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Recycling batteries means there's lower usable lifetime. The recycled batteries would be cheaper to source, but the more frequent replacement drives up labor co

Recycling batteries means there's lower usable lifetime. The recycled batteries would be cheaper to source, but the more frequent replacement drives up labor costs. Recycling also doesn't alter the fundamental disparities in scale. Production needs to increase by close to two orders of magnitude to make any significant amount of grid storage. We're struggling to keep pace with just EV demand for batteries, adding just one hour of grid storage for the USA (about 500GWh) would eat up an entire year's worth of batter production. What alternatives are you talking about? The existing alternatives aren't presently being used because lithium based chemistries beats them in cost. Other storage systems like compressed air are in their infancy and it's unclear if they'll become cost effective enough. Let me re-use your logic: we don't need solar, or wind, or storage. We'll just use fusion. Fusion is making big strides each year. There's no limit to the number of ways we can squeeze together two hydrogen atoms, so if the tokamak doesn't work out there's too many alternatives for me to think about.

jeffbee 4y ago
> What alternatives are you talking about? The existing alternatives aren't presently being used because lithium based chemistries beats them in cost. This just isn't the case. There are many large-scale lead-acid energy storage installations.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Where? There doesn't seem to be any listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power_plants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power...
ben_w 4y ago
> Recycling batteries means there's lower usable lifetime. Irrelevant, it's a cost reduction. > The recycled batteries would be cheaper to source, but the more frequent replacement drives up labor costs. Insignificant, and automatable. > Recycling also doesn't alter the fundamental disparities in scale. Unimportant, the scaling up is already occurring. Currently planned infrastructure gets us half way all by itself by 2030. There's no need to hypothesise about beyond that, that's a problem for investors and governments. > Production needs to increase by close to two orders of magnitude to make any significant amount of grid storage. Yes, and? > We're struggling to keep pace with just EV demand for batteries, Which is why Tesla is investing in mining and alternative chemistries. > adding just one hour of grid storage for the USA (about 500GWh) would eat up an entire year's worth of batter production. Unimportant, more factories and more mines are being built as fast as people can find investors. Assuming today's output is a constant going forward is only useful for extremely short time horizons; in this context, extremely short is in the order of 6-12 months, given how fast global capacity is changing. > What alternatives are you talking about? The existing alternatives aren't presently being used because lithium based chemistries beats them in cost. False: https://insideevs.com/news/575956/tesla-battery-chemistries-explained/ https://insideevs.com/news/575956/tesla-battery-chemistries-... > Other storage systems like compressed air are in their infancy and it's unclear if they'll become cost effective enough. Hydroelectric and hydrogen are both large scale, easy to make. China recently finished a big hydroelectric plant. We have not run out of places we can fill will water, not even places that fill themselves with water. Hydrogen electrolysis is so easy that it predates alternators and dynamos, and I did it myself when I was single-digit-years-old. There hasn't been much point to it until recently as it's a store rather than a source, but now we have solar cheaper than natural gas, it's trivial and obvious. > Let me re-use your logic: we don't need solar, or wind, or storage. We'll just use fusion. Fusion is making big strides each year. Logic without a connection to reality is not useful. Fusion, to my personal frustration, is not making "big" strides each year, certainly not if you are defining the current growth rate of batteries (let alone renewables) as anything less than "extremely big". Logic is also not useful when you ignore some of the consequences of your assumptions, e.g., the best current estimates for the quantity of superconductors needed to make 2 TW of fusion reactors (ITER magnet is ~1000 tons and the reactor is 500 MW-thermal) is also enough for a lossless global power grid. > There's no limit to the number of ways we can squeeze together two hydrogen atoms, so if the tokamak doesn't work out there's too many alternatives for me to think about. You are currently using a lithium ion or lithium polymer battery. Demonstrate a working fusion reactor that makes more electricity than it consumes. You only get to count the sun if you're willing to use PV. This is the crux of your mistake: you're treating all futures as equals, when the environmental goals need us to act as quickly as possible. Fission is too slow to build, and we have working designs; fusion is too slow to build even the experimental reactors whose useful descendants are currently scheduled to arrive after it's too late. The new fusion startups? Well, good luck to them, I wish them the best, but any policy decisions that assume they will be ready to start building their own reactor factories before the already-planned-just-not-yet-built battery factories are finished, is wishful thinking. Or do you think it's unfair to count "merely" planned battery factories and mines, even though there's nothing fundamentally novel about them?
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  This amounts to a long winded way of hand-waving away the shortcomings of battery storage without actually proposing a plan to resolve them. We do have lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries, but not in sufficient quantities. Your proposal amounts to crossing our fingers and hoping that extraction industries can accommodate a 100x increase in output over the next decade, without significant increase in price. There are indeed alternative battery chemistries but they aren't being used because various shortcomings make lithium based batteries the most effective. Nobody has ever commercially deployed hydrogen storage, and most hydrogen is produced via steam reformation. The fact that you performed electrolysis as a child does not somehow mitigate the difficulties of using it as a form of grid storage. If you do have a plan to make it viable, go talk to VCs and you'll be a billionaire. But alas, actually delivering grid storage is harder than making promises.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > Nobody has ever commercially deployed hydrogen storage, Because it wasn't previously useful. Now it is starting to get useful. Do you understand the concept of "change"? That the future is not always like the present? > and most hydrogen is produced via steam reformation. Why do you think that's relevant? > If you do have a plan to make it viable, go talk to VCs and you'll be a billionaire. The billionaires are already doing this. Literally. That specific thing is being done on the orders of the richest person on the planet, as part of a plan to get even richer. He's hardly the only one. This is why a lot of new infrastructure in this field is getting funding and being built. This is why the infrastructure that has been planned and whose construction is in progress is so much larger than what currently exists. This isn't "crossing my fingers and hoping", it's the default outcome unless something else makes it all redundant. All of the issues you're using to doubt this are "throw money at them and they go away" type of problems, and enough money being thrown at them to be interesting. Fusion, sadly, is still in the "throw money at the problems and we expect to find new ones" category.

