Ice Batteries and Industrial Heat Storage (until just Batteries)

Logical thought is hard to detect in todays energy policies. Every now and than the super obvious has to be stated just to remind those that act as if we are stuck and need fossil fuels they have not bought or hypnotized everybody. Renewables cause energy surplusses, spikes that could have been predicted a decade ago, but if you had believed the IEA at every point in recent history solar and wind would have plateaued (yes that is a word).

Embarassing, but necessary to ensure banks did not invest too much and fossil credit flows kept flowing

The problem today is a lack of batteries in the ‘grid’. Grid operators have been very clear they can see anything coming, and can anticipate a great future for any technology, as long is it is not renewable energy, especially distributed. Electic cars where also very hard to wrap their heads around, but the author of this piece was in the room when provincial regents declared it undesirable to anticipate a growth in EV, the same regent that blocked the construction of wind turbines (above 2 meter) in sparcely populated North Holland. In other words, there is a battle going on, we all know it.

Negative electricity prices due to too much being offered to the market are now a common occurance. Up to hundreds of Euro per Mwh can be earned if you just take it off the hands of the grid operators. This would be a strong stimulus if these prices where easier to access by companies, in other words if there was not a market step between raw producers and consumers. That step exists, as a legacy burden on the economy one could say. And there is a lot of debt loaded onto it as the burners of fossil fuels and grid operators recently became privately owned. A strange event because the cities selling it to the ‘investors’ where left with a couple of billions, but 10 years later that money was still not invested in anything it seemed. Would have made sense to invest in solar, but nope.

Anyway, what to do with that free electricity? We propse to generate ice which can then be used to reduce the cost of airconditioning. Just build a large tank, preferably the size of a swimmingpool under your building, fill it with water and run some pipes through there with freezing alcohol (something that remains liquid but can transfer the cold). Then during the day you run your airco cooling pipes through the same water and presto : You reduce the cost of your airco, and even more electricity will be available (the peaks come during the day).

Converting excess low-price electricity into high-temperature stored heat for industry and high-value electricity production

Heat storage can be lossy, but german tests showed it is possible. They used a large vacuum insulated concrete tank that had a pointy top to reduce circualtion, and found it cooled down slowely of course, but the bigger the tank the more heat remains in it (just like an elephant cools less fast than a mouse). We like to think about large tanks under the shared road between homes or special purpose tanks beneath fields nearby.

An example of large volume thermal storage But of course the entire top radiates heat..The deeper the better..

When a lot of electricity is dumped on the market this gives a contradictory signal to it : It discourages the building of more renewable energy sources, because how is the investment going to earn itself back if the profit is negative? This is why storage is a no no for the fossil side of the energy battle. Fossil energy is uniquely stored, highly stabile as well. It is a cornerstone of their defence to have reneables grasp for a way to be conserved for later use.

We have witnessed a number of battery technologies dissapear in the mist of fossil/banking control, like quite a few other disruptive technologies, for example freeze desalination of seawater at a fraction of the energy cost of reverse osmosis. The new (Lithium) batteries now in development will still be quite expensive, but they will last for decades. Investments in them will probably explode in spite of the awarness of banks they lose cashflow by supporting them. The holy grail however is a battery factory that needs only renewable energy and which owns its own energy sources. It can sell batteries for next to nothing. And we are not even mentioning potassium or zinc bromide batteries for stationary storage : Cheap, easy to make, killers.

It makes total sense to build a large grid battery to buffer renewable electricity. We have written about a big solar power plant in the Markermeer, and this enormous battery could be part of this project. Homes, solar, battery, recreation, nature for birds, fresh water protection in the heart of Holland. But until then there is certainly an option to store energy by keeping a cold store for your airconditioners.