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we need to account for the danger of disposal/long term storage of the dead batteries for solar as well. But I'm not sure what the calculation for that is vs. n

by ryoshu 4y ago

we need to account for the danger of disposal/long term storage of the dead batteries for solar as well. But I'm not sure what the calculation for that is vs. nuclear waste.

adrianN 4y ago
Batteries can be recycled. They contain expensive metals in high concentrations, recycling makes financial sense.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  They can be recycled but it doesn’t appear we’ve had to deal with this much on an industrial scale - yet. Electric car batteries may be better off being “reused” for less demanding tasks after they’ve hit their usable limit for vehicle use. Of course they’ll need to be recycled eventually. This isn’t my domain so I’m very open to new information. In regards to recycling lead acid batteries the work seems horrendous, for more information check out the lead poisoning cases from Florida workers at Gopher Resource in Tampa.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Obviously you'd want to reduce, reuse, recycle in that order. But it's not surprising that we don't have a large lithium battery recycling industry yet, since we don't have all that many big lithium batteries on the market yet.
croes 4y ago
The difference is that you usually store garbage to protect people from it. With nuclear waste, however, you also have to protect the waste from people like ISIS & Co. It's cheaper to store something in such a way that you can't just trip over it. But it's something else to store it in a way that you can't reach it even if you know where it is.
dieselgate 4y ago
My impression of solar in the western US, at least, is most solar arrays do not charge batteries. They are linked up to the power grid instead and solar owners are payed back a percentage of what they’ve contributed. Im personally an advocate of battery banks (And have them in a boat and rv) but it seems if every single family home had a battery bank there’d be a large surplus of energy created but not always used (aka it doesn’t scale well). If anyone has information otherwise I’m all ears this isn’t my domain

by ryoshu 4y ago

we need to account for the danger of disposal/long term storage of the dead batteries for solar as well. But I'm not sure what the calculation for that is vs. nuclear waste.

adrianN 4y ago

Batteries can be recycled. They contain expensive metals in high concentrations, recycling makes financial sense.

dieselgate 4y ago
They can be recycled but it doesn’t appear we’ve had to deal with this much on an industrial scale - yet. Electric car batteries may be better off being “reused” for less demanding tasks after they’ve hit their usable limit for vehicle use. Of course they’ll need to be recycled eventually. This isn’t my domain so I’m very open to new information. In regards to recycling lead acid batteries the work seems horrendous, for more information check out the lead poisoning cases from Florida workers at Gopher Resource in Tampa.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Obviously you'd want to reduce, reuse, recycle in that order. But it's not surprising that we don't have a large lithium battery recycling industry yet, since we don't have all that many big lithium batteries on the market yet.

croes 4y ago

The difference is that you usually store garbage to protect people from it. With nuclear waste, however, you also have to protect the waste from people like ISIS & Co. It's cheaper to store something in such a way that you can't just trip over it. But it's something else to store it in a way that you can't reach it even if you know where it is.

dieselgate 4y ago

My impression of solar in the western US, at least, is most solar arrays do not charge batteries. They are linked up to the power grid instead and solar owners are payed back a percentage of what they’ve contributed. Im personally an advocate of battery banks (And have them in a boat and rv) but it seems if every single family home had a battery bank there’d be a large surplus of energy created but not always used (aka it doesn’t scale well). If anyone has information otherwise I’m all ears this isn’t my domain