Thanks for making the video, it's a really interesting topic. I think new battery technology is cool, but it's really important not to underestimate the scale of the challenge here. The US uses about 11 million MWh of electricity a day, mostly from fossil fuels. To replace fossil fuels with renewables and store just 1 day of US electricity would therefore need almost 14,000 of the 800MWh vanadium plants of the type you described being built in china. For comparison the US only has about 1000 power plants producing 200MW or more (i.e. same power output as the vanadium storage plants). Most estimates I've seen suggest that for solar and wind to be reliable enough to not require natural gas backup would require 2 weeks of storage capacity: 2 weeks would require almost 200,000 of the 800MWh vanadium plants.

@iareid8255

3 жыл бұрын

Tom, at last, a touch of realism, the fantasists also forget the need for extra generation capacity to charge these batteries.

@1337Jogi

3 жыл бұрын

The problem are not even the short (2 week ) term loading/unloading cycles but the annual. For many countries the amount of energy stored varies greatly over the course of the year. Fortunately in the summer solar produces more and in the winter wind. Still for most countries that gives not an even scale. In Germany you would need to store and release energy in a 12 months cycle. If you do not want to waste massive amounts of energy (because you scrap it) you will need to store energy in spring and give it back in autumn. You can only work around that if your production capacity is so high that you will meet your demand in low production months. That could also be an option but you would have massive amounts of excess energy to use. Maybe for producing Hydrogen or something else.

@Bayliss21

2 жыл бұрын

Which is why we call them greentards. This will never ever ever ever ever ever happen. If you think it will, you don't understand capital markets.

Awesome video man! Finally, an update on the next stage of city-sized batteries that are ESSENTIAL for transitioning to renewables.

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching!

@tsamuel6224

4 жыл бұрын

I'm not impressed. For an impressive grid scale battery check out the Ambri liquid metal battery. Their battery is good for 100,000 full charge full discharge cycles. That's with only abundant materials in their battery. Needs a heater at startup but needs no cooling. Operating at grid scale it is self heating. And very efficient with performance similar to pumped hydro, but with the nearly instant synthetic throttle and exciter response times of all battery systems. You could call it a 300 year battery, but as a practical matter it simply will outlast the infrastructure it is built for.

@Sekir80

4 жыл бұрын

@@tsamuel6224 Ah, Sadoway's stuff! I'm hoping it will get somewhere!

@iareid8255

4 жыл бұрын

TJ Grant, I keep hearing and reading about 100% renewables no fossil fuels etc. It's a fantasy it is not going to happen. Renewable generation is inferior power and the reality is, that due to technical reasons, it is not suitable for large scale grid supply. Why, apart from intermittency (which batteries will not compensate for, another pipe dream), they are asynchronous power sources, so cannot support the grid frequency which is a critical parameter to control, they have no inertia which large steam plants have, another characteristic that keeps the frequency stable, They contribute to lowering short circuit current for the grid which inhibits effective operation of grid protection systems. Wind, in particular, is very unstable at times because of the cube law relationship between wind speed and power output. Their lifespan is far shorter than conventional power plants and their load factor, i.e. how much power you actually get as opposed to name plate capacity is small, so you need lots of them. and even then there are times when their output is virtually zero. Germany has spent trillions of Euros and still they are having to build new coal stations. The large capacity of renwable generation has made little effect on their CO2 emissions, it simply is not effective or reliable. Not only that their elctricity costs are about the highest in Europe with 'free wind and solar'1

@VeritasVortex

4 жыл бұрын

@@UndecidedMF Please change your intro music! It's so annoying!

Please for the love of God: Energy: MWh aka Megawatt-hour Power: MW aka Megawatt

Can you mention Cryogenic Air storage too? Currently Highview Power is building a 250MWh system in Manchester, England. No toxic or rare materials required, no shortage of raw materials and half the price of Li-ion. Easily scalable and can be built anywhere. Yes, its only 60-75% efficient but there are no chemical process involved, only physical.

@StefanvanderFange

4 жыл бұрын

www.energy-storage.news/news/fossil-fuel-plant-in-england-will-get-250mwh-liquid-air-energy-storage-make Yes, very interesting solution. Just store air under pressure...

