Getting Big Batteries (BESS) & Pumped Hydro (PHES) to Play Well Together

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At a latest Solar Citizens rally within the seat of Dixon, I had the intellectually stimulating alternative to converse with Mike Westerman of GHD concerning the viability of pumped hydro (PHES).

Mike is the lead for GHD on hydropower. GHD (named from the initials of the founders, engineers Gutteridge, Haskins, and Davey) states that it’s “committed to making water, energy and communities sustainable for generations to come.” Mike’s LinkedIn profile tells us that he has had “success in developing pumped hydro in Australia so now focusing internationally on Scotland, North America and Middle East pumped storage developments.” He has had “all levels of experience to director level in engineering consultancies in energy sector. Particular expertise in contract administration and hydro engineering, from pre-feasibility to refurbishment.”

The dialog opened with the view that it’s not both BESS or PHES, however each. Together with his excessive stage of experience and my lack of know-how, I believed it finest to let him clarify his view with out too many interruptions from the peanut gallery. By e-mail, he informed me:

“We need both BESS and PHES. I expect that for the next 2–3 years BESS is going to explode (due to slower growth in EV sales — evil empire fights back).”

He explains extra totally:

“Though international manufacturing of batteries would battle to transform the world’s ICE fleet within 30y, present demand is a couple of third of that capability. Therefore EV makers are closely discounting, and BESS builders are making hay whereas the solar shines with improbable offers. I don’t see that lasting because the potential demand as above is properly in extra of provide, and the massive battery buyers significantly in China will likely be reluctant to put money into extra capability until they’ve higher recovered from their earlier investments, and so I anticipate that in 2-3y time we might properly see battery costs holding at present ranges. One other issue as you talked about is that at current globally the recycling trade may be very immature and as an adjunct, the storage of spend batteries pending their recycling has been fairly haphazard, leading to plenty of fires. There have additionally been some spectacular and broadly mentioned fires in BESS installations particularly early services the place fireplace security was insufficient. Insurers have responded by more durable requirements on BESS installations but it surely might moderately be anticipated that they are going to be very reticent to cowl recycling vegetation till acceptable requirements round fireplace safety and suppression are labored out.

“We need to explore what is unique about PHES and why Australia in particular should get going in building them (and how the government could provide the key without having to either fund them or take all the risk on each project).”

Readers could recall my earlier article on this. Be aware particularly the hyperlink to the interactive ANU map displaying potential websites.

Mike defined how BESS and PHES might play collectively for the good thing about the grid:

“Let’s have a look at the technical, basically BESS is a very digital gadget, whereas PHES is analogue. BESS makes use of an inverter that creates the AC waveforms from a lot of little steps after which smudges them along with a filter to do away with the noise. However the controls are nonetheless digital: it samples voltage, present, part and frequency at small time intervals and compares them with set factors. It calculates not solely the errors, but additionally the speed of change of the errors and the cumulative worth of the errors, then does the maths to work out the best way to reply.

“Clearly, it wants multiple level on the graph to do all this but additionally the error must be greater than that which it’s informed to disregard. For voltage disturbances which may rise in a short time, the response will be very quick virtually instantaneous whereas for frequency will likely be sluggish, and in addition for smaller perturbations. So, there’s some compromises arising from the truth that the digital response must be steady however fast, but additionally preserve the gadget inside its scores. Inverters are likely to fall off in effectivity dramatically off their most score, just because the waveform is created by switching circuits on and off quickly and so are optimised for the rated output. This doesn’t depart a lot up their sleeves for overload, and as you recognize with digital gadgets round your property, they’re usually strong but when they run into overload – they burn out.

“Solid state digital devices are robust if within their ratings, but push them outside that and they fail rapidly: very much all or nothing. BESS themselves also behaves very differently from PHES in terms of discharge of stored energy and the impact on life span. Because BESS is a chemical storage, it can be subject to thermal runaway, but also to degradation the rate of which is dependent on how they are treated: run hard – high current and deep discharge – and the degradation rates go up. PHES because it stores by gravity and converts potential to electrical energy at low temperatures suffers very little degradation over extremely long lifecycles, and even at overload, damage occurs progressively without a “tripping point”.

“So, though BESS are quick and react very properly to smaller, shorter perturbations they run into their limits quickly. They’ll additionally intrude with one another if not tuned to behave appropriately given the traits of their native community. So, if a community may be very strong and properly behaved and a bunch of inverters begin making an attempt to over compensate for perturbations, they will rapidly knock one another over.

“The trouble is that the most money can be made in arbitrage and network services in areas with pretty good network characteristics, unless you are a BESS connected “behind the meter” that’s on to a photo voltaic or wind farm particularly to fill in for when these power sources fluctuate. So, BESS should determine what job they’re there to do and what else there’s on their native community. That’s what makes PHES buddy – a bit like having some large forwards to steadiness the lithe wingers in your group.

“As a result of PHES has large chunks of rotating plenty and really sturdy magnetic and electrical fields all instantly linked to the community, they actually should reply instantaneously, no calculations or sampling wanted however the saved power to take action is proscribed in contrast to the entire storage in a battery. However just like the forwards, they will take an actual hammering over a chronic interval with out giving up, giving the safety gadgets on the community time to type issues out. They significantly excel at frequency stability however to maintain reacting appropriately on voltage and part they use intelligent electronics and so that could be a bit slower, needing to answer not solely errors however traits and accumulation, a lot in the identical manner because the inverters on the BESS.

“The big challenge with PHES is not so much the actual capex (higher than BESS for power that is $/MW but cheaper for energy stored that is $/MWh) but that there is a lot a risks and unknowns at the time the deal needs to be signed. And as we’ve seen with every large project in Australia, the proponents fib about the likely cost because they don’t want the projects killed off and contractors load up with risk premiums. One possibility is for governments to provide “insurance” for that threat in alternate for hefty returns late within the lifetime of the initiatives when the personal buyers have already made their cash. That manner the federal government is actually betting on the longer term, and if it scrutinises initiatives rigorously and holds the proponents and contractors to account (that’s scrape out the chance premiums, do a practical estimate for the most certainly value after which cowl the chance premiums that shouldn’t sit for the above, for instance unknown geology or future labour charges or crashed foreign money).”

I requested Mike for an instance of initiatives that he has labored on, and he gave me two:

“Kidston: the first and only (as far as I know) repurposing of a mine to a pumped hydro, currently under construction in North Queensland. I assisted the contractor in securing that project and took it to GHD who did the engineering of much of the project. 250MW x 8h so even though small as far as pumped hydro goes, it is as big as the biggest BESS. It should be online mid next year. Pic attached. The project was developed by listed Genex but sold recently to the Japanese energy giant J-Power.”

“Phoenix: first and only PHES to execute a long-term energy services agreement with the NSW government that provides revenue support to the project, helping with reaching financial close. At 800MW and up to 15h generation it will be a significant support to the Renewable Energy being built in the Central West Orana REZ in NSW near the town of Wellington. GHD identified the site, carried out the studies including the geotechnical and environmental site investigations, and completed the reference design used to invite contractors to get involved (a process just starting). The project is owned by the Filipino energy powerhouse ACEN.”

As a part of our dialogue, we checked out Michael Barnard’s recent CleanTechnica article. Mike admits that he’s a fan of Barnard’s work and provides: “Water is an amazing medium: dense enough, fluid enough with relatively low viscosity, non-volatile, non-toxic, abundant and multi-purpose.”

By the by, Peter Dutton, chief of the conservative Liberals (now there’s an oxymoron) misplaced the seat of Dixon because the folks of Australia rejected Trumpism and backed a cleaner photo voltaic powered future.