[LDES-technology] Piece from Jesse Jenkins

[Kittner, Noah]

I think the article misses on the potential technological innovation that could occur from California leading in long-duration storage (and not necessarily operating as a closed state system).

They basically define clean firm power as natural gas with CCS – assuming carbon can be permanently stored underground and safely stored underground at a low cost--  or nuclear or geothermal.

Personally, I think that the potential for further cost reductions in new types of storage technologies actually offers more diversity/flexibility in the future than betting heavily on cost reductions for carbon capture and storage, which to me poses its own risks. Previous studies investigating learning rates for CCS and nuclear have identified difficulties, whereas studies looking into technological learning for storage are much more optimistic. See Reiner 2016, for CCS as an example.

The authors also advocate for more new-generation nuclear projects. While they may provide low-carbon electricity, right now nuclear is costly and takes a long time to plan and permit. So even if NuScale becomes successful in the pilot plant by 2026 in Idaho, it would take even longer to plan and permit in California. Look at high speed rail as an example for permitting.

The flexibility and modularity of different storage technologies could offer unstated advantages over CCS and nuclear –options to site new projects in a wider variety of locations and adjust the size.

Ultimately though, it may come down to more of a question of political will for the “clean firm power” to become longer term technological winners. There needs to be support for CCS and nuclear.

What sticks out to me is from the recent study by Ziegler and Trancik, which highlights rapid innovation and cost declines witnessed for battery storage and their conclusion “These rates also suggest that battery technologies developed for stationary applications, where
restrictions on volume and mass are relaxed, might achieve faster cost declines, though engineering-based mechanistic cost modeling is required to further characterize this potential.”

Just my thoughts.

Noah



From: ldes-technology <ldes-technology-bounces at lists.ucmerced.edu> on behalf of Sarah Kurtz <skurtz at ucmerced.edu>
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 2021 at 2:59 PM
To: ldes-coremodel at lists.ucmerced.edu <ldes-coremodel at lists.ucmerced.edu>
Cc: ldes-technology at lists.ucmerced.edu <ldes-technology at lists.ucmerced.edu>
Subject: [LDES-technology] Piece from Jesse Jenkins
You may have joined us last fall for a presentation from Jesse Jenkins. He and his set of collaborators are making the case for “Clean Firm Power”

As we discussed before, this is betting on the success of carbon capture and sequestration, as we discussed with Julio Friedmann.  But, in this piece, they go even further, concluding:

California’s government could require utilities to build some form of clean firm power now and allow cost recovery for their implementation.
Long duration storage may provide another useful arrow in the quiver, but systems with clean firm power remain meaningfully less expensive.

However, they aren’t very clear about exactly what they have in mind, but they are clear that the state should start funding “Clean firm power” over “Long duration energy storage”. Would we agree?

https://issues.org/california-decarbonizing-power-wind-solar-nuclear-gas/
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