[Applause]
[Music]
Good evening
produce electricity with wind
or the sun today
and well it became cheaper in the
most cases only with energies
conventional pollutants
in fact renewable energies are
not only more ecological
but they have also become cheaper
and so we might wonder why
why we do not develop them anymore
quickly and well simply because
that they are intermittent
that means they produce them
do not produce consistently
and very often when we implant
wind turbines somewhere or panels
PV
well we have wings to power plants
gas or oil-fired plants not very
far we will turn on to produce
electricity
when there is more wind have more
sun and suddenly there are many people
who believe that in fact these the
renewable energies are not green
at all there is side of that there are others
people who say that ben not the
all you need to store energy
the problem is that storing
energy is extremely expensive
today a period without sun that
lasts about 12 hours we call it
the night and periods without wind
can last even longer
and if you wanted stored in
batteries electricity production
of a country like France during 12
hours
it would have to invest 300 billion
euros
that’s about five times the budget of
national education
it would be necessary to renew this
investment every ten years because
that today is the lifespan
batteries
then there are other ways to
store energy
you may have heard of
hydrogen or compressed air
she still has many more
but all these solutions are still
more expensive except one
these are the pumping stations
turbines they are also called
energy transfer stations by
pumping
in fact they are power plants
hydroelectric companies that are capable of
run in both directions and when
we have a surplus of electricity on the
electrical network
we will be able to use it to pump
the water from a downstream reservoir to a
upstream reservoir and that will allow to
transform this electrical energy into
potential energy and then we go
can reuse it
when there is a shortage of electricity
on the network it will work in the
in the opposite direction the hamon tank is going to
empty into the conduct that served
fill it
it will fill the downstream reservoir in
operating a hydroelectric turbine
then there are two problems to this
solution
first of all it’s not much less
expensive than a battery and then we can
implement this type of system only in
some mountainous areas
because they have to be both
water tanks that constitute them
be located not only at altitudes
very different to maximize the
energy storage but also that they do not
not too far from each other
because otherwise we’ll increase
exponentially the cost of driving
who connects them then this system there he in
exists a number in the world
already the stations were obviously
located in areas that are
economically the most interesting and
so future settlements are going to
to do in places where that do that
the costs of this system are going
his toy has grown permanently
so whether it’s battery or
pumped storage stations one can
consider that energy storage
it is above all an economic problem
and as a result it slows down
considerably the dynamics of
energetic transition
so as an engineer I had the opportunity
to work for a dozen
years in the automotive industry and
on rationalization functions and
of cost reduction and one day I get
am told that if it was possible to
reduce costs in an area that
has been ripe for decades
still manages to reduce costs
today in this area
it will also be possible to reduce the
costs in the field of storage
of energy for the electricity network
knowing that this is a problem that
is much newer and it’s like
that I imagined two ways of
greatly reduce the cost of
energy storage that I’m going to
then present the first solution
we will leave the mountain areas on
will go to sea because at sea we have
very important unevenness between the bottom
from the sea and the surface the depth
average of the mayors of the surroundings near
4000 meters and we will imagine a very
big concrete mass that we will ask
bottom of the water and then we’ll take a
barge on the surface so with a winch
electric and with a long cable
we are going to hang on to the mass and we
goes the climb over 4000 meters of
drop in doing that the winch is going
transform electrical energy into
potential energy and of course 4000
meters of elevation it is possible to
store as much energy in a kilo of
concrete only in half a kilo of battery
gold a kilo of concrete it costs 100 times
cheaper than half a kilogram of batteries
so that gives you an idea of
huge savings that can be done like
it was then necessary to find a
solution that allows
to exploit this principle for the network
electric
well it is simple just
connect the barge to the electricity grid
with a submarine cable the same type of
cable used for wind turbines
offshore
and so when we have a surplus
electricity on the network
well it will be injected into the cable
electric to the barge that will go up
concrete masses one by one since the
bottom of the sea to the surface
and then when there is a shortage
power
it will work in the opposite direction
masses will be down one by one and
they will pull on the winch that goes
operate in generator mode
electric a little bit like a
dynamo if you want then you have to
use to maximize the ability to
storage we will use several
dozens of masses for a single winch
it allows to increase the capacity without
increase the cost of the winch and the
barge and for that we have to find a
solution to keep them on the surface
when we store them in height we can
for example hook them to
floats and to prevent these
floats do not go adrift when
there is a storm
well we will anchor his floats with
long anchor cables a little bit
