1 hour ago, fredfredburger said:

Utility scale batteries are very expensive, will only get more expensive with time as Lithium demand continues to increase, and are inefficient ways of storing energy (Lithium Ion stores 1/100 the energy of gasoline). I am not in favor of building or buying a new Nat Gas generator for a microgrid, but it would be much cheaper (https://www.uspeglobal.com/listings/1334945-used-25-mw-2018-used-ge-tm2500-natural-gas-turbine-generator-sets). The technology is simply not there yet with batteries. Hopefully, someone will be able to create a stable sodium or potassium battery.

 

Solar is not a viable option in Northeast Ohio, and wind will only work when battery tech improves. If we need a microgrid let's just spend the 15 million on the extra nat gas turbine connected to downtown or build another nuclear plant. Until battery technology improves this is just a waste of money and a pro-oil/pro-mining scheme.

 

 

 

 

I'm a solar developer doing projects in northern Ohio. We're producing and selling electricity below wholesale rates. So I beg to differ. 

20 minutes ago, ASP1984 said:

 

I'm a solar developer doing projects in northern Ohio. We're producing and selling electricity below wholesale rates. So I beg to differ. 

Did not know that was your background!

 

What do you think the long-term mix of wind and solar generation will be in Northeast Ohio -- on a scale from 0% wind with 100% solar to 100% wind with 0% solar?

 

And if you have sources (studies, articles, etc.) for your estimate, I'd be very curious about that too!

1 hour ago, ASP1984 said:

 

I'm a solar developer doing projects in northern Ohio. We're producing and selling electricity below wholesale rates. So I beg to differ. 

Thanks to the Macrogrid (https://www.pjm.com/committees-and-groups/closed-groups/irs/pris.aspx), wind and solar can sell with lower nodal prices to the RTO. Other plants then have to reduce output which adds stress to the system and incurs more costs on the consumer end downstream. You can make a subsidized profit, and I can pay more for electricity that is not better for the environment than Natgas.

 

I don't believe that solar (only able to produce power 50% of the time) in a city famous for cloud cover could be feasibly relied upon for a microgrid in the event of a macro shutdown.

Thanks to the Macrogrid (https://www.pjm.com/committees-and-groups/closed-groups/irs/pris.aspx), wind and solar can sell with lower nodal prices to the RTO. Other plants then have to reduce output which adds stress to the system and incurs more costs on the consumer end downstream. You can make a subsidized profit, and I can pay more for electricity that is not better for the environment than Natgas.
 
I don't believe that solar (only able to produce power 50% of the time) in a city famous for cloud cover could be feasibly relied upon for a microgrid in the event of a macro shutdown.

Thanks to the Macrogrid (https://www.pjm.com/committees-and-groups/closed-groups/irs/pris.aspx), wind and solar can sell with lower nodal prices to the RTO. Other plants then have to reduce output which adds stress to the system and incurs more costs on the consumer end downstream. You can make a subsidized profit, and I can pay more for electricity that is not better for the environment than Natgas.
 
I don't believe that solar (only able to produce power 50% of the time) in a city famous for cloud cover could be feasibly relied upon for a microgrid in the event of a macro shutdown.

That is a very liberal interpretation of what’s discussed in your own citation.

The link you provided also says that (1) the value of fuel displaced by renewables greatly outweighs the increased costs of ramping traditional generators more to counteract grid variability; that (2) consumers would pay more to keep traditional generators online IF said generators don’t make up lost energy revenues in the capacity market, AND IF policymakers designate said generators important enough to keep online for grid stability at above-market prices; and that (3) #2 is likely only IF solar and wind don’t adopt batteries to smooth out variable production. Which we are now doing at staggering speed and scale.

Also, no one here is talking about a solar only micro grid. You’re arguing with a straw man you made up. And natural gas being as environmentally friendly as solar? Even with raw materials accounted for, that’s just not true.


