5 ms·

> Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will That's a bold claim. Batteries could also suffer from law of diminishing returns. It might not be ph

by Ygg2 7y ago

> Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will That's a bold claim. Batteries could also suffer from law of diminishing returns. It might not be physically possible to store energy much more densely, without catastrophic failures.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
> That's a bold claim. I don't think it is [1] [2]. Regardless of cell and pack density, there's plenty of open land to install outdoor enclosures. Utility storage isn't cars, where density is terribly important. [1] https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Battery-Cost-Curve-Chart-v.2.png?resize=1170%2C557&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-cells-this-year-100-kwh-tesla-battery-packs-in-2020/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  I fear you do not sufficiently appreciate the gravitas of the energy storage problem. The big Hornsdale power reserve in Australia is 130 MWh. Say you want to store 6 hours of US average energy consumption. That's 1 500 000 MWh, or 11 000 Hornsdale stations. Just for 6 hours of electricity storage.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    It's ~6000 Tesla Megapack stations [1], along with HVDC transmission lines (if we're upgrading transmission lines from AC->DC, drop those aerial lines underground while you're at it for reliability and to stave off the NIMBYs). I entirely appreciate the scale of the problem we're facing regarding energy storage (climate change keeps my up at night), hence my arguments for solutions available today, not those that might (might!) start producing power in a decade. You can buy these battery stations today (Tesla quotes a 3 month deployment cycle). You can recycle their battery cells today. There are over 7,000 power plants in the United States run by over 3,000 companies. There are over 55,000 substations and over 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. I don't believe what I'm proposing is unreasonable. Hard? Sure. But unreasonable? Absolutely not. Going to the Moon was hard, and we still went to the Moon. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scale-energy-storage https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scal...
imtringued 7y ago
Why is energy density necessary for cheap batteries? Economies of scale can result in far greater cost reductions than are possible simply by reducing the amount of needed materials for a given capacity.
- godelski 7y ago
  > Why is energy density necessary for cheap batteries? So you can put them in cars, boats, planes, and other things. Yeah, I know, we have Teslas. But do you know it's twice the weight of an ICE alternative? Weight matters a lot. While we've made a lot of progress in the last few decades, the best research batteries are still 100x below any fossil fuel in terms of energy density.
  - qiqitori 7y ago
    Which Tesla is twice the weight of an equivalent ICE car? The Model S (2019) appears to look roughly the same and appears to be roughly the same size as the Audi A7 (2019), and is just a bit heavier (Tesla curb weight 4883 lbs, Audi 4332 lbs). https://www.cars.com/research/compare/?acodes=USC90TSC024F0,USC90AUC261A0 https://www.cars.com/research/compare/?acodes=USC90TSC024F0,...
    - godelski 7y ago
      I was comparing with ranges, sorry should have specified. Equivalent cars with ranges. Though maybe this isn't the best because a model S is a sports car (I guess they are heavier than I thought). To better compare I think that Audi is a good comparison (price, style, luxury). So though they're weights are similar the Audi has a range of 424.6/559.9 and the Tesla has 285. That's 50.1%-67.2% of the range (let's say 60%). Yes, ~300mi is a mostly comfortable range, but it's the same weight for 60% the range (and 5k more). To get the same range we'd have to add a ton of weight, which would probably push us to 2x (maybe the original comparison was decent enough?).
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago

by Ygg2 7y ago

toomuchtodo 7y ago

> That's a bold claim. I don't think it is [1] [2]. Regardless of cell and pack density, there's plenty of open land to install outdoor enclosures. Utility storage isn't cars, where density is terribly important. [1] https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Battery-Cost-Curve-Chart-v.2.png?resize=1170%2C557&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-cells-this-year-100-kwh-tesla-battery-packs-in-2020/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...

semi-extrinsic 7y ago
I fear you do not sufficiently appreciate the gravitas of the energy storage problem. The big Hornsdale power reserve in Australia is 130 MWh. Say you want to store 6 hours of US average energy consumption. That's 1 500 000 MWh, or 11 000 Hornsdale stations. Just for 6 hours of electricity storage.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It's ~6000 Tesla Megapack stations [1], along with HVDC transmission lines (if we're upgrading transmission lines from AC->DC, drop those aerial lines underground while you're at it for reliability and to stave off the NIMBYs). I entirely appreciate the scale of the problem we're facing regarding energy storage (climate change keeps my up at night), hence my arguments for solutions available today, not those that might (might!) start producing power in a decade. You can buy these battery stations today (Tesla quotes a 3 month deployment cycle). You can recycle their battery cells today. There are over 7,000 power plants in the United States run by over 3,000 companies. There are over 55,000 substations and over 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. I don't believe what I'm proposing is unreasonable. Hard? Sure. But unreasonable? Absolutely not. Going to the Moon was hard, and we still went to the Moon. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scale-energy-storage https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scal...

imtringued 7y ago

Why is energy density necessary for cheap batteries? Economies of scale can result in far greater cost reductions than are possible simply by reducing the amount of needed materials for a given capacity.

godelski 7y ago
> Why is energy density necessary for cheap batteries? So you can put them in cars, boats, planes, and other things. Yeah, I know, we have Teslas. But do you know it's twice the weight of an ICE alternative? Weight matters a lot. While we've made a lot of progress in the last few decades, the best research batteries are still 100x below any fossil fuel in terms of energy density.
- qiqitori 7y ago
  Which Tesla is twice the weight of an equivalent ICE car? The Model S (2019) appears to look roughly the same and appears to be roughly the same size as the Audi A7 (2019), and is just a bit heavier (Tesla curb weight 4883 lbs, Audi 4332 lbs). https://www.cars.com/research/compare/?acodes=USC90TSC024F0,USC90AUC261A0 https://www.cars.com/research/compare/?acodes=USC90TSC024F0,...
  - godelski 7y ago
    I was comparing with ranges, sorry should have specified. Equivalent cars with ranges. Though maybe this isn't the best because a model S is a sports car (I guess they are heavier than I thought). To better compare I think that Audi is a good comparison (price, style, luxury). So though they're weights are similar the Audi has a range of 424.6/559.9 and the Tesla has 285. That's 50.1%-67.2% of the range (let's say 60%). Yes, ~300mi is a mostly comfortable range, but it's the same weight for 60% the range (and 5k more). To get the same range we'd have to add a ton of weight, which would probably push us to 2x (maybe the original comparison was decent enough?).
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago