8 ms·

I've seen a lot of suggestions that solar can be used as the only energy source for humanity, that we don't need anything else, just build more solar! That's n

by glogla 5y ago

I've seen a lot of suggestions that solar can be used as the only energy source for humanity, that we don't need anything else, just build more solar! That's not realistic. Of course, the limitations that solar has are very much solvable, and having solar is better than not having it. Solar is important, and it is our future. But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence.

colechristensen 5y ago
You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable. But that’s really more of a “80% of our power is solar” problem and the US isn’t even at 3%. The percentage of usage which could be handled by solar is usually far underestimated. We don’t need to care about limitations of solar for a long long time.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I agree, however your point about 3% isn’t quite true. Look at the last 12 months rolling and estimated total solar and divide by total electricity and you get about 3.7%: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Presumably you want a lot of hydroelectric, wind, and nuclear so you don't need a lot of batteries, and you have enough sources of power when the sun isn't shining. Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? ^ This seems nonsense science fiction.
  - ac29 5y ago
    > Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Depends on how much storage you have. There is very, very little right now so even 50% might be a stretch. > Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? I'd think you'd need a relatively inexpensive superconducting cable for that to make any sense. Running cables between continents has been a thing for over 150 years, but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia.
    - shakna 5y ago
      > but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia. Allow me to present to you the "Australia-Asia Power Link" [0], exporting solar power a distance of about 4,500km, which is still less than half of LA to Australia, but not insignificant. What governs the practicality is often more complex than just power loss. Carbon credits, local taxation, and plain ol' bureaucracy can make it more profitable to export than to consume. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
    - pydry 5y ago
      Grid scale batteries became cost effective within the last year or so, though. It's at the same point solar/wind were a few years ago when they were the cheapest form of energy but received a lot of criticism for making up a small % of total production. Naturally that changed.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Resistance losses aren’t a huge problem (standard currently available HVDC can do 3.5% loss per 1000km, or 1-(0.965^20) = 51% loss between opposite points of the planet, which is fine given how cheap PV is). The cost for both is the big thing: even just assuming overnight electricity replacement, 12 hours * 2 TW * $100/kWh = $2.4 trillion; the 8 GW English Channel link cost $1.6/km[0][1], which a naive scaling up to 20 Mm and 2 TW would cost $8 trillion. Then the question is “which lasts longer, and which is harder to refurbish at end of life?”. (Numbers are just a guideline. On the one hand there is less demand at night and there will probably be wind and geothermal in the mix, on the other hand we want something that allows everyone to have an energy use currently only available to rich people and this doesn’t cover anything except mere electricity). I have not been able to find the size of the global energy industry in dollars per year to compare this to, only an un-cited claim of “$5 trillion per year … subsidizing the fossil fuel industries”. That said, at this scale I have to ask about the economics of making an orbital ring, transferring power kinetically in what is essentially a ballistic superconductor[2], and now you can put the PV in space on the ring without having to solve the political aspects of “can I convince everyone else I’ve not sneakily designed my power satellite to be used as a death ray, and can I be sure everyone else’s can’t all be told to collectively focus on one place even if I trust the owners’ intentions?” that usually follows any discussion of space-based solar. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Co... [1] I’m ignoring converter stations because over 1 Mm they amortise to negligible [2] i.e. purely classical and without the fun quantum magnetic effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  > You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable. this is a lesson factorio can teach us. from[1]: "A single solar panel outputs an average of 42 kW over a day and requires 0.84 accumulators to sustain a constant power output through the night. It takes 23.8 solar panels to operate 1 MW of factory and charge 20 accumulators to sustain that 1 MW through the night." the rules are contrived and simplistic, but the principles apply. the effectiveness of solar generation varies relative to net consumption rate and storage capacity. of course, some inefficiency may be desirable to avoid severe weather problems, but our imprecise climatalogical models dont positively affirm a sense of impending doom. hard to tell what the correct path is. [1] https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel
  - jnsaff2 5y ago
    Let me get this right. You are using numbers from a computer game wiki in a discussion about real world? Numbers which are by the way off by 2 orders of magnitude. Don't have any nuance in them, don't account for any seasonal variance nor in fact for weather.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      It's game-ified and an alien planet. Could be a tool to learn how to think of the problem. Quick ballpark numbers. Common solar panels are between 15 and 20% efficient. Numbers for the _surface_ of the earth (not the upper atmosphere) are quoted as about 1000W per square meter in a search. I assume that's a peak number. Since I don't want to think about weather, calculus, or any other factors for a napkin estimate, can we agree that's 8 hours of useful output at 1KW of input power per hour? So over a day 1 meter of solar panel would generate between 1.2 and 1.6 KW / day? I'd also very crudely extend that to 75% of the daily output must exist as a storage buffer. (Gut feeling more than anything else.) 1.2KWd to 1.6KWd of daily generation per square meter. 0.9KW to 1.2KW storage; per square meter for a day. I have trouble visualizing that though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-cycle_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-cycle_battery Suggests that the discharge should only be to 50% on a regular basis for the most economy of material use (and thus cost). Double the above estimates for the storage bank. Searching for "deep cycle battery solar" I see many results for 12V 110AH batteries, just a tiny bit more than the 1200KW storage value I guestimated earlier. Around 200 dollars per battery, about 13 x 7 x 8.5 inches (rounded up). So a big honking consumer 'truck' / SUV battery sized deep cycle battery, but double that up for wear prevention. Though I still prefer baseload generation capacity for industrial and 24/7 loads. Solar can be a good peaker for AC use and waking consumer stuff.
