Viewing posts tagged "Epri"

Eric Wesoff | September 10, 2009 at 4:31 PM

EPRI’s Smart Grid Vision

Erfan Ibrahim of EPRI gave a wide ranging talk on Tuesday evening entitled "EPRI's Smart Grid Vision and AMI/HAN Research Overview."  It was an Industry Outreach Event held at EPRI's bucolic Palo Alto campus. The talk touched upon Noam Chomsky, the effect of high magnetic fields on the menstruation cycles of cattle (long story), and the long-term energy portfolio of the United States. Mostly the latter.
 
EPRI is the Electric Power Resource Institute – a non-profit tax-exempt organization funded by utilities and founded in 1972 after the electric blackouts of the 1960s.  EPRI has more than 700 employees, a budget in excess of $300 million and instigates more than 1,600 R&D projects annually. EPRI also engages in relatively high-risk technology innovation and research ranging from new energy storage technologies and new battery chemistries – all the way to cold fusion.

EPRI has four divisions:

• Generation
• Environment
• Power Delivery and Energy Utilization (smart grid is in this segment)
• Nuclear

Long View

Ibrahim set the stage saying: "As we gaze over the grazing animals and the rolling hills of Palo Alto - we think in the long term." How do we deal with coal? It's not going away. How to we lengthen the life of nuclear power plants?

According to Ibrahim, the solution is not wind mills. Nor is it solar. (Adequate transmission lines being just one of the obstacles)

Aim of the Smart Grid

"Our aim is to begin a very serious dialogue on how the smart grid will lead us to a low-carbon environment as a society," he said. Ibrahim emphasized that EPRI is not made up of idealogues, that "there is no panacea" to curb greenhouse gas emissions and that it is going to take a combination of many technologies to decarbonize the electric industry.

The smart grid is just one piece of the puzzle.  

"It's not that the grid is dumb – it's that we haven't found a way to network all of these nodes," he said. There already is a relatively smart grid that functions at an almost 100 percent efficiency rate, according to Ibrahim. Siemens, ABB, etc. have been embedding intelligence into the grid for years.

"We have to intelligently embed networks to create a distributed intelligent network," said Ibrahim. How do we create this distributed intelligent network? EPRI is looking for a movement with realistic expectations.  Not just an IP platform.

EPRI's Prism Study (downloadable here) is a carbon cap strategy that limns out the best way to transition to low emissions technology.

And that includes:

• Efficiency
• PHEVs
• Demand Response
• Weatherization, better water heaters, better pool pumps
• Enabling intermittent renewables via advanced transmission grids
• Expanded advanced light water reactor deployment – increased dependence on nuclear power is going to decrease carbon footprint
• Advanced coal plants with CO2 capture and storage

Nuclear and CCS

It's not that EPRI isn't a fan of of solar – Ibrahim acknowledged it's contribution but doesn't see it playing a large role in our energy mix. In fact, in large-scale, EPRI found that solar actually increased the price of electricity (I'll assume that's due to the necessity of having back up generation or expensive storage to cover solar's flaws.)

EPRI certainly sees nuclear, now about 20 percent of the U.S. energy mix as a necessity. Specifically, third-generation nukes – "passively safe type reactors."  

And if you check the prism chart, EPRI also sees CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration) as a necessary part of the U.S. energy picture. In fact, Erfan described coal with CCS
as a "disruptive technology" that will "revolutionize the industry."

EPRI's worldview is a glimpse into the utility mindset and must be considered as the likely trajectory our electric generators will follow.

 

Eric Wesoff | August 14, 2009 at 12:00 PM

Energy Storage Economics and the Smart Grid

It has become cliche to refer to energy storage as the holy grail of renewable energy.  Actually, it's not energy storage that we need.  We have that.  What we need is cheap energy storage. 

"Most storage technology is expensive so we spend a lot of time trying to figure out the value."

Those are the words of EPRI's Dan Rastler who spoke on Wednesday night at the monthly Silicon Valley Photovoltaic Society meeting at PARC.

EPRI

Mr. Rastler is the Program Manager for Energy Storage at EPRI.
  
Founded in 1973, EPRI is an "independent" non-profit center for public interest energy and environmental research center that receives about $350 million in funding each year.  "Independent" is an approximate term in this case as EPRI's substantial budget comes in the most part from America's utilities.  And utility agendas don't always map exactly with the public good.  That said, it was an informative talk and Mr. Rastler did not seem too evil.

Smart Grid Defined

Rastler's talk looked at electric energy storage's role in the smart grid, defining the smart grid as "overlaying information control technology over the electric grid for efficiency and reliability,"  adding, "The buzzword is interoperability – how do you make everything connect across the entire domain from bulk generation to the customer?"

He made the distinction between smart grid on the utility side – where utilities are putting sensors and cameras on utility assets, "to where it really gets interesting"– the customer side where the smart grid can influence customer behavior.

Another important point he made was the need for scale – because anything less than 100 megawatts is not really important to a utility.

Industry Pain Points and Market Drivers

• The biggest driver the electrical sector is facing is carbon.  "There is no single technology that is going to get us there."  It's going to take a portfolio of technologies – solar, de-carbonizing, EVs, wind, nuclear, etc.

• Managing increased wind penetration – Texas could have 18 gigawatts of wind by 2015, California could have up to 12 gigawatts of wind by 2012.  The intermittency of renewables like wind and solar need bulk storage to buffer that unpredictability.

• We are going to need $200 billion in transmission and $400 billion in distribution investment in T&D infrastructure over the next 15 years

• Peak is only 400 hours a year – storage and information control can help manage the peak

Advanced Energy Storage Technology

Rastler is a fan of advanced lead acid batteries.  He pointed out a firm called Xtreme Power and declared that, "lead acid is going to re-emerge."  Xtreme Power builds a solid dry cell rated as a 1-megawatt four-hour system for $2 million.

He noted a few other storage technologies nearing commercialization or ready for deployment at reasonable price points:

• A 400 megawatt-10hour CAES (Compressed Air Energy Storage) system
• A 1 megawatt–seven hour NaS system as substation grid support  that costs $3,000 to $3,500 per kilowatt hour
• A 500 kilowatt-four hour ZnBr flow battery system that is meant to be transportable to where the pain point is
• "Lithium ion is getting to megawatt scale," he said citing a 1 megawatt-15 minute Li-ion system.  He adds, "There are as many different Li-ion chemistries as there are California wines."  There are currently early field trials by Altair Nano and A123 using Li-ion at utility scale.
• Redox flow batteries with a number of different electrolyte species

Costs of Storage

According to Rastler, "We need to get below $300 per kilowatt hour installed all in."

CAES is below $100 per kilowatt hour (but does use a fuel source).

Cost of Li-ion ranges from $400 per kilowatt hour to $1,200 per kilowatt hour.

Final Words

Rastler finished in saying that we have to get the cost structure down significantly and we need a smart grid and storage-aware regulatory policy.

He concluded saying that storage is "really an advanced materials play."  The EPRI presentation can be downloaded here.