to meet demand across all sectors." That is quite the jump!
I've worked drilling wells since 1979 and have worked on about 10 wells that were used for gas storage. These wells are no way as easy a Joe makes it sound like they are. Your best bet for a gas storage cavern is to set casing in a salt formation then use fresh water to dissolve the salt.
A national (even better, Global) mandate where all buildings from business to homes, small to large, are required to have Green-Roofs would def. help a bit. Particularly if each zip code had it's own sort of "regional best suited" plants so they'd survive in their natural climate zones. It'd be rad to look out and see all human-made lands be topped off with greenery. Again, each appropriate to it's local climate to save on needing to water, etc. The intake of carbon (once done nation wide) would be substantial. As well as the oxygen output.
Compressed air in salt caverns sounds great . To hyper compress it during peak loads you can send down a charge and detonate some combustible fuel to rapidly expand via heat !
Santorini, another impetus for the 1177 effect, the island is also known as Thera it was an incident of that era that could have accelerated the demise of the region, it exploded with a ferocity not too unlike Krakatoa, besides the Greek fighting themselves.
It's such a relief to know that the politicians of the world have got this in hand. Because I'd be worried if I thought that nowhere near enough was being done.
I get that the 'it sucks that we still burn things for energy' is the hook for the clip, but as you note at 1:43, a fundamental property of energy is the addition of heat. Kind of like saying it sucks that so much of travel is at ground level, then introducing the confounding variable of gravity.
Besides being able to store more energy from renewables, we also should be able to use less, much less energy. Electric cars are just one way we can start doing it, but there are a lot to do still. For example: why should we keep all street lights on when nobody is out? By turning on public lights only when people are there to be illuminated could potentially save a lot of energy (I haven't done the math, but you probably got the idea). We can also make our washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners, ovens, light bulbs, etc. more efficient, saving more power. By combining both renewable energy and efficiency, it would be easier to solve our energy, environment, and health problems caused by fossil fuels. Best Regards.
You need to remember to mention upgrading all the power lines to move the added power needed to recharge EV cars. Also, read 'energy for future presidents'.
Regarding the first line: power distribution upgrading was foreseen to be a problem a decade ago for EV charging in SoCal area by SDG&E & Edison utilities, and were requiring permits to install charging stations, even home units. Many areas were already near designed max load capacity, with increased installs of central AC units in homes because of longer hotter summers. Too many EVs on a substation/transformer branch could result in brownouts or eventually trip the breakers, blacking out a subdivision. As usual, high cost infrastructures will lag behind demand. Smart grid equipment for commercial/home load controls and Rooftop Solar with wind turbine generation can help offset the need for major transmission line upgrades (always a political sore spot). Also, have read Prof. Richard Muller's book many times, especially good to supplement his online lectures series. Unfortunately it's technology details are 13 years out of date; the physics are still fine, but cost/benefit factors and tech developments have made many assumptions invalid and needs a revision (Tesla, SpaceX, solar cell mega-factory outputs, etc.)
A few problems with the start of the video: 1. By far the largest renewable energy source at the current point in time is hydroelectricity. 24 hours a day, very reliable electricity. 2. Wind and solar combined actually produce fairly predictable amounts, and tend to be more reliable over time than fossil fuel plants ie fossil fuel and nuclear plants often need to be shut down for maintenance whereas wind and solar are typically maintained in much smaller quantities so there is much less variation from predicted output. 3. There are many opportunities around the world to add more wind and solar without requiring any storage.
Joe, have you ever thought of doing a video on Lightning strikes and the harnessing of such energy? there is some interesting information out there on the topic that I think a lot of your viewers would enjoy.
Funny, the Gravity Battery pretty much already exists in my parents old grandfather clock. They are weight driven too and we had to crank the weights back up daily to put more energy into the system. This is just scaling it up a lot. What's old is new again.
Really nice video but I got a question about the hydrogen storage. If it ever had a leak wouldn't it make a huge cavern full of explosive gas? I know that it would have to have a ratio of oxygen to hydrogen to explode but still wouldn't any small leak make it mix with air and get that ratio?
Gravity batteries can be cheaper to produce if the weight is replaced with an empty container that can be drawn up by a much smaller and cheaper motor, water is then pumped by water pumps, these pumps are super efficient, the water load is dumped once the container reaches the end of it's travel and drawn up then refilled.
So many puns on the gravity battery. "Elevator power!" "The energy source with a sinking feeling!" "Uplifts as it charges!" "They show real energy potential!" I wonder, if the weight included a massive drill, if they could keep digging deeper when energy is abundant, extending the storage capacity of the plant. Might be a potential for finding ore and mineral deposits as well.
There are lots if storage options that offer different advantages and synergies and that's fantastic! It shouldn't be forgotten we have the ability to trade electricity over thousands of miles using decades old technology such as High-voltage direct current HVDC.
Don't forget, there are different problems, energy storage needs to address: There are the daily fluctuations which need to be addressed, but there are also the seasonal fluctuations; especially when heating energy demand is included. So, you need considerable amounts of energy for the winter season in many places. With respect to energy density, there is no alternative to chemical storage.
Another type of flow battery plates a metal on to a bunch of plastic shelves or plates that are dosed with Carbon to make them conductive. When discharging, the metal goes back into solution. The Zinc bromide flow battery is one of these. They have no fade over time and no self discharge. Efficiencies are comparable to Pumped storage.
You can gain alot of efficiency when electronic devices work directly off of dc. Side effect is cheaper designs, nearly all devices/applianceshave ac-dc conversion that can be eliminated. This is a big reason to have local solar where possible. No expensive inverter necessary, reducing solar installation costs. Less e-waste from capacitors etc. More reliable and longer lasting electronics because there is no power supply ripple heating components causing wear.
