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ERCOT, PUC, and deregulation got us here


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1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

"Windless nights" is pretty much a red herring designed to strike fear into the hearts of the ignorant, and it's obvious what industry is stoking that fear.  While any one local wind farm might see periodic reductions in power below baseline, the aggregate wind power generated across the grid is predictable and planned for.

Regardless we need a baseline power amount that the ERCOT/PUC can deliver 99.99% of the time. If not more. I don't care if its a windless night or a cold front.

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2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

"Windless nights" is pretty much a red herring designed to strike fear into the hearts of the ignorant, and it's obvious what industry is stoking that fear.  While any one local wind farm might see periodic reductions in power below baseline, the aggregate wind power generated across the grid is predictable and planned for.

Yes and no.  Look, I'm a big fan of renewables, but we DO get functionally windless periods statewide.  Especially in the heat of summer.  So, we DO need on-demand power.  It's okay to admit that.  Things like batteries, nuclear, and yes, natural gas, belong in the mix still.  The percentage SHARE of fossil fuel generation can and should go down, which it has done and is continuing to do.  But we aren't close to a "zero fossil fuel" in the mix position yet.

I'm all for more battery projects, that helps reduce the share of generation from fossil fuel even more.  And, globally speaking, I think that nuclear energy needs to increase its role in power generation.  It's clean, reliable, and constant.

Our challenge is our market design.  If it stays an "energy only" market, instead of adding a "capacity market" function, it will be next to impossible to get anyone to build new gas generation (or nuclear, for that matter).  Why would you build something that doesn't make economic sense?  A capacity market functions like insurance - you pay a little extra tacked onto your mortgage payment to pay for homeowners insurance.  You pay for it whether you need it or not.  Maybe you never need it.  But when you need it, you NEED IT.  But we won't do that.  Because...well, you know all the reasons.

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3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yes and no.  Look, I'm a big fan of renewables, but we DO get functionally windless periods statewide. 

And those are known and planned for.  I mean, it's not like the data and trends aren't out there.  We know how the wind works.

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45 minutes ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:

There are multiple battery facilities getting built in Texas. There are two going through the approval process in Henderson County right now.

Just curious, do you have to develop specialized firefighting plans in the event a battery barn catches fire?

 

 

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15 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

And those are known and planned for.  I mean, it's not like the data and trends aren't out there.  We know how the wind works.

Yes, they are known and planned for.  And MOST of the time, there are sufficient additional resources.  But from time to time, the resource availability cuts it close (and maybe even falls short).  That's what happened in February 2021.  It almost happened in the winter of 2011 (we ignored the warnings that event gave us).  We cut it close in the cold snap in January.  We don't have much in the way of "cushion" for when we have extreme weather events.  Again, a capacity market is a lot like insurance -- you can go years without needing it....until you really, really need it.

Edited by Brisketexan
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Thanks for the education, Dad.  I only spent over two decades as a mechanical engineer inventing, patenting, developing, manufacturing and selling commercial scale power quality equipment.  You know, this shit that keeps the lights on when the power goes out.

I have never once said we don't need the ability to quickly respond to supply sags, so I don't know what you're on about.  I'm saying that renewable energy fluctuations can largely be predicted and planned for.  It would also be nice if the statewide natural gas systems were winterized, but hey, WIND AND SOLAR FLUCTUATE.

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1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

Thanks for the education, Dad.  I only spent over two decades as a mechanical engineer inventing, patenting, developing, manufacturing and selling commercial scale power quality equipment.  You know, this shit that keeps the lights on when the power goes out.

I have never once said we don't need the ability to quickly respond to supply sags, so I don't know what you're on about.  I'm saying that renewable energy fluctuations can largely be predicted and planned for.  It would also be nice if the statewide natural gas systems were winterized, but hey, WIND AND SOLAR FLUCTUATE.

So...then I'm not sure what we're arguing about.  You're getting mighty defensive and bristly when I'm not criticizing renewable energy in the slightest.  I'm not disagreeing that energy fluctuations can largely be predicted and planned for.  I'm just adding that "and sometimes, even if we use every available MW of generation....it won't be enough.  Having that amount of generation available is a function of a market that incentivizes having only just enough power, as opposed to having a little extra, to provide a margin of safety."  Oh, and I don't design or manufacture generation equipment.  I just deal with the market in which it operates locally, particularly when that market has....issues.  The market's issues generally are not because we have the wrong type of equipment or the equipment is poorly designed/manufactured (although you're dead-on on the failure to winterize natural gas systems....which will never really happen, for you know the reasons).  The market's issues are because of its design, embodied in the ERCOT protocols.  Which I have been elbow-deep in from time to time.

I'm not arguing against you, I'm really not.  My sole point is that without a capacity market, our resource mix and planning efforts will continue to occasionally cut it way close, sometimes too close, and we'll be short of needed generation.  It won't happen often.  But it will happen.  2011 was a big warning.  2021 was the shit 2011 warned us about coming to pass.  We have not materially modified the market since then.  If we have another 2021 event, we will have another grid failure.  Shit, if we continue to have summers like this past one, all it takes is a couple of resources having an unexpected outage, and we'll have to implement rolling blackouts.  "Little to no margin for error" is not a great way to design a system that delivers a public utility.  That's the sum total of my take here.

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Sage Geosystems is going to start construction on a geothermal battery that they claim can provide back up power for up to 18 hours.

Super interesting imo

 

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/sage-geosystems-geothermal-storage-fervo-princeton/707879/

Spoiler
 
DIVE BRIEF

Sage Geosystems raises $17M to build first-of-its-kind geothermal energy storage system in Texas

The plant will be able to store energy for both short and long durations using pressurized water stored underground.

