9 ms·

Solar and batteries are going to win, and our thinking needs to adjust

94 points by jseliger 3y ago

gmuslera 3y ago
The debate is outdated, not because somewhere in the future would it be possible to switch to batteries and renewable energy generation if everything remains the same, but because everything won’t remain the same. We’ve been pushing the natural variations of our climate system towards the edge of surpassing tipping points and accelerating feedback loops, and maybe with an extra push (like the present El Niño cycle) we might cross it into a path of not return. Maybe if we restricted our energy requirements 30 years ago, pushed strongly for renewables, changed our so emitting energy sources to existing cleaner ones even at an economic loss we might not have been so close to that point and had enough time for a batteries revolution. But now it may be too little, too late already. There are signals of acceleration in trends (I.e. https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ ) that may change badly conditions in a few years. And emitting less is not solving, just not worsening as bad as not doing it, even if we switch to batteries by tomorrow by some magic.
bokohut 3y ago
I have found through experience in explaining the utility grid problem to those that have little or no knowledge of the topic to start simply with a visual mathematical equation. Everyone understands basic math right? Today we have: Generation = Consumption If generation fails, regardless of the reason, consumption fails as well. As some know, over consumption can cause generation failure and this is the finite juggle we read daily in the Summer from places such as TX and CA but this impact will be expanding globally year over year as electrical demand grows. Now consider: Generation + Storage = Consumption Using a buffer, a computing concept applied to the energy sector, would allow for a place to debit/credit energy at will within the limits of the system regardless of consumption. In time any and all generation systems will feed into storage mechanisms which shifts the system reliability to the storage vectors away from today's generation focus. This concept is extremely big picture and I mentioned nothing about renewables as the current core electrical grid design is unsustainable. Those with their thinking cap on will realize also that the buffer is nothing more than a unit of consumption itself that is capable of returning a portion of what it held minus efficiency round trip losses. Looking at it as math we can now apply logic as such ((Generation0 + Generation1 + GenerationN) + (Storage0 + Storage1 + StorageN)) = Consumption As an analogous computer comparison that some here can certainly relate to, I fall back to those which have experienced the relief when a load balancer was introduced into their tech stack. Failure is definitely still possible but the core architectural design change allows to plan and compensate for that failure. One thing is certain it will likely get worse before it gets better as there are many people talking about the problem and significantly less working toward a solution. PS: Apologies if the format is jacked, I'm busy building. Stay Healthy!
- nradov 3y ago
  Your formula for today is missing a term. We already have storage (buffer capacity). It is mainly stored natural gas used to fuel gas turbine peaker plants that can spin up in a matter of minutes to handle surges in consumption.
ilaksh 3y ago
I think the focus should be on seasonal storage and that isn't a fully solved problem. But there are lots of ways to do it that aren't economically competitive yet. But maybe a few of them could easily be competitive if they just picked up some momentum for popularity? It's weird to me that when I search for "hydrogen storage" I get a bunch of results about cars. The biggest challenge for hydrogen seems like safety, and that is a much larger concern for a vehicle in my mind. Whereas I assume you should be able to bury hydrogen tanks for seasonal energy storage and those would be relatively safe. Especially when compared to hydrogen on vehicles zipping around. There are other possibilities for renewable seasonal energy storage. Such as biofuels from algae or maybe vegetables. Ammonia is a possibility. Compressed biogas might help meet seasonal energy needs. Long-term high density batteries would be great. It sounds like this is more hypothetical though at this point?
theptip 3y ago
“Solar PV + storage” is likely to be utility-scale storage sized at ~4h of the facility’s peak production; this lets the plant shift the load from the middle of the day when the sun is strongest to the evening where the residential power demand peaks. There is an interesting report on this: https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/ https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/ It seems to me that the affordability of short-term storage is a really under-reported story. It seems to be adding $10-20 $/MWh which is not trivial but still leaves solar competitive with other sources (except perhaps gas). It’s not clear to me that there is an obvious candidate for seasonal storage though. Anyone seen a good analysis on that? Green hydrogen is one possibility but the OpEx seems high, if you have a hydrogen plant you want to run it all the time to amortize the cost right?
nojvek 3y ago
Gasoline has gravimetric density ~45MJ/kg and volumetric density ~35MJ/L. Costs about $3.80 / gallon avg or roughly $1/L. You can store it in a cool dry place inside a metal/plastic container for decades. Cheap, light weight, space efficient, easy to transport and convert into mechanical/electrical/heat energy. On the other hand, lithium ion battery has gravimetric density of 0.45MJ/kg - 0.7MJ/kg and volumetric density if 0.8MJ - 0.8 - 3.6 MJ/L. So gasoline and its hydrocarbon cousins (kerosene, diesel, vegetable fat) are 50-100X gravimetric dense and 10-100X volumetric dense compared to Li-ion batteries. This has huuuge implications on transport - especially air travel. Now let’s look at solar. Sun gives us about 1350 watts/m2. With clouds and conversion losses solar panels capture about 300 watts/m2. A standard US parking lot is 9ft by 18ft. That’s 15m2. At 4.5 hours of sunlight on average summer day, if the parking lot was covered with solar panel, it would generate 4.5MW of energy. Suppose hypothetically we could have an an artificial tree like technology that could convert solar to gasoline like hydrocarbon, like trees capture solar + CO2 + H20 into glucose + O2. That artificial tree solar panel would generate equivalent of 20 gallons of gasoline per month. Avg car consumes about 40 gallons a month. So 2 parking lots would generate enough energy for 1 car. An area the size of New Zealand / Italy / UK (roughly 300km2) if covered with solar can meet energy needs of the entire planet. IMO the holy grail of solar will be when we crack solar -> dense hydrocarbon store and make it cheap. It blows my mind that Trees/plants are both materials and fuel. The best form of carbon capture I know of. Wood is one of the most renewable construction materials. Trees are the ultimate natural technology that we ought to amplify. Suppose if we could make an artificial tree that captured CO2 + solar and turned it into hydrocarbon fuel + high strength/light weight carbon-fibre-like wood, that would be the epic holy grail. Abundant high density green fuels + strong light weight building materials. Fundamentally it is possible. In the universe of all possible DNA, I think there exists a configuration of DNA that will yield a high efficiency carbon capture tree. There’s also the self-assembly nature of trees. A seed grows millions of times its size into a huge tree. Then there’s the reproducing nature of trees. A tree will produce seeds that can make more trees, which will make more seeds, which makes even more trees. One seed can turn into a forest. Ofcourse we have to keep biodiversity in mind in an artificial forest. - I may get downvoted for dreaming. However from laws of physics and biochemistry artificial trees should be possible. Solar panels are non-viral non-self-assembling trees that convert to electricity.
