Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Clay Monroe via Mercedes 
I take a few of the extending education for olde folke classes.  One is 
renewable energy in the great dark north.  The last class had the leader of the 
Kodiak electric company.  Old way they spew electrons was with diesel, then 
they build a hydro set up with room for three generators, but installed only 
two when built.  In 2009 they install three wind mills and get three shipping 
containers of battery(megawatt each) to handle drops/spikes and to balance 
load/frequency.  Hydro provides around 80%, so it base load.  The micro bursts 
of charge/discharge destroyed the batteries in 5 years instead of the 15 the 
vendor said.  A few years later another three windmills go up that provide 
around 19% of annual load, max 40% daily to the grid.  The back up upgrades to 
three flywheels of one megawatt each for constant frequency and micro load 
balancing.  That is good for around 90 seconds of load, giving the batteries a 
chance to come online and carry for almost five minutes, which allows for the 
penstock at the hydro plant to push enough water to spin up the turbines to 
carry the dropped load.  The system on Kodiak runs between 11 megawatt and 
peaks at 27.  The three hydro sets could provide constant load, the dam does 
not hold enough water to let that happen.

There are larger flywheels up here.

clay

> On Oct 21, 2019, at 6:05 AM, Meade Dillon via Mercedes 
>  wrote:
> 
> That's a neat story.
> 
> Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
> never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
> up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
> flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
> use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
> online.
> 
> Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
> "battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
> -
> Max
> Charleston

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Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Dan Penoff via Mercedes 
Heh. I was in some missile silo support buildings that had these. Ancient 
technology but extremely reliable and robust. Sort of the 240D of standby power…

-D


> On Oct 21, 2019, at 7:17 PM, OK Don via Mercedes  
> wrote:
> 
> The State of OK built a new data center a couple of years before I retired
> - and IBM sold them one of these - that would have been around 2010 ...
> 
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:06 AM Meade Dillon via Mercedes <
> mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
> 
>> That's a neat story.
>> 
>> Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
>> never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
>> up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
>> flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
>> use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
>> online.
>> 
>> Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
>> "battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
>> -
>> Max
>> Charleston SC
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
>> mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Quite surprising.
>>> 
>>>  TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
>>> oldPublished:
>>> Monday, October 21, 2019
>>> 
>>> New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
>>> batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
>>> <
>>> 
>> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
 
>>> on the East River in Queens.
>>> 
>>> But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at work
>>> for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a warehouse
>> in
>>> central Alaska.
>>> 
>>> The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely
>> gone
>>> the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
>>> replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
>>> lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
>>> blackouts last year alone.
>>> 
>>> "Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go
>> away,"
>>> said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley
>>> Electric Association, which owns the battery.
>>> 
>>> The push to install bigger and bigger batteries on U.S. electric grids
>>> comes as the price of lithium-ion systems has plummeted and states try to
>>> squeeze out fossil fuels. By soaking up excess power and dispatching it
>>> when demand spikes, batteries can help keep grids stable and smoothly
>>> incorporate ebbs and flows of wind and solar. They can also displace so
>>> called peaker natural-gas plants that kick in only when demand surges.
>>> 
>>> Dubbed the BESS , for Battery Energy
>>> Storage System, the array in Alaska uses 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells,
>>> stacked in rows. Guinness World Records certified it as the world's most
>>> powerful battery when it was commissioned in 2003. It's since lost its
>>> global crown as systems including Tesla Inc.'s 100-megawatt battery in
>>> Australia have come online.
>>> 
>>> Now several installations planned in the U.S. are poised to eclipse it,
>>> too.
>>> 
>>> In California, Tesla is building a 182.5-megawatt installation for PG
>>> Corp. In Florida, NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Power & Light utility is
>>> planning
>>> <
>>> 
>> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/the-race-to-build-the-world-s-largest-solar-storage-plant-is-on
 