Published Feb. 20, 2024
Kavya Balaraman's headshot
Kavya BalaramanFreelance reporter
Geothermal mud pots near the Salton Sea in California
Thermal mud pots at Controlled Thermal Resources’ project site near the Salton Sea in California. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources
audio_icon.svg?482016190122Listen to the article4 min

Dive Brief:

  • Geothermal company Sage Geosystems has closed a $17 million Series A funding, which will go towards funding a 3-MW commercial geo-pressured geothermal system in Texas, the company announced Thursday.
  • The plant — called EarthStore — will be able to store energy for both short and long durations using pressurized water stored underground, complementing solar, wind and other renewable sources of generation to help provide dispatchable energy to the grid, according to the company.
  • A recent study from Princeton University and geothermal start-up Fervo Energy found that tapping into the energy storage capabilities of enhanced geothermal reservoirs could help increase the value of the energy source dramatically.

Dive Insight:

Last September, Sage Geosystems conducted a pilot to test its technology and concluded that it could provide 18 hours or more of storage capacity at a cost that can compete with both shorter-duration lithium-ion batteries, as well as longer-duration pumped storage hydropower. The levelized cost of storage for its technology depends on duration and is between 2 cents/kWh and 4 cents/kWh, according to the company. 

Sage’s technology involves drilling a well to form a fracture in a certain kind of rock formation, which is then used as a makeshift reservoir. Excess solar, wind or other renewable energy can be used to pump water into that reservoir, causing it to expand and store the water under pressure. When electricity is needed back on the grid, opening the facility’s valves will send water back to the surface, where it will turn a turbine to generate power. The company expects the technology can complement renewable energy, as well as replace gas peaker plants during periods when the grid is especially stressed. 

Now, the company is preparing a first-of-its-kind commercial geothermal system in Texas. Sage is manufacturing equipment for the 3-MW facility and plans to begin constructing it in the second quarter of 2024, aiming for a commission date in the fourth quarter of the year. The exact location of the plant has not yet been announced. 

Sage Geosystems chose Texas for its first commercial energy storage facility for two reasons: the ability to move rapidly, and the fact that the Texas market has rapidly growing installations of wind and solar, making it a good fit for energy storage, CEO Cindy Taff said in an email. The company is also looking at energy storage and geothermal projects in California, Arizona, and locations outside the U.S., and is eyeing a potential energy storage test in Arizona this year, she added.

Meanwhile, a study from Princeton University and Fervo Energy released in January found that tapping into the energy storage potential of enhanced geothermal  essentially, a form of geothermal energy that is less dependent on specific geographies  along with declines in the cost of drilling technologies could result in over 100 GWs worth of geothermal capacity in the Western U.S.

Traditional geothermal energy requires specific geographic conditions, including kinds of rock, and in 2022 produced only 0.4% of the total electricity in the U.S. 

But newer approaches to drilling and hydraulic fracturing could change that. In fact, by using geothermal power plants in a flexible manner and leveraging their energy storage abilities, the value of the resource could be dramatically increased and used to smooth out intermittent renewable energy, the study found. 

“Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of clean energy, but their downfall is their variability and weather dependency. You can earn a lot of additional revenue if you can find a way to shift your clean energy generation to times without wind and solar,” Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, said in a statement.

 

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1 minute ago, Post Oak said:

Sage Geosystems is going to start construction on a geothermal battery that they claim can provide back up power for up to 18 hours.

Super interesting imo

 

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/sage-geosystems-geothermal-storage-fervo-princeton/707879/

  Hide contents
 
DIVE BRIEF

Sage Geosystems raises $17M to build first-of-its-kind geothermal energy storage system in Texas

The plant will be able to store energy for both short and long durations using pressurized water stored underground.

Published Feb. 20, 2024
Kavya Balaraman's headshot
Kavya BalaramanFreelance reporter
Geothermal mud pots near the Salton Sea in California
Thermal mud pots at Controlled Thermal Resources’ project site near the Salton Sea in California. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources
audio_icon.svg?482016190122Listen to the article4 min

Dive Brief:

  • Geothermal company Sage Geosystems has closed a $17 million Series A funding, which will go towards funding a 3-MW commercial geo-pressured geothermal system in Texas, the company announced Thursday.
  • The plant — called EarthStore — will be able to store energy for both short and long durations using pressurized water stored underground, complementing solar, wind and other renewable sources of generation to help provide dispatchable energy to the grid, according to the company.
  • A recent study from Princeton University and geothermal start-up Fervo Energy found that tapping into the energy storage capabilities of enhanced geothermal reservoirs could help increase the value of the energy source dramatically.

Dive Insight:

Last September, Sage Geosystems conducted a pilot to test its technology and concluded that it could provide 18 hours or more of storage capacity at a cost that can compete with both shorter-duration lithium-ion batteries, as well as longer-duration pumped storage hydropower. The levelized cost of storage for its technology depends on duration and is between 2 cents/kWh and 4 cents/kWh, according to the company. 

Sage’s technology involves drilling a well to form a fracture in a certain kind of rock formation, which is then used as a makeshift reservoir. Excess solar, wind or other renewable energy can be used to pump water into that reservoir, causing it to expand and store the water under pressure. When electricity is needed back on the grid, opening the facility’s valves will send water back to the surface, where it will turn a turbine to generate power. The company expects the technology can complement renewable energy, as well as replace gas peaker plants during periods when the grid is especially stressed. 

Now, the company is preparing a first-of-its-kind commercial geothermal system in Texas. Sage is manufacturing equipment for the 3-MW facility and plans to begin constructing it in the second quarter of 2024, aiming for a commission date in the fourth quarter of the year. The exact location of the plant has not yet been announced. 