walleeee 3y ago
For a counterpoint, see Simon Michaux's work on what full electrification entails from a resource perspective.
- mm263 3y ago
  Could you recommend anything specific please?
  - SinParadise 3y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc Long video, but informative. TLDR: We don't have enough minerals (including reserves) to completely switch our energy from ff to renewables, assuming our current energy consumption flatline, and our renewable technology efficiency and mineral consumption remain the same.
- beefield 3y ago
  I find his work not so credible. He seems to assume LFP does not exist as a viable alternative for nickel/cobolt requiring chemistries. and He's also missing that the lithium reserves keep on increasing on a rapid pace. (I refer to his work a couple of years ago, if he has something brand new, I don't know about that.)
  - SinParadise 3y ago
    Based on his calculations from a video a year ago. He projects that we would need 940M tons of lithium, while 2022 reported reserves is 95M tons.[0] Are we going realistically find enough undiscovered lithium reserves that is the same size as our known reserves as of 2022, even assuming that he is off by a factor of 4? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc&t=2604s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc&t=2604s
    - beefield 3y ago
      I was referring his claims about electrification of glo al car fleet. Now that you mention, he had also some claims about lithium needs for replacing all fossil production with lithium batteries, baut also there the assumptions were not so realistic if I recall correctly. If you want to quote him, I would recommend going through his assumptions very carefully.
phh 3y ago
My biggest gripe against the title of the poll "Climate or economic growth?" is the underlying assumption that economic growth comes with comfort growth. Going from oil heating to heat pumps will decrease GDP while improving comfort. Making durable fridge will decrease GDP while improving comfort, etc. Not fixing the climate will increase the GDP because of all the mitigations we'll have to implement (iirc French government estimated 15% of GDP will go to climate mitigations in 2050) Now about the thesis of OP, even if we assume a full solar + battery world, and manage to keep that +2C, electricity pricing will swing a lot (it'll probably often go negative or at least to 0) which will lead to discomforts (people not able to pay for electricity in the winter) without state protections, even if economic growth is here. And then electricity is not enough. Simply keeping the production of autos has a considerable CO2 cost.
- m_mueller 3y ago
  Much better than heat pumps: good thermal insulation, central air snd a heat exchanger. This solved the root of the problem, heat being transferred. For the little that‘s left over, depending on climate, you can add a small heat pump that’s mostly shut off.
  - phh 3y ago
    Yup you're right. Thanks for correcting me.
- HardlyCurious 3y ago
  Why do you think an electric heat pump will increase comfort over oil heating? It's not that I think heat pumps are bad, I just didn't know there was a claim of any improvements beyond efficiency / environmental benefits.
  - htss2013 3y ago
    If there is no other difference besides they use less energy to produce the same amount of heating, then you have extra money, and extra money can buy lots of comforts. Why does the comfort have do come directly from the pump?
PaulHoule 3y ago
Exciting things are happening with batteries but there are multiple bottlenecks to be overcome to get to that future. This talk sounds so much like somebody in 1950 who expects fast breeder reactors to be everywhere in 1980.
- burkaman 3y ago
  I disagree, the whole point of this article is that the "fast breeder reactors" in your analogy are already here and widely deployed. We don't need any new technology and we don't need it to get cheaper, although it probably will. It's a description of the current world, not a prediction of the future.
  - letitbeirie 3y ago
    > We don't need any new technology We need grid-scale energy storage. Right now we have about 30 GW worth of it on a grid with 1200 GW of generative capacity. Until that changes, every solar and wind installation is going to come paired with a gas peaker plant.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > We need grid-scale energy storage. We need some grid-scale energy storage. But having distributed storage is a welcome element as well, it makes the grid far more stable and reduces the impact of peak production times as well as the day/night cycle. Anyway, on a planetary scale energy is more of an engineering challenge than a serious problem, the issues all stem from the hundreds of local fiefdoms that all vie for control of a slice of the pie.
    - burkaman 3y ago
      Right, we need grid-scale storage, and as you say we already have some deployed. So the challenge now is to deploy a lot more, which is certainly a big challenge, but we don't need to invent any new technology.
    - StillBored 3y ago
      And even then, unless your willing to admit to rolling blackouts and grid failures on a fairly regular basis someone will have to build NG plants, even if they only run a couple days a year. The future isn't solar/wind + batteries, at least not much beyond the point where the overbuild requirements are such that one is building more and more generation and storage to compensate for smaller and smaller windows of time. Which for most places is probably around the point where the total solar and wind capacity is roughly equal to the peak production average times a small multiple less than 2. I always point at texas, and which is again in the news, because they are discovering that solar quits about two hours before the peak demand falloff, and they are literally paying people not to consume power. And this is only really a problem because no one wants to invest in NG plants that sit idle most of the time, and the wind generation has dropped down to 20% or so of its nameplate installed capacity over the past couple weeks. Leaving literally nothing to make up the shortfall. So there is going to be a huge rush to install enough batteries to make up that 2 hour window for 1/2 the year, then it will stop because its not economical to have them providing power outside of that window.
psychlops 3y ago
The article is out of date, he is still talking about the Trump presidency.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  The bigger fear is that he's premature.
  - psychlops 3y ago
    I don't think it's realistic. Certainly people are tired of the geriocracy.
    - lotsoweiners 3y ago
      Cool but if Trump is the Republican nominee on Election Day 2024 your choice will be Biden at almost 82 and Trump at 78. Sounds like geriocracy will be your only choice.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Well, the Republicans can solve that at one stroke and win the election: nominate Trump as running mate of whoever wins the primaries that isn't 80+. Of course that would still create all kinds of potential for trouble but it would almost certainly win them the elections. But maybe I shouldn't be giving them any idea. Otoh Trump will almost certainly not want to play second fiddle to anybody. But it would be one way to get pardoned.
wunderland 3y ago
Batteries and solar panels will not save us from an economic system that requires over-production and over-consumption.
