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Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

652 points by rchaudhary 7y ago

ailideex 7y ago
Is this like a future dated article or something? Seems it is discussing events that may happen in 2023.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Why lithium ion batteries — are they much cheaper to make than new gravitational potential (i.e. hydroelectric) storage systems?
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Hydro can be extremely disruptive to ecosystems, and you also need a suitable site for it. It's very situational, from what I understand.
  - Animats 7y ago
    very situational Yes. You need a mountain lake and a low level lake close to each other, and the lakes aren't useful for much else because the water level goes way up and down every day. The US has 10 pumped storage plants bigger than a gigawatt, and few attractive sites for more.
    - cmoscoe 7y ago
      I've hear the Hoover Dam proposed, and theoretically any existing dam could be converted? Just need to pump some water back upstream when there's excess load in the system. Here in Canada a lot of our energy is hydroelectric and I know there's a lot of talk about this sort of solution in Quebec.
      - cesarb 7y ago
        > theoretically any existing dam could be converted? Just need to pump some water back upstream when there's excess load in the system. For that, you need water that can be pumped back upstream, that is, you need also a lower reservoir. If your dam discharges directly into a river, you won't have enough water downstream of the dam to pump back upstream. Not all dams have suitable geology to form another reservoir below them. An alternative would be to create a new reservoir higher than the dam, using the existing dam as the lower reservoir, with a set of tunnels with the reversible generator/pumps linking both reservoirs (this new upper reservoir does not need to be in the path of the river).
      - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago
        > Just need to pump some water back upstream In this situation, you'd simply never let the water flow through in the first place. This amounts to releasing water while generating energy, only to pump it back. The net result is just a lot of wasted energy. Pumped hydro requires two reservoirs. There's no way around it.
    - organsnyder 7y ago
      Or build a reservoir next to a body of water. The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant next to Lake Michigan has 2172 MW of generating capacity and 19,548 MWh of storage capacity.
      - Animats 7y ago
        That site has a hill. 111 meter difference between the reservors. More would be better, but that part of the country doesn't have mountains.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    It's not (very) disruptive if you build an artificial closed-cycle lake on an existing elevation difference. But such sites are not very commonly available where storage is needed. You have to refresh the water to compensate for evaporation, and that's about the extent of the impact. Dammed streams of course are a completely different story.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Like that time Banqiao dam burst and killed 100,000 people...
  - nanomonkey 7y ago
    I wonder if it would be better to go distributed, pump water into a water tower from a well, or from a municipal source, and then generate electricity and release it back into municipal lines when solar power is not present.
- jpollock 7y ago
  No moving parts, and finding free water for pumped storage is going to be hard in California.
- deleted 7y ago
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- codesushi42 7y ago
  Of course. You would have to build a generator. You would need to lay the lines from your hydroelectric source, which could extend many, many miles. And you'd need step down transformers for the last mile. Lipo would supply DC power directly from within your neighborhood.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  For systems that only run for a few hours per day (4-6), battery systems are cheaper to build, faster to build, and far easier to site. There are only a few critical hours of peak demand in California, in the late afternoon/early evening. For example, look at the demand graph here for yesterday (11 July 2019): http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx Demand goes above 35 gigawatts at 3:30 in the afternoon and is back below that level by 7:00 PM, 3.5 hours later. Battery systems are useful for shaving off that daily peak. They reduce the need to activate more expensive and more polluting open cycle gas turbines that have typically been used as peakers. It will be a few years more yet before solar plus storage systems can make a significant dent in the use of more efficient combined cycle gas turbine generation.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  You need the existing terrain to provide a significant elevation change, and building that artificially is probably not worthwhile in most cases.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Well depends on the timeframe you are looking at. Hydro can do a lot more cycles than li-ion batteries.
alvern 7y ago
(Los Angeles deal) would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. So 3.297 cents per kwh. That's on par with large hydro like Tacoma Power Park. I'm getting 11 cents per kwh for my solar currently in the midwest.
Animats 7y ago
$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas and doesn't match load at all.
- ausjke 7y ago
  I have been wonder why can't we convert outside heat into indoor cooling naturally, i.e. in Texas can we convert summer heat to AC power in real time for at least each residence house?
  - loser777 7y ago
    This is possible only when you have a temperature _difference_ to work with. If it’s equally hot everywhere, you’re SOL. (Think heat death of the universe)
  - Animats 7y ago
    Because E < (T2-T1)/T2 To get energy from heat, you need a hot end and a cold end. The more difference between the two, the more energy you can extract. Extracting energy from small temperature differences is very inefficient. Temperature is measured from absolute zero for this.
    - codesushi42 7y ago
      Exactly, this is why steam boiler engines became obsolete, because you can burn gas at a much higher temperature than boiling water. Lower temp can only be viable if you reduce the work needed to run the engine, and can still output the needed work/energy. This is related to why work and heat are both measured in joules.
      - astazangasta 7y ago
stupidcar 7y ago
I wonder what the wider economic effect will be if the price of solar continues to improve and the fossil fuel industry can't find a way to remain competitive. Since some places are far more suitable for solar power generation than others, will those areas end up with a significant advantage in the cost of living? Could that in turn lead to a major migration of people and economic activity to those areas?
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  If you are talking about countries, cost of energy stopped being an important differential ages ago (except for some very specific niches, like aluminum refining). If you are talking about cities, people will just build transmission lines.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Houston might end up with a significant advantage in the cost of living in the low carbon future, because our economy is based on oil and there won't be nearly as many jobs here anymore. Hopefully we get diversifying...
- francisofascii 7y ago
  I don't think the differences are that extreme. I used this site: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ to get annual energy output for a 4KW system. Houston 5,737 kWh/Year Boston 5,214 kWh/Year Seattle 4,389 kWh/Year
- anonuser123456 7y ago
  The Saudis can still make money at 20$/ barrel oil. Oil is just a commodity, so the decline in oil consumption will be a gradual process, not a step function. W.r.t. power production in good solar areas, modern transmission tech can send power 1k miles w/less than 1% loss. Those regions will likely export power, not import people.
- golemiprague 7y ago
  Are you a concerned citizen? From the article it seems like it is not that cheap and that the batteries can work for only few hours so they will still need other resources. I wouldn't be so worried, it will just be another tool in the arsenal of energy generation which will all reduce to similiar costs but with different advantages and disadvantages. Fossil will be reliable but dirty, sun will be not reliable but clean, nuclear will be clean but risky etc. There is not going to be such a big change over all just maybe a slightly different make up but with the growing population and need for energy nobody is going to loose anything.
driverdan 7y ago
> In March, an analysis of more than 7000 global storage projects by Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that the cost of utility-scale lithium-ion batteries had fallen by 76% since 2012, and by 35% in just the past 18 months, to $187 per MWh. I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. That's the amortized cost of $187 per MWh cycle, not the battery's upfront cost. Assuming 2000 cycles that's $374,000 per MWh of storage.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Does it at least use a TVM calculation? If so it's indeed quite misleading, considering that at max 1 cycle per day (e.g. solar) that's 6 years to spread the cost across.