youeseh 5y ago
> But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy We're further along than you think.
photochemsyn 5y ago
Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system. After all, the entire fossil fuel reserves of planet Earth were generated over time by photosynthesis, i.e. the solar-powered capture of atmospheric carbon and its reduction to the hydrocarbon state from the carbon dioxide state. The problem is the scale of the effort needed to replace current generation with solar generatioin. Practically, it would take decades and a vast amount of work. However, there are no technological barriers, and if the world had exhausted its fossil fuel reserves in say, 1970 then we'd already have much of the solar infrastructure in place. As far as storage solutions, you can find dozens of strategies. My favorite is using solar energy to capture carbon for carbon fiber building materials, 'aerochemical' products (as opposed to petrochemical) for industrial needs (dyes, solvents, etc.) and of course RP1 jet/rocket production. Clearly such an approach will be needed for interplanetary travel as well (Mars seems to have enough CO2 and H2O to make this viable). It's not surprising that people are so poorly informed, however, as the fossil fuel sector runs massive propaganda operations targeting childhood education onwards.
- tigerBL00D 5y ago
  > Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system. Just don't want to let it become a single point of failure. Earth's history is punctuated by periods of low sunlight at sea level.
jluxenberg 5y ago
Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then recharge during the day when the sun comes out. If you have a large home or need to always have a fully charged car, spend $15k on a home battery. We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price. With some investment from individual homeowners we can reduce peak to average ratios for utilities and make it much cheaper and possible to use intermittent green energy sources like wind and solar.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. That's a solution I hope that neither I nor my children live to see. It's a solution I hope never happens unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries in order to get our hands on rare resources. Lithium battery tech is quite miraculous, but it's also not appropriate as the basis for the entire electrification of human civilization. Also, lots of people will have neither cars nor garages.
  - Anchor 5y ago
    > unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries It is already here. Google LFP batteries.
    - adamparsons 5y ago
      I’m a big fan of LFP don’t get me wrong, but it still requires mining and refining lithium, which indeed does fuck over the environment quite badly
      - lanstin 5y ago
        https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium-gold-mine/ https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium-gol... I can’t vouch for this of my own knowledge but as lithium is such a light element it is sensible that it would be easy to find and use.
rndgermandude 5y ago
>But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence. You're not wrong, but also not right. We have renewables that run at night (wind, water, geo-thermal heat pumps), we have some storage solutions/"batteries" as well, such as pumping stations or water-based heat storage. And even peakers that burn fuel are not that bad for the environment if you only run them a limited time. Coal/gas peakers that only run when needed would not kill the environment if the main sources of energy production are renewable - a coal plant burning only some nights is still a lot better than one burning 24/7 - and peakers can be fueled by renewable sources as well, not just stuff you dig out of the ground, making them carbon neutral over the grow-burn circle. The problem right now is that switching over to such a mixed energy production requires a lot of investment and construction, and we have a lot of infrastructure (especially housing) that cannot be easily retrofitted. E.g. right now, be it in the US, be it in Germany where I live, be it in other places, solar and wind deployment is severely hampered by the lack of transmission lines. This isn't a problem of high investment cost either, it's "locals" fighting tooth and nail against new transmission lines being build in the vicinity of where they live because "it ruins the view".
7952 5y ago
Battery storage seems eminently scalable compared to other energy developments. A commodity that can be manufactured in a factory and that we would need anyway for cars. Small components that can be built into enclosures, and racked in a container. And the sites are nice and simple. A fence, some substation gear, a concrete pad.
- pydry 5y ago
  Particularly nuclear.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Not true. Check out https://model.energy https://model.energy
johnrgrace 5y ago
I think you have not looked at all the of EV vehicles currently being built and how much of a change those vehicles are going to have on the power grid 1. a large portion of the batteries in those vehicles are going to find 2nd lives as stationary battery storage. 2. The vehicles themselves are also storage.
adrianN 5y ago
There are proven, scalable technologies for storing large amounts of energy. For overnight storage you can melt salt. For seasonal storage you can make Methane (or Hydrogen). Every country has strategic gas storage infrastructure already built. Batteries are only interesting because they might become cheaper than these. Currently we don't store large amounts of energy because it's cheaper not to, not because it's impossible to build the necessary infrastructure.
- pydry 5y ago
  It is now cheap to store using batteries. It just hasnt been that way for very long.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    That depends on the scale I think. It's getting close to economical for private electricity use, but we're still pretty far away from the manufacturing capabilities that would allow us to store a week of power for the whole grid. And even further away if you also include energy that is currently not supplied as electricity (e.g. for heating).
    - pydry 5y ago
      It's economical to combine it with solar/wind on the grid. Both California and Hawaii are doing this right now. This form of energy is about 1/3 the cost per MWh of nuclear (as opposed to solar/wind alone which is about 1/6th the cost). It just hasnt been that cheap for very long. Hydro as storage, better grid interconnects, demand shaping (e.g. using smart storage heaters that turn on when electricity is cheap) can bring down the cost still further.

