Renewables Power Grid Study for Israel

This is useful because itrepresents the possibilities for a small desert state that is successfully partof the modern world and lacks the natural conflicts faced with less developedregions. 

Thus this report can be thoughtof as a template for possibilities throughout the arid semi tropics.

As we have posted often, it isnow all about energy storage, although amazingly enough, the advent ofpractical superconducting power cables is shifting us toward a distributedpower production protocol such as wind power and toward large power storage installations.  Using surplus grid power at night to pumpwater up hill into a dammed reservoir makes great sense as long as you go big.

A country covered with thousandsof wind mills is rarely suffering from intermittent power so long as it costslittle to move that power around.  Thesame holds true with solar power generation.

The success of the wind powerparadigm, the advent of the super conductor cable and industrial energy storageprovides a bullet proof energy system that consumes almost nothing and afterpay out is easily maintained for centuries. In fact, it makes Nuclear completely obsolete.

This item makes it clear that itis good for base line power and gas plants can be put in place for short fallsas they occur since they already exist.

I personally think that all thisspells the economic end of coal plants or any fuel based system.  The modest cost differential in the front endevaporates once the plant is paid for and the power becomes affectively free.

Can a Country Get 90 Percent of Its Power From Renewables?

Academically speaking, that is.

MICHAEL KANELLOS: APRIL1, 2011

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/can-a-country-get-90-percent-of-its-power-from-renewables/

Seder Boqer, Israel --- Renewable energy is often intermittent andunreliable, but with the right storage technology, it can become a substitutefor baseline power.

A paper that will soon come out from the National Solar Energy Centerin Israel hypothesizes that the country -- which now only gets a tiny fractionof its power from solar -- could conceivably boost the total to 90 percent withthings like vanadiumredox flow batteries and pumped hydro storage, according to David Faiman,the director of the center and chair of the department of solar energy andenvironmental physics at Ben-GurionUniversity here.

The paper is based on an hour-by-hour analysis of the country’selectricity consumption in 2006. Faiman’s group studied the baseline power,intermediate baseline and spinning reserves. Solar plants, without storage,could only generate around 3 percent to 4 percent of the country’s powerwithout being forced to dump large amounts of solar power.

“If you build a really large solar plant, you have a really largeproblem of getting it to the grid,” he said.

If one were willing to dump up to 20 percent of the solar powergenerated because of transmission and distribution levels, the total could riseto 20 percent, he said. The 20 percent figure matches the estimates of otherresearchers in other parts of the world on how much renewables could becomepart of the energy mix.

But add storage to allow a utility to deliver solar power generatedduring the morning and afternoon in the evening and, through the magic ofstorage, the figure zooms dramatically. The country gets an inordinate amountof sun and areas like the Negev Desert in the south stillsport quite a bit of open space.  Plus, some of the intellectual propertyfor concentrating PV comes from the region.

“PV alone could provide 90 percent of Israel’s electricity needs withthe appropriate storage,” he said. “Israel shouldn’t build more coalplants and it shouldn’t even think of building nuclear plants.”

The remaining 10 percent could be provided by gas-burning power plants:Most of the power would be needed at night. The country’s current goal is toget 10 percent of its power from renewables by 2020. Power costs around half ashekel, or 15 cents a kilowatt-hour, and feed-in tariffs have recently dippedbelow 2 shekels.

So which storage technologies does he like? Pumped hydro is the firstidea. Many regions of the country are relatively flat, but underground cisternsexist. Water could be pumped to the surface and then released into them. GravityPower and Escovale Consultancy Services have touted similar subterraneanideas.

He’s also a fan of vanadium redox batteries, which are large tanks withflowing electrolytes. Unlike sodium sulfur batteries, vanadium flow batteriesdon’t need to be heated to high temperatures. The batteries also resistcorrosion, he said. Compressed air he's not so enthusiastic about in thisscenario.

Any storage technology in this scenario would have to be capable ofdelivering power rapidly. It takes around 15 minutes at a minimum to get anatural gas plant moving.