5 ms·

Hmm, so this 900 megawatt hour lithium installation will roughly use about 73 metric tons of lithium at 0.3 grams per amp hour. World lithium production is abou

by foxyv 5y ago

Hmm, so this 900 megawatt hour lithium installation will roughly use about 73 metric tons of lithium at 0.3 grams per amp hour. World lithium production is about 82 thousand metric tons with plenty of room for future expansion. Using a single year's supply of lithium we would be able to produce 1 terawatt hour worth of battery as an upper limit. Currently the world uses about 64 terawatt hours daily on average. Assuming we would only need storage for 1/3 of that amount, we would need roughly 20 terawatt hours of storage. What this means is we would need to dedicate 20 years worth of current lithium mining to produce the needed batteries or expand lithium mining by a factor of 5-10 to meet climate targets. Back of the napkin, this seems practical in the long run, but difficult in the short run. With recycling we can build up a reserve of lithium over the years, however I think it's going to take half a century just to get the lithium we need to replace fossil fuels. In the meantime we'll take a small chunk out of fossil fuel demand. However demand is still increasing. We may want to consider subsidizing nuclear at this point to get us over the finish line on renewables. Unless we come up with another carbon neutral energy source that provides consistent power 24/7.

sofixa 5y ago
> Assuming we would only need storage for 1/3 of that amount, we would need roughly 20 terawatt hours of storage Out of curiosity, why 1/3?
- foxyv 5y ago
  I think current estimates are something along those lines. For a residential off-grid installation they suggest 100% kwh/day of battery storage. Grid power has backups and mitigation strategies that could reduce that significantly. I was mostly trying to be generous to grid battery installations. For the most part 1/3 is a bare minimum still requiring natural gas emergency peak plants.
nickik 5y ago
There are other battery types such as sodium, liquid air, liquid metal, air-metal and so on. Doing everything with lithium is not a great idea as we need that for cars mostly. But I also always preferred nuclear.
- foxyv 5y ago
  For sure! For sure! I imagine if we're lucky we could get a grid scale chemical energy storage solution in the next 10 to 20 years that will make lithium seem like a waste of money. I was mostly curious as to how viable these grid scale batteries are materials wise right now. Currently, lithium batteries are the only storage medium that is efficient enough (~90%) to allow photovoltaic solar to compete with nuclear and fossil fuels. Pumped water storage is okay at 80%. Molten sodium on those cool solar thermal generators in the desert is pretty good since they don't add a step to the generation process. Liquid air is 50% efficient when used with heat exchangers, molten salt plants are at about 70%, and gravity is about 90%. Gravity is efficient but supremely low density requiring huge installations for even a few megawatt hours. As panels get cheaper and more efficient, these storage mediums will become cost effective, but for now are relegated to neat research projects and demonstrations. I imagine that molten salt will end up being our goto in 15 years or so if nothing cool like metal air batteries comes out before then. Right now it seems lithium installations are only at a scale for grid stabilization when paired with natural gas peakers. However I can see that changing a lot as power prices go up from carbon credits and we start manufacturing more cells. But yeah, I prefer nuclear too. We can do nuclear now. Modern designs are just waiting to be built and tested. Ones that can also do peaking like the natrium reactor. What's more, they will allow us to grow our industry at the same time without adding more carbon to our atmosphere.
  - lovemenot 5y ago
