Just a quick hit of some videos that crossed my path this week.
First up, I feel every mood Robert has in this video.
May 19, 2024Join Robert for May’s Almost Breaking News! This episode tackles misinformation about electric vehicles spread by the BBC, busts myths surrounding secondhand EVs, and delves into the world of BIG electric trucks. Robert also explores Amazon’s extraordinary charging network, wooden wind turbines, the surge in EV chargers in the UK, gas leaks from old oil wells, the ongoing issue with Tesla and the Supercharger Network and some good news on Gigabatteries.Get ready for a whirlwind tour of all the essential news from the world of EVs and clean energy from the past month, peppered with Robert’s signature rants! @fullychargedshow @EverythingElectricShow
==========
A compilation of energy storage in rocks (mostly via heat) and its viability:
h/t mousebumples
Sandia engineers convert excess renewable electricity into heat that gets stored in piles of gravel
Nathan Schroeder, a mechanical engineer at Sandia National Labs, arranges landscaping gravel in a thermal energy storage unit. Sandia is working with CSolPower on optimizing a low-cost solution for storing intermittent renewable energy. (Image: Craig Fritz, Sandia National Laboratories)
Storing energy is one of the key challenges for implementing sustainable but intermittent electricity sources like solar and wind. Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories are collaborating with New Mexico-based CSolPower LLC to develop a very affordable method of accomplishing that storage.
Thermal energy is very energy-dense — you can basically use any material that could withstand high temperatures to store heat and then deliver it when you need it. “Say you have a PV or a wind farm and you’re overproducing in the middle of the day. You can take that excess electricity and heat up air using a big resistive heater,” said Sandia engineer Luke McLaughlin. You can then use a blower to push the heated air through a bed of gravel, which is quite porous. That transfers the heat from the air to the rocks. You then close some valves, and the system goes into “hold” mode for hours, days, or weeks, until it needs to be released by reversing the flow. “The rocks have so much surface area, you’re blowing through what is basically a big sponge — it’s a lot of area for the heat transfer,” said Nathan Schroeder, a mechanical engineer at Sandia.
When the heat energy is ready to be used, it is transferred back to the air. The heated air can either be dispatched directly to a process or it can be used to create steam to drive a turbine like you would in a traditional power cycle. Read the rest here
=========
Two videos that talk about similar technology:
Oct 22, 2023Rondo Energy just secured $60 million of funding from some of the world’s shrewdest investors. So, can they now achieve their goal of a 90GWh per annum production facility for their simple heat battery technology, reducing global industrial CO2 emissions by 12 MILLION tonnes per year? Time will tell!
Jan 25, 2023How A Brick & Rock Battery Is Changing Energy Storage – Explained. The first 100 people to use code UNDECIDED at the link below will get 20% off of Incogni: https://incogni.com/undecided. Grid-scale lithium ion batteries are our current go-to chemical energy storage solution, but they present their own challenges in safety, sustainability, cost, and longevity. However, the competition is … heating up. New forms of thermal energy storage systems built using abundant, cheap materials are on the rise. One company is aiming to sidestep the complications that come with chemical batteries…with a brick battery. And another company’s weapon of choice is a crushed volcanic rock battery. Talk about going back to basics to store massive amounts of energy. But is simple really best?
==========
Once again the liberals are attacking your freedoms by suggesting it might be better to have healthier indoor air by using better technology. Cheesy fun with a great message:
May 22, 2024Faster, cleaner, safer, more precise, and more energy efficient, the induction stove is the stove of the future. And the future is now! ⚡️ Join us for Extraordinary Electrics as we put this top-of-the-line tech to the test and show you how induction cooking can make your life better. Did you know? Upgrading to energy-efficient electric appliances like an induction stove not only fights climate change — it also lowers your energy bills, improves air quality, and makes your home comfier. Win-win-win-win. Get started: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/newsl…That’s enough for this holiday weekend. In other news, I have some kindness/good news items tucked away for next week. I think we need the reset.
This is a doom and gloom free zone
Reader Interactions
37Comments
Comments are closed.
Another Scott
Thanks for this.
It’s good to be looking at all kinds of ways to store excess power, but dunno if thermal is the way to go. One usually needs big temperature differences for doing practical work, and one would like to be able to store and grab the excess heat on demand. Pumped storage would seem to have many advantages over stored thermal, if – and it’s a big if – one has the proper geography for it.
One can also do trickery with phase change materials to control when the excess heat is stored and released. Of course, that’s much more spendy than a bin of gravel. ;-)
Lots of interesting stuff is going on.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
I feel oppressed.
Shana
We got an induction cooktop when we remodeled our kitchen several years ago because we couldn’t get gas at our address and I hated the electric cooktop we had. One of the best things we did in the remodel
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Something to lift your spirits.
