OPPORTUNITY FOR THE NAVAJO PEOPLE
One of the benefits of doing something like this on tribal land is that the tribe “owns” the land, it is not in private ownership of different individuals. Of course, there are people living on the land, but there are vast areas that are unused. It is much easier for a tribe to section off a part or parts of their unused land to lease out for wind, solar and battery farms than it is to find land in a county or state where they have to deal with dozens of landowners to amass one large parcel.
Another advantage the Navajo have is the vastness of the Navajo Nation at over 27,000 sq miles! It’s about 180 miles from the 500 kV switch at Cameron, AZ to the Four Corners plant near Shiprock, NM. 160 miles from Page to Four Corners and 80 miles Cameron to Page. All on Navajo land except for a short segment of 500 kV line that runs thru Hopi land.
A 10-20 year project to replace this power would create thousands of good paying construction jobs all over the Navajo Nation. It could encourage Navajo who live elsewhere to move back home since jobs would be available. They may have to build housing to house all the workers they’ll need.
If something like this gets up and running, hundreds of decent paying, skilled jobs maintaining power lines, substations, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and everything else associated with the equipment will be created along with other jobs in engineering and administration.
Before anything could be built in the APS CEO’s carbon-free by 2050 plan, lot’s of R & D will need to be done. The Navajo are in a good position here too.
I see it as a great opportunity for them. They have a unique situation with all that transmission capacity and all that land and could become a world leader in this field.
Working with the industry to establish a Renewables Research and Training Park now, and then to use that research to develop state of the art solar and wind generation facilities on the Navajo Nation would give them a shot at doing that. A location near Cameron would be an hour from Flagstaff and 30 minutes from the Navajo’s largest community, Tuba City (pop 8600), which has a few hotel rooms, stores and food. This location is also close to the APS owned Moenkopi 500 kV switch.
The highlighted 215 acres would be a good location for a Renewables Research and Training Park, across from the APS owned Moenkopi 500 kV switch with 3 500 kV lines passing thru. Click here for a larger image. Click here to go to the My Maps view.
Over the next few years, they could partner with APS, other electric utilities, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and other research programs, solar panel manufacturers, battery makers, construction contractors, etc, and provide the land for a large renewables research park and training center, where some of the technology needed could be tested and refined in the field and hands-on training could be provided.
Different ideas for solar farm and substation design could be developed, then refined and tested in the field at the renewables research park. A large research facility like that could attract academic researchers and solar/wind/battery manufacturers R&D departments from around the world.
They could use the renewables research park and training center to partner with local school districts and their county technical colleges for education and training in the renewables fields to encourage Navajo kids (and others) to pursue engineering degrees and other education paths related to renewable energy, then find jobs back home when they graduate. They could also use it to train installation and maintenance workers.
If something like this were to be developed on Navajo land (or any sparsely populated area), I don’t think they have enough people to do all the work! They are gonna need a lot of hardhats.
Navajo leaders could also use what is learned at the facility, to plan for rules (similar to zoning), standards, locations, construction, etc. And figure out how to charge for leases! They would be leasing out sq miles of land (spread out over 27,000 sq miles).
The local electric utility, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA, a utility cooperative owned and operated by the Navajo people) could build and maintain 69kV and 115 kV subtransmission lines to connect remote “Collection and Control” substations to the loop substations at the high voltage transmission lines. This would be like building roads out to new residential subdivisions. Since these transmission lines will have renewable generators with frequency control, they could also power local distribution substations.
Owners of individual wind and solar farms without frequency control would build their own transmission lines to the nearest loop or remote “Collection and Control” substation for their exclusive use. They will be needing ROW for these transmission lines as well as land. The Navajo planning and zoning department will be busy (if they even have one).
If something like this could be built by 2050, it would essentially turn the Navajo Nation into one power plant spread out over 27,000 sq miles capable of providing for all their power needs, the power needs of nearby communities in AZ, CO, NM, and UT and still send Gigawatts of power to Phoenix, Vegas and SoCal 24/7. While using a small fraction of their land.
And it would be open to utility, public and private entities to build solar and wind farms. Plenty of room for everyone. But it needs to be controlled and operated by one entity, like a grid operator, that sets up rules and processes and controls access to the transmission system.
FREQUENCY CONTROL
Besides the “always on” feature of carbon based power plants, these large coal and gas plants provide frequency control using their dispatchable generation. These carbon based power plants will need to be shutdown to meet that carbon free goal. These features will need to be replaced to keep the power grid stable.
