Are ultra high efficiency Heat Pumps a possibility to transfer more or multiply excess e-energy into the thermal heat storage unit?

Harvey, this seems like a good application of solar energy from a power tower. Avoid the conversion to electricity until needed late in the day. Then use the gas turbine.

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Clett it is still an early estimate. I think the future of massive seasonal renewable energy storage is either hydrogen in old gas fields or liquid hydrogen in buried and insulated cryogenic tanks or thermal storage in sand. It may be a combination of all three.

EP I would hardly imaging that 10 cents for long-term storage (over 2 days) of a kwh is an issue when you only need to use such stored energy from thermal heat sinks for probably 10% of your total annual consumption of electricity. Probably 55% of solar and wind power need not be stored at all but can be used directly. And the remaining 35% of the annual electricity consumption can use short-term storage (less than 2 days) using lower cost high cycle life batteries costing about 130 USD per kwh at the pack level in 2030. With 5000 cycles that is 2.6 cents for battery storage per kwh (=130/5000).

The average cost of solar and wind power is going below 3 cents per kwh by 2030. That is lower that any fossil fuel or nuclear. Add 3 more cents for grid services and storage services and 6 cents per kwh will be what the average electricity consumer will pay for 100% pollution free electricity by 2030. We can't use nuclear and fossils for electricity production as they both pollute and we are going towards a zero pollution society. Pollution will be an issue only for primitive and poor civilizations. It will not be accepted in future western societies.

EP forget about off-shore wind power. It is niche and is about 2 to 3 times as expensive as onshore wind power and is primarily promoted by the oil and gas industry that wants to tap into green funds by building expensive offshore platforms with wind turbines on top of it. Offshore wind power is BS and a pipedream IMO. Less than 2GW of offshore wind power is build per year compared to about 50Gw of onshore wind power. Wind power cost onshore in the USA for new turbines is about 5 cent per kwh without subsidies. By 2030 it will be about 3 cents per kwh for new turbines onshore. Utility scale solar PV is about 10 cents today in southern California. I think 3 cents per kwh is possible for solar there by 2030 or maybe 2040.

Tesla's 50Gwh battery factory will sell backup batteries for renewable for about 200 USD per kwh and build 20 more 50Gwh factories and the price for battery backup will drop to 130 USD at the pack level. Same price for electric cars. I think that by 2030 there will be about 20 50GWh factories in operation worldwide.

EP forget about off-shore wind power. It is niche and is about 2 to 3 times as expensive as onshore wind power

The UK doesn't have nearly enough on-shore resources, even if they were willing to pollute their viewscapes and mince their raptors.  Throwing in 50% losses just adds insult to injury.

about 50Gw of onshore wind power.

Compared to almost 1 TW of thermal and hydro in the USA alone.

Wind power cost onshore in the USA for new turbines is about 5 cent per kwh without subsidies.

That is not dispatchable power.  That is the intermittent input from which you hope Siemens' thermal-storage scheme can power a real grid.  After 50% losses in storage you have 10¢/kWh, plus O&M and amortization of the storage system.

Tesla's 50Gwh battery factory will sell backup batteries for renewable for about 200 USD per kwh

Average US grid load:  ~450 GW.
Typical US electric power consumption:  1.08e10 kWh/day.
Cost of 2 days' storage at $200/kWh:  $2.16 TRILLION.

Amount of nuclear generation $2.16 trillion will buy at $6000/kW:  360 GW.  In other words, for the price of 2 days worth of PowerWalls, you could nuclearize most of the remaining generation of the USA and not have to worry about unreliable sources like wind at all.

I think that by 2030 there will be about 20 50GWh factories in operation worldwide.

It would take 9 of them running for a year to produce a 1-hour backup for the USA.  I'd much rather have them in cars, displacing petroleum, than sitting on walls ready for the sun to go down (which happens every day).

There will never be a day in the US where solar, wind and hydro produces 0%.