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I've seen too many comments on here that imply that lithium-ion batteries are the only (and too expensive) option.  Lithium-ion batteries are "great" for certain applications because they are relatively compact, lightweight, and durable enough to survive a car crash (or a dropped laptop). 

 

But the weight and size of the battery and impact resistance are not the most important issues for a battery that's just going to sit in one spot and serve a neighborhood or a factory.  There are a number of companies developing liquid "flow" batteries.  They're relatively cheap, so they can be oversized and charged "when the sun is shining" for use when the grid goes down.  There are several different types, and most are still in the development stage, but some are being put into use already.

 

https://www.engineering.com/story/flow-batteries-versus-lithium-ion-whats-best-for-grid-scale-storage

 

Imagine if every block in Cuyahoga County had a 10x12 "shed" with a flow battery, charged by the grid and by solar panels on all the houses in the neighborhood.  Peaker plants might run twice a year, and power outages would be limited to a single block.

 

EDIT:  Another article explaining vanadium flow batteries in use in Australia.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/vanadium-flow-batteries/

Edited January 11, 20232 yr by Foraker

Did not know that was your background!
 
What do you think the long-term mix of wind and solar generation will be in Northeast Ohio -- on a scale from 0% wind with 100% solar to 100% wind with 0% solar?
 
And if you have sources (studies, articles, etc.) for your estimate, I'd be very curious about that too!

Thanks for posing the question!

I’d love to put some thought into that and get back to you. I don’t see us going long on any one resource - it will have to be a mix. But let’s just say that the energy potential of offshore wind in Lake Erie alone could power the state of Ohio. The fact that we gutted our RPS standard aside - which would provide an easy answer, I’d like to do some digging and offer a more thoughtful reply.


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17 hours ago, ASP1984 said:

Thanks for posing the question!

I’d love to put some thought into that and get back to you. I don’t see us going long on any one resource - it will have to be a mix. But let’s just say that the energy potential of offshore wind in Lake Erie alone could power the state of Ohio. The fact that we gutted our RPS standard aside - which would provide an easy answer, I’d like to do some digging and offer a more thoughtful reply.


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I wanted some data to back that up so went digging. According to this report from 2010 from the National Renewable Energy Lab (a lab of the DoE), there is 46.1 GW of potential wind energy on Ohio's portion of Lake Erie. Over an entire year I'm assuming that's equivalent to 4,038 TWh (24 hours/day*365 days. That's probably non-conservative since the turbines can't be operating 24/7 nonstop). The DoE put out a report in 2015 stating that Ohio's electric needs were 152.5TWh, which is only 3.7%% of the potential of lake erie 🤯

 

The entire US electricity demand seems to have peaked up around 4000 TWh for the last ten years, so in theory (if you ignore all of the real world problems like distribution, time of need, storage, etc.) Lake Erie could power the entire country. Pretty wild

FYI, I couldn't find if the maps were public anywhere so I'll err on the side of caution in posting them.

 

The potential locations in Brooklyn and Euclid were chosen due to proximity to existing substations/businesses (duh). But it makes a lot more sense when you're actually looking at the map hah.

22 hours ago, Foraker said:

I've seen too many comments on here that imply that lithium-ion batteries are the only (and too expensive) option.  Lithium-ion batteries are "great" for certain applications because they are relatively compact, lightweight, and durable enough to survive a car crash (or a dropped laptop). 
 
But the weight and size of the battery and impact resistance are not the most important issues for a battery that's just going to sit in one spot and serve a neighborhood or a factory.  There are a number of companies developing liquid "flow" batteries.  They're relatively cheap, so they can be oversized and charged "when the sun is shining" for use when the grid goes down.  There are several different types, and most are still in the development stage, but some are being put into use already.
 
https://www.engineering.com/story/flow-batteries-versus-lithium-ion-whats-best-for-grid-scale-storage
 
Imagine if every block in Cuyahoga County had a 10x12 "shed" with a flow battery, charged by the grid and by solar panels on all the houses in the neighborhood.  Peaker plants might run twice a year, and power outages would be limited to a single block.
 