Dispatchable power plants can adjust their power output on demand at the request of power grid operators. Today, solar and wind generation does not have this ability. Batteries or some other form of storage is needed, but just putting batteries on a solar farm doesn’t solve the problem. New technology will need to be developed to integrate solar/wind generation with charging and discharging batteries as well as being able to provide frequency response on a split second notice.
Dispatchable power plants have some “spinning reserve” capacity, meaning they can throttle an already running generator’s power output up or down by increasing or decreasing the torque applied to the turbine's rotor. This allows immediate response to the constant changes in supply and demand on a power grid.
Frequency control is critical to the power grid.
While we often speak of electricity supply in terms of raw power inputs and demand – whether from gigawatt-scale nuclear plants, the terawatt hours of annual demand in each U.S. state, or even individual 15 W light bulbs – there is another dimension that is less discussed but no less critical: frequency.
The three main U.S. grids run on a frequency of 60 cycles per second (60 hertz), and European grids on 50 Hz. Any significant deviation from this would wreck electrical equipment, including the appliances of end users, and as a result relays are set to trip if the grid exceeds a relatively narrow band of acceptable frequencies.
These frequencies can rise or fall if there is an imbalance between the supply of power and end user demand. When this happens, the enormous spinning bulk of turbines at hydro, gas, coal, oil, or nuclear plants can help address the problem until more resources are brought online.
This entire system is under threat, as large generators are going offline and being replaced by wind, solar, and batteries which have no large spinning masses. While wind can supply “synthetic inertia” to compensate, this is not the same, and eventually a whole new system will need to be created if we are to transition entire grids to renewable energy resources.
How do you replace 2 GW of power generated by one coal plant 24/7? And the frequency control it provides? How can we combine multiple wind, solar and battery farms into one big entity that functions like a coal or gas fired power plant on the power gird? This will be necessary to go completely carbon free by 2050.
There will need to be a lot of Research & Development.
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Much of the technology needed in utility scale electricity storage is yet to be developed, just starting to be developed or just starting to be used in utility scale implementations.
Today, solar and wind farms are either on or off, very few have batteries installed. If they do have batteries, they are not designed to control the power output from the solar farm. Today there is nothing available for power management of the power coming from solar and wind farms.
DC>AC inverters used by solar panels may be able to be programmed to route power to the transmission line or the batteries, but L-Ion batteries have limitations. One of them is that they can’t charge and discharge at the same time. This limitation would make it hard for them to be used for frequency response.
The ability to control the flow of power onto the transmission lines from the renewable resources along with something similar to the “spinning reserve” provided by gas and coal plants will need to be developed. New hardware and software will need to be developed that can route power to the transmission system or to the batteries or both as needed and draw down and charge batteries as needed.
It will cost billions, but so do large coal or gas fired plants.
Lots of land will be needed. Coal and gas plants are concentrated on an area measured in acres. The amount of land needed for solar generation will be measured in sq miles. These renewable “power plants” would be distributed throughout a wide area, but will occupy a lot of land to produce anywhere near the amount of power needed. There will be a need to develop dual-use solar farms and other ways to maximize land use.
Batteries can also require a lot of land, but they don’t have to. They can be placed under solar panels, or stacked 3 or 4 high on floors in large warehouse buildings or even high rise buildings, like those 245-ft tall boiler buildings at the old Navajo Plant. Too bad they didn’t just dismantle the boilers and leave the building. They could have been refurbished into battery farms, like the Moss Landing Plant.
The first phase of Moss Landing’s energy storage system comprises more than 4,500 stacked battery racks or cabinets, each containing 22 individual battery modules. (Larger image)
For this hypothetical “Master Plan”, I will consider the Navajo Generating Station to be still in operation, even though it was closed in 2019 and is being dismantled. The 500 kV transmission lines running to this plant still seem to be in place. Since this plant was the only power source that was powering these lines, there is a lot of transmission capacity available for wind and solar. These 500 kV transmission lines are a key component in this “plan”.
OVERVIEW- WHAT IS THERE NOW
Google My Maps (Click on the link to open the map. You can then zoom in and scroll around):
Click here for larger Image. Click here for link to the map to zoom and and scroll around.
The red lines are 230 kV transmission lines maintained by the WAPA as are the 345 kV maroon lines. The purple lines are 500 kV lines maintained by Arizona Public Service. These lines form a loop around the Navajo Nation. All the 500 kV lines receive all their power from the closing coal plants and send it to either Phoenix or Las Vegas/SoCal.
