OK, so it looks like this series on power storage has turned into a three-day rant; particularly disconcerting because it has nothing whatsoever to do with Canadian preferred shares or even financial markets in general. Sorry, guys, but in the first place it’s interesting and in the second place Assiduous Reader JP keeps sending me interesting links, unlike youse other bums, who never send me NUTHIN’.<\/p>\n
One thing I found myself was the 2011 Ontario Auditor General’s Report on Renewable Energy<\/a>:<\/p>\n Since the prevalence of SBG events could threaten the reliability of the electricity system, the IESO has been taking action to ease the power surplus. However, there are technical difficulties and cost implications of these actions. Among them:<\/p>\n …<\/b> The only question left in my mind is: Is Ontario energy policy determined by morons, or is it determined by dolts? Never mind. Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.<\/p>\n Assiduous Reader JP sends me a link to a US Department of Energy report: Grid Energy Storage<\/a>:<\/p>\n At present, the U.S. has about 24.6GW (approx. 2.3% of total electric production capacity) of grid storage, 95% of which is pumped storage hydro. Europe and Japan have notably higher fractions of grid storage. Pursuit of a clean energy future is motivating significantly increased storage development efforts in Europe and Asia, as well as the U.S. Japan is an emerging storage powerhouse<\/a>:<\/p>\n Japan is emerging as a hot-spot for energy storage projects, as utilities and technology companies look to battery-based solutions in response to the surge in solar PV installations.<\/p>\n Two new battery storage projects have been announced in the past week, with Toshiba to install a 20MWh\/40MW lithium-ion battery project in Tohuku, and the island of Okinawa announcing a 2MW battery storage project on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Japan is expected to be the largest market for solar PV installations in 2013, with around 9GW to be installed following the introduction of feed in tariffs last year in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n … and Israel’s getting in on the action<\/a>:<\/p>\n Alstom has signed two contracts totaling around \u20ac120 million1 with PSP Investment Ltd for the supply of two 150 MW pump-turbines with the associated balance of plant equipment and Alstom\u2019s Distributed Control System (DCS) for the 300 MW Gilboa pumped storage power plant in Israel.<\/p>\n Alstom also signed an eighteen-year operation & maintenance (O&M) agreement, covering day-to-day operation and maintenance of the power plant. The project represents Alstom\u2019s first entry into the Israeli hydro market and will be the country\u2019s first pumped storage power station, Alstom already has a proven track record in the Israeli power generation market with respect to existing steam plants and gas plants.<\/p>\n The power plant, located 60 km east of Haifa, will be commissioned in 2018, and will increase the country\u2019s installed power generation capacity by 2.5%. It will contribute to increasing the reliability of electricity supply and will provide an important tool to control the demand and distribution of electricity.<\/p>\n During off-peak hours, pumped storage uses the energy from other power stations to transfer water to a high storage reservoir. The stored water will later be reused to generate electricity to cover temporary peaks. This helps lower the overall operation cost of power production and levels the fluctuating output of intermittent power sources.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And what are we doing here in Ontari-ari-ari-owe, barely years after the Auditor-General’s report? Flywheels<\/a>!<\/p>\n \nThere\u2019s nothing like a 4,000-kilogram spinning steel cylinder to smooth out the ups and downs of the power system.<\/p>\n At least, that\u2019s what Temporal Power is betting on.<\/p>\n The fledgling firm showed off its technology to Ontario energy minister Bob Chiarelli on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Temporal is betting on flywheels as a solution to an increasing problem on Ontario\u2019s power system: With an increasing amount of wind and solar power flowing onto the grid, you need systems that can counterbalance the natural ebbs and flows of renewables. As far as I can tell – from the DoE report – flywheels are good for conditioning power. For load-shifting … not so much.<\/p>\n But fear not! Time-of-Use Billing with our billion dollar smart meter programme will save us! Right? Right<\/a>?<\/p>\n The most significant result of those presented below is that both the conventional impact analysis and the elasticity analysis report the same result for the estimated residential summer weekday On-Peak reduction, 3.3%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The following is not a figure, it’s a table, but never mind.<\/p>\n\n
However, intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar require fast-responding backup power and\/or storage capacity to keep the supply of electricity steady when the skies are cloudy or the wind dies down. The OPA informed us that because viable large-scale energy storage is not available in Ontario, wind and solar power must be backed up by other forms of generation.
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Despite these concerns, the cost and environmental impacts of such backup generation capacity were not formally analyzed to ensure that this information would be available to policy decision-makers. We noted that:<\/p>\n\n
\nthis study\u2019s projections and did not determine how much backup power would be required.<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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In the past few years, the urgency of energy storage requirements has become a greater, more pressing issue that is expected to continue growing over the next decade:<\/p>\n\n
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New capabilities of pumped hydro, through the use of variable speed pumping, is opening up the potential for the provision of additional services that may be used to assist in the integration of variable generation sources. Projects may be practically sized up to 4,000 MW and operate at about 76%\u201385% efficiency, depending on design. Pumped hydro plants have long lives, on the order of 50-60 years. As a general rule, a reservoir one kilometer in diameter, 25 meters deep, and having an average head of 200 meters would hold enough water to generate 10,000 MWh. <\/blockquote>\n
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Temporal has an agreement with Ontario Power Generation and NRStore \u2014 a firm headed by Annette Verschuren \u2014\u2013 for a flywheel facility to counter-balance the minute-by-minute voltage variations on the power grid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n