As control room operator at FP&L for over 20 years I have seen the effects of low frequency on the grid. What typically happens in hot weather is as frequency gets lower due to not enough generation capacity dispatch load control will start shedding load during brown outs in order to keep frequency up... If there is enough battery capacity to supply enough load during this time it can eliminate brown outs. So green energy is a good option to prevent brown outs and load shedding..

I don't comment nearly enough on how much I enjoy and look forward to your outstanding work. Thanks

Amazing work with these videos! Love to learn about the energy transition on your channel. Such a soothing voice and great use of diagrams and text!

Just a quick thank you, for your well presented and, without dumbing down the subject easy to follow videos. You are my go to channel on these matters.

It's nice to see the inter-connected grid gaining ground. I read about this stuff 30 years ago and finally we are beginning to implement it.

Came across your channel last week and I’m loving the content!! It’s really refreshing and motivating to hear of different technology and ideas around renewables, after being stuck in the sphere where only problems, not solutions, were discussed.

Excellent reportage and explanation as I've come to expect from this top youtube channel. It's a go-to for anyone interested in the key energy issues of today, from retirees to politicians, to teachers, the science community and high school students upwards. Many thanks

This is amongst the best of youtube, Dave. Factual, lots of info, a great start for the viewer to acquire a basis to understand the issues you tackle and present so well.

Thanks again for all your work. I really learn a lot from you.

Just go with all Nuclear. This battery idea is a non starter. You are very right about how proponents of solar and wind do not understand the battery equation.

Fascinating information well presented I definitely will look forward to seeing more of your presentations. Gladly will share with others.

Thank you very much for that presentation, It has given me an overview on electrical grid distributed storage capacity trends. Here are few points that I could retain : energy individual

Your presentation of transforming our energy reliance is just wholesome. A big thank you for your videos. It is an additional showcase for the underlying unity of Europe. I would love to see cooperation with other channels, which need a bit more content. The more people are aware of what actually changes, the better we can prepare ourselves for the future. Whether you do or not, I will have a look at how Patreon works.

Well done Dave, we're doing a community solar farm here in Ireland. I would also like to see governments encouraging community grid infrastructure as well as community energy storage, this would accelerate and extend rollout renewables within communities, it would also allow communities to benefit from revenues earned through the three components of renewable energy 👍👍

Nice one! If we add Norway to the north and with Switzerland in the south there could be more than enough hydro-energy storage to keep the whole thing nice and steady. Then a big chuck of solar in the very dry Spanish interior and we'll be much less dependable on Russian and Arab fossil fuel. The EU has plenty of drawbacks but things like this really show it's worth.

Love the vid and the concept! I think in our drive for new solutions, we forget old concepts. I think that chemical storage solutions are definitely going to be an integral part of renewable transition, but mechanical batteries could play a major role at the individual household level, or at a municipal level. These would provide safe, simple, independent energy storage solutions used in conjunction with a renewable grid and chem battery array. Load management system can coordinate the systems. Battery array allows for smoothing major needs, mech battery stands in for grid in times of low output, and in case of emergency blackout etc. The solutions are all around us. We need to dedicate the will, skill, time, and resources. Inaction is a choice.

Great Video Dave, I particularly like the use of video diagrams to accompany your commentary. Well done and keep up the good work!

Congratulations from all of us Sir for the amount of work you put on each video. You make the world a better place

Great video .This one is spot on and with references to more reading. Love it !

Excellent presentation. Clear and articulate and well modulated (no droning).

Watching Dave is like watching a highly focused and bang up to date Tomorrows World, most enjoyable.

I learned this in grad school ten years ago. You just summarized three semesters very well!

My view at the moment is - if you have solar panels get a decent sized battery or 2 added to the system. That needs to be government policy the world over. It will help enormously and a bonus is that your solar will continue to work when there is a power outage, during the sunlight hours of course. You get your own power station. Great video. Greetings from Australia.

Decentralized energy storage is where this is headed for a lot of good reasons. First and arguably most importantly, as it becomes more widespread it will make economic sense due to increased engineering expertise and the cost savings that come with mass production of the components needed. Secondly, storing energy closer to where it's being used reduces transmission losses during peak usage times, when they are most detrimental. And beyond the stabilizing effects on the electrical grid mentioned in this video, it will go a long way towards making renewables feasible for providing the bulk of our energy.

