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One argument that I often hear is that even if we go with batteries, they then need to be replaced every few years, and the electricity is mostly coming from no

One argument that I often hear is that even if we go with batteries, they then need to be replaced every few years, and the electricity is mostly coming from non-renewable sources either way.

Robotbeat 8y ago
I think the latter is definitely not true. We already are around 37% clean energy in the US already. In many states, the number is already over 50%. Especially with storage, we have a fairly easy path to getting most, or even the vast majority of our electricity from clean sources. (Including nuclear under “clean sources,” too, because while it isn’t intermittent, it also isn’t really dispatchable so it also benefits from storage.)
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  Outside of compressed air or springs there isn't currently a clean way of storing power. Batteries are the plastic trash bags of the future and the massive problems they're causing won't cause an uproar until we can see it from outer space, just like the trash island.
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Recovering 95% of the economically valuable materials [0] used in batteries is pretty much a solved problem. Using plastics and other low value materials might ruin that number but there is no reason why governments can't mandate to build batteries that can be easily recycled. [0] https://www.audiworld.com/articles/new-power-from-old-cells-audi-and-umicore-develop-closed-loop-battery-recycling/ https://www.audiworld.com/articles/new-power-from-old-cells-...
beenBoutIT 8y ago
Batteries are super eco-friendly when you're using them unless they start burning. Making batteries and disposing of batteries is when they're damaging the environment.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  What's the energy and resource requirement of recycling grid scale batteries?
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    I hear that recycling li ion batteries requires a lot of pretty nasty chemicals, and wouldn't be surprised if the long tail on handling and cleanup of those plus the actual process is fairly resource intensive. Oil is a pretty nasty chemical too, so I don't know what the balance is.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - acidburnNSA 8y ago
      Besides just batteries, renewable energy circles in China are just now starting to grasp what it's going to take to transport and recycle the gadzillions of solar waste that's going to start rolling in around 2030. Some takes make it sound pretty dire. [1] [1] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002631/the-dark-side-of-chinas-solar-boom- https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002631/the-dark-side-of-chin...
      - Brakenshire 8y ago
        That is FUD. > Mary Hutzler, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research in Washington D.C., said that solar panels are manufactured using hazardous materials — including sulfuric acid and phosphine gas — making them difficult to recycle. They also contain toxic metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium, which can be harmful to humans and are likely to leak from electronic waste dumps into drinking water supplies. Chromium is only in CIGS, which is 0% of the market, Cadmium is only in CdTe, which is a few percent of the market and only manufactured in the US by First Solar. Lead is just in the solder, which is the same issue as with all electronics. How does the use of chemicals purely as part of the manufacturing process make the panel more difficult to recycle, if the material is not in the finished product? IER is a Koch funded nonsense.
ogrisel 8y ago
Li-ion batteries are mostly useful to shift the load by a couple of hours, that is to be able to sell cheap to produce solar power in the evening when the demand is highest and therefore the gross price for electricity the highest. So just a few hours worth of storage are actually really useful to integrate a significantly higher amount of renewables in the power mix.
- rstuart4133 8y ago
  I didn't realise just how useful that "shift load by a couple of hours" was until I got a battery installed at home. Before my PV + battery system was installed, I paid about $0.21 for each kW.hr consumed. After it was installed, the same power company offered to pay $0.11 for feed in. So I looked around. There is another company that would charge $0.19 for power consumed, and $0.20 for feed-in, with a catch. The catch is encoded in a complex formula, but it boils down to "we hit you hard if consume power during the 4 hour peak hour period at _any_ time during the 90 day billing period". My battery isn't big enough to supply an entire day or act as a back up during an extended power outage - but it can easily shift the 4 hours power usage this plan needs. Just doing that makes a big difference since we produce twice what we use. Who would have thought just having a 4 hour battery could drop your power bill by 1/3? Even more impressively, the battery says on the box it is good for 6,000 cycles. But they are full cycles, and if I just use it for 4 hours I'll never use a full cycle. It could last over 20 years if I only draw on it 4 hours a day.
_Microft 8y ago
Isn't the wear on lithium ion batteries very small as long as they are only charged and discharged in the range of 20-80% of their maximum capacity?
imtringued 8y ago
Germany has almost no hydro power compared to the 24% average in the EU. Biomass, PV and Wind Power alone produce 38% of the electricity in Germany. This percentage is growing by 3-4% a year. Combined with nuclear and other zero emission technologies it produces 45% of the electricity without emitting CO2. If Germany had hydro power it would already be at 69% but it wouldn't matter. Despite this massive success the total CO2 emissions haven't changed. The electricity sector is obviously only responsible for around 24% of the total energy used in Germany. Therefore the renewable strategy only amounts to a 12% reduction. One of the biggest problems that Germany suffers from is that the transportation sector still uses gasoline. Over the last 10 years people have started buying more cars and driving them for more miles. Less efficient diesel (which is taxed less than gasoline) cars also resulted in a minor increase in CO2 emissions. This completely negated the CO2 decreases thanks to renewable electricity. If anything what holds back renewable energy is the total lack of mass market electric cars that can compete with ICEs and lack of charging infrastructure. Battery technology is currently improving at such a high pace that we might never even need anything better than lithium ion batteries. Tesla has managed to reduce the cobalt content down from 14% to less than 3%. The yearly cost reductions even make cheap flow batteries which basically are just sulfuric acid with vanadium mixed in uncompetitive.
- miskin 8y ago
  Less efficient diesel regarding CO2 emisions? One of the reasons diesel engines were pushed in EU was due to better CO2 emmisions by diesel engines compared to petrol engines.
  - chopin 8y ago
    The average car has gotten bigger.
- gridlockd 8y ago
  > Combined with nuclear and other zero emission technologies it produces 45% of the electricity without emitting CO2. Which is pretty embarrassing, given the huge investment made. By that same measure, France is at almost 90% (74% nuclear, 15% renewable). Without further nuclear developments, Germany will depend either on fossils or on massive technological breakthroughs in solving the fluctuations caused by wind energy.