@MrGonzonator

4 жыл бұрын

@@StefanvanderFange no, it's not pressurised, that's the whole point. Because it's a cryogenic liquid it doesn't have to be pressurised, just well insulated which makes containment much less expensive.

@StefanvanderFange

4 жыл бұрын

@@MrGonzonator Thanks. It's been a while since I've done physics, but getting gas to liquid can be done in 2 ways, as I recall it: either cool it, or put in under pressure. Or a combination of both ofcourse. Keeping it cooled seems to cost much more energy, than keeping it under pressure...

@tjejojyj

3 жыл бұрын

There’s an excellent video about it. It says recycling the heat generated during compression is important to its efficiency. -- Liquid Air Batteries. Literally energy from thin air. Seriously. Literally! kzread.info/dash/bejne/poGA15t9pNqfqaw.html

@charlesthompson8704

3 жыл бұрын

@@StefanvanderFange A gas over it's critical temperature cannot be compressed into a liquid. This is also the difference in the definition of vapor and gas. A vapor can be compressed to a liquid. A gas cannot be compressed to a liquid but can be turned to a supercritical fluid.

Good to hear you adding more depth to the videos with layers of sound! Very cool *edit* ok maybe a BIT too much but still great video

@vincentrobinette1507

4 жыл бұрын

I've never heard a beat like that from a wind turbine in real life. It's not good promotion, showing them making that kind of noise.

Awesome video and level of detail on the topic. Thanks for putting all this dense information in one video!

Glad to hear that energy storage battery technology is progressing significantly, let’s not lose sight of the reality that the energy storage capacity even if built out at an aggressive pace with improving technology is and will be but a small fraction of solar and wind generation capability for a long time. Further more , it is at least an order of magnitude too small to address issues such as seasonal variation of solar. (Example: I have a modest 14 Kw home solar installation. On an annual basis, it meets 90% of household needs, but only 20% during the worst 2 winter months. A pair of original-spec Powerwalls would easily address a day or so of this seasonal deficit, but clearly not the remaining 60 days of inadequate system production. That is worse than an order of magnitude shortfall between hypothetical system capability and need.)

Always learn so much with your videos - thanks for all the time and research you do. Have a great day!

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Really appreciate that. Hope you have a great day too!

Amazing video mate.....short yet very informative!

Thank you for making this video. Keep it up!

I just wanted to say thank you for the very interesting videos :D

Brilliant review once again Matt.👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

👊🏻

Thank you, sir. I will share this on.

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Awesome, thank you!

Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for the content

You need to tell us how much a battery might cost that could run New York City for a day. Something tells me that cost is out of sight.

@kennetw42

2 жыл бұрын

Try Mexico City. Mind boggling>

I enjoyed the sound of the battery. :)

Not sure how I missed this video before but I appreciate the fact that you got citations listed without having to log into something like Facebook.

Thanks Matt!

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching!

after watching several vids of your channel, you have got me :-) greetings from germany martin teuber

we could also have a system wherein a large proportion of average energy demand is met with nuclear energy. witch by nature is very consistent (mostly for safety reasons) where the remainder of typical demand is met by renewables with the excess stored and used in place of peaking plants. not a perfect system, but more attainable and would more than serve as a multi decade solution while the tech and infrastructure is further developed for an entirely renewable energy environment

"Everyone owning a phone" that reminds me of a blizzard meme.

@LeonAruba

4 жыл бұрын

That bald dude with his red shirt and one strap backpack is a legend. Your comment cracked me up, thank you.

Matt lots if thanks for informative lectures , i would like to know the name of the music you play at the intro.of your videos ? Thanks , Rik . Netherlands .

@UndecidedMF

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Rik! It's Ganja by Ooyy.

@rikmarx107

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks , love it

6:27 That's 22.5 kWh of space heaters! I had one just like those when I lived in Europe.

I recently modeled the addition of storage for a local 1.5 MW wind turbine. With a couple of years of daily generation, the model showed that the size of battery to avoid blackouts is int the order of 500 MWh. This is some 5 times the largest battery in existence today. This amount of storage for each wind turbine is inconceivable!

@MrElifire84

4 жыл бұрын

Fascinating!! Explain your modeling better. This is good info sir!!!

@richdobbs6595

3 жыл бұрын

@@MrElifire84 Probably is that you basically need two weeks of storage for windpower to get past maximum becalmed incidents. 500MWh/1.5MW is 300 hours.

