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"The idea that we are not currently, today, deploying massive amounts of batteries everywhere with today's technology is just plain ignorance" I don't see anyo

by alvah 3y ago

"The idea that we are not currently, today, deploying massive amounts of batteries everywhere with today's technology is just plain ignorance" I don't see anyone making this weirdly-specific claim. However, it's widely acknowledged that sufficient battery storage to guarantee national grid-wide power on-demand, sufficient for a modern industrial economy, is not currently feasible, in both economic and practical terms.

epistasis 3y ago
What you say is "widely acknowledged" is in direct contradiction to what is actually getting deployed on the grid. And what you say is a "weirdly specific claim" is also a surprise to people. If a large chunk of current grid investment in Texas, profit-drivej by independent investors, how could it not be feasible to continue this level of investment? Especially when costs are falling dramatically and production capacity for batteries is just getting started and is scaling at a tremendous rate that will result in a complete excess of battery capacity within the time period that we could only build a thousandth of the same amount of nuclear wattage? What is the blocker on feasibility?
- alvah 3y ago
  Among the blockers are (1) economics and (2) availability of raw & finished materials. This is all in the public domain, if you go looking for the numbers. I’m not saying your claim about the rapid pace of building out battery storage is false - your claim is true. However, there is no currently-feasible way to run an advanced industrial economy on intermittent energy sources backed by chemical batteries. It may become technically feasible at some point in the future (never bet against human ingenuity in the long run), but it’s technically and economically impractical right now.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Not sure what you mean by blockers or "impractical right now" but at best that's "we haven't built the mines or factories, yet." Which is not in any way a fundamental blocker on our ability to build what we want to build. There are of course feasible ways of running our entire economy entirely on renewables, saying otherwise means ignoring the massive amount of literature on the topic: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 Every argument I have ever seen attempted to say it is not possible makes simplifying unrealistic assumptions. Such as saying something silly like "here's our known lithium reserves, that's not enough."" Of course, our known reserves of lithium is going up every year, because we keep on looking for more, and the argument is not even sophisticated enough to acknowledge what proven reserves means as a concept. So if you think you have a solid argument present it, and if I'm convinced let's get it published and overturn all this other literature.
    - alvah 3y ago
      Your link talks (theoretically, not practically) about 100% RE by 2060! Do you understand what “currently” means? You hand-wave with “we haven’t built the mines or factories, yet”. In the real world, discovery, proving, permits, construction, and commissioning new mines can take many years - and that’s if sufficient quantities of the required minerals are feasibly recoverable, or in a jurisdiction that allows extraction and export (e.g. not China). So let’s get back to the real world & be realistic. 100% RE is not currently viable for an advanced industrial economy. Let’s get all the published literature revised to get rid of the hand-waves and ivory tower theoretical BS.

by alvah 3y ago

epistasis 3y ago

What you say is "widely acknowledged" is in direct contradiction to what is actually getting deployed on the grid. And what you say is a "weirdly specific claim" is also a surprise to people. If a large chunk of current grid investment in Texas, profit-drivej by independent investors, how could it not be feasible to continue this level of investment? Especially when costs are falling dramatically and production capacity for batteries is just getting started and is scaling at a tremendous rate that will result in a complete excess of battery capacity within the time period that we could only build a thousandth of the same amount of nuclear wattage? What is the blocker on feasibility?

alvah 3y ago
Among the blockers are (1) economics and (2) availability of raw & finished materials. This is all in the public domain, if you go looking for the numbers. I’m not saying your claim about the rapid pace of building out battery storage is false - your claim is true. However, there is no currently-feasible way to run an advanced industrial economy on intermittent energy sources backed by chemical batteries. It may become technically feasible at some point in the future (never bet against human ingenuity in the long run), but it’s technically and economically impractical right now.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Not sure what you mean by blockers or "impractical right now" but at best that's "we haven't built the mines or factories, yet." Which is not in any way a fundamental blocker on our ability to build what we want to build. There are of course feasible ways of running our entire economy entirely on renewables, saying otherwise means ignoring the massive amount of literature on the topic: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 Every argument I have ever seen attempted to say it is not possible makes simplifying unrealistic assumptions. Such as saying something silly like "here's our known lithium reserves, that's not enough."" Of course, our known reserves of lithium is going up every year, because we keep on looking for more, and the argument is not even sophisticated enough to acknowledge what proven reserves means as a concept. So if you think you have a solid argument present it, and if I'm convinced let's get it published and overturn all this other literature.
  - alvah 3y ago
    Your link talks (theoretically, not practically) about 100% RE by 2060! Do you understand what “currently” means? You hand-wave with “we haven’t built the mines or factories, yet”. In the real world, discovery, proving, permits, construction, and commissioning new mines can take many years - and that’s if sufficient quantities of the required minerals are feasibly recoverable, or in a jurisdiction that allows extraction and export (e.g. not China). So let’s get back to the real world & be realistic. 100% RE is not currently viable for an advanced industrial economy. Let’s get all the published literature revised to get rid of the hand-waves and ivory tower theoretical BS.