Sage Geosystems chose Texas for its first commercial energy storage facility for two reasons: the ability to move rapidly, and the fact that the Texas market has rapidly growing installations of wind and solar, making it a good fit for energy storage, CEO Cindy Taff said in an email. The company is also looking at energy storage and geothermal projects in California, Arizona, and locations outside the U.S., and is eyeing a potential energy storage test in Arizona this year, she added.

Meanwhile, a study from Princeton University and Fervo Energy released in January found that tapping into the energy storage potential of enhanced geothermal  essentially, a form of geothermal energy that is less dependent on specific geographies  along with declines in the cost of drilling technologies could result in over 100 GWs worth of geothermal capacity in the Western U.S.

Traditional geothermal energy requires specific geographic conditions, including kinds of rock, and in 2022 produced only 0.4% of the total electricity in the U.S. 

But newer approaches to drilling and hydraulic fracturing could change that. In fact, by using geothermal power plants in a flexible manner and leveraging their energy storage abilities, the value of the resource could be dramatically increased and used to smooth out intermittent renewable energy, the study found. 

“Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of clean energy, but their downfall is their variability and weather dependency. You can earn a lot of additional revenue if you can find a way to shift your clean energy generation to times without wind and solar,” Jesse Jenkins, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, said in a statement.

 

How does this implement Holonomics, spinning toroids, and travelling waves?  Asking for....you know.

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9 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I'm not arguing against you, I'm really not. 

I'm not suggesting you're arguing against me, only that you felt the need to point out that renewable sources sometimes fall outside supply expectations.  It feeds the "unreliable" argument, when (ironically) we got fucked in 2021 because fossil fuels failed miserably, not the renewables, particularly with regard to expectations.

Believe me, I have a lot of concerns about renewable energy resources, but most of those concerns are economic, not technical.  I am no longer in that business -- I'm developing a consumer electronic product -- and I just don't have the time or even interest in trying to dig into the various regulatory and subsidy issues that affect the true cost of all power resources to the customer.  It's an intentionally tough nut to crack, and I'm not gonna be the one to do it.

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2 hours ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:

There are multiple battery facilities getting built in Texas. There are two going through the approval process in Henderson County right now.

There are a lot more than that, when you consider that Bitcoin mines are just big batteries that constantly burn energy but don’t store any for later use.

Dammit. @Captainant beat me to it.

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1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

only that you felt the need to point out that renewable sources sometimes fall outside supply expectations. 

Ahhh, then you misread me, or I communicated it poorly.  My point was NOT that "renewable" resources fall outside of supply expectations.  It was that our full resource mix - including ALL types of generation - is intentionally insufficient with little to no margin for safety by virtue of our intentional market design.  Yes, the "margin" is almost always going to have to be made up of reliable on-demand generation (batteries, nat gas, nuclear) because the very purpose of that last few percentage points is that it be reliable with on-demand availability.  And yes, to the extent we expect that margin to be covered by natural gas, it needs to be with plants that have a reliable, winterized fuel source, WITH A CAP ON THE GAS PRICE BY CONTRACT.

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And by the way, there is a very interesting briefing article in The Economist this week about the electrification of heavy industry.

Spoiler

Basf is in the business of molecules. As the world’s biggest chemicals firm, with operations in more than 90 countries, it makes a lot of them. When those molecules contain carbon atoms (and a great many do—they are a wonderfully versatile resource) those carbon atoms tend to come from fossil fuels. When their manufacture requires high temperatures, which is also often the case, that heat comes from burning fossil fuels. Until recently basf’s massive plant in Ludwigshafen in Germany accounted for 4% of the country’s entire consumption of natural gas.

Conventional wisdom has it that such a firm cannot really hope to lower very much the number of carbon-dioxide molecules it creates in the course of its business. The path to decarbonisation will come instead from gathering up those molecules and disposing of them underground, a process known as carbon capture and storage (ccs). The same conventional wisdom holds that if basf were to swear off burning molecules of gas to create heat, the obvious green alternative would be to burn hydrogen molecules instead. Those molecules would have to be manufactured, too, in an energy-intensive process.

That is why the recent declaration by Martin Brudermüller, the boss of basf, that “the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries can only be achieved through electrification” sounds, to many ears, like heresy. Electricity is for houses and light bulbs and maybe even for cars, but not for heavy industries built around burning heroic quantities of fossil fuel. Yet Dr Brudermüller is not alone.

basf has joined a consortium including sabic, a Saudi chemicals firm, and Linde, a European engineering firm, to develop an electric furnace that can generate heat intense enough for the chemical reactions that are their bread and butter. These firms are not the only recent converts to the electrification of industry. On February 8th Rio Tinto and bhp, both gargantuan mining firms, announced a joint effort to build Australia’s first electric smelter for iron ore. Fortescue, another mining giant, is introducing all-electric excavators and mining lorries, while Spain’s Roca Group recently unveiled the first electric industrial tunnel kiln for ceramics. Such innovations offer a new path to slowing global warming which may in many cases prove quicker and easier than approaches based on ccs and hydrogen.

Industrial fail

According to the International Energy Agency (iea), a research body, industry consumes a third of all global energy, with the generation of heat accounting for three-quarters of that. A staggering 90% of that heat is made by burning fossil fuels. All this makes industry a bigger source of greenhouse-gas emissions than power generation or transport. What is more, whereas carbon-dioxide emissions from power generation appear to have peaked and, if electric vehicles continue to proliferate, emissions from transport may soon stop growing, too, industrial emissions are projected to keep growing indefinitely (see chart 1).

20240217_BBC423.png image: the economist

Aware that this is impossible to square with their commitments to slash emissions, governments in advanced economies have showered subsidies on hydrogen and ccs as the technologies most likely to help decarbonise industry. Both, however, have so far disappointed. Electrification, meanwhile, had long been dismissed for two reasons. First, it was argued, the very high temperatures and steam required by heavy industry would be difficult or at least uneconomic to produce with electricity. Second, the standard ways of making cement and steel require carbon as an input, which means emitting carbon dioxide is unavoidable even if clean electricity were to replace the burning of fossil fuels.