>>> a 409-megawatt battery pack. Meanwhile, New York's battery at the
>>> Ravenswood power plant in Long Island City will be built in three phases,
>>> with the first coming online in 2021.
>>> 
>>> But for now, the BESS remains king.
>>> 
>>> For the record, the U.S. Energy Department considers BESS to be tied
>>>  with a battery
>> in
>>> California as the country's largest, listing the capacity of both at 40
>>> megawatts. Golden Valley, however, says its system in Alaska weighs in at
>>> 46 megawatts.
>>> 
>>> Designed by ABB Ltd. with cells from Saft Groupe SA, the $35 million
>> system
>>> kicks in whenever there's an interruption in electricity supply. The
>>> Alaskan interior lacks the densely woven web of power lines found in much
>>> of the country, and blackouts used to be common, said Tom DeLong,
>> chairman
>>> of Golden Valley's board of directors.
>>> 
>>> "We were islanded — we had basically one big extension cord down to
>>> Anchorage," he said. "Everyone in Fairbanks, when I was here in the '70s
>>> and '80s, had a generator in their garage."
>>> 
>>> As such, the BESS represents an earlier generation of energy-storage
>>> projects, BloombergNEF analyst Logan Goldie-Scot said. The large-scale
>>> batteries now being installed provide a variety of

Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread OK Don via Mercedes 
The State of OK built a new data center a couple of years before I retired
- and IBM sold them one of these - that would have been around 2010 ...

On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:06 AM Meade Dillon via Mercedes <
mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:

> That's a neat story.
>
> Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
> never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
> up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
> flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
> use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
> online.
>
> Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
> "battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
> -
> Max
> Charleston SC
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
> mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
>
> > Quite surprising.
> >
> >   TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
> > oldPublished:
> > Monday, October 21, 2019
> >
> > New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
> > batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
> > <
> >
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
> > >
> >  on the East River in Queens.
> >
> > But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at work
> > for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a warehouse
> in
> > central Alaska.
> >
> > The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely
> gone
> > the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
> > replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
> > lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
> > blackouts last year alone.
> >
> > "Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go
> away,"
> > said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley
> > Electric Association, which owns the battery.
> >
> > The push to install bigger and bigger batteries on U.S. electric grids
> > comes as the price of lithium-ion systems has plummeted and states try to
> > squeeze out fossil fuels. By soaking up excess power and dispatching it
> > when demand spikes, batteries can help keep grids stable and smoothly
> > incorporate ebbs and flows of wind and solar. They can also displace so
> > called peaker natural-gas plants that kick in only when demand surges.
> >
> > Dubbed the BESS , for Battery Energy
> > Storage System, the array in Alaska uses 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells,
> > stacked in rows. Guinness World Records certified it as the world's most
> > powerful battery when it was commissioned in 2003. It's since lost its
> > global crown as systems including Tesla Inc.'s 100-megawatt battery in
> > Australia have come online.
> >
> > Now several installations planned in the U.S. are poised to eclipse it,
> > too.
> >
> > In California, Tesla is building a 182.5-megawatt installation for PG
> > Corp. In Florida, NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Power & Light utility is
> > planning
> > <
> >
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/the-race-to-build-the-world-s-largest-solar-storage-plant-is-on
> > >
> >  a 409-megawatt battery pack. Meanwhile, New York's battery at the
> > Ravenswood power plant in Long Island City will be built in three phases,
> > with the first coming online in 2021.
> >
> > But for now, the BESS remains king.
> >
> > For the record, the U.S. Energy Department considers BESS to be tied
> >  with a battery
> in
> > California as the country's largest, listing the capacity of both at 40
> > megawatts. Golden Valley, however, says its system in Alaska weighs in at
> > 46 megawatts.
> >
> > Designed by ABB Ltd. with cells from Saft Groupe SA, the $35 million
> system
> > kicks in whenever there's an interruption in electricity supply. The
> > Alaskan interior lacks the densely woven web of power lines found in much
> > of the country, and blackouts used to be common, said Tom DeLong,
> chairman
> > of Golden Valley's board of directors.
> >
> > "We were islanded — we had basically one big extension cord down to
> > Anchorage," he said. "Everyone in Fairbanks, when I was here in the '70s
> > and '80s, had a generator in their garage."
> >
> > As such, the BESS represents an earlier generation of energy-storage
> > projects, BloombergNEF analyst Logan Goldie-Scot said. The large-scale
> > batteries now being installed provide a variety of services: helping
> > maintain grid stability, storing excess electricity from wind and solar
> and
> > in some cases replacing small power plants. But in BESS's day, large
> > batteries often served relatively remote communities that needed a backup
> > power source in a pinch,

Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Curt Raymond via Mercedes 
 "As long as we get through this quarter and I get by bonus I don't care."
BTDT.
-Curt

On Monday, October 21, 2019, 11:48:32 AM EDT, Jim Cathey 
 wrote:  
 
 At my prior workplace we had an inertial UPS.  It would provide many seconds
worth of power while the big Cat genset came online.