by glogla 5y ago

colechristensen 5y ago

You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable. But that’s really more of a “80% of our power is solar” problem and the US isn’t even at 3%. The percentage of usage which could be handled by solar is usually far underestimated. We don’t need to care about limitations of solar for a long long time.

Robotbeat 5y ago
I agree, however your point about 3% isn’t quite true. Look at the last 12 months rolling and estimated total solar and divide by total electricity and you get about 3.7%: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Presumably you want a lot of hydroelectric, wind, and nuclear so you don't need a lot of batteries, and you have enough sources of power when the sun isn't shining. Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? ^ This seems nonsense science fiction.
- ac29 5y ago
  > Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Depends on how much storage you have. There is very, very little right now so even 50% might be a stretch. > Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? I'd think you'd need a relatively inexpensive superconducting cable for that to make any sense. Running cables between continents has been a thing for over 150 years, but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia.
  - shakna 5y ago
    > but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia. Allow me to present to you the "Australia-Asia Power Link" [0], exporting solar power a distance of about 4,500km, which is still less than half of LA to Australia, but not insignificant. What governs the practicality is often more complex than just power loss. Carbon credits, local taxation, and plain ol' bureaucracy can make it more profitable to export than to consume. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
  - pydry 5y ago
    Grid scale batteries became cost effective within the last year or so, though. It's at the same point solar/wind were a few years ago when they were the cheapest form of energy but received a lot of criticism for making up a small % of total production. Naturally that changed.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Resistance losses aren’t a huge problem (standard currently available HVDC can do 3.5% loss per 1000km, or 1-(0.965^20) = 51% loss between opposite points of the planet, which is fine given how cheap PV is). The cost for both is the big thing: even just assuming overnight electricity replacement, 12 hours * 2 TW * $100/kWh = $2.4 trillion; the 8 GW English Channel link cost $1.6/km[0][1], which a naive scaling up to 20 Mm and 2 TW would cost $8 trillion. Then the question is “which lasts longer, and which is harder to refurbish at end of life?”. (Numbers are just a guideline. On the one hand there is less demand at night and there will probably be wind and geothermal in the mix, on the other hand we want something that allows everyone to have an energy use currently only available to rich people and this doesn’t cover anything except mere electricity). I have not been able to find the size of the global energy industry in dollars per year to compare this to, only an un-cited claim of “$5 trillion per year … subsidizing the fossil fuel industries”. That said, at this scale I have to ask about the economics of making an orbital ring, transferring power kinetically in what is essentially a ballistic superconductor[2], and now you can put the PV in space on the ring without having to solve the political aspects of “can I convince everyone else I’ve not sneakily designed my power satellite to be used as a death ray, and can I be sure everyone else’s can’t all be told to collectively focus on one place even if I trust the owners’ intentions?” that usually follows any discussion of space-based solar. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Co... [1] I’m ignoring converter stations because over 1 Mm they amortise to negligible [2] i.e. purely classical and without the fun quantum magnetic effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction
kryogen1c 5y ago