I'm impressed that you were able to get FIVE falsehoods, misleading factoids and critical omissions into one sentence.  It's a feat worthy of a professional propagandist.

1. Solar goes to zero at night, every night.  Even units with thermal storage are not designed to run overnight.  There are also seasonal deficits in e.g. winter.
2. Wind can go to zero or near-zero not just for hours but for weeks.  All the wind farms in the BPA area, spanning nearly 1000 km, had zero or minimal output for 13 days in 2014.  We can be certain that winds near that zone were also sub-par for the same period.
3. Hydro produces less than 7% of US electric power, and a far smaller fraction of total energy.  As a way of evening out major fluctuations in other generation on the scale of seasons, it is hopelessly inadequate.
4. The problem doesn't begin at 0%, it begins whenever generation falls short of need and storage begins depleting.  That is going to include every calm evening.
5. Having power elsewhere in the USA is useless unless "elsewhere" has
   • a surplus to share,
   • sufficient to address your deficit, and
   • enough transmission capacity in between to get it there.
   The transmission part alone is a massive infrastructure project with huge legal obstacles.

for two days or 48 hours of battery backup we only need 12 hours max at full average load.

And when the wind takes 2 weeks of vacation in January, when the sun is also working a very light schedule, what do you need then?

Do you wonder why I think "renewables" advocates are nuts?  It's because digging even slightly into their claims shows that they are delusional, if not full-blown insane.  If you're not getting paid to write this, you're crazy; if you are, you're despicable.

Germany is planning to store up to 200 TWh of excess wind and solar energy, via power-to-gas, in their existing natural gas network as part of the energiewende. That's enough to cover 3 weeks worth of total national primary energy requirements (transport, heating and electricity).

EP you are creating a problem that does not exist. It is entirely possible to deal with the intermittency of renewable wind, solar and hydro and not spend more than running on either nuclear or fossils that have huge external expenses because of their not paid for pollution. No nuclear power plant could be build if it had to be fully self-insured also being liable for worst case accidents that could make large parts of an entire nation inhabitable for hundreds of years. And then you have the problem of nuclear companies producing loads of nuclear waste that need to be safely stored for 1000s of years. This will be an annual expense for thousands of years after they have stopped generating any power and revenue to pay for that. No thanks putting that burden on future generations. It is simply immoral.

The externalities of fossils are even more obvious with 7 million people that dies prematurely every year because of air pollution from fossil fuel burning. So fission nuclear and fossils are not an option for the future energy supply. Fusion nuclear and renewable are the only way forward.

You overlook the fact that solar and wind power is a constant energy resource for all of the planet as 50% of the planet is always energised by the fusion reactor at the centre of our solar system. Global power lines (using superconductors) could do the trick. The batteries that are used for vehicles are already paid for so there is no extra expense here. You could have been a little clever and said that 300 million vehicles with 100kwh battery packs on average are not needed in the future because all these vehicles will be fully autonomous and therefore only about 75 million are needed to do the same transportation as 300 million non-autonomous vehicles. 75 million with 100kwh each will still give use 25kwh per person in America or about one full day of electric use or 4 days when power lines and variable electricity prices are considered. Stationary grid storage could add another 25kwh per person so we get 2 days of full load and 8 days of managed storage from batteries, grid transport and variable prices. That is still 50kwh per person or 6500 USD per person (=50*130) or 325 USD per year for 20 years for part of an infrastructure that can make fossils or nuclear fission redundant. It is certainly not impossible in a wealthy society. So we need 300 years of 50Gwh plant years to make 50kwh per person in the USA. That is the steady state production of 15 of those 50GWh plants assuming 20 years average life before recycling of those batteries. So what? What is the problem? Just build it.

Sweden is already closing their nuclear power plants because they are uneconomical not because they have been ordered to do so. The Swedish nuclear power plants are all written off so what makes them uneconomical is maintenance, fuel and waste handling. The Scandinavian grid is getting more renewable capacity every year and the average inflation adjusted prices in the grid is going down. That is killing nuclear in Sweden. When the USA also get a lot of renewable capacity it will also make the US nuclear uneconomical.