I suggest you do a segment on liquid metal batteries provided by Ambri. Inexpensive, efficient and reliable with very low degradation, they offer an exceptional solution for grids and likely for businesses and homes.

This channel is superb content. Great topics, keep em coming.

The importance of the FERC Order 841 being upheld cannot be overstated. I work for a DNSP/TNSP and invariably it is the legislation that we operate under that is what is holding innovation back and not the technology availability or the commercial interest in using it! Good stuff Dave.

Best teacher on UKposts ! I love your clear reasoning and explanations ! Regards.

Just come across your channel and I have to say your content is amazing!🙌 You explain things so clearly yet keep a lot of detail. As a student and an energy nerd I've got to thank you for all the research and hardwork you put into your videos

This is a complex subject, well researched as ever and put into context. Recently retired, my last job was in the IoT space and Smart Grids were an application I studied. Storage changes everything and with batteries getting cheaper the opportunities for balancing the demand/supply equation and providing frequency response services to accommodate more renewables are increasing. The challenge is one of management which needs a lot of real-time data collection. Blockchain looks to be the best solution using connectivity technologies such as cellular, LPWA and MESH networks. We come from a world of a few power sources and many power loads, the new world is where millions of loads are also sources, e.g. electric vehicle batteries supporting V2G on the low voltage part of the grid. This is a potential nightmare from a management perspective but again IoT technology should be up to it. As we used to say, giga bytes are just as important as giga watts.

I just made a video today on this exact outcome, we have a massive grid scale regional and schools program being rolled out here in Western Australia, so exciting!

Thank you for the video. We both have similar thoughts on this subject. Great job.

An excellent and well researched presentation as usual. The good news is that the market is moving more quickly than the regulators, especially in some of those "developed" countries that love to dig their coal and burn it. I'm hoping that domestic batteries will be included in the upcoming UK efficiency grant scheme, that will be a game changer for me, allowing me to both store my own solar electricity, and buy grid electricity at lower rates during the two blocks of three hours a day that are really cheap in the UK. Leading on from this, that will bring the running costs of moving from gas central heating to air source heat pump central heating PRICE EQUIVALENT in the UK, which is where the carbon game really starts to change.

I think I heard you say that electricity consumption in the US and Canada will be increasing - I thought we were all supposed to be looking for ways to REDUCE our consumption?

Love this channel!! Would dearly like to know at some point what we're glancing at stage right. (no worries, I do that too :)

Thank you for the thorough and detailed explanations. Keep up the good work

Vermont has a program to subsidize the cost of home batteries that top off at night and then power the home during peak energy demand during the day to reduce the need for peaker plant operation. Sounds like a great start.

We are just a group of neighbors in Pennsylvania,U.S.A. Tinkering around with an old air conditioner. We have been somewhat successful in using wind and solar power to power the compressor of the air conditioner to compress the freon in a much larger reservoir than the original a/c unit used. We are working on the principle of kinetic energy to even out the day/night; wind/no wind. Now we can only get enough storage to run an led light bulb (7watts) all night or approximately 8.7 hours. None of us are chemists so we just use freon. Perhaps researchers with degrees in applied physics and chemistry can find a better compress able gas to liquid formula and make this a form of battery.

Many thanks for this wonderful channel - I have learnt a lot from your careful research and methodical presentations.

