AES Seeks to Replace Gas Power Plants With Big Batteries

[bananas]

Source: Bloomberg

AES Corp. (AES), the biggest operator of electricity-storage systems, is now seeking to sell batteries big enough to substitute for power plants.

The Advancion systems will cost from $10 million to $500 million, depending on size, and will be offered to utilities and renewable-energy developers in arrays as large as 500 megawatts, said Chris Shelton, president of Arlington, Virginia-based AES’s energy storage unit. The company has operated its own battery systems as large as 64 megawatts, enough to supply 51,000 average U.S. homes, in the U.S. and Chile for more than two years.

The batteries will store power when its cheap and abundant and then feed it to the grid during periods of high demand. They may replace so-called peaking plants that typically are fueled by natural gas and are costly to build and run because they sometimes operate only a few hours a year. The systems also can compensate for the intermittent output from wind and solar farms, according to a statement today.

“We’re competitive with power plants,” Shelton said in a telephone interview. “People are really seeing that this could be part of comprehensive future planning for the utility sector.”

Advancion systems, which can supply power for as long as four hours, will cost about $1,000 a kilowatt, compared to about $1,350 a kilowatt for a recently built gas peaker plant, he said.

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Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/aes-seeks-to-replace-gas-power-plants-with-big-batteries.html

[packman]

1. A science teacher once told me

That making hydroelectricity was efficient and cheap during the day, but during the night when demand was low and water was still going over the dam, made it less efficient and drove up the relative cost. He said the problem was storage. If there was only some way to store all that energy he mused. This battery advancement seems like it was made for just that problem.

[itsrobert]

5. Why couldn't they just slow down the water at night

by using locks and gates?

[daybranch]

6. they could stop it.

All that they stop is just like a battery. Hydroelectric generators are much more efficient than coal or gas. It would also be very efficient to use excess solar or wind generated electricty to pump water back over the dam and then let it through the through the gates to produce electricity whenever you need it.

[packman]

9. My friend pointed out to me

Now keep this in mind this was back in the 70's, that the energy needed to pump the water BACK into the dam at night or low peak usage, wasn't energy efficient - it used more energy to lift it than was created. This was well before solar and wind was even on the horizon.
The idea of reusing water by pumping it from one level and then recycling it back to the higher level and keep the cylce in motion without loss of energy has got to be on the equivalent of fusion energy.
Maybe the battery solution is the solution.

[NYC_SKP]

10. It's called "Pumped Storage", look up Helms pumped storage in California

It stores excess power from Diablo Canyon nuke plant by pumping water to the upper reservoir when the production exceeds demand, lets it flow down again to generate power when needed.

[Xithras]

8. They do.

Here in California, at least, they do reduce outflows from the hydroelectric dams at night for that very reason.

[gristy]

2. when I first saw the headline I thought this must surely be from the onion

But after a quick read it makes a ton of sense. That's really something that it might be cheaper, but time will tell on that. Rare earth metals, costs of new batteries and recycling old ones could be a problem. Not to mention the 4-hour time limit. And does that $1,000/kW full amortize the cost of the plant, given that it operates just 4 hours a day?

[greatlaurel]

4. The peaker plants sit unused a huge amount of time.

I have seen gas peaking plants sit unused for months and, in some cases, years. The battery plants would be far more efficient and would be far cheaper in both the short and long term. The batteries could be charged using many different renewable sources. This could be a game changer. Hope they do not get bought out by big oil or big coal.

[charliea]

7. Batteries for Grid power storage will not use rare earth elements.

Note that rare earth metals are not the target technology for development of batteries capable of storing power in the multiple megawatt-hour range, that is focused on using ultra-low cost materials, mostly various types of salt , or purely thermal storage. This is already in use in southern Spain at the the Andasol-1 solar-power plant. At a commercial scale these may soon be the most effective way to store energy for peak needs, or store wind and solar energy for later delivery.

A book I recently read about all sorts of future power generation and storage solutions titled "Powering the Future", by Nobel prize winner Robert Laughlin was a good intro.

I'm convinced that a combination of the latest incarnation of PV systems, whose costs are lower every year, combined with these battery installations could reduce/eliminate the need for new fossil fuel plants. The focus would be on shoring up the grid to allow power distribution across the entire country.

I've seen estimates that subsides for the oil and gas industries is currently ~$7B/year, if that money was spent instead on promoting non-polluting generation and storage we could, at least, prevent any increase in the need for imported oil, and hopefully additional fracking.

Now all we need is a rational government, that can plan for a cleaner future <*sigh*>

[RobertEarl]

3. Smart

Most coal plants fire up only when needed. It is an inefficient use of power production. It is more efficient to keep a plant running. Most of the plants do run continuously just to keep the turbines from warping.

I've seen a few coal pants fire up from standby each day as demand is expected and the black smoke that comes each time.

Keep them running and we can close down many and make cleaner the emissions that do come out.

Then as we get more solar we can close down more coal burners.

[Adrahil]

11. Advanced high capacity battery tech....

...will make wide-spread solar and wind possible. We need to support its development.