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    If the battery storage is directly connected to the DC side of a solar farm, that's one charging opportunity per day. If it's just hooked into the grid, two charging opportunities per day would be more typical in California. Wind power output tends to be highest at night after the daily demand peak is already past. http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx Look at yesterday (11 July 2019) on the renewables trend graph, for example. Wind reaches its daily minimum around noon, while solar is peaking. Wind's maximum output is at 10:00 PM, long after the sun has set and after the demand peak has passed.
- mikestew 7y ago
  I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. Misleading to some, flat-out useless to others. The replacement cost of the 24KWh battery in our Nissan Leaf is about $5K. So I'll take two of those $187 MWh batteries, please. Oh, of course they're not speaking the same language as I am with that kind of price difference. But then I guess I don't know what in the hell they're talking about if not XWh of energy storage.
  - sp332 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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hristov 7y ago
Good. Could not have happened soon enough.
ed_at_work 7y ago
So, that's cool and all. I love green tech. And I hate fossil fuels. Buuuuuuut, aren't we going to have the same issue with supplies of lithium that we are having with fossil fuels? Unless we have a dramatic shift in renewable battery tech, we're still painting ourselves into a corner with the giant battery trent.
- ravedave5 7y ago
  Once you burn a fossil fuel it's gone. When a battery stops charging properly you can recycle the lithium in that cell.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  The big difference is that fossil fuels are burnt, lithium is not. Lithium can also be recycled once batteries hit end of life. But lithium is just one of many possible battery chemistries. And you're not even limited to chemical batteries; potential energy ones work at grid scale too; all you need to do is pump water uphill.
- NickM 7y ago
  The cost of lithium is a pretty small portion of the cost of the batteries, and in the worst case scenario we can extract an effectively unlimited amount of lithium from seawater; it would make batteries a little more expensive but by that time costs will presumably have fallen much further.
darksaints 7y ago
I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure. His story is particularly interesting to me because he doesn't give a shit about climate change. His views are best described by George Carlin [1]. And yet, he has the lowest carbon lifestyle of anybody I know. In the 15,000 nautical miles he's sailed, he has burned a grand total of 5 gallons of diesel. And that was only because he stayed for a few weeks in Palau without sailing around, and there was a stint of a few days where there was little solar energy due to storms. He now thinks his decision to buy a diesel backup generator was just a waste of money. If you ask him why he did it, these are his answers: It's cheaper, it's quieter, it's less smelly, and it's more reliable. Not a single mention of carbon emissions or resource depletion or pollution. At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia. The costs and performance of renewables+batteries has come so far in the last 5-10 years, and I think we're finally at the point where the intrinsic costs will guarantee adoption. [0] https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-generator/ https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-generator/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4
- StreamBright 7y ago
  And? You think that an average person could do any of these?
- nexuist 7y ago
  >At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about drones? No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables). MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] - that's simply impossible with today's battery tech. I know there are electric planes in development, maybe in production - but none of them match the passenger capacity or cargo volume of a Boeing 747. Until they do, there will always be a place for gas guzzling airliners. Solar can work for households, skyscrapers, and apartments, and like you said, I think the advantages do outweigh the advantages of traditional coal plants so I'm excited to see that become more mainstream. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-is-able-to-stay-in-the-air-for-five-days-at-a-time/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-is-...
viach 7y ago
Imagine our energy is solar 90%, don't we lose some risks diversification here just in the case if the state of affairs with the global sunlight conditions will change drastically?
- mrsharpoblunto 7y ago
  If global sunlight conditions change drastically, we're probably screwed regardless of how we're generating our power. Think crop failures, ecosystem collapse etc.
- Guzba 7y ago
  "global sunlight conditions will change drastically" is an interesting way of saying near extinction level event.
bit_logic 7y ago
Maybe we don't need the batteries if the synthetic fuel tech becomes good enough (there are companies working on this such as Prometheus and Carbon Engineering). Could it be possible for California to become a major oil producer state with extremely cheap solar? Cover the Mojave desert with solar and convert the excess power into oil? It seems definitely possible if there was a carbon tax (which should exclude such synthetic fuel from the tax since it's carbon neutral when it's burned). Without such a tax, maybe it's possible but much more difficult to compete with fossil oil.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  >should exclude such synthetic fuel from the tax since it's carbon neutral when it's burned I hope not. Let the plants remove the CO2 from the air instead. That would be much better than burning it again. How can your process be called neutral if nature has a "more neutral" solution than yours? Let the biomass do its job and just stop burning oil.
laser 7y ago
How is the battery storage only $0.013 per kWh? Is that a misprint and they meant $0.13 per kWh? Or is there some fancy accounting where they're storing only a small percentage of the total energy output and giving a diluted price with the partial storage cost spread over the total output? Or is it truly possible with massive scale to achieve battery costs this low? I can't see how this adds up without some sleight of hand, as the gigafactory production cost isn't even nearly this low yet?
- F_r_k 7y ago
  It's the marginal price of storing a kWh of energy. Not the price of the battery capacity itself
  - laser 7y ago
    Right, I get that—but still don't get the math. Let's say they're buying this capacity at $300 per kWh of capacity, that the batteries last six years on average with a daily cycle, for a total of 2190 cycles. Amortizing that $300 kWh cost over 2190 cycles is $0.137 per kWh. In other words, holding the other constants the same, this company is suggesting $30 kWh batteries, which is just not yet possible as far as I'm aware. That makes me suspect they're actually only storing like 10% capacity then amortizing the cost of storage across total output, as I can't understand how else the numbers add up. Any ideas?
    - philipkglass 7y ago
      > Any ideas? Yes, there are two things that probably contribute here. One is (as you guessed initially) "storing only a small percentage of the total energy output and giving a diluted price with the partial storage cost spread over the total output." The majority of the solar generation can be consumed immediately without taking a trip through the battery. The battery capacity is needed to serve peak demand periods in the late afternoon/early evening, which last just a few hours. The other is that you are probably lowballing the number of charge/discharge cycles at 2190. Unlike EV batteries, stationary batteries for grid demand don't ever need to "supercharge" at high rates or rapidly discharge for high acceleration. Careful moderation of charge/discharge rates can give double or more lifetime compared to identical batteries that undergo fast charging and discharging.
option 7y ago
Maybe this isn’t a problem, but I am curious about how and where all those solar cells and batteries will be disposed at the end of their usefulness?
- tathougies 7y ago
  solar panels (the panels themselves) are made of silicon, which is sand, so aren't a huge concern.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  It's pretty much a non issue. Battery recycling is going to be a great business once currently produced batteries start reaching their rather long end of life. We're in a weird situation right now where we are producing vastly more than just a few years ago so the recycling market is lagging the production market by about 10-15 years or so. However, lithium is easily recovered and the incentives for recovering it are very high given how scarce and expensive this stuff is. Solar recycling is much less of an issue since we're mostly talking about silicon. There's probably enough precious metals involved that recycling them after a few decades is going to be a thing. But compared to the extremely dirty business that is coal mining this is a complete non issue.
DubiousPusher 7y ago
