3 ms·

Powering the whole world on batteries for 50 minutes - that's nuts. Any sources for this? I wonder how long these batteries last. If we can get our battery ca

Powering the whole world on batteries for 50 minutes - that's nuts. Any sources for this? I wonder how long these batteries last. If we can get our battery capacity to grow to 12-24 hours, it removes a lot of the concerns around solar. The other remaining issue would be recycling that amount of batteries.

edent 3y ago
I have a 4.8kWh battery installed at home. That's usually good for 30-50% of my daily usage. It charges from solar and cheap overnight electricity.
- FredPret 3y ago
  I had a walkman that could barely get through two tapes on a set of batteries. Now people are running their houses on it. Wild!
ben_w 3y ago
I'm not the original poster, but here's my estimate and source for the same: 2022 production: 1.57 TWh of batteries - https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-battery-manufacturing-capacity-2022-2030 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-b... 2022 total global electricity use: 28,527.8 TWh - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=ch... 1.57 TWh / (28527.8 TWh/y) = 28.93 minutes. - For stuff like this I assume batteries will have 50% capacity after 1000 cycles even though this always gets surprised responses insisting they're good for far more cycles, as I think lowballing is a safer assumption. You can always just multiply as appropriate for different assumptions about cycles. However, that last 50% is still useful in this context, so that's half an hour every day going down to 15 minutes/day after 3 years; assuming it's exponential decay, I think that's a steady state equivalent to 4.3-ish times the production rate? Not sure though[0]. Same graph also forecasts 6.79 TWh/y manufacture in 2030, which is ~2 hours each day instantaneous or 8.6 hours steady-state if my previous assumptions were correct. At that scale, I suspect you also need to start accounting for the impact from variable day lengths meaning there won't be demand to fully discharge the batteries 365 days of the year, and also that demand is lower at night while all the demand numbers I've given assume constant use. A realistic estimate also needs to account for the impact of nighttime renewables getting used preferentially, further lowering the overall frequency with which the batteries need to go through a complete cycle, and conversely increasing battery demand to account for how well the grid they're connected to can compensate for renewable-unfriendly weather, but that's not the topic of this sub-thread. Also also, I expect these batteries will probably mostly get used by cars. Finally, I think recycling is a red herring because I can't believe that getting metals out of batteries is harder than getting the same metals out of literal rocks in the ground. [0] integral from 0 to infinity of 2^(-x/3) for a 3 year capacity halving time?

edent 3y ago

I have a 4.8kWh battery installed at home. That's usually good for 30-50% of my daily usage. It charges from solar and cheap overnight electricity.

FredPret 3y ago
I had a walkman that could barely get through two tapes on a set of batteries. Now people are running their houses on it. Wild!

ben_w 3y ago

I'm not the original poster, but here's my estimate and source for the same: 2022 production: 1.57 TWh of batteries - https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-battery-manufacturing-capacity-2022-2030 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-b... 2022 total global electricity use: 28,527.8 TWh - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-demand?tab=ch... 1.57 TWh / (28527.8 TWh/y) = 28.93 minutes. - For stuff like this I assume batteries will have 50% capacity after 1000 cycles even though this always gets surprised responses insisting they're good for far more cycles, as I think lowballing is a safer assumption. You can always just multiply as appropriate for different assumptions about cycles. However, that last 50% is still useful in this context, so that's half an hour every day going down to 15 minutes/day after 3 years; assuming it's exponential decay, I think that's a steady state equivalent to 4.3-ish times the production rate? Not sure though[0]. Same graph also forecasts 6.79 TWh/y manufacture in 2030, which is ~2 hours each day instantaneous or 8.6 hours steady-state if my previous assumptions were correct. At that scale, I suspect you also need to start accounting for the impact from variable day lengths meaning there won't be demand to fully discharge the batteries 365 days of the year, and also that demand is lower at night while all the demand numbers I've given assume constant use. A realistic estimate also needs to account for the impact of nighttime renewables getting used preferentially, further lowering the overall frequency with which the batteries need to go through a complete cycle, and conversely increasing battery demand to account for how well the grid they're connected to can compensate for renewable-unfriendly weather, but that's not the topic of this sub-thread. Also also, I expect these batteries will probably mostly get used by cars. Finally, I think recycling is a red herring because I can't believe that getting metals out of batteries is harder than getting the same metals out of literal rocks in the ground. [0] integral from 0 to infinity of 2^(-x/3) for a 3 year capacity halving time?