3 ms·
We are really far from solving the storage issue. And no nuclear is far from being cheaper than solar + lithium (except maybe in very specific area such as Chil
by pl-94 8y ago
We are really far from solving the storage issue. And no nuclear is far from being cheaper than solar + lithium (except maybe in very specific area such as Chili with high sunlight and high cost of nuclear). There are not enough Lithium on Earth anyway to answer large scale energy storing.
Using vehicle battery is a naive way to think about it. Your car battery cycle is not appropriate (and will surely not be) to house consumption: as a result you will just crash your battery life expectancy.
The only advancement for large scale is fly wheel storage. But the record is only 40 MWh for a duration of 4 hours. Waw. Not even close.
The point of the nuclear is namely to think that 4th generation nuclear power plant are a way to reduce nuclear fossils cost to zero. Zero because many countries recycled their nuclear waste (if France is using 4th generation, they will not need to buy uranium before 10000 years). And Russia succeeded to make work a 650 MW 4th generation power plant.
Governments have paid large subsidies (140 billions in 15 years in France) for renewable energy. But in most cases, it resulted in a few percent of energy consumption - and it will not be much more in next years. If we want to solve global warming today, thats just not a working solution.
The only solution is to enhance nuclear powering.
- danans 8y ago> The only advancement for large scale is fly wheel storage. But the record is only 40 MWh for a duration of 4 hours. Waw. Not even close. Flow batteries have already reached 60 MWh storage, and their capacity scales linearly with the volume of electrolytes, so it's effectively unlimited, unlike flywheels, which can only get so massive before their mechanical systems would fail. They also have extremely fast response times, and unlike Lithium Ion batteries, are capable of charging to 100% and total depletion to 0% without damage to the battery. Therefore they are already being deployed in grid-scale renewable energy applications to smooth out supply and demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery#Largest_vanadium_grid_batteries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery#Largest... The only thing they don't do well at is energy density, but for grid storage applications, that's not an issue.
- ryacko 8y agoThere is mechanical and thermal storage. Molten salt storage has been used several times in recent designs but it isn’t popular. For mechanical storage, pumping water could be more viable than fly wheels.
- samhain 8y agoHave you seen the "move a mountain" idea? Basically pump water underneath a large mass of earth to lift it up. Then let the water pump back out to retrieve the energy. Main issue is the seals that would need replaced.