The WAPA owned lines are powered by the Glen Canyon Dam. The two 345 kV lines from the dam run to the Pinnacle Peak substation near Phoenix. These are most likely near capacity carrying power from the dam to the Pinnacle Peak substation. The 230 kV line also gets power from the San Juan coal plant. The 230 kV line is considered a regional transmission line and powers large distribution substations all the way to Montrose, CO and beyond.
Substations along these lines are located at Glen Canyon Dam, the Navajo Generating Station, Long House Valley, Kayenta, Shiprock, the San Juan Generating Station, the Four Corners Generating Station and the Arizona Public Service owned Moenkopi 500-kV Switchyard on Navajo land near Cameron, AZ.
There are 3 large coal plants:
There are 4.65 GW of coal plants going offline that these transmission lies served. This means that up to 4.65 GW of power could be transmitted across these lines to the same locations that had been served by the coal plants. That’s a lot of solar panels and wind turbines and it could put the Navajo at the forefront of cutting-edge power generation, storage and transmission technology, if they want to be.
HOW POWER IS TRANSMITTED TODAY
This is how it worked before the Navajo coal plant shutdown. From satellite photos, it does not appear that anything has been done to the transmission lines around the old Navajo plant, but the plant itself is in the process of being torn down.
This diagram shows how it appears that power is transmitted from the coal plants today. Click here for larger Image.
- Power from Glen Canyon Dam is mostly sent out the 345 kV lines to the Pinnacle Peak substation (Phoenix). Some power can be sent out the 230 kV line to Long House Valley, Kayenta, Shiprock and Montrose, CO and beyond. Local sub-transmission lines are powered from these substations.
- Power from the San Juan coal plant is sent a short distance to the Shiprock substation on a 345 kV line. The Shiprock substation can put this power on the 230 kV line. I’m not sure which is the primary power source for the 230 kV line, the dam or the coal plant, but one can provide power to the line if the other is offline.
- The Shiprock substation can also send the power from the dam or the San Juan coal plant to local sub-transmission lines and to the Four Corners substation on a 345 kV line. It can also receive power from Four Corners on the 345 kV line.
- Power from the Four Corners coal plant is sent primarily out two 345 kV lines (I did not trace these lines out, they head southwest, probably to Phoenix) and a 500 kV line that runs across the Navajo Nation to the Moenkopi 500-kV Switchyard near Cameron. It can also send power to the Shiprock substation on the 345 kV line and powers local sub-transmission lines.
- Power from the Navajo plant was sent out three 500 kV lines, one to Nevada Energy’s Crystal Substation and from there to Las Vegas and SoCal. One goes to the Pinnacle Peak substation (Phoenix) and the other connects to the Moenkopi 500-kV Switchyard near Cameron. There does not appear to be any other lines connected at this substation, transmission or local distribution. It appears that all power produced at this plant was sent out of the region on these 3 lines.
- The Moenkopi 500-kV Switchyard near Cameron has two incoming 500 kV lines, one from Four Corners and one from Navajo. There are two 500 kV lines heading out, one to Southern California Edison’s Eldorado Substation near Las Vegas and the other to the Pinnacle Peak substation (Phoenix)
HOW CAN THIS TRANSMISSION SYSTEM BE SETUP IN THE FUTURE?
In order to output Gigawatts of power continuously, 24/7, with the ability to control frequency by ramping power up or down as needed like the coal plants, you will need far more generation capacity than you intend to transmit. For example, if you want to output 3GW 24/7 with the ability to ramp up to 4 GW during peak hours, You could need 12 to 15 GW of wind and solar generation and about 14-15 GWh of battery storage during winter. The ratio of generation to storage would need to be figured out during R & D.
To create a that kind of power with solar, you are going to need square miles of land. If you build it all in one location, then a cloudy or rainy day takes your generation offline.
Power generation distributed around a large region can help with that. But if you do that, you end up with hundreds of independent solar and wind farms scattered everywhere with no way to control how much power and when they put that power on the transmission lines.
What I see can be done on Navajo Nation is to use the existing transmission lines to create a regional high voltage transmission loop. Most of the existing high voltage lines coming from the plants would be used as outlets at the corners to ship power out of the region.
Instead of concentrating all the power generation at the old coal plants, they can be distributed around the entire loop. They are linked together making the transmission loop act as one power generating entity.