They spent a _lot_ of money on infrastructure here, which they discarded
like used Kleenex once they decided to move all the servers to San Jose,
where everybody knows power and space are _so_ much cheaper than
in Eastern WA.

Shortly after that they closed the office entirely.  Wasn't hard to see coming.

Fools.

-- Jim
  
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Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Floyd Thursby via Mercedes 
Yeah like all that power from E WA that gets sent to CA must be cheaper, 
somehow...


I recall my former colleagues at Enron had some role in that power too...

--FT

On 10/21/19 11:48 AM, Jim Cathey via Mercedes wrote:

At my prior workplace we had an inertial UPS.  It would provide many seconds
worth of power while the big Cat genset came online.

They spent a _lot_ of money on infrastructure here, which they discarded
like used Kleenex once they decided to move all the servers to San Jose,
where everybody knows power and space are _so_ much cheaper than
in Eastern WA.

Shortly after that they closed the office entirely.  Wasn't hard to see coming.

Fools.

-- Jim


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--
--FT


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Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Jim Cathey via Mercedes 
At my prior workplace we had an inertial UPS.  It would provide many seconds
worth of power while the big Cat genset came online.

They spent a _lot_ of money on infrastructure here, which they discarded
like used Kleenex once they decided to move all the servers to San Jose,
where everybody knows power and space are _so_ much cheaper than
in Eastern WA.

Shortly after that they closed the office entirely.  Wasn't hard to see coming.

Fools.

-- Jim


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Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Curt Raymond via Mercedes 
 I went to a facility once that had one of those, they called it an "inertial 
UPS". Had a huge generator attached that could run the whole place for like 2 
minutes. It'd been in place since the '60s or so. Apparently much cheaper to 
maintain than batteries but very expensive to build new.
-Curt

On Monday, October 21, 2019, 10:06:37 AM EDT, Meade Dillon via Mercedes 
 wrote:  
 
 That's a neat story.

Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
online.

Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
"battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
-
Max
Charleston SC


On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:

> Quite surprising.
>
>  TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
> oldPublished:
> Monday, October 21, 2019
>
> New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
> batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
> <
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
> >
>  on the East River in Queens.
>
> But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at work
> for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a warehouse in
> central Alaska.
>
> The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely gone
> the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
> replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
> lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
> blackouts last year alone.
>
> "Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go away,"
> said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley
> Electric Association, which owns the battery.
>
> The push to install bigger and bigger batteries on U.S. electric grids
> comes as the price of lithium-ion systems has plummeted and states try to
> squeeze out fossil fuels. By soaking up excess power and dispatching it
> when demand spikes, batteries can help keep grids stable and smoothly
> incorporate ebbs and flows of wind and solar. They can also displace so
> called peaker natural-gas plants that kick in only when demand surges.
>
> Dubbed the BESS , for Battery Energy
> Storage System, the array in Alaska uses 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells,
> stacked in rows. Guinness World Records certified it as the world's most
> powerful battery when it was commissioned in 2003. It's since lost its
> global crown as systems including Tesla Inc.'s 100-megawatt battery in
> Australia have come online.
>
> Now several installations planned in the U.S. are poised to eclipse it,
> too.
>
> In California, Tesla is building a 182.5-megawatt installation for PG
> Corp. In Florida, NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Power & Light utility is
> planning
> <
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/the-race-to-build-the-world-s-largest-solar-storage-plant-is-on
> >
>  a 409-megawatt battery pack. Meanwhile, New York's battery at the
> Ravenswood power plant in Long Island City will be built in three phases,
> with the first coming online in 2021.
>
> But for now, the BESS remains king.
>
> For the record, the U.S. Energy Department considers BESS to be tied
>  with a battery in
> California as the country's largest, listing the capacity of both at 40
> megawatts. Golden Valley, however, says its system in Alaska weighs in at
> 46 megawatts.
>
> Designed by ABB Ltd. with cells from Saft Groupe SA, the $35 million system
> kicks in whenever there's an interruption in electricity supply. The
> Alaskan interior lacks the densely woven web of power lines found in much
> of the country, and blackouts used to be common, said Tom DeLong, chairman
> of Golden Valley's board of directors.
>
> "We were islanded — we had basically one big extension cord down to
> Anchorage," he said. "Everyone in Fairbanks, when I was here in the '70s
> and '80s, had a generator in their garage."
>
> As such, the BESS represents an earlier generation of energy-storage
> projects, BloombergNEF analyst Logan Goldie-Scot said. The large-scale
> batteries now being installed provide a variety of services: helping
> maintain grid stability, storing excess electricity from wind and solar and
> in some cases replacing small power plants. But in BESS's day, large
> batteries often served relatively remote communities that needed a backup
> power source in a pinch, Goldie-Scot said.
>
> Like any aging system, BESS needs work. Half

Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes 
To store excess windpower when not in use direct the spinning turbines to
skim milk into 100 percent free renewable energy BUTTER.

On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 10:41 AM Dan--- via Mercedes 
wrote:

> None of this technology is outdated and much of it is still in use.
>
> Nickel-cadmium battery banks are still in use in the communications and
> standby power industries.
>
> Motor generators, also known as “MG sets” are still in service for
> mainframe computers. In fact, IBM was one of the largest users of MG sets
> for decades. They consisted of a large electric motor, a flywheel, and a
> generator all coupled together. The motor and generator faced each other
> with the flywheel on the connecting shaft in between. The main reason these
> have been in use for such a long time is that they also provided power
> conversion, that is, the generator was a 400 Hz generator, so the unit as a
> whole not only provided standby power (known as “ride through”) for the few
> seconds it took to bring a generator or UPS online, but it also provided
> frequency conversion for the computer power supplies.
>
> -D
>
> > On Oct 21, 2019, at 10:16 AM, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes <
> mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
> >
> > Back ages ago I did an analysis of a Superconducting Magnetic Energy
> Storage System (SMESS).  It was an interesting concept that relied on a
> supercooled magnetic torus into which electrons were injected and they kept
> spinning around until some were extracted and used again.  It probably
> would have worked sorta OK until the supercooling went away and then all
> those electrons wanted to go somewhere else... rapidly.
> >
> > --FT
> >
> >> On 10/21/19 10:05 AM, Meade Dillon via Mercedes wrote:
> >> That's a neat story.
> >>
> >> Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but
> I've
> >> never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook
> that
> >> up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
> >> flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power
> drops,
> >> use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
> >> online.
> >>
> >> Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
> >> "battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
> >> -
> >> Max
> >> Charleston SC
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
> >> mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Quite surprising.
> >>>
> >>>   TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
> >>> oldPublished:
> >>> Monday, October 21, 2019
> >>>
> >>> New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
> >>> batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
> >>> <
> >>>
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
> >>>  on the East River in Queens.
> >>>
> >>> But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at
> work
> >>> for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a
> warehouse in
> >>> central Alaska.
> >>>
> >>> The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely
> gone
> >>> the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
> >>> replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
> >>> lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
> >>> blackouts last year alone.
> >>>
> >>> "Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go
> away,"
> >>> said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley
>
>
> ___
> http://www.okiebenz.com
>
> To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
>
> To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
> http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
>
>
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Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Dan--- via Mercedes 
None of this technology is outdated and much of it is still in use.

Nickel-cadmium battery banks are still in use in the communications and standby 
power industries. 

Motor generators, also known as “MG sets” are still in service for mainframe 
computers. In fact, IBM was one of the largest users of MG sets for decades. 
They consisted of a large electric motor, a flywheel, and a generator all 
coupled together. The motor and generator faced each other with the flywheel on 
the connecting shaft in between. The main reason these have been in use for 
such a long time is that they also provided power conversion, that is, the 
generator was a 400 Hz generator, so the unit as a whole not only provided 
standby power (known as “ride through”) for the few seconds it took to bring a 
generator or UPS online, but it also provided frequency conversion for the 
computer power supplies.

