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Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or sol

Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or solar power that would be $120 million. Wind farms at around $1.5 million per MW ie., around 80 times that. And are there that numbers of batteries available? Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries.

SuoDuanDao 3y ago
Batteries are currently following their own version of Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course, that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game in town.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight battery backup for 4 cents/kWh. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8minute-Solar-Energy-Expands-Development-Pipeline-to-18-Gigawatts-with-New-Solar-Plus-Storage-Power-Plants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8mi...
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Batteries are much cheaper today than they were yesterday, and it’s a clear push downward over time. China being the “main supplier” has more to do with them undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying attention enough to their environment, it isn’t sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes from that, but not most of it. There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables to move water back up to reservoirs.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  China is world leading on renewable production and installation, EVs and EV busses, Lithium, LFP and Sodium battery production, Hydro, HVDC, nuclear, high speed rail and a bunch of other stuff. It's not just a case of them being happy to dig nasty stuff out of the ground without care. If anything it's because they lack a specific type of nasty stuff to dig out of the ground and so their government hasn't been totally captured by fossil fuel interests. The west actively abdicated their early lead on all these technologies.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > It's not just a case of them being happy to dig nasty stuff out of the ground without care. If anything it's because they lack a specific type of nasty stuff to dig out of the ground and so their government hasn't been totally captured by fossil fuel interests. China still produces plenty of coal, so I'm not sure what your point is. I guess you mean oil, and their move into EVs totally makes sense from that context even if they can get it cheaply from Iran and Russia these days. But the cost is huge. Even the Chinese central government is pragmatic enough to admit that they have a huge unsustainable problem; e.g. https://time.com/6258519/china-lithium-mining-environmental-investigation/ https://time.com/6258519/china-lithium-mining-environmental-... > The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material — and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they’re grappling with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent from Beijing. You can tour the Chinese countryside and find tons of places like this. > The west actively abdicated their early lead on all these technologies. The west could not keep up Chinese refiners because Chinese refiners have little regard for their environment. As the Chinese central government cracks down and the west worries more about their resource security, the Chinese will simply lose that advantage.
- twelve40 3y ago
  pumped storage hydro, while really cool, are absolutely massive and complicated multibillion dollar infrastructure projects (which California lately has not been particularly famous for)
throwaway473825 3y ago
Storage will probably use sodium-ion batteries in the future. Those have none of the four elements you mentioned.
pydry 3y ago
Snowy 2 is $6 billion for 350GWh, so $17k per MWh. At this point somebody usually argues that you can only do that in Australia and the geography for pumped storage is super rare (I call it the "theres a shortage of up" fallacy), and I have to cite the same study proving that it's actually not.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I would go the contrarian way and suggest Snowy 2 is one of several examples that demonstrate that spending the same amount of money on more renewable generation and some battery storage would provide more reliable power for less money. Which makes the geography question moot. But most people's intuitions on renewables/battery are years out of date so it's confusing to respond to their sarcastic "are we just going to build lots of batteries, LOL" with "actually yes that's going to be sensible for 80% of the world's population". edit: long article comparing Snowy to more solar plus batteries: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-storage/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-stora...
  - pydry 3y ago
    That's a weird article. It simultaneously argues that between batteries and snowy 2 there is no clear winner, that snowy 2 is a white elephant and that: >Hornsdale Power Reserve: $690 per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity. If Snowy Hydro 2 comes in at $10 billion, its cost per kilowatt of power will be $5,000, which is 5.6 times more than Hornsdale. But its cost per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity is much lower no matter if you think $20, $29, or $250 is appropriate. In other words in terms of storing a large volume of energy, cheaply, at high efficiency, pumped storage blows everything else out of the metaphorical water - between 3x and 34.5x cheaper! I would say that batteries and large scale pumped storage complement each other. I don't agree that Australia will regret building it.
  - robocat 3y ago
    That article is completely mad. But it does admit the following: The main drawbacks [of battery storage] are: At the moment, it has a much higher cost per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity. Much shorter lifespan. If we consider Snowy Hydro 2’s maximum possible energy storage capacity, it comes to only $20 to $29 per kilowatt-hour $5,000 [buys] 5.16 kilowatt-hours of Hornsdale storage That is, Snowy Hydro is an order of magnitude cheaper for storage. The article continuously harps on about kW comparisons, and ignores comparing kWh storage: foolish for an article supposedly about electricity storage. For example the article makes the inane point: “If Snowy Hydro 2 comes in at $10 billion, its cost per kilowatt of power output comes to… $5,000 per kilowatt. That’s not cheap. Gas generation normally comes to under $1,000 per kilowatt.”, and again “Snowy 2 Vs. Hornsdale: Assuming Snowy Hydro 2 costs $5,000 per kilowatt of power output, for that cost, we could instead buy . . .”. Utter rubbish.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> around $600K per MWh So if enough solar gets built that the electricity price falls to near zero every day, batteries are now cheaper than natural gas? That's a very impactful change that I honestly didn't see coming.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Even at a domestic scale you can install solar and batteries for your household/heating/car usage -- assuming you have the roof space -- be self sufficent 10 months a year, and have a payack time of about 12 years last time I looked. The other 2 months a year sure, you've got either grid power or an off grid oil/gas generator.
ben_w 3y ago
"$600K per MWh" sounds like the cost per peak (initial) storage capacity; as the batteries can be recharged something like six thousand times before wearing down to half capacity, that's more like adding $100 per MWh ($0.1/kWh) if you throw them out at that point or $50 per MWh (5¢/kWh) if they keep wearing down at the same rate until they're negligible. > And are there that numbers of batteries available Not yet — but there are enough people investing in each stage of mining, processing, and making battery factories, that this is probably not going to be an issue. > Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries. Technically, I think, yes; but that's just where we are today rather than a fundamental property of world geography.
7952 3y ago
I think you are assuming that turbines would be paired with a certain number of batteries and taken together that would provide continuous power. But that is just not how a grid works or how the economics work. Battery storage is economical because you can buy cheap and sell high. And a system with high renewables penetration will see some very high prices for a few hours or days per month and cheap prices the rest of the time. That is ideal for battery storage, particularly as renewables gets cheaper.

