The Lemon Fool

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who don't realise we already have ways of encouraging people to use off peak electricity... although the idea of splitting ev's off at the meter would make it even easier.

Forking car chargers off at the meter is an interesting idea.

Money Box Live: Electric Cars:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbn6yr

Electric Mercedes opens German assault on Tesla

STOCKHOLM/PARIS (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz is set to unveil its much-anticipated electric SUV on Tuesday, marking the start of a German onslaught against Tesla’s (TSLA.O) dominance of the fast-growing market for premium battery cars.

Daimler-owned (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes, BMW (BMWG.DE) and Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) Audi and Porsche divisions are all gunning for the $52 billion Californian upstart ... The new Mercedes, due to reach its first customers next year, will be priced close to the fuel-burning GLC to compete in the same bracket as Tesla’s $49,000 Model 3, helped by its hotter-selling SUV form ...Like Tesla, Mercedes is announcing EQC orders in Norway even before its price. It has amassed more than 2,000 refundable deposits of 20,000 crowns ($2,400) in Europe’s biggest electric-car market, where Tesla sold 8,500 vehicles last year ...Audi on Monday began production of its e-Tron SUV ahead of a Sept. 17 sales launch jamboree in San Francisco, just 40 miles from Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant ...The e-Tron is due in showrooms early next year, followed in 2020 by two more electric Audis and the Porsche Taycan sports car.

- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford ... SKCN1LI0SE

Schroders blog post on uptake of EVs, and possibly where the opportunity lies for investors

https://www.schroders.com/en/uk/private ... ntent_link

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy ... tures.html

Looks like Europe is slowly waking up to the EV battery shortfall issue.

John

Article in DT:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... t-jackpot/

Four projects on the Dogger Bank – more than 60 miles out into the North Sea, and invisible even to the most outraged Nimby armed with a telescope – will have five gigawatts (GW) of capacity at a strike price ranging from £39.65 to £41.61 per megawatt/hour (MWh) from 2023 to 2024.

It seems that de-carbonisation of electricity generation is proceeding more rapidly than thought possible. The strike price implies no subsidy necessary for renewable generation.
So the big challenges that remain are grid scale storage, and the capex to upgrade the local distribution of electricity to enable all of those domestic heatpumps and EV charging points.

There are 1/3 million substations in the UK. 50% of these date from the original grid electrification more than half a century ago. Not to mention that all the roads will need to be dug up to fit uprated cables and plug in points for roadside parking.

TUK020 wrote:Article in DT:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... t-jackpot/

Four projects on the Dogger Bank – more than 60 miles out into the North Sea, and invisible even to the most outraged Nimby armed with a telescope – will have five gigawatts (GW) of capacity at a strike price ranging from £39.65 to £41.61 per megawatt/hour (MWh) from 2023 to 2024.

It seems that de-carbonisation of electricity generation is proceeding more rapidly than thought possible. The strike price implies no subsidy necessary for renewable generation.
So the big challenges that remain are grid scale storage, and the capex to upgrade the local distribution of electricity to enable all of those domestic heatpumps and EV charging points.

There are 1/3 million substations in the UK. 50% of these date from the original grid electrification more than half a century ago. Not to mention that all the roads will need to be dug up to fit uprated cables and plug in points for roadside parking.

It is almost as if there was a huge commercial opportunity waiting for entrepreneurs to find it.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:
It is almost as if there was a huge commercial opportunity waiting for entrepreneurs to find it.

Regards,

Yup, Electricity Distribution Network Operators willing to take an investment risk, and loads of eastern Europeans in vans with pickaxes.

No wait, we are going to privatise the former, and have persuaded all the latter to bugger off home.

Article in DT:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... -launches/

Highview Power has secured the go-ahead for a 50 megawatt liquid air plant in the North of England capable of offering days of fast back-up power for the grid when needed and for far longer periods than a lithium battery.

and

Highview’s Mr Cavada said the estimated cost for the first cryoenergy project is £110 per MWh. This is slightly below the levelised cost of “gas peaker” plants, which in the case of the UK rely increasingly on imported natural gas from Norway or Qatar.