Thanks Matt , I learned something new about flow battery.

amazing video matt. Thanks

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Glad you liked it!

The last battery you mentioned, made from cheap, abundant materials, might be the Sodium Ion battery. a company named "Aquion" made it, that battery hasn't taken off yet, with the company fading in and out over the years. According to their specifications of batteries they actually had for sale on the market would last ~3,000 cycles, but, it had a high equivalent series resistance, making it a long term storage option. (it could not be charged or discharged quickly) The only reason I don't have them, is because the total levelized cost per kWh of electrical energy storage was more expensive than Lead Acid, and Lithium Iron Phosphate. They were bulky, but that's fine for stationary energy storage applications like renewable energy.(wind, solar)

That's a lot of really cool energy storage technology :)

how are we doing on the problem of long-distance electricity transportation (e.g. from sunny/windy production areas to consumer areas)?

@kensmith5694

3 жыл бұрын

High voltage DC transmission lines are a proven technology. The problems are political ones. Nobody seems to want them running near their house and nobody is willing to fund the building of extra lines.

I don't know abt energy density of li-ion batteries but the knowledge density of this video is off the roof!! Great video !

Flow batteries look promising for large scale energy storage. Please keep on sharing as the technologies evolve because we are all interested in the various energy storage options you have shared in the last year

Another option is to invest in thorium reactors.

@MrElifire84

4 жыл бұрын

Ding ding ding!! Right answer!!! Read my separate comments and the responses to this video and some others. You are correct sir.

Storage is extremely helpful for transitioning to renewables, particularly having a couple of hours, which, as you mentioned, is very fast, and can help with grid stability providing frequency regulation, voltage regulation, and synthetic inertia. Long duration battery storage would be very helpful too, and super interesting to learn about, BUT, you can do 90 or 95% of the transition without it, and we are nowhere near that. Storage is but one tool, in the tool box. Adding transmission, demand management, overbuild, and keeping some gas plants operational for that week or two when we are really short can get us way down the road. Might even be able to do power to gas, and either make methane, or potentially store hydrogen and use fuel cells. We'll see. Any storage that is added to the grid will not only help shave the peaks, and peak prices, but will help decrease the number of times the price of electricity goes too low. It will be easier to add more renewables if you can get paid for more hours.

@tsamuel6224

4 жыл бұрын

90 or 95% of the transition without storage is nonsense. That's what causes blackouts. Unless you have extremely fast throttle and exciter response times (lots of fossil fuel), you need storage.

@fjalics

4 жыл бұрын

@@tsamuel6224 We already have storage, and the rate that we are adding it is going up exponentially, but we are only around 20% renewables. Getting to 40% is not that big of a deal. A little bit of battery storage with the right power electronics can do amazing things, as Australia found out when they got their Tesla battery system at the Hornsdale Power Reserve. Frequency and voltage regulation. They can both add and take power, and some systems can also provide synthetic inertia. cleantechnica.com/2020/03/02/neoen-says-hornsdale-battery-has-exceeded-expectations/

as we have just seen demonstrated, fossil fuel burning slows so does the rain fall and cloud cover , therefore solar gets more productive = a feed back loop that's useful for once. Also liquid air / compressed air energy systems are starting to get the attention they should have gotten a very long time ago. Well done Manchester UK

Hello, What's your opinion on cryogenic energy storage solution by Highview Power? It seems more eco-friendly and scalable than all the other storage solutions. Thanks.

Great information

Thank you for this most informative video. I'd love you to get more to the nitty gritty of figures as well but I understand it must appeal to everybody. If you have data, perhaps you could put it in a spreadsheet and put down under your video a link to a directory with those data in the cloud? I have been in storage in 2018 but things are moving fast. Mass storage is not being funded well. In EU there is no venture capital like in the USA. People prefer to invest in real estate for 'stones and ground don't run away'. Feudal think of the Middle Ages but there it is right in the 21st century.

I knew a young boy named Ferrell when I lived in the Philippines in 1956-1957. I was 9 and I think he was a year younger. If you are related to him, say hello for me. We were both "Air Force Brats" as we called ourselves. I enjoy your shows.

Some good directions for battery technology.

Hey Matt. There is an energy storage company called Ambri that is about grid scale storage but I haven't heard an update about them in a bit. Can you look into them and tell us what you think.