> the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion They make this sound like a lot but that strikes me as actually pretty cheap. I don't think that number can be right. Edit: I mean seriously think. The F-35 has cost us 1.45 trillion dollars so far. That's roughly 1/3 of the price they're asserting here. Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits. I mean way beyond the simple evolutionary next step of one piece of military equipment. It seems like every dollar we spend on energy sovereignity is doing like 10 or even 100 times the work 1 dollar of weapons development is doing to secure our country.
- nexuist 7y ago
  >Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits It would also cause extreme instability by shooting up unemployment, destroying large corporations that offered valuable careers with good benefits, and exacerbate polarization between those who believe in man made climate change and those who don't. Don't get me wrong - I think energy independence is the way to go - but paying $4.5 trillion to effectively ruin the lives of millions of people is not a popular position, especially given that we have terrible safety nets to allow these people to find other jobs. I think the much more likely, less rough path is to continue renewable research until it becomes cheaper than fossil fuels in almost all cases. At which point the market will do the rest. The vast majority of fossil fuel users do not actually care that they use fossil fuel - they just care about energy generation. If you can give them a cheaper means to achieve that, they will go for it.
  - torpfactory 7y ago
    I imagine that it would take a fair number of new workers to help burn that $4.5T. They wouldn't work for oil companies, but they might still be involved in energy production. Besides, it's not like we have some choice here. We can either decarbonize our world economy or perish. I'm awful sick of the 'but the jobs' arguments. We don't need jobs in outdated, polluting industries. That is outright theft of healthy ecosystems from future generations for short term gain, if you can call it that.
ourmandave 7y ago
Meanwhile in Iowa, Mid American Energy is well on their way to 100% renewal by 2021 with an endless array of wind farms. Their final phase of the project started in 2018 with a $922M investment. Iowa Public Radio toured one of the windmills back in January. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind-energy-continues-expand-iowa#stream/0 https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind...
- kortilla 7y ago
  What is the base load supply?
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  Do they have plans for energy storage?
  - AdamTReineke 7y ago
    Currently piloting. "Our pilot project 1-megawatt battery storage facility, announced in November 2018, is now operational in Knoxville, Iowa. It provides 4-megawatt-hours of storage capacity, or enough electricity to power nearly 900 average Iowa homes for up to four hours." https://www.midamericanenergy.com/battery-storage https://www.midamericanenergy.com/battery-storage
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- colechristensen 7y ago
  I wonder how people would feel about ethanol plants fired by wind farms. The one built near my family home is coal fired and the idea of growing crops to be turned into car fuel is ... less appealing. But if you had electric or ethanol powered tractors growing biomass to ferment and distill into more ethanol with a plant fired with wind, maybe there are some different environmental considerations there. For one it would be carbon negative or neutral if you considered that the fuel is all going to be returned to the atmosphere.
rmuesi 7y ago
I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install solar at scale? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t the energy companies eventually do this, which, given macro market laws of supply and demand, would eventually cause the price of electricity to go dramatically down for their end consumer, thus eliminating the financial benefit of privately installed roof top solar for homeowners? I live in the southwest, and based on online calculators it “makes sense” from a 10 year outlook to pay the money now and install solar on my home, but that’s only if the energy prices don’t fall. But nobody seems to even think that’s a possibility.
- wait-a-minute 7y ago
  The financial benefit to the end consumer is that their electricity bill goes down since the panels generate electricity on their own.
- pat2man 7y ago
  You are probably right, but home solar has a few advantages. You already have the space for it. And you don't need to transport the energy anywhere.
- barneygumble742 7y ago
  Energy companies see rooftop solar as competition. Their primary motivation is profit. I do not doubt that they will all eventually go 100% renewable, it's just a matter of ensuring that they lock in their profits. Another issue is the amount they can charge customers. The utilities are also charging for maintenance of the power lines. With rooftop solar, that fee is lost unless the home owner pays the monthly fee to tie their system to the grid.
- mattferderer 7y ago
kalium-xyz 7y ago
Are these being produced using renewable materials and how will they be disposed of after their lifetime (up to 10 years iirc)?
gersh 7y ago
Lithium ion batteries have limited lifecycles so they aren't sustainable. We need to be building massive pumped hydro.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  Newly produced Lithium-Ion batteries last longer than the average car life expectancy. They are also fully recyclable.
barneygumble742 7y ago
> Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion The 2017 tax cut cost $1.5 trillion. I'm starting to suspect that priorities are being misplaced.
- kragen 7y ago
  The tax cut cost the government $1.5 trillion, but provided that same $1.5 trillion directly to the taxpayers. It was a pure transfer, not a cost in the sense that we're talking about here, which involves the consumption of natural resources and human labor, for which the dollars are merely a numerical representation. A better comparison would be the cost of some boondoggle defense program, or the prison system, or unemployment.
mattferderer 7y ago
I'm curious about the Mark Jacobson quote. Is getting rid of coal & natural gas possible without nuclear? I don't see how solar & wind can do it by themselves, even if you take the battery part out of the equation.
- caoilte 7y ago
  Why not? We have enough sunshine and wind to power the Earth many times over. If you take the battery part out of the equation there is no advantage left for nuclear and many many disadvantages, - is hugely expensive to design, build and run (requiring eye watering government guarantees that encourage builders/operators to cut corners). - takes longer than the climate can tolerate to build - needs water for cooling that access to will be problematic once construction is finally complete (France is struggling to run it's reactors already, Britains will be under water in 50 years) - byproducts we cannot deal with and haven't even figured out how to safely bury. - insane de-commissioning costs that everyone pretends don't exist - small risk that there will be an accident and Hollywood will make a shockingly inaccurate hit tv series about it - huge geo-political risk that constrains use to countries that are not going to be de-stablised by global warming in 60 year life time of plant (name one...) - build more than a few and we will struggle to supply the uranium (it's surprisingly hard to find in high enough concentrations for economic strip-mining) And now that batteries are becoming affordable the last argument left for Nuclear is evaporating.
Causality1 7y ago
I wonder why we're not seeing such precipitous drops in the cost of personal solar installations? It still takes a couple of decades for a home panel installation to pay for itself, and that's if you're in a good area for sunlight. Regardless, it's excellent news. Coal is godawful stuff and we'll be much better off leaving it in the ground where it belongs.
rossdavidh 7y ago
Good news: non-carbon energy sources will, faster than most of the world currently thinks, force carbon energy sources off the market. This has already started to happen with coal. Bad news: Well the Left may lament the fact that it will not be due to any change of heart or international cooperation, it will just be due to mercenary calculations of cost, and technology. But all of us have to consider what will (not may, will) happen to places with very oil-dependent economies, when oil goes the way of coal. Imagine Saudi Arabia in the state that Venezuela is in right now.
- ajross 7y ago
  Cynically: to first approximation no one lives in Saudi Arabia. Even if it devolves to a Venezuela style anarchy, we'd still be more worried about Venezuela. Practically: Saudia Arabia is an oil source. Petroleum fuels are going to be with us forever. It's coal (first) and gas (eventually) which are being displaced by better electrical generation options. But if you want to fly an airplane, you really can't replace the savings you get from not having to carry 2/3 of the reaction mass on the vehicle. Oil wealth will be the very last to go, likely well after they're tapped out anyway. And politically: "the Left" you postulate doesn't really exist anyway. You can be a raving socialist and still be pleased that technology solves your problem. You can be a market centrist and still believe that carbon regulation is a good idea.