EDIT:  Another article explaining vanadium flow batteries in use in Australia.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/vanadium-flow-batteries/

I’m so glad you raised this point - long duration energy storage using common, non-lithium based raw materials is entering the market at scale in a way that will change the game for renewables. This factory (the company is called Form Energy, an MIT spin-out), which starts construction in West Virginia this year, will start churning out iron oxide batteries in 2024 with the potential to store energy over 100 hour durations at an energy density of 3 MW of output capacity per acre at 10% the cost of todays lithium ion batteries.

 

Something like this would be perfect for a micro grid - it’s that kind of affordable long duration storage that’s needed to help weather things like severe storm outages, terrorist attacks, etc.

It would be cool to run an analysis more broadly on how many acres would be needed to support 30% of Ohio’s projected energy load from solar - or in other words, the penetration level PJM currently says is feasible without significant grid upgrades system wide. If we assumed half that solar capacity got backed by batteries, for example, that could yield some interesting insights on land. If we assumed something like $200 / kWh for today's lithium-ion batteries, that could also give directional indication of expected ratepayer impact if someone wanted to run the numbers.

https://newatlas.com/energy/form-energy-iron-battery-plant/?amp=true


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Edited January 11, 20232 yr by ASP1984

2 hours ago, ASP1984 said:

I’m so glad you raised this point - long duration energy storage using common, non-lithium based raw materials is entering the market at scale in a way that will change the game for renewables. This factory (the company is called Form Energy, an MIT spin-out), which starts construction in West Virginia this year, will start churning out iron oxide batteries in 2024 with the potential to store energy over 100 hour durations at an energy density of 3 MW of output capacity per acre at 10% the cost of todays lithium ion batteries.

. . .
Something like this would be perfect for a micro grid - it’s that kind of affordable long duration storage that’s needed to help weather things like severe storm outages, terrorist attacks, etc.

It would be cool to run an analysis more broadly on how many acres would be needed to support 30% of Ohio’s projected energy load from solar - or in other words, the penetration level PJM currently says is feasible without significant grid upgrades system wide. If we assumed half that solar capacity got backed by batteries, for example, that could yield some interesting insights on land. If we assumed something like $200 / kWh for today's lithium-ion batteries, that could also give directional indication of expected ratepayer impact if someone wanted to run the numbers.

https://newatlas.com/energy/form-energy-iron-battery-plant/?amp=true


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Well, it looks like Ohio consumes about 152 TWh annually.  https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/OH-Energy Sector Risk Profile.pdf

 

So if we want to store 30%, that would be 45.6 TWh. 

3MW/acre would require 15M acres. (Cuyahoga County is nearly 800,000 acres).  At about 10% of Ohio's population, and assuming Ohioans use the same amount of electricity, maybe we need about 1,520,000 acres -- going to have to stack.

At $200/kWh, is that about $30T?  If we can reduce that cost by 80% (conservative estimate, assuming Form Energy's 10% of cost of lithium-ion is overly optimistic) ($40/kwh), the cost would drop to below $6T. (Assuming my math is right.)  (10% of Ohio's storage would be $600B for Cuyahoga County)  That's not going to happen overnight!

 

I know electricity consumption varies widely over a year, but if we assume that that 152TWh are evenly spread over the year (365 days) and we want to store 3 days of electricity (instead of 30% of the annual consumption), that would be 1.25 TWh.  At $40/kwh, that's $50B. Ohio spends about $3B on highway construction and maintenance per year.  So if we could invest $2B per year, we'd hit the target in 25-30 years.

Edited January 11, 20232 yr by Foraker
Correcting (hopefully) math errors.