EP you are creating a problem that does not exist. It is entirely possible to deal with the intermittency of renewable wind, solar and hydro and not spend more than running on either nuclear or fossils

You keep using the label "renewable" to describe impoundment-fed hydro (dispatchable), wind and PV (both highly unreliable) which have nothing in common except the label.  Further, you provide no evidence.  I keep asking people to show me ANYWHERE that a fossil-dominated grid has been decarbonized (say, to 100 gCO2/kWh) by substituting wind and solar, and maintains the ability to supply wind and solar hardware to expand the system.  ANYWHERE.

Where is this being done?  NOWHERE.  Most of the "renewable" PV panels are coming from China, which is choking on coal emissions.

It isn't being done anywhere because it ISN'T possible.  You have a few villages in India and Nepal and Pacific islands where PV and batteries have mostly replaced diesel generators.  These places can scarcely support domestic refrigerators, and don't have the industry to so much as build a sewing machine.

Meanwhile, France soldiers along with its 78%-nuclear, 40 gCO2/kWh grid with some of the cheapest electric rates in Europe while Germany spews 460 grams and prides itself on its virtue because it intends to shut down all its non-emitting base load plants.

You overlook the fact that solar and wind power is a constant energy resource for all of the planet as 50% of the planet is always energised by the fusion reactor at the centre of our solar system. Global power lines (using superconductors) could do the trick.

In other words, use the prospect of technology we don't have and couldn't afford anyway to tell Germans that someday solar farms bobbing in the South Pacific will keep their houses bright and warm on frigid January nights, while switching the existing grid away from non-emitting sources to lignite.

Insane or evil, pick one.

That's a "moving of the goalpost" attempt there.

There isn't going to be some non-fossil non-nuclear example before it exists, especially if that grid has already built nuclear and fossil plants (very likely). That's like insisting on "evidence" in 1955 on a grid that is mostly nuclear before any such thing existed yet. It's unreasonable.

Its been established gas turbines can back any capacity issues for an extremely cheap capital cost (1/14th of nuclear in the USA/Europe).

Next question - does wind and/or solar provide power at a cheaper cost in $/MWh than nuclear? Plenty of markets yes, and where it doesn't, it certainly will in as little as 5 years.

Next question. What about the eventual night time issue?

Is there enough already built plants (fossil+nuclear+hydro) to cover nighttime? If the answer is yes, you either slowly ratchet up your carbon prices or wait until old coal plants cost to much to fix.

Years later when the cost/benefit warrants it....

You start buying/building intraday storage to store cheap wind and solar. Not a day before. Probably 10 years later.

And you go past intraday to perhaps 2 days (to store spare cheap power from the weekend nadir) assuming the cost warrants it et. cetera. Maybe not - it well could be just overbuilding wind and solar by multiple times and sticking with intraday storage is the cheaper result. It all depends on what the price ends up 10 years later.

Really no big deal at all, because if you're using 15% gas for elecricity by TWh to back bad solar+wind days, it just doesn't matter. Plant some trees to compensate or use biomethane. Or don't. You've still reduced your emissions by 85% or so, which is plenty.

Since it looks like my last comment isn't getting out of moderation jail any time soon, I'm going to re-write and re-post.

Back in his role as "Mr. Apples Equal Oranges" is NewtonPulsifer!

Simple cycle natural gas costs $0.25 per watt when you convert an old coal plant, $0.60 new.

Comparing incommensurables.  A converted coal plant is not simple-cycle.  Neither option is emission-free.  You put forth two "options" that cannot do what they're supposed to be an alternative to.

Fuel cost would be in the big picture negligible (say 5 cents per kilowatt-hour in the UK fuel price at $7 per mmBTU), as you're running these 4% of the year ($150 million in fuel costs).

Numbers just pulled out of your b***.