This is exactly right. electrical energy storage is the ONLY thing keeping renewable energy from being the dominant source of electrical power. My idea, is similar to your idea of "behind the meter storage". Having a substantial battery at home makes the most sense right now, because the LCOE of the battery only has to compete with RETAIL rates, rather than WHOLESALE rates that it would have to compete with in front of the meter. If homes and small businesses could do a thing called "peak shaving", there would never be a need for peaker plants in times of peak demand. Peak shaving works by battery chargers set to a voltage threshold, where if the voltage from the grid sags below a certain level, the charger turns off, unloading the grid. When the voltage rises,(hopefully due to the wind turning turbines)then, the charger(s) come back on, charging the battery bank. Under high demand, your loads just run on your own battery. Once you have a DC storage system, that system can be supplied by rooftop solar, wind, micro-hydro, or any other source.(in worst cases, a backup generator) With four sources of power, you have no problem maintaining 24/7 power.(solar, your battery, the grid, or backup generator) you could even have a 5th source, if you have a wind turbine. with grid electricity getting more expensive, and off grid solar equipment becoming less, there will be a crossing point, where you could save money putting in your own off-grid photovoltaic system with battery. In the areas where local ordinances do not allow disconnecting from the grid, the peak shaving system I described above is a good idea, besides, the grid is a good backup, in case something goes wrong.(A peak shaving system is sometimes referred to as a "grid autonomous" system) A system like that could easily be adapted to work with the Zellweger ripple system, in case the voltage rise is due to a peaker plant, and not excess power from a windy day.

3:05 Just a side note. High-Voltage direct current is used for really long distance power transfer as it has smaller transmission losses and the more expensive conversion equipment justifies itself in such a case. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

Thanks, a very interesting discussion. I have spent my entire career in recycling and alternative energy projects and very good to now see it so openly discussed.

Thank you Sir, I am way less confused by "Energy usage" now. I'm still confused but you have helped a lot. Ta

Great video..like the research you do and the presentation.

The best customer of a mega-pack would be the energy producer themselves. You could run your plant at near peak 24/7 and meet a high demand peak with ease. Power companies would clean up with this investment.

There is a certain danger in saying "once we have storage solved, then we can go alternative", much like saying we need to get to zero, it presents an impossible goal so that the status quo can continue floundering along. Spinning up and down can be accomplished with natural gas to yield big co2 reduction while still taking big steps in the right direction. Also, please no block chain, its a gimmick, there is already such a thing as accounting, we don't need an inefficient form of it where everytime a transaction is made, we need to process every transaction it has ever been in all over again, huge waste of power.

Very good elucidation of the issues. First time for me on the channel, and I subscribed. (I subscribe to no more than one or two channels a year!)

My grandmother lived in an apartment in Manhattan that had DC power! I've wondered if that building ever upgraded. She had a gas stove and a refrigerator that was electric, but it was of the adsorption type. Used to be very common as any source of heat can be used, and have been. Some campers have dual fuel refrigerators. Electricity and when not available, propane.

I hope they apply energy storage to oil production too. Currently whenever I fly over North Dakota at night I see them flaring millions of tons of natural gas.

I notice small nuances (hard to name them as they are more related to body language) which make your representation even better. Good job and great video! 😊

logical and educational video on a topic I had never thought of before, thanks!

Dave, love your presentations. Presently listening to your explanation of how the electrical “grid” system works and how renewables fit in this process. Why do I envision the elimination of the “grid” as renewables and storage get better and stronger, making end users totally independent.

Seasonal storage is a huge obstacle to renewable (electric) systems. A home in Canada's far north can require stored energy for 4 or 5 months a year and given the very high demand during the winter, would require approximately $4 million in Tesla Powerwalls to assure safe levels of heating. However, geothermal storage of low grade (heat) energy offers storage at under 1% of the cost of electrical energy storage. See "The Renewable Energy Transition, Realities for Canada and the World" for the concept and some hard numbers and examples. Electricity is a high grade energy but we have to also learn to use low grade energy (heat) if we are going to make renewables work.

Thank you for your informative videos 👍😎

what's so disenhartning in energy storage is the realization of just how much of it we would need if we wanted to switch off from fossil fuels. a month worth of electricity storage is 720h so 720GWh for a single gigawatt. and this is only by assuming near 100% storage efficiency. real energy estimate for the same storage energy is probably double. Then there's the fact that our electricity use is only going to increase in the future.

When the cost of grid storage falls below the cost of fossil fuels, it is all over for carbon. From Don Sadoway MIT/Ambri

Very good video about a revolution that is undergoing without major public attention.