Outstanding review of the various battery technologies and potential developments

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

Thanks Matt, an interesting dive into the nascent technologies trying to solve the grid level storage conundrum! Many here comment on the sheer size of the storage required, for ever increasing energy requirements, a problem that I suspect will never go away. My background is physics and engineering. Despite the put down of "It's always 50 years away" which has been the case for my whole adult life, I believe that in the end fusion power is the only truly viable longterm solution, unless we can halt our almost exponential growth of energy requirements. This area has been starved of funding almost since its inception, which of course is one of the reasons that it is taking so long. I've watched documentaries where, highly qualified and experienced physicists and engineers are working out of small industrial units, using materials scavenged from past research at universities etc. Astonishing given the money poured into vanity projects all over the world For instance in the UK our government spent $20 Billion on a track and trace app (which did not work) for coronovirus and a further £75 billion on a high speed rail link to shorten a journey time of 1.5 hours by 15 minutes, and yet only announced a grant of $275 million into fusion research over 5 years!!! ITER in the south of France is an international collaboration for fusion research, which although it will not produce commercially viable electricity, will hopefully solve most of the problems facing this technology. The other thing I have noticed from your videos is the speed at which technology is evolving in the energy storage and generation area. Often it seems that just as a technology like Vanadium flow is poised to enter the mainstream, along comes a newer tech that promises more, better or cheaper solutions, at which point I suspect that the projects in the pipeline for that technology either stall or collapse due to a lack of funding. A classic example of this is the nuclear power plants developed in the UK back in the 60's and 70's, each one of which was effectively a prototype, resulting in a hard to manage and maintain generating capability. At some stage, in order to get some useful energy out of a system the decision has to be taken to standardise the product and go with it, warts and all, then you have a known set of problems with that design that can be corrected in all the instances of that product rather than needing s different solution for each instance.

Thanks Matt, very positive video, even with the negative puns

I frequently see videos about batteries, and all the potential new designs that appear to still be years away from being used. However, if the point is easy to scale energy storage, then I think CAES is going to be a major player. Highview Power is a current CAES company that is operating in the UK, and just contracted to build a plant in the US. I'd love to see a video on this that would explore some pros and cons of this system!

I was half expecting one of those "renewables and batties won't work around the world..." videos, but this is very insightful and yes, we do need to research new technologies, in the end if we have the technology today then great! we can deploy it and when it advances we can replace it at the end of it's lifespan, if we don't then we can at least try to reduce the effects of the damaging sources of energy while we develop technologies.

Thank you.

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks as always, Ron!

In the animation at 4:45 the ions are going the wrong way. The ions need to flow from the anode to the cathode, same as the electrons do.

How about doing a video on nuclear technology? It has the best potential to reduce carbon emissions by a long shot without destroying the environment.

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

A couple of videos ago I did touch on nuclear with my Thorium energy video. Definitely an interesting path towards cleaner energy.

@MrElifire84

4 жыл бұрын

It was a prettY good video too.

@tlo9055

4 жыл бұрын

@@UndecidedMF Thorium will likely be further in future. Small Modular Reactors are being reviewed by regulatory agencies and could be licensed and online within this decade. Thanks for doing these videos!

I've been following Ramez Naam for years on the falling cost of batteries. At one point a few years ago he said the trend on batteries was a 20% drop in cost per year. While learning about all the different chemistries is fun, massive adoption obviously depends on lifecycle cost. The $80/kwh/3000 cycle batteries that were hyped in the news recently would dip below $0.03/kwh/cycle, which, combined with solar, could challenge natural gas right now. What's really exciting is when solar+batteries become cheaper than the _just the fuel_ for fossil fuel power plants (meaning you'll save money shutting down an existing plant even if it has plenty of life left and there aren't carbon taxes yet).

MATT , could you look into cryo-air battery technology by High View Power. It appears to reuse well understood gas liquefaction technology in a new way. Stores energy for weeks and supposedly cost a fraction of the cost of lithium ion batteries at large scale. Currently , the company is building plant [ not a pilot plant ] in Manchester England.

A very small but crucial mention in this video is the power of patents to hinder progress, either intentionally (fossil fuel industry) or otherwise. Intellect, when we desperately need these ideas for the greater benefit of humanity, shouldn't become property. Rewards should be wider than simple exclusive monetary gain.