But this cost falls rapidly if the hours of storage are lengthened. “We can expand very easily by just adding more tanks. The economies of scale are gigantic. The costs don’t double if the storage doubles. They go up just 10pc,” he said.

The economies of scale point is particularly important.
This, combined with the progress on costs for offshore wind, imply that the generation part of the puzzle is close to getting an economic answer.
This will put the focus back on solving the distribution part of the puzzle - digging up the roads to put in charging points.

tuk020

Article in the FT:
https://www.ft.com/content/9cba0522-f56 ... f8794b17c6

The UK will have to spend £240bn installing an average of 4,000 electric vehicle charging points and heat pumps a day if the government is to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” by 2050, according to new forecasts.

It looks more and more like the local distribution network is where the capex elephant is.......

Article in FT
https://www.ft.com/content/7c36dd38-f69 ... 9acae3b654

Cost of offshore electricity predicted to fall by 40% by 2030. Offshore to be single biggest source of generation by 2040.

We'll have to build a lot of these compressed air battery storage facilities then. All this could give a huge boost to the economy - I k=just hope we don't have to import all the equipment, that won't be good for our balance of payments.

Article on the BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49958457
Wheels of fortune? A new age for electric motors
"APC has set out a roadmap of how it sees electric motors developing; and, by 2025, it expects costs per kilowatt to almost halve, while power density triples.
"For the same amount of power they generate, they'll weigh a third as much and be one third of the package size as well. At the same time the costs will reduce," says Mr OudeNijeweme.
"The electric motor will dramatically change. I don't know how quickly, but ten years from now it will be unrecognisable from what you see today, not in how it looks - but in what it does.""

I wonder what effect that will have

Adrian

AJC5001 wrote:Article on the BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49958457
Wheels of fortune? A new age for electric motors
"APC has set out a roadmap of how it sees electric motors developing; and, by 2025, it expects costs per kilowatt to almost halve, while power density triples.
"For the same amount of power they generate, they'll weigh a third as much and be one third of the package size as well. At the same time the costs will reduce," says Mr OudeNijeweme.
"The electric motor will dramatically change. I don't know how quickly, but ten years from now it will be unrecognisable from what you see today, not in how it looks - but in what it does.""

I wonder what effect that will have

Adrian

It would be nice if these ambitions possibilities happen: Tripling power density is more than what I have seen, but there is now a lot of world wide effort that was never before put onto batteries, halving the cost looks much more do able to me.

Also with electric motors they are currently over 80% efficient, so doesn't look to be huge upside there, unless I am missing something.

Regards,

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:

scrumpyjack wrote:We'll have to build a lot of these compressed air battery storage facilities then. All this could give a huge boost to the economy - I k=just hope we don't have to import all the equipment, that won't be good for our balance of payments.

If you're referring to Highview Power, I am afraid that's going to be a rather forlorn hope. (By the way, Highview Power is liquid air storage. Compressed air energy storage is presently being promoted in the UK by a company call Storelectric, who it seems have yet to actually build an energy storage plant.)

If you have information or links it would be interesting to know who owns Highview power and who are the competitors?

Regards,

TUK020 wrote:Article in the FT:
https://www.ft.com/content/9cba0522-f56 ... f8794b17c6

The UK will have to spend £240bn installing an average of 4,000 electric vehicle charging points and heat pumps a day if the government is to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” by 2050, according to new forecasts.

It looks more and more like the local distribution network is where the capex elephant is.......