Yet McKinsey, a consultancy, predicts that 44% of the decarbonisation it foresees in Europe by 2050, should the eu stick to its net-zero targets, will come from electrification, more than double the share of hydrogen and ccs combined. Why is it so optimistic about an unheralded technology?

Electrification is suddenly getting a second look for several reasons, argues Jeffrey Rissman in a new book: “Zero-Carbon Industry”. Most obviously, green electricity has become much cheaper and more widely available thanks to the remarkable decline in the cost of wind and solar power. Another factor is growing wariness of reliance on natural gas, thanks to the global price shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Supplies of gas ran so low in Germany, for example, that the government considered rationing it for industrial users like basf.

But the best reason for reconsideration is innovation. Making things hot with electricity is not that hard; think of an electric kettle. Such technologies can scale: if you want ten times as much boiling water, get ten kettles or one bigger one. But if you want to get to 1,000°C instead of 100°C, until recently there were few electric options. That is now changing.

Electric avenue

For temperatures of up to 200°C, the technology attracting most attention is not the electric kettle but the industrial heat pump. Heat pumps, like refrigerators, move heat from one place to another. In a fridge the heat is removed from the inside (keeping the contents cooler) and dumped outside (making the kitchen a little warmer). Heat pumps, which are becoming increasingly common for domestic heating, take heat from outside and move it inside. Because the amount of energy needed to move heat this way is lower than the amount needed to heat things up directly, this can lead to big energy savings. And as the technology improves and sales increase, prices are falling.

Some companies are betting that what works in the home can work in the factory, too. One such is AtmosZero, a startup that aims to reduce emissions at New Belgium Brewing, an American beermaker. AtmosZero is installing a heat pump that will soon replace one of the gas-fired boilers at New Belgium’s brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. Like most industrial firms over the past 150 years, New Belgium burns fossil fuel to produce steam, which in its case then heats the ingredients required to make beer. AtmosZero’s heat pump will allow it to produce that steam without any burning. Since the electricity used to run the pump will be renewable in the future, that eliminates most greenhouse-gas emissions from the process. It is also more efficient, consuming less energy overall. And because the heat pump transfers warmth to water, just as in a conventional boiler, the equipment can be slotted into New Belgium’s existing factory, without the need for a complete overhaul.

20240217_BBC408.png image: the economist

Such heat pumps would allow a vast array of industrial processes that require heat of less than 200°C to be electrified, replacing fossil-fuelled dryers, stills, ovens and boilers. Using electricity to run a heat pump can be several times more efficient than using natural gas to heat a boiler. Using hydrogen, in contrast, is less efficient, because making hydrogen by splitting water molecules through hydrolysis powered by green electricity, although emission-free, involves a loss of at least 20% of the energy you started with (see chart 2).

Some industrial heat pumps are in use in Europe and Japan, thanks both to subsidies and to a relatively high ratio of gas prices to electricity prices. Kobe Steel, a big Japanese industrial firm, sells commercial heat pumps capable of producing high-pressure steam at 165°C very efficiently. Heaten, a Norwegian startup boasting investment from the venture arm of Shell, a British oil giant, has developed a durable, low-maintenance heat-pump that can harness waste industrial heat to reach temperatures of up to 200°C. That makes it attractive for industries from pharmaceuticals to textiles that need middling heat.

Even in developing countries in Asia, electrification of relatively low-heat industries is making headway, despite the region’s abundance of cheap coal and lack of subsidies, which makes it harder for heat pumps and the like to compete. rmi, a think-tank, calculates that some four-fifths of the increase in industrial electrification globally since 2014 has taken place in Chinese light industries. The iea predicts that the share of heat used in industry that is generated with electricity will rise from 4% in 2022 to almost 11% in 2028. China will account for almost half of that growth, boosting its use of renewable electricity to generate industrial heat more than five-fold.

In America, electrified solutions are making inroads even though natural gas is comparatively cheap. A study published in January by the Renewable Thermal Collaborative (rtc), an industry consortium, finds it costs no more to run a heat pump than a gas boiler when trying to attain temperatures below 130°C. That would make heat pumps competitive for 29% of industrial demand for heat, without any subsidy or technological improvements. The rtc expects heat pumps for temperatures of up to 200°C to become competitive by 2030. Harald Bauer of McKinsey expects that, in time, heat pumps will be able to reach temperatures of 500°C.

For the time being, however, higher temperatures require different technology. “You are looking at the future of industrial energy infrastructure right here!” declares John O’Donnell, the head of Rondo Energy, a startup developing “thermal storage”. At first glance, the future does not seem that remarkable: the object of his enthusiasm is a big metal box.

It mainly contains bricks. Wires use electricity to heat the bricks, much as a toaster does bread, to temperatures over 1,000°C. The bricks, helped by extremely effective insulation, can then retain heat for days with only minimal losses. When it is needed, the heat can be released in controlled doses at variable temperatures. Air is blown through channels in the bricks, transferring heat.

Rondo’s thermal batteries are cheaper to manufacture than electric ones that require cobalt or lithium. The heat stored is intense enough to power a lot of heavy industry. As with AtmosZero’s heat pumps, they can be slotted into existing factories without a complete redesign. And since each battery is so efficient, it can consume electricity to heat the bricks when power is cheapest but dispense heat any time.

The box is generating lots of enthusiasm. Rondo recently raised $60m in financing from the venture-capital arms of such corporate titans as Microsoft, a software colossus, Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, and Rio Tinto. It counts various luminaries of tech investing among its backers. After a widely viewed ted talk and a recent lecture to the great and the good at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr O’Donnell chuckles, he is known as “the brick guy”.