In order for renewable energy to replace fossil fuels the cost per kWh has to be close to the same as fossil fuels and as reliable. Next video: How to use renewables to power an aluminum production plant.

As a home builder here in Canada, I would say that insulation is the most important battery in this country. No matter what the heat source is for your home, or cooling source in summer, insulation will keep your home warm or cool for much longer. The materials needed to insulate are the most common materials on the planet and they work for hundreds of years without any added energy when installed properly. No it is not a sexy solution but it is so very important to reduce the demand for energy while maintaining a good quality of life over the long run.

@kensmith5694

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, "rock wool" is really good stuff. Foam is better but costs more. For windows, "nothing works" as in two sheets of glass held apart with small glass spacers and a vacuum is the way to go. Nearly any nation could make a better future for its people by making those upgrades today.

Promising and exciting.

Hi! Can you do a video on alternatives to battery storage systems such as compressed air energy storage. I believe this is a viable solution for large scale grid storage.

Hi Matt, the solution for any problem with energy is the hydroelectric riverless. It can generate as much you need will without rivers.

@joaolemos1050

2 жыл бұрын

Do you mean pumped-storage? They do have a lot of limitations regarding geographics

I loved the occasional crickets in the background. Great video.

Hi Matt (or anyone informed on the subject) what about the residues left from the batteries? are they toxic? will they be a bigger problem in the future if we rely on batteries too much?

@theairstig9164

3 жыл бұрын

Recyclable yes, about 80%. The rest is just as toxic as when it was an ore. If coal is radioactive (some isn’t) then the coal ash is radioactive too. Which would you prefer to have your school built on?

4:06 she couldn't park more far from the charging point 🤣

What about just using excess electricity for the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen, and then burning the hydrogen in off-peak hours to generate steam for turbines or other methods of electricity generation? Would be a cheap stopgap solution untill cheap scalable solid state batteries become available. Sure would be less efficient than batteries, but much cheaper. Could you do a video on that? Maybe compare efficiency rates for all the possible technologies?

OMG!!! The energizer bunny just got arrested! He was charged with battery.

@vincentrobinette1507

4 жыл бұрын

If it's a Sodium Ion battery, he could be charged with salt-in-battery!!🤣😂😁

@TheyCalledMeT

3 жыл бұрын

that was such a textbook sample of a dad joke! :D

@steveturners1258

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheyCalledMeT and yet, the joke is still very much alive.

@teenforce-dance5255

3 жыл бұрын

nice one

@teenforce-dance5255

3 жыл бұрын

@@vincentrobinette1507 :) good one

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the videos and information presented but the following statement needs some explanation and follow up: "Its taken around 40 years for lithium ion to reach the state we are at right now. But We don't have that kind of time to wait for grid scale storage to mature." Why don't we have that kind of time for large scale batteries? The entire video seemed to present clear and logical information on the topic with backing information outside of that statement.

I see a mix of storage being the future. Computers have a variety of types of memory in the various components that are optimized for a task. I could see home/ small commerical packs providing on sight power to peak shave while flow batteries store seasonal power from wind/solar for uses weeks/months later.

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

I also fall into the “it’s going to be a mix” camp. I really don’t see one technology being “the thing.” It’ll most likely be a combination of a bunch of things. Thanks for watching!

Batteries are a major concern and we need more of them. But it is also important to realize that if we need to fire up those old gas, oil or coil generators few weeks a year, we still reduce 95% of our carbon emissions so we may not need to substitute all our energy needs on batteries. Maybe only 95%.

Chemical batteries are not the only solution to large scale energy storage. There is gravity storage which you alluded to with pumping water, but you can lift other things. There is also phase change storage and liquid air storage is already viable, neiither of which require long, complicated development.

Great review but only considers chemical batteries. For static applications ‘mechanical’ batteries that store energy by e.g. liquefying a gas (large scale Liquid Air batteries just being trialed now) have a lot of scope too.

@kensmith5694

4 жыл бұрын

The big heavy weights made grandfather clocks work fine. Perhaps for some stuff we should go back to that.

Reminds me of the articles from Popular Mechanics or Engadget. Seems like every week there'd be a new fangled battery that promises the sun and the moon. We're still waaaiting!