-D 

> On Oct 21, 2019, at 10:16 AM, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes 
>  wrote:
> 
> Back ages ago I did an analysis of a Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage 
> System (SMESS).  It was an interesting concept that relied on a supercooled 
> magnetic torus into which electrons were injected and they kept spinning 
> around until some were extracted and used again.  It probably would have 
> worked sorta OK until the supercooling went away and then all those electrons 
> wanted to go somewhere else... rapidly.
> 
> --FT
> 
>> On 10/21/19 10:05 AM, Meade Dillon via Mercedes wrote:
>> That's a neat story.
>> 
>> Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
>> never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
>> up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
>> flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
>> use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
>> online.
>> 
>> Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
>> "battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
>> -
>> Max
>> Charleston SC
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
>> mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Quite surprising.
>>> 
>>>   TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
>>> oldPublished:
>>> Monday, October 21, 2019
>>> 
>>> New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
>>> batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
>>> <
>>> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
>>>  on the East River in Queens.
>>> 
>>> But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at work
>>> for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a warehouse in
>>> central Alaska.
>>> 
>>> The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely gone
>>> the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
>>> replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
>>> lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
>>> blackouts last year alone.
>>> 
>>> "Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go away,"
>>> said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley


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Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Floyd Thursby via Mercedes 
Back ages ago I did an analysis of a Superconducting Magnetic Energy 
Storage System (SMESS).  It was an interesting concept that relied on a 
supercooled magnetic torus into which electrons were injected and they 
kept spinning around until some were extracted and used again.  It 
probably would have worked sorta OK until the supercooling went away and 
then all those electrons wanted to go somewhere else... rapidly.


--FT

On 10/21/19 10:05 AM, Meade Dillon via Mercedes wrote:

That's a neat story.

Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
online.

Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
"battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
-
Max
Charleston SC


On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:


Quite surprising.

   TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
oldPublished:
Monday, October 21, 2019

New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
  on the East River in Queens.

But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at work
for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a warehouse in
central Alaska.

The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely gone
the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
blackouts last year alone.

"Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go away,"
said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley
Electric Association, which owns the battery.

The push to install bigger and bigger batteries on U.S. electric grids
comes as the price of lithium-ion systems has plummeted and states try to
squeeze out fossil fuels. By soaking up excess power and dispatching it
when demand spikes, batteries can help keep grids stable and smoothly
incorporate ebbs and flows of wind and solar. They can also displace so
called peaker natural-gas plants that kick in only when demand surges.

Dubbed the BESS , for Battery Energy
Storage System, the array in Alaska uses 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells,
stacked in rows. Guinness World Records certified it as the world's most
powerful battery when it was commissioned in 2003. It's since lost its
global crown as systems including Tesla Inc.'s 100-megawatt battery in
Australia have come online.

Now several installations planned in the U.S. are poised to eclipse it,
too.

In California, Tesla is building a 182.5-megawatt installation for PG
Corp. In Florida, NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Power & Light utility is
planning
<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/the-race-to-build-the-world-s-largest-solar-storage-plant-is-on
  a 409-megawatt battery pack. Meanwhile, New York's battery at the
Ravenswood power plant in Long Island City will be built in three phases,
with the first coming online in 2021.

But for now, the BESS remains king.

For the record, the U.S. Energy Department considers BESS to be tied
 with a battery in
California as the country's largest, listing the capacity of both at 40
megawatts. Golden Valley, however, says its system in Alaska weighs in at
46 megawatts.

Designed by ABB Ltd. with cells from Saft Groupe SA, the $35 million system
kicks in whenever there's an interruption in electricity supply. The
Alaskan interior lacks the densely woven web of power lines found in much
of the country, and blackouts used to be common, said Tom DeLong, chairman
of Golden Valley's board of directors.

"We were islanded — we had basically one big extension cord down to
Anchorage," he said. "Everyone in Fairbanks, when I was here in the '70s
and '80s, had a generator in their garage."

As such, the BESS represents an earlier generation of energy-storage
projects, BloombergNEF analyst Logan Goldie-Scot said. The large-scale
batteries now being installed provide a variety of services: helping
maintain grid stability, storing excess electricity from wind and solar and
in some cases replacing small power plants. But in BESS's day, large
batteries often served relatively remote communities that needed a backup
power source in a pinch, Goldie-Scot said.

Like any aging system, BESS needs work. Half its cells have been replaced,
and the control

Re: [MBZ] OT: USA's largest and very old storage battery

2019-10-21 Thread Meade Dillon via Mercedes 
That's a neat story.