Mr O’Donnell is planning a big global expansion. With the help of Thailand’s Siam Cement Group, an investor with plenty of experience making bricks, Rondo hopes to manufacture enough boxes each year to store 90gwh of electricity—double the capacity of Tesla’s “gigafactory” for batteries in Nevada.

Other companies are developing variations of these “rocks in a box”. Brenmiller, an Israeli firm funded in part by the European Investment Bank, uses volcanic rock as a storage medium. Antora, a Californian startup, uses big cubes of solid carbon to store heat as intense as 1,800°C. Boston’s Fourth Power uses molten tin flowing through a system of graphite bricks (and graphite plumbing) to provide storage at 2,400°C. Because the tin glows white hot, specialised photovoltaic cells inside the system mean that energy can be withdrawn in the form of electricity as well as heat. In areas with variable power prices, it can run at a profit simply by storing heat when power is cheap and dispensing electricity when the price rises.

The hardest industrial processes to electrify are those that require intense heat around the clock, especially if they use fossil fuels not only to generate heat but also to provide some sort of chemical necessity—such as the carbon used in steelmaking. This is the most experimental end of the spectrum of electrifying industry, but also potentially the most rewarding, since steel, chemicals and cement together account for more than half of industrial heat and thus for a similar proportion of industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

Several well-funded startups are pursuing radical innovations in aspects of steelmaking, one of the world’s most polluting industries. Electra, which is backed by Amazon and bhp among others, has found a way to make pure iron in a fire-free furnace. A picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—who met a molten end in a steelworks—glares down at researchers at its laboratory in Colorado as they dissolve iron ore in a chemical cocktail and zap it with electricity. This “electrowinning” technique produces pure sheets of iron without using any coking coal or fossil fuels and so emitting hardly any greenhouse gases. The firm is chasing rivals including ssab, from Sweden, which plans to commercialise green steel by 2026.

Illustration of the aerial view of an Oil refinery plant with power extension cords making up some of the buildings image: ricardo tomás

A more tried and tested method of reducing the carbon emissions from steelmaking replaces blast furnaces with electric-arc furnaces. These typically use electricity to melt and recycle scrap metal, rather than making steel from scratch using iron ore and coking coal. That makes the most sense in places with a carbon price, plenty of scrap and relatively stable demand for steel—rich countries, in other words. In January Tata Steel announced it would shut down blast furnaces and shift to electrified steelmaking in Britain. Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, predicts investment of $130bn in electric-arc furnaces in the coming years. That would allow low-emission steel production, currently 28% of global output, to rise to 50% by 2050.

Cement is another tricky industry to decarbonise because, like steelmaking, its emissions come from the chemical reactions involved, as well as from burning fossil fuels to generate heat. Sublime Systems has found a way to obtain the necessary chemicals without emissions at room temperature, using electrolysis—a process in which chemical reactions are stimulated by running an electric current through a solution. “We are basically replacing the kiln,” explains Leah Ellis, the firm’s co-founder. Investors including Siam Cement poured in $40m last year.

The third giant, sooty industry is chemicals. One radical form of electrification involves feeding chemical precursors into a super-speedy rotor, spinning at more than 20,000 revolutions a minute. Coolbrook, a Finnish firm, is pioneering this sort of “roto-dynamic reactor”. It is backed by Braskem, a Brazilian firm, Cemex, a Mexican one and sabic, a Saudi one. In December it announced it had used this technique to crack (break down) naphtha, a common process for the industry.

Some chemicals firms are also looking at nuclear power as a source of electricity and heat. Dow, an American one, plans to build four small modular reactors made by x-energy, a startup, at a plant in Texas. These will replace gas-fired boilers that currently provide electricity and steam.

Amping up

Even if such technologies work as advertised, electrifying industry will take time. Frederic Godemel of Schneider Electric, a big French manufacturer of industrial equipment, reckons existing technologies can in theory electrify 30% to 50% of heavy industry. In practice, however, he thinks only 10% is electrified now. That is because, even when new electrical kit is competitive over the long run with existing equipment, factory bosses often resist switching because it involves high upfront costs, disruptive stoppages, training on the new gear and so on.

Carbon pricing or other incentives to cut emissions would obviously help. So do technologies that minimise the disruption. Addison Stark, the chief executive of AtmosZero, has explained that his firm explicitly set out to overcome managers’ objections by designing its electric boiler to slot into existing factories easily and so reduce the hassles of installation. “Steam powered the first Industrial Revolution,” he declares, “and decarbonised steam will power the next one.”

One indication that electrification may live up to its promise is the interest shown by oil and gas companies, whose products the technology is intended to supplant. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil firm, has long been electrifying its offshore rigs to reduce the emissions involved in pumping for oil. Its most efficient offshore operations emit less than 1kg of carbon dioxide for every barrel of oil produced (or for the equivalent amount of gas) compared with a global average of 15kg a barrel. Oil firms drilling in America’s Permian basin, under pressure from regulators to cut emissions, are spending billions to replace conventional equipment prone to leaking methane (a potent greenhouse gas) with electric alternatives. If even the natural enemies of electrification can see its worth, its prospects must be decent.

 

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3 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

And by the way, there is a very interesting briefing article in The Economist this week about the electrification of heavy industry.

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Basf is in the business of molecules. As the world’s biggest chemicals firm, with operations in more than 90 countries, it makes a lot of them. When those molecules contain carbon atoms (and a great many do—they are a wonderfully versatile resource) those carbon atoms tend to come from fossil fuels. When their manufacture requires high temperatures, which is also often the case, that heat comes from burning fossil fuels. Until recently basf’s massive plant in Ludwigshafen in Germany accounted for 4% of the country’s entire consumption of natural gas.