    I feel you undersold pumped hydro. This proven technology is cheap, efficient and at scale. If any grid needs energy storage and has suitable undeveloped sites available, they'd be foolish to consider any other alternative you mentioned. The significant issue with ph is site availability.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Your words seem measured and reasonable, yet your final paragraph makes no sense at all. How does nuclear help avoid the need for battery storage on a carbon free grid? So many people claim this, and yet as I say it makes no actual sense. Has anyone attempted to flesh this proposal out beyond a snarky comment every time renewables get mentioned on a news article? I'd love to be proved wrong, but as far as I'm aware there's no way building any more nuclear today makes sense unless you believe that solar and wind renewables and battery storage and green hydrogen are some kind of elaborate hoax that doesn't really exist or work. So what are you proposing exactly? How does subsidized nuclear prevent the use of storage on the grid?
- azurezyq 5y ago
  This battery farm, has a capacity of 900 MWh. While a typical nuclear power plant has a capacity of ~3000MW. So this battery farm is just... tiny. But solar power generation has a large potential for larger capacity, the shortest leg is energy storage. So if something else can be used for base load (e.g., nuclear, natural gas, hydro), solar power works well for daytime peaks.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Please try to sketch this out. Grab some daily production and consumption numbers from somewhere and then increase the nuclear (basically shift it straight up) and/or increase the solar (stretching upward is a rough approx but we can also flatten it) to levels that cover roughly 100% of demand. Look at the bit where both are running at the same time and compare it's area to the rest. Why is this duplicated "baseload" useful? Try it again with wind, which is much cheaper and faster to build than nuclear. The conclusion should be fairly obvious.
    - azurezyq 5y ago
      It's not difficult to accumulate enough capacity for solar / wind farms, I agree. But the problem is that we have not yet solved the problem of energy storage (as I said, it's tiny, compared to the capacity it can generates). So you need something to cover the night or windless periods. Did some search online and it seems that distributed wind farms may work as base load but I highly doubt it works anywhere due to seasonal winds. It definitely needs more research. Especially extreme weathers are becoming more frequent these years.
credit_guy 5y ago
The challenging problem is not storing the electricity produced during the day to consume it at night, but to store electricity produced during summer to consume it during winter. At latitudes such as Paris, or London, or Seattle, or higher, the summer day is much longer than the winter day, and the rays come from an angle much closer to the vertical, they go through a thinner layer of atmosphere so the end result is that solar panels produce about 6 times more electricity. But people consume on average more electricity during the winter days. You can address this problem by building massive overcapacity, but this is expensive (solar power may be cheaper than natural gas power, but not 6 times cheaper). Or you can try to find a way to store the summer electricity for 6 months. That is not easy either.
- foxyv 5y ago
  I think there are solutions like high voltage DC transmission that could help with this. That would allow power sharing schemes over ~1000 mile distances without too much loss. But yeah, aside from HUGE overprovisioning in southern latitudes and monstrous transmission losses, we may be stuck with nuclear for northern countries and states until something new comes up. Also I don't see Russia being happy with being dependent on middle eastern, Chinese, or European power generation during the winter. On the other hand, Canada seems to do pretty well with wind power despite the northern latitudes. But it is still only 6% of their winter power output. Leaving out wind and solar during the winter, you are kinda left with geothermal and nuclear as your only low carbon options.
  - labawi 5y ago
    > monstrous transmission losses When people claim monstrous transmission losses, I'm not sure what to think of. Is it 80%? Maybe 50%? Is 30% too much of a hit for reliable clean power? Surely you're not hung up about 15% for a good PV spot? Transporting HVDC across the globe raises questions about efficiency, but for 1000-2000 km I suggest you compare it to the efficiency of batteries and report which one has better efficiency. > HUGE overprovisioning in southern latitudes If you design it well, it's not overprovisioning, it's displacing production from consumption. Which is mostly problematic for socio-economical and political, not technical reasons.