In my theoretical Navajo Renewable Power Plant, there would be 8 collection and control substations on the transmission ring that would collect all the power from dozens of solar and wind farms in the nearby areas. Six of the substations currently exist, they would be modified. Two new tap substations would be added near the midpoint of two existing 500 kV lines. Each collection and control substation could eventually grow to provide 500MW to 1GW or more of power continuously.
Large solar and storage farms would be developed around each collection and control center, with transmission lines connecting to other solar and wind farms within a 10 or 20 mile radius from these collection and control centers.
Medium voltage (69 kV or 115 kV) transmission lines could be built from the collection and control centers at the transmission loop to remote collection and control centers. The remote collection and control center would control clusters of solar and wind farms connected to it around it’s local area and send power up to its parent collection and control center as requested by the parent collection and control center. The chain could continue even further away from the transmission loop if transmission capacity on the chain allows.
Here is a diagram with the high voltage transmission changes noted in red
Here is a diagram with the high voltage transmission changes noted in red. Click here for larger Image.
The old coal plants are gone and their transmission substations are modified to support a loop (or ring) design. One high voltage line at the former plants will be used for the transmission loop. Remaining transmission lines at the former plants will be used as the outlets from the loop.
The 230 kV lines coming from the dam pass by the Navajo substation. They can be connected to the Navajo substation so that the dam can send power into the Navajo substation to be sent out on the Navajo substation’s two 500 kV lines The dam can also be used for frequency control on the 230 kV circuit (and possibly the transmission loop) and power the 230 kV as a backup (and possibly the entire loop to power local distribution lines in an emergency, for instance, when you aren’t generating power and the batteries are drained). The 230 kV circuit will be part of the transmission loop.
The Long House Valley, Kenyata and the two new 500 kV substations on the mid points of the 500 kV lines would be able to send power out in either or both directions. The same applies to the substations at the corners with the outlet transmission lines, but in most cases, power generated and stored at these stations would just be going out on the outlet transmission lines, but could be routed into the loop if needed elsewhere.
With the loop setup, power can be routed out to any of the exits at corners from any substation on the loop with power leaving the loop at the Moenkopi, Four Corners, Shiprock and Navajo switch substations. Power can also be sent between loop substations to charge batteries. This will help when one location is having a cloudy day. Sunny locations can send extra generation power from other substations to that substation to store on batteries at that location. It’s 180 miles from Cameron to Shiprock, so if one has a cloudy day, chances are the other will be sunny.
Each of these loop substations would have very large solar and battery farms densely developed on as much land as can be obtained around the substations. You’d probably want these loop substations to be utility owned.
A system like this doesn’t have to be configured in a loop or ring, any single high voltage line running from an old coal or gas plant could be used between the plant and the next transmission switch on the line. This is usually several hundred miles. Power on the line could be sent in both directions, to the original destination of the coal plant or to the site of the old coal plant were it could be put on the remaining high voltage lines. All the transmission lines coming from an old coal plant could be used as well, combining single lines into a radial system. All “Collection & Control” Substations would be linked to together to work as one on all the lines. Primary direction of power would be to the original destination of the line, but power could be sent back to the old plant site to route out on other lines that need it. You’d build “Collection & Control” Substations at one or two points on the line depending on length and a big one at the location of the old coal or gas plant. It would work the same way as the loop system, but with less options to route power.
In my example case, the Navajo already have the lines in place to make a loop system, so may as well maximize routing options and use them in a loop.
COLLECTION AND CONTROL SUBSTATIONS
The loop substations would essential be “Collection & Control” substations . They don’t exist yet.
As Jeff Guldner, CEO of Arizona Public Service said when talking about their new goal of going 100% carbon free by 2050:
Jeff Guldner, the new CEO of Arizona’s biggest utility, said the plan is ambitious and will require technology not currently available. But by setting the goal, the company will move in the right direction
We have collection substations at solar and wind farms today, but these simply collect the power from turbines or the inverters attached to solar panels, steps it up to a higher voltage and transmits it to a substation attached to a transmission line. There is no control other than on or off.
Loop substations could have remote “Collection & Control” Substations attached to them. These would function the same way as the loop substations, except they would transmit power out to the loop substation instead of the high voltage transmission loop. This would allow generation and storage to be moved further and further away from the transmission loop, allowing for a larger region to be used. Loop substations should be owned by a utility.
All loop and remote “Collection & Control” Substations would also have “dumb” wind farms and small solar farms connected to them. These would use the standard Collection Substations used today, they send power out, on or off, no control. The “Collection & Control” Substation those “dumb” farms are connected to would control power out into the next level in system.
The “Collection & Control” Substations are necessary to keep the connections to the high voltage transmission lines to a minimum, while allowing for scalability, the ability to keep growing the system further and further out from the transmission line until you reach capacity of the loop transmission line and also be able to provide frequency control on the high voltage and collection transmission lines.
The remote “Collection & Control” Substations could be privately owned or owned by a utility, but power output and onsite storage needs to be controlled by the grid operator.
Individual solar and wind farms could be privately owned, but they all they do is provide power and storage for this loop systems. Utilities and the grid operators manage the loop and “Collection & Control” Substations.
Solar farms would be required to have battery storage onsite. They will want to consider minimizing land usage for the batteries by building large buildings and stacking them on top of each other, even building a high-rise type structure.
Existing and dual-use solar farms would be exempt from the battery requirement. Dual-use solar farms would be using the land below the solar panels for other purposes like “Agrivoltaics” (making farm or grazing land under elevated panels) and other dual use purposes. There would be no room for batteries. Retrofitting existing farms may not be possible due to space limitations.
Since wind power is generated as AC power, batteries are not recommended in this setup. They would send power as they create it to a loop or remote “Collection & Control” Substations, which would decide whether to transmit that AC power out to the transmission line or route it to storage.
All the “Collection & Control” Substations and the loop substations would be controlled by a central control computer. The loop substations would each act as independent power plants putting power on the transmission loop, but to the transmission grid operators, the entire transmission loop, along with all the wind, solar and battery farms attached to it, is just one big power plant.
Loop and remote “Collection & Control” Substations are basically the same thing. For simplicity, I’ll refer to the “Collection & Control” Substations at the major transmission line as a “Loop” substations when something applies specifically to them, even though they could be on a single line or in a radial line configuration. And I’ll specify remote “Collection & Control” Substations if it applies specifically to them or just “Collection & Control” Substations if it applies to both.
The “Collection and Control” substations would be where power is managed for transmission. It would send power out on the transmission line or route it to storage and replace the “Spinning Reverse” frequency control the large gas, coal and hydro power provide.
Here is a diagram of how I think these “Collection and Control” substations could be setup, using technology available today (lot’s of R&D still needed):
“Collection and Control” substation. Click here for larger Image.
COLLECTION AND CONTROL SYSTEM
The Collection and Control System is a piece that does not exist yet. There needs to be a way to route specific amounts of power arriving into the station to the AC transmission line or to batteries. It may be as simple as telling the batteries to draw a certain amount of power from the incoming bus and transmit out whatever the batteries don’t draw off. Perhaps existing DC>AC inverters can be modified to route specified amounts of DC power coming in from solar panels to DC storage or convert it to AC for transmission. This is the “Routing Hardware” in the diagram above. Still to be developed, but existing technology may be able to be modified to do it.
No matter what the hardware solution is, software to control it all will also need to be developed.
TRANSMISSION
“Collection and Control” substations would have transmission hardware similar to what gas and coal power plants and solar/wind farm collection substations have today (voltage step up transformers, etc). Loop substations would feed into a transmission switch substation. Remote “Collection and Control” substations would feed into another “Collection and Control” substation.
VANADIUM REDOX FLOW BATTERIES (VRFB) FOR FREQUENCY CONTROL
VANADIUM REDOX FLOW BATTERY (VRFB). Click here for larger image.
The “Collection and Control” substations would control how much power is placed on the transmission line at any given time and route excess power to storage or draw from storage when needed using a combination of the “Routing Hardware” and a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB).
The VRFB would essentially be the throttle controlling frequency, simulating the “spinning reserve” of the turbine based power plants. VRFBs have milliseconds response times and can adjusting the power being output up or down limited to the output size of the battery.
A drawback to the VRFBs is that they need vast quantities of electrolyte liquids for energy storage and operation temperature ranges are limited. But they have very fast response times and can charge and discharge at the same time. The number of charging cycles are very high and they are expected to last for a 30 year lifespan. They are also scalable.
The lack of degradation and their ability to cycle multiple times each day means that VFBs have a very low marginal cost per cycle, making them ideal for any application requiring high utilisation (or capacity factor). Examples of these include; using VFBs to ‘shift’ excess solar or wind power, wholesale trading on day-ahead electricity markets and/or ‘stacking’ together multiple different revenue streams on a single asset.