16:00 Several years ago, I built a scale model flywheel energy storage system with LEGO, I wanted to design and incorporate into a vehicle for a type of regenerative braking; With hopes this would lead to a scalable, mass production version that I could patent. Well, that didn't pan out because I'm a pleb; but I still find the topic fascinating. This video is a goldmine for my brain, lol. Cheers Mr. Scott, looking forward to more content. 16:23 --| ............\/ 9:02 "I saw a[...] "piston", "ceiling would be weighted with concrete[...]". Am I ahead on this one? You said it's not in use yet.
It is important to understand that when we talk about energy storage, we are really talking about 2 different types, short term and long term. Short term is measured in hours. Long term is days or weeks. Long term is what is needed when the wind does not blow or solar conditions are suboptimal for an extended period. High capacity/low cost grid size storage does not exist today. This cost is not in LCOE and leads to misleading conclusions that renewables can compete with fossil fuels. The truth is they cannot, and by a wide margin. The other problem with love is that it does not include the infrastructure cost to get the power to my house. Renewable requires huge acreage for wind and solar farms, with will be further away from the consumption than fossil fuels. The measurement that is missing from LCOE is the percent reliability. LCOE is based upon assumptions of average weather. Weather is never average. Fossil fuel is low cost high reliability. Renewable is high cost low reliability. The cost to achieve equal reliability with fossil fuels needs to be included to have an accurate cost comparison.
Brian Keyes Do it. I have supported Joe on Patreon for a while. I met him with the other ludicrous future guys at a rocket launch. Joe is more thoughtful, more human, and just as funny in real life. Go Joe!
SONO Sion, and other smart electric cars should be able to charge when there's energy available, and "dump" into the grid when the voltage or frequency drops. This is part of the smart-grid solution. GO-JOE, do a video on SONO Motors, they need a bit of a plug right now (Now-you-know have done a 1/2 hour segment, it's your turn !!)
Honestly, when I hear the "what do you do at night or what do you do if the wind doesn't blow". I mention technologies such as high altitude wind turbines which generate more electricity than standard turbines and can be quickly deployed. Considering they're high altitude, if the wind doesn't "blow" with them we're screwed. There's also spherical solar panel from Andre Broessel that has promise. Due to it uses a spherical glass to focus light on a small solar panel, it's said to be a lot more efficient than standard panels and can even generate some power in cloudy conditions
9:02 I saw a video about a "biodome" research project where the participants/scientists were sealed in a facility, all food, water, and air was processed on site. It might have even been one of your videos, forgive me, after a while I forget exactly which source. It was an experiment related to Mars habitation though. On to the point: The facility had a "diaphragm" which would absorb changes in air pressure. I've thought about an energy storage reservoir which would use a similar principle, a large, air tight chamber with a movable top, similar to a piston. The ceiling would be weighted with concrete to increase the amount of potential energy that can be stored. Similar to the compressed air gas chambers, but they could be built anywhere and with controlled parameters.
Isn't a Hydroelectric Dam just a giant battery? It produces energy, but it uses latent Kinetic energy to do so. Hold enough water and it's the same as charging a battery. Example: 100 gallons per second to produce energy 100% of the time. 150 gallons per second added to lake = charging. 50 gallons per second = losing charge but still producing 100/sec
6:03 basically what I expect people to realize when I tell them batteries are only 3% of the US's Grid energy storage; and that 94% is hydropump storage. But now that I have actually witnessed it, I feel a little bad for wanting that reaction in the first place.
There is actually a big advantage to everyone living in cities, a silver lining. The vastly increased density means vastly improved efficiency for all kinds of services, assuming they are well thought out and designed to be eco friendly. Transportation, energy delivery, food delivery, all kinds of infrastructure can service FAR more people using far less actual physical infrastructure because of the density. Cities that rise vertically and are built dense and well planned are actually the solution imho.
i love how the last 2 ideas are just basic physics. no hydrogen or lakes as fuel. just get a block of tungsten and a cable for all of your energy storing needs
12:35 "Utility scale battery storage is going to explode in the next several years"...
Poor choice of words Joe.
DEMONETIZED
don't buy your utility scale batteries from Samsung
When he said that I said "Hopefully not literally" to myself XD
Some probably will.
Christoph Bader Making your entire business not go *Kaboom* tends to be one of the main priorities of people owning businesses
@3:00 just need to point out a small correction. Power plants do not want to overproduce not because of profits, but if they are producing more power than needed the frequency of the power starts to increase. If the frequency gets more than half a Hz off of 60 then protection systems start to engage which can shut down lines, cities, or plants.... Very bad things.
For the record I work in Electrical Transmission in a grid control center.
Thanks for that perspective. 👍
@@joescott There is much people don't know about the complexity of the grid. But I love the show and it is very popular with the engineers I work with. If you didn't live 3000km away I would invite you to the control center for a tour.
Nathan Peters Clark Joe has camera, will travel.
HVDC can sort make all that go away . . . .
@@philtimmons722 We operate 500KV HVDC.... It works well on paper.
Humans are basically beaver with more teeth...Got it 😂
Your knowledge of plurality is evident.
Leave it to beaver
Ducks are basically rapey dinosaurs
@@makerhappy6718 nice one
Plato would be pissed if he heard this
"You know what's a sobering thought? It's literally 2 weeks away from 2020" I enjoy this statement for purely ironic reasons.
'The Lost Year', 'The Year Without an Easter'.
We are literally 2 months away from 2022 and we still haven't solved these problems due to the lack of political will. We have actually moved backwards into denying science...and vaccines.
@Faulty Juice no
@Faulty Juice no
@Faulty Juice no
3:23 that was the first time I've heard anybody other than me say that. You can't imagine how good it feels to hear anything other than alarmist bs or denial.
