could SGL Group be our next mou?, page-30

Graham ……………… I don’t think you understand where I am coming from ………………. In my job as a design electrical engineer I design what are termed UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supplies) and all systems have battery storage and all are connect to the grid mainly to supply power when, for whatever reason, the grid fails. These systems are typically used where loss of the supply is critical to the operation of whatever the electricity is supplying ie operating theatres, general plant operating systems, remote mines and LNG operating systems, large data bank storage systems and etc however all these are installed at the user end of the grid not the supply end and obviously use extensive banks of batteries.

With the technology we have right now IMO the cost will be prohibitive for the development of storage systems at the supply end of the grid especially when we consider the caustic state politics round the world ……………… I quoted the costs in my last post and detailed how I arrived at the costs but seems you don’t understand so here it is again:

The German details taken straight out of the article (bold highlites by myself):

The new plant, opened by Wemag AG, will be able to store five megawatts –enough to power roughly 2,500 homes. With Germany committed to going green, one of the country’s biggest problems had been where to store excess energy.

The installation cost 6 million euro and is the size of a school gymnasium, while it’s powered by 25,600 lithium-ion batteries, which were produced by Samsung. The plant will service an area of 8,600 sq. km, which already receives 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources. However, by the end of the year the region should be totally dependent on green energy, according to Reuters

So from the above it cost 6m euros to supply 2500 households ………… by that famous thing called google I discovered there are 40.7m households in German therefore the arithmetic is now pretty simple to get the cost per household or just under 100b euros.

If you read carefully the last para of my first post you will also see that I have stated quite clearly that I believe storage systems at the home is a more viable solution (ie at the user end of the grid NOT the supply end):

In the industry peak power is round 30% to 50% above the base load and as we design for peak load obviously the CAPEX and OPEX of the grid rises proportionally ………….. Power supply companies are now penalising anyone who over designs but the small Aussie mum and dads are really the problem. There certainly are solutions in Smart Meters etc that will place a premium on the use of peak power but these come at a cost at in the present caustic political environment I cannot see this happening in the foreseeable (3 to 5 years) future. IMO Australia is perfectly placed to use solar energy and if we combine this with storage we will have residential property that will be almost independent of the grid BUT at a cost of round $50k plus. If Australia had the political will to include this into the cost of a home ie add it to the cost of the home and amortise it over the life of the mortgage it will come at a reasonable cost. I must admit I haven’t done the figures (I am an engineer not accountant or banker) but am sure the savings would almost off set the costs

Also comparing Nuclear to Solar is like comparing apples with oranges; Nuclear is being used to generate power for base load whereas Solar can never be used for base load even with battery backup as the power requirements are massive!!!!!

This is a complicated subject Graham so please read my posts carefully and if you have questions then please ask as maybe I have missed something or not explained it clearly enough.

HPV