Mike Stasse wanted me to watch another Simon Michaux piece. Thanks Mike - I know know how Michaux came to his odd conclusions about pumped hydro! Remember how mystified I was in my last post as to how he came to his conclusions on Pumped Hydro? On Page 185 he just asserts:-
"Establishing an operating PHS station with an elevated supporting dam is logistically difficult. It cannot be positioned just anywhere. Very specific requirements are needed for the site if the hydroelectric system is to function. This limits the viability of PHS stations to very few geographical locations."
It was unusual for a supposedly academic paper - but there was not even an attempt at a reference. No rationale as to why he concluded this. Maybe in his breathless rush to conclude "We have no viable large scale energy storage!" he simply forgot to fulfil that High School Mathematics mandate called "Show your working!" Maybe he knew if he referenced his study he would be called out for the obvious cherry-picking? I don't know. But unsteady Stasse came to the rescue with this recommendation! It's right here - just click play.
OK - so this is his reference. Finally! Something I could check - written in plain enough English that even I - with my non-technical Social Sciences background - could read! Yes! The study title?
"Energy Storage Systems"
So far so good! And the subtitle?
"Technology Roadmap for Singapore"
(....sound of record needle scratching across the vinyl....)
What the? No - it couldn't be - please say it isn't so! Singapore has some great engineers - no doubt about it. All that city to plan over that small island, and that ocean that wants to mess up their drainage systems. But pumped hydro viability FOR Singapore? Singapore - with a total area of only 733 km 2 and the highest hill only 15 metres above sea level?
OK, what did the study say? Well - first let's remember that Michaux agrees with me that pumped hydro is the cheapest large scale energy storage there is. But what does his Singapore study conclude?
Page 34 concludes:
Large scale technologies such as compressed air, pumped-hydro and thermal energy
storage generally perform better in terms of lower negative environmental impact.
Sounds good so far. So what's the problem? Page 88:
Pumped hydro storage is a mature technology that has been adopted in many countries especially for bulk storage due to its long lifetime, high efficiency and low cost. However, it requires natural resources
like water bodies and natural reservoirs to store water at elevated heights. Creating artificial reservoirs or underwater tunnels or caverns require high investment costs. Also, the energy density of this technology is quite low. So, this technology though mature is not very locally relevant at the near to medium term in Singapore's context.
Boy - that's a surprise! A small island with barely any hills is not the best place for pumped hydro? In other news water is wet. Yet Michaux quite happily rips this study out of context and bangs it down in the middle of his 1000 page "study" to prevent us looking too closely at off-river pumped hydro. He's trying to hide the sheer potential of what he already admits is the best, cheapest way to store grid level electricity.
It reminds me of Oz trying to hide - but instead of throwing the green curtain over a little hack magician, it's Michaux being a hack trying to hide pumped hydro!
So what should Singapore do? There are a variety of storage mechanisms they could use - such as the new Thermal Energy Storage systems that are finding new super-cheap materials (sand, bricks laced with tin, etc) that store heat very cheaply for weeks.
Or Singapore could go nuclear.
Or Singapore could trade electricity and storage with their neighbours. Look at all the off-river Pumped Hydro electric storage potential across the border in Malaysia! This is all browsable in the Professor Andrew Blakers ANU satellite map. Note - I turned the resolution down to NOT include all the 15, 5, and 2 GWh sites. Each dot represents either 50 GWh or 150 GWh for 19 hours sites. There is so much power storage potential here it is ridiculous - and it's all primarily water and gravity!
My advice? Michaux is either too devious or too dumb to bother with. Grab your favourite brew, sit back, and watch this section on pumped hydro from Professor Andrew Blakers. It starts talking about the Australian pumped hydro scene - but pretty soon goes on a world tour. Most continents on earth have about 100 TIMES as many sites as they need. Pick your best 1% and you're done. There's plenty more to say about Michaux's straw-manning of renewables, including the particular renewables plans he decides to critique, etc. But for now - just watch a REAL renewable engineer.
If Michaux worries you - just remember - the whole world is not a small flat island like Singapore. Is it Professor Michaux? 
No comments:
Post a Comment