2 days of storage is not enough for a wind dominated system. The capacity requirement is determined, not by a single wind drought, but by a series of wind droughts with insufficient wind generation to charge the batteries between droughts. For full decarbonisation, storage capacities of > 25 days may be needed.
Your system needs to be 99.999% reliable. That sounds high, but that is the current standard. hence you need to determine the 0.001% probability of a multi-day wind drought. Such a drought, at that probability, in most places, lasts around 10-14 days. That is the ACTUAL amount of storage you need to have. And, even worse, that is all emergency backup storage that gets used once every couple of years.
25 days seems a bit long but isn't outside the realm of probability.
If you are trying to move energy seasonally, then even 90 days storage might be necessary.
Great Analysis! So now you have done 2 out of 4 important analyses - wind and BESS. So now it's time to do solar and CSS. (If you have, my apologies, give me the link.). I am particularly interested in the comparison of solar PV paired with SCGT vs CCGT. That's an issue here in Tennessee in TVA's long range planning, in addition to the question of how much nuclear. Re carbon capture and storage - does it make sense or not? Yeah, I think I know the answer, but I would like to see the numbers.
In Uruguay we have a big capacity of wind power but in summer demand peak the wind generation is less than the few photovoltaic generation. The wind power near de coast produces more on demand valleys when ther is hydraulic energy at less price. The wind power far of the sea has the peak 1 hour after the evening demand peak. We don't have BESS. We only have one lake for hydraulic storage, that is not enough and we need flex thermal backup by now..
Moss Landing's batteries just burned down, so you may want to revise your spacing estimates, but even if they double I don't think that changes the conclusions. But the cost of fire safety equipment and procedures is certainly going to change costs.
It's funny I got feedback on reddit saying my space estimates are too large as the batteries can be squeezed tighter together. I lean your way, they need more space between blocks of batteries.
David, thank you for this summary. Your subhead tells the most important fact about battery electric storage: Its not cheap! 48 big systems are required for Colorado.
2 days of storage is not enough for a wind dominated system. The capacity requirement is determined, not by a single wind drought, but by a series of wind droughts with insufficient wind generation to charge the batteries between droughts. For full decarbonisation, storage capacities of > 25 days may be needed.
YES.
Your system needs to be 99.999% reliable. That sounds high, but that is the current standard. hence you need to determine the 0.001% probability of a multi-day wind drought. Such a drought, at that probability, in most places, lasts around 10-14 days. That is the ACTUAL amount of storage you need to have. And, even worse, that is all emergency backup storage that gets used once every couple of years.
25 days seems a bit long but isn't outside the realm of probability.
If you are trying to move energy seasonally, then even 90 days storage might be necessary.
Great Analysis! So now you have done 2 out of 4 important analyses - wind and BESS. So now it's time to do solar and CSS. (If you have, my apologies, give me the link.). I am particularly interested in the comparison of solar PV paired with SCGT vs CCGT. That's an issue here in Tennessee in TVA's long range planning, in addition to the question of how much nuclear. Re carbon capture and storage - does it make sense or not? Yeah, I think I know the answer, but I would like to see the numbers.
Here you go - https://liberalandlovingit.substack.com/p/nuclear-vs-solar-capex-and-opex
In Uruguay we have a big capacity of wind power but in summer demand peak the wind generation is less than the few photovoltaic generation. The wind power near de coast produces more on demand valleys when ther is hydraulic energy at less price. The wind power far of the sea has the peak 1 hour after the evening demand peak. We don't have BESS. We only have one lake for hydraulic storage, that is not enough and we need flex thermal backup by now..
Good news, the chance of failure is 1 in 1 million for the batteries.
Bad news, each facility contains millions of cells, and a failure in a single cell can cause a cascading failure destroying the whole facility.
Moss Landing's batteries just burned down, so you may want to revise your spacing estimates, but even if they double I don't think that changes the conclusions. But the cost of fire safety equipment and procedures is certainly going to change costs.
It's funny I got feedback on reddit saying my space estimates are too large as the batteries can be squeezed tighter together. I lean your way, they need more space between blocks of batteries.
David, thank you for this summary. Your subhead tells the most important fact about battery electric storage: Its not cheap! 48 big systems are required for Colorado.