SuoDuanDao 3y ago

Batteries are currently following their own version of Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course, that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game in town.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight battery backup for 4 cents/kWh. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8minute-Solar-Energy-Expands-Development-Pipeline-to-18-Gigawatts-with-New-Solar-Plus-Storage-Power-Plants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8mi...

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Batteries are much cheaper today than they were yesterday, and it’s a clear push downward over time. China being the “main supplier” has more to do with them undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying attention enough to their environment, it isn’t sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes from that, but not most of it. There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables to move water back up to reservoirs.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
China is world leading on renewable production and installation, EVs and EV busses, Lithium, LFP and Sodium battery production, Hydro, HVDC, nuclear, high speed rail and a bunch of other stuff. It's not just a case of them being happy to dig nasty stuff out of the ground without care. If anything it's because they lack a specific type of nasty stuff to dig out of the ground and so their government hasn't been totally captured by fossil fuel interests. The west actively abdicated their early lead on all these technologies.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > It's not just a case of them being happy to dig nasty stuff out of the ground without care. If anything it's because they lack a specific type of nasty stuff to dig out of the ground and so their government hasn't been totally captured by fossil fuel interests. China still produces plenty of coal, so I'm not sure what your point is. I guess you mean oil, and their move into EVs totally makes sense from that context even if they can get it cheaply from Iran and Russia these days. But the cost is huge. Even the Chinese central government is pragmatic enough to admit that they have a huge unsustainable problem; e.g. https://time.com/6258519/china-lithium-mining-environmental-investigation/ https://time.com/6258519/china-lithium-mining-environmental-... > The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material — and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they’re grappling with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent from Beijing. You can tour the Chinese countryside and find tons of places like this. > The west actively abdicated their early lead on all these technologies. The west could not keep up Chinese refiners because Chinese refiners have little regard for their environment. As the Chinese central government cracks down and the west worries more about their resource security, the Chinese will simply lose that advantage.
twelve40 3y ago
pumped storage hydro, while really cool, are absolutely massive and complicated multibillion dollar infrastructure projects (which California lately has not been particularly famous for)

throwaway473825 3y ago

Storage will probably use sodium-ion batteries in the future. Those have none of the four elements you mentioned.

