In order to make better use of green energy (solar, wind, tidal, etc), it helps to be able to store the power when it is generated and use it when you want. Time shifting, as it were.
Hydroelectric does this by pumping water back uphill as a form of mechanical storage.
The idea of using batteries for this isn’t new — but the kind of battery you want for this has a different set of requirements than say one in a car.
I have several UPS systems throughout my house (tiny lead-acid batteries — uninterruptible power systems) that keep various critical things powered so they can weather a storm or simply enable me to shut down things safely. Wish I had one big enough to keep the refrigerator going, though. $$$
Grid Power
The key point is that utility scale grid power doesn’t have to be lightweight, transportable or small — it has to be cheap, reliable, and safe.
In the news this week, Form Energy has announced chemistry for an air-breathing iron pellet based battery that would cost around $20/kWh. This has the potential to be a game changer both for renewables, but even for nuclear plants that can generate power more cheaply at night.
Lithium-ion, on the other hand, is optimized for high energy density per unit mass (e.g. lightweight) and currently costs over $80/kWh. There is cobalt and nickel in the manufacturing process (cobalt in particular has some really bad sourcing issues), and the kicker is that Lithium doesn’t respond well to firefighting. (Add water to lithium and find out!)
Speaking of Lithium and Water:
And in fact that’s not just a problem with this gigantic installation in Australia. Firefighters are not prepared for handling electric car fires here in the US.
“What the heck? How do we make this stop?’” [Chief Palmer] Buck [of Houston, TX] asked his team. They quickly consulted Tesla’s first responder guide and realized that it would take far more personnel and water than they could have imagined. Eight firefighters ultimately spent seven hours putting out the fire. They also used up 28,000 gallons of water — an amount the department normally uses in a month. That same volume of water serves an average American home for nearly two years.
Car batteries are not small batteries — not only do they hold a LOT of energy,
...unlike a small phone battery, the large batteries found in the Tesla Model X, for instance, contain enough energy to power an average American home for more than two days.
This is further complicated in Tesla’s case because there can be 400v high power lines in unexpected places. Going to use the jaws-of-life on that car? Better know where the cables are. (Or were.)
Disclosure: I own a BMW i3 — only has about 60 miles of range and is a lot smaller. Also I think that BMW did a slightly more safety conscious design, but there is still room for concern with this type of battery.
There is absolutely NO excuse for using Lithium Ion on a grid scale installation.
This article talks about a Tesla that crashed into someone’s house, lighting it on fire, etc. What it fails to mention (and is covered in previous NBC article above) is that even after removing the Tesla from the garage, it continued to reignight:
But 45 minutes after the flames on the Tesla were extinguished, it reignited again. Firefighters began hosing it down with copious amounts of water, up to 200 gallons per minute, but “that did not extinguish the flames,” according to the NTSB. At approximately 9:13 p.m., nearly three hours after the first alarm was received, firefighters had to pour out more than 600 gallons of water per minute. In the end, two firefighters sustained minor smoke inhalation-related injuries, and the agency used 20,000 gallons of water.
Yes, we need grid scale batteries to time shift renewable energy. Absolutely. It just shouldn’t be Lithium Ion and it shouldn’t be from Tesla. (IMHO)