6 ms·

The factor that drives up price for grid level storage is scale. Only ~300 GWh worth of batteries is produced globally each year. The world uses 2.5 TWh of elec

The factor that drives up price for grid level storage is scale. Only ~300 GWh worth of batteries is produced globally each year. The world uses 2.5 TWh of electricity each hour. If anyone tries to install battery storage at a significant scale, demand will vastly outstrip supply and drive prices up.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jeremysalwen 6y ago
Assuming there aren't economies of scale. Demand for solar had gone way up in recent decades (e.g. in germany, before it was cheap), and the price subsequently went down.
- mlyle 6y ago
  It's not clear batteries will do the same. While there's been effort to make batteries less reliant on scarce natural resources and mining, there's no guarantee we really get there. If we don't, price can be expected to go up, not down, with scale. I would bet on price going down slightly with scale, but one can't really tell now what will happen: it might go up a lot, it might go down a lot, or it might stay flat.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    There are thousands of different chemistries for batteries. The nuclear stans are betting that all of them fail.
    - Manfredo_1 6y ago
      None of those other battery chemistries are seeing the massive growth that lithium ion batteries have experienced. The nuclear "stans" are just pointing out that these are potential solutions, not actual solutions. If iron oxide batteries, or some other chemistry, suddenly becomes cheap and easily deployed at the TWh scale, great. But until then they're not a solution.
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        Yes, you all are engaging in the "nothing can be invented" argument. It's profoundly reactionary, and also hypocritical, because nuclear itself is dead without great improvement. Uranium quickly runs out if the world is powered by burner reactors and known uranium resources, so either massive seawater uranium extraction or breeding cycles would be needed. Batteries have the advantage of being explorable at a small scale. Now that the potential market has become so clear this is happening, in many companies.
        Manfredo_1 6y ago
        It's not "nothing can be invented". It's "come back to me after it's invented, not before". And uranium seawater extraction already exists: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s... It's more expensive than mined uranium, but since fissile material is so energy-dense that increase in fuel cost amounts to hardly any change in overall cost.
        pfdietz 6y ago
        LOL. Hydrogen storage is much more invented than seawater uranium extraction. All the components are close to off the shelf; it's just a matter of putting them together (and for the CO2 tax to be high enough to make it worthwhile). Seawater uranium extraction is at a much lower TRL (technology readiness level). This is an excellent example of your hypocritical double standards on this subject.
        Manfredo_1 6y ago
        Name one hydrogen electric grid storage facility. Not prototypes, but actual commercial facilities connected to the grid. You insist that hydrogen is so technically ready, yet nobody is using it.
        pfdietz 6y ago
    - imtringued 6y ago
      These discussions are always super boring. There are dozens of technologies that can scale to the level needed but everyone goes goes lithium ion and pumped hydro as if everything else didn't exist. Sure cell batteries might not work, we can try out flow batteries, we can try liquid metal batteries, we can try hydraulic hydro storage, we can try out hydrogen, we can try compressed air, we can try electrolyzing iron or aluminum, we can try another dozen different things and it is highly likely that at least 3 will work out just fine.
tzs 6y ago
That's lithium batteries, isn't it? For storage to balance out fluctuations in renewable sources you shouldn't need to use lithium. It's used in cars and consumer devices because it can store a lot of energy for its size and weight and you don't have to mollycoddle it to avoid memory effects. Those are much less important concerns for this application. You'd build you battery facilities somewhere outside your cities, perhaps near where you build your solar farms, and you don't need the batteries to move. Batteries that take up more room and/or weigh more than lithium batteries for a given capacity should be fine.
- Manfredo_1 6y ago
  Right. Lithium batteries won't cut it. That leaves geographically-dependent hydroelectricity, which isn't so easy to build. And then proposed solutions that are still in the prototyping phase, and aren't commercially available.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    I've really enjoyed reading your contribution to this discussion. To the extent I kind of wished there was a private message function. Partially this is because we have similar views on a lot of the challenges facing a move to renewables. I think sometimes this comes across as being sceptical of the progress of renewables. In my case, and I suspect in yours, that's not really the case. In fact I'm excited and interested in how we will solve these problems in a variety of different ways. I think we are in agreement that lithium isn't going to be the answer to energy storage at grid scale. If for no other reason than being in direct competition with the electrification of transportation isn't ideal. Personally I'm hopeful that Ambri's liquid metal battery will materialize. What developments do you have your eye on?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jeremysalwen 6y ago