Amidst all the restructuring of the large electrical utilities, you will notice that none of them are rushing to - and proclaiming that - they are bulking up on DNOs. I can't for the like of me think why that might be ....... (not) !

regards, dspp

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:

odysseus2000 wrote:

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:If you're referring to Highview Power, I am afraid that's going to be a rather forlorn hope. (By the way, Highview Power is liquid air storage. Compressed air energy storage is presently being promoted in the UK by a company call Storelectric, who it seems have yet to actually build an energy storage plant.)

If you have information or links it would be interesting to know who owns Highview power and who are the competitors?

Regards,

I have little information on the company beyond what's on their website https://www.highviewpower.com. If you're really interested in ownership, take a look at Companies House as a starting point. Regarding competition, that would be anyone in the grid scale energy storage business. Specifically cryogenic air storage? I am guessing nobody since there is no real market out there yet. However, the technology is very common and very well established. I imagine that any patents they hold will relate to the use of existing technology in a novel way. Having said that, power recovery from cryogenic plants is very old news. It may not be patent-able, just a new way of thinking about very old ways of doing things. In that sense, should the market suddenly explode then it is very, very simple for companies like Linde, Air Liquide or Air Products to join in. They all have the exact skill set required and could even re-purpose existing plant for this service. The bar to entry, therefore is pretty low in this business, I'd say.

Barriers to entry in cryogenic and/or compressed gas storage of energy are low. (Ditto by the way for all the bulk storage of low grade heat approaches).

Barriers to profitability are very high, and driven by a nasty combination of high capital costs and of poor thermodynamic cycle efficiency. The latter cannot be undone as physics doesn't care about humans.

I think - and have done so for 20 years - that this approach to energy storage will be dead-ended except in niche circumstances. The lack of take-up at any scale suggests my call is (so far) correct.

That said there are some interesting approaches that have merit in lowering the capital cost side of the equation and if there were ever any breakthroughs it would be interesting to re-examine my assumptions.

regards, dspp

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:

dspp wrote:

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:I have little information on the company beyond what's on their website https://www.highviewpower.com. If you're really interested in ownership, take a look at Companies House as a starting point. Regarding competition, that would be anyone in the grid scale energy storage business. Specifically cryogenic air storage? I am guessing nobody since there is no real market out there yet. However, the technology is very common and very well established. I imagine that any patents they hold will relate to the use of existing technology in a novel way. Having said that, power recovery from cryogenic plants is very old news. It may not be patent-able, just a new way of thinking about very old ways of doing things. In that sense, should the market suddenly explode then it is very, very simple for companies like Linde, Air Liquide or Air Products to join in. They all have the exact skill set required and could even re-purpose existing plant for this service. The bar to entry, therefore is pretty low in this business, I'd say.

Barriers to entry in cryogenic and/or compressed gas storage of energy are low. (Ditto by the way for all the bulk storage of low grade heat approaches).

Barriers to profitability are very high, and driven by a nasty combination of high capital costs and of poor thermodynamic cycle efficiency. The latter cannot be undone as physics doesn't care about humans.

I think - and have done so for 20 years - that this approach to energy storage will be dead-ended except in niche circumstances. The lack of take-up at any scale suggests my call is (so far) correct.

That said there are some interesting approaches that have merit in lowering the capital cost side of the equation and if there were ever any breakthroughs it would be interesting to re-examine my assumptions.

regards, dspp

dspp, far be it for me to pick a bun fight over something like this but I don't really think you are quite correct about high capital cost and poor round trip efficiency. Smallish scale cryo-plants are almost off the shelf items. They are semi-production line build these days for nitrogen generation for example. International competition from low cost manufacturing countries keeps a lid on prices. Highview Power are effectively using the front half of a nitrogen generator, liquefying the air and running it off to standard industrial gases bulk storage. Again, semi-production line built kit. The machinery involved, the main air compressor again, standard off the shelf kit, nothing special, buy it from a catalogue almost. These days, they are extraordinarily efficient with polytropic efficiencies in the middle 80 per cent range. The expanders used to recover the energy from the liquid air are again, pretty much commodity items, often using magnetic bearing systems and efficiency in the 90 per cents is the norm. Where you are correct is that the electricity used to drive the main air compressor is a significant cost, but the idea is to run only at off peak tariff times only. The big energy requirement is when it comes to vapourising the liquid air and expanding it across the turbo expander. I think you'll find that the preferred location for such liquid air energy storage facilities is next to a facility that has heat to sink or a requirement for chilling. So, the heat of expansion is preferably "waste" heat from another facility close by. Hope that helps understanding, the bar to entry to this business is pretty low, but there as yet, is no market. (Sometimes you can buy redundant nitrogen generators from industrial gases companies. Generally these are scrapped for the aluminium content, but would be simple to convert to liquid air energy storage).