- kdamica 3y ago
  No but it might buy us time until commercialized fusion lets us create all the energy we want.
  - SinParadise 3y ago
    That imo is our only way out, but this is effectively deus ex machina moment for humanity.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Fusion (particularly DT fusion) is grossly overvalued as an energy source. It's been an element of the consensus futurology (which is why you see it as a trope in SF stories), but this placement is not deserved by its actual qualities. Renewables make much more sense. At the experience curve for utility scale PV from 2010 to 2022, assuming that experience rate of 33.1% decline per doubling of cumulative deployment would continue, if the world were powered by PV the levelized cost of delivered power would fall to $0.003/kWh.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Exactly the "too cheap to meter" claims that were made about fission energy. The problem is that though the marginal cost of the next watt-hour of electricity may be low you still have to pay the very real (and likely huge) costs of constructing and maintaining the reactors and generating plant. Investors will need to earn a return; the bonds payments will need to be made.
    - kdamica 3y ago
      Of course there are still costs; the point is that we would be able to generate more and more energy without increasing carbon emissions.
anonymousiam 3y ago
You don't get to say that the debate is over until there has been a debate. You don't get to "win" by silencing the opposition. I'm not taking sides, but I see lots of "alternative facts" from all sides (and there are more than two sides). There's evidence that the earth is warming, but only if you squint a certain way. If you include the entire temperature record, and remove data from stations that didn't actually report data, and remove adjustments to the reported data (or alternatively remove the stations with "questionable" data recording methods), then all evidence of warming is gone. The tidal data is also conflicted. There's no dispute that ocean levels are rising (as they have for tens of thousands of years), but the rate of the rise has not changed since pre-industrial times. There's zero doubt that human activity is increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but there should be a debate (and there hasn't been one) over the point at which this becomes a problem. There are benefits to increased atmospheric CO2 such as lower diurnal temperature range (less extreme environment), increased food production, etc. There's also the problem of getting the major contributors of the CO2 production to stop. China is at the top and has "committed" to leveling emissions at 2030 levels. Even if that happens, the whole of the remaining world could cut their emissions to zero and it would have no effect. India is number two and the same problem applies. Today now the US is committing economic suicide by eliminating energy sources and raising energy prices while the rest of the world laughs. If you look carefully at the media reporting, you'll see that all of the climate alarm-ism comes from just a handful of extremest reporters. If you look at the academic papers, you see a bias created by the funding sources and a reluctance of the peer-review publications to accept any skeptical works. https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-overwhelming-consensus-is-manufactured/ https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-o...
- anonymousiam 3y ago
  https://cei.org/opeds_articles/greatest-hits-of-the-science-deniers/ https://cei.org/opeds_articles/greatest-hits-of-the-science-...
- brazzy 3y ago
  Every single word of that is bullshit. 100% lies paid for by oil companies. And at this point the evidence is so clear and overwhelming that there is no reason to believes anyone argues this bullshit in good faith. Summers are getting longer and hotter, glaciers and arctic ice are receding at record speeds, those are undeniable facts that everyone can see that with their own eyes. So fuck right off with your Rupert-Murdoch-provided lies.
debacle 3y ago
Many people underappreciate the value of liquid energy. The utility of being able to put your energy in a 5 gallon container and move it anywhere you'd like doesn't compare with batteries.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  A 2 kWh battery with integrated inverter is far cleaner, more convenient and quieter than carrying around a gallon of gasoline and a generator. 5 gallons of gas and a similarly sized generator is big enough that you want a vehicle to move it around. And since you're using a vehicle, and since in the future most of those will be electric with V2L, the 5 gallons of gas & generator are thus superfluous.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  We could create a battery shaped like a 5 gallon container if you like?
- reportingsjr 3y ago
  People are doing exactly that with batteries these days though. Go look at youtube channels where people are building a cabin, traveling in a van/RV, etc. I'm seeing lots of videos with a portable "5 gallon container" sized batteries that people are moving around. Even better, since you can attach some solar panels and not have to go refill the container, unlike gas/diesel containers. This isn't to say batteries/solar are perfect for this. But, they are certainly providing enough pros vs liquid fuels that tons of people are widely using them in place of gasoline/diesel/kerosene. Personally, if I never have to hear a damn generator running all frigging day/night while at a campsite, the cost to switch to batteries/solar will have been entirely worthwhile.
  - tomatocracy 3y ago
    On the other hand, the energy density difference is astonishing and this is where hydrocarbons are pretty unbeatable. 1 US gallon of diesel has more than 35 kWh of energy in it (and we can get more than 40% of that out of it with modern efficient engines) and weighs approximately 3.5kg.
somethoughts 3y ago
My hot take is now that most of the climate change focused people are on board with solar+battery its time to shift the story to focus on the benefits that will accrue - irrespective of climate change. Solar+grid scale batteries could lead to true energy independence. It would provides optionality in energy sources that can provide energy pricing stability in times of crisis as well as enable lower long term negotiated prices overall. If OPEC is opportunistically price gouging oil, solar+battery can step in. If China is opportunistically hoarding solar panels and battery raw materials, we can look to OPEC to provide a price ceiling. I'd rather be dependent on OPEC+China and be able to play them off each other than just be solely dependent on OPEC. For national security, US reserves should be kept in the ground as long as possible in case of true emergencies. I never got the narrative that we should be pumping it now and selling it on the open market.
- nradov 3y ago
  How are batteries going to lead us to energy independence when many of the key raw materials are mined in foreign countries?
  - somethoughts 3y ago
    Grid scale batteries are still aways out and still have to prove themselves at scale but a promising one is made out of materials that are sourced universally - such as iron. [1] If lithium is battery substrate of choice then the actual raw materials suppliers are more numerous and are not highly correlated to OPEC members. So you get relative energy independence. As far as I know there is not any sort of lithium cartel that has formed as of yet. Additionally as I understand it - since for grid scale, density is not a factor - there is not as strong a need for rare earth metals. [2] [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/iron-air-battery-renewable-grid/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/iron-air-battery-renew... [2] https://www.energy-storage.news/comparing-six-types-of-lithium-ion-battery-and-their-potential-for-bess-applications/ https://www.energy-storage.news/comparing-six-types-of-lithi...