Well it's still an understatement. The planet will be fine. It always was and animals, plants and fungi will always have a few species that survive(see that big space rock that presumably was responsible for one of the mass extinction events). We as humans won't be fine tho. At least most of us.
4:56 That's the best damn explanation of pumped hydropower!
I often fill my cavernous bodies with gas, but I don't get more energy. Just complaints.
it can be solved with a butt plug that converts energy
Perhaps you should convert your stored chemical energy into heat. I think we should invent the "Home Flatulator"...just back up to the funnel, and the small compressor sucks in your "output" and compresses it into mixed hydrocarbon fuel.
It always puts a little pep in my step.
You actively pump gas in there?
Kinky.
@@rafqueraf Ha! Outfit to bovines and take a chuck out of global warming consequences. :-)
I am an electrical engineer that have worked with several of the technologies that you mention. I have to say you did a very good job with this video, Joe! However, I think you forgot to mention the biggest energy storage we have by far: regular hydropower. Even if you can't reverse the water flow and pump the water, it is still a huge amount of energy that is stored in the large reservoirs and it's ready to be used at any time.
Obviously you need a sizable amount of hydropower that can be powered down when solar and wind powers up, otherwise you still have the problem of excess energy that can't be stored.
But as the Cities grow, they use up the flowing water as well (Lake Mead is a good example). Transmission loss means the plants need to be close to the cities, and poor city planners see the nearby water as a water source instead of a power source.
@@ShelburneCountry It's true that hydropower doesn't work everywhere.
Totally agree, Joe! I have been saying for years - "It's insane that we still dig stuff up and burn it for energy". Finally it is starting to change!
15:14 we need to keep an "ion" this one? Nice :)
>> Seconding the requests for a whole separate episode on Flow Batteries plz!
&Roger Everett ... Yes. I third your second 😂.
Flow battery dedicated video please 👍
ARES gravity “Train Storage” video please 👍
Loved this video Joe. Great work (like always)
4th
+
"Now, are there any dam questions?"
Yeah where's the damn bait
Can i have a Dam Snack?
Dam yess 😂
Lithium Ion may be fine for light weight energy density solutions, but we can definitely find cheaper grid-scale energy storage solutions and I'm glad you pointed a few of these options out.
I'll add Molten Salt Batteries as an additional possibility that deserves a mention as well though.
About the flywheel storage system, you have to see it as the supercapacitors of the powergrid. As you said, their energy density is quite low, but their main advantage is that they can provide huge amount of energy in a very short time without degrading the storage.
For the last 3 months, you have probably become the best youtuber in this scientific story-teller area
Not to take away form Joe, but if you haven't encountered him yet, look for Isaac Arthur (SFIA youtube channel).
FreeGoro But Joe is easier to understand
@@hynjus001 Isaac is generally looking far further into the future than Joe, asking the big galaxy-spanning questions rather than concerning himself with down to Earth matters.
Hey, there's room for both. Joe provides the realistic means for the Isaac Arthur future
Hey, fusion is only 10 years away tho...
^quote from 1980
No,no.. fusion is always 30 years away. Lol
The Lucas Tomorrow, always tomorrow 😬
Fusion is eight light minutes away, and has been, for quite a long time.
@@UncleKennysPlace lol... Nice pun.
The truth about fusion though is that if fusion research had been properly funded we would already have it today already.
Years ago, my Dad had a little place up at Smith Mountain Lake. We always marveled at the fact that the lake had daily "tides". The lake would gradually fall about a foot each day, and then miraculously rise back up overnight. We were aware that they were using the lake as a "battery" for electrical storage, but were blown away by the magnitude and scale of what was happening electromechanically each and every day. Still kind of mind blowing.
You missed a really cool one: *Pumped hydro with concrete half spheres under water* - lakes or in the sea. When there's excess power a pump will remove the water, leaving just a vacuum with some steam behind. When you need power, the water will rush into the vacuum chamber again.
A 30 meter diameter half sphere in 700 meter depth can store 20 MWh of energy with an efficiency between 75 and 80%.
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelpumpspeicher
you can link the English one. and its not half speres, its full spheres
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Energy_at_Sea
They store about 66 GJ with an energy density of 4.67 MJ/m³ which is about twice as good as a battery. The biggest advantage being that it can store energy for a long time. However as you can see in the wiki article you wont make a lot of money from it, specially if you use it as a long time storage.
And this is the main problem with most storage solutions. We won't solve the storage problem until there is some redistribution tax on electricity that helps paying for storage.
the hot air in washington seems endless. if only we could use it for good,
Not just Washington. Political centres of all types could be the answer to all our energy problems.
Sadly politicians of all types are dim bulbs. Not a lot of power there I'm afraid.
“According to Wikipedia” is the way I started my final essay for my undergrad.
English is a bitch subject, my absolute least favorite. That is exactly why I majored in STEM
@@ghostridersinthesky21 As much as I love writing and art, I did the same thing because, while I do want to have artistic endeavours in the future, I don’t hate myself.
Wikipedia is the best
English isn't the only subject for which you have to write papers.. I wrote papers for every single subject I took? Including STEM. STEM doesn't save you from doing research and communicating it.
JET uses lead flywheels in order to not destroy the whole grid when starting up the fusion reactor
Tom Verhulst I agree.
using lead as the flywheel material makes very little sense....
@B. Rippy @Basement ScienceE oh yeah the metal i could be wrong on its been a few years ive been there. I must have remembered totally wrong. But all sources on wikipedia lead to redacted pages from JET so i cant check which type of alloy.
@@p3rtang Probably steel frame and lead ballast flywheel.
@@Basement-Science It is a cheap dense metal so it does make sense, you'd definitely need to encase it in something more rigid though.