  - rossdavidh 7y ago
    You _can_, certainly. But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied that the carbon emissions will plummet without any changes in political beliefs or policies being involved. As for Saudi Arabia: there's a lot more people living there, than did before there was oil. Yes, we will still use _some_ oil for many years, but if the oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current levels, I think that there will be problems sooner rather than later.
    - ajross 7y ago
      > But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied Only in the somewhat specious sense that a good chunk of the political X is continually dissatisfied, for all values of X. I'm on that mythical "Left" you're talking about. No one would be happier to see carbon emissions plumet than I, and for any reason. That doesn't mean that I don't think some kind of regulation is inappropriate or unnecessary, in particular because I don't see the revolution in the linked article as inevitable as we might hope.
IshKebab 7y ago
> Last month, the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion So 20% of the US military budget for 40 years. Doesn't sound impossible.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  How independent are they? This number sounds ridiculously high. The right question to ask would be how expensive it would be to keep coal/gas going when it is clearly more expensive than just about anything else, even right now. It's a reason coal plants have been closing for several years now; and even some gas plants are shutting down way ahead of their projected end of life. They're just not viable anymore. It's not about the cost of decarbonizing but the cost of not doing that. There's a point where putting enough solar and batteries in your house gets cheaper than consuming coal produced electricity.
macawfish 7y ago
Looks like the so-called "carbon bubble" is starting to pop!
emanuensis 7y ago
Much better than batteries or gravity storage mechanisms is liquid air storage. It is not for small scale sites, but the bigger, the more economical, it becomes. As an OTS (off the shelf) solution i do not know why it is not used more... Liquid air storage offers cheapest route to 24 hour wind and solar https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424313
- tim333 7y ago
  It's often not very efficient in terms of getting back the energy you put in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#Effic...
  - emanuensis 7y ago
    Great review! Yes both the review and the recent article i cited mention the use of hot and/or/both cold sources to boost efficiency. with high grades of both one can approach 100% Even low grade (AKA heat pump type) sources boost well.
effnorwood 7y ago
They are not.
cyrksoft 7y ago
In case anybody knows, what will happen to those batteries? Can they be recycled in any way?
- deleted 7y ago
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- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  We already recycle 50% of them: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling-rates-far-higher-than-some-statistics-suggest/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling.... And we can recycle them 100% https://www.scribd.com/document/406401162/Tesla-Impact-Report-2019 https://www.scribd.com/document/406401162/Tesla-Impact-Repor... (p. 26)
zelon88 7y ago
Seriously! I'm an old time R/C enthusiast who romps frequently and still buys a toy here and there. I got out of R/C for a little bit so the last pack I bought was a 4,200mah 7.4 volt LiPo from a tiny mom+pop manufacturer. The pack is well taken care of and probably 7 or 8 years old. It's time for a new one. I just looked up a replacement battery by the same manufacturer and their 7.4v LiPo's are up to 22,000 mah! That's almost 525% bigger than my last pack! That kind of capacity was only a dream back then, and 20 years ago when NiMH was the only game in town we were racing 30mph with 3,300! I thought it was a typo. But other manufacturers are offering similar products.
- mfgs 7y ago
  Is there a theoretical limit to (current generation) battery capacity, like there is with solar panel power output?
  - zelon88 7y ago
    There probably is. I'm no chemical engineer, but this is a question they would be best suited to answer. From my experience observing the technology from an R/C standpoint, it seems appearant that the maximum capacity you can achieve with a NiCd (nickel cadmium) battery in a 1.2v "Sub-C" form factor is about 2,000 MaH. The max capacity for a NiMH (nickel metal-hydride) is about 6,000 Mah. Anything lithium is capable of anything nickel can do, but with approximately 50% the weight. Lithium cells are where the technology currently lies and it seems that there is plenty of potential, although graphene is also promising. We haven't hit the limit for lithium batteries yet (or nickel for that matter, but the remaining potential is no longer relevant) Li-Ion (lithium ion) are less stable than Li-Po (lithium-polymer). Also, since Lithium cells are usually 3.4v rectangles and Nickel cells are 1.2v cylinders there are some form-factor differences to consider.
  - zelon88 7y ago
    Also, it's important to note that batteries don't generate power. They store power. Literally. You pump electrons into them and they hold onto them internally until they can be released again. Think of it as a water balloon for electrons. You create a vessel which is capable of efficiently containing electrons. Then you pump electrons into it and hope enough of them stick to be worthwhile. This is battery technology. Different battery technologies have different characteristics. Nickel batteries usually have some form of "cell memory" where the cell will store "stale" electrons indefinately, and lose the ability to release them. These electrons can become "trapped" inside the battery and reduce it's capacity. Likewise the chemical composition of lithium batteries makes them extremely volatile. This means that if you were to completely remove all electrons from the cell it would forget that it is a battery and refuse to store future electrons you try to pump into it. You also have to balance each cell in a lithium pack, else they will become uneven and one could possibly become completely empty (killing the cell). Likewise, when a nickel cell loses all it's electrons it is still possible to "zap" the cell back to life with a large jolt of electrons. Some of which stick, some do not. Sometimes this results in the battery "waking up" to accept more electrons. Sometimes it doesn't, and a 6 cell (7.2v) nickel battery will have to be dissected to replace the bad cells.
Jedd 7y ago
> .. addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. This never fails to frustrate me. Solar cells / PVC won't work absent sunshine, but solar thermal / CSP produces power for many hours after the sun goes down.
pg_bot 7y ago
I've done a bit of research on batteries and I haven't seen too many people mention vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) for grid storage. While lithium ion batteries have great energy density (necessary when you need to carry your energy) they deteriorate over time leading to continual capital expenditures. From what I've read, it seems like the VRFBs can basically run forever with minimal maintenance. If I were betting on large scale grid battery storage technologies I think this is where I would be interested in putting my money. While they are less energy dense, it doesn't really matter since most houses are stationary.
- tim333 7y ago
  Apparently the vanadium stuff is expensive. Guy here arguing for Zinc. https://youtu.be/UCwJqMOiLs0?t=275 https://youtu.be/UCwJqMOiLs0?t=275
dfilppi 7y ago
Thanks to the most essential ingredient: taxpayer 'subsidies'
dclowd9901 7y ago
I love the move to clean energy, but the pragmatist within me can't help but wonder: what's the downside to solar from an environmental perspective (if any)? Has anyone conducted any studies on the environmental impact of a large solar farm in a given area (to wildlife, weather, etc)?
earthstabber 7y ago
Contrarian buy signal on natural gas from this article. Currently hovering just under 2.5
charliebrownau 7y ago
Gday Has anyone actually released info to the public domain or open source to create your own DIY battery from scratch and diy solar panel from scratch or is this tech like so much in business/corporations and chinas hands and out of the ability for the average person to make yourself
jwillie 7y ago
An alternative perspecrive from a physicist/enginner/venture capitalist who was named Energy Writer of the Year" in 2016 by the American Energy Society. This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.” Among the reasons: Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh. Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%. Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%. The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced. Heres's a link to his full paper: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-... Whose argument holds up to serious critical analysis, Mills or Science Mag's?
foxyv 7y ago
> It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023. This seems a bit slow to me. 5 years in California time usually ends up being at least 10 years if you are lucky. By then the 7% will probably be closer to 3-5%. I think California is going to have to be a lot more aggressive with Solar and battery if they are going to reach their climate goals...

