Some German researchers are investigating the use of surplus wind electric power to generate natural gas.
With the rapid expansion of renewable energies, the need for new storage technologies grows massively. This is of special interest for energy utilities and power companies. "So far, we converted gas into electricity. Now we also think in the opposite direction, and convert electricity into ’real natural’ gas," explains Dr. Michael Sterner of Fraunhofer IWES, who is investigating engineering aspects and energy system analysis of the process. "Surplus wind and solar energy can be stored in this manner. During times of high wind speeds, wind turbines generate more power than is currently needed. This surplus energy is being more frequently reflected at the power exchange market through negative electricity prices." In such cases, the new technology could soon keep green electricity in stock as natural gas or renewable methane.
You might think wind power is too expensive to use to crack water to get hydrogen to bond to carbon to make methane. Normally that would be true. But tax incentives for wind electric power generation combined with strong winds at night when demand is low results in wind electric occasionally driving wholesale electric power prices negative. That's right, the wind farms pay to get their electricity used. They do that because as long as the negative price isn't bigger than the US wind production tax credit or equivalent tax credits in other countries the wind farm generates make money by paying people to take their electricity.
Now, you might argue as a taxpayer that you don't want your tax money going to subsidize negative prices and I'd agree. But even if the price of electric power sometimes went only to 0 (or even close to 0) the energy cost of generating synthetic hydrocarbons is low enough to make it worth considering.
To make the economics work the capital cost has to be low enough for the hydrocarbons synthesis plant to only operate part of the time. The lower the frequency of very low cost electricity the lower the capital cost needed for the hydrocarbons synthesis plant.
A hydrocarbons synthesis plant is probably not the only potential use for intermittently low cost electricity. Obviously, more long distance electric power grids would enable the wind electric power to be transported to places with higher electric power demand. How does the cost for the grid compare to the cost of a synthesis plant? Anyone have some good ideas on what to do with intermittently low cost electricity?
| Share | | Randall Parker, 2010 May 09 04:13 PM Energy Wind |
Once you have hydrogen there are a number of possibilities. The reason that CH4 is used as a feedstock to Haber ammonia synthesis is that it has a lot of hydrogen. That's what's needed for NH3. The world knows how to handle and distribute NH3 but it could be taken a bit further to NH4 and NO3.
I find the idea attractive for the US since the wind happens right where the NH3 is needed in flyover country, thus reducing shipping costs as well as grid loss.
"Anyone have some good ideas on what to do with intermittently low cost electricity?"
How do capital and energy costs compare for processing power? If energy costs dominate, maybe you could place processor farms near sources of intermittent power, and run them when the windmills were turning. I've suggested in the past that, given a fiber optic network, people in the frozen north might arrange to have seasonally available server farms in their basements, to provide home heating.
For this sort of scheme to make sense, you need electrolyzers with very low capital cost, since they will be used with low duty cycle. Efficiency would be of less importance.
I recall seeing a news story some years ago about just such devices, made mostly of plastic with sprayed-on metal powder electrocatalysts. I don't know what's happened to these since.
The news was about a low cost electrolyzer effort at GE, led by Richard Bourgeois. See http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review07/pdp_16_bourgeois.pdf and http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/progress08/ii_b_7_swalla.pdf or google "richard bourgeois GE electrolysis".
It's much more sensible to shift demand to the night. It will probably be 10 years before we really run into problems absorbing wind into the grid, and by then there will be much more EV charging. Plus, of course, a lot of existing residential demand can be shifted to night.
A Molybdenum compound was just recently offered as a cheap, high quality Platinum replacement for splitting water.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2010/04/30/inexpensive-catalyst-for-generating-hydrogen-from-water/
http://alchemy.cchem.berkeley.edu/jeff/paper111.pdf
There are plenty of other efforts underway as well. Some of them are bearing fruit now, but since we're not at commercialization yet it's hard to tell. There's definitely a commercial future for this stuff - the Hydrogen economy will inevitably take shape in one form or another, though we'll more likely refer to it under the umbrella term 'synthetic fuels' instead. That said, once it happens we won't look back with nostalgia for fossil fuel...
It is called throwing good money after bad. Most businessmen regard it as a bad policy.
Forget the hydrogen step. Just use bugs to turn CO2 and electricity into methane. Given that the archaea include lots of extremophiles, it shouldn't be hard to find a strain which performs at 100°C and is really easy to cool (just let water boil into a condenser).
The real problem with these schemes is finding the CO2. Capturing the byproduct of biogas or ethanol production is possible, but storage is an issue.
You can turn the blade of a wind such that it only produces a little power so i really doubt that a wind farm operator ever pays to get it electricity used
This article is silly. As long as energy is exchanged at flexible market prices, consumers will shift their loads to low-cost periods, peak producers will supply energy during high-cost periods, and power will flow from low-cost to high-cost locations. There's no particular reason to use low-cost electricity to synthesize methane: just sell it on the market and let other players deal with the increased supply. Even negative prices can most likely be absorbed by industry or households.
Most consumers, especially residential, do not pay "flexible" (real-time) market prices.
I'd love to see ice-storage air conditioners and even domestic refrigerators. These two things account for a large fraction of domestic electric consumption. Being able to time-shift those loads to exercise arbitrage wouldn't be difficult or expensive, but it would require re-thinking the way things are done and putting in the systems (communications) to change it. Having seen what things were like in 1987 vs. how they are now, I appreciate just how much inertia there is.
Most utilities aren't really excited about flexible pricing because, of course, it will reduce consumption overall. Further, it reduces the need to build peak generation capacity, from which they get both guaranteed ROI payments and KWHs they can sell at a good markup.
On the other hand, the 2005 Energy Act required that all utilities make it available. Anyone, anywhere in the US who wants it just has to ask for it.
E-P,
Domestic refrigerators?
We really need buildings designed for energy efficiency. The storage systems (and getting cold from outside) need to be integrated into building design to maximize the potential of storage.
One thing that attracts me to hot and cold storage: Makes a house less vulnerable to power outages.
Yes, domestic refrigerators. My parents' generation didn't call them "iceboxes" for nothing. Add some ice as a buffer on the fridge section and at least half of the unit can coast on stored energy during grid sags and stock up during surges (the freezer isn't so flexible absent e.g. frozen brine).
Yes, we really do need buildings designed for efficiency. Part of the problem is building codes which favor slapdash, stick-built construction and the cheap labor market fed by illegal immigrants. Technologies like structural insulated panels (SIPs) are much more efficient and only a bit more expensive overall, but under a cheap-labor regime they can't break through the barriers of institutional inertia. If labor was paid at a living wage for the USA, they'd have replaced lumber shipped to the job site and climate control would be a fraction of the problem it is.
I'd love to try ground-coupling a house, especially for the summer (nice, cool groundwater in my area). Not sure how to get started, though.
I'm the owner of a renewable energy R&D firm, and we are working on using surplus wind power to generate something close to methane. Can't talk too much about it yet, but we are doing a documentary through the process. We are working with two of the largest electricity producers in the country, and we are preparing to deploy the technology soon......and there are plans for a lot of wind farms between now and 2020, so the surplus night time wind power is projected to increase somewhat. The power companies are having a heck of a time making the numbers work for the wind farms when they factor in the cost of transmission lines because they are often in the middle of nowhere. Our system is skid mounted, mobile and set up on 3 semi trailers to get it close to the wind farms, thereby avoiding the transmission line issue.
I think we may eventually be able to break the hold Big Oil has on everyone if things go as planned. Can't wait.
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