    - nradov 3y ago
edent 3y ago
Over the last 3 years, our solar panels in London generated 12MWh of electricity. We sold 7MWh back to the grid. And we only imported 7MWh. Basically, we're power neutral right now. A standard UK roof can easily generate an average household's electricity use across the year. Panels are likely to get cheaper and more efficient. At current prices, solar panels pay for themselves in under 8 years. Batteries are harder. Our 4.8kWh battery means our electricity bill for August has been practically zero. As we go into winter, we'll switch to a tariff which does cheap overnight charging so we can arbitrage on cost. Personally, I think big batteries for communities make more sense - the current domestic ones are big, noisy, and have a far longer payback time. For less than the subsidy of one nuclear power station, we could give every home in the UK a 5kW solar installation. (Yes, I know it isn't that simple.) Solar has convincingly won. But the inertia of the old way of doing things will take a little time to correct.
- phil21 3y ago
  > As we go into winter, we'll switch to a tariff which does cheap overnight charging so we can arbitrage on cost. "As we go into winter, we will leverage the super cheap battery poor folks are forced to pay to exist for us when it's convenient". It's very hard to take these arguments seriously when that is really what is happening - relatively well off folks using the commons to subsidize themselves whilst patting themselves on the back about it. Yes, it's a quite trivial problem when you get to outsource the hard bit of it and only have to pay for the low hanging profitable fruit. Until your community battery gets into the weeks to month in storage capacity, these anecdotes really read disingenuous to me. Seasonal storage is the hard nut to crack, and we haven't even solved overnight storage for most places. I've been spec'ing out truly off-grid designs lately, and it's an order of magnitude difference if you want to not use the public subsidy of your neighbors paying for it for you.
- htss2013 3y ago
  How does that work in the winter in England? You'd think such a climate wouldn't work well with solar except in the summer, and not summer is most of the year. I assume you're using gas or other sources for heating?
- 3y ago
nuc1e0n 3y ago
Lithium batteries also have costs involved even though they have benefits. I feel that pumped 'hydro' energy storage with dense liquids will be more sustainable for power grids in the long run. There are also aspects of our current energy usage that cannot yet be performed by renewables, such as mass steel production and recycling of solar panels or wind turbines. R&D should be done to come up with fixes for these problems.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Not so fast. I work in large scale renewable energy. While we do invest heavily in solar and batteries, battery storage is a much riskier proposition long term than just solar generation. No single renewable is going "to win". The only way to make renewables work is if you use every one practical in a particular market. And even then oil, gas and coal aren't going to go away because some markets and use cases just require it. Energy is complicated. Don't buy anyone's line where they promise you the moon.
- _hypx 3y ago
  Agreed. Here's what I've noticed: > I get a little of this feeling when I watch Americans argue about climate change; the discussions seem stuck back in 2010 This article itself feels like a throwback to 2010. He acts like solar + batteries solves the entire problem. It doesn't. In fact, it barely scratches the surface. We have much larger needs such as industrial, heavy transportation, agriculture, etc. Writing an outdated article about the rapidly dropping price of solar power while handwaving all other problems doesn't solve the problem. The author is basically just now catching up to 2010. He is in reality still stuck in 2010 despite what he thinks.
- goethes_kind 3y ago
  "Season battery storage" sounds very wrong to me. Maybe he is talking about some kind of flow battery where you can just add more tanks of electrolyte. But we don't have that yet.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Seasonal energy storage would be an e-fuel, like hydrogen.
- mperham 3y ago
  How likely are cars with V2G to be the grid batteries of the future?
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
starkparker 3y ago
Are there battery/energy storage solutions that don't themselves require limited, non-renewable resources?
- leothecool 3y ago
  Would you count a water battery? Or is it non-renewable because the pipes will rust.
sproketboy 3y ago
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skymast 3y ago
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dangerwill 3y ago
"For batteries, the constraint is mineral availability; though mining the minerals for batteries is far less environmentally destructive than mining fossil fuels, limited availability of lithium and we will probably have to switch to types of batteries that don’t use lithium in order to get enough storage for the whole world. [...] These are real challenges, but I doubt they’ll be prohibitive. [...] Meanwhile, there’s no reason to think that iron-air batteries or other types of batteries that rely on common minerals aren’t subject to the same scaling effects as lithium-ion batteries were. So I think we’ll get grid storage reasonably cheap and scalable as well." This is just handwaving away an incredibly difficult problem that is going to be a massive choke point for batteries. Yes there is lots of ongoing research in the material science of batteries to route around the lithium bottleneck, but there is a large lead time from finding success in research to generating end products at scale. 5-15 years of being blocked here will be extremely painful/crucial. He also purely focuses on the economics of getting solar based energy to market, eg the cost for consumers per kwh of electricity and the cost of batteries for things like EVs. But what about the added weight of these batteries? The damage done to roadways is exponentially related to the weight of the vehicles on the road, so making all cars 2x heavier means way more than 2x the road maintenance, which leads to increases in concrete and steel production. Both of which have environmental/carbon impacts of their own, and steel production especially uses an INTENSE amount of energy. And you also have the rocket problem where the bigger the battery you have to increase your range, the more of your range is being wasted by the energy required to lug the battery around. Any serious work here has to at least look at the benefits of increased train, tram, and trolley bus networks with overhead electrification as that gives all the benefits of electrified transportation but without the downsides of batteries.
rich_sasha 3y ago
I'm really fed up with all these articles that wave their hands at seasonal storage. Oh, we'll sort it out. It's kinda a big problem, especially in places like, well, most of Europe, where most of your energy needs are in winter (remember the hoo-ha about Russian gas imports over winter of 2022-23?) and also where most of the sunless, and also often windless times are. I'll be glad when solar+storage will provide cheap energy on tap, but until then waving away seasonal storage problems basically means: let's burn some stuff.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And also that this combination of generation+storage must be reasonably priced. That is at least somewhat competitive. Which for storage part is still quite suspect.

