3 ms·

> At the current rate, it will take us at least a century to replace fossil fuels with battery and renewables. N While I am as much of a pessimist as you are,

> At the current rate, it will take us at least a century to replace fossil fuels with battery and renewables. N While I am as much of a pessimist as you are, you also need to recognize that the growth in solar, wind, and storage capacities is _exponential_, with the exponent being _dramatically_ higher than even the most optimistic of expectations.

foxyv 5y ago
Keep in mind, using current technology, we would need to mine 3-5x our yearly output JUST for grid energy. This doesn't include cell phones, laptops, electric bikes, and Teslas. Even then it would be the bare minimum just required to replace baseline natural gas and coal at the current power usage. Not including replacing peaker plants for winter and heat waves. Sure, we are increasing battery production pretty fast. However mined lithium has gone down in the last few years while demand has soared for non-grid batteries. We need either a new storage technology, a vast increase in mined lithium, or a base load generator which can compete with natural gas like lithium does. So far we have 0.1% of the grid scale batteries we need. It took 6 years to go from 6 gigawatts to 28 gigawatts. (At a power to storage scale of 0.5 you can roughly convert to energy storage by doubling the power) Even at an exponential rate it's still going to take decades. Eventually we will hit the top of the logistic curve when we find a limiting factor to production. Current estimates are 52 gigawatts by 2025. Roughly a doubling rate of 4-5 years. Assuming a 5 year doubling rate with no logistical limitation, an exponential expansion would reach necessary capacity in 44 years. Which would be awesome, if we can manage it. However, in 44 years, power demand will have increased as well. Currently we are not building enough renewables to even touch the increase much less batteries. Year - Power - Percent of 10tw 2025 - 52 gw - 0.5% 2030 - 100 gw - 1.0% 2035 - 200 gw - 2% 2040 - 400 gw - 4% 2045 - 800 gw - 8% 2050 - 1600 gw - 16% 2055 - 3200 gw - 32% 2060 - 6400 gw - 64% 2065 - 12800 gw - 128%
- labawi 5y ago
  Did you just switch from solar / wind, which is totally workable and cheapest form of energy, to arguing about batteries? Batteries for storage are problematic, especially grid scale lithium - globally unfeasible regardless of nuclear. We need to move a lot of consumption onto electric (or direct solar) so we will need to manage the time and location aspects of consumption - easier with nuclear (if you get it built) but not a deal-breaker as argued elsewhere. Technology already exists - least sophisticated one is called a switch. Solar by itself is already rated at 3.7% of world electricity consumption, so your table is .. grid batteries? Yes, unworkable and besides the point. y GW cap % of 30TW 2020 700 2.3 2025 2200 7.3 2030 7000 23 2035 21000 71 2040 65000 210 If we keep the pace of x1.25 year-to-year increase, PV solar achieves global domination by 2040 and Li-ion is considered an archaic technology (at least for grid scale load shifting).

foxyv 5y ago

Keep in mind, using current technology, we would need to mine 3-5x our yearly output JUST for grid energy. This doesn't include cell phones, laptops, electric bikes, and Teslas. Even then it would be the bare minimum just required to replace baseline natural gas and coal at the current power usage. Not including replacing peaker plants for winter and heat waves. Sure, we are increasing battery production pretty fast. However mined lithium has gone down in the last few years while demand has soared for non-grid batteries. We need either a new storage technology, a vast increase in mined lithium, or a base load generator which can compete with natural gas like lithium does. So far we have 0.1% of the grid scale batteries we need. It took 6 years to go from 6 gigawatts to 28 gigawatts. (At a power to storage scale of 0.5 you can roughly convert to energy storage by doubling the power) Even at an exponential rate it's still going to take decades. Eventually we will hit the top of the logistic curve when we find a limiting factor to production. Current estimates are 52 gigawatts by 2025. Roughly a doubling rate of 4-5 years. Assuming a 5 year doubling rate with no logistical limitation, an exponential expansion would reach necessary capacity in 44 years. Which would be awesome, if we can manage it. However, in 44 years, power demand will have increased as well. Currently we are not building enough renewables to even touch the increase much less batteries. Year - Power - Percent of 10tw 2025 - 52 gw - 0.5% 2030 - 100 gw - 1.0% 2035 - 200 gw - 2% 2040 - 400 gw - 4% 2045 - 800 gw - 8% 2050 - 1600 gw - 16% 2055 - 3200 gw - 32% 2060 - 6400 gw - 64% 2065 - 12800 gw - 128%

labawi 5y ago
Did you just switch from solar / wind, which is totally workable and cheapest form of energy, to arguing about batteries? Batteries for storage are problematic, especially grid scale lithium - globally unfeasible regardless of nuclear. We need to move a lot of consumption onto electric (or direct solar) so we will need to manage the time and location aspects of consumption - easier with nuclear (if you get it built) but not a deal-breaker as argued elsewhere. Technology already exists - least sophisticated one is called a switch. Solar by itself is already rated at 3.7% of world electricity consumption, so your table is .. grid batteries? Yes, unworkable and besides the point. y GW cap % of 30TW 2020 700 2.3 2025 2200 7.3 2030 7000 23 2035 21000 71 2040 65000 210 If we keep the pace of x1.25 year-to-year increase, PV solar achieves global domination by 2040 and Li-ion is considered an archaic technology (at least for grid scale load shifting).