> You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable. this is a lesson factorio can teach us. from[1]: "A single solar panel outputs an average of 42 kW over a day and requires 0.84 accumulators to sustain a constant power output through the night. It takes 23.8 solar panels to operate 1 MW of factory and charge 20 accumulators to sustain that 1 MW through the night." the rules are contrived and simplistic, but the principles apply. the effectiveness of solar generation varies relative to net consumption rate and storage capacity. of course, some inefficiency may be desirable to avoid severe weather problems, but our imprecise climatalogical models dont positively affirm a sense of impending doom. hard to tell what the correct path is. [1] https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel
- jnsaff2 5y ago
  Let me get this right. You are using numbers from a computer game wiki in a discussion about real world? Numbers which are by the way off by 2 orders of magnitude. Don't have any nuance in them, don't account for any seasonal variance nor in fact for weather.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    It's game-ified and an alien planet. Could be a tool to learn how to think of the problem. Quick ballpark numbers. Common solar panels are between 15 and 20% efficient. Numbers for the _surface_ of the earth (not the upper atmosphere) are quoted as about 1000W per square meter in a search. I assume that's a peak number. Since I don't want to think about weather, calculus, or any other factors for a napkin estimate, can we agree that's 8 hours of useful output at 1KW of input power per hour? So over a day 1 meter of solar panel would generate between 1.2 and 1.6 KW / day? I'd also very crudely extend that to 75% of the daily output must exist as a storage buffer. (Gut feeling more than anything else.) 1.2KWd to 1.6KWd of daily generation per square meter. 0.9KW to 1.2KW storage; per square meter for a day. I have trouble visualizing that though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-cycle_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-cycle_battery Suggests that the discharge should only be to 50% on a regular basis for the most economy of material use (and thus cost). Double the above estimates for the storage bank. Searching for "deep cycle battery solar" I see many results for 12V 110AH batteries, just a tiny bit more than the 1200KW storage value I guestimated earlier. Around 200 dollars per battery, about 13 x 7 x 8.5 inches (rounded up). So a big honking consumer 'truck' / SUV battery sized deep cycle battery, but double that up for wear prevention. Though I still prefer baseload generation capacity for industrial and 24/7 loads. Solar can be a good peaker for AC use and waking consumer stuff.

youeseh 5y ago

> But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy We're further along than you think.

photochemsyn 5y ago

Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system. After all, the entire fossil fuel reserves of planet Earth were generated over time by photosynthesis, i.e. the solar-powered capture of atmospheric carbon and its reduction to the hydrocarbon state from the carbon dioxide state. The problem is the scale of the effort needed to replace current generation with solar generatioin. Practically, it would take decades and a vast amount of work. However, there are no technological barriers, and if the world had exhausted its fossil fuel reserves in say, 1970 then we'd already have much of the solar infrastructure in place. As far as storage solutions, you can find dozens of strategies. My favorite is using solar energy to capture carbon for carbon fiber building materials, 'aerochemical' products (as opposed to petrochemical) for industrial needs (dyes, solvents, etc.) and of course RP1 jet/rocket production. Clearly such an approach will be needed for interplanetary travel as well (Mars seems to have enough CO2 and H2O to make this viable). It's not surprising that people are so poorly informed, however, as the fossil fuel sector runs massive propaganda operations targeting childhood education onwards.

tigerBL00D 5y ago
> Yes, you could run a civilization entirely on solar if you had a robust storage, conversion and distribution system. Just don't want to let it become a single point of failure. Earth's history is punctuated by periods of low sunlight at sea level.