652 points by rchaudhary 7y ago

Is this like a future dated article or something? Seems it is discussing events that may happen in 2023.

Why lithium ion batteries — are they much cheaper to make than new gravitational potential (i.e. hydroelectric) storage systems?

bobthepanda 7y ago
Hydro can be extremely disruptive to ecosystems, and you also need a suitable site for it. It's very situational, from what I understand.
- Animats 7y ago
  very situational Yes. You need a mountain lake and a low level lake close to each other, and the lakes aren't useful for much else because the water level goes way up and down every day. The US has 10 pumped storage plants bigger than a gigawatt, and few attractive sites for more.
  - cmoscoe 7y ago
    I've hear the Hoover Dam proposed, and theoretically any existing dam could be converted? Just need to pump some water back upstream when there's excess load in the system. Here in Canada a lot of our energy is hydroelectric and I know there's a lot of talk about this sort of solution in Quebec.
    - cesarb 7y ago
      > theoretically any existing dam could be converted? Just need to pump some water back upstream when there's excess load in the system. For that, you need water that can be pumped back upstream, that is, you need also a lower reservoir. If your dam discharges directly into a river, you won't have enough water downstream of the dam to pump back upstream. Not all dams have suitable geology to form another reservoir below them. An alternative would be to create a new reservoir higher than the dam, using the existing dam as the lower reservoir, with a set of tunnels with the reversible generator/pumps linking both reservoirs (this new upper reservoir does not need to be in the path of the river).
    - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago
      > Just need to pump some water back upstream In this situation, you'd simply never let the water flow through in the first place. This amounts to releasing water while generating energy, only to pump it back. The net result is just a lot of wasted energy. Pumped hydro requires two reservoirs. There's no way around it.
  - organsnyder 7y ago
    Or build a reservoir next to a body of water. The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant next to Lake Michigan has 2172 MW of generating capacity and 19,548 MWh of storage capacity.
    - Animats 7y ago
      That site has a hill. 111 meter difference between the reservors. More would be better, but that part of the country doesn't have mountains.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  It's not (very) disruptive if you build an artificial closed-cycle lake on an existing elevation difference. But such sites are not very commonly available where storage is needed. You have to refresh the water to compensate for evaporation, and that's about the extent of the impact. Dammed streams of course are a completely different story.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Like that time Banqiao dam burst and killed 100,000 people...
- nanomonkey 7y ago
  I wonder if it would be better to go distributed, pump water into a water tower from a well, or from a municipal source, and then generate electricity and release it back into municipal lines when solar power is not present.
jpollock 7y ago
No moving parts, and finding free water for pumped storage is going to be hard in California.
deleted 7y ago
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codesushi42 7y ago
Of course. You would have to build a generator. You would need to lay the lines from your hydroelectric source, which could extend many, many miles. And you'd need step down transformers for the last mile. Lipo would supply DC power directly from within your neighborhood.
philipkglass 7y ago
For systems that only run for a few hours per day (4-6), battery systems are cheaper to build, faster to build, and far easier to site. There are only a few critical hours of peak demand in California, in the late afternoon/early evening. For example, look at the demand graph here for yesterday (11 July 2019): http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx Demand goes above 35 gigawatts at 3:30 in the afternoon and is back below that level by 7:00 PM, 3.5 hours later. Battery systems are useful for shaving off that daily peak. They reduce the need to activate more expensive and more polluting open cycle gas turbines that have typically been used as peakers. It will be a few years more yet before solar plus storage systems can make a significant dent in the use of more efficient combined cycle gas turbine generation.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
You need the existing terrain to provide a significant elevation change, and building that artificially is probably not worthwhile in most cases.
StreamBright 7y ago
Well depends on the timeframe you are looking at. Hydro can do a lot more cycles than li-ion batteries.

alvern 7y ago

(Los Angeles deal) would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. So 3.297 cents per kwh. That's on par with large hydro like Tacoma Power Park. I'm getting 11 cents per kwh for my solar currently in the midwest.

Animats 7y ago

$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas and doesn't match load at all.

ausjke 7y ago
I have been wonder why can't we convert outside heat into indoor cooling naturally, i.e. in Texas can we convert summer heat to AC power in real time for at least each residence house?
- loser777 7y ago
  This is possible only when you have a temperature _difference_ to work with. If it’s equally hot everywhere, you’re SOL. (Think heat death of the universe)
- Animats 7y ago
  Because E < (T2-T1)/T2 To get energy from heat, you need a hot end and a cold end. The more difference between the two, the more energy you can extract. Extracting energy from small temperature differences is very inefficient. Temperature is measured from absolute zero for this.
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    Exactly, this is why steam boiler engines became obsolete, because you can burn gas at a much higher temperature than boiling water. Lower temp can only be viable if you reduce the work needed to run the engine, and can still output the needed work/energy. This is related to why work and heat are both measured in joules.
    - astazangasta 7y ago

stupidcar 7y ago

I wonder what the wider economic effect will be if the price of solar continues to improve and the fossil fuel industry can't find a way to remain competitive. Since some places are far more suitable for solar power generation than others, will those areas end up with a significant advantage in the cost of living? Could that in turn lead to a major migration of people and economic activity to those areas?

marcosdumay 7y ago
If you are talking about countries, cost of energy stopped being an important differential ages ago (except for some very specific niches, like aluminum refining). If you are talking about cities, people will just build transmission lines.
asdfman123 7y ago
Houston might end up with a significant advantage in the cost of living in the low carbon future, because our economy is based on oil and there won't be nearly as many jobs here anymore. Hopefully we get diversifying...
francisofascii 7y ago
I don't think the differences are that extreme. I used this site: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ to get annual energy output for a 4KW system. Houston 5,737 kWh/Year Boston 5,214 kWh/Year Seattle 4,389 kWh/Year
anonuser123456 7y ago
The Saudis can still make money at 20$/ barrel oil. Oil is just a commodity, so the decline in oil consumption will be a gradual process, not a step function. W.r.t. power production in good solar areas, modern transmission tech can send power 1k miles w/less than 1% loss. Those regions will likely export power, not import people.
golemiprague 7y ago
Are you a concerned citizen? From the article it seems like it is not that cheap and that the batteries can work for only few hours so they will still need other resources. I wouldn't be so worried, it will just be another tool in the arsenal of energy generation which will all reduce to similiar costs but with different advantages and disadvantages. Fossil will be reliable but dirty, sun will be not reliable but clean, nuclear will be clean but risky etc. There is not going to be such a big change over all just maybe a slightly different make up but with the growing population and need for energy nobody is going to loose anything.

driverdan 7y ago

> In March, an analysis of more than 7000 global storage projects by Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that the cost of utility-scale lithium-ion batteries had fallen by 76% since 2012, and by 35% in just the past 18 months, to $187 per MWh. I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. That's the amortized cost of $187 per MWh cycle, not the battery's upfront cost. Assuming 2000 cycles that's $374,000 per MWh of storage.