Totally OT.
From Hannah Karlzon’s Daydrems.
Wapiti
When I was an engineering student, in ~1980, they were talking about pumped storage, but I’ve no idea how much has been implemented.
The thermal storage… from a rock-bottom cost standpoint it might make sense (if it works well enough). As solar and wind are implemented worldwide, there will be places that need cheap storage solutions. I was wondering if it would be more efficient to use water rather than air, to more efficiently transfer heat, but then the system needs to be engineered to prevent leaks, and more pumps, etc. It adds cost.
Salty Sam
I learned the art and craft of blacksmithing by volunteering at a living history museum. We used coal, and fed air to the fire with hand cranked blowers. It was messy and stinky. When I opened up my own shop, I still had a coal forge, but did most of my work with a propane furnace style forge. Much simpler, and cleaner. Still, fossil fuels…
Nowadays, many blacksmiths are switching to induction forges. It’s amazing to watch them place a piece of iron inside a loop of copper tubing, and within seconds, the workpiece is ready to go. Shop stays much cooler, and cleaner as well. It’s on my list for my big next piece of equipment.
raven
We have an investment in an electric truck company in the UK and they just filed for “administration”.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Wapiti: I had a similar thought about water. I thought water is usually the substance of choice for storing heat because it has such a high specific heat, meaning it holds more energy per degree of temperature change. Found this table with specific heats for a bunch of things, and you can see water at 4182 is much higher than any other common material.
Sand comes in at 830. I assume gravel is in that ballpark.
I’m pretty sure that DIY passive greenhouses uses, where you get all your heat from the sun, usually use water to store the excess heat during the day and give it back at night.
There must be other engineering tradeoffs that make the air-gravel choice attractive.
I’ve also heard of gravity storage. You use your excess energy to lift something up (like a bunch of water), and let it fall when you want to reclaim the energy.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Perhaps your belt is too tight.
TaMara
I don’t remember if it’s in one of those videos, but also talk of using defunct coal mines to store energy. I’ll try and track down the info.
TaMara
@Salty Sam: That’s niche but it fascinates me. Would love to see that in action.
WaterGirl
I went to the farmer’s market this morning, and it was very quiet compared to the usual. Then I stopped to pick up a croissant at my favorite cafe, an nearly all the parking spaces were open, which is very unusual there.
The streets are all empty; hardly any traffic. It’s like driving to the train station at 6am, except of course it’s not dark.
I would think that even on a holiday, it would be a wash. Some folks would traveling elsewhere; others would be visiting here. Apparently that is not the case!
Looks like Balloon Juice may be slow today, too.
HinTN
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: TVA has the Raccoon Mountain pumped storage facility on the Tennessee River between us and Chattanooga. They built it a loooooong time ago. It’s huge, it works. I don’t know how much extra they get at peak power but it sure allows them to keep generating inline when short term demand is lower.
Gin & Tonic
@Wapiti:
A long time ago I had an opportunity to tour this place, and found it fascinating. They say it can produce over a gigawatt.
bookworm1398
What I don’t see much chatter about is temperature adjustable clothing. It’s obviously takes much less energy to just heat or cool the area around a person than to cool the whole house, but people don’t really seem interested in going there.
TaMara
@bookworm1398: Part of the problem with that may be, right now, clothing manufacturing is one of the biggest energy/water/polluting processes out there. There are a lot of folks working on solving that and then temperature controlled could be a good next step.
I actually have a friend who is focused on improving clothing manufacturing, as well and bringing local vs overseas.
TaMara
I’m off to wash off the gardening grime…I’ll check back later before I log off for (hopefully) the weekend.
RevRick
@Another Scott:
@Shana:
@schrodingers_cat:
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
John Michael Greer wrote a book about what he called an ecotech future, in which he made the observation that our needs are pretty simple: hot showers and refrigeration. He noted that solar cooking is easily possible through the mid latitudes and you could DIY one with a plate of glass, a cardboard box, and some aluminum foil. A passive solar hot water heater would require a metal barrel painted black. Similarly, there are materials that can produce an electric current when it’s exposed to a thermal gradient, for example, tin telluride. The idea is instead of going big like with wind turbines, you go small, at the household level.
Salty Sam
Ask and ye shall receive:
https://youtube.com/shorts/-KNyd8dCoBI?si=stKLy8-c0oRuo-xQ
TaMara
@Salty Sam: You are the best
Geminid
A company called Polar Night Energy put up an undated press release about a sand battery system it installed in a small city in Finland. I think the unit went on line last year. It was added to an existing municiple heating system; a very simple and efficient use of this technology:
There were some a Frequently Asked Questions, with answers:
Another question:
The unit contains the sand and heat inside a large donle walled container made of steel, with “standard heat-resistant insulating materials” between the inner and outer walls.