One argument that I often hear is that even if we go with batteries, they then need to be replaced every few years, and the electricity is mostly coming from non-renewable sources either way.

Robotbeat 8y ago

I think the latter is definitely not true. We already are around 37% clean energy in the US already. In many states, the number is already over 50%. Especially with storage, we have a fairly easy path to getting most, or even the vast majority of our electricity from clean sources. (Including nuclear under “clean sources,” too, because while it isn’t intermittent, it also isn’t really dispatchable so it also benefits from storage.)

beenBoutIT 8y ago
Outside of compressed air or springs there isn't currently a clean way of storing power. Batteries are the plastic trash bags of the future and the massive problems they're causing won't cause an uproar until we can see it from outer space, just like the trash island.
- imtringued 8y ago
  Recovering 95% of the economically valuable materials [0] used in batteries is pretty much a solved problem. Using plastics and other low value materials might ruin that number but there is no reason why governments can't mandate to build batteries that can be easily recycled. [0] https://www.audiworld.com/articles/new-power-from-old-cells-audi-and-umicore-develop-closed-loop-battery-recycling/ https://www.audiworld.com/articles/new-power-from-old-cells-...

beenBoutIT 8y ago

Batteries are super eco-friendly when you're using them unless they start burning. Making batteries and disposing of batteries is when they're damaging the environment.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
What's the energy and resource requirement of recycling grid scale batteries?
- zdragnar 8y ago
  I hear that recycling li ion batteries requires a lot of pretty nasty chemicals, and wouldn't be surprised if the long tail on handling and cleanup of those plus the actual process is fairly resource intensive. Oil is a pretty nasty chemical too, so I don't know what the balance is.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Besides just batteries, renewable energy circles in China are just now starting to grasp what it's going to take to transport and recycle the gadzillions of solar waste that's going to start rolling in around 2030. Some takes make it sound pretty dire. [1] [1] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002631/the-dark-side-of-chinas-solar-boom- https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002631/the-dark-side-of-chin...
    - Brakenshire 8y ago
      That is FUD. > Mary Hutzler, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research in Washington D.C., said that solar panels are manufactured using hazardous materials — including sulfuric acid and phosphine gas — making them difficult to recycle. They also contain toxic metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium, which can be harmful to humans and are likely to leak from electronic waste dumps into drinking water supplies. Chromium is only in CIGS, which is 0% of the market, Cadmium is only in CdTe, which is a few percent of the market and only manufactured in the US by First Solar. Lead is just in the solder, which is the same issue as with all electronics. How does the use of chemicals purely as part of the manufacturing process make the panel more difficult to recycle, if the material is not in the finished product? IER is a Koch funded nonsense.