Well, it looks like Ohio consumes about 152 TWh annually.  https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/OH-Energy Sector Risk Profile.pdf
 
So if we want to store 30%, that would be 45.6 TWh. 
3MW/acre would require 15M acres. (Cuyahoga County is nearly 800,000 acres).  At about 10% of Ohio's population, and assuming Ohioans use the same amount of electricity, maybe we need about 1,520,000 acres -- going to have to stack.
At $200/kWh, is that about $30T?  If we can reduce that cost by 80% (conservative estimate, assuming Form Energy's 10% of cost of lithium-ion is overly optimistic) ($40/kwh), the cost would drop to below $6T. (Assuming my math is right.)  (10% of Ohio's storage would be $600B for Cuyahoga County)  That's not going to happen overnight!
 
I know electricity consumption varies widely over a year, but if we assume that that 152TWh are evenly spread over the year (365 days) and we want to store 3 days of electricity (instead of 30% of the annual consumption), that would be 1.25 TWh.  At $40/kwh, that's $50B. Ohio spends about $3B on highway construction and maintenance per year.  So if we could invest $2B per year, we'd hit the target in 25-30 years.

 
Thanks for taking a stab at this!
 
My numbers came out differently using some back of the envelope assumptions on battery cycling, revised pricing of $100/kWh per Wood MacKenzie (link), and an assumed rate of return of 7.28% (AEP's approved IRR) over 30 years (a generously short time horizon in the energy industry):
 

 
 
All said, for $36 more a year, or $3 more a month - heck yeah I'm willing to pay for that! It would also only occupy a meager 3167 acres.
 
So, [mention=3467]LlamaLawyer[/mention], to answer your question above, if my math is remotely correct, shooting for 30% solar backed by iron-oxide batteries to me seems like a no-brainer, statewide. With solar being produced at below wholesale rates today, an incremental rate impact of $0.002 / kWh isn't going to move the needle. Assuming this scenario reduces the production variability of concern to PJM, its no question we should be shooting for higher than 30% solar over the coming decade or two.
 

Edited January 12, 20232 yr by ASP1984

13 hours ago, ASP1984 said:

 
Thanks for taking a stab at this!
 
My numbers came out differently using some back of the envelope assumptions on battery cycling, revised pricing of $100/kWh per Wood MacKenzie (link), and an assumed rate of return of 7.28% (AEP's approved IRR) over 30 years (a generously short time horizon in the energy industry):
 

 
 
All said, for $36 more a year, or $3 more a month - heck yeah I'm willing to pay for that!
 
So, @LlamaLawyer, to answer your question above, if my math is remotely correct, shooting for 30% solar backed by iron-oxide batteries to me seems like a no-brainer, statewide. With solar being produced at below wholesale rates today, an incremental rate impact of $0.002 / kWh isn't going to move the needle. Assuming this scenario reduces the production variability of concern to PJM, its no question we should be shooting for higher than 30% solar over the coming decade or two.
 

Thanks for the very thorough summary!

 

What about the potential of pumped storage hydropower (given we have a huge lake with mines underneath it) as an alternative to chemical batteries? Or is that not practical here?

20 hours ago, Foraker said:

Well, it looks like Ohio consumes about 152 TWh annually.  https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/OH-Energy Sector Risk Profile.pdf

 

So if we want to store 30%, that would be 45.6 TWh. 

3MW/acre would require 15M acres. (Cuyahoga County is nearly 800,000 acres).  At about 10% of Ohio's population, and assuming Ohioans use the same amount of electricity, maybe we need about 1,520,000 acres -- going to have to stack.

At $200/kWh, is that about $30T?  If we can reduce that cost by 80% (conservative estimate, assuming Form Energy's 10% of cost of lithium-ion is overly optimistic) ($40/kwh), the cost would drop to below $6T. (Assuming my math is right.)  (10% of Ohio's storage would be $600B for Cuyahoga County)  That's not going to happen overnight!

 

I know electricity consumption varies widely over a year, but if we assume that that 152TWh are evenly spread over the year (365 days) and we want to store 3 days of electricity (instead of 30% of the annual consumption), that would be 1.25 TWh.  At $40/kwh, that's $50B. Ohio spends about $3B on highway construction and maintenance per year.  So if we could invest $2B per year, we'd hit the target in 25-30 years.