@12:19 The Horndale power reserve in South Australia was a 129 MWH power reserve with a max power output of 100 MW, it is worth noting that in November 2019 this power system was upgraded to 195 MWH storage with a max output power delivery of 150 MW! I love your channel @Joe Scott
:D
This is pretty awesome. I'd love to see a video on geothermal heating for a home.
More accurately called "ground sourced heat pump". Geothermal is most commonly refers to one of Iceland's energy sources, tapping into volcanoes.
@@CarFreeSegnitz correct
Half of the time, I live in a place in central Europe where they have streams at almost boiling point. Yet there is very little usage outside of large scale agriculture. It makes no sense at all. Mainly it is a legislative issue.
Just use the mitochondria 🙄
Y'all know what it does 😎
Powerhousing the cell?
Narrow the cause of the well?
flower mouse in hell?
That powder has a lovely smell?
Shower less and wipe with a shell?
I love how whenever hydro is mentioned in the environmental impacts of flooding big areas with water quickly get brushed aside. Yes. Hydro is AMAZING source of power and energy reservoirs... but it is a major disturbance to the natural ecosystem of an area.
At least it won't be radioactive for a couple of decades :D
Nothing humanity does has no impact to the environment. Best to do less harm than to stay on the current high harm coal mining etc.
@@VolkerHett decades???
Still far better than burning carbon or millenniums of radioactive waste.
To be in line with your thought process, we should petition for the extermination of the human race, which is the real core issue here. No matter what we do, we have a dramatic impact on the environment. Us not being here would truly solve the problem.
@@VolkerHett Not if you use Gen 4 Reactors
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but your videos send my wife straight to sleep. She loves your voice, she finds it soothing. I love the content, i get the knowledge she gets the much needed sleep... win win. As usual amazing video, so well researched and a joy to watch. Keep em’ coming.
I enjoyed the tour of the current state of various energy storage systems. I'm familiar with a pumped storage facility near where I went to university.
However, the video frames the problem incorrectly in a few ways, which is important because a friend who edits a renewable energy science journal mentions that any near term storage solutions won't be adequate for 100% renewables, like California has mandated.
Wind and solar aren't just temporally variable (intermittency), they're spatially variable, and that's an opportunity. Visualize a weather map of a continent. Somewhere on the continent it's the right speed of wind for power production, and during the day, somewhere it's sunny. An American study showed that wind generated by farms spread over a thousand mile diameter were as reliable as a coal fired utility boiler. (A UK study showed that over a 25 year period, the UK was producing commercial wind power 100% of the time.). And a commercial DC electric line has been carrying electrical power 1000 miles from British Columbia to Los Angeles for decades, with 10 to 20 percent losses, so transmitting electricity that far efficiently is a solved problem. A combination of storage and of transmission from where it's sunny or windy to where the power is needed, is more likely to succeed than storage alone, even with foreseeable improvements in storage.
Why rule out overproduction? The costs of solar and wind have been plummeting for a good decade, and continue to drop. The cheapest, most effective solution may be some combination of storage, transmission, overproduction and occasional natural gas.
The British use of wind power is only going to increase massively from here on. When the new larger turbines get to be built that's only going to increase. The turbines stretch out across the sea and over the horizon. They talking about the plan as far back as the nineties. On my street alone, there are solar panels on roofs from one end to the other. We have had national pumped hydro power storage since before I was born. It can be done if you make them do it.
Joe: "These are all the best methods for storing energy on a large scale."
Advanced Rail Energy Storage: "Am I a joke to you?"
ARES is basically the same as the potential energy mass storage system Joe talked about with the mine shafts. Except less efficient and more visible and exposed to the elements and idiots who throw shit in the way. Also much like the mine shafts, completely dependent on there being elevation change / mine shafts near by.
Battery is the only realistic way forward. It has the smallest footprint and least likely to explode. Compressed air is basically fracking but with higher pressures. Any mass-driven storage is basically a potential natural disaster (floods, train derailment, snapping cables, etc.).
Hydrogen meanwhile is just inefficient and basically combustion. Oxidation is combustion.
It's less efficient than any of the systems mentioned because of rail friction, less scaleable and the3 amount of energy stored is tiny compared to the amount of land needed.
Sure, I'm just surprised he didn't mention it.
@@sth128 "Any mass-driven storage is basically a potential natural disaster"
There's nothing natural about such energy storage methods. Potential disaster? Surely. Natural, nuh-uh.
Welcome Gravity Storage. heindl-energy.com/
There are so many of those, he just can't mention all of them.
Compressing large amounts of hydrogen underground sounds like a giant explosion waiting to happen
Yeah, but you could always just blame the other guy.
It would need oxygen to explode
There is actually no safer place than "underground" for storing explosive things, first of all the ambient conditions are more stable and controllable and maybe more importantly the scary things are deep and far from humans
Even if some H2 managed to leak out, it is not going to find enough oxygen to explode with unless someone decided to store O2 down there. Of more concern is if whoever is running the place decides to go overboard with the compressed air storage, as eventually the rock would give out and apparently Romans used that as a mining tool: Dig a tunnel sloping down, then a shaft up and a chamber in the middle of a mountain they want to remove. Then you let a lake empty into the tunnel, filling it so that the water pushes the air into the chamber, where it can't get out. Eventually the pressure rose so much the mountain cracked open. Spain used to have more mountains but they had gold in them that Romans wanted...
Why does everybody want hydrogen storage? Just generate a more dense, stable compound for christ's sake. Methanol is an obvious option.
Hey Joe, I have a question you may find interesting to research: When are humans expected to evolve into a new species? Meaning do scientists agree on a common threshold after which we become homo sapien neosapiens, and have any (reputable) experts speculated about when that may occur?
Thanks for the awesome channel!