aidenn0 7y ago
Does it at least use a TVM calculation? If so it's indeed quite misleading, considering that at max 1 cycle per day (e.g. solar) that's 6 years to spread the cost across.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  If the battery storage is directly connected to the DC side of a solar farm, that's one charging opportunity per day. If it's just hooked into the grid, two charging opportunities per day would be more typical in California. Wind power output tends to be highest at night after the daily demand peak is already past. http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx Look at yesterday (11 July 2019) on the renewables trend graph, for example. Wind reaches its daily minimum around noon, while solar is peaking. Wind's maximum output is at 10:00 PM, long after the sun has set and after the demand peak has passed.
mikestew 7y ago
I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. Misleading to some, flat-out useless to others. The replacement cost of the 24KWh battery in our Nissan Leaf is about $5K. So I'll take two of those $187 MWh batteries, please. Oh, of course they're not speaking the same language as I am with that kind of price difference. But then I guess I don't know what in the hell they're talking about if not XWh of energy storage.
- sp332 7y ago

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hristov 7y ago

Good. Could not have happened soon enough.

ed_at_work 7y ago

So, that's cool and all. I love green tech. And I hate fossil fuels. Buuuuuuut, aren't we going to have the same issue with supplies of lithium that we are having with fossil fuels? Unless we have a dramatic shift in renewable battery tech, we're still painting ourselves into a corner with the giant battery trent.

ravedave5 7y ago
Once you burn a fossil fuel it's gone. When a battery stops charging properly you can recycle the lithium in that cell.
CydeWeys 7y ago
The big difference is that fossil fuels are burnt, lithium is not. Lithium can also be recycled once batteries hit end of life. But lithium is just one of many possible battery chemistries. And you're not even limited to chemical batteries; potential energy ones work at grid scale too; all you need to do is pump water uphill.
NickM 7y ago
The cost of lithium is a pretty small portion of the cost of the batteries, and in the worst case scenario we can extract an effectively unlimited amount of lithium from seawater; it would make batteries a little more expensive but by that time costs will presumably have fallen much further.

darksaints 7y ago

I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure. His story is particularly interesting to me because he doesn't give a shit about climate change. His views are best described by George Carlin [1]. And yet, he has the lowest carbon lifestyle of anybody I know. In the 15,000 nautical miles he's sailed, he has burned a grand total of 5 gallons of diesel. And that was only because he stayed for a few weeks in Palau without sailing around, and there was a stint of a few days where there was little solar energy due to storms. He now thinks his decision to buy a diesel backup generator was just a waste of money. If you ask him why he did it, these are his answers: It's cheaper, it's quieter, it's less smelly, and it's more reliable. Not a single mention of carbon emissions or resource depletion or pollution. At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia. The costs and performance of renewables+batteries has come so far in the last 5-10 years, and I think we're finally at the point where the intrinsic costs will guarantee adoption. [0] https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-generator/ https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-generator/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4

StreamBright 7y ago
And? You think that an average person could do any of these?
nexuist 7y ago
>At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about drones? No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables). MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] - that's simply impossible with today's battery tech. I know there are electric planes in development, maybe in production - but none of them match the passenger capacity or cargo volume of a Boeing 747. Until they do, there will always be a place for gas guzzling airliners. Solar can work for households, skyscrapers, and apartments, and like you said, I think the advantages do outweigh the advantages of traditional coal plants so I'm excited to see that become more mainstream. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-is-able-to-stay-in-the-air-for-five-days-at-a-time/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-is-...

viach 7y ago

Imagine our energy is solar 90%, don't we lose some risks diversification here just in the case if the state of affairs with the global sunlight conditions will change drastically?

mrsharpoblunto 7y ago
If global sunlight conditions change drastically, we're probably screwed regardless of how we're generating our power. Think crop failures, ecosystem collapse etc.
Guzba 7y ago
"global sunlight conditions will change drastically" is an interesting way of saying near extinction level event.

bit_logic 7y ago

Maybe we don't need the batteries if the synthetic fuel tech becomes good enough (there are companies working on this such as Prometheus and Carbon Engineering). Could it be possible for California to become a major oil producer state with extremely cheap solar? Cover the Mojave desert with solar and convert the excess power into oil? It seems definitely possible if there was a carbon tax (which should exclude such synthetic fuel from the tax since it's carbon neutral when it's burned). Without such a tax, maybe it's possible but much more difficult to compete with fossil oil.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
>should exclude such synthetic fuel from the tax since it's carbon neutral when it's burned I hope not. Let the plants remove the CO2 from the air instead. That would be much better than burning it again. How can your process be called neutral if nature has a "more neutral" solution than yours? Let the biomass do its job and just stop burning oil.

laser 7y ago

How is the battery storage only $0.013 per kWh? Is that a misprint and they meant $0.13 per kWh? Or is there some fancy accounting where they're storing only a small percentage of the total energy output and giving a diluted price with the partial storage cost spread over the total output? Or is it truly possible with massive scale to achieve battery costs this low? I can't see how this adds up without some sleight of hand, as the gigafactory production cost isn't even nearly this low yet?

F_r_k 7y ago
It's the marginal price of storing a kWh of energy. Not the price of the battery capacity itself
- laser 7y ago
  Right, I get that—but still don't get the math. Let's say they're buying this capacity at $300 per kWh of capacity, that the batteries last six years on average with a daily cycle, for a total of 2190 cycles. Amortizing that $300 kWh cost over 2190 cycles is $0.137 per kWh. In other words, holding the other constants the same, this company is suggesting $30 kWh batteries, which is just not yet possible as far as I'm aware. That makes me suspect they're actually only storing like 10% capacity then amortizing the cost of storage across total output, as I can't understand how else the numbers add up. Any ideas?
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    > Any ideas? Yes, there are two things that probably contribute here. One is (as you guessed initially) "storing only a small percentage of the total energy output and giving a diluted price with the partial storage cost spread over the total output." The majority of the solar generation can be consumed immediately without taking a trip through the battery. The battery capacity is needed to serve peak demand periods in the late afternoon/early evening, which last just a few hours. The other is that you are probably lowballing the number of charge/discharge cycles at 2190. Unlike EV batteries, stationary batteries for grid demand don't ever need to "supercharge" at high rates or rapidly discharge for high acceleration. Careful moderation of charge/discharge rates can give double or more lifetime compared to identical batteries that undergo fast charging and discharging.

option 7y ago

Maybe this isn’t a problem, but I am curious about how and where all those solar cells and batteries will be disposed at the end of their usefulness?

tathougies 7y ago
solar panels (the panels themselves) are made of silicon, which is sand, so aren't a huge concern.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
It's pretty much a non issue. Battery recycling is going to be a great business once currently produced batteries start reaching their rather long end of life. We're in a weird situation right now where we are producing vastly more than just a few years ago so the recycling market is lagging the production market by about 10-15 years or so. However, lithium is easily recovered and the incentives for recovering it are very high given how scarce and expensive this stuff is. Solar recycling is much less of an issue since we're mostly talking about silicon. There's probably enough precious metals involved that recycling them after a few decades is going to be a thing. But compared to the extremely dirty business that is coal mining this is a complete non issue.

