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I plugged this in with existing storage technologies and existing energy demand for just the USA (500 GW). It turns out we'll only need... 6,000 GWH of battery

I plugged this in with existing storage technologies and existing energy demand for just the USA (500 GW). It turns out we'll only need... 6,000 GWH of battery storage! https://imgur.com/TGRMOBw https://imgur.com/TGRMOBw By comparison, the entire world only produces ~400 GWh of batteries each year. So it'd only take a decade and a half of global battery production to satisfy the storage demands of just the USA. The rest of the world would be left with zero EV or electronics production for a decade and a half and no grid storage to show for it. Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just how unfeasible energy storage really is.

pfdietz 4y ago
Obviously production would have to be scaled up. It's dishonest to present this as some sort of insurmountable barrier, for all potential battery chemistries or other storage modes.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Batteries are not transistors. Their input costs are skyrocketing, and sure enough the end costs of batteries are now starting to rise, too [1]. It's dishonest to pretend that continued exponential growth is guaranteed. The cost of an automobile shrank from a million dollars inflation adjusted to a hundred thousand over the course of the 1900s. Assembly line manufacturing continued to shrink this down to $10,000 by 1920. Would it be safe to assume that a car would cost $1 by the end of the century given the past rate of a 10x drop in price every two decades? The reality is that most products are not transistors. They don't get better when you make them smaller. A car will always contain a certain mass of metal, and will not cheaper than the cost of that input. Manufacturing already accounts for under a quarter of a battery's cost. The rest is dominated by cathode and anode material [2]. Battery manufacturing had already become a resource extraction problem. 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/#:~:text=After%20more%20than%20a%20decade,last%20year%20in%20real%20terms https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-... 2. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a...
  - coder543 4y ago
    You could not be more wrong about batteries. You made a huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes up. It’s possible — just possible — that other people have researched batteries too, and maybe they have a better sense of where the industry is going. It makes no sense to assume that we’ve reached “peak battery”, at all. Continuing this argument is pointless, and really does seem like you’re choosing to ignore reality. I’m done with this conversation.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      > You made a huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes up. Care to explain? I'm always intrigued by commenters asserting that an error has been made, yet neglect to explain the error.
      - coder543 4y ago
        I already responded to you elsewhere. Perhaps you ignored it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846 Cathodes are not a giant chunk of elemental lithium, as you believe.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        But lithium still dominates the cost of the cathode. Iron is not the main driver of battery expenses.
        coder543 4y ago
        13% is not 50%. It makes a huge difference in the cost scaling under discussion. In fact, nickel dominates the cost of the cathode, in case you missed what I had posted. But there are nickel-free chemistries out there.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
coder543 4y ago
> Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just how unfeasible energy storage really is. It’s amazing how clearly you can see the trees without realizing there’s a forest. Battery production capacity has been scaling like crazy and will continue to scale like crazy: https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-to-rise-five-fold-by-2030/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-ion-ba... It doesn’t matter if battery prices increase some, as you have made that the cornerstone of your argument. Many many comments ago, I linked to the Hornsdale battery. Based on the revenue, you can do the math: the batteries could cost a lot more, and it would still have been profitable. Batteries also don’t make up the entire cost of grid scale storage: the inverters, the transformers, even the cabinets and control computers cost money. As it is, mining is a lagging indicator. Once mining scales up, the cost of the commodities will naturally go back down. While there is profit to be made, too many people will open mines, which will bring the profitability back down to earth. It’s a tale as old as supply chains. This same inability to imagine how quickly solar and wind would drop in price led to numerous “experts” making absurd claims about solar and wind being economically infeasible at any scale. The battery supply chain is scaling. There will be price volatility, but the volume is growing by leaps and bounds. It will take years for the world to transition, but it also takes years to build and install the necessary wind and solar. Battery production won’t remain constant, and it won’t even increase slightly. It has and will increase drastically.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Predictions and actual capability are two vastly different things. Outside the realm of predictions, back here in reality, battery costs are actually increasing rather than declining [1]. "Just scale up mining" is easier said than done. Steel is a widely used commodity. If we could "just scale up mining" and exponentially decrease the cost of materials, why haven't we been able to do this with steel? Care you explain why "just scale up mining" will work for lithium when it hasn't for plenty of other commodities? 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/#:~:text=After%20more%20than%20a%20decade,last%20year%20in%20real%20terms https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just how unfeasible energy storage really is. Turns out even good tools can give bad results if intentionally used in bad faith. If you include a small amount of dispatch to represent long distance transmission, biogas or hydro things change dramatically. Prices are for real finished projects, and are going down for wind, solar, and storage very rapidly. 10% Dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=99cee0624b3f3f84ed7fe4f03b968cad#solve https://model.energy/?results=99cee0624b3f3f84ed7fe4f03b968c... 5% Dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=50ab975942dbab37b25ef471759b4d92#solve https://model.energy/?results=50ab975942dbab37b25ef471759b4d... 2.5% Dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=524af6e91d482ff646b2a9fcbff5a18a#solve https://model.energy/?results=524af6e91d482ff646b2a9fcbff5a1... At 2.5% even using gas for dispatch would only add 10g of CO2 per kWh to the total. Well within the error margins of estimates from various low carbon sources and significantly less than taking a year longer to build out low carbon generation. Restricting scope to subsets of the country: PNW with no offshore wind because it has the worse renewable resources: 15% dispatch + imports and 9hr storage: https://model.energy/?results=a72cdef1b55cc6a27ce7b9ba9c534ede#solve https://model.energy/?results=a72cdef1b55cc6a27ce7b9ba9c534e... West virginia is similar: https://model.energy/?results=adcdcd3d6e54c0c80b0bb39ebe75c5bf#solve https://model.energy/?results=adcdcd3d6e54c0c80b0bb39ebe75c5... California with 5% dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=b3166c36c03318779a65aef9d2f48268#solve https://model.energy/?results=b3166c36c03318779a65aef9d2f482...

