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4 hours of 17 Gigwatts would represent 20% of the ~300 GWh global lithium ion battery production [1]. That's a massive storage plant, and such a plant would rep

4 hours of 17 Gigwatts would represent 20% of the ~300 GWh global lithium ion battery production [1]. That's a massive storage plant, and such a plant would represent an order of magnitude increase in battery storage. But consider the fact that the US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity daily. Plans for an economy powered by wind and solar call for anything from 12 hours to 3 weeks of storage depending on how much overproduction we're building. Manfredo_1 was the account I created on mobile, responding to a comment I made on desktop (password manager, so no way to log in on mobile). Everyone so far seems to have inferred continuity from the name similarity, but if it's a cause for confusion, I've imported my password to mobile. 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...

epistasis 6y ago
It's not a single plant, and it's not all going to be installed in a year; these are the interconnection plans for all sorts of much smaller projects. We are only at the infancy of lithium ion production, I'm actually surprised that we are at 300GWh. With this very limited capacity, and typical grid storage batteries being warranties for around 15 years, our current production supports a global deployment of 4.5TWh of storage. We are at 9 hours of global storage, and we haven't even really started scaling battery production. I know you didn't put a label on these numbers, as being big or small, but we are on track to solve this problem with battery storage, it seems!
- manfredo 6y ago
  If your takeaway is that we're on track to solve energy storage with lithium ion batteries, then you have severely misinterpreted the situation. Remember 300 GWh is global battery production. 4.5 TWh is 9 hours of storage for just the United States. Furthermore, actually using this quantity of batteries would entail ceasing the use of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles and electronics - not a realistic option. Furthermore batteries only last a few hundred to a thousand cycles, depending on depth of discharge. These batteries need to be replaced every 3-5 years if they're being used for diurnal use (cycled 365 times a year), not 15. If you produce 300 GWh of batter every year and hook it up to the grid you'll only reach 0.9 or 1.5TWh of battery storage - the first batteries you add will have worn out before 15 years. This can be extended if you reduce depth of discharge. But that entails building an over-capacity of storage. E.g. if you're only withdrawing or storing half the energy you can increase the lifespan, but then you need to build 2 TWh for every 1 TWh of actual storage that can be used. Global daily energy consumption is 60TWh. If we want to provide 12 hours of storage then this amounts to 30 TWh. If this is cycled daily, a battery with a life of 2,000 cycles (which is very, very good) then we'd need to be contributing 5.5 TWh of batteries to grid storage every year. Most lithium ion battery production is expected to be dedicated to electric vehicles, with grid storage making up only ~10% of produced lithium ion batteries [1]. And 12 hours of storage is likely only enough to get us to ~80% renewables. 100% renewables is estimated to require 3 weeks of storage [2]. We're not anywhere close to solving grid storage with lithium ion batteries, even if we assume its exponential growth will be sustained. 1. https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production 2. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...
  - epistasis 6y ago
    Existing storage lithium ion batteries have a minimum of 10 year warranties [1,2], and the Tesla Hornsdale battery has a fifteen year warranty. [3] it’s not as though the batteries suddenly stop working then, they just have less capacity. So 3-5 years of equipment life is not a realistic estimate. Putting 12 hours of battery storage right next to 3 weeks just makes the 12 hours look suspect too. 3 weeks is just crazy numbers from people that haven’t studied the problem much. Most zero carbon grid modeling selects far far less than 12 hours of battery storage. But even if we stick with that 12 hours of world energy of batteries, 60 TWh is only 5x more than the 12 TWh of US energy. I apologize for misinterpreting your stats and being off by 5 in the comparison of numbers, but a 5x or 10x or even 100x growth is well within the range of sustained exponential growth. As grid storage plus solar becomes cheaper than natural gas, we will hit an inflection point that will drive massive expansion of battery storage production capacity, even beyond what is currently being built for EVs. Will there be a massive interchange of technologies and production capacities. Yes, it will be huge, so from one perspective we are a long ways away from our target, but from the perspective of our current trajectory and from the perspective of what is currently being planned just for EVs, an entire industry is being built. It will take a little while for energy guys to wake up to this new reality because they are a slow changing industry, but they will be brought along for the ride whether they know it now or not. There’s a good reason that NextEra surpassed the market cap of Exxon recently, as the market is finally waking up to the new reality too. [1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-construction-of-the-worlds-largest-lithium-ion-battery-storage-faci/431765/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-construction-of-the-... [2] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall [3] https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/faqs/ https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/faqs/