RVF,
Equally I'm not wanting to have a bunfight, but can we dissect the numbers please. I agree with you on all the industrial componentry by the way. And the heat/cold location associations/synergies.

Compress & cool to store - are you serious that it is 80% efficient ? This is the biggy.
Expanders - yes I'd agree that about 90% would be about right.
To both sides I'd add about another 10% of losses for real world components & issues (motors, drives, wiring).

So round trip becomes - if you are right - 0.8 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 = 0.58.

A 58% round trip efficiency is not a good starting place for anything other than niche applications is it ? And that is assuming your n=0.8 on the in is correct. Is it ?

regards, dspp

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:

dspp wrote:

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:dspp, far be it for me to pick a bun fight over something like this but I don't really think you are quite correct about high capital cost and poor round trip efficiency. Smallish scale cryo-plants are almost off the shelf items. They are semi-production line build these days for nitrogen generation for example. International competition from low cost manufacturing countries keeps a lid on prices. Highview Power are effectively using the front half of a nitrogen generator, liquefying the air and running it off to standard industrial gases bulk storage. Again, semi-production line built kit. The machinery involved, the main air compressor again, standard off the shelf kit, nothing special, buy it from a catalogue almost. These days, they are extraordinarily efficient with polytropic efficiencies in the middle 80 per cent range. The expanders used to recover the energy from the liquid air are again, pretty much commodity items, often using magnetic bearing systems and efficiency in the 90 per cents is the norm. Where you are correct is that the electricity used to drive the main air compressor is a significant cost, but the idea is to run only at off peak tariff times only. The big energy requirement is when it comes to vapourising the liquid air and expanding it across the turbo expander. I think you'll find that the preferred location for such liquid air energy storage facilities is next to a facility that has heat to sink or a requirement for chilling. So, the heat of expansion is preferably "waste" heat from another facility close by. Hope that helps understanding, the bar to entry to this business is pretty low, but there as yet, is no market. (Sometimes you can buy redundant nitrogen generators from industrial gases companies. Generally these are scrapped for the aluminium content, but would be simple to convert to liquid air energy storage).

RVF,
Equally I'm not wanting to have a bunfight, but can we dissect the numbers please. I agree with you on all the industrial componentry by the way. And the heat/cold location associations/synergies.

Compress & cool to store - are you serious that it is 80% efficient ? This is the biggy.
Expanders - yes I'd agree that about 90% would be about right.
To both sides I'd add about another 10% of losses for real world components & issues (motors, drives, wiring).

So round trip becomes - if you are right - 0.8 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 = 0.58.

A 58% round trip efficiency is not a good starting place for anything other than niche applications is it ? And that is assuming your n=0.8 on the in is correct. Is it ?