A VRFB used for frequency control does not have to have much long-term storage, an hour or even less would do. But it does need to have significant output power. For example, a 100 MW/100 MWh VRFB could be used for frequency control at the “Collection and Control” substations at the transmission loop. A 20 MW/20 MWh VRFB could be used for frequency control at the “Collection and Control” substations. The frequency control VRFB would be installed between the Routing Hardware and the Generator Transmission hardware
VRFB development time line. Click here for a large image
VRFBs have been around for a while and Research and Development is ongoing. The technology is constantly improving.
Improvements in electrolytes have increased power density (more power stored per volume) as well as increased the operating temperature. Costs are coming down. Performance is similar to L-Ion. The main issue today is they are about twice as expensive upfront as L-Ion batteries. As the technology improves and more utility scale VRFBs are implemented, costs will come down and be more in line with L-Ion costs.
Due to their limitations, L-Ion batteries cannot be used for frequency control. The frequency control VRFB would be configured to charge and discharge at the same time. It can store incoming power in storage if it needs to throttle down, or draw power from storage to throttle up.
The development of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy is limited by their inherently random and intermittent nature. However, vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) comprise a cost- and energy-efficient, long-life energy storage technology that can store and smoothly output power from renewable energy sources.
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A research group led by Prof. Li Xianfeng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new generation of VFB stack technology that offers low cost and high power density. The group's test results showed stack energy efficiency exceeding 81%. The stack ran at a constant power of 30 kW and showed no capacity decay after 100 cycles.
World’s largest battery: 200MW/800MWh vanadium flow battery – site work ongoing . A 200MW/800MWh vanadium flow battery in Dalian, China. Click here for larger image.
China is leading the way with utility scale VRFB implementations. They are building a very large utility scale 200MW/800MWh vanadium flow battery in Dalian, China. Construction started in 2017 and was supposed to be complete in 2020. The pandemic slowed it down and it is now expected to be completed this year.
China started building battery storage in 2017 and continues to develop the technology while building more capacity. They are starting to combine smaller units with solar farms.
Large-scale Vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) technology looks set to be deployed at a 100MW solar energy power plant in China, two years after a smaller-scale demonstration project was commissioned in the region.
Canada-headquartered vertically-integrated technology provider VRB Energy said that the solar PV power station will be integrated with a 100MW / 500MWh (five-hour duration) battery that the company is developing in Xiangyang, in China’s Hubei Province.
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Since the September 2017 publication of the country’s first high-level strategy and policy document on energy storage, China has been keen on getting several huge vanadium flow battery projects deployed. The 100MW / 500MWh project for VRB Energy was among those
At this time, energy loss in battery storage is pretty high when you factor it the power needed to run the battery, energy lost in storage, and conversion from AC to DC and back. They must be made more efficient along with more efficient AC/DC converters.
Power loss on AC/DC conversion is a reason why my diagram has solar panels directly feeding batteries with DC power and the “Routing Hardware” sending most AC power right onto the transmission line with the VRFB handling only enough of the power flow to provide flow control. If it is generated as AC power (wind) or already converted from batteries to AC power, you do not want to route that power into batteries unless you have to.
I’ll get more into batteries and other technology in another diary.
ALL THIS SOUNDS GREAT! LET’S START BUILDING IT NOW!!!
Hold on! It’s going to take us 5-10 years to get to the point where any of this can be built. There is still a lot of R&D to do to improve efficiencies in power conversion and storage. It will be hard enough to generate enough renewable power to fill all the storage needed. If you only get 70-75% of what you put into storage back out, it will be even harder, and it will make the cost of power drawn from storage even more expensive. Vast improvements are needed.
In the meantime, planning needs to get underway to get ready for the influx of development that will occur everywhere. You don’t want a gold rush of people coming in and starting to put wind and solar farms haphazardly onto transmission lines, especially if they have no frequency control.
In the Navajo’s situation, offering up land for a large renewables research and training facility would get them involved in the process and help with that planning. The research solar farm can be used to build prototypes and tweak them, as well as a place to test refinements to solar panels and other equipment needed. Most research would be offsite, but this would be a place for hands on, integrated testing and development.
Within 3-5 years, they could start building out smaller scale solar and wind farms with the intention of tying them into the larger system being developed at the research solar farm. With 27,000 sq miles of land and lots of sun, the Navajo are in a position to be world leaders in solar electric generation, storage and transmission.
I’m working on another diary to review some of the existing technology and technology still in development that could be refined and used in this “power plant”. It won’t be easy to get off of carbon based generation.
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