as we find for the platforms
certain oil rigs and
at sea we must generally be dimensioned
when we build a boat a
platform anything you have to hold
account exceptional conditions this
that happens once every 50 years or
every hundred years
and for it to withstand storms
exceptional it takes cables in
steel that is very thick and in addition they
have to be very long because we are
on very important depths and
so we’ll see some cables that are going to be
very expensive and all the profit we
will draw from these concrete masses which a
inexpensive material that stores a lot
on important elevations
we will lose it with cables that are
too expensive and well I invented and
patented several technical solutions
which make it possible to ensure that these
floats is not located on the surface
exposed to wind and waves but
several tens of meters
below the water below the
surface permanently then one of the
ways to do it is to gather all
its floats on a single support and
that this unique support is itself
attached anchored to the bottom of the water with
some anchor cables then from me
to say yes but precisely the cables
anchoring is expensive except that here we go
adapt the floating capacity of the
structure according to the number of
masks we will hang on to each
we’re going to hang up a mass
inject air into a float that
going to become floating is so
that we will never have more than
the equivalent of a mass in strength of
tension in the cable and it helps
greatly reduce the costs of this
component then there is a small
energy consumption when we do that
that it needs air tablets but one
can show that she weighs roughly
1 % of the total capacity you can
accumulate on unevenness of 4000 m I
know about 40 meters away for
floats then the main interest of
this solution it is at the cost level
investment
if we add up the cost of all
components so the concrete saw it
was about 100 times cheaper
that a battery and that we add
cables and still some cables
anchoring floats barges and then
especially if we also take into account the
cost of the submarine cable which
carry electricity even on
distances of over 100 km well we
arrives at a total investment cost
which is about ten times lower 10
times lower than the best
Current batteries that may seem a
not hard to believe but it can be
check s is easily because these
components actually we use them
already in a maritime environment for
other applications obviously in
general it’s in the industry
offshore oil
and so we know very well their shot
and we also know that she is their
lifetime
so that’s a very good solution
economically interesting
which must be implanted at sea
could be related to systems
solar wind turbines and then also
to consumers on earth when we are
in on a power grid that
is located a few hundred
kilometers from the coast
the tastes are quite acceptable
but congresses over distances
much more important
a few thousand kilometers is the
case for example north america
center of north america or
center of asia so this solution
is no longer so interesting from a point of
economic view because it’s the cost
of electricity transmission that becomes
too high and so for these cases of
figure there I imagined another way
reduce the cost of energy storage
so we’re going to leave the sea and we’re going
come back to earth and was worth it in
flat areas we saw that the
pumped storage stations one can only
put them only in areas
mountainous
so here we go on purpose to go in
areas all flat and we will dig
a big conical shaped hole a little
little like the big mines to heaven
open where the big careers form
conical to prevent slippage
field we will take a slope rather
cautious and with all the rock we’re going
excavated one will erect a dam in
circular embankment just next
and so we will make two
tanks that can be filled with water
who will not be at the same altitude and who
will not be too far from each other
it solves the main
problem of pumping turbining one can
so do it anywhere including
in flat areas for
hell in picardie for example
obviously a system so simple we
says that
if it was in addition to its economic it
would be too good and in fact when we
look what it costs with spite
order of magnitude calculation on a case
generic we come across a cost
investment that about two
times higher than batteries for
fake 200 meters deep
but let’s look at what happens if we
increases the size of the device one is going
double the dimensions if we double the
depth the width and the length of
the pit and the dam we’re going
multiply the volumes by eight we go
can store eight times more water
have to extract eight times more rock
and we will also have to pay 8 times more
expensive by against the storage capacity
of energy it depends on the volume of water
but it also depends on the altitude difference
which will have been multiplied by two
so the energy storage capacity
would have been multiplied by 16 while the
kun has increased eightfold
we have a phenomenon of economies of scale
by increasing the size the ability to
increased storage faster than cost
and the question is not how much too much
expensive is to store energy the
question it becomes what size it
must have for it to be
economically interesting and well if we
dug a pit of the eiffel tower
got scale 1 the goal is to
not to dig a hole in paris then
to bury half of
arrondissements under under 100 meters of
rock if we dig a hole of 400 meters
depth well we can reach
an investment cost that is two
times lower than that of batteries
and in addition we have a lifetime that is
more important
so in total discounted cost we get to
something that is five to six times
more economically advantageous
on the other hand it supposes to store
very large amounts of energy on a