regards, dspp

dspp, I said polytropic efficiency of turbo compressor these days gets towards the mid 80's per cent. That's a fact ***. The liquefaction process itself (other than very on small plants) recovers part of the power consumed by running a turbo expander in parallel with a JT (Joule Thompson) valve. Overall round trip efficiency is high 50 per-centile typically, yes. The point I didn't mention and you seem to miss though, is that presently, we often have more wind power than we can consume whilst maintaining grid stability. National Grid pay wind farm operators to stop generating. We are heading in the UK toward much higher penetration of wind generation than anyone ever imagined even five to ten years ago and prices are falling continuously. So, what these means for energy storage is that if I have an air liquefaction plant, I can run it to soak up those excess megawatts of wind power that we won't actually be able to utilise. If I am really clever I will get that energy for free, or even be paid by National Grid to use it. That's when I make my liquid air **. Then, I turn off my liquid air plant and I sell my electricity that I am going to make by vapourising my liquid air to drive my turbo expander generator. Meantime, the fish finger factory, conveniently next door is very happy for me to chill or freeze their entire day's production for them. Even better, I only charge them half what it would cost them to freeze the fish fingers for themselves. So, all in all, everyone is happy and I have a profitable energy storage business despite my thermodynamic round trip efficiency being only around 58 per cent. It may not be happening quite today, but this is a very, very new industry and it is changing very quickly. We are desperate for true grid scale energy storage not least to enable the increasing off shore wind generation fleet to continue it's extraordinary expansion.

** Many industrial gases nitrogen/oxygen liquefaction plants around the world only run at weekends or off peak night time power.
*** If it helps, my day job is machinery technical authority for an international energy company.

Thank you RVF for confirming the numbers, and I too know this technology. You never know we may once have worked for the same company, or not, but at least we have the same number, n = 58% round trip efficiency.

I haven't missed the intermittency & curtailment points, I took the understanding of them for granted.

I agree with you regarding the need to soak up some of the excess. It comes down to a balance between over-investing in excess generation vs investing in storage. So far most of my analysis suggests that it is cheaper to over-invest in excess generation (even with no curtailment payments) vs investing in storage. Strange but true, this seems to be quite a robust conclusion, for quite a lot of the transition pathway. Irrespective, I set that aside and assume some considerable storage will be required even during the large section of the transition pathway for which the numbers suggest it is not the optimal solution.

So then we come to which storage types are most needed. Useful factors to analyse are scale (MWh) vs duration (hrs, days) with storage sufficent for about a week of discharge being the goal for most industralised economies when you do the probabalistic intermittency sums. Again I fully agree with you that co-located air liquide plants can have sidestreams of value that a battery plant cannot (cooling), but battery plants can deliver low grade heat so there is not heat-side advantage. These days a typical lithium-ion would be 95% round trip, or more realistically in my mind 85-90% system-level round trip. So the question becomes are there enough locations that can soak up the cold advantage to make 58% equal to, or better than, 90%. I humbly suggest not as many as you might hope.

I say this because of my experience trying to - basically - give away excess heat or cold from large power stations. (through the same lumps of kit & processes & cycles you are describing, and similar). It turns out that trying to get two neighbouring commercial sites to be built, operate viably, and ultimately decommissioned over the same 20-40 year lifecycle and to remain in commercial & technical lockstep from start to finish is hellishly difficult. That at least is my observation. It gets better when there is a low grade heat network to decouple the individual providers and users (i.e. the network has a 40-60 year lifecycle, even if individual users/consumers turn over more rapidly). That is why district heating schemes can become viable (in some cultures, notably not so much in Anglo Saxon ones). However district cooling schemes are far less common (are there any at all, outside of refinery/petrochem complxes?).

Then we come to the $$/kWh question. I can see the technology decline curve operating on the battery space, and that is a very agressive curve by comparison with the fantastically stable cost & technology curve that is operating in the air liquide space. So even if there is - perhaps briefly - a window of opportunity to run air liquide plants as storage then fairly soon it will be dead-ended & outcompeted. And in the meantime the battery plant can access all-but-one of the same revenue streams as the air liquide plant (it cannot easily do the coolth), and the battery plant can also access the high frequency response aspects more so than the air liquide plant.

I am very happy to be told I am wrong, and shown why. But the above is the summary of my logic in this area.

all imho of course.

regards, dspp