LinkedIn weirdness

[Keith Henson]

I posted this on LinkedIn.

The biggest problem with renewable energy is large scale, long term storage.

"A Victorian gas-making technology might solve this problem. About
1860, they made gas by burning coke till it got white hot, then
shutting off the air and blowing steam through the mass of coke. This
made CO and hydrogen, which was distributed as town gas.

"For carbon, we can use municipal waste, which is 40% carbon. For
heat, renewable electricity from wind or solar. 4 MWh will vaporize a
ton of carbon in steam, making about 11 MWh of syngas. The syngas can
be stored and then burned in a combined cycle turbine, giving over 6
MWh of electricity.

"This scales to a rather large size. LA makes 100,000 tons per day, of
which 40% is carbon. Run 1/3rd of the day, the gasifiers could absorb
20 GW, producing 240 GWh of syngas. This sounds like a lot until you
realize California is putting in 13 GW over the canals."

According to LinkedIn, almost 1000 people read it, including people in
the utility industry. There were no comments except my comment,
giving my email. No emails.

Is the idea so strange that people can't understand? 75 years ago,
the US made town gas from coke at a similar scale. Is invoking
chemical reactions from the Victorian era simply rejected?

Any thoughts on the results? I am mystified.

Keith

PS March 24, I am giving a talk on this topic to the local IEEE
chapter. If it is not closed, I will let you know.

[Opener of the Way]

I don't get on LinkedIn. Don't have anything to do with Reid Hoffman.

With regard to substituting carbon from landfill garbage, how do you maintain bed temperature with air blasts? Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia were removed from town gas before it could be used for residential use in the olde days. One would expect more and more varied impurities. 

Town gas was supplanted by natural gas which is much cheaper. Natural gas is primordial and widely found in the universe around us as well as here on Earth. A cost analysis would be a useful refinement for your proposal. Certainly there are benefits from your approach.

I should like to see more details on this idea. Do you have a white paper on it?

Sincerely,

Jim

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[Paul Werbos]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2026, 03:19 Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

I posted this on LinkedIn.

The biggest problem with renewable energy is large scale, long term storage.

No, it is ignorance by energy decisionskers of the thermal storage technologies developed and proven in chile, and US and Persian Gulf

Technologies interfacing with it.

[Geoffrey Landis]

I'd be a little dubious about this process. Electrical energy is a very high quality form of energy, and you never want to convert high quality energy into low quality energy if you can help it.. Looking at the process you outline, you're converting electrical energy into heat energy, and the heat energy into chemical energy, which you store. Then, to get the energy back, you burn the chemicals to convert chemical energy into heat energy, convert the heat energy into mechanical energy, and then convert the mechanical energy back into electrical energy. Your end to end energy efficiency is going to be terrible. Depends on your temperatures, of course, but just as a quick estimate I'll guess you'd be hard put to do better than maybe 30% round-trip energy efficiency with this process

Batteries, on the other hand, are getting better every year, and have no problem getting 90% round-trip efficiency.

--

Geoff

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2026 at 3:09 PM Geoffrey Landis
<geoffre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd be a little dubious about this process. Electrical energy is a very high quality form of energy, and you never want to convert high quality energy into low quality energy if you can help it.. Looking at the process you outline, you're converting electrical energy into heat energy, and the heat energy into chemical energy, which you store. Then, to get the energy back, you burn the chemicals to convert chemical energy into heat energy, convert the heat energy into mechanical energy, and then convert the mechanical energy back into electrical energy. Your end to end energy efficiency is going to be terrible.

4 MWh/ton of carbon makes about 11 MWh of syngas, burned in a combined
cycle turbine, you get at least 6 MWh. It looks like a 150% battery,
but the extra energy comes from the carbon in waste. The only reason
this makes sense is that it moves solar energy from the middle of the
day into whenever you want it. Power cost is a wash because you get
back more than the solar input. It depends on the waste being free,
but that seems like a good assumption.

Depends on your temperatures, of course, but just as a quick estimate
I'll guess you'd be hard put to do better than maybe 30% round-trip
energy efficiency with this process
> Batteries, on the other hand, are getting better every year, and have no problem getting 90% round-trip efficiency.

Batteries have problems. Look at what happened to Moss Landing.
Plus, batteries are no use at all for seasonal storage.

Keith

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[Geoffrey Landis]

Hmm, so essentially what you're saying is that you're using the electrical input to burn waste, and getting most of the energy from the waste.

Interesting, but would be useful to compare it to just burning the waste directly.

--Geoff

[Robert Poor]

Keith:

You assert that "The biggest problem with renewable energy is large scale, long term storage." and proceed to suggest converting municipal waste into town gas (CO + H2) as an energy source.

