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We are going to need some more big batteries. Don’t we pay our neighbors to take our excess during peak times?
by true_tuna 8y ago
We are going to need some more big batteries. Don’t we pay our neighbors to take our excess during peak times?
- dublin 8y agoGet a clue and do the math. (Seriously, this is a one-to-two hour google for info and apply third-grade arithmetic back-of-an-envelope project.) Batteries are NOT the answer - the quantity of batteries required is astronomically beyond the world's battery production capacity, even in Musk's most fevered dreams. Seriously - the mining impact of REALLY trying to build enough batteries to stabilize an area the size of CA would increase mining pollution worldwide by an order of magnitude or more...
- Nasrudith 8y agoPutting aside the lithium mining myths (it works via brine evaporation making it damn clean compared to most mining) less storage is needed than you think thanks to wind power. Actual voltage stabilization requires shockingly little of energy storage compared to the size of the grid as demonstrated by the Australian battery project generating millions per day via stabilization services and doing it so quickly it outran the instability detection. Wind turbines actually produce more power at night - as to be expected with wind being caused by temperature differentials. Texas for one has a lot of wind power to grid export thanks to its geography.
- sctb 8y agoCould you please stop being so thorny? It doesn't make your point any clearer, it just makes the discussion worse.
- jrockway 8y agoBig batteries are a solved problem. You use electricity to pump water uphill. When you want the electricity back, you let it run back downhill through a turbine. This does not require mining lithium either, btw.