ogrisel 8y ago

Li-ion batteries are mostly useful to shift the load by a couple of hours, that is to be able to sell cheap to produce solar power in the evening when the demand is highest and therefore the gross price for electricity the highest. So just a few hours worth of storage are actually really useful to integrate a significantly higher amount of renewables in the power mix.

rstuart4133 8y ago
I didn't realise just how useful that "shift load by a couple of hours" was until I got a battery installed at home. Before my PV + battery system was installed, I paid about $0.21 for each kW.hr consumed. After it was installed, the same power company offered to pay $0.11 for feed in. So I looked around. There is another company that would charge $0.19 for power consumed, and $0.20 for feed-in, with a catch. The catch is encoded in a complex formula, but it boils down to "we hit you hard if consume power during the 4 hour peak hour period at _any_ time during the 90 day billing period". My battery isn't big enough to supply an entire day or act as a back up during an extended power outage - but it can easily shift the 4 hours power usage this plan needs. Just doing that makes a big difference since we produce twice what we use. Who would have thought just having a 4 hour battery could drop your power bill by 1/3? Even more impressively, the battery says on the box it is good for 6,000 cycles. But they are full cycles, and if I just use it for 4 hours I'll never use a full cycle. It could last over 20 years if I only draw on it 4 hours a day.

_Microft 8y ago

Isn't the wear on lithium ion batteries very small as long as they are only charged and discharged in the range of 20-80% of their maximum capacity?

imtringued 8y ago

Germany has almost no hydro power compared to the 24% average in the EU. Biomass, PV and Wind Power alone produce 38% of the electricity in Germany. This percentage is growing by 3-4% a year. Combined with nuclear and other zero emission technologies it produces 45% of the electricity without emitting CO2. If Germany had hydro power it would already be at 69% but it wouldn't matter. Despite this massive success the total CO2 emissions haven't changed. The electricity sector is obviously only responsible for around 24% of the total energy used in Germany. Therefore the renewable strategy only amounts to a 12% reduction. One of the biggest problems that Germany suffers from is that the transportation sector still uses gasoline. Over the last 10 years people have started buying more cars and driving them for more miles. Less efficient diesel (which is taxed less than gasoline) cars also resulted in a minor increase in CO2 emissions. This completely negated the CO2 decreases thanks to renewable electricity. If anything what holds back renewable energy is the total lack of mass market electric cars that can compete with ICEs and lack of charging infrastructure. Battery technology is currently improving at such a high pace that we might never even need anything better than lithium ion batteries. Tesla has managed to reduce the cobalt content down from 14% to less than 3%. The yearly cost reductions even make cheap flow batteries which basically are just sulfuric acid with vanadium mixed in uncompetitive.

miskin 8y ago
Less efficient diesel regarding CO2 emisions? One of the reasons diesel engines were pushed in EU was due to better CO2 emmisions by diesel engines compared to petrol engines.
- chopin 8y ago
  The average car has gotten bigger.
gridlockd 8y ago
> Combined with nuclear and other zero emission technologies it produces 45% of the electricity without emitting CO2. Which is pretty embarrassing, given the huge investment made. By that same measure, France is at almost 90% (74% nuclear, 15% renewable). Without further nuclear developments, Germany will depend either on fossils or on massive technological breakthroughs in solving the fluctuations caused by wind energy.