DubiousPusher 7y ago

> the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion They make this sound like a lot but that strikes me as actually pretty cheap. I don't think that number can be right. Edit: I mean seriously think. The F-35 has cost us 1.45 trillion dollars so far. That's roughly 1/3 of the price they're asserting here. Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits. I mean way beyond the simple evolutionary next step of one piece of military equipment. It seems like every dollar we spend on energy sovereignity is doing like 10 or even 100 times the work 1 dollar of weapons development is doing to secure our country.

nexuist 7y ago
>Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits It would also cause extreme instability by shooting up unemployment, destroying large corporations that offered valuable careers with good benefits, and exacerbate polarization between those who believe in man made climate change and those who don't. Don't get me wrong - I think energy independence is the way to go - but paying $4.5 trillion to effectively ruin the lives of millions of people is not a popular position, especially given that we have terrible safety nets to allow these people to find other jobs. I think the much more likely, less rough path is to continue renewable research until it becomes cheaper than fossil fuels in almost all cases. At which point the market will do the rest. The vast majority of fossil fuel users do not actually care that they use fossil fuel - they just care about energy generation. If you can give them a cheaper means to achieve that, they will go for it.
- torpfactory 7y ago
  I imagine that it would take a fair number of new workers to help burn that $4.5T. They wouldn't work for oil companies, but they might still be involved in energy production. Besides, it's not like we have some choice here. We can either decarbonize our world economy or perish. I'm awful sick of the 'but the jobs' arguments. We don't need jobs in outdated, polluting industries. That is outright theft of healthy ecosystems from future generations for short term gain, if you can call it that.

ourmandave 7y ago

Meanwhile in Iowa, Mid American Energy is well on their way to 100% renewal by 2021 with an endless array of wind farms. Their final phase of the project started in 2018 with a $922M investment. Iowa Public Radio toured one of the windmills back in January. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind-energy-continues-expand-iowa#stream/0 https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind...

kortilla 7y ago
What is the base load supply?
gameswithgo 7y ago
Do they have plans for energy storage?
- AdamTReineke 7y ago
  Currently piloting. "Our pilot project 1-megawatt battery storage facility, announced in November 2018, is now operational in Knoxville, Iowa. It provides 4-megawatt-hours of storage capacity, or enough electricity to power nearly 900 average Iowa homes for up to four hours." https://www.midamericanenergy.com/battery-storage https://www.midamericanenergy.com/battery-storage
- deleted 7y ago
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colechristensen 7y ago
I wonder how people would feel about ethanol plants fired by wind farms. The one built near my family home is coal fired and the idea of growing crops to be turned into car fuel is ... less appealing. But if you had electric or ethanol powered tractors growing biomass to ferment and distill into more ethanol with a plant fired with wind, maybe there are some different environmental considerations there. For one it would be carbon negative or neutral if you considered that the fuel is all going to be returned to the atmosphere.

rmuesi 7y ago

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install solar at scale? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t the energy companies eventually do this, which, given macro market laws of supply and demand, would eventually cause the price of electricity to go dramatically down for their end consumer, thus eliminating the financial benefit of privately installed roof top solar for homeowners? I live in the southwest, and based on online calculators it “makes sense” from a 10 year outlook to pay the money now and install solar on my home, but that’s only if the energy prices don’t fall. But nobody seems to even think that’s a possibility.

wait-a-minute 7y ago
The financial benefit to the end consumer is that their electricity bill goes down since the panels generate electricity on their own.
pat2man 7y ago
You are probably right, but home solar has a few advantages. You already have the space for it. And you don't need to transport the energy anywhere.
barneygumble742 7y ago
Energy companies see rooftop solar as competition. Their primary motivation is profit. I do not doubt that they will all eventually go 100% renewable, it's just a matter of ensuring that they lock in their profits. Another issue is the amount they can charge customers. The utilities are also charging for maintenance of the power lines. With rooftop solar, that fee is lost unless the home owner pays the monthly fee to tie their system to the grid.
mattferderer 7y ago

kalium-xyz 7y ago

Are these being produced using renewable materials and how will they be disposed of after their lifetime (up to 10 years iirc)?

gersh 7y ago

Lithium ion batteries have limited lifecycles so they aren't sustainable. We need to be building massive pumped hydro.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
Newly produced Lithium-Ion batteries last longer than the average car life expectancy. They are also fully recyclable.

barneygumble742 7y ago

> Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion The 2017 tax cut cost $1.5 trillion. I'm starting to suspect that priorities are being misplaced.

kragen 7y ago
The tax cut cost the government $1.5 trillion, but provided that same $1.5 trillion directly to the taxpayers. It was a pure transfer, not a cost in the sense that we're talking about here, which involves the consumption of natural resources and human labor, for which the dollars are merely a numerical representation. A better comparison would be the cost of some boondoggle defense program, or the prison system, or unemployment.

mattferderer 7y ago

I'm curious about the Mark Jacobson quote. Is getting rid of coal & natural gas possible without nuclear? I don't see how solar & wind can do it by themselves, even if you take the battery part out of the equation.

caoilte 7y ago
Why not? We have enough sunshine and wind to power the Earth many times over. If you take the battery part out of the equation there is no advantage left for nuclear and many many disadvantages, - is hugely expensive to design, build and run (requiring eye watering government guarantees that encourage builders/operators to cut corners). - takes longer than the climate can tolerate to build - needs water for cooling that access to will be problematic once construction is finally complete (France is struggling to run it's reactors already, Britains will be under water in 50 years) - byproducts we cannot deal with and haven't even figured out how to safely bury. - insane de-commissioning costs that everyone pretends don't exist - small risk that there will be an accident and Hollywood will make a shockingly inaccurate hit tv series about it - huge geo-political risk that constrains use to countries that are not going to be de-stablised by global warming in 60 year life time of plant (name one...) - build more than a few and we will struggle to supply the uranium (it's surprisingly hard to find in high enough concentrations for economic strip-mining) And now that batteries are becoming affordable the last argument left for Nuclear is evaporating.

Causality1 7y ago

I wonder why we're not seeing such precipitous drops in the cost of personal solar installations? It still takes a couple of decades for a home panel installation to pay for itself, and that's if you're in a good area for sunlight. Regardless, it's excellent news. Coal is godawful stuff and we'll be much better off leaving it in the ground where it belongs.

rossdavidh 7y ago

Good news: non-carbon energy sources will, faster than most of the world currently thinks, force carbon energy sources off the market. This has already started to happen with coal. Bad news: Well the Left may lament the fact that it will not be due to any change of heart or international cooperation, it will just be due to mercenary calculations of cost, and technology. But all of us have to consider what will (not may, will) happen to places with very oil-dependent economies, when oil goes the way of coal. Imagine Saudi Arabia in the state that Venezuela is in right now.

ajross 7y ago
Cynically: to first approximation no one lives in Saudi Arabia. Even if it devolves to a Venezuela style anarchy, we'd still be more worried about Venezuela. Practically: Saudia Arabia is an oil source. Petroleum fuels are going to be with us forever. It's coal (first) and gas (eventually) which are being displaced by better electrical generation options. But if you want to fly an airplane, you really can't replace the savings you get from not having to carry 2/3 of the reaction mass on the vehicle. Oil wealth will be the very last to go, likely well after they're tapped out anyway. And politically: "the Left" you postulate doesn't really exist anyway. You can be a raving socialist and still be pleased that technology solves your problem. You can be a market centrist and still believe that carbon regulation is a good idea.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  You _can_, certainly. But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied that the carbon emissions will plummet without any changes in political beliefs or policies being involved. As for Saudi Arabia: there's a lot more people living there, than did before there was oil. Yes, we will still use _some_ oil for many years, but if the oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current levels, I think that there will be problems sooner rather than later.
  - ajross 7y ago
    > But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied Only in the somewhat specious sense that a good chunk of the political X is continually dissatisfied, for all values of X. I'm on that mythical "Left" you're talking about. No one would be happier to see carbon emissions plumet than I, and for any reason. That doesn't mean that I don't think some kind of regulation is inappropriate or unnecessary, in particular because I don't see the revolution in the linked article as inevitable as we might hope.