only site
we’re talking about 50 gigawatt hours but that’s
quite realistic to pick up
the example of France with the 12
hours in this case there would have to be
build about twenty sites of
this size is for
your info the current energy mix
which is a predominantly nuclear mix
and well the 62 nuclear reactors they
are concentrated on about twenty
websites
so in terms of concentration of
power it’s not a problem
after to dig pits of 400
meters we can say that it’s too much
it’s great utopian
not at all the biggest mines to
open sky of the world
they are twice as deep and
are ten times larger the more
high dam of the world in embankments they
are three times higher and then the
surface that will be occupied by a system
like that we talk about a total of five
square kilometers so if we wanted
build about twenty sites in
a country like France so it would take
occupied a surface that would be 1000 times
weaker more than a thousand times more
weak than the agricultural area
so that would be negligible in
comparison of the environmental issue
and economical that it represents
so I took the example of France
because it’s more meaningful for us
all but hey such a solution for the
france which is a country anyway
maritime
it’s still the solution of the masses
in concrete at sea which remains by far the
more economical
finally the most advantageous but here at
what could the mix look like
energy of the future at least on its
energy storage component one would have
about three quarters of storage with
maritime solutions
and then the rest with more solutions
traditional but on systems of
very large size at savings
of scale then I am sometimes asked
how come solutions that
are so simple and above all very
are not developed
today you must know that I
started to divulge his ideas there to
about four years ago I introduced them
first to the energy ministries and
of industry in several countries in
europe and also to some great
generalist energy groups
also in europe
simply because it is a
environmental and economic challenge
and then also there are issues of
job creation that is very
important
I had the opportunity to meet
many experts in different
disciplines that are concerned with these
systems and so far nobody has
questioned the hypotheses
economic
so I took some assumptions that are
also very cautious but is not the same
of no questioning of the
feasibility and yet I found
now with a little hindsight that has
some reluctance on the part of
major players in the energy sector to
promote storage systems that
really low cost and that allows
finally to compete with the backups
thermal fossils that we develop
today to be combined with
new renewable energies and
that’s why I found
that it would be a good thing to
start communicating with a
wider public and in particular via a
tedx conference thank you for your
Warning
[Applause]
[Music]
Good evening
produce electricity with wind
or the sun today
and well it became cheaper in the
most cases only with energies
conventional pollutants
in fact renewable energies are
not only more ecological
but they have also become cheaper
and so we might wonder why
why we do not develop them anymore
quickly and well simply because
that they are intermittent
that means they produce them
do not produce consistently
and very often when we implant
wind turbines somewhere or panels
PV
well we have wings to power plants
gas or oil-fired plants not very
far we will turn on to produce
electricity
when there is more wind have more
sun and suddenly there are many people
who believe that in fact these the
renewable energies are not green
at all there is side of that there are others
people who say that ben not the
all you need to store energy
the problem is that storing
energy is extremely expensive
today a period without sun that
lasts about 12 hours we call it
the night and periods without wind
can last even longer
and if you wanted stored in
batteries electricity production
of a country like France during 12
hours
it would have to invest 300 billion
euros
that’s about five times the budget of
national education
it would be necessary to renew this
investment every ten years because
that today is the lifespan
batteries
then there are other ways to
store energy
you may have heard of
hydrogen or compressed air
she still has many more
but all these solutions are still
more expensive except one
these are the pumping stations
turbines they are also called
energy transfer stations by
pumping
in fact they are power plants
hydroelectric companies that are capable of
run in both directions and when
we have a surplus of electricity on the
electrical network
we will be able to use it to pump
the water from a downstream reservoir to a
upstream reservoir and that will allow to
transform this electrical energy into
potential energy and then we go
can reuse it
when there is a shortage of electricity
on the network it will work in the
in the opposite direction the hamon tank is going to
empty into the conduct that served
fill it
it will fill the downstream reservoir in
operating a hydroelectric turbine
then there are two problems to this
solution
first of all it’s not much less
expensive than a battery and then we can
implement this type of system only in
some mountainous areas
because they have to be both
water tanks that constitute them
be located not only at altitudes
very different to maximize the
energy storage but also that they do not
not too far from each other
because otherwise we’ll increase
exponentially the cost of driving
who connects them then this system there he in
exists a number in the world
already the stations were obviously
located in areas that are
economically the most interesting and
so future settlements are going to
to do in places where that do that