Major frequency drops / spikes in Jan 2021 (a part of Europe was too high and a part was way too low, there is little tolerance) the safety devices reacted and split the European grid within seconds I think In January it started with a malfunction either in one of the Balkan states or Italy. It certainly impacted Italy and had a ripple effect. The South of Europe delivered energy to the North - until that was disrupted. they scrambled and w/0 30 minutes the worst was over (shedding industrial capacities etc). Then came another major event very recently (? May I think). When a huge coal plant in Poland went off the grid - a transformator nearby malfunctioned (the plant worked but they could not deliver anymore). The energy company has a lot of pump storage capacities and they activated all their stored hydro power, and the other nations acitivated their reserves as well, especially shedding industrial users and then of course getting the fast plants on the grid. This time no splitting of the European grid, but it was again a serious incident.

Great video! One (very!) minor nit: transformers are not used to drop voltage to 120VAC in the US for household usage. It comes in as 240 two-phase and is split to 120 (no transformer needed) at the distribution box in the building. Things like electric stoves, heat pumps, and car chargers are typically wired for 240. It's split to 120 to make it safer. If you look at the old 'tube and insulator' residential wiring used when this first became standard, it makes a lot of sense. But yes, AC is the key to electric distribution. We have Nikolai Tesla to thank for that.

The rate of collapse of fossil fuel energy will be startling. Well done, thanks for posting.

Not anytime soon. New systems and technologies have to earn their way on merit, not on feelings.

I'm an early adopter having Solar panels, Tesla Powerwall 2 and BEV. The only tie I've used the grid to charge the car since March is when Octopus Energy were paying me to use electricity. Renewables & storage are the way forward. Especially when we get V2G for BEVs.

Ever Sunday, I look forward to watching your blog, and I have a thought that is rattling around in my brain, and want to present it to you, even though it is a tangent topic to today's show. It is geothermal, to be used for commercial and residential heating and cooling, powered by green energy, using heat pumps. Ground based systems have a sweet spot that is driven by latitude. This Goldilocks latitude is not at the Equator (ground too hot), nor the Arctic (ground too cold), but between these, where it's just right. And there, in this good zone, the expensive part is to get this desired temperature content. Drilling can almost always be done here, almost like drilling for oil, except you're guaranteed to hit your prize... local appropriate temperature circulated water. If there were millions of holes drilled and tens of thousands of drilling rigs, especially if these rig operations were funded by the state, then costs would plummet. In addition, the inside the building conditioning systems costs would be slashed as well, as you need only the heat pump. You don't need a furnace. And costs in the heat mode and the cooling mode are slashed by roughly seventy to eighty percent. Your mileage may vary. This is a winwinwin. And the carbon exhaust cost saving are similarly accumulated. Another win. In cities, the system could be provided by the municipalities, as a utility. City living costs would plummet, and it's environment would be in it's own sweet spot. In effect, you are using the Earth as a battery, swapping summer heat and winter cooling. Swapping it for six months later.

Really impressing your film. The illustration of it let me think, that there is a big lobby behind your channel. Love your British accent. Me as a German (please forgive me my English!) am sceptical against so called renewable energy. Because we already pay for it very high. We have the highest energy prices in Europe, probably in the world. We live constantly close to a blackout. If we have had no neighbours with coal or nuclear plants, our system would crash very often. 2018 we have had two critical moments in our grid. In your film you are showing a beautiful landscape at the beach "decorated" with many windmills. This was a symbolic picture: human greediness and ideology destroying nature! My point is not: I am against electrical storage. No! Not at all! This is even the crucial problem of renewables. I am for obligatory solar panels on flat roofs in industrial areas. But I am against Solar Parks on fertile soil or in woods, against cornfields for our electrical comfort. Simply because of the efficiency of renewables, the so called EROI (Energy Return on Investment), which is too low. For that reason they need a big area to compensate. Photovoltaic has an EROI of 1.6, Biomass 3.5, Wind 3.9, Gas 28, Coal 30, Water 35. In comparison to it the old veteran of Pressurized Water Reactor has an EROI of 75! Which is not too bad. The windmills are meanwhile as high as the television tower in Stuttgart. The concrete weights 7000 Tonnes. The socle of 3500 Tonnes is left for ever in the soil. The wings are impossible to recycle - they still look for an solution for this problem. And many birds and insects are victim of this sort of environmental protection. But if you compare the renewables with the new concepts of nuclear power plants of fourth generation, you will understand, that the increasing demand of energy needs a new investment of nuclear plants of the fourth generation: MSR, LFTR or DFR: They have an EROI starting from 1000 up to 2000, some people of the DFR-Team claim even an EROI of 4000! They are safe ("Walk away Security"), they are modular, fit into a container and the best of all: they burn up the nuclear waste of our good old Pressurized Water Nuclear Plants. Ah, I forgot: they produce energy very very cheap. Ah, one point more: because they run with Thorium, they could produce for the next 1000 years, without leaving behind tonnes of garbage with a long decay as the old nuclear plants. Because of the high process heat from 1000 Grade Celsius, you could add to such a plant innovative techniques like: PowerToGas with Hydrogen Production, Synthetic Fuel, LOHC, NanoFlowcell, Seawater Desalination, Long-Distance Heating. These added spin-offs could solve many problems around the globe. And the power plants themselves could help, to give back nature to nature, because these plants don't need space. Specially in Germany the Green politics have destroyed big terrains of woods with the windmills, fertile land with solar panels. And they call this environmental protection, and declare it as nature protection, which is not the same! But we do not need this sort of environmental protection. We need a new wilderness for biodiversity. In Europe there are no virgin forests anymore (ok, in Poland, the Białowieża National Parc). Just have a think!