94 points by jseliger 3y ago

The debate is outdated, not because somewhere in the future would it be possible to switch to batteries and renewable energy generation if everything remains the same, but because everything won’t remain the same. We’ve been pushing the natural variations of our climate system towards the edge of surpassing tipping points and accelerating feedback loops, and maybe with an extra push (like the present El Niño cycle) we might cross it into a path of not return. Maybe if we restricted our energy requirements 30 years ago, pushed strongly for renewables, changed our so emitting energy sources to existing cleaner ones even at an economic loss we might not have been so close to that point and had enough time for a batteries revolution. But now it may be too little, too late already. There are signals of acceleration in trends (I.e. https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ ) that may change badly conditions in a few years. And emitting less is not solving, just not worsening as bad as not doing it, even if we switch to batteries by tomorrow by some magic.

bokohut 3y ago

I have found through experience in explaining the utility grid problem to those that have little or no knowledge of the topic to start simply with a visual mathematical equation. Everyone understands basic math right? Today we have: Generation = Consumption If generation fails, regardless of the reason, consumption fails as well. As some know, over consumption can cause generation failure and this is the finite juggle we read daily in the Summer from places such as TX and CA but this impact will be expanding globally year over year as electrical demand grows. Now consider: Generation + Storage = Consumption Using a buffer, a computing concept applied to the energy sector, would allow for a place to debit/credit energy at will within the limits of the system regardless of consumption. In time any and all generation systems will feed into storage mechanisms which shifts the system reliability to the storage vectors away from today's generation focus. This concept is extremely big picture and I mentioned nothing about renewables as the current core electrical grid design is unsustainable. Those with their thinking cap on will realize also that the buffer is nothing more than a unit of consumption itself that is capable of returning a portion of what it held minus efficiency round trip losses. Looking at it as math we can now apply logic as such ((Generation0 + Generation1 + GenerationN) + (Storage0 + Storage1 + StorageN)) = Consumption As an analogous computer comparison that some here can certainly relate to, I fall back to those which have experienced the relief when a load balancer was introduced into their tech stack. Failure is definitely still possible but the core architectural design change allows to plan and compensate for that failure. One thing is certain it will likely get worse before it gets better as there are many people talking about the problem and significantly less working toward a solution. PS: Apologies if the format is jacked, I'm busy building. Stay Healthy!

nradov 3y ago
Your formula for today is missing a term. We already have storage (buffer capacity). It is mainly stored natural gas used to fuel gas turbine peaker plants that can spin up in a matter of minutes to handle surges in consumption.

ilaksh 3y ago

I think the focus should be on seasonal storage and that isn't a fully solved problem. But there are lots of ways to do it that aren't economically competitive yet. But maybe a few of them could easily be competitive if they just picked up some momentum for popularity? It's weird to me that when I search for "hydrogen storage" I get a bunch of results about cars. The biggest challenge for hydrogen seems like safety, and that is a much larger concern for a vehicle in my mind. Whereas I assume you should be able to bury hydrogen tanks for seasonal energy storage and those would be relatively safe. Especially when compared to hydrogen on vehicles zipping around. There are other possibilities for renewable seasonal energy storage. Such as biofuels from algae or maybe vegetables. Ammonia is a possibility. Compressed biogas might help meet seasonal energy needs. Long-term high density batteries would be great. It sounds like this is more hypothetical though at this point?

theptip 3y ago

“Solar PV + storage” is likely to be utility-scale storage sized at ~4h of the facility’s peak production; this lets the plant shift the load from the middle of the day when the sun is strongest to the evening where the residential power demand peaks. There is an interesting report on this: https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/ https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/ It seems to me that the affordability of short-term storage is a really under-reported story. It seems to be adding $10-20 $/MWh which is not trivial but still leaves solar competitive with other sources (except perhaps gas). It’s not clear to me that there is an obvious candidate for seasonal storage though. Anyone seen a good analysis on that? Green hydrogen is one possibility but the OpEx seems high, if you have a hydrogen plant you want to run it all the time to amortize the cost right?

nojvek 3y ago

Gasoline has gravimetric density ~45MJ/kg and volumetric density ~35MJ/L. Costs about $3.80 / gallon avg or roughly $1/L. You can store it in a cool dry place inside a metal/plastic container for decades. Cheap, light weight, space efficient, easy to transport and convert into mechanical/electrical/heat energy. On the other hand, lithium ion battery has gravimetric density of 0.45MJ/kg - 0.7MJ/kg and volumetric density if 0.8MJ - 0.8 - 3.6 MJ/L. So gasoline and its hydrocarbon cousins (kerosene, diesel, vegetable fat) are 50-100X gravimetric dense and 10-100X volumetric dense compared to Li-ion batteries. This has huuuge implications on transport - especially air travel. Now let’s look at solar. Sun gives us about 1350 watts/m2. With clouds and conversion losses solar panels capture about 300 watts/m2. A standard US parking lot is 9ft by 18ft. That’s 15m2. At 4.5 hours of sunlight on average summer day, if the parking lot was covered with solar panel, it would generate 4.5MW of energy. Suppose hypothetically we could have an an artificial tree like technology that could convert solar to gasoline like hydrocarbon, like trees capture solar + CO2 + H20 into glucose + O2. That artificial tree solar panel would generate equivalent of 20 gallons of gasoline per month. Avg car consumes about 40 gallons a month. So 2 parking lots would generate enough energy for 1 car. An area the size of New Zealand / Italy / UK (roughly 300km2) if covered with solar can meet energy needs of the entire planet. IMO the holy grail of solar will be when we crack solar -> dense hydrocarbon store and make it cheap. It blows my mind that Trees/plants are both materials and fuel. The best form of carbon capture I know of. Wood is one of the most renewable construction materials. Trees are the ultimate natural technology that we ought to amplify. Suppose if we could make an artificial tree that captured CO2 + solar and turned it into hydrocarbon fuel + high strength/light weight carbon-fibre-like wood, that would be the epic holy grail. Abundant high density green fuels + strong light weight building materials. Fundamentally it is possible. In the universe of all possible DNA, I think there exists a configuration of DNA that will yield a high efficiency carbon capture tree. There’s also the self-assembly nature of trees. A seed grows millions of times its size into a huge tree. Then there’s the reproducing nature of trees. A tree will produce seeds that can make more trees, which will make more seeds, which makes even more trees. One seed can turn into a forest. Ofcourse we have to keep biodiversity in mind in an artificial forest. - I may get downvoted for dreaming. However from laws of physics and biochemistry artificial trees should be possible. Solar panels are non-viral non-self-assembling trees that convert to electricity.

