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Why are you assuming that we don't know how to build more battery factories? And does the wind not blow at night?

manfredo 7y ago
Lithium ion battery production is estimated to reach 1TWh per year in 2023 and 2TWh per year at ~2030 [1]. If you integrate that curve, you're still looking at several decades to build enough battery capacity to fulfill the world's storage demand if solar is the primary generation source. The wind does blow at night, but intermittently. Wind generation is even when averaged out over long stretches of time, but in the near term it can vary a lot. Some estimates for how much storage we'd need to reliably meet demand for generation that comes from solar and wind at 3 days supply. The US consumes over 10TWh of energy daily. 1. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
- eisa01 7y ago
  Why would growth slow down after 2023? And are you’re comparing primary energy to electricity? That’s a lot of waste heat that would not need to be replicated Anyway, we don’t need all of this by 2030 if we have large scale electrification - that will have made a lot of CO2 savings in other sectors
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > Why would growth slow down after 2023? The growth is mostly linear. > And are you’re comparing primary energy to electricity? That’s a lot of waste heat that would not need to be replicated Are there plants that scavenge waste heat from batteries? Batteries generate some waste heat, but not at temperatures that can be used to drive a turbine. > Anyway, we don’t need all of this by 2030 if we have large scale electrification - that will have made a lot of CO2 savings in other sectors This is the opposite of what is true. Large scale electrification will make it so that there is even more demand on the power grid as things like cars and trains that are currently being fueled by fossil fuels now draw electricity from the grid.
Hypx 7y ago
It's unlikely we'll ever build enough battery factories to catch up with hydrogen based energy storage. The other guy mentioned total global battery production capacity is about 300 GWh of storage. 300 GWh can be matched by a single underground salt dome or salt cavern storing pressurized H2. A number of these facilities already exist, and the total number that could exists number in the tens of thousands worldwide.

Lithium ion battery production is estimated to reach 1TWh per year in 2023 and 2TWh per year at ~2030 [1]. If you integrate that curve, you're still looking at several decades to build enough battery capacity to fulfill the world's storage demand if solar is the primary generation source. The wind does blow at night, but intermittently. Wind generation is even when averaged out over long stretches of time, but in the near term it can vary a lot. Some estimates for how much storage we'd need to reliably meet demand for generation that comes from solar and wind at 3 days supply. The US consumes over 10TWh of energy daily. 1. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...

eisa01 7y ago
Why would growth slow down after 2023? And are you’re comparing primary energy to electricity? That’s a lot of waste heat that would not need to be replicated Anyway, we don’t need all of this by 2030 if we have large scale electrification - that will have made a lot of CO2 savings in other sectors
- manfredo 7y ago
  > Why would growth slow down after 2023? The growth is mostly linear. > And are you’re comparing primary energy to electricity? That’s a lot of waste heat that would not need to be replicated Are there plants that scavenge waste heat from batteries? Batteries generate some waste heat, but not at temperatures that can be used to drive a turbine. > Anyway, we don’t need all of this by 2030 if we have large scale electrification - that will have made a lot of CO2 savings in other sectors This is the opposite of what is true. Large scale electrification will make it so that there is even more demand on the power grid as things like cars and trains that are currently being fueled by fossil fuels now draw electricity from the grid.

Hypx 7y ago

It's unlikely we'll ever build enough battery factories to catch up with hydrogen based energy storage. The other guy mentioned total global battery production capacity is about 300 GWh of storage. 300 GWh can be matched by a single underground salt dome or salt cavern storing pressurized H2. A number of these facilities already exist, and the total number that could exists number in the tens of thousands worldwide.