the costs of this system are going
his toy has grown permanently
so whether it’s battery or
pumped storage stations one can
consider that energy storage
it is above all an economic problem
and as a result it slows down
considerably the dynamics of
energetic transition
so as an engineer I had the opportunity
to work for a dozen
years in the automotive industry and
on rationalization functions and
of cost reduction and one day I get
am told that if it was possible to
reduce costs in an area that
has been ripe for decades
still manages to reduce costs
today in this area
it will also be possible to reduce the
costs in the field of storage
of energy for the electricity network
knowing that this is a problem that
is much newer and it’s like
that I imagined two ways of
greatly reduce the cost of
energy storage that I’m going to
then present the first solution
we will leave the mountain areas on
will go to sea because at sea we have
very important unevenness between the bottom
from the sea and the surface the depth
average of the mayors of the surroundings near
4000 meters and we will imagine a very
big concrete mass that we will ask
bottom of the water and then we’ll take a
barge on the surface so with a winch
electric and with a long cable
we are going to hang on to the mass and we
goes the climb over 4000 meters of
drop in doing that the winch is going
transform electrical energy into
potential energy and of course 4000
meters of elevation it is possible to
store as much energy in a kilo of
concrete only in half a kilo of battery
gold a kilo of concrete it costs 100 times
cheaper than half a kilogram of batteries
so that gives you an idea of
huge savings that can be done like
it was then necessary to find a
solution that allows
to exploit this principle for the network
electric
well it is simple just
connect the barge to the electricity grid
with a submarine cable the same type of
cable used for wind turbines
offshore
and so when we have a surplus
electricity on the network
well it will be injected into the cable
electric to the barge that will go up
concrete masses one by one since the
bottom of the sea to the surface
and then when there is a shortage
power
it will work in the opposite direction
masses will be down one by one and
they will pull on the winch that goes
operate in generator mode
electric a little bit like a
dynamo if you want then you have to
use to maximize the ability to
storage we will use several
dozens of masses for a single winch
it allows to increase the capacity without
increase the cost of the winch and the
barge and for that we have to find a
solution to keep them on the surface
when we store them in height we can
for example hook them to
floats and to prevent these
floats do not go adrift when
there is a storm
well we will anchor his floats with
long anchor cables a little bit
as we find for the platforms
certain oil rigs and
at sea we must generally be dimensioned
when we build a boat a
platform anything you have to hold
account exceptional conditions this
that happens once every 50 years or
every hundred years
and for it to withstand storms
exceptional it takes cables in
steel that is very thick and in addition they
have to be very long because we are
on very important depths and
so we’ll see some cables that are going to be
very expensive and all the profit we
will draw from these concrete masses which a
inexpensive material that stores a lot
on important elevations
we will lose it with cables that are
too expensive and well I invented and
patented several technical solutions
which make it possible to ensure that these
floats is not located on the surface
exposed to wind and waves but
several tens of meters
below the water below the
surface permanently then one of the
ways to do it is to gather all
its floats on a single support and
that this unique support is itself
attached anchored to the bottom of the water with
some anchor cables then from me
to say yes but precisely the cables
anchoring is expensive except that here we go
adapt the floating capacity of the
structure according to the number of
masks we will hang on to each
we’re going to hang up a mass
inject air into a float that
going to become floating is so
that we will never have more than
the equivalent of a mass in strength of
tension in the cable and it helps
greatly reduce the costs of this
component then there is a small
energy consumption when we do that
that it needs air tablets but one
can show that she weighs roughly
1 % of the total capacity you can
accumulate on unevenness of 4000 m I
know about 40 meters away for
floats then the main interest of
this solution it is at the cost level
investment
if we add up the cost of all
components so the concrete saw it
was about 100 times cheaper
that a battery and that we add
cables and still some cables
anchoring floats barges and then
especially if we also take into account the
cost of the submarine cable which
carry electricity even on
distances of over 100 km well we
arrives at a total investment cost
which is about ten times lower 10
times lower than the best
Current batteries that may seem a
not hard to believe but it can be
check s is easily because these
components actually we use them
already in a maritime environment for
other applications obviously in
general it’s in the industry
offshore oil
and so we know very well their shot
and we also know that she is their
lifetime
so that’s a very good solution
economically interesting
which must be implanted at sea
could be related to systems
solar wind turbines and then also
to consumers on earth when we are
in on a power grid that
is located a few hundred
kilometers from the coast
the tastes are quite acceptable
but congresses over distances
much more important
a few thousand kilometers is the
case for example north america
center of north america or
center of asia so this solution
is no longer so interesting from a point of
economic view because it’s the cost
of electricity transmission that becomes
too high and so for these cases of
figure there I imagined another way
reduce the cost of energy storage
so we’re going to leave the sea and we’re going
come back to earth and was worth it in
flat areas we saw that the
pumped storage stations one can only
put them only in areas
mountainous
so here we go on purpose to go in
areas all flat and we will dig
a big conical shaped hole a little
little like the big mines to heaven
open where the big careers form
conical to prevent slippage
field we will take a slope rather
cautious and with all the rock we’re going
excavated one will erect a dam in
circular embankment just next
and so we will make two
tanks that can be filled with water
who will not be at the same altitude and who
will not be too far from each other
it solves the main
problem of pumping turbining one can
so do it anywhere including
in flat areas for
hell in picardie for example
obviously a system so simple we
says that
if it was in addition to its economic it
would be too good and in fact when we
look what it costs with spite
order of magnitude calculation on a case
generic we come across a cost
investment that about two
times higher than batteries for
fake 200 meters deep
but let’s look at what happens if we
increases the size of the device one is going
double the dimensions if we double the
depth the width and the length of
the pit and the dam we’re going
multiply the volumes by eight we go
can store eight times more water
have to extract eight times more rock
and we will also have to pay 8 times more
expensive by against the storage capacity
of energy it depends on the volume of water
but it also depends on the altitude difference
which will have been multiplied by two
so the energy storage capacity
would have been multiplied by 16 while the
kun has increased eightfold
we have a phenomenon of economies of scale
by increasing the size the ability to
increased storage faster than cost
and the question is not how much too much
expensive is to store energy the
question it becomes what size it
must have for it to be
economically interesting and well if we
dug a pit of the eiffel tower
got scale 1 the goal is to
not to dig a hole in paris then
to bury half of
arrondissements under under 100 meters of
rock if we dig a hole of 400 meters
depth well we can reach
an investment cost that is two
times lower than that of batteries
and in addition we have a lifetime that is
more important
so in total discounted cost we get to
something that is five to six times
more economically advantageous
on the other hand it supposes to store
very large amounts of energy on a
only site
we’re talking about 50 gigawatt hours but that’s
quite realistic to pick up
the example of France with the 12
hours in this case there would have to be
build about twenty sites of
this size is for
your info the current energy mix
which is a predominantly nuclear mix
and well the 62 nuclear reactors they
are concentrated on about twenty
websites
so in terms of concentration of
power it’s not a problem
after to dig pits of 400
meters we can say that it’s too much
it’s great utopian
not at all the biggest mines to
open sky of the world
they are twice as deep and
are ten times larger the more
high dam of the world in embankments they
are three times higher and then the
surface that will be occupied by a system
like that we talk about a total of five
square kilometers so if we wanted
build about twenty sites in
a country like France so it would take
occupied a surface that would be 1000 times
weaker more than a thousand times more
weak than the agricultural area
so that would be negligible in
comparison of the environmental issue
and economical that it represents
so I took the example of France
because it’s more meaningful for us
all but hey such a solution for the
france which is a country anyway
maritime
it’s still the solution of the masses
in concrete at sea which remains by far the
more economical
finally the most advantageous but here at
what could the mix look like
energy of the future at least on its
energy storage component one would have
about three quarters of storage with
maritime solutions
and then the rest with more solutions
traditional but on systems of
very large size at savings
of scale then I am sometimes asked
how come solutions that
are so simple and above all very
are not developed
today you must know that I
started to divulge his ideas there to
about four years ago I introduced them
first to the energy ministries and
of industry in several countries in
europe and also to some great
generalist energy groups
also in europe
simply because it is a
environmental and economic challenge
and then also there are issues of
job creation that is very
important
I had the opportunity to meet
many experts in different
disciplines that are concerned with these
systems and so far nobody has
questioned the hypotheses
economic
so I took some assumptions that are
also very cautious but is not the same
of no questioning of the
feasibility and yet I found
now with a little hindsight that has
some reluctance on the part of
major players in the energy sector to
promote storage systems that
really low cost and that allows
finally to compete with the backups
thermal fossils that we develop
today to be combined with
new renewable energies and
that’s why I found
that it would be a good thing to
start communicating with a
wider public and in particular via a
tedx conference thank you for your
Warning
[Applause]
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