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"no grid-scale battery technology to remove this fatal intermittency problem" Where is the bottleneck with mass producing batteries, that don't need rare eleme
by hutzlibu 3y ago
"no grid-scale battery technology to remove this fatal intermittency problem"
Where is the bottleneck with mass producing batteries, that don't need rare elements, like saltwater batteries?
Surely it is not cheap either, but it is working technology, cannot burn, nor contaminate entire landscapes if something goes wrong.
"Today there isn't even a small city anywhere in the world actually powered solely by solar/wind"
Because of economics and not really factoring in external costs, fossil fuels are simply cheaper. But it surely can be done with current tech. And El Hierro, a canarian island, is pretty close:
https://renewablesnow.com/news/spains-el-hierro-island-beats-18-day-record-for-100-renewables-supply-664174/ https://renewablesnow.com/news/spains-el-hierro-island-beats...
- Manuel_D 3y agoHydroelectric energy storage is geographically limited and quite hard to develop. You need an elevated reservoir sitting next to a river or body of water in order to fill and drain it (look at the photo in your link, to see the kind of specific features required [1]). You can find academic articles proclaiming the vast potential of hydroelectric storage. But those are just running algorithms over terrain data, without consideration for accessibility to proximity to places with energy demand. Developing Tibet's hydroelectric potential isn't exactly feasible. 1. https://cdn.aiidatapro.net/media/9b/7d/7c/t780x490/9b7d7ca4d2e50b59f72e98cef032a446.webp https://cdn.aiidatapro.net/media/9b/7d/7c/t780x490/9b7d7ca4d...