Comment by DanielHB
5 hours ago
When I worked with medium-sized scale batteries one of the most surprising use-cases was to use them _together_ with diesel generators. Diesel generators are incredibly wasteful because they don't vary the power output / fuel-consumption very well based on demand.
When you couple a large battery with a diesel generator the generator turns off when the battery is full so the generator always run at optimal efficiency.
I feel like this is one of those things that isn’t surprising to Factorio players
Factorio power generators always run at 100% efficiency, so it is not really the same thing, you still consume the same amount of coal if you have batteries or not.
I guess it applies for nuclear power if you do that jank thing to not put fuel cells unless you need power. But then it is a thermal battery...
Or S-R latched heat tower with accumulator, though it's more of a hassle than it's worth.
We did this many years ago for remote First Nations sites with an energy monitoring startup I worked for - saving them enormous sums of money (and carbon!) in the process. It's actually quite amazing how low some of the low hanging fruit is once you start looking.
Yep, this is the fully hybrid electric path. Generators work much more efficiently when ran at a fixed RPM.
Not just fixed but most engineers design with UL standards so while they advertise maximum output they're all most efficient somewhere around 80% their maximum.
The batteries help the grid because they can maintain a minimum demand the power plants need and compensate for any excess demand that would tax the grid infrastructure.
I've never tested a generator, are they all producing pure sine waves?
Unless its a Chevy Volt. That was a really interesting car in many ways, but they kneecapped fuel efficiency by eating transformer losses twice instead of licensing Toyota patents.
That's literally how hybrid cars work, yeah.