epistasis 6y ago

It's not a single plant, and it's not all going to be installed in a year; these are the interconnection plans for all sorts of much smaller projects. We are only at the infancy of lithium ion production, I'm actually surprised that we are at 300GWh. With this very limited capacity, and typical grid storage batteries being warranties for around 15 years, our current production supports a global deployment of 4.5TWh of storage. We are at 9 hours of global storage, and we haven't even really started scaling battery production. I know you didn't put a label on these numbers, as being big or small, but we are on track to solve this problem with battery storage, it seems!

manfredo 6y ago
If your takeaway is that we're on track to solve energy storage with lithium ion batteries, then you have severely misinterpreted the situation. Remember 300 GWh is global battery production. 4.5 TWh is 9 hours of storage for just the United States. Furthermore, actually using this quantity of batteries would entail ceasing the use of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles and electronics - not a realistic option. Furthermore batteries only last a few hundred to a thousand cycles, depending on depth of discharge. These batteries need to be replaced every 3-5 years if they're being used for diurnal use (cycled 365 times a year), not 15. If you produce 300 GWh of batter every year and hook it up to the grid you'll only reach 0.9 or 1.5TWh of battery storage - the first batteries you add will have worn out before 15 years. This can be extended if you reduce depth of discharge. But that entails building an over-capacity of storage. E.g. if you're only withdrawing or storing half the energy you can increase the lifespan, but then you need to build 2 TWh for every 1 TWh of actual storage that can be used. Global daily energy consumption is 60TWh. If we want to provide 12 hours of storage then this amounts to 30 TWh. If this is cycled daily, a battery with a life of 2,000 cycles (which is very, very good) then we'd need to be contributing 5.5 TWh of batteries to grid storage every year. Most lithium ion battery production is expected to be dedicated to electric vehicles, with grid storage making up only ~10% of produced lithium ion batteries [1]. And 12 hours of storage is likely only enough to get us to ~80% renewables. 100% renewables is estimated to require 3 weeks of storage [2]. We're not anywhere close to solving grid storage with lithium ion batteries, even if we assume its exponential growth will be sustained. 1. https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production 2. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...
- epistasis 6y ago
  Existing storage lithium ion batteries have a minimum of 10 year warranties [1,2], and the Tesla Hornsdale battery has a fifteen year warranty. [3] it’s not as though the batteries suddenly stop working then, they just have less capacity. So 3-5 years of equipment life is not a realistic estimate. Putting 12 hours of battery storage right next to 3 weeks just makes the 12 hours look suspect too. 3 weeks is just crazy numbers from people that haven’t studied the problem much. Most zero carbon grid modeling selects far far less than 12 hours of battery storage. But even if we stick with that 12 hours of world energy of batteries, 60 TWh is only 5x more than the 12 TWh of US energy. I apologize for misinterpreting your stats and being off by 5 in the comparison of numbers, but a 5x or 10x or even 100x growth is well within the range of sustained exponential growth. As grid storage plus solar becomes cheaper than natural gas, we will hit an inflection point that will drive massive expansion of battery storage production capacity, even beyond what is currently being built for EVs. Will there be a massive interchange of technologies and production capacities. Yes, it will be huge, so from one perspective we are a long ways away from our target, but from the perspective of our current trajectory and from the perspective of what is currently being planned just for EVs, an entire industry is being built. It will take a little while for energy guys to wake up to this new reality because they are a slow changing industry, but they will be brought along for the ride whether they know it now or not. There’s a good reason that NextEra surpassed the market cap of Exxon recently, as the market is finally waking up to the new reality too. [1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-construction-of-the-worlds-largest-lithium-ion-battery-storage-faci/431765/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-construction-of-the-... [2] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall [3] https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/faqs/ https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/faqs/