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I've said this before but there is no evidence that battery storage can scale to anything like the required storage. Tesla's battery in Australia stores roughly

I've said this before but there is no evidence that battery storage can scale to anything like the required storage. Tesla's battery in Australia stores roughly what the UK receives from French nuclear over production in a few minutes.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
"no evidence that battery storage can scale" Obviously laws of physics do not bar it from scaling, the question is around cost.
im3w1l 6y ago
Are we short some raw material or why do you mean it couldn't work?
- booboolayla 6y ago
  Yes we would be short on quality lithium sources. Mining lithium is extremely damaging to environment, too, but you'll rarely hear about that in "climate change" discussions. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_...
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  "As of 2016, global lithium-ion battery production capacity was 28 gigawatt-hours, with 16.4 GWh in China." UK current electricity demand is 30GW. So the demand for one hour is similar to the entire lithium battery production for a whole year. How many hours worth of storage would we need to balance the energy grid using only battery storage? Off grid homes usually aim for around 3-7 days worth. Obviously that's excessive for a whole country where weather conditions vary across the country but I'd think several house would be required to account for peak in demand at times of low production. Realistically distributed storage and load side control I think are more likely to be a bigger part of making it work.
  - UseStrict 6y ago
    That's a fairly old statistic to pick, not sure if it was intentional or not, but the reality is lithium battery production has grown significantly since 2016 and shows no signs of stopping. The largest manufacturer in China, CATL is estimated to grow its capacity beyond 307GWh by 2028 [2]. "In 2019, LG Chem had the most lithium battery production capacity at over 50 GWh. LG Chem [is] increasing EV battery production capacity to as much as 110GWh by the end of 2020." The design of a modern grid with battery storage would change as well - no reason to have singular giant storage plants. A mixture of solar, wind, and hydroelectric with distributed storage doesn't need to self-sustain 30GWh of storage, it needs to be able to smooth distribution and handle peaks. It'd be far more honest to look at seasonal average loads versus peaks, plus a buffer. [1] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-by-company/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithiu...
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      The UK has very little hydroelectric power and the undeveloped hydro resources are in remote areas of outstanding natural beauty (which is a shame because it's by far the best option for base load renewables). The UKs current installed pumped hydro resources amount to some 28GWh. Clearly we need a multiple of that if that is currently required to balance a grid consisting of largely dispatchable power. Given that, I don't think my estimate of needing several hours worth storage is too far out. That was the first statistic I found. Even if we say current production is 200GWh of lithium battery storage, that isn't going to go very far if the rest of the world also need to create similar storage infrastructure.
- petre 6y ago
  It would work just like running your house on a car battery, for about five minutes. My dad has 24 industrial lead acid 2V 450Ah cells which amount to 1m³ and 4.5kWh of usable storage since if you drain more than 20% you will kill the batteries too early. The 1140Wp PV array charges about 6kWh on a sunny summer day. We use about 5kWh daily in our apartment - that's no AC or electrical heating, just the basic appliances and a gas heater. He probably uses two to three times that amount, again no AC or electrical heating. Also lead acid batteries are rated for like 10y, PV retains 80% of its capacity for 25y, so you need to change 2.5 batteries during its lifetime. Batteries alone amount close to 50% of the TCO. So good luck running the grid on batteries for more than 15 minutes. We'd probably need to cover Alaska with lithium batteries. At least 40% base load is what is needed and one only gets that from nuclear and geothermal if we discard fossil fuels. Maybe solar thermal with molten salt storage too, dunno.
  - mcot2 6y ago
    Lead Acid is pretty old tech. My car (Tesla Model 3) has a roughly 75kWh lithium-ion battery. Even with AC and/or a heat pump, that battery could run a rather large home for more than a day on it’s own. Their powerwall home battery is a roughly 17kWh battery that is stackable to build any size system you want. Point of use energy generation and storage is a much bigger deal than I think people realize. I believe internally Tesla thinks this is many times it’s car business.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

"no evidence that battery storage can scale" Obviously laws of physics do not bar it from scaling, the question is around cost.

im3w1l 6y ago

Are we short some raw material or why do you mean it couldn't work?

booboolayla 6y ago
Yes we would be short on quality lithium sources. Mining lithium is extremely damaging to environment, too, but you'll rarely hear about that in "climate change" discussions. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_...
VBprogrammer 6y ago
"As of 2016, global lithium-ion battery production capacity was 28 gigawatt-hours, with 16.4 GWh in China." UK current electricity demand is 30GW. So the demand for one hour is similar to the entire lithium battery production for a whole year. How many hours worth of storage would we need to balance the energy grid using only battery storage? Off grid homes usually aim for around 3-7 days worth. Obviously that's excessive for a whole country where weather conditions vary across the country but I'd think several house would be required to account for peak in demand at times of low production. Realistically distributed storage and load side control I think are more likely to be a bigger part of making it work.
- UseStrict 6y ago
  That's a fairly old statistic to pick, not sure if it was intentional or not, but the reality is lithium battery production has grown significantly since 2016 and shows no signs of stopping. The largest manufacturer in China, CATL is estimated to grow its capacity beyond 307GWh by 2028 [2]. "In 2019, LG Chem had the most lithium battery production capacity at over 50 GWh. LG Chem [is] increasing EV battery production capacity to as much as 110GWh by the end of 2020." The design of a modern grid with battery storage would change as well - no reason to have singular giant storage plants. A mixture of solar, wind, and hydroelectric with distributed storage doesn't need to self-sustain 30GWh of storage, it needs to be able to smooth distribution and handle peaks. It'd be far more honest to look at seasonal average loads versus peaks, plus a buffer. [1] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-by-company/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithiu...
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    The UK has very little hydroelectric power and the undeveloped hydro resources are in remote areas of outstanding natural beauty (which is a shame because it's by far the best option for base load renewables). The UKs current installed pumped hydro resources amount to some 28GWh. Clearly we need a multiple of that if that is currently required to balance a grid consisting of largely dispatchable power. Given that, I don't think my estimate of needing several hours worth storage is too far out. That was the first statistic I found. Even if we say current production is 200GWh of lithium battery storage, that isn't going to go very far if the rest of the world also need to create similar storage infrastructure.
petre 6y ago
It would work just like running your house on a car battery, for about five minutes. My dad has 24 industrial lead acid 2V 450Ah cells which amount to 1m³ and 4.5kWh of usable storage since if you drain more than 20% you will kill the batteries too early. The 1140Wp PV array charges about 6kWh on a sunny summer day. We use about 5kWh daily in our apartment - that's no AC or electrical heating, just the basic appliances and a gas heater. He probably uses two to three times that amount, again no AC or electrical heating. Also lead acid batteries are rated for like 10y, PV retains 80% of its capacity for 25y, so you need to change 2.5 batteries during its lifetime. Batteries alone amount close to 50% of the TCO. So good luck running the grid on batteries for more than 15 minutes. We'd probably need to cover Alaska with lithium batteries. At least 40% base load is what is needed and one only gets that from nuclear and geothermal if we discard fossil fuels. Maybe solar thermal with molten salt storage too, dunno.
- mcot2 6y ago
  Lead Acid is pretty old tech. My car (Tesla Model 3) has a roughly 75kWh lithium-ion battery. Even with AC and/or a heat pump, that battery could run a rather large home for more than a day on it’s own. Their powerwall home battery is a roughly 17kWh battery that is stackable to build any size system you want. Point of use energy generation and storage is a much bigger deal than I think people realize. I believe internally Tesla thinks this is many times it’s car business.