N.E. Clean Power Connect in Maine - Should we care ?

[peakbagger]

Mostly off topic, but the Winter/Spring 2022 Appalachia has an article summarizing the "nine-year fight" against Northern Pass. It's mostly a victory lap story for the AMC. They mention the Clean Energy Connect in passing at the end of the article as the next stage of the battle.

I have been waiting for someone to come out with a book on the Northern Pass campaign. i think the personalities and twists and turns would provide plenty of background for a book.

 

[peakbagger]

Hydro Quebec temporarily shut down construction on the Canadian side of the line today.

 

[peakbagger]

The news this evening reported that Avangrid, CMP's owner has sued to overturn the second referendum. They successfully overturned to the first referendum. I do not believe the other lawsuit regarding the Bureau of Public Lands violating state law to sell a right of way to the project has been resolved. The utility claimed that they have work around for this issue but two other organizations claim to own development easements on the alternative routing.

 

[peakbagger]

Back in the news, two related cases in front of Maine Supreme Court

https://bangordailynews.com/2022/05...projects-fate-rests-with-maine-supreme-court/

 

[peakbagger]

The appeal of the environmental permit was voted down

https://www.mainepublic.org/environ...board-rejects-appeals-of-cmp-corridor-permits

This was linked to the supreme court cases which have yet to be ruled on.

Given the push for a national Climate Emergency designation, it would be interesting to see if Mass tries to get the FERC to overrule the state referendums to allow the line to be built. That power for critical electrical infrastructure projects was given to FERC for many years but it really has not been used often and generally had been litigated all the way to the supreme court.

 

[TEO]

I'm not sure about that, but let me ask you a question: What kind of power plant would you rather have 20 miles down the road from you; wood/refuse, oil, natural gas, or nuclear? I'm discounting solar and wind since they don't produce power 24/7

Huh? What does producing power 24/7 have to do with anything? You know there is something called a battery, which can store energy, and we're still in the infancy of battery technology.

 

[rocket21]

Huh? What does producing power 24/7 have to do with anything?

Keeping the lights on and preventing people from freezing to death. Because...

we're still in the infancy of battery technology.

 

[CaptCaper]

Huh? What does producing power 24/7 have to do with anything? You know there is something called a battery, which can store energy, and we're still in the infancy of battery technology.

A battery is still a battery. They haven't been able to transform it much at all since it's inception.

 

[TEO]

Keeping the lights on and preventing people from freezing to death. Because...

So much for "America exceptionalism," huh? Extreme weather events caused by anthropogenic climate change are a far greater risk.

A battery is still a battery. They haven't been able to transform it much at all since it's inception.

Tell that to someone using a smart phone, laptop, or driving an electric car.

 

[peakbagger]

CMP in Maine has been deploying grid size batteries for a couple of years as a cost-effective solution to local grid congestion. Australia deployed a 300 MW/450 MWH battery pack a couple of years ago. California is deploying big batteries combined with natural gas peaker plants and is actively deploying large standalone grid batteries. The biggest thing slowing down installing batteries and renewables these days are the utilities lack of resources to review the interconnection of the these power sources to the grid. The grid is a radial grid designed for moving power one way from big central power rather than distributed power. I see that locally that Coos country can produce far more renewable power than it can send out on the New England Grid. It can take up to 3 years to get permission to interconnect new generation in some areas. New generation is still needed, but all CPC does is greenwash power from an underutilized gas fired power plant in Three Rivers Quebec and rebrand it as green so Mass can meet its RPS goals. Far better to put in new large scale renewable like offshore wind locally.

 

[maineguy]

You know there is something called a battery, which can store energy

Thanks...I guess I'm lucky there weren't any battery questions on my PE License exam

 

[B the Hiker]

So much for "America exceptionalism," huh? Extreme weather events caused by anthropogenic climate change are a far greater risk.

Tell that to someone using a smart phone, laptop, or driving an electric car.

People can disagree about politics, climate change is existential.

 

[maineguy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

George Carlin...RIP

 

[skiguy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

George Carlin...RIP

We would also not need to be worried about renewable energy if we didn't have so much "Stuff" either. Illicit language warning! https://youtu.be/MvgN5gCuLac

 

[TCD]

Reality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Now if you REALLY WANT intermittent power sources for the grid, go ahead. I have no problem with this. But be ready to tear up large areas of mountainsides for pumped storage facilities. Nothing else is anywhere near ready.

https://www.dw.com/en/batteries-are-hitting-physical-limits/a-19449790

Batteries are hitting physical (physics, not technology) limits. The best lithium batteries have one one-hundredth the energy density of gasoline. Even the touted theoretical "air battery" will have only one tenth the energy density of gasoline.

 

[egilbe]

I love my Lifepo4 batteries in my off grid trailer. 400AH lasts me a couple days and the sun powers it all. In two years it will have paid for itself and then its saving me money on not paying CMP any more money.

 

[skiguy]

Reality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Now if you REALLY WANT intermittent power sources for the grid, go ahead. I have no problem with this. But be ready to tear up large areas of mountainsides for pumped storage facilities. Nothing else is anywhere near ready.

https://www.dw.com/en/batteries-are-hitting-physical-limits/a-19449790

Batteries are hitting physical (physics, not technology) limits. The best lithium batteries have one one-hundredth the energy density of gasoline. Even the touted theoretical "air battery" will have only one tenth the energy density of gasoline.

These are some interesting links. The actual production of batteries, lifetime of the batteries and recycling of batteries is and will be continually challenging. From reading the link below it is evident that most essential elements are mined outside the United States which will most likely result if it has not also an eventual plethora of Socioeconomic and political challenges on a global scale. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8390110/

 

[peakbagger]

Lot of different emerging battery tech using less strategic materials coming out soon. One of the unforeseen outcomes of developing battery tech so rapidly for cars is that in the short term, high power density battery technology is being used in places where high density is not needed like storage. The early Tesla home batteries use the same batteries as cars which are a resource intensive design for high power density. They also like the burn explosively and fire departments really dislike them (I have 1.6 MWhr Powerwall based battery in the process of being commissioned in Mass and the fire requirements are not easy to meet). The new Tesla Megapacks and competitors use a Lithium Polymer battery, slightly lower power density but far more forgiving. The LiPo batteries use far less strategic materials.

I had two zinc based flow batteries approved in Mass for storage applications, but both did not get built due to client finances (healthcare is a rough business). The recirculating liquid in the battery could be drank, although not recomended. Many bets are that Lithium based batteries are just a short term thing, that is why folks like Elon Musk are begging other firms to mine it, he doesnt want to get tied into mining knowing that the investment could be worthless in less than 10 years.

Bill Gates and friends spent a couple of 100 million on Aquion batteries that used salt water for electrolyte and went bankrupt, GE built a 500 million dollar plant in upstate NY to build a new style sodium sulfur battery (Durathon) and scrapped the plant before going into production. Like any new technological growth spurt, hindsight is twenty twenty but anyone who invests now is one step away from gambling on what wlll be the ultimate battery tech. My guess is the solid state tech is the next big one but I sure do not invest my money in it.

 

[TCD]

Thanks, Peakbagger. I'm familiar with the GE debacle. They did get into production, but the batteries were too fragile. And they were never really intended for grid support use (not NEARLY enough energy storage, as with all batteries). These were mostly planned for backup power for cell towers in Africa, where the grid is super unreliable with frequent outages. The market never took off. The whole battery thing is just a distraction from the need for continuous baseload power.

 

[peakbagger]

As long as we have a daily load curve https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/ I think storage has a lot of use. Far better to generate less power using more efficient baseload power plants 24/7 and store for the daytime peaks. Thursday may be record power demand day this week and as the demand goes up, the less efficient generation will go online to meet the peak. Mass has a "clean peak" standard to deal with the peaks using batteries versus cranking up simple cycle peakers (AKA jets). Even with wire to wire efficiency loss power plants run better at night due to lower ambient temps so best run them to charge up the batteries for daytime use which are less affected by ambient temps.