Assuming there aren't economies of scale. Demand for solar had gone way up in recent decades (e.g. in germany, before it was cheap), and the price subsequently went down.

mlyle 6y ago
It's not clear batteries will do the same. While there's been effort to make batteries less reliant on scarce natural resources and mining, there's no guarantee we really get there. If we don't, price can be expected to go up, not down, with scale. I would bet on price going down slightly with scale, but one can't really tell now what will happen: it might go up a lot, it might go down a lot, or it might stay flat.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  There are thousands of different chemistries for batteries. The nuclear stans are betting that all of them fail.
  - Manfredo_1 6y ago
    None of those other battery chemistries are seeing the massive growth that lithium ion batteries have experienced. The nuclear "stans" are just pointing out that these are potential solutions, not actual solutions. If iron oxide batteries, or some other chemistry, suddenly becomes cheap and easily deployed at the TWh scale, great. But until then they're not a solution.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      Yes, you all are engaging in the "nothing can be invented" argument. It's profoundly reactionary, and also hypocritical, because nuclear itself is dead without great improvement. Uranium quickly runs out if the world is powered by burner reactors and known uranium resources, so either massive seawater uranium extraction or breeding cycles would be needed. Batteries have the advantage of being explorable at a small scale. Now that the potential market has become so clear this is happening, in many companies.
      - Manfredo_1 6y ago
        It's not "nothing can be invented". It's "come back to me after it's invented, not before". And uranium seawater extraction already exists: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s... It's more expensive than mined uranium, but since fissile material is so energy-dense that increase in fuel cost amounts to hardly any change in overall cost.
        pfdietz 6y ago
        LOL. Hydrogen storage is much more invented than seawater uranium extraction. All the components are close to off the shelf; it's just a matter of putting them together (and for the CO2 tax to be high enough to make it worthwhile). Seawater uranium extraction is at a much lower TRL (technology readiness level). This is an excellent example of your hypocritical double standards on this subject.
        Manfredo_1 6y ago
        Name one hydrogen electric grid storage facility. Not prototypes, but actual commercial facilities connected to the grid. You insist that hydrogen is so technically ready, yet nobody is using it.
        pfdietz 6y ago
  - imtringued 6y ago
    These discussions are always super boring. There are dozens of technologies that can scale to the level needed but everyone goes goes lithium ion and pumped hydro as if everything else didn't exist. Sure cell batteries might not work, we can try out flow batteries, we can try liquid metal batteries, we can try hydraulic hydro storage, we can try out hydrogen, we can try compressed air, we can try electrolyzing iron or aluminum, we can try another dozen different things and it is highly likely that at least 3 will work out just fine.

tzs 6y ago

That's lithium batteries, isn't it? For storage to balance out fluctuations in renewable sources you shouldn't need to use lithium. It's used in cars and consumer devices because it can store a lot of energy for its size and weight and you don't have to mollycoddle it to avoid memory effects. Those are much less important concerns for this application. You'd build you battery facilities somewhere outside your cities, perhaps near where you build your solar farms, and you don't need the batteries to move. Batteries that take up more room and/or weigh more than lithium batteries for a given capacity should be fine.

Manfredo_1 6y ago
Right. Lithium batteries won't cut it. That leaves geographically-dependent hydroelectricity, which isn't so easy to build. And then proposed solutions that are still in the prototyping phase, and aren't commercially available.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  I've really enjoyed reading your contribution to this discussion. To the extent I kind of wished there was a private message function. Partially this is because we have similar views on a lot of the challenges facing a move to renewables. I think sometimes this comes across as being sceptical of the progress of renewables. In my case, and I suspect in yours, that's not really the case. In fact I'm excited and interested in how we will solve these problems in a variety of different ways. I think we are in agreement that lithium isn't going to be the answer to energy storage at grid scale. If for no other reason than being in direct competition with the electrification of transportation isn't ideal. Personally I'm hopeful that Ambri's liquid metal battery will materialize. What developments do you have your eye on?