An awful lot hangs on that assertion and the suggested solution.  I'll start with the assertion, and counter that the biggest problem that renewables face is obstacles to mass deployment.  Battery-firmed renewables are already cost effective (cue Lazard's LCOE and LCOS studies).  Rather, mass deployment in the US is hindered partly by access to the grid: there's a large and growing backlog for interconnection requests.  But a larger impediment lies in policy and market structures.  Battery storage, essential for any sane renewable energy source, provides multiple benefits (peak shaving, infrastructure deferrals, frequency stabilization, congestion abatement), but is only priced for its ability to perform arbitrage.  When a solar farm generates too much energy for the grid to use, it is curtailed while gas and coal and nuclear plants remain online since they can't be shut down easily.  A more sane approach would simply to deploy more batteries to soak up the excess.

The town gas approach will face the same problems that any thermal generation technology faces: a race against time.  The current backlog for utility scale turbines is about five years.  If you extrapolate what costs will look like in five years, it's likely that solar will have gotten a little cheaper, while batteries will have become a lot cheaper.  The cost of turbines probably won't decrease at the same rate.  And as someone who has studied the angles of turning waste into useful products (including energy), there's another infrastructure problem: do you site the processing plant (in this case the town gas processing plant) near the feedstock (presumably near landfill), or do you site it at the point of consumption, e.g. near a grid connection.  In either case, I posit that permitting alone will be challenging.  By contrast, solar-powered battery plants are coming online at record rates: planning to going online within 18 months.

Another thing that sets batteries apart from other forms of generation and storage: they're multi-scale.  You can build huge utility-scale systems to provide grid stabilization and alleviate congestion, or you can pool together thousands of small batteries sited in people's garages or C&I plants to deliver power where you need it and when you need it.  All of this has been amply proven in South Australia.

- rdp

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[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2026 at 6:28 PM Geoffrey Landis
<geoffre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hmm, so essentially what you're saying is that you're using the electrical input to burn waste, and getting most of the energy from the waste.

It is gasifying, not burning. 4 MWh input plus a ton of carbon in
waste gives 11 MWh in syngas, so a lot does come from the carbon in
waste, old tires, plant trimmings, cardboard, wood, and plastics.

> Interesting, but would be useful to compare it to just burning the waste directly.

Europe mostly incinerates waste and makes electricity. But this is
partly because they don't want to use the area for landfills. And
they don't make a lot of power that way. It is really tricky to dry
out waste so that it will burn. If this "make waste into syngas" is
developed, I think most of the incinerators will be replaced by
gasifiers because they need the water.

They have other attributes besides storing energy. They are a
controllable load that can be ramped up or down almost instantly. The
grid, especially the renewable part, can run at full power all the
time the source (sun, wind) is available. And while you can burn the
syngas for power, you can also make it into methanol, gasoline, jet
fuel, diesel, plastics, etc.

They eliminate the need for new landfills, which are hard to permit.
And they reduce methane leakage.

The main drawback is the cost. I don't have a good handle on that
yet. One limit is set by the upflowing syngas entraining solids that
then flow downstream to the gas cleanup sections. The amount of gas
created is set by the steam flow and limited by the electrical input
to the induction heaters. If the waste takes an hour to heat as it
falls to the slag layer, a 2500 ton per day gasifier will have an
internal capacity of ~1000 tons. For a density of 1/2, 2000 cubic
meters. If the main shaft is 50 meters, 40 meters tall, probably less
because the shaft will need to open out to reduce the velocity of the
syngas.

Keith

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[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2026 at 8:54 PM Robert Poor <rdp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Keith:
>
> You assert that "The biggest problem with renewable energy is large scale, long term storage." and proceed to suggest converting municipal waste into town gas (CO + H2) as an energy source.

It is more of an energy storage method, though the carbon in waste
does contribute to the output.

> An awful lot hangs on that assertion and the suggested solution. I'll start with the assertion, and counter that the biggest problem that renewables face is obstacles to mass deployment.

If you know of another way to cope with a cloudy week with no wind, or
a way to store renewable energy for a month, let me know.

Battery-firmed renewables are already cost effective (cue Lazard's
LCOE and LCOS studies). Rather, mass deployment in the US is hindered
partly by access to the grid: there's a large and growing backlog for
interconnection requests. But a larger impediment lies in policy and
market structures. Battery storage, essential for any sane renewable
energy source, provides multiple benefits (peak shaving,
infrastructure deferrals, frequency stabilization, congestion
abatement), but is only priced for its ability to perform arbitrage.
When a solar farm generates too much energy for the grid to use, it is
curtailed while gas and coal and nuclear plants remain online since
they can't be shut down easily.

I agree with you that coal and nuclear are hard to shut down, but gas
is easy. In California, gas picks up the load when the Sun goes down.

> A more sane approach would simply to deploy more batteries to soak up the excess.

This is more like a very high-capacity battery than anything else. LA
waste will soak up as much as 20 GW. And you can get the power back
anytime you want it, even a year later. Can you do that with Lithium
batteries, or does self-discharge eat them up? I think batteries are
a good idea, but they do have limits.

> The town gas approach will face the same problems that any thermal generation technology faces: a race against time. The current backlog for utility scale turbines is about five years.

The existing gas turbines will be just as happy with syngas as they
are with natural gas.

> If you extrapolate what costs will look like in five years, it's likely that solar will have gotten a little cheaper, while batteries will have become a lot cheaper. The cost of turbines probably won't decrease at the same rate. And as someone who has studied the angles of turning waste into useful products (including energy), there's another infrastructure problem: do you site the processing plant (in this case the town gas processing plant) near the feedstock (presumably near landfill), or do you site it at the point of consumption, e.g. near a grid connection.

Put them at the landfill, that's where the trucks dump now. In the
case of LA, the largest landfill is no more than 5 miles from the 3 GW
Sylmar converter station. Gas is piped all over the place, and there
are empty gas and oil fields all over the place. If you want to store
energy for more than a few days, it would probably be best to convert
it to methane and use the gas network. (A big leak of CO would be a
bad event.)

> In either case, I posit that permitting alone will be challenging. By contrast, solar-powered battery plants are coming online at record rates: planning to going online within 18 months.

They are not without problems. Consider Moss Landing. Is there even
a date for getting that one back online?

> Another thing that sets batteries apart from other forms of generation and storage: they're multi-scale. You can build huge utility-scale systems to provide grid stabilization and alleviate congestion, or you can pool together thousands of small batteries sited in people's garages or C&I plants to deliver power where you need it and when you need it. All of this has been amply proven in South Australia.

At some scale, this is less expensive than batteries.

Keith

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Wed, Mar 04, 2026 at 06:11:37PM -0800, Keith Henson wrote:
> If you know of another way to cope with a cloudy week with no wind, or
> a way to store renewable energy for a month, let me know.

http://launchloop.com/PowerLoop

Up to a very large scale, power loop storage cost scales as
the SQUARE ROOT of stored energy. However, learning curve
and reliability scaling may take decades. If someone has
a few acres of neighborless land and a fractional megabuck,
we can start designing/building/testing/failing/designing.

I'm a chip engineer, and watched chip reliability scale by
factors of billions over five decades. That's why Samsung can
sell 4 terabyte solid state drives for a few hundred dollars.

For those reading this two decades from now, a terabyte is a
micro exabyte. Hopefully there will still be human readers
at that future time.

Keith L.

--
Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

[vid.b...@fotonika-lv.eu]

We are looking to flow batteries for storage in networks with high solar and wind generation in the network.   Organic flow batteries that do not use critical materials appear to have significant advantages.  Vid Beldavs

Background on Flow Batteries for Long‑Duration Energy Storage

Flow batteries are emerging as one of the most promising approaches for storing renewable energy at multi‑hour to multi‑day scales, especially in grids with high penetration of solar and wind. Unlike lithium‑ion systems, which store energy in solid electrodes, flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolytes contained in external tanks. This separation of power (the stack) from energy (the tank size) gives them properties well‑suited to large‑scale, long‑duration storage.

Key Advantages

• Scalable energy capacity
Energy storage is determined almost entirely by tank volume and electrolyte concentration. If you want more hours or days of storage, you simply increase tank size rather than redesigning the battery stack. This makes multi‑day storage economically more feasible than with lithium‑ion.

• High cycle life and deep cycling
Flow batteries generally handle tens of thousands of full cycles with minimal degradation because the active material doesn’t undergo solid‑phase structural changes. Lifetimes of 20–30 years are realistic.

• Safety and low fire risk
Electrolytes are typically aqueous and non‑flammable, dramatically reducing fire and thermal‑runaway risks compared to lithium‑ion systems.

• Use of abundant, non‑critical materials (for organic systems)
Organic flow batteries—using synthesized molecules rather than vanadium or rare metals—avoid supply‑chain constraints and cost volatility. They also offer the potential for tunable chemistries, lower cost electrolytes, and more benign environmental profiles.

• Easy maintainability
Because components are modular and the electrolyte can be refurbished or replaced, flow batteries can be serviced without retiring the whole system, which improves long‑term reliability and reduces lifecycle costs.