walleeee 3y ago

For a counterpoint, see Simon Michaux's work on what full electrification entails from a resource perspective.

mm263 3y ago
Could you recommend anything specific please?
- SinParadise 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc Long video, but informative. TLDR: We don't have enough minerals (including reserves) to completely switch our energy from ff to renewables, assuming our current energy consumption flatline, and our renewable technology efficiency and mineral consumption remain the same.
beefield 3y ago
I find his work not so credible. He seems to assume LFP does not exist as a viable alternative for nickel/cobolt requiring chemistries. and He's also missing that the lithium reserves keep on increasing on a rapid pace. (I refer to his work a couple of years ago, if he has something brand new, I don't know about that.)
- SinParadise 3y ago
  Based on his calculations from a video a year ago. He projects that we would need 940M tons of lithium, while 2022 reported reserves is 95M tons.[0] Are we going realistically find enough undiscovered lithium reserves that is the same size as our known reserves as of 2022, even assuming that he is off by a factor of 4? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc&t=2604s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc&t=2604s
  - beefield 3y ago
    I was referring his claims about electrification of glo al car fleet. Now that you mention, he had also some claims about lithium needs for replacing all fossil production with lithium batteries, baut also there the assumptions were not so realistic if I recall correctly. If you want to quote him, I would recommend going through his assumptions very carefully.

phh 3y ago

My biggest gripe against the title of the poll "Climate or economic growth?" is the underlying assumption that economic growth comes with comfort growth. Going from oil heating to heat pumps will decrease GDP while improving comfort. Making durable fridge will decrease GDP while improving comfort, etc. Not fixing the climate will increase the GDP because of all the mitigations we'll have to implement (iirc French government estimated 15% of GDP will go to climate mitigations in 2050) Now about the thesis of OP, even if we assume a full solar + battery world, and manage to keep that +2C, electricity pricing will swing a lot (it'll probably often go negative or at least to 0) which will lead to discomforts (people not able to pay for electricity in the winter) without state protections, even if economic growth is here. And then electricity is not enough. Simply keeping the production of autos has a considerable CO2 cost.

m_mueller 3y ago
Much better than heat pumps: good thermal insulation, central air snd a heat exchanger. This solved the root of the problem, heat being transferred. For the little that‘s left over, depending on climate, you can add a small heat pump that’s mostly shut off.
- phh 3y ago
  Yup you're right. Thanks for correcting me.
HardlyCurious 3y ago
Why do you think an electric heat pump will increase comfort over oil heating? It's not that I think heat pumps are bad, I just didn't know there was a claim of any improvements beyond efficiency / environmental benefits.
- htss2013 3y ago
  If there is no other difference besides they use less energy to produce the same amount of heating, then you have extra money, and extra money can buy lots of comforts. Why does the comfort have do come directly from the pump?

PaulHoule 3y ago

Exciting things are happening with batteries but there are multiple bottlenecks to be overcome to get to that future. This talk sounds so much like somebody in 1950 who expects fast breeder reactors to be everywhere in 1980.

burkaman 3y ago
I disagree, the whole point of this article is that the "fast breeder reactors" in your analogy are already here and widely deployed. We don't need any new technology and we don't need it to get cheaper, although it probably will. It's a description of the current world, not a prediction of the future.
- letitbeirie 3y ago
  > We don't need any new technology We need grid-scale energy storage. Right now we have about 30 GW worth of it on a grid with 1200 GW of generative capacity. Until that changes, every solar and wind installation is going to come paired with a gas peaker plant.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > We need grid-scale energy storage. We need some grid-scale energy storage. But having distributed storage is a welcome element as well, it makes the grid far more stable and reduces the impact of peak production times as well as the day/night cycle. Anyway, on a planetary scale energy is more of an engineering challenge than a serious problem, the issues all stem from the hundreds of local fiefdoms that all vie for control of a slice of the pie.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Right, we need grid-scale storage, and as you say we already have some deployed. So the challenge now is to deploy a lot more, which is certainly a big challenge, but we don't need to invent any new technology.
  - StillBored 3y ago
    And even then, unless your willing to admit to rolling blackouts and grid failures on a fairly regular basis someone will have to build NG plants, even if they only run a couple days a year. The future isn't solar/wind + batteries, at least not much beyond the point where the overbuild requirements are such that one is building more and more generation and storage to compensate for smaller and smaller windows of time. Which for most places is probably around the point where the total solar and wind capacity is roughly equal to the peak production average times a small multiple less than 2. I always point at texas, and which is again in the news, because they are discovering that solar quits about two hours before the peak demand falloff, and they are literally paying people not to consume power. And this is only really a problem because no one wants to invest in NG plants that sit idle most of the time, and the wind generation has dropped down to 20% or so of its nameplate installed capacity over the past couple weeks. Leaving literally nothing to make up the shortfall. So there is going to be a huge rush to install enough batteries to make up that 2 hour window for 1/2 the year, then it will stop because its not economical to have them providing power outside of that window.

psychlops 3y ago

The article is out of date, he is still talking about the Trump presidency.

jacquesm 3y ago
The bigger fear is that he's premature.
- psychlops 3y ago
  I don't think it's realistic. Certainly people are tired of the geriocracy.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    Cool but if Trump is the Republican nominee on Election Day 2024 your choice will be Biden at almost 82 and Trump at 78. Sounds like geriocracy will be your only choice.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Well, the Republicans can solve that at one stroke and win the election: nominate Trump as running mate of whoever wins the primaries that isn't 80+. Of course that would still create all kinds of potential for trouble but it would almost certainly win them the elections. But maybe I shouldn't be giving them any idea. Otoh Trump will almost certainly not want to play second fiddle to anybody. But it would be one way to get pardoned.