Great video! There are also non-chemical energy storage approaches, like the stone/concrete based heat storages that can store large amounts of energy by heating stone, and later producing steam for retrieval.

@kensmith5694

4 жыл бұрын

A big tank of water is better than concrete. Water can be pumped to the heat exchanger.

@chrisdistant9040

4 жыл бұрын

Ken Smith the idea is that heated concrete can store tons of heat, which can be transferred to water to power turbines as needed. Water alone doesn’t store that much heat.

@kensmith5694

4 жыл бұрын

@@chrisdistant9040 Water is has about the highest specific heat going. www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-d_391.html Water is waaaaay better than concrete on this.

@chrisdistant9040

4 жыл бұрын

@@kensmith5694 Huh you are right. There must be a reason Siemens and others use concrete or volcanic rock to store energy though. Maybe the reason is to keep the pressure during storage low, so only when they want to power a turbine, high pressures convert to kinetic/electrical energy.

@chrisdistant9040

4 жыл бұрын

@@kensmith5694 www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/hybrid-and-storage/thermal-energy-storage-with-etes

Lithium is a pretty common element, new techniques & mines to extract it will reduce it's perceived rarity. As for cobalt, latest research indicates it's only along for the ride. New techniques of how to put the battery together can essentially remove it's requirement entirely.

'Liquid Air', is probably the grid scale storage technology you're looking for.

@andrewcbartlett

4 жыл бұрын

@NotTheCIA I.think Already being built! www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-manchester-53097208

Thanks for the video, quite illuminating. Bottom line is that absent a significant breakthrough in battery technology, renewables won't supply the majority of the worlds energy needs at scale or reasonable cost. If one of these technologies takes off it will certainly be a game changer, but for now hydrocarbons are going to be doing the majority of the heavy lifting.

replacing peaker plants makes sense .. replacing base load plants with solar/wind and battery storage (for the low production times i.e. night and or no wind) is beyond ineffective and even a net negative for the environment .. so replacing base load coal/gas with water or fusion power plants (.. which don't exist yet) sure i'm all in! Untill then .. replacing coal/gas isn't an option without quadrupling the electricity bill whilst effectively damaging the environment (the scale of required battery parks is so enormous .. their production/construction and later deconstruction/recycling would cause more problems/toxic waste/pollution than letting regular power plants run for another 2 decades)

Great video as usual, but the sound was distracting (crickets, typing on a laptop).

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Appreciate the feedback. I’ll do better next time.

@RyanWilliams222

4 жыл бұрын

Undecided with Matt Ferrell, thanks. Your videos are great. I dance like an idiot whenever the theme music comes on (solid choice!). 😂

How can we address the heat waste of all these transitions? Conventional power plant has a 66% waste heat? Love the technology.

I want to reinforce the question traveller asked below. How about Liquid Air or Cryo storage large scale batteries. All the articles I find on this have no depth. They don't explain how it deals with the heat of compression or the chill of decompression. How they deal with the fact that each gas liquifies at different temperature. Also why wasn't it done before? What new development makes it practical now? I would love to see you go into this subject in depth.

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

Appreciate the shout out for that. Several folks have hit me up about that. Adding it to the list.

@AnalystPrime

4 жыл бұрын

Good questions. Apparently now they store the waste heat created when compressing air and use it during decompression so the system is more efficient. Also, simply by building such storage near some place that requires cooling or produces waste heat allows both to save energy. Given AC is one of the main energy users, replacing it with few pipes that bring cold air to every apartment building in the city would save even more money than simply using the liquid air for energy storage to run the AC with cheaper electricity. Why now and not before? Money, usually. It helps that we now have more push towards getting rid of fossil fuels and especially the peaker plants, renewables have proven they produce far more power than doubters have claimed, and various prototypes that have been in operation for decades in some cases show that energy storage also works and becomes even more economically viable as fuel costs and price of energy rises. But the main issue is what can you get right now at cheap price. Tesla had a bunch of batteries ready to sell so they could get Hornsdale operational in couple months because they had made them for EVs and Powerwalls, but as useful as those megabatteries are, we need few thousands of them all over the world by yesterday and Tesla is not going to be able to produce that many any time soon. Concrete and steel are far cheaper and last longer than even simplest chemical batteries and the technology does not need to be more efficient than Tesla's best batteries to be useful, it only needs to be cheaper than the expensive peaker plants and available now instead of "maybe in few years we develop a cheaper chemical".