The system can hold heat for months but is typically heated and discharged in a two-week cycle, using excess solar and wind power. These systems can be used to produce steam for electrical generation, albeit less efficiently than Kankaapii’s simpler heating model.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Double walled?
Geminid
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Yes, “double walled.” My proof reader has the howliday weakened oft.
Martin
Consider putting Climate Town in your rotation. I think he’d land with the crowd here, and his most recent video is on trying to find a vendor to make sustainable shirts.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I have things I should be doing, like a fence repair. But it’s 85 degrees out there so instead I’m inside in the AC reading Balloon Juice and scrolling through my YouTube feed.
So here’s a couple of random YouTubes for your enjoyment.
Kent
Here in the US in the year of our lord 2024 it is currently the case that cryptocurrency mining uses between 3 and 12 times more electricity than all the EVs currently in use everywhere in the US.
And it is EVs that are stressing our electrical grid?
Sheesh.
and
Peke Daddy
@Another Scott: Could the Stirling engine have a place here? Or thermoelectric generation?
Sure Lurkalot
Another great post, TaMara, where I leave smarter than when I walked in.
Peke Daddy
@bookworm1398: Here’s a jumping off point for individualized temperature control.
https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/hyperchair
Peke Daddy
@Another Scott: Phase change materials can be integrated into building structures. With proper efficiency design, it would be possible to minimize the cost of their use to moderate small temperature changes over time.
Dan B
Thanks for posting two content creators we’ve watched regularly for years. My partner is a gear head. He’s interested in cars. I’m also interested but the batteries and energy storage are very exciting to me. I love the simple and scalable solutions: brick, salt, gravel, and sand especially. Local energy storage gives the grid the or decades, it needs to catch up. Pumped storage is less interesting because there are few sites without “issues”, often nasty issues. Local, modular, low tech, cheap materials, safe, etc.
Another Scott
@Peke Daddy: Made me look…
It looks like folks have tried to use Stirling engines with solar heat, but were unable to compete with PV.
Lockheed-Martin tried to make ocean thermal gradients work for power for decades, without much success.
Thermoelectrics have been a holy grail for decades. The problem continues to be finding the magic material with a high ZT figure of merit. One wants high electrical conductivity and very low thermal conductivity at the same time in the same hunk of stuff. Of course, one also wants the material not to be toxic, not to be expensive, and to have stable and high efficiency for decades. It’s a challenging problem!
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Dan B: There is a pumped storage facility in Bath County, Virginia. It started operations in the 1970s, and was intended to balance out the power generated by Virginia Power’s 4 nuclear plants. The nuclear plants are best run at a constant rate, so excess late-night power is used to pump water uphill to the upper reservoir. Then it flows back down during peak demand hours.
I read that Portugal is considering adding pumped storage to their existing hydro power system. Portugal is ahead of most European countries in renewable power generation, in part because of the hydro-electric resources they started developing in the 1970s. I think that supplies 25 or 30% of domestic requirements now.
Portugal also has plenty of wind farms and they are building more , including some offshore. They are installing more solar as well. The plan seems to be to become an energy exporter.
Dan B
@Geminid: I don’t have a source to cite on possible pumped storage sites but we were seeing multiple reports that there are few sites available in the US. There must be suitable elevation change, no claims to the land that can’t be overcome, financing, easy water availability, location near a robust market for the electricity, etc. There are also fish passage issues, wildlife / ecosystem issues, and more. Cheap batteries / modular heat storage seems primed to leap ahead of large scale pumped hydro.
In the PNW we’ve got immense amounts of hydro but there is little expansion or pumped hydro available. The PNW is growing so there has been a need to increase green electricity. Wind and solar have been it. In addition we’re removing small dams and enjoying great benefits over much broader areas than expected. The Elwha River dam removal has benefitted fish, forest, and life in the Straight if Juan de Fuca, in part by the return of sandy and gravelly shoreline habitat for many marine species
Pumped storage is great from an engineering perspective but is limited in practice in the real world.
Another Scott
@Dan B: There’s been some work on underground pumped hydro storage. The lower reservoir could be underground. (I suppose given enough money and demand, the upper one could be underground as well…)
People are doing lots of thinking outside the box.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Dan B: There probably won’t be many more pumped storage projects in the US. Batteries can serve the same purpose. The model could be practical in Portugal because its maritime regions are both rainy and hilly. The reservoirs built already help out with load balancing.
BeautifulPlumage
Late to the blog today, great information & comments. Thank you Tamara for keeping this topic going weekly. It’s both important and a needed antidote to other posts