wunderland 3y ago

Batteries and solar panels will not save us from an economic system that requires over-production and over-consumption.

kdamica 3y ago
No but it might buy us time until commercialized fusion lets us create all the energy we want.
- SinParadise 3y ago
  That imo is our only way out, but this is effectively deus ex machina moment for humanity.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Fusion (particularly DT fusion) is grossly overvalued as an energy source. It's been an element of the consensus futurology (which is why you see it as a trope in SF stories), but this placement is not deserved by its actual qualities. Renewables make much more sense. At the experience curve for utility scale PV from 2010 to 2022, assuming that experience rate of 33.1% decline per doubling of cumulative deployment would continue, if the world were powered by PV the levelized cost of delivered power would fall to $0.003/kWh.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Exactly the "too cheap to meter" claims that were made about fission energy. The problem is that though the marginal cost of the next watt-hour of electricity may be low you still have to pay the very real (and likely huge) costs of constructing and maintaining the reactors and generating plant. Investors will need to earn a return; the bonds payments will need to be made.
  - kdamica 3y ago
    Of course there are still costs; the point is that we would be able to generate more and more energy without increasing carbon emissions.

anonymousiam 3y ago

You don't get to say that the debate is over until there has been a debate. You don't get to "win" by silencing the opposition. I'm not taking sides, but I see lots of "alternative facts" from all sides (and there are more than two sides). There's evidence that the earth is warming, but only if you squint a certain way. If you include the entire temperature record, and remove data from stations that didn't actually report data, and remove adjustments to the reported data (or alternatively remove the stations with "questionable" data recording methods), then all evidence of warming is gone. The tidal data is also conflicted. There's no dispute that ocean levels are rising (as they have for tens of thousands of years), but the rate of the rise has not changed since pre-industrial times. There's zero doubt that human activity is increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but there should be a debate (and there hasn't been one) over the point at which this becomes a problem. There are benefits to increased atmospheric CO2 such as lower diurnal temperature range (less extreme environment), increased food production, etc. There's also the problem of getting the major contributors of the CO2 production to stop. China is at the top and has "committed" to leveling emissions at 2030 levels. Even if that happens, the whole of the remaining world could cut their emissions to zero and it would have no effect. India is number two and the same problem applies. Today now the US is committing economic suicide by eliminating energy sources and raising energy prices while the rest of the world laughs. If you look carefully at the media reporting, you'll see that all of the climate alarm-ism comes from just a handful of extremest reporters. If you look at the academic papers, you see a bias created by the funding sources and a reluctance of the peer-review publications to accept any skeptical works. https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-overwhelming-consensus-is-manufactured/ https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-o...

anonymousiam 3y ago
https://cei.org/opeds_articles/greatest-hits-of-the-science-deniers/ https://cei.org/opeds_articles/greatest-hits-of-the-science-...
brazzy 3y ago
Every single word of that is bullshit. 100% lies paid for by oil companies. And at this point the evidence is so clear and overwhelming that there is no reason to believes anyone argues this bullshit in good faith. Summers are getting longer and hotter, glaciers and arctic ice are receding at record speeds, those are undeniable facts that everyone can see that with their own eyes. So fuck right off with your Rupert-Murdoch-provided lies.

debacle 3y ago

Many people underappreciate the value of liquid energy. The utility of being able to put your energy in a 5 gallon container and move it anywhere you'd like doesn't compare with batteries.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
A 2 kWh battery with integrated inverter is far cleaner, more convenient and quieter than carrying around a gallon of gasoline and a generator. 5 gallons of gas and a similarly sized generator is big enough that you want a vehicle to move it around. And since you're using a vehicle, and since in the future most of those will be electric with V2L, the 5 gallons of gas & generator are thus superfluous.
thebruce87m 3y ago
We could create a battery shaped like a 5 gallon container if you like?
reportingsjr 3y ago
People are doing exactly that with batteries these days though. Go look at youtube channels where people are building a cabin, traveling in a van/RV, etc. I'm seeing lots of videos with a portable "5 gallon container" sized batteries that people are moving around. Even better, since you can attach some solar panels and not have to go refill the container, unlike gas/diesel containers. This isn't to say batteries/solar are perfect for this. But, they are certainly providing enough pros vs liquid fuels that tons of people are widely using them in place of gasoline/diesel/kerosene. Personally, if I never have to hear a damn generator running all frigging day/night while at a campsite, the cost to switch to batteries/solar will have been entirely worthwhile.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  On the other hand, the energy density difference is astonishing and this is where hydrocarbons are pretty unbeatable. 1 US gallon of diesel has more than 35 kWh of energy in it (and we can get more than 40% of that out of it with modern efficient engines) and weighs approximately 3.5kg.

somethoughts 3y ago

My hot take is now that most of the climate change focused people are on board with solar+battery its time to shift the story to focus on the benefits that will accrue - irrespective of climate change. Solar+grid scale batteries could lead to true energy independence. It would provides optionality in energy sources that can provide energy pricing stability in times of crisis as well as enable lower long term negotiated prices overall. If OPEC is opportunistically price gouging oil, solar+battery can step in. If China is opportunistically hoarding solar panels and battery raw materials, we can look to OPEC to provide a price ceiling. I'd rather be dependent on OPEC+China and be able to play them off each other than just be solely dependent on OPEC. For national security, US reserves should be kept in the ground as long as possible in case of true emergencies. I never got the narrative that we should be pumping it now and selling it on the open market.

