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> is the only form of non-intermittent green energy production other than geographically limited options like dams and geothermal That "is" should be a "was".

> is the only form of non-intermittent green energy production other than geographically limited options like dams and geothermal That "is" should be a "was". > The globe currently uses 60 TWh of electricity per day. That's 30,000 GWh for 12 hours of storage. Bloomberg New Energy Finance tracks battery production capacity announcements, and has a total world capacity of 7.9 TWh/year by the end of 2025 [0]. With a warrantied life of 12-20 years, that 2025 manufacturing capacity would support 95-158 TWh of ongoing storage. Keep in mind that the talking points you are drawing from are several years of out date and assume an audience that knows little about the world of energy. HN is not the right place to pull out the standard bag of tricks from the electronic information toolkit. For example, you claim a need for "seasonal" storage out of nowhere, but do not consider the obvious (to the HN audince at least) idea of overcapacity such that there's enough generation at the seasonal minimum to cover needs, and oversupply the rest of the year. Already, many countries in Europe have seen single-digit /MWh average prices this month [1]. That's going to become far more common during most of the year. [0] https://twitter.com/colinmckerrache/status/1775880888162656258 https://twitter.com/colinmckerrache/status/17758808881626562... [1] https://x.com/LionHirth/status/1777309657804992969 https://x.com/LionHirth/status/1777309657804992969

Manuel_D 3y ago
> For example, you claim a need for "seasonal" storage out of nowhere, but do not consider the obvious (to the HN audince at least) idea of overcapacity such that there's enough generation at the seasonal minimum to cover needs, and oversupply the rest of the year. No amount of overcapacity will make solar panels produce electricity at night. You'll at least need diurnal storage, no amount of overproduction will help solar power offset the day and night cycle. Overproduction is also not a silver bullet: solar production during cloudy days and wind production during still winds are often under 10% of average output. You'd need a massive amount of overproduction in order to avoid building large amounts of storage. As for your battery production predictions, these seem very far-fetched given the history of lithium ion battery production. Bear in mind that production capacity is a different figure than actual production. Production capacity is what factories theoretically could make if given unlimited input materials. But that's not what matters, what matters is actual production figures - how much battery capacity was actually built. 2023 saw 680 GWh of lithium ion batteries produced worldwide: https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/which-manufacturer-supplied-the-largest-volume-ev-batteries-in-2023-podcast/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,for%20passenger%20cars%20and%20vans https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/which-manufactur.... 2021 this figure was 476 GWh: https://interactanalysis.com/insight/lithium-ion-battery-market-is-moving-into-surge-mode/#:~:text=The%20global%20Li%2Dion%20battery,that%20wasn't%20a%20blip https://interactanalysis.com/insight/lithium-ion-battery-mar.... Will we actually see 7.9 TWh of batteries produced annually by the end of 2025? The growth over the last two years was only about 200 GWh of capacity, so seeing over 7,000 GWh of production increase over the next two years seems a bit far fetched.

Manuel_D 3y ago

> For example, you claim a need for "seasonal" storage out of nowhere, but do not consider the obvious (to the HN audince at least) idea of overcapacity such that there's enough generation at the seasonal minimum to cover needs, and oversupply the rest of the year. No amount of overcapacity will make solar panels produce electricity at night. You'll at least need diurnal storage, no amount of overproduction will help solar power offset the day and night cycle. Overproduction is also not a silver bullet: solar production during cloudy days and wind production during still winds are often under 10% of average output. You'd need a massive amount of overproduction in order to avoid building large amounts of storage. As for your battery production predictions, these seem very far-fetched given the history of lithium ion battery production. Bear in mind that production capacity is a different figure than actual production. Production capacity is what factories theoretically could make if given unlimited input materials. But that's not what matters, what matters is actual production figures - how much battery capacity was actually built. 2023 saw 680 GWh of lithium ion batteries produced worldwide: https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/which-manufacturer-supplied-the-largest-volume-ev-batteries-in-2023-podcast/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,for%20passenger%20cars%20and%20vans https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/which-manufactur.... 2021 this figure was 476 GWh: https://interactanalysis.com/insight/lithium-ion-battery-market-is-moving-into-surge-mode/#:~:text=The%20global%20Li%2Dion%20battery,that%20wasn't%20a%20blip https://interactanalysis.com/insight/lithium-ion-battery-mar.... Will we actually see 7.9 TWh of batteries produced annually by the end of 2025? The growth over the last two years was only about 200 GWh of capacity, so seeing over 7,000 GWh of production increase over the next two years seems a bit far fetched.