Why They Matter for a Grid With a “Cloudy Week With No Wind”
Flow batteries aren’t yet the lowest‑cost option for seasonal storage, but they fill the niche between short‑duration lithium‑ion and very long‑duration mechanical or chemical storage. For networks that need 10–100 hours of storage—enough to ride through multi‑day renewable lulls—flow systems may be the most economical electrochemical solution we can deploy in the near term.

Organic flow batteries in particular offer a pathway to large‑scale, safe, and potentially low‑cost storage built from globally abundant materials. As the chemistries mature, they could become a backbone technology for stabilizing highly renewable grids.

---

From: power-satell...@googlegroups.com <power-satell...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Keith Lofstrom <kei...@keithl.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2026 10:52 AM
To: Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com>
Cc: Robert Poor <rdp...@gmail.com>; Paul Werbos <paul....@gmail.com>; ExI chat list <extrop...@lists.extropy.org>; extro...@googlegroups.com <extro...@googlegroups.com>; Inventor's Lunch <invento...@googlegroups.com>; Power Satellite Economics <power-satell...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Energy Storage method

 

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[Robert Poor]

On Wed, Mar 04, 2026 at 06:11:37PM -0800, Keith Henson wrote:
> If you know of another way to cope with a cloudy week with no wind, or

> a way to store renewable energy for a month, let me know.

My filter is simple: "We need energy generation and storage techniques that get progressively cheaper over a long period AND have short learning cycle times."

PV solar is getting cheaper (and I'm still rooting for NovaSolix and their carbon nanotube rectennas).  Batteries are getting cheaper -- fast.  And while batteries are not yet an economically viable option for extended Dunkelflaute, we've already seen the trend from 1 hour => 4 hour => 12 hour battery storage, and it's only reasonable to believe that trend will continue.

But until we get to "168 hour battery storage", there's a hybrid approach: pair a battery farm with every existing combined cycle gas turbine plant.  Use renewables to charge the batteries whenever possible (no more curtailment).  Power the grid off the batteries.  And during Dunkelflaute, if the batteries are depleted, then (and only then) fire up the CCGT plant.

This has a few benefits:

• All the technology for this hybrid approach is at hand.
• Modeling shows that in many cases, the hybrid approach can immediately reduce CO2 emissions by 80% by reducing the CCGT duty cycle to 20%.
• CCGT plants already have HV transformers and grid connections which otherwise would take multiple years to acquire.
• The batteries don't need to be co-located with the CCGT plants -- they can be sited near load centers to reduce the peak loads on transmission lines and thus defer the need for building new transmission lines -- another slow and expensive process.

This hybrid approach is admittedly a transition technology -- maybe SMRs will get cheap enough, or town gas will prove to be an economically viable energy source, or ... -- but it solves a real problem that we have right now with tools that we have right now.  And it's also possible that by the time other technologies come out of the lab, using batteries charged by renewables will have become the dominant standard.  But we don't have to wait.

- rdp

[Paul Werbos]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2026 at 9:26 AM vid.b...@fotonika-lv.eu <vid.b...@fotonika-lv.eu> wrote:

We are looking to flow batteries for storage in networks with high solar and wind generation in the network.   Organic flow batteries that do not use critical materials appear to have significant advantages.  Vid Beldavs

Hi, Vid!

Battery technology was well within the scope of the electric power program I ran at NSF, which did not really continue after my retirement in 2015. But for NSF AND for IEEEUSA, we developed a great map of the field. MANY types of batteries are better for different applications.

SOLAR FARMS were the biggest opportunity allowing great progress, if the right information could get to   For Europe, there are great sites in Spain, Italy and Greece, suitable for the power tower solar farm technology, building on solid new developments in US, Chile and Persian Gulf nations, which work better if combined.

The key opportunity there was use of THERMAL storage, instead of batteries. Chile has the world lead in that (though I worry whether recent politics might be getting in the way). Much better than batteries of any kind for THAT application.

For batteries proper... I still have the final technical report of a workshop I funded at MIT, under Sadoway.

The best battery, at least for cars, was certainly a rechargeable lithium-air battery AS DEVELOPED by LOnnie JOhnson of Atlanta,

Georgia. Much less lithium per kwh stored, higher efficiency and less cost and weight. 

Corruption and political friendships have been huge factors in reducing energy efficiency in the US in recent years.

That creates huge opportunities for Europe.

[vid.b...@fotonika-lv.eu]

Robert
I would again like to focus on flow batteries using organic electrolytes from innexpensive materials available everywhere.  No complications of supply chains for critical materials.  As flow batteries scale and storage capacitiy grows significantly beyohd 100 hours the flow battery costs will drop.  At least our numbers show this possibility.  The challenge now is to go from lab scale to prototypes that can be piloted with users and then with lessons learned learned produced at scale. Our project is in the planning stages.  We would welcome European or African partners eligible for European funding.

Vid Beldavs

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