A Brief History of Everything Wireless Blog: Renewables + batteries: the perfect storm

Renewables + batteries: the perfect storm

2024-07-25 [Petri]

There has been several major inflection points in the history, from the era of Luddites (which they lost) to the era of current non-EV Luddites (which they will also inevitably lose).

As I wrote in the previous blog entry, I have been studying the latest battery technologies, and it has inevitably exposed me to the very latest renewable energy developments as well.

Both of these areas are experiencing the hockey stick curve right now, creating a perfect storm.

As a result, several experts now predict that we will witness an irreversible decline of the oil, coal and natural gas-based energy economy in the next 5-10 years.

This is due to the fact that the existing imbalance between production and consumption of renewable energy is going to be solved by the battery technologies, as the price of both is in rapid decline.

This transition was expected to take much longer, but Vladimir Putin’s desire of creating a "conquistador's legacy" for himself has greatly sped it up since 2022, especially after his failed attempt to use Russian energy as a pawn in international relations.

This blatant attempt to blackmail kicked the EU into high gear, unifying and incentivizing Europe to invest tens of billions of euros into the renewable energy sector.

This, together with the already ongoing transition in China, is really changing the energy landscape.

Renewable energy is mainly about solar and wind, and many of the other oil producing countries reside on amicable latitudes, swimming in excess cash that enables new investments into this technology.

Russia’s northern location does not fare well in the game, and their stubborn spending on the ongoing war pretty much ensures that their financial resources will be severely restricted.

Not to mention the brain-drain from Russia that has happened, in the count of hundreds of thousands, since the brutal war in the heart of Europe started.

The inevitable result of this is that the counter-reaction to Russia’s own action will will end up hurting Russia the most.

As mentioned, despite the quickly lowering cost of renewables, they were still facing the fact that half of every day, the Sun does not shine, and the wind patterns are unpredictable.

In many parts of the World, super cold weather is accompanied by still air. For example in my native Finland, when it is absolutely calm and pitch dark in the middle of winter, the energy consumption goes through the roof as the temperatures plummet to -40 C or even below.

In general, the daily energy consumption tends to follow the infamous “duck curve”, peaking first during the day and then again in the dark evening hours.

Hence the production peak from renewables very seldom match the peaks in consumption, and the way our grids have coped with this has been to bring additional, often very polluting traditional fossil fuel power stations online on demand.

This has forced us to keep many older, highly polluting power stations alive.

And not only the old ones: China, which is still experiencing a major growth in energy consumption, keeps on building new coal-powered plants on an almost weekly basis, despite of the fact that their solar and wind plants are currently largest in the world.

To even out the mismatch between renewal energy production and overall consumption, one available method has been to use the excess energy to pump water uphill into mountain reservoirs, and then re-use its potential energy to run traditional hydro-power generators.

This has traditionally been the most common “surplus energy” storage method, and is profitable, even though some 20-30% of energy gets wasted in the process cycle.

Generating “green hydrogen” with the excess energy has also been suggested as the solution, but the losses in the two-way conversion process and the problems in keeping the tiny hydrogen atoms in storage have so far been major limitations of this approach.

Even more esoteric solutions, like using gravity-based systems built around either towers or former deep mine shafts have been suggested: you lift heavy blocks up with cheap energy, and then use the gained potential energy of these blocks to generate power when prices are favorable.

The first commercial-scale project in this class is about to be commissioned in Rudong, China, with the peak output of 25 MW.

Whatever the solution, the common feature for all of them is that they could cover just a small proportion of the required backup of energy. In addition to this, some of the methods have long start-up times, so blackouts are not always avoided when the grid experiences some major imbalance.

Therefore, it is no surprise that big part of the battery technology research is focusing on this part of the energy needs: electricity storage and re-use are well-understood properties and require no moving parts.

Batteries in general are divided into two categories: high energy density + low weight for cars and especially aviation, and reliable, long-life and “weight does not matter” batteries for stationary solutions.

Several very, very old battery technologies have seen a renaissance of interest, in order to help balance the peaks and troughs of the power grid.

In one mention-able success story, Tesla has successfully pivoted from the car batteries to stationary ones, offering their Power Wall solution for domestic users with solar panels, as well as huge, stationary battery backup systems, like the one installed in Australia.

The latter is still following the same, somewhat volatile lithium-ion battery tech as the Tesla cars, claiming that potential fires can be contained by design.

Tesla’s South Australia Hornsdale Power Reserve can respond to grid overload in milliseconds, practically removing the need of gas or coal-powered backup being waiting for online deployment, and it has proven to have saved the Southern Australia’s grid from several blackouts by now.

This year, Tesla has had orders for new units, the value of which already surpasses the sales in 2023.

Using lithium-ion tech is just due to Tesla’s history of coming from the EV industry: the weight of the unit does not matter when it is installed stationary on the ground, so the reliability and the cost take the driver’s seat.

In this kind of use cases, the new sodium-ion batteries seem like a good match, and as mentioned, older tech, like flow batteries, are also heavily researched.

These facilities can be built modularly near to consumers and turned on and off immediately at the slightest indication of grid overload, as well as charged with a variety of sources, be it solar, wind or just cheap night-time energy directly from the connected grid itself.

Systems like this are the nightmare scenario for gas, coal and oil-producing countries. Their market for grid balancing solutions will continuously diminish, and they are forced to look for new sources of income.

And as mentioned, nobody seems to be less ready for this than Russia, which itself kicked this transition into overdrive with its attack on Ukraine.

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