Jeff Mathers I read ppl think autism is the next step in brain development i.e. Wrre getting less able to communicate with each other less trapped in our own brains
not joe, not a scientist either, but I could guess
we won't
the advent of modern medicine messed up with our species' ability to adapt in response to environmental pressure, we no longer need to be born fit to survive naturally until reproducing age in order to pass on our genes
and while that's obviously great at the individual level, our right to live is no longer determined by random odds
it also means the 'drive force' of evolution, natural selection, is no longer affecting us as much as it used to
and while yes, there are other 'forces' that also play a role in the gradual change of a population that can potentially lead to speciation (which is the arbitrary line we draw to say one group of a population have become a new one: when the individuals can no longer produce a fertile offspring), like sexual selection for instance
all of them, just as natural selection, do operate on the scale of dozens to hundreds of generations before speciation can occur
and in the past dozen of generations of our species, we've more then doubled our life expectancy due to modern medicine, among many other factors
our 'man-made change' operates lot faster then evolution, so if we ever 'became another species', my bet is that it'll rather be through our own doing and not standard natural speciation that has putted us on this world
ps: sorry the bad english, and the lack of sources, I'm just procrastinating
Maybe we're just going to have to go with intelligent design and accept that life adapts but it doesn't evolve.
That "Gravity Battery" is honestly the most ingenious thing I saw in this whole video, it's so simplistic and simple I'm actually very shocked I haven't thought of it before let alone people a hundred years ago, that seems like it would've been one of the first sources of nocturnal power to ever arise in history yet it hasn't, at this point I think we've moved past the stage where that would be useful to powering our large scale civilization or even the consumer market but I'm shocked that that wasn't one of the first primitive steps to getting us where we are today, very fascinating
4:50 That's the best explanation of the dam power of water I've ever heard.
Men what an underrated channel, awesome content and delivery!
Thanks for giving us the low down really quickly so people who want to talk my head off to try to sound smart to impress me end up allowing to get annoyed by them instead, so I don't get my ear chewed off. I'm really thankful for that, even though it's past thanksgiving. It's ok to be late to the party lol
I'm happy to see - though we are still lacking so much - we have come so far, and so many good ideas have been discovered and utilized - especially by the Energy Sector, along with governments! It is almost as if - someone has begun to realize that there are no profits to be obtained by an extincted civilization!
The Adelaide battery has been awesome in smoothing out the flow of electricity. It reacts faster than a power plant can, which means that it gets to sell the high cost power. Then if renewables arent available it tops up with cheaper low demand coal based power. It is apparently so good at this that at first it wasn't getting all the revenue it could have until systems were put in place.
some comments.
1. Pumped hydropower, the transformation loss is about 20 to 25%, in addition, you need a lot of space and it also costs quite a lot, as you also mentioned within your vid. So maybe in US it could work, but in smaller esp. flat countries not really. So only for Germany (I'm for there), we would need more than 400 big ones, costs about 500 Billion EURO. We currently have 13 and already run out of space to build new ones.
2. As you mentioned, but in addition, together with pressed air, it could cause massive problems with the ground stability up to earthquakes.
3. All storage is common that they are more or less expensive and often currently in a pilot phase. So we need costs decline and larger scales.
4. Battery isn't such a good idea despite that they would min. double the engery prices easly.
5. Some of this storage we must consider a more or less risk for serious damage when something went wrong. Have you ever seen a Batterie of an E-Car burning? Its' going up to 2000 Celsius.
6. Overalls my current best guess is that it will take min. 1 decade to bring technology to a state where we are able to install it in larger scales we need to an acceptable cost. And another decade or even two, to install them in our countries. As you mentioned we really need a lot of this kind of storage.
Maybe we have fusion power at that time as well.
hydrogen is a good idea until you realize that it likes to go BOOM
There have been hydrogen cars for more than 20 years now. BTW hydrogen explosions are not very dangerous overall because its so light whereas propane will sink and surround you then burn up from there. Hydrogen is already escaping and trying to escape higher. Hydrogen is really where the future of energy lies. The only issue is making the supply chain. Hopefully the oil companies will see this and step in. They're sure hurting now.
Only goes boom in the presence of oxygen and an ignition source.
So does natural gas, propane, oxygen, etc. We've been safely storing compressed explody gasses for a long time now.
That's what makes it a good fuel. ALL good fuels like to go BOOM.
@@johnpossum556 The issue is the energy it takes to generate the hydrogen in the first place. Electrolysis isn't very efficient. You still end up with the question of how to produce that hydrogen. I agree with you that fuel cells are far superior to Li-ion batteries for things like cars. I'm all about 4th generation nuclear for electricity production.
I think the most exciting ones are the liquid metal battery (because it's cheap, safe, and lasts basically forever) and Eduard Heindl's gravity storage. Heindl's concept is different from the one in this video in that it uses ginormous (100-250m radius) hydraulic pistons excavated out of the bedrock and sealed with cement on the outer surfaces, with a rolling seal between the outer wall and the piston. There are two advantages to this concept: 1) a doubling of radius increases the capital costs by 4X but increases the storage capacity by 16X, meaning much lower costs as you scale up; 2) you can use existing pumped hydro equipment but without needing any elevation differences; and 3) it's much more robust than a cable-based solution--cables wear out fast when they're constantly raising and lowering tons of weight, but water never wears out.
The Picture of the pumped hydro plant at 6:05 is the Herdecke plant in Germany. Guess what: On the white spot right to the big building are today three 40-ft shipping containers containing EV-batteries for 7,6 MW and 7,8 MWh of storage (Either the picture is old, or the white spot are these containers mashed into pixel jam...). Since a pumped hydro plant can only react to frequency drops within minutes, these storage units can bridge the gap reacting within milliseconds.
This is actually a cool combination of a variety of storage methods mutually overcoming disadvantages of both.