jeffbee 4y ago

> What alternatives are you talking about? The existing alternatives aren't presently being used because lithium based chemistries beats them in cost. This just isn't the case. There are many large-scale lead-acid energy storage installations.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Where? There doesn't seem to be any listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power_plants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_power...

ben_w 4y ago

> Recycling batteries means there's lower usable lifetime. Irrelevant, it's a cost reduction. > The recycled batteries would be cheaper to source, but the more frequent replacement drives up labor costs. Insignificant, and automatable. > Recycling also doesn't alter the fundamental disparities in scale. Unimportant, the scaling up is already occurring. Currently planned infrastructure gets us half way all by itself by 2030. There's no need to hypothesise about beyond that, that's a problem for investors and governments. > Production needs to increase by close to two orders of magnitude to make any significant amount of grid storage. Yes, and? > We're struggling to keep pace with just EV demand for batteries, Which is why Tesla is investing in mining and alternative chemistries. > adding just one hour of grid storage for the USA (about 500GWh) would eat up an entire year's worth of batter production. Unimportant, more factories and more mines are being built as fast as people can find investors. Assuming today's output is a constant going forward is only useful for extremely short time horizons; in this context, extremely short is in the order of 6-12 months, given how fast global capacity is changing. > What alternatives are you talking about? The existing alternatives aren't presently being used because lithium based chemistries beats them in cost. False: https://insideevs.com/news/575956/tesla-battery-chemistries-explained/ https://insideevs.com/news/575956/tesla-battery-chemistries-... > Other storage systems like compressed air are in their infancy and it's unclear if they'll become cost effective enough. Hydroelectric and hydrogen are both large scale, easy to make. China recently finished a big hydroelectric plant. We have not run out of places we can fill will water, not even places that fill themselves with water. Hydrogen electrolysis is so easy that it predates alternators and dynamos, and I did it myself when I was single-digit-years-old. There hasn't been much point to it until recently as it's a store rather than a source, but now we have solar cheaper than natural gas, it's trivial and obvious. > Let me re-use your logic: we don't need solar, or wind, or storage. We'll just use fusion. Fusion is making big strides each year. Logic without a connection to reality is not useful. Fusion, to my personal frustration, is not making "big" strides each year, certainly not if you are defining the current growth rate of batteries (let alone renewables) as anything less than "extremely big". Logic is also not useful when you ignore some of the consequences of your assumptions, e.g., the best current estimates for the quantity of superconductors needed to make 2 TW of fusion reactors (ITER magnet is ~1000 tons and the reactor is 500 MW-thermal) is also enough for a lossless global power grid. > There's no limit to the number of ways we can squeeze together two hydrogen atoms, so if the tokamak doesn't work out there's too many alternatives for me to think about. You are currently using a lithium ion or lithium polymer battery. Demonstrate a working fusion reactor that makes more electricity than it consumes. You only get to count the sun if you're willing to use PV. This is the crux of your mistake: you're treating all futures as equals, when the environmental goals need us to act as quickly as possible. Fission is too slow to build, and we have working designs; fusion is too slow to build even the experimental reactors whose useful descendants are currently scheduled to arrive after it's too late. The new fusion startups? Well, good luck to them, I wish them the best, but any policy decisions that assume they will be ready to start building their own reactor factories before the already-planned-just-not-yet-built battery factories are finished, is wishful thinking. Or do you think it's unfair to count "merely" planned battery factories and mines, even though there's nothing fundamentally novel about them?

Manuel_D 4y ago
This amounts to a long winded way of hand-waving away the shortcomings of battery storage without actually proposing a plan to resolve them. We do have lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries, but not in sufficient quantities. Your proposal amounts to crossing our fingers and hoping that extraction industries can accommodate a 100x increase in output over the next decade, without significant increase in price. There are indeed alternative battery chemistries but they aren't being used because various shortcomings make lithium based batteries the most effective. Nobody has ever commercially deployed hydrogen storage, and most hydrogen is produced via steam reformation. The fact that you performed electrolysis as a child does not somehow mitigate the difficulties of using it as a form of grid storage. If you do have a plan to make it viable, go talk to VCs and you'll be a billionaire. But alas, actually delivering grid storage is harder than making promises.
- ben_w 4y ago
  > Nobody has ever commercially deployed hydrogen storage, Because it wasn't previously useful. Now it is starting to get useful. Do you understand the concept of "change"? That the future is not always like the present? > and most hydrogen is produced via steam reformation. Why do you think that's relevant? > If you do have a plan to make it viable, go talk to VCs and you'll be a billionaire. The billionaires are already doing this. Literally. That specific thing is being done on the orders of the richest person on the planet, as part of a plan to get even richer. He's hardly the only one. This is why a lot of new infrastructure in this field is getting funding and being built. This is why the infrastructure that has been planned and whose construction is in progress is so much larger than what currently exists. This isn't "crossing my fingers and hoping", it's the default outcome unless something else makes it all redundant. All of the issues you're using to doubt this are "throw money at them and they go away" type of problems, and enough money being thrown at them to be interesting. Fusion, sadly, is still in the "throw money at the problems and we expect to find new ones" category.