5 ms·

The numbers given in article the world wide battery installations are predicted in 2040 to cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption assuming it w

The numbers given in article the world wide battery installations are predicted in 2040 to cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption assuming it would be equal close to 2016 figures, where majority of world is in relative poverty. It definitely is at least two orders of magnitude too little to stop climate change. People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change. Nope, emissions are only related to rate of change not absolute value. Reducing emissions by 90% would only slow down the change, it reducing 99% would actually stop it, and it would need to be about 100% to slowly reverse the effects of what has been done by the time humanity gets there.

x43b 7y ago
I actually work on reducing emissions tangentially and am absolutely not a "denier", but I have not seen any evidence that our models are so accurate that we can predict the tipping point from halting increases to decreases within 1%.
- adrianN 7y ago
  You're probably right, but that's really nothing good. Our models are poor and despite not knowing where irrecoverable tipping points lie exactly, we blast full steam ahead with our emissions.
- josmala 7y ago
  Just took a number which carbon is removed from air-sea-plants natural circulation. The increase in CO2 stops when emissions match the removal of CO2 from circulation as permanent basis. And that figure seems to be about 1% of our emissions. But the key issue is that those two numbers need to match in order to actually stop the climate change permanently which is so far away from every politicians discussion points. All the renewables and storage technologies fail when we start to calculate amount of material required to build them and mining of those resources. Only energy technology so far that could actually do it is nuclear. As for uranium limited reserves they are calculated about 0.1 cent per kwh price limit. It is one of those situations where emotions points towards renewables while numbers are clearly for the nuclear if people could accept tiny risk of having two bananas worth of radiation or even the extreme case of getting so high radiation dose that it would give as high cancer risk as the average alcohol consumption.
standardUser 7y ago
"..cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption..." That seems like a meaningless metric. No one is designing a global battery system to power the entire planet. What matters is how battery systems integrate with generation systems. "People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change..." Why do you assume people assume this?
- adrianN 7y ago
  Why do you think that this is a meaningless metric. It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night. Realistically we need enough storage to cover reduced production and increased demand through winter.
  - cesarb 7y ago
    > It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night. That's only the case if all your generation is from photovoltaic solar. The wind doesn't stop blowing at night, and you need a long drought for hydro to stop producing power.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Yeah good, then we need enough storage to last half a night and good enough transmission lines to get wind power from wherever it's windy to where the power is needed. That's still a lot more storage than 20 minutes.
  - kragen 7y ago
    It's cheaper under most assumptions to build enough solar panels that the reduced production during winter is still enough to cover your increased demand, rather than to build seasonal utility energy stores. See my calculations at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20664835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20664835 which show that 50x panel overprovisioning is cheaper than a week’s worth of battery backup. 26 week backup would then be a higher cost than overprovisioning panels by 1300x. The actual seasonal variability in panel output is normally less than a factor of 2, nowhere near 1300. Unless you're in Antarctica or something.
tim333 7y ago
Nitpick - I make it closer to 1 hours electricity but I agree it's way too low from a fixing global warming point of view. The figure 2,850GWh by 2040 works out about 280 Wh a head if you guess a 10bn population. For comparison a Tesla Powerwall is 13.5 kWh. Something like 100x that storage would be good if we are running on renewables. With something like the nantenergy battery they are already talking $100/kWh and have cheap materials so it would seem quite plausible to get down to say $25/kWh by 2040 meaning you could get 40kWh for $1000 or so which I think may be a better target. (https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/17776/NantEnergys-Zinc-Air-Battery-Crosses-the-100kWh-Barrier.aspx https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...)
kragen 7y ago
Agreed, the humans will need enough short-term energy storage to cover several hours of their energy use to transition it mostly to solar, which is probably what they will do. However, you are forgetting about atmospheric carbon capture.

x43b 7y ago

I actually work on reducing emissions tangentially and am absolutely not a "denier", but I have not seen any evidence that our models are so accurate that we can predict the tipping point from halting increases to decreases within 1%.

adrianN 7y ago
You're probably right, but that's really nothing good. Our models are poor and despite not knowing where irrecoverable tipping points lie exactly, we blast full steam ahead with our emissions.
josmala 7y ago
Just took a number which carbon is removed from air-sea-plants natural circulation. The increase in CO2 stops when emissions match the removal of CO2 from circulation as permanent basis. And that figure seems to be about 1% of our emissions. But the key issue is that those two numbers need to match in order to actually stop the climate change permanently which is so far away from every politicians discussion points. All the renewables and storage technologies fail when we start to calculate amount of material required to build them and mining of those resources. Only energy technology so far that could actually do it is nuclear. As for uranium limited reserves they are calculated about 0.1 cent per kwh price limit. It is one of those situations where emotions points towards renewables while numbers are clearly for the nuclear if people could accept tiny risk of having two bananas worth of radiation or even the extreme case of getting so high radiation dose that it would give as high cancer risk as the average alcohol consumption.

standardUser 7y ago

"..cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption..." That seems like a meaningless metric. No one is designing a global battery system to power the entire planet. What matters is how battery systems integrate with generation systems. "People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change..." Why do you assume people assume this?

adrianN 7y ago
Why do you think that this is a meaningless metric. It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night. Realistically we need enough storage to cover reduced production and increased demand through winter.
- cesarb 7y ago
  > It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night. That's only the case if all your generation is from photovoltaic solar. The wind doesn't stop blowing at night, and you need a long drought for hydro to stop producing power.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Yeah good, then we need enough storage to last half a night and good enough transmission lines to get wind power from wherever it's windy to where the power is needed. That's still a lot more storage than 20 minutes.
- kragen 7y ago
  It's cheaper under most assumptions to build enough solar panels that the reduced production during winter is still enough to cover your increased demand, rather than to build seasonal utility energy stores. See my calculations at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20664835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20664835 which show that 50x panel overprovisioning is cheaper than a week’s worth of battery backup. 26 week backup would then be a higher cost than overprovisioning panels by 1300x. The actual seasonal variability in panel output is normally less than a factor of 2, nowhere near 1300. Unless you're in Antarctica or something.

tim333 7y ago

Nitpick - I make it closer to 1 hours electricity but I agree it's way too low from a fixing global warming point of view. The figure 2,850GWh by 2040 works out about 280 Wh a head if you guess a 10bn population. For comparison a Tesla Powerwall is 13.5 kWh. Something like 100x that storage would be good if we are running on renewables. With something like the nantenergy battery they are already talking $100/kWh and have cheap materials so it would seem quite plausible to get down to say $25/kWh by 2040 meaning you could get 40kWh for $1000 or so which I think may be a better target. (https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/17776/NantEnergys-Zinc-Air-Battery-Crosses-the-100kWh-Barrier.aspx https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...)

kragen 7y ago

Agreed, the humans will need enough short-term energy storage to cover several hours of their energy use to transition it mostly to solar, which is probably what they will do. However, you are forgetting about atmospheric carbon capture.