I'm getting some significantly different numbers... I think you're confusing units, MWh=/=MW and TWh=/=TW. A MWh is a MW of power continuously delivered for an hour.

 

152TWh annually divided up equally throughout the year is .01735TW of power (365 days and 24 hours/day). That's equivalent to 17,350MW, which at 3MW per acre is only 5,783.3 acres of space needed, assuming their numbers can be believed and scaled linerally.

 

They also talk about the same acre storing 100 hours worth of power, which would mean that the same 5,783.3 acres can power the entire state for 100 hours without any additional input (4 days and 4 hours).

 

Put another way, they're saying that every acre of installation can store 300MWh, but it can only deliver that 3MW at a time. Lithium batteries can very easily handle 1C charge and discharge rates, meaning that they can deliver their entire capacity in a single hour... ie: a 300MWh lithium battery could deliver a peak output of 300MW. That means that these batteries deliver power at 1% of the rate that a lithium battery does.

Hopefully someone else can check us, because both of our numbers seem pretty implausible to me (yours on the high end, and mine on the low end).

2 minutes ago, dastler said:

I'm getting some significantly different numbers... I think you're confusing units, MWh=/=MW and TWh=/=TW. A MWh is a MW of power continuously delivered for an hour.

I think your math is correct, I misinterpreted the "h" -- your calculations look right, fwiw.  (or better)

 

 

5 minutes ago, dastler said:

Put another way, they're saying that every acre of installation can store 300MWh, but it can only deliver that 3MW at a time. Lithium batteries can very easily handle 1C charge and discharge rates, meaning that they can deliver their entire capacity in a single hour... ie: a 300MWh lithium battery could deliver a peak output of 300MW. That means that these batteries deliver power at 1% of the rate that a lithium battery does.

This is a very important observation, thank you.  Probably the key question then is what are the peak electricity demands -- if peak output is only 3MW/acre, how many acres do we need to meet peak demand?  What if our peak demand is 16,000 MWh per month (30 days, 24h/day) -- 22.22 MW (?) a day?  Maybe 3MW released "at a time" (how fast?) is sufficient.

 

My understanding is that we lose a lot of energy before electricity ever reaches our homes.

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/flow-graphs/electricity.php

 

And as long as no one wants to live next to a power plant, and the electricity is cheap enough, that's not a big problem.  But if we can generate electricity closer to where we live, we could greatly reduce the transmission losses -- and the need to produce as much electricity to account for that.  That's another benefit of locally-produced wind and solar electricity.

 

 

 

 

16 minutes ago, Foraker said:

I think your math is correct, I misinterpreted the "h" -- your calculations look right, fwiw.  (or better)

 

 

This is a very important observation, thank you.  Probably the key question then is what are the peak electricity demands -- if peak output is only 3MW/acre, how many acres do we need to meet peak demand?  What if our peak demand is 16,000 MWh per month (30 days, 24h/day) -- 22.22 MW (?) a day?  Maybe 3MW released "at a time" (how fast?) is sufficient.

 

My understanding is that we lose a lot of energy before electricity ever reaches our homes.

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/flow-graphs/electricity.php

 

And as long as no one wants to live next to a power plant, and the electricity is cheap enough, that's not a big problem.  But if we can generate electricity closer to where we live, we could greatly reduce the transmission losses -- and the need to produce as much electricity to account for that.  That's another benefit of locally-produced wind and solar electricity.

 

 

 

 

Peak demand is projected to plateau up around 30,000MW by 2039 (Data source PUCO, Table 3.2), so you would need 10,000 acres to handle peak load demands with just this style of battery.

 

Having energy generation closer to where it's used will definitely help with distribution losses, but you need to be careful in where you look in the chart you posted. The T&D (transportation and distribution) loss is only 0.77 quadrillion Btu of a total 37.35. It's a lot of loss in aggregate, but only 2.1% of the total and 4.7% of the usable energy.