jluxenberg 5y ago

Storage will be a solved problem once everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. Power your home overnight from your car, then recharge during the day when the sun comes out. If you have a large home or need to always have a fully charged car, spend $15k on a home battery. We need to get out of this mindset that electric utilities will provide unlimited power at a fixed price. With some investment from individual homeowners we can reduce peak to average ratios for utilities and make it much cheaper and possible to use intermittent green energy sources like wind and solar.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> everyone has an electric vehicle with a 65kWh battery sitting in their garage. That's a solution I hope that neither I nor my children live to see. It's a solution I hope never happens unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries in order to get our hands on rare resources. Lithium battery tech is quite miraculous, but it's also not appropriate as the basis for the entire electrification of human civilization. Also, lots of people will have neither cars nor garages.
- Anchor 5y ago
  > unless a new battery technology arrives that for a start eliminates our need to once again fuck over some very poor countries It is already here. Google LFP batteries.
  - adamparsons 5y ago
    I’m a big fan of LFP don’t get me wrong, but it still requires mining and refining lithium, which indeed does fuck over the environment quite badly
    - lanstin 5y ago
      https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium-gold-mine/ https://nbcpalmsprings.com/2021/04/29/salton-sea-lithium-gol... I can’t vouch for this of my own knowledge but as lithium is such a light element it is sensible that it would be easy to find and use.

rndgermandude 5y ago

>But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence. You're not wrong, but also not right. We have renewables that run at night (wind, water, geo-thermal heat pumps), we have some storage solutions/"batteries" as well, such as pumping stations or water-based heat storage. And even peakers that burn fuel are not that bad for the environment if you only run them a limited time. Coal/gas peakers that only run when needed would not kill the environment if the main sources of energy production are renewable - a coal plant burning only some nights is still a lot better than one burning 24/7 - and peakers can be fueled by renewable sources as well, not just stuff you dig out of the ground, making them carbon neutral over the grow-burn circle. The problem right now is that switching over to such a mixed energy production requires a lot of investment and construction, and we have a lot of infrastructure (especially housing) that cannot be easily retrofitted. E.g. right now, be it in the US, be it in Germany where I live, be it in other places, solar and wind deployment is severely hampered by the lack of transmission lines. This isn't a problem of high investment cost either, it's "locals" fighting tooth and nail against new transmission lines being build in the vicinity of where they live because "it ruins the view".

7952 5y ago

Battery storage seems eminently scalable compared to other energy developments. A commodity that can be manufactured in a factory and that we would need anyway for cars. Small components that can be built into enclosures, and racked in a container. And the sites are nice and simple. A fence, some substation gear, a concrete pad.

pydry 5y ago
Particularly nuclear.

Robotbeat 5y ago

Not true. Check out https://model.energy https://model.energy

johnrgrace 5y ago

I think you have not looked at all the of EV vehicles currently being built and how much of a change those vehicles are going to have on the power grid 1. a large portion of the batteries in those vehicles are going to find 2nd lives as stationary battery storage. 2. The vehicles themselves are also storage.

adrianN 5y ago

There are proven, scalable technologies for storing large amounts of energy. For overnight storage you can melt salt. For seasonal storage you can make Methane (or Hydrogen). Every country has strategic gas storage infrastructure already built. Batteries are only interesting because they might become cheaper than these. Currently we don't store large amounts of energy because it's cheaper not to, not because it's impossible to build the necessary infrastructure.

pydry 5y ago
It is now cheap to store using batteries. It just hasnt been that way for very long.
- adrianN 5y ago
  That depends on the scale I think. It's getting close to economical for private electricity use, but we're still pretty far away from the manufacturing capabilities that would allow us to store a week of power for the whole grid. And even further away if you also include energy that is currently not supplied as electricity (e.g. for heating).
  - pydry 5y ago
    It's economical to combine it with solar/wind on the grid. Both California and Hawaii are doing this right now. This form of energy is about 1/3 the cost per MWh of nuclear (as opposed to solar/wind alone which is about 1/6th the cost). It just hasnt been that cheap for very long. Hydro as storage, better grid interconnects, demand shaping (e.g. using smart storage heaters that turn on when electricity is cheap) can bring down the cost still further.