I’m definitely studying the right thing

I'm sceptical that storage will compete with natural gas peakers for actually delivering a meaningful amount of energy such that high penetration renewables grid will actually work. -Li-ion is great for frequency control and ancillary services but monstrously too expensive for large scale storage. -Liquid air looks like it will be far cheaper but still more expensive than the renewable power it wants to store plus not all that efficient. It's all genuinely quite exciting to see the developments and i'm especially keen to see just how cheep the liquid air can get. The cost of the pilot project in Birmingham is about £340,000 /MWh so for that to backup Cleve hill solar park for 6 hours would cost £714 million. Bearing in mind Cleve Hill will cost £450 million that's a rather large extra expense for the storage system, especially when you consider that Cleve Hill is already about DOUBLE the cost of Hinkley Point C per MW and Hinkley will not require any storage to meet baseload. That being said, low carbon storage could complement Hinkley Point C (and the rest of the nuclear fleet) to meet peak power as nuclear is not particularly good at load following. I've shared these (similar) numbers with you before @just have a think and you acknowledged that they were "challenging". I think I'll remain one of your "naysayers who debate and deny what's happening right in front of them" for the time being until the liquid air guys scale up and release figures but I'm hanging on to hope for the technology! Thanks for the vid as always :)

Great presentation thank you for sharing.

Nice! And as always, can't wait for battery day ;-)

Second :-) That was good. I needed a think. Thanks Dave, nicely done as always.

Thanks for the video. It's unfortunate we didn't start the transition much earlier, but still high hopes for the future.

Excellent presentation. Everything is becoming more interconnected thanks to the internet and world wide web. Automation has become so widely available as well as more efficient devices and it has become cheaper to generate your own renewable energy. I think in the future it will be possible to automatically buy energy from different sources more cheaply or greener based on your preferences

Notice that the speaker never discusses costs. This is the hallmark of green vs. carbon energy debates since the costs of most of the ambitious green proposals makes their implementation economically absurd. Take for instance, the recent customer power outage in California. This was due directly to the decommissioning recently of peaker gas power plants that served 6 million customers. When A/C demand during the heat wave became too great a power draw for the grid there were no batteries or neighboring states with power to spare and 300,000 customers had to be blacked out for an hour. The estimated cost to buy the 12 Gwatts of batteries to remedy this problem is $91 billion for four hours of back-up. Then, to keep the batteries charged another 12 Gwatts of supplementary solar and wind will have to be built to be sure the batteries are charged and ready when the main solar and wind portfolios are too busy to charge, at a cost of another $20 billion. So essentially you need twice as much solar and wind in California to keep and maintain a battery backup of four hours standby. $91 + $20 billion = $111 billion which amortized over a payback period of 10 years is $100/10 = $10 billion per year which must be added to the $41.6 billion that Californians already pay for electricity per year. This mind you is only for four hours backup. Eight hours or 24 hours or God forbid a whole week makes it all infeasible.