Another dam-fine video sir. Pumping the water of knowledge through the floodgates of stupidity once again.
Stanley Orchard ... Dam-fine comment there, Stanley 😂.
@@CapinCooke lol
"renewable kinda suck"
*objects in New Zealand*
You need to check how much we produce in NZ. We could have done it but we have geothermal and renewable plants where scaled back about 30-40 years ago as gas was just so much cheaper.
New Zealand is no longer Clean as it was just so much cheaper to pollute it
General Harness yeah I know, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t pursue renewables further but then again NZ isn’t the wealthiest country due to it not being much more than a tourist destination.
Brian Henry how so?
3:01 It's not about finding the minimum amount to produce to maximize profits. It's about finding the minimum per product not total production (total production actually increases more than necessary in many cases). Big distinction and clarification and it's part of why this system that you give a thumbs up to is exacerbating the very problems you are struggling to solve.
That clutching your pearls bit was hilarious... Lol
You forgot the most powerful energy source of all: angry billionaires scared of paying taxes.
Christian incorrect
Christian because its a world renowned source of energy
Christian you clearly dont know what boomer means. generally speaking you should only use a word if you know what it means because when you misuse words you look really dumb and people make fun of you behind your back.
Christian Tell that to the billionaires who spend 95% of their waking hours thinking of ways to avoid paying taxes.
This is the best comment I've ever seen
Yesterday my son asked me, 'What if there wasn't fire?' It made me think about all the things we can do by simply burning things... this video was very timely.
A large percentage of household energy use is for heating water. And, every water heater with a tank is an energy storage device that can be used to reduce load during periods of high electricity demand.
We won't destroy the planet, just us so nothing to worry about.
Dude we're killing speicies at at least twice the rate of any other mass extinction all ready!
@@Chobaca If you discount islands, the number of species humans have exterminated since 1500 is...
9
@@treasurehunter3744 wrong
@@Chobaca I did say excluding islands. Rats and snakes we carried with us did ravage island species and kill hundreds of species for those islands.
But human caused extinction has only taken 9 species on large land masses.
While we are on the topic, I'd say human life is more valuable than other species anyway, but it's important to conserve ecosystems while we are still connected causally with them.
@@treasurehunter3744 your wrong.
Thanks Joe, for yet again, another very informative, humorous & seamless production.
I like how Joe acknowledges the negative aspects of reality yet focuses more on the positive, solution based perspectives...instead of an alarmist approach. It's much more inspiring.
I follow independent journalists(Grayzone & others) for my news thus I am already alarmed. Joe's approach helps me to find balance & not act like a headless chicken.
Way to go, Joe! \0/
I get my energy and heat from the biogas plant down the road... They store the energy in the form of silage in big bunkers. That along with solar panels and the wind turbines we have everywhere, means our entire region can easily run entirely on renewable energy.
At work we have a few concept ambulance that use solar and I was assigned one. We “post” in parking lots around the city and normally the unit would just run to heat and cool the rig. This would keep the batteries that also charge the batteries that run the box and lights. With solar we could shut off the unit and we can run things from battery and if the solar could not keep up for what ever reason the rig would restart on its own and shut off when it could. It was cool to be apart of the concept.
Whenever there are mismatches between supply and demand, such as shortages, it means something is preventing market mechanisms from working correctly.
In this case, the regulators aren't allowing a large enough price difference between peak usage and low usage times. There will always be some level of price difference that will incentivize end users to shift their usage patterns to match supply, or purchase energy storage to save money for themselves.
Early on you say "anti-green people always say something like this..."
When they are making correct points. They aren't anti-green, they are pragmatic. I don't know anyone that wouldn't love a safe, cheap, abundant, always available, renewable and zero emission energy source. Nuclear checks almost every box but that isn't good enough for the pro-green crowd.
Checking all those boxes is incredibly difficult. Recognizing that doesn't make someone "anti-green".
Bryon Grosz I know someone that would hate a safe cheap abundant available renewable energy, anyone in the coal or oil industry, and unfortunately they have a lot more power than scientists who know what we need
So where do solid state batteries fit into this. Thats only 6 or 7 years away according to you. Low cost and sodium from the ocean is more abundant than that metal
Solid state batteries just improve upon the energy density of our current best, of Li-Ion, through its various advantages*. This means we should see vast improvements in portable technologies, EVs and plausibly enable things like long-haul Electric Aircraft.
Depending on how cost effective the tech is - I wouldn't expect it to directly** play a large role in grid-scale energy storage, as, similar to Li-Ion, the strengths lie in weight and size reduction. The grid doesn't really need that, per se. (size and weight are fairly unimportant when you're storing things underground or in a field. Storage/discharge times and return of investment are.)
I do expect other battery and storage technologies to play a larger role there, eventually (Li-ion is very cost effective atm, because we have spent a lot of effort making it so, as it's necessary for so much more)
* - Solid state batteries have a better ratio of active ingredients, so, more of the battery is "doing battery things" for its weight. There are theoretically other advantages, like faster dis/charge, no flammable liquids and such, but that will be determined by the final products (as opposed to laboratory examples)
** - I say "directly" because I'm a HUGE believer in Vehicle 2 Grid tech and the important role it will play in the future energy mix. It's basically mandatory for renewable uptake imo
I kept hoping you would talk about flywheel storage and you did not disappoint me. The first time i heard about this method my first reaction was that I brought this up years ago when I found out about regenerative braking. Thank you for the interesting video.
5:12 Picture is Osaka, Dotonbori Canal. Very nice place and fantastic restaurants there.
The best thing ever said by Joe: the planet is not going to be destroyed.
Best look is the one he gave after he said it. 3:30
Joe. I work for a utility company and I've never heard of this "Flow" battery technology. I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that, to be frank. But all the same, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do a video on this technology. I can't wait.