pfdietz 4y ago

Obviously production would have to be scaled up. It's dishonest to present this as some sort of insurmountable barrier, for all potential battery chemistries or other storage modes.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Batteries are not transistors. Their input costs are skyrocketing, and sure enough the end costs of batteries are now starting to rise, too [1]. It's dishonest to pretend that continued exponential growth is guaranteed. The cost of an automobile shrank from a million dollars inflation adjusted to a hundred thousand over the course of the 1900s. Assembly line manufacturing continued to shrink this down to $10,000 by 1920. Would it be safe to assume that a car would cost $1 by the end of the century given the past rate of a 10x drop in price every two decades? The reality is that most products are not transistors. They don't get better when you make them smaller. A car will always contain a certain mass of metal, and will not cheaper than the cost of that input. Manufacturing already accounts for under a quarter of a battery's cost. The rest is dominated by cathode and anode material [2]. Battery manufacturing had already become a resource extraction problem. 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/#:~:text=After%20more%20than%20a%20decade,last%20year%20in%20real%20terms https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-... 2. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a...
- coder543 4y ago
  You could not be more wrong about batteries. You made a huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes up. It’s possible — just possible — that other people have researched batteries too, and maybe they have a better sense of where the industry is going. It makes no sense to assume that we’ve reached “peak battery”, at all. Continuing this argument is pointless, and really does seem like you’re choosing to ignore reality. I’m done with this conversation.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > You made a huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes up. Care to explain? I'm always intrigued by commenters asserting that an error has been made, yet neglect to explain the error.
    - coder543 4y ago
      I already responded to you elsewhere. Perhaps you ignored it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846 Cathodes are not a giant chunk of elemental lithium, as you believe.
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        But lithium still dominates the cost of the cathode. Iron is not the main driver of battery expenses.
        coder543 4y ago
        13% is not 50%. It makes a huge difference in the cost scaling under discussion. In fact, nickel dominates the cost of the cathode, in case you missed what I had posted. But there are nickel-free chemistries out there.
        Manuel_D 4y ago

coder543 4y ago

> Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just how unfeasible energy storage really is. It’s amazing how clearly you can see the trees without realizing there’s a forest. Battery production capacity has been scaling like crazy and will continue to scale like crazy: https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-to-rise-five-fold-by-2030/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-ion-ba... It doesn’t matter if battery prices increase some, as you have made that the cornerstone of your argument. Many many comments ago, I linked to the Hornsdale battery. Based on the revenue, you can do the math: the batteries could cost a lot more, and it would still have been profitable. Batteries also don’t make up the entire cost of grid scale storage: the inverters, the transformers, even the cabinets and control computers cost money. As it is, mining is a lagging indicator. Once mining scales up, the cost of the commodities will naturally go back down. While there is profit to be made, too many people will open mines, which will bring the profitability back down to earth. It’s a tale as old as supply chains. This same inability to imagine how quickly solar and wind would drop in price led to numerous “experts” making absurd claims about solar and wind being economically infeasible at any scale. The battery supply chain is scaling. There will be price volatility, but the volume is growing by leaps and bounds. It will take years for the world to transition, but it also takes years to build and install the necessary wind and solar. Battery production won’t remain constant, and it won’t even increase slightly. It has and will increase drastically.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Predictions and actual capability are two vastly different things. Outside the realm of predictions, back here in reality, battery costs are actually increasing rather than declining [1]. "Just scale up mining" is easier said than done. Steel is a widely used commodity. If we could "just scale up mining" and exponentially decrease the cost of materials, why haven't we been able to do this with steel? Care you explain why "just scale up mining" will work for lithium when it hasn't for plenty of other commodities? 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/#:~:text=After%20more%20than%20a%20decade,last%20year%20in%20real%20terms https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just how unfeasible energy storage really is. Turns out even good tools can give bad results if intentionally used in bad faith. If you include a small amount of dispatch to represent long distance transmission, biogas or hydro things change dramatically. Prices are for real finished projects, and are going down for wind, solar, and storage very rapidly. 10% Dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=99cee0624b3f3f84ed7fe4f03b968cad#solve https://model.energy/?results=99cee0624b3f3f84ed7fe4f03b968c... 5% Dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=50ab975942dbab37b25ef471759b4d92#solve https://model.energy/?results=50ab975942dbab37b25ef471759b4d... 2.5% Dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=524af6e91d482ff646b2a9fcbff5a18a#solve https://model.energy/?results=524af6e91d482ff646b2a9fcbff5a1... At 2.5% even using gas for dispatch would only add 10g of CO2 per kWh to the total. Well within the error margins of estimates from various low carbon sources and significantly less than taking a year longer to build out low carbon generation. Restricting scope to subsets of the country: PNW with no offshore wind because it has the worse renewable resources: 15% dispatch + imports and 9hr storage: https://model.energy/?results=a72cdef1b55cc6a27ce7b9ba9c534ede#solve https://model.energy/?results=a72cdef1b55cc6a27ce7b9ba9c534e... West virginia is similar: https://model.energy/?results=adcdcd3d6e54c0c80b0bb39ebe75c5bf#solve https://model.energy/?results=adcdcd3d6e54c0c80b0bb39ebe75c5... California with 5% dispatch: https://model.energy/?results=b3166c36c03318779a65aef9d2f48268#solve https://model.energy/?results=b3166c36c03318779a65aef9d2f482...