 

The bigger issue is the conversion losses which accounts for 60.5%!!! of the total. That seemed shockingly high, but I think it's mostly because coal power plants average 33% efficiency in the US (average plant has 66% loss, with a bunch being worse). Natural gas is a lot better at 45-57% efficient. Solar is actually super inefficient at 16.5-20% efficient, but the sun is beating down on us all the time so we're not really "wasting" the energy we can't turn into electricity :)

people down the island way out east here in old shaolin are up in arms about somebody that wants to build one of these big power storage batteries on a church school parking lot:

 

https://lithium-news.com/community-outraged-by-lithium-ion-battery-storage-facility-proposed-for-staten-island-neighborhood/

Long overdue update to this thread:

 

Cuyahoga County expects to hire Compass Energy Platform to develop microgrid utility

 

 

Cleveland and County leaders - take note - Detroit is showing the world what's possible:

 

Lightstar tapped to build 10-MW agrivoltaic solar portfolio for city of Detroit (solarpowerworldonline.com)

 

Clean energy + agriculture + food production + social equity.

 

Energy based community development done the right way.

 

 

Edited June 25, 2024Jun 25 by ASP1984

We tried to show the world what is possible placing wind turbines in fresh water. Reationary Ohioans said "No!"

4 hours ago, cadmen said:

We tried to show the world what is possible placing wind turbines in fresh water. Reationary Ohioans said "No!"

That’s not completely accurate. The energy lobby said “no.”  

^  Sure, and l would argue that the energy lobby is part of that reationary response. The politics of "Energy" is usually divided with fossil fuels on the reationary side and renewables on the progressive side.

Cuyahoga County (+Painesville) awarded $129 Million for 5 brownfield solar arrays, storage, and more:

 

https://www.epa.gov/inflation-reduction-act/cuyahoga-county-ohio

 

Quote

The selected application will support Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland, and the City of Painesville in their transition from reliance on a coal-fired power plant in Northeast Ohio. The grant will fund the deployment of 63 megawatts (MW) of solar installations on five brownfield and previous landfill sites and 10 MW of battery storage. The grant funds will also support the restoration of natural habitats and expand tree coverage on a blighted brownfield site along the shoreline of Lake Erie and create pollinator habitats at the Cleveland and Cuyahoga solar sites. 

 

From NOACA's application summary, the arrays will be in Brooklyn, Brook Park, Cuyahoga Heights, Garfield Heights, and Old Brooklyn.  Cuyahoga Green Energy is the utility formed to administer the microgrid project, and this is the first tangible action I've heard of from it.

 

Edited July 22, 2024Jul 22 by acd

LOVE it.

21 minutes ago, acd said:

Cuyahoga County (+Painesville) awarded $129 for 5 brownfield solar arrays, storage, and more

 

Typical.  Cheapskates.

@acd do you or anyone else know where this is....

 

"The grant funds will also support the restoration of natural habitats and expand tree coverage on a blighted brownfield site along the shoreline of Lake Erie"

15 minutes ago, KJP said:

@acd do you or anyone else know where this is....

 

"The grant funds will also support the restoration of natural habitats and expand tree coverage on a blighted brownfield site along the shoreline of Lake Erie"

 

Yes, its former Diamond Shamrock chemical plant in Painesville. West Creek Conservancy is involved in the restoration project of that site along Lake Erie and the Grand River. 

Thanks!

 

 

EPA gives Greater Cleveland $129.4M for five solar arrays, reforestation
By Ken Prendergast / July 22, 2024

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) today awarded $129.4 million in federal funding to the Greater Cleveland area to produce cheaper, more competitive, cleaner electricity locally. The funded work includes constructing five solar arrays in up to five communities, closing a coal-fired power plant in Painesville and supporting reforestation efforts in a community once called the Forest City.

 

MORE:

https://neo-trans.blog/2024/07/22/epa-gives-greater-cleveland-129-4m-for-five-solar-arrays-reforestation/

Plusses all around. Federal dollars, green energy, greening up old industrial sites, new jobs. Great, just great.