Wouldn't it help to spread grids east to west to extend solar "day length"

This channel and content is simply amazing! Thank you!

Its always nice to hear your voice. Good video.

Generate Hydrogen gas with the extra power and store the gas. H2 has the largest "Delta H", thus perfect storge mechanism!

Amazing time to be alive !

As you rightly point out... Electricity is transmitted at relativistic velocity’s.. So when I turn on the lights .....those electrons have been produced, transmitted and converted into photons before I can take my hand off the switch .... thus ... the slowest part of that sequence is my ability to groove on it ....!

Very well explained, super helpful, Super Dave! Thanks

It staggers me that so many people don't appreciate the difference between 'storage' and 'creation'. Batteries don't MAKE energy.

Think what would be possible if we keep our Nuclear Energy. If Germany would have kept 20-40 GW of reliable energy production.

This is the best channel I’ve seen on sustainable energy.

Thank you for helping. #Briansmithenergy #wellbeing #weareguildford. Love, respect and gratitude

THANK YOU FOR THIS CHANNEL! IT CLLEARLY EXPLAINS HOW THE TRANSITION TO A FOSSIL FUEL FREE POWERED SOCIETY WILL TAKE PLACE....FRANK MOELLER

“Use blockchain to track energy production ...”. The cost of per unit energy will be times more.

Hi thanks sir, 1 question can we tap lightening electricity.is it possible.can store to global battry back-up.

Very very good vidéo, i appreciate very much. Good continuation!

@justhaveathink Have u heard of Ecosia? Maybe you'd like to make a video about them. : )

This sounds much like Tesla Autobidder, already in use in some groundbreaking markets.

Dave, 100% agreement. As a rooftop solar array owner, I quickly learned the art of not wasting energy. Real needs are always met by current solar panel generation of kWh's. I am writing from Phoenix, Arizona, where sunlight is abundant and keeps the electrical cost very low, even with frequent air conditioning use.

Can you provide your perspective of the effectiveness, scalability and likely implementation of the storage application being marketed and deployed by Highview Power?

Thank you, a loud and clear information to see an LED light at the end of the grid.

Amazing presentation that managed to skip Norway, pumped hydro and natural gas balancing out renewables.

One of the best methods for storing energy is molten salt. The solar farms in Spain concentrate solar energy with mirrors to heat up a column of molten salt. The heat in the salt is used as needed to generate electricity. Molten salt can also be paired with next gen nuclear or other energy sources.

Great video as always. Looks like great things are happening!

Flow batteries for grid look good

"all participating participants" - Because those non-participating participants are so pesky to pin down.

Energy storage can not control the frequency or phase of grid but can control the voltage supplied to the grid. Also energy storage introduces larger in efficiencies into the grid which will require more generating capacity for the overall grid. Energy storage will allow for cleaner renewables to account for a larger percentage of the generating capacity of the grid and will eliminate the even more inefficient and a major polluter of the fossile fueled peaking stations within the the grid. As of such they probably won't replace conventional power stations but will reduce the amount of conventional stations and above all the very wasteful & major polluters of conventional power stations on the grid. Once someone comes up with a way to maintain a reliable grid phase then a 100% renewable grid will be feasible. Either way the main need in the grid is power storage. We should be perusing power storage more than renewables. You can't put the cart ahead of the horse.

A better explanation might be that resistance in a wire is a function of Amperage. The lower the amperage the lower the resistance and hence the less power wasted in transmitting power. Voltage and Amperage are inversely related to each other for a given Wattage so the higher the voltage the lower the amperage.

Norway where I live have allways had storage and cost of electrical power lower then generated from carbon based sources. That have not eliminated the use of carbon based fuel and will not do so anytime soon. We have the highest prosentage of electric cars, but we still have large areas where that is not really an option. Most homes and commerce has electricety as the main power source inluded heating. I really wish that renewable energy was the answer, but as long as so many will not include nuclear, the low energy density in solar and wind takes a lot more resource to develop then vi have available. All the development in solar and wind the last 20 years has so fare only covered as small part of the increase in electrical power and still it has put a strain on the availability of many raw materials. Just to replace what we use to day more then 20 times more has to be built and that do not include storage and transmission.