Conventional wisdom has it that such a firm cannot really hope to lower very much the number of carbon-dioxide molecules it creates in the course of its business. The path to decarbonisation will come instead from gathering up those molecules and disposing of them underground, a process known as carbon capture and storage (ccs). The same conventional wisdom holds that if basf were to swear off burning molecules of gas to create heat, the obvious green alternative would be to burn hydrogen molecules instead. Those molecules would have to be manufactured, too, in an energy-intensive process.

That is why the recent declaration by Martin Brudermüller, the boss of basf, that “the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries can only be achieved through electrification” sounds, to many ears, like heresy. Electricity is for houses and light bulbs and maybe even for cars, but not for heavy industries built around burning heroic quantities of fossil fuel. Yet Dr Brudermüller is not alone.

basf has joined a consortium including sabic, a Saudi chemicals firm, and Linde, a European engineering firm, to develop an electric furnace that can generate heat intense enough for the chemical reactions that are their bread and butter. These firms are not the only recent converts to the electrification of industry. On February 8th Rio Tinto and bhp, both gargantuan mining firms, announced a joint effort to build Australia’s first electric smelter for iron ore. Fortescue, another mining giant, is introducing all-electric excavators and mining lorries, while Spain’s Roca Group recently unveiled the first electric industrial tunnel kiln for ceramics. Such innovations offer a new path to slowing global warming which may in many cases prove quicker and easier than approaches based on ccs and hydrogen.

Industrial fail

According to the International Energy Agency (iea), a research body, industry consumes a third of all global energy, with the generation of heat accounting for three-quarters of that. A staggering 90% of that heat is made by burning fossil fuels. All this makes industry a bigger source of greenhouse-gas emissions than power generation or transport. What is more, whereas carbon-dioxide emissions from power generation appear to have peaked and, if electric vehicles continue to proliferate, emissions from transport may soon stop growing, too, industrial emissions are projected to keep growing indefinitely (see chart 1).

20240217_BBC423.png image: the economist

Aware that this is impossible to square with their commitments to slash emissions, governments in advanced economies have showered subsidies on hydrogen and ccs as the technologies most likely to help decarbonise industry. Both, however, have so far disappointed. Electrification, meanwhile, had long been dismissed for two reasons. First, it was argued, the very high temperatures and steam required by heavy industry would be difficult or at least uneconomic to produce with electricity. Second, the standard ways of making cement and steel require carbon as an input, which means emitting carbon dioxide is unavoidable even if clean electricity were to replace the burning of fossil fuels.

Yet McKinsey, a consultancy, predicts that 44% of the decarbonisation it foresees in Europe by 2050, should the eu stick to its net-zero targets, will come from electrification, more than double the share of hydrogen and ccs combined. Why is it so optimistic about an unheralded technology?

Electrification is suddenly getting a second look for several reasons, argues Jeffrey Rissman in a new book: “Zero-Carbon Industry”. Most obviously, green electricity has become much cheaper and more widely available thanks to the remarkable decline in the cost of wind and solar power. Another factor is growing wariness of reliance on natural gas, thanks to the global price shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Supplies of gas ran so low in Germany, for example, that the government considered rationing it for industrial users like basf.

But the best reason for reconsideration is innovation. Making things hot with electricity is not that hard; think of an electric kettle. Such technologies can scale: if you want ten times as much boiling water, get ten kettles or one bigger one. But if you want to get to 1,000°C instead of 100°C, until recently there were few electric options. That is now changing.

Electric avenue

For temperatures of up to 200°C, the technology attracting most attention is not the electric kettle but the industrial heat pump. Heat pumps, like refrigerators, move heat from one place to another. In a fridge the heat is removed from the inside (keeping the contents cooler) and dumped outside (making the kitchen a little warmer). Heat pumps, which are becoming increasingly common for domestic heating, take heat from outside and move it inside. Because the amount of energy needed to move heat this way is lower than the amount needed to heat things up directly, this can lead to big energy savings. And as the technology improves and sales increase, prices are falling.

Some companies are betting that what works in the home can work in the factory, too. One such is AtmosZero, a startup that aims to reduce emissions at New Belgium Brewing, an American beermaker. AtmosZero is installing a heat pump that will soon replace one of the gas-fired boilers at New Belgium’s brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. Like most industrial firms over the past 150 years, New Belgium burns fossil fuel to produce steam, which in its case then heats the ingredients required to make beer. AtmosZero’s heat pump will allow it to produce that steam without any burning. Since the electricity used to run the pump will be renewable in the future, that eliminates most greenhouse-gas emissions from the process. It is also more efficient, consuming less energy overall. And because the heat pump transfers warmth to water, just as in a conventional boiler, the equipment can be slotted into New Belgium’s existing factory, without the need for a complete overhaul.

20240217_BBC408.png image: the economist

Such heat pumps would allow a vast array of industrial processes that require heat of less than 200°C to be electrified, replacing fossil-fuelled dryers, stills, ovens and boilers. Using electricity to run a heat pump can be several times more efficient than using natural gas to heat a boiler. Using hydrogen, in contrast, is less efficient, because making hydrogen by splitting water molecules through hydrolysis powered by green electricity, although emission-free, involves a loss of at least 20% of the energy you started with (see chart 2).

Some industrial heat pumps are in use in Europe and Japan, thanks both to subsidies and to a relatively high ratio of gas prices to electricity prices. Kobe Steel, a big Japanese industrial firm, sells commercial heat pumps capable of producing high-pressure steam at 165°C very efficiently. Heaten, a Norwegian startup boasting investment from the venture arm of Shell, a British oil giant, has developed a durable, low-maintenance heat-pump that can harness waste industrial heat to reach temperatures of up to 200°C. That makes it attractive for industries from pharmaceuticals to textiles that need middling heat.