pydry 3y ago

Snowy 2 is $6 billion for 350GWh, so $17k per MWh. At this point somebody usually argues that you can only do that in Australia and the geography for pumped storage is super rare (I call it the "theres a shortage of up" fallacy), and I have to cite the same study proving that it's actually not.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
I would go the contrarian way and suggest Snowy 2 is one of several examples that demonstrate that spending the same amount of money on more renewable generation and some battery storage would provide more reliable power for less money. Which makes the geography question moot. But most people's intuitions on renewables/battery are years out of date so it's confusing to respond to their sarcastic "are we just going to build lots of batteries, LOL" with "actually yes that's going to be sensible for 80% of the world's population". edit: long article comparing Snowy to more solar plus batteries: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-storage/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-stora...
- pydry 3y ago
  That's a weird article. It simultaneously argues that between batteries and snowy 2 there is no clear winner, that snowy 2 is a white elephant and that: >Hornsdale Power Reserve: $690 per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity. If Snowy Hydro 2 comes in at $10 billion, its cost per kilowatt of power will be $5,000, which is 5.6 times more than Hornsdale. But its cost per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity is much lower no matter if you think $20, $29, or $250 is appropriate. In other words in terms of storing a large volume of energy, cheaply, at high efficiency, pumped storage blows everything else out of the metaphorical water - between 3x and 34.5x cheaper! I would say that batteries and large scale pumped storage complement each other. I don't agree that Australia will regret building it.
- robocat 3y ago
  That article is completely mad. But it does admit the following: The main drawbacks [of battery storage] are: At the moment, it has a much higher cost per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity. Much shorter lifespan. If we consider Snowy Hydro 2’s maximum possible energy storage capacity, it comes to only $20 to $29 per kilowatt-hour $5,000 [buys] 5.16 kilowatt-hours of Hornsdale storage That is, Snowy Hydro is an order of magnitude cheaper for storage. The article continuously harps on about kW comparisons, and ignores comparing kWh storage: foolish for an article supposedly about electricity storage. For example the article makes the inane point: “If Snowy Hydro 2 comes in at $10 billion, its cost per kilowatt of power output comes to… $5,000 per kilowatt. That’s not cheap. Gas generation normally comes to under $1,000 per kilowatt.”, and again “Snowy 2 Vs. Hornsdale: Assuming Snowy Hydro 2 costs $5,000 per kilowatt of power output, for that cost, we could instead buy . . .”. Utter rubbish.

marcosdumay 3y ago

> around $600K per MWh So if enough solar gets built that the electricity price falls to near zero every day, batteries are now cheaper than natural gas? That's a very impactful change that I honestly didn't see coming.

ta1243 3y ago
Even at a domestic scale you can install solar and batteries for your household/heating/car usage -- assuming you have the roof space -- be self sufficent 10 months a year, and have a payack time of about 12 years last time I looked. The other 2 months a year sure, you've got either grid power or an off grid oil/gas generator.

ben_w 3y ago

"$600K per MWh" sounds like the cost per peak (initial) storage capacity; as the batteries can be recharged something like six thousand times before wearing down to half capacity, that's more like adding $100 per MWh ($0.1/kWh) if you throw them out at that point or $50 per MWh (5¢/kWh) if they keep wearing down at the same rate until they're negligible. > And are there that numbers of batteries available Not yet — but there are enough people investing in each stage of mining, processing, and making battery factories, that this is probably not going to be an issue. > Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries. Technically, I think, yes; but that's just where we are today rather than a fundamental property of world geography.

7952 3y ago

I think you are assuming that turbines would be paired with a certain number of batteries and taken together that would provide continuous power. But that is just not how a grid works or how the economics work. Battery storage is economical because you can buy cheap and sell high. And a system with high renewables penetration will see some very high prices for a few hours or days per month and cheap prices the rest of the time. That is ideal for battery storage, particularly as renewables gets cheaper.