Thanks and happy holidays.
Here in Sweden the oil company Preem is producing fuel from sawdust and other rest materials from the lumber industry. They produce in quantatiy an sell it at their gas stations.
There is tremendous potential for storing "low-quality" energy. This means thermal energy that is not hot enough to turn turbines. Like backyard thermal solar panels, to heat all your water and provide a baseline of home heating. I live in Southern California, and a large percentage of our household electricity usage is for hot water and heating during the winter months. But in winter, we usually have clear skies so we could store heat and then use it at night.
17:19 The 2020 battery study by the IEA states that by 2040, "nearly 10 000 GWh of batteries and other storage will be required to meet demand across all sectors." That is quite the jump!
All this talk of solar, fossil and hydro. I just wanna fuse
Solar is fusion sort of
I've worked drilling wells since 1979 and have worked on about 10 wells that were used for gas storage. These wells are no way as easy a Joe makes it sound like they are. Your best bet for a gas storage cavern is to set casing in a salt formation then use fresh water to dissolve the salt.
A national (even better, Global) mandate where all buildings from business to homes, small to large, are required to have Green-Roofs would def. help a bit. Particularly if each zip code had it's own sort of "regional best suited" plants so they'd survive in their natural climate zones. It'd be rad to look out and see all human-made lands be topped off with greenery. Again, each appropriate to it's local climate to save on needing to water, etc. The intake of carbon (once done nation wide) would be substantial. As well as the oxygen output.
Compressed air in salt caverns sounds great . To hyper compress it during peak loads you can send down a charge and detonate some combustible fuel to rapidly expand via heat !
Santorini, another impetus for the 1177 effect, the island is also known as Thera it was an incident of that era that could have accelerated the demise of the region, it exploded with a ferocity not too unlike Krakatoa, besides the Greek fighting themselves.
Weight goes up, weight goes down...YOU CAN"T EXPLAIN THAT!
Nice one!
I'm hopelessly addicted to these videos...
It's such a relief to know that the politicians of the world have got this in hand. Because I'd be worried if I thought that nowhere near enough was being done.
I get that the 'it sucks that we still burn things for energy' is the hook for the clip, but as you note at 1:43, a fundamental property of energy is the addition of heat. Kind of like saying it sucks that so much of travel is at ground level, then introducing the confounding variable of gravity.
Besides being able to store more energy from renewables, we also should be able to use less, much less energy. Electric cars are just one way we can start doing it, but there are a lot to do still. For example: why should we keep all street lights on when nobody is out? By turning on public lights only when people are there to be illuminated could potentially save a lot of energy (I haven't done the math, but you probably got the idea). We can also make our washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners, ovens, light bulbs, etc. more efficient, saving more power. By combining both renewable energy and efficiency, it would be easier to solve our energy, environment, and health problems caused by fossil fuels. Best Regards.
You need to remember to mention upgrading all the power lines to move the added power needed to recharge EV cars.
Also, read 'energy for future presidents'.
Regarding the first line: power distribution upgrading was foreseen to be a problem a decade ago for EV charging in SoCal area by SDG&E & Edison utilities, and were requiring permits to install charging stations, even home units. Many areas were already near designed max load capacity, with increased installs of central AC units in homes because of longer hotter summers. Too many EVs on a substation/transformer branch could result in brownouts or eventually trip the breakers, blacking out a subdivision. As usual, high cost infrastructures will lag behind demand. Smart grid equipment for commercial/home load controls and Rooftop Solar with wind turbine generation can help offset the need for major transmission line upgrades (always a political sore spot).
Also, have read Prof. Richard Muller's book many times, especially good to supplement his online lectures series. Unfortunately it's technology details are 13 years out of date; the physics are still fine, but cost/benefit factors and tech developments have made many assumptions invalid and needs a revision (Tesla, SpaceX, solar cell mega-factory outputs, etc.)
A few problems with the start of the video:
1. By far the largest renewable energy source at the current point in time is hydroelectricity. 24 hours a day, very reliable electricity.
2. Wind and solar combined actually produce fairly predictable amounts, and tend to be more reliable over time than fossil fuel plants ie fossil fuel and nuclear plants often need to be shut down for maintenance whereas wind and solar are typically maintained in much smaller quantities so there is much less variation from predicted output.
3. There are many opportunities around the world to add more wind and solar without requiring any storage.
Joe, have you ever thought of doing a video on Lightning strikes and the harnessing of such energy? there is some interesting information out there on the topic that I think a lot of your viewers would enjoy.
Funny, the Gravity Battery pretty much already exists in my parents old grandfather clock. They are weight driven too and we had to crank the weights back up daily to put more energy into the system. This is just scaling it up a lot. What's old is new again.
GRAVITRICITY! My personal favorite energy storage option.
Really nice video but I got a question about the hydrogen storage. If it ever had a leak wouldn't it make a huge cavern full of explosive gas? I know that it would have to have a ratio of oxygen to hydrogen to explode but still wouldn't any small leak make it mix with air and get that ratio?
Gravity batteries can be cheaper to produce if the weight is replaced with an empty container that can be drawn up by a much smaller and cheaper motor, water is then pumped by water pumps, these pumps are super efficient, the water load is dumped once the container reaches the end of it's travel and drawn up then refilled.
So many puns on the gravity battery. "Elevator power!" "The energy source with a sinking feeling!" "Uplifts as it charges!" "They show real energy potential!"
I wonder, if the weight included a massive drill, if they could keep digging deeper when energy is abundant, extending the storage capacity of the plant. Might be a potential for finding ore and mineral deposits as well.
Just signed up for Curiosity Stream Joe. Thanks. And they also have an $11.99 per year right now so even better. Oh and great vid as always.