I think the idea that batteries need to be able to 'power entire cities for hours' is not really true. In a decentralised and diverse power network there isn't ever one source. Batteries will play a role but there will be other sources too like hydro, liquid air, gravity storage, flywheel etc.

@Froggability

4 жыл бұрын

How about at night turn off office lighting for a start. Cities have vast amounts of waste. Many Developing countries use 1/10th the energy or less and everyone lives to tell the tale

Nice video and good subject. For energy storage, I still prefer capacitors over batteries.

@dennistucker1153

4 жыл бұрын

@@memberwhen22 I know they don't have as much energy density as batteries. However, they last almost forever, allow for fast charging, are easy and cheap to make and there is no hazardous chemicals or hazardous waste.

@MrElifire84

4 жыл бұрын

Dennis Tucker They really are amazing!!! If we could just get their energy density higher. Latest I saw was the best are approaching the energy density of lead acid batteries. Not to close to Lithium ion yet. However, grid scale storage is a different matter!! We don’t need to move or Propel a stationary grid battery so size and weight hardly matter! And the power rate for both charge and discharge coupled with unlimited life seems like a great fit for grid scale storage! I wonder why capacitors aren’t used more? Anybody know? Matt? Is it cost?

I can understand the need of energy density for portable stuff, like phones or vehicles, but energy density is not a big factor when we are talking about static batteries in the outskirts of cities where space is not a problem. Let's dump the energy in the cheapest battery type , no matter how much it occupies.

@dave8599

3 жыл бұрын

The lead acid battery is a cheap technology, but we will need to open dozens of lead mines to supply the material. That wile increase the cost of lead as demand will surge over that of supply. lead will be like silver price wise if that were to happen, no longer cheap.

🤩🤩🤩🤩 need more Vedios like these

promising tec. IMO usage might be a cycletime of a few days. For long term cylces, like seasonal storage, my money is still on P2X like methanation.

Befor the video I got an ad about batteries.

5:50-6:00 Gee that sounds like solar panels.

The problem is that Tesla's Powerwall is still quite expensive because of the need to use lithium-ion battery packs. A better solution is going with less expensive means of power storage like molten salt batteries, which is less of an issue since you don't have size limitations like you have with electric vehicles.

What are your thoughts on zero point energy sources? (Dr Steven Greer)

@kensmith5694

4 жыл бұрын

"zero point energy" is the term for the minimum energy that can be in the components of an atom. This energy can never be taken out of the atom so it is simply never available to use. Many folks have adopted the term to "baffle with BS" about their various scams and cons. Sadly this has lead to a common disinformation effect that ends up holding back alternative energy work.

I'd like to hear what you think of Ambri's new liquid metal grid storage battery. Cheap and abundant material and long lasting.

If the intention is to run air conditioning each evening, batteries suit short daily use. If the intention is to replace natural gas then weather events lasting a few days is more typical of pumped storage. Maybe multiple solutions for multiple circumstances?

What about more mechanical battery tech, like Gravitricity’s energy well system?

I am surprised you did not mention the sodium and nickel chloride batteries developed at MIT.

An inconvenient truth..sadly

Add to your list: Liquid Air Energy Storage also called Cryogenic energy storage en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#United_Kingdom

@garethboyd325

4 жыл бұрын

www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/uk-firm-highview-power-announces-plans-for-first-liquid-to-gas-cryogenic-battery

@UndecidedMF

4 жыл бұрын

👍

@raviteza8

4 жыл бұрын

Highview Power is the most promising of all the energy storage technologies. Batteries and Redox Flow can't simply scale. Mechanical Energy Storage systems like LAES ,CAES and Pumped Heat Energy Storage are the only scalable solutions.

This is exactly why we need to take back our manufacturing. We can not depend of other countries to make and recycle our products.

I’ve been a proponent of flow batteries for years. We should save lithium for applications that require light weight and portable power. I see flow batteries as a park of the distributed generation grid concept

I read read recently about liquid air energy storage. Converting air to liquid then as it is turned back to air it turns a turbine to generate electricity. I wonder how viable that is.