nradov 3y ago
How are batteries going to lead us to energy independence when many of the key raw materials are mined in foreign countries?
- somethoughts 3y ago
  Grid scale batteries are still aways out and still have to prove themselves at scale but a promising one is made out of materials that are sourced universally - such as iron. [1] If lithium is battery substrate of choice then the actual raw materials suppliers are more numerous and are not highly correlated to OPEC members. So you get relative energy independence. As far as I know there is not any sort of lithium cartel that has formed as of yet. Additionally as I understand it - since for grid scale, density is not a factor - there is not as strong a need for rare earth metals. [2] [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/iron-air-battery-renewable-grid/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/iron-air-battery-renew... [2] https://www.energy-storage.news/comparing-six-types-of-lithium-ion-battery-and-their-potential-for-bess-applications/ https://www.energy-storage.news/comparing-six-types-of-lithi...
  - nradov 3y ago

edent 3y ago

Over the last 3 years, our solar panels in London generated 12MWh of electricity. We sold 7MWh back to the grid. And we only imported 7MWh. Basically, we're power neutral right now. A standard UK roof can easily generate an average household's electricity use across the year. Panels are likely to get cheaper and more efficient. At current prices, solar panels pay for themselves in under 8 years. Batteries are harder. Our 4.8kWh battery means our electricity bill for August has been practically zero. As we go into winter, we'll switch to a tariff which does cheap overnight charging so we can arbitrage on cost. Personally, I think big batteries for communities make more sense - the current domestic ones are big, noisy, and have a far longer payback time. For less than the subsidy of one nuclear power station, we could give every home in the UK a 5kW solar installation. (Yes, I know it isn't that simple.) Solar has convincingly won. But the inertia of the old way of doing things will take a little time to correct.

phil21 3y ago
> As we go into winter, we'll switch to a tariff which does cheap overnight charging so we can arbitrage on cost. "As we go into winter, we will leverage the super cheap battery poor folks are forced to pay to exist for us when it's convenient". It's very hard to take these arguments seriously when that is really what is happening - relatively well off folks using the commons to subsidize themselves whilst patting themselves on the back about it. Yes, it's a quite trivial problem when you get to outsource the hard bit of it and only have to pay for the low hanging profitable fruit. Until your community battery gets into the weeks to month in storage capacity, these anecdotes really read disingenuous to me. Seasonal storage is the hard nut to crack, and we haven't even solved overnight storage for most places. I've been spec'ing out truly off-grid designs lately, and it's an order of magnitude difference if you want to not use the public subsidy of your neighbors paying for it for you.
htss2013 3y ago
How does that work in the winter in England? You'd think such a climate wouldn't work well with solar except in the summer, and not summer is most of the year. I assume you're using gas or other sources for heating?
3y ago

nuc1e0n 3y ago

Lithium batteries also have costs involved even though they have benefits. I feel that pumped 'hydro' energy storage with dense liquids will be more sustainable for power grids in the long run. There are also aspects of our current energy usage that cannot yet be performed by renewables, such as mass steel production and recycling of solar panels or wind turbines. R&D should be done to come up with fixes for these problems.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

Not so fast. I work in large scale renewable energy. While we do invest heavily in solar and batteries, battery storage is a much riskier proposition long term than just solar generation. No single renewable is going "to win". The only way to make renewables work is if you use every one practical in a particular market. And even then oil, gas and coal aren't going to go away because some markets and use cases just require it. Energy is complicated. Don't buy anyone's line where they promise you the moon.

_hypx 3y ago
Agreed. Here's what I've noticed: > I get a little of this feeling when I watch Americans argue about climate change; the discussions seem stuck back in 2010 This article itself feels like a throwback to 2010. He acts like solar + batteries solves the entire problem. It doesn't. In fact, it barely scratches the surface. We have much larger needs such as industrial, heavy transportation, agriculture, etc. Writing an outdated article about the rapidly dropping price of solar power while handwaving all other problems doesn't solve the problem. The author is basically just now catching up to 2010. He is in reality still stuck in 2010 despite what he thinks.
goethes_kind 3y ago
"Season battery storage" sounds very wrong to me. Maybe he is talking about some kind of flow battery where you can just add more tanks of electrolyte. But we don't have that yet.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Seasonal energy storage would be an e-fuel, like hydrogen.
mperham 3y ago
How likely are cars with V2G to be the grid batteries of the future?
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

starkparker 3y ago

Are there battery/energy storage solutions that don't themselves require limited, non-renewable resources?

leothecool 3y ago
Would you count a water battery? Or is it non-renewable because the pipes will rust.

sproketboy 3y ago

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skymast 3y ago

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dangerwill 3y ago

"For batteries, the constraint is mineral availability; though mining the minerals for batteries is far less environmentally destructive than mining fossil fuels, limited availability of lithium and we will probably have to switch to types of batteries that don’t use lithium in order to get enough storage for the whole world. [...] These are real challenges, but I doubt they’ll be prohibitive. [...] Meanwhile, there’s no reason to think that iron-air batteries or other types of batteries that rely on common minerals aren’t subject to the same scaling effects as lithium-ion batteries were. So I think we’ll get grid storage reasonably cheap and scalable as well." This is just handwaving away an incredibly difficult problem that is going to be a massive choke point for batteries. Yes there is lots of ongoing research in the material science of batteries to route around the lithium bottleneck, but there is a large lead time from finding success in research to generating end products at scale. 5-15 years of being blocked here will be extremely painful/crucial. He also purely focuses on the economics of getting solar based energy to market, eg the cost for consumers per kwh of electricity and the cost of batteries for things like EVs. But what about the added weight of these batteries? The damage done to roadways is exponentially related to the weight of the vehicles on the road, so making all cars 2x heavier means way more than 2x the road maintenance, which leads to increases in concrete and steel production. Both of which have environmental/carbon impacts of their own, and steel production especially uses an INTENSE amount of energy. And you also have the rocket problem where the bigger the battery you have to increase your range, the more of your range is being wasted by the energy required to lug the battery around. Any serious work here has to at least look at the benefits of increased train, tram, and trolley bus networks with overhead electrification as that gives all the benefits of electrified transportation but without the downsides of batteries.

rich_sasha 3y ago

I'm really fed up with all these articles that wave their hands at seasonal storage. Oh, we'll sort it out. It's kinda a big problem, especially in places like, well, most of Europe, where most of your energy needs are in winter (remember the hoo-ha about Russian gas imports over winter of 2022-23?) and also where most of the sunless, and also often windless times are. I'll be glad when solar+storage will provide cheap energy on tap, but until then waving away seasonal storage problems basically means: let's burn some stuff.

Ekaros 3y ago
And also that this combination of generation+storage must be reasonably priced. That is at least somewhat competitive. Which for storage part is still quite suspect.