IshKebab 7y ago

> Last month, the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion So 20% of the US military budget for 40 years. Doesn't sound impossible.

jillesvangurp 7y ago
How independent are they? This number sounds ridiculously high. The right question to ask would be how expensive it would be to keep coal/gas going when it is clearly more expensive than just about anything else, even right now. It's a reason coal plants have been closing for several years now; and even some gas plants are shutting down way ahead of their projected end of life. They're just not viable anymore. It's not about the cost of decarbonizing but the cost of not doing that. There's a point where putting enough solar and batteries in your house gets cheaper than consuming coal produced electricity.

macawfish 7y ago

Looks like the so-called "carbon bubble" is starting to pop!

emanuensis 7y ago

Much better than batteries or gravity storage mechanisms is liquid air storage. It is not for small scale sites, but the bigger, the more economical, it becomes. As an OTS (off the shelf) solution i do not know why it is not used more... Liquid air storage offers cheapest route to 24 hour wind and solar https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424313

tim333 7y ago
It's often not very efficient in terms of getting back the energy you put in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#Effic...
- emanuensis 7y ago
  Great review! Yes both the review and the recent article i cited mention the use of hot and/or/both cold sources to boost efficiency. with high grades of both one can approach 100% Even low grade (AKA heat pump type) sources boost well.

effnorwood 7y ago

They are not.

cyrksoft 7y ago

In case anybody knows, what will happen to those batteries? Can they be recycled in any way?

deleted 7y ago
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rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
We already recycle 50% of them: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling-rates-far-higher-than-some-statistics-suggest/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling.... And we can recycle them 100% https://www.scribd.com/document/406401162/Tesla-Impact-Report-2019 https://www.scribd.com/document/406401162/Tesla-Impact-Repor... (p. 26)

zelon88 7y ago

Seriously! I'm an old time R/C enthusiast who romps frequently and still buys a toy here and there. I got out of R/C for a little bit so the last pack I bought was a 4,200mah 7.4 volt LiPo from a tiny mom+pop manufacturer. The pack is well taken care of and probably 7 or 8 years old. It's time for a new one. I just looked up a replacement battery by the same manufacturer and their 7.4v LiPo's are up to 22,000 mah! That's almost 525% bigger than my last pack! That kind of capacity was only a dream back then, and 20 years ago when NiMH was the only game in town we were racing 30mph with 3,300! I thought it was a typo. But other manufacturers are offering similar products.

mfgs 7y ago
Is there a theoretical limit to (current generation) battery capacity, like there is with solar panel power output?
- zelon88 7y ago
  There probably is. I'm no chemical engineer, but this is a question they would be best suited to answer. From my experience observing the technology from an R/C standpoint, it seems appearant that the maximum capacity you can achieve with a NiCd (nickel cadmium) battery in a 1.2v "Sub-C" form factor is about 2,000 MaH. The max capacity for a NiMH (nickel metal-hydride) is about 6,000 Mah. Anything lithium is capable of anything nickel can do, but with approximately 50% the weight. Lithium cells are where the technology currently lies and it seems that there is plenty of potential, although graphene is also promising. We haven't hit the limit for lithium batteries yet (or nickel for that matter, but the remaining potential is no longer relevant) Li-Ion (lithium ion) are less stable than Li-Po (lithium-polymer). Also, since Lithium cells are usually 3.4v rectangles and Nickel cells are 1.2v cylinders there are some form-factor differences to consider.
- zelon88 7y ago
  Also, it's important to note that batteries don't generate power. They store power. Literally. You pump electrons into them and they hold onto them internally until they can be released again. Think of it as a water balloon for electrons. You create a vessel which is capable of efficiently containing electrons. Then you pump electrons into it and hope enough of them stick to be worthwhile. This is battery technology. Different battery technologies have different characteristics. Nickel batteries usually have some form of "cell memory" where the cell will store "stale" electrons indefinately, and lose the ability to release them. These electrons can become "trapped" inside the battery and reduce it's capacity. Likewise the chemical composition of lithium batteries makes them extremely volatile. This means that if you were to completely remove all electrons from the cell it would forget that it is a battery and refuse to store future electrons you try to pump into it. You also have to balance each cell in a lithium pack, else they will become uneven and one could possibly become completely empty (killing the cell). Likewise, when a nickel cell loses all it's electrons it is still possible to "zap" the cell back to life with a large jolt of electrons. Some of which stick, some do not. Sometimes this results in the battery "waking up" to accept more electrons. Sometimes it doesn't, and a 6 cell (7.2v) nickel battery will have to be dissected to replace the bad cells.

Jedd 7y ago

> .. addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. This never fails to frustrate me. Solar cells / PVC won't work absent sunshine, but solar thermal / CSP produces power for many hours after the sun goes down.

pg_bot 7y ago

I've done a bit of research on batteries and I haven't seen too many people mention vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) for grid storage. While lithium ion batteries have great energy density (necessary when you need to carry your energy) they deteriorate over time leading to continual capital expenditures. From what I've read, it seems like the VRFBs can basically run forever with minimal maintenance. If I were betting on large scale grid battery storage technologies I think this is where I would be interested in putting my money. While they are less energy dense, it doesn't really matter since most houses are stationary.

tim333 7y ago
Apparently the vanadium stuff is expensive. Guy here arguing for Zinc. https://youtu.be/UCwJqMOiLs0?t=275 https://youtu.be/UCwJqMOiLs0?t=275

dfilppi 7y ago

Thanks to the most essential ingredient: taxpayer 'subsidies'

dclowd9901 7y ago

I love the move to clean energy, but the pragmatist within me can't help but wonder: what's the downside to solar from an environmental perspective (if any)? Has anyone conducted any studies on the environmental impact of a large solar farm in a given area (to wildlife, weather, etc)?

earthstabber 7y ago

Contrarian buy signal on natural gas from this article. Currently hovering just under 2.5

charliebrownau 7y ago

Gday Has anyone actually released info to the public domain or open source to create your own DIY battery from scratch and diy solar panel from scratch or is this tech like so much in business/corporations and chinas hands and out of the ability for the average person to make yourself

jwillie 7y ago

An alternative perspecrive from a physicist/enginner/venture capitalist who was named Energy Writer of the Year" in 2016 by the American Energy Society. This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.” Among the reasons: Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh. Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%. Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%. The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced. Heres's a link to his full paper: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-... Whose argument holds up to serious critical analysis, Mills or Science Mag's?

foxyv 7y ago

> It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023. This seems a bit slow to me. 5 years in California time usually ends up being at least 10 years if you are lucky. By then the 7% will probably be closer to 3-5%. I think California is going to have to be a lot more aggressive with Solar and battery if they are going to reach their climate goals...