I'm a lead maintenance mechanic for best buy but eventually I want to end up leading a team for an energy plant just because its so damn cool
There are lots if storage options that offer different advantages and synergies and that's fantastic! It shouldn't be forgotten we have the ability to trade electricity over thousands of miles using decades old technology such as High-voltage direct current HVDC.
Don't forget, there are different problems, energy storage needs to address:
There are the daily fluctuations which need to be addressed, but there are also the seasonal fluctuations; especially when heating energy demand is included. So, you need considerable amounts of energy for the winter season in many places. With respect to energy density, there is no alternative to chemical storage.
Another type of flow battery plates a metal on to a bunch of plastic shelves or plates that are dosed with Carbon to make them conductive. When discharging, the metal goes back into solution. The Zinc bromide flow battery is one of these. They have no fade over time and no self discharge. Efficiencies are comparable to Pumped storage.
You can gain alot of efficiency when electronic devices work directly off of dc. Side effect is cheaper designs, nearly all devices/applianceshave ac-dc conversion that can be eliminated. This is a big reason to have local solar where possible. No expensive inverter necessary, reducing solar installation costs. Less e-waste from capacitors etc. More reliable and longer lasting electronics because there is no power supply ripple heating components causing wear.
tHAT WAS YOUR BEST TANGENT CAM EVER, REALLY GOOD STUFF RIGHT THERE.
I'm not retyping this
"What are you gonna do at night? What if the wind doesn't blow?"
Me: Have you heard of a generator?
16:00 Several years ago, I built a scale model flywheel energy storage system with LEGO, I wanted to design and incorporate into a vehicle for a type of regenerative braking; With hopes this would lead to a scalable, mass production version that I could patent. Well, that didn't pan out because I'm a pleb; but I still find the topic fascinating.
This video is a goldmine for my brain, lol. Cheers Mr. Scott, looking forward to more content.
16:23 --|
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9:02 "I saw a[...] "piston", "ceiling would be weighted with concrete[...]".
Am I ahead on this one? You said it's not in use yet.
It is important to understand that when we talk about energy storage, we are really talking about 2 different types, short term and long term. Short term is measured in hours. Long term is days or weeks. Long term is what is needed when the wind does not blow or solar conditions are suboptimal for an extended period. High capacity/low cost grid size storage does not exist today. This cost is not in LCOE and leads to misleading conclusions that renewables can compete with fossil fuels. The truth is they cannot, and by a wide margin.
The other problem with love is that it does not include the infrastructure cost to get the power to my house. Renewable requires huge acreage for wind and solar farms, with will be further away from the consumption than fossil fuels.
The measurement that is missing from LCOE is the percent reliability. LCOE is based upon assumptions of average weather. Weather is never average. Fossil fuel is low cost high reliability. Renewable is high cost low reliability. The cost to achieve equal reliability with fossil fuels needs to be included to have an accurate cost comparison.
I am really loving this channel getting closer to committing support.
Brian Keyes Do it. I have supported Joe on Patreon for a while. I met him with the other ludicrous future guys at a rocket launch. Joe is more thoughtful, more human, and just as funny in real life. Go Joe!
SONO Sion, and other smart electric cars should be able to charge when there's energy available, and "dump" into the grid when the voltage or frequency drops. This is part of the smart-grid solution. GO-JOE, do a video on SONO Motors, they need a bit of a plug right now (Now-you-know have done a 1/2 hour segment, it's your turn !!)
Honestly, when I hear the "what do you do at night or what do you do if the wind doesn't blow". I mention technologies such as high altitude wind turbines which generate more electricity than standard turbines and can be quickly deployed. Considering they're high altitude, if the wind doesn't "blow" with them we're screwed. There's also spherical solar panel from Andre Broessel that has promise. Due to it uses a spherical glass to focus light on a small solar panel, it's said to be a lot more efficient than standard panels and can even generate some power in cloudy conditions
9:02 I saw a video about a "biodome" research project where the participants/scientists were sealed in a facility, all food, water, and air was processed on site. It might have even been one of your videos, forgive me, after a while I forget exactly which source. It was an experiment related to Mars habitation though.
On to the point: The facility had a "diaphragm" which would absorb changes in air pressure. I've thought about an energy storage reservoir which would use a similar principle, a large, air tight chamber with a movable top, similar to a piston. The ceiling would be weighted with concrete to increase the amount of potential energy that can be stored. Similar to the compressed air gas chambers, but they could be built anywhere and with controlled parameters.
Isn't a Hydroelectric Dam just a giant battery?
It produces energy, but it uses latent Kinetic energy to do so. Hold enough water and it's the same as charging a battery. Example:
100 gallons per second to produce energy 100% of the time.
150 gallons per second added to lake = charging. 50 gallons per second = losing charge but still producing 100/sec
6:03 basically what I expect people to realize when I tell them batteries are only 3% of the US's Grid energy storage; and that 94% is hydropump storage. But now that I have actually witnessed it, I feel a little bad for wanting that reaction in the first place.
We need to keep "eye on it", at 15:13 was the perfect expression in a sentence about battery.
There is actually a big advantage to everyone living in cities, a silver lining. The vastly increased density means vastly improved efficiency for all kinds of services, assuming they are well thought out and designed to be eco friendly. Transportation, energy delivery, food delivery, all kinds of infrastructure can service FAR more people using far less actual physical infrastructure because of the density. Cities that rise vertically and are built dense and well planned are actually the solution imho.
20:09 I preffer a cup of good coffee to a good cup of coffee.
Thanks for another great video Joe. I'd love to become a Patreon but I just can't find the energy.
i love how the last 2 ideas are just basic physics. no hydrogen or lakes as fuel. just get a block of tungsten and a cable for all of your energy storing needs