Reminds me of an older technology, which I have only heard about but I've
never seen, which is using a large flywheel as a storage device.  Hook that
up to a motor-generator, so when the utility power is available, the
flywheel gets brought up to speed, and then when the utility power drops,
use the inertia to drive the generator until another source is brought
online.

Maybe fill up an old missile silo with massive flywheels, use that as a
"battery" to store wind or solar that is not needed.
-
Max
Charleston SC


On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 9:23 AM Andrew Strasfogel via Mercedes <
mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:

> Quite surprising.
>
>   TECHNOLOGYBig batteries are all the rage, but this one's 16 years
> oldPublished:
> Monday, October 21, 2019
>
> New York City dove headlong into the race to build bigger and bigger
> batteries this week, as regulators approved plans for a massive system
> <
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/long-island-city-will-soon-be-home-to-new-york-s-biggest-battery
> >
>  on the East River in Queens.
>
> But for those keeping score, the biggest of all has been quietly at work
> for almost 16 years in a far more remote corner of America: a warehouse in
> central Alaska.
>
> The 46-megawatt battery, in Fairbanks, uses a chemistry that's largely gone
> the way of fax machines. It's old enough that its operators can't find
> replacement parts for some components. But it still works, keeping the
> lights in the city of 32,000 near the Arctic Circle, preventing 59
> blackouts last year alone.
>
> "Our system operators are very adamant that they don't want it to go away,"
> said Dan Bishop, manager of engineering services for the Golden Valley
> Electric Association, which owns the battery.
>
> The push to install bigger and bigger batteries on U.S. electric grids
> comes as the price of lithium-ion systems has plummeted and states try to
> squeeze out fossil fuels. By soaking up excess power and dispatching it
> when demand spikes, batteries can help keep grids stable and smoothly
> incorporate ebbs and flows of wind and solar. They can also displace so
> called peaker natural-gas plants that kick in only when demand surges.
>
> Dubbed the BESS , for Battery Energy
> Storage System, the array in Alaska uses 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells,
> stacked in rows. Guinness World Records certified it as the world's most
> powerful battery when it was commissioned in 2003. It's since lost its
> global crown as systems including Tesla Inc.'s 100-megawatt battery in
> Australia have come online.
>
> Now several installations planned in the U.S. are poised to eclipse it,
> too.
>
> In California, Tesla is building a 182.5-megawatt installation for PG
> Corp. In Florida, NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Power & Light utility is
> planning
> <
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/the-race-to-build-the-world-s-largest-solar-storage-plant-is-on
> >
>  a 409-megawatt battery pack. Meanwhile, New York's battery at the
> Ravenswood power plant in Long Island City will be built in three phases,
> with the first coming online in 2021.
>
> But for now, the BESS remains king.
>
> For the record, the U.S. Energy Department considers BESS to be tied
>  with a battery in
> California as the country's largest, listing the capacity of both at 40
> megawatts. Golden Valley, however, says its system in Alaska weighs in at
> 46 megawatts.
>
> Designed by ABB Ltd. with cells from Saft Groupe SA, the $35 million system
> kicks in whenever there's an interruption in electricity supply. The
> Alaskan interior lacks the densely woven web of power lines found in much
> of the country, and blackouts used to be common, said Tom DeLong, chairman
> of Golden Valley's board of directors.
>
> "We were islanded — we had basically one big extension cord down to
> Anchorage," he said. "Everyone in Fairbanks, when I was here in the '70s
> and '80s, had a generator in their garage."
>
> As such, the BESS represents an earlier generation of energy-storage
> projects, BloombergNEF analyst Logan Goldie-Scot said. The large-scale
> batteries now being installed provide a variety of services: helping
> maintain grid stability, storing excess electricity from wind and solar and
> in some cases replacing small power plants. But in BESS's day, large
> batteries often served relatively remote communities that needed a backup
> power source in a pinch, Goldie-Scot said.
>
> Like any aging system, BESS needs work. Half its cells have been replaced,
> and the control system now needs an upgrade or replacement. Golden Valley,
> however, has no plans to ditch it.
>
> "Not unlike your other computer-based things, after a certain amount of
> time, the chips aren't made anymore," Bishop said. *— David R. Baker,
> Bloomberg*
> ___
> http://www.okiebenz.com
>
> To search