|
We already do store excess grid energy. That's actually what happens to old APC units and old car batteries. There are huge problems with this, and it's really not as simple as simply updating the grid to store energy.
For starters, we need to go over some terminology. We've been using the word power thus far when we actually mean to say energy. That's fine for casual conversation between lay persons, but I can't do that if I'm going to address the subject of why we dont appear to store energy for emergency blackouts.
Energy, not power, is what your electrical devices use and consume in order to run. When we plug a device into the wall so that it can receive "juice," the juice we are talking about is energy. Power is the speed at which the device receives and uses that energy. We try to describe things in terms of power, because these devices run over a certain length of time.
Power tells us how fast our customers are using energy, and in turn, how fast we need to generate it and transfer it. When we send you a bill each month, it's for how much energy hounded up. Energy can be stored, but power can not, although power can tell us how fast we can store energy.
Energy comes in many different forms. Some forms of energy are easy to store, like mechanical energy. If I want to store mechanical energy, all I need to do is carry a ball to the roof. If I want to get that energy back, I drop the ball. Electrical energy is very hard to store, almost impossible at times, but it's very easy to transport long distances. Ideally, what we want to do is convert other forms of energy to electrical energy so that it can be sent somewhere. We do this by putting dropping water off a cliff to turn a giant wheel, by burning coal, or by banging radioactive materials together. It's hard to send a river to someone's house, but you can send the river's energy through a copper wire.
The problem is, the only way we really have to store electrical energy is inside a battery (as chemical energy). Batteries suck. We like to think we've made enormous leaps in battery technology in recent years with the ten hour laptop batteries and such, but batteries are absolute ****. Priced per joule of energy, batteries are retarded expensive.
For home use like a TV remote, a battery is fine. It's less ideal for a grid application. You have to keep in mind that these grids are powering more than just the lights in your homes and offices. They also power heavy machinery. They power hospitals, which require as much energy as entire neighborhoods. There are individual machines that, due to their operation, draw as much daily energy as your entire house. Your house may spike higher at certain times when your refrigerator and air conditioner kick on at thet same time, but these industrial machines are running nonstop all day.
There just aren't enough batteries to store the kind of energy we need. The power consumption throughout a city is just too high. We'd suck the batteries dry in minutes, and we're talking about a lot of batteries. Remember, batteries are expensive.
Another thing about batteries is that they drain constantly, even when not in use. In order for a battery to be any good in a power grid, it has to be constantly hooked up to the charge circuit when it's not in use. You can't charge it and set it aside, because it might drain all the way down before the next emergency. You have to keep it charging to make sure it's full when you need it. That ruins batteries real fast, and remember, batteries are expensive.
There's just no good way to store energy on this scale. We're talking about the energy requirements of multi-state regions. We still try, but storing energy for an emergency just isn't feasible. We haven't even touched on the fact that in order to store energy, you have to be producing a surplus - that in itself is no mean feat. Sometimes when you hit a slow cycle, the machines themselves need time to cool down and be checked for maintenance. It's possible that California just may not be able to produce surplus energy with the number of people they have using it up. The Midwest is different, there is a lot of empty space there.
The best mechanism for dealing with high loads and energy shortages is not to store energy for emergencies, but to call up another company three states away and see what they've got for you. Every grid in the United States and Canada is hooked up to one another in some fashion. That's our emergency plan. It isn't feasible to store energy in batteries, but it is feasible to build enough plants in the Midwest to supply all of North America with electricity.
_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
