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I have at times tried to explain realistic visions of what it takes for renewables to become, say, 75% of the grid and people have taken it as crapping on solar

I have at times tried to explain realistic visions of what it takes for renewables to become, say, 75% of the grid and people have taken it as crapping on solar, because I describe how it will require trillion dollar scale storage solutions. But fossil fuels also require trillion dollar scale extraction solutions, so I don't see it as crapping on solar, it won't be easy but we will do it, I hope!

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
$1T is really not that much money for the US. Energy is 4.8% of US GDP, about ~$1T. So we already have $1T to spend on energy... It's just a matter of how we spend it. This is just what things cost when you've got 335M people and most of them are relatively rich from a global perspective.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  Right, but we don't yet see this projects happening, and it might be time that they start happening. But how to talk people into that, when half of the USA thinks climate change is a liberal scam, I don't know.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  The world will spend upwards of $1Q on energy in the next century.
megaman821 3y ago
How can you accurately project costs of grid-scale store 1 or 2 decades into the future? It is an industry that is just starting out and projected to grow quite large. Profits and manufacturing labor account for greater than 50% of the battery costs now, so there is a good bit of room for prices to fall as manufacturing ramps up and the market becomes more competitive.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  You can't, it was an order of magnitude napkin math calculation I did based on the cost of pump back hydro dams in china and the amount of energy storage you would need. It is going to be in the trillions barring some radical revolution in storage that is unlikely given our breadth of knowledge of physics at this point. A lot of people think that Tesla Megapacks here and there are enough but those cover interruptions on the scale of minutes, not hours or days.
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  You don’t need to be very accurate, because the cost of storage is enormous even if you’re off by factor of 5. Try it yourself: start from here https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ and calculate how much it would cost to store one day of energy use in US.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Well, the salt formation in Delta, UT can store enough hydrogen for something like 30 hours of the average US electrical power consumption. IIRC, creating those ~100 storage caverns would cost in neighborhood of $10 B.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

$1T is really not that much money for the US. Energy is 4.8% of US GDP, about ~$1T. So we already have $1T to spend on energy... It's just a matter of how we spend it. This is just what things cost when you've got 335M people and most of them are relatively rich from a global perspective.

jackmott42 3y ago
Right, but we don't yet see this projects happening, and it might be time that they start happening. But how to talk people into that, when half of the USA thinks climate change is a liberal scam, I don't know.
pfdietz 3y ago
The world will spend upwards of $1Q on energy in the next century.

megaman821 3y ago

How can you accurately project costs of grid-scale store 1 or 2 decades into the future? It is an industry that is just starting out and projected to grow quite large. Profits and manufacturing labor account for greater than 50% of the battery costs now, so there is a good bit of room for prices to fall as manufacturing ramps up and the market becomes more competitive.

jackmott42 3y ago
You can't, it was an order of magnitude napkin math calculation I did based on the cost of pump back hydro dams in china and the amount of energy storage you would need. It is going to be in the trillions barring some radical revolution in storage that is unlikely given our breadth of knowledge of physics at this point. A lot of people think that Tesla Megapacks here and there are enough but those cover interruptions on the scale of minutes, not hours or days.
xyzzyz 3y ago
You don’t need to be very accurate, because the cost of storage is enormous even if you’re off by factor of 5. Try it yourself: start from here https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ and calculate how much it would cost to store one day of energy use in US.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Well, the salt formation in Delta, UT can store enough hydrogen for something like 30 hours of the average US electrical power consumption. IIRC, creating those ~100 storage caverns would cost in neighborhood of $10 B.