Even in developing countries in Asia, electrification of relatively low-heat industries is making headway, despite the region’s abundance of cheap coal and lack of subsidies, which makes it harder for heat pumps and the like to compete. rmi, a think-tank, calculates that some four-fifths of the increase in industrial electrification globally since 2014 has taken place in Chinese light industries. The iea predicts that the share of heat used in industry that is generated with electricity will rise from 4% in 2022 to almost 11% in 2028. China will account for almost half of that growth, boosting its use of renewable electricity to generate industrial heat more than five-fold.

In America, electrified solutions are making inroads even though natural gas is comparatively cheap. A study published in January by the Renewable Thermal Collaborative (rtc), an industry consortium, finds it costs no more to run a heat pump than a gas boiler when trying to attain temperatures below 130°C. That would make heat pumps competitive for 29% of industrial demand for heat, without any subsidy or technological improvements. The rtc expects heat pumps for temperatures of up to 200°C to become competitive by 2030. Harald Bauer of McKinsey expects that, in time, heat pumps will be able to reach temperatures of 500°C.

For the time being, however, higher temperatures require different technology. “You are looking at the future of industrial energy infrastructure right here!” declares John O’Donnell, the head of Rondo Energy, a startup developing “thermal storage”. At first glance, the future does not seem that remarkable: the object of his enthusiasm is a big metal box.

It mainly contains bricks. Wires use electricity to heat the bricks, much as a toaster does bread, to temperatures over 1,000°C. The bricks, helped by extremely effective insulation, can then retain heat for days with only minimal losses. When it is needed, the heat can be released in controlled doses at variable temperatures. Air is blown through channels in the bricks, transferring heat.

Rondo’s thermal batteries are cheaper to manufacture than electric ones that require cobalt or lithium. The heat stored is intense enough to power a lot of heavy industry. As with AtmosZero’s heat pumps, they can be slotted into existing factories without a complete redesign. And since each battery is so efficient, it can consume electricity to heat the bricks when power is cheapest but dispense heat any time.

The box is generating lots of enthusiasm. Rondo recently raised $60m in financing from the venture-capital arms of such corporate titans as Microsoft, a software colossus, Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, and Rio Tinto. It counts various luminaries of tech investing among its backers. After a widely viewed ted talk and a recent lecture to the great and the good at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr O’Donnell chuckles, he is known as “the brick guy”.

Mr O’Donnell is planning a big global expansion. With the help of Thailand’s Siam Cement Group, an investor with plenty of experience making bricks, Rondo hopes to manufacture enough boxes each year to store 90gwh of electricity—double the capacity of Tesla’s “gigafactory” for batteries in Nevada.

Other companies are developing variations of these “rocks in a box”. Brenmiller, an Israeli firm funded in part by the European Investment Bank, uses volcanic rock as a storage medium. Antora, a Californian startup, uses big cubes of solid carbon to store heat as intense as 1,800°C. Boston’s Fourth Power uses molten tin flowing through a system of graphite bricks (and graphite plumbing) to provide storage at 2,400°C. Because the tin glows white hot, specialised photovoltaic cells inside the system mean that energy can be withdrawn in the form of electricity as well as heat. In areas with variable power prices, it can run at a profit simply by storing heat when power is cheap and dispensing electricity when the price rises.

The hardest industrial processes to electrify are those that require intense heat around the clock, especially if they use fossil fuels not only to generate heat but also to provide some sort of chemical necessity—such as the carbon used in steelmaking. This is the most experimental end of the spectrum of electrifying industry, but also potentially the most rewarding, since steel, chemicals and cement together account for more than half of industrial heat and thus for a similar proportion of industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

Several well-funded startups are pursuing radical innovations in aspects of steelmaking, one of the world’s most polluting industries. Electra, which is backed by Amazon and bhp among others, has found a way to make pure iron in a fire-free furnace. A picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—who met a molten end in a steelworks—glares down at researchers at its laboratory in Colorado as they dissolve iron ore in a chemical cocktail and zap it with electricity. This “electrowinning” technique produces pure sheets of iron without using any coking coal or fossil fuels and so emitting hardly any greenhouse gases. The firm is chasing rivals including ssab, from Sweden, which plans to commercialise green steel by 2026.

Illustration of the aerial view of an Oil refinery plant with power extension cords making up some of the buildings image: ricardo tomás

A more tried and tested method of reducing the carbon emissions from steelmaking replaces blast furnaces with electric-arc furnaces. These typically use electricity to melt and recycle scrap metal, rather than making steel from scratch using iron ore and coking coal. That makes the most sense in places with a carbon price, plenty of scrap and relatively stable demand for steel—rich countries, in other words. In January Tata Steel announced it would shut down blast furnaces and shift to electrified steelmaking in Britain. Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, predicts investment of $130bn in electric-arc furnaces in the coming years. That would allow low-emission steel production, currently 28% of global output, to rise to 50% by 2050.

Cement is another tricky industry to decarbonise because, like steelmaking, its emissions come from the chemical reactions involved, as well as from burning fossil fuels to generate heat. Sublime Systems has found a way to obtain the necessary chemicals without emissions at room temperature, using electrolysis—a process in which chemical reactions are stimulated by running an electric current through a solution. “We are basically replacing the kiln,” explains Leah Ellis, the firm’s co-founder. Investors including Siam Cement poured in $40m last year.

The third giant, sooty industry is chemicals. One radical form of electrification involves feeding chemical precursors into a super-speedy rotor, spinning at more than 20,000 revolutions a minute. Coolbrook, a Finnish firm, is pioneering this sort of “roto-dynamic reactor”. It is backed by Braskem, a Brazilian firm, Cemex, a Mexican one and sabic, a Saudi one. In December it announced it had used this technique to crack (break down) naphtha, a common process for the industry.