by foxyv 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

> Assuming we would only need storage for 1/3 of that amount, we would need roughly 20 terawatt hours of storage Out of curiosity, why 1/3?

foxyv 5y ago
I think current estimates are something along those lines. For a residential off-grid installation they suggest 100% kwh/day of battery storage. Grid power has backups and mitigation strategies that could reduce that significantly. I was mostly trying to be generous to grid battery installations. For the most part 1/3 is a bare minimum still requiring natural gas emergency peak plants.

nickik 5y ago

There are other battery types such as sodium, liquid air, liquid metal, air-metal and so on. Doing everything with lithium is not a great idea as we need that for cars mostly. But I also always preferred nuclear.

foxyv 5y ago
For sure! For sure! I imagine if we're lucky we could get a grid scale chemical energy storage solution in the next 10 to 20 years that will make lithium seem like a waste of money. I was mostly curious as to how viable these grid scale batteries are materials wise right now. Currently, lithium batteries are the only storage medium that is efficient enough (~90%) to allow photovoltaic solar to compete with nuclear and fossil fuels. Pumped water storage is okay at 80%. Molten sodium on those cool solar thermal generators in the desert is pretty good since they don't add a step to the generation process. Liquid air is 50% efficient when used with heat exchangers, molten salt plants are at about 70%, and gravity is about 90%. Gravity is efficient but supremely low density requiring huge installations for even a few megawatt hours. As panels get cheaper and more efficient, these storage mediums will become cost effective, but for now are relegated to neat research projects and demonstrations. I imagine that molten salt will end up being our goto in 15 years or so if nothing cool like metal air batteries comes out before then. Right now it seems lithium installations are only at a scale for grid stabilization when paired with natural gas peakers. However I can see that changing a lot as power prices go up from carbon credits and we start manufacturing more cells. But yeah, I prefer nuclear too. We can do nuclear now. Modern designs are just waiting to be built and tested. Ones that can also do peaking like the natrium reactor. What's more, they will allow us to grow our industry at the same time without adding more carbon to our atmosphere.
- lovemenot 5y ago
  I feel you undersold pumped hydro. This proven technology is cheap, efficient and at scale. If any grid needs energy storage and has suitable undeveloped sites available, they'd be foolish to consider any other alternative you mentioned. The significant issue with ph is site availability.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Your words seem measured and reasonable, yet your final paragraph makes no sense at all. How does nuclear help avoid the need for battery storage on a carbon free grid? So many people claim this, and yet as I say it makes no actual sense. Has anyone attempted to flesh this proposal out beyond a snarky comment every time renewables get mentioned on a news article? I'd love to be proved wrong, but as far as I'm aware there's no way building any more nuclear today makes sense unless you believe that solar and wind renewables and battery storage and green hydrogen are some kind of elaborate hoax that doesn't really exist or work. So what are you proposing exactly? How does subsidized nuclear prevent the use of storage on the grid?

azurezyq 5y ago
This battery farm, has a capacity of 900 MWh. While a typical nuclear power plant has a capacity of ~3000MW. So this battery farm is just... tiny. But solar power generation has a large potential for larger capacity, the shortest leg is energy storage. So if something else can be used for base load (e.g., nuclear, natural gas, hydro), solar power works well for daytime peaks.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Please try to sketch this out. Grab some daily production and consumption numbers from somewhere and then increase the nuclear (basically shift it straight up) and/or increase the solar (stretching upward is a rough approx but we can also flatten it) to levels that cover roughly 100% of demand. Look at the bit where both are running at the same time and compare it's area to the rest. Why is this duplicated "baseload" useful? Try it again with wind, which is much cheaper and faster to build than nuclear. The conclusion should be fairly obvious.
  - azurezyq 5y ago
    It's not difficult to accumulate enough capacity for solar / wind farms, I agree. But the problem is that we have not yet solved the problem of energy storage (as I said, it's tiny, compared to the capacity it can generates). So you need something to cover the night or windless periods. Did some search online and it seems that distributed wind farms may work as base load but I highly doubt it works anywhere due to seasonal winds. It definitely needs more research. Especially extreme weathers are becoming more frequent these years.

credit_guy 5y ago

The challenging problem is not storing the electricity produced during the day to consume it at night, but to store electricity produced during summer to consume it during winter. At latitudes such as Paris, or London, or Seattle, or higher, the summer day is much longer than the winter day, and the rays come from an angle much closer to the vertical, they go through a thinner layer of atmosphere so the end result is that solar panels produce about 6 times more electricity. But people consume on average more electricity during the winter days. You can address this problem by building massive overcapacity, but this is expensive (solar power may be cheaper than natural gas power, but not 6 times cheaper). Or you can try to find a way to store the summer electricity for 6 months. That is not easy either.

foxyv 5y ago
I think there are solutions like high voltage DC transmission that could help with this. That would allow power sharing schemes over ~1000 mile distances without too much loss. But yeah, aside from HUGE overprovisioning in southern latitudes and monstrous transmission losses, we may be stuck with nuclear for northern countries and states until something new comes up. Also I don't see Russia being happy with being dependent on middle eastern, Chinese, or European power generation during the winter. On the other hand, Canada seems to do pretty well with wind power despite the northern latitudes. But it is still only 6% of their winter power output. Leaving out wind and solar during the winter, you are kinda left with geothermal and nuclear as your only low carbon options.
- labawi 5y ago
  > monstrous transmission losses When people claim monstrous transmission losses, I'm not sure what to think of. Is it 80%? Maybe 50%? Is 30% too much of a hit for reliable clean power? Surely you're not hung up about 15% for a good PV spot? Transporting HVDC across the globe raises questions about efficiency, but for 1000-2000 km I suggest you compare it to the efficiency of batteries and report which one has better efficiency. > HUGE overprovisioning in southern latitudes If you design it well, it's not overprovisioning, it's displacing production from consumption. Which is mostly problematic for socio-economical and political, not technical reasons.