@pathfollower

3 жыл бұрын

@NotTheCIA I.think I recently saw a video that talked about this tech. They said they believed it to be a compliment to batteries, not a competitor. Apparently battery banks are concidered 4 hour storage at best. It appears noone is building or planning a battery array to supply to the grid backup power for longer than that. While it meets that need quite well, with liquid air you can supply the grid for 10 hours or better. Also they are easy and cheap to scale up. Once you have the infrastructure in to provide the megawatts per hour that is required, you need only add more storage tanks, to add morre hours of backup.

@pathfollower

3 жыл бұрын

@NotTheCIA I.think Thanks for the lesson. I believe I grasp it. Maybe this is why tjey said batteries and liquid air compliment each other. Liquid air is billed as power storage, like.pumped hydro.

@pathfollower

3 жыл бұрын

@NotTheCIA I.think Thanks again. A friend and I recently started up a non profit. Main goal is building farms to supply orphanages with sustainable food source. Our first farm is 29 acres just outside of Jinja Uganda. I know there is no power there now. Not sure of the distance and the cost to bring it in, but even then it is notoriously unreliable. Lots of blackouts. Therefore offgrid may be the way to go . I'm trying to learn what I can about power.

@pathfollower

3 жыл бұрын

@NotTheCIA I.think Yeah, I don't have many specifics at this point. This particular farm is to provide food primarily for an orphanage of 75 kids, + staff members. Things we would like to have. Housing for workers and their families. The goal is to employ widows with children. Give them housing, tie the kids into the education system the orphanage uses. We of course need a barn and food processing facility. We want to install a cannery inorder to preserve food. We would like to put in a vocational school for kids aging out of the orphanage that don't wish to go on to college. Agricultural, equipment repair, welding... those types of things. We also hope to build guest housing to host church groups on mission trips. (Income) Lots of electrical needs. Actually was checking into freeze-dried foods, because it is the best way to preserve, but those machines use major kilowatts.

@pathfollower

3 жыл бұрын

@NotTheCIA I.think They would. I have to have some viable preservation method. The childten presently live off of corn meal mush and cooked dried beans. They get maybe one ounce of chicken a week. Most food is not meat therefore I dont think smoking is a viable option. Besides that, smoked meats lead to stomach cancer. Often at a young age.

I suspect we will see a generation of zinc flow batteries and then a new replacement. Waiting for the perfect battery is not an option.

Matt, Your content is so good. Have you seen Graham Stephan. He’s great and ruthlessly with a flair of humor asks for likes on every episode....and it works. You deserve a lot more likes. Maybe you could use a little of what works for him, in your own way/ watered down. U rock. I appreciate what you do. May may enjoy watching some of his posts on how much money he makes from his posts. It’s amazing.

What are the energy densities of the most promising solutions? Energy storage for large cities seemly would take up vast amounts of space.

@kensmith5694

4 жыл бұрын

Imagine a "big box store". Make that a battery and you have enough for about 100,000 homes.

The Hornsdale expansion completed in April and my understanding has been operational since then and is now rated as 150MW/193.5 MWh. Tesla project with has PG&E project should be underway by now and initial targets for 182.5MW/730MWh with option to expand to 1.2 GWh. And there are other large projects Tesla has planned/proprosed and/or been accepted. To be honest today we have plenty of energy more than enough. A major part of the problem is the majority of buildings are low performance. Probably should do a video about Net Zero and Passive home construction. Building or upgrading to passive home & commercial construction with only minimal increased costs can probably reduce energy needs in the country by half if not more (if excluding electric vehicles).

The thing is: we were so desperate to make cheap renewable energy production, that we forgot about cheap storage. Redox batteries look promising for stationary grid level batteries, as long as the demand keeps growing the technology will get cheaper.

@AnalystPrime

4 жыл бұрын

But without major increase of cheap energy production there wouldn't be so much demand for cheap storage. The real issue is companies and politicians refusing to improve the grid infrastructure, as we could simply build loads of renewables in best locations and power the whole world with them if there just were enough cables to transmit the energy.

We should just have every building producing its own power independently. Buildings with lots of sun can go solar, buildings that have a lot of wind can go wind, buildings with a stream or river etc that has a current can go Hydro.

Another battery technology is the Liquid Metal Battery from Ambi, developed out of Dr. Donald Sadoway's group at MIT. Cheap components and virtually unlimited life.