Some chemicals firms are also looking at nuclear power as a source of electricity and heat. Dow, an American one, plans to build four small modular reactors made by x-energy, a startup, at a plant in Texas. These will replace gas-fired boilers that currently provide electricity and steam.

Amping up

Even if such technologies work as advertised, electrifying industry will take time. Frederic Godemel of Schneider Electric, a big French manufacturer of industrial equipment, reckons existing technologies can in theory electrify 30% to 50% of heavy industry. In practice, however, he thinks only 10% is electrified now. That is because, even when new electrical kit is competitive over the long run with existing equipment, factory bosses often resist switching because it involves high upfront costs, disruptive stoppages, training on the new gear and so on.

Carbon pricing or other incentives to cut emissions would obviously help. So do technologies that minimise the disruption. Addison Stark, the chief executive of AtmosZero, has explained that his firm explicitly set out to overcome managers’ objections by designing its electric boiler to slot into existing factories easily and so reduce the hassles of installation. “Steam powered the first Industrial Revolution,” he declares, “and decarbonised steam will power the next one.”

One indication that electrification may live up to its promise is the interest shown by oil and gas companies, whose products the technology is intended to supplant. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil firm, has long been electrifying its offshore rigs to reduce the emissions involved in pumping for oil. Its most efficient offshore operations emit less than 1kg of carbon dioxide for every barrel of oil produced (or for the equivalent amount of gas) compared with a global average of 15kg a barrel. Oil firms drilling in America’s Permian basin, under pressure from regulators to cut emissions, are spending billions to replace conventional equipment prone to leaking methane (a potent greenhouse gas) with electric alternatives. If even the natural enemies of electrification can see its worth, its prospects must be decent.

 


Unfortunately, we need a subrsciption to the Economist to read it. 

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7 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

"Windless nights" is pretty much a red herring designed to strike fear into the hearts of the ignorant, and it's obvious what industry is stoking that fear.  While any one local wind farm might see periodic reductions in power below baseline, the aggregate wind power generated across the grid is predictable and planned for.

Thems some fancy words. Probably one of those but g city libs who make kids read trans books and want to take our guns away.

Move along.

We have no use for anything outside our current worldview regardless of the facts in front of us.

Commie.

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Just now, Dahobbs said:

Click the spoiler tag amigo. 

Yes but in dark mode, you savages who don’t post plain text make it impossible to read.

I believe that one day we aren’t judged for the color of our mode, but for the content of our quotations.

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Just curious, do you have to develop specialized firefighting plans in the event a battery barn catches fire?
 
 

We are supposed to get briefed on that by the company. I don’t have much in the way of details yet. Neither of them will be in my first due but we will be responding to one if it does catch fire.
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13 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

Yes but in dark mode, you savages who don’t post plain text make it impossible to read.

I believe that one day we aren’t judged for the color of our mode, but for the content of our quotations.

dont you put that evil on me GIF

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35 minutes ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:


We are supposed to get briefed on that by the company. I don’t have much in the way of details yet. Neither of them will be in my first due but we will be responding to one if it does catch fire.

Good luck.  I now have to write instruction letters and apply stickers when we ship stuff with lithium ion batteries.  Good times.  

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37 minutes ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:


We are supposed to get briefed on that by the company. I don’t have much in the way of details yet. Neither of them will be in my first due but we will be responding to one if it does catch fire.

Pull, Aim, Squeeze, and Sweep.

You're welcome.

oh and bring a class b extinguisher.

That’s right. I’ve taken a CBT.

 

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48 minutes ago, Leeroy Jenkins said:


We are supposed to get briefed on that by the company. I don’t have much in the way of details yet. Neither of them will be in my first due but we will be responding to one if it does catch fire.

If it does, you better post video.  Though I doubt it would be better than the rattlesnake den mess you had that one time.

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8 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

How does this implement Holonomics, spinning toroids, and travelling waves?  Asking for....you know.

I read this like five times, and I keep picturing the gypsy wagon in the Wizard of Oz, except he’s a traveling proctologist with an unlimited supply of propofol. 

Edited by Judge Roybeanbag
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  • 1 month later...

Pretty good podcast from Lewin and Nathan Johnson about the future of the grid. About an hour but pretty interesting and somewhat promising.

Johnson seems like a smart guy. 

Here's the lede.

 

 

Following Winter Storm Uri, the Texas legislature worked to identify proposals that can increase the reliability of the ERCOT grid. In this week’s episode, State Senator Nathan Johnson, representing Senate District 16 in Dallas and a member of the Business and Commerce Committee overseeing ERCOT and the PUC, shares insights into the proposals that are reshaping Texas energy policy.

Central to Senator Johnson's efforts is the establishment of a fund aimed at creating microgrids at crucial facilities such as hospitals and police stations. This initiative, now part of the Texas Energy Fund via Senate Bill 2627, secured nearly $2 billion to bolster microgrid infrastructure after receiving approval from Texas voters in a constitutional amendment. Moreover, Senate Bill 1699, spearheaded by Senator Johnson, formalizes the collaboration between the Public Utility Commission and various stakeholders to implement virtual power plants and aggregated distributed energy resources programs, while also mandating the commission to enact measures for reducing residential energy consumption.

Beyond legislative achievements, the conversation delves into pressing topics such as transmission policy, the evolving dynamics between fossil fuels and renewables, the imperative for innovative regulatory frameworks and incentives for utilities, and the pivotal role of energy efficiency in shaping Texas' energy landscape.

 

https://castbox.fm/vb/691715803

 

 

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