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It doesn't have to be so bleak. - Every EV purchased can be part of the solution by supporting vehicle to grid charging. - Annual production capacity can incr

by oezi 2y ago

It doesn't have to be so bleak. - Every EV purchased can be part of the solution by supporting vehicle to grid charging. - Annual production capacity can increase. IEA estimates 6,000 GWh per year will be manufactured in 2030. I am sure it will grow further. - We need way less than 60,000 GWh to provide batteries for an average day, because solar, wind, hydro are covering part of this.

Manuel_D 2y ago
Using EV as grid storage is not feasible. One, many vehicles are used for business, utilities, and public transit. So they'll be driven during the day, and charged at night. This is going to increase load during hours of non-production, the opposite of storage. Two, no san grid operator is going to accept a situation where much of their storage capacity will just drive away for vacation, or in anticipation of a disaster. The predicted exponential rise is still an order of magnitude less than the scale required, and the vast majority of it is not going to grid storage. Wind is subject to intermittency, too. It's not a magic bullet that eliminates storage. Unless you're overprovisioning wind by a factor of 10 (in which case it's not cheap anymore), you'll still have weeks-long stretches where there is insufficient energy. Hydro is really the only non-intermittent carbon-free energy source besides geothermal and nuclear power. The reality is that wind and solar are only cheap in the context of a non-intermittent source that can fill in for the intermittency of renewable production. Running a minority of your grid on solar and wind, supplementing gas plants is one thing. Running a grid mostly wind and solar is totally different beast.
- oezi 2y ago
  But you can't deny the reality that the electricity supply is rapidly changing and that the issues of non-intermittency are turn out as not so relevant than anticipated. We have the existing non-intermittent power plants and can use them if we need to. Batteries are helping us rely less on them and since cost of batteries and PV/wind is trending so strongly down, it is already happening that many markets prefer batteries over using gas/coal plants. This will push down CO2 emittance. That all that matters really (at reasonable cost).
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    > We have the existing non-intermittent power plants and can use them if we need to. Not if you want to solve climate change. Reducing emissions to 50% of present levels and then just keeping them there isn't going to prevent climate change. Overproduction during peak hours doesn't help unless you have a way to release that energy in non-peak hours. Again, growing battery production isn't actually resulting in grid storage. Even dedicating 100% of battery production to grid storage isn't going to make significant changes in grid storage, but it will stop EV adoption.
    - oezi 2y ago
      Sorry this just false. Battery deployment for electricity grid storage is progressing with unprecedented and accelerating speed. We will solve this. It just requires some money. If you research it, it is surprisingly little in relation to global annual GDP (at least less than I was expecting).
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        > Sorry this just false. Battery deployment for electricity grid storage is progressing with unprecedented and accelerating speed. And what, exactly, is that speed? The US plans to deploy "15GW" (presumably the authors mean GWh of storage, GW is not a unit of storage) of grid storage in 2024. That's less than 2 minutes of storage! https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61202#:~:text=Planned%20and%20currently%20operational%20U.S.,Preliminary%20Monthly%20Electric%20Generator%20Inventory.&text=Battery%20storage%20projects%20are%20getting%20larger%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61202#:~:tex.... Again, global battery production is only about 6-700 GWh (be careful with figures that cite capacity, which is distinct from actual production). And very little of that is dedicated to grid storage.
        oezi 2y ago
        Those figures are about maximum dispatchable power usually for a time of more than 1 hour (2 to 4 seems typical). So 16 GW battery allow you to power the US similarly to 3x times the power of the largest US nuclear reactor for probably 3 hours. If such projects are economically feasible now, the economics are just getting better and better and this means we will see exponential growth. California is seeing improved grid stability and reduction in CO2 emissions due to batteries today. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/batte...

by oezi 2y ago

Manuel_D 2y ago

Using EV as grid storage is not feasible. One, many vehicles are used for business, utilities, and public transit. So they'll be driven during the day, and charged at night. This is going to increase load during hours of non-production, the opposite of storage. Two, no san grid operator is going to accept a situation where much of their storage capacity will just drive away for vacation, or in anticipation of a disaster. The predicted exponential rise is still an order of magnitude less than the scale required, and the vast majority of it is not going to grid storage. Wind is subject to intermittency, too. It's not a magic bullet that eliminates storage. Unless you're overprovisioning wind by a factor of 10 (in which case it's not cheap anymore), you'll still have weeks-long stretches where there is insufficient energy. Hydro is really the only non-intermittent carbon-free energy source besides geothermal and nuclear power. The reality is that wind and solar are only cheap in the context of a non-intermittent source that can fill in for the intermittency of renewable production. Running a minority of your grid on solar and wind, supplementing gas plants is one thing. Running a grid mostly wind and solar is totally different beast.

oezi 2y ago
But you can't deny the reality that the electricity supply is rapidly changing and that the issues of non-intermittency are turn out as not so relevant than anticipated. We have the existing non-intermittent power plants and can use them if we need to. Batteries are helping us rely less on them and since cost of batteries and PV/wind is trending so strongly down, it is already happening that many markets prefer batteries over using gas/coal plants. This will push down CO2 emittance. That all that matters really (at reasonable cost).
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  > We have the existing non-intermittent power plants and can use them if we need to. Not if you want to solve climate change. Reducing emissions to 50% of present levels and then just keeping them there isn't going to prevent climate change. Overproduction during peak hours doesn't help unless you have a way to release that energy in non-peak hours. Again, growing battery production isn't actually resulting in grid storage. Even dedicating 100% of battery production to grid storage isn't going to make significant changes in grid storage, but it will stop EV adoption.
  - oezi 2y ago
    Sorry this just false. Battery deployment for electricity grid storage is progressing with unprecedented and accelerating speed. We will solve this. It just requires some money. If you research it, it is surprisingly little in relation to global annual GDP (at least less than I was expecting).
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      > Sorry this just false. Battery deployment for electricity grid storage is progressing with unprecedented and accelerating speed. And what, exactly, is that speed? The US plans to deploy "15GW" (presumably the authors mean GWh of storage, GW is not a unit of storage) of grid storage in 2024. That's less than 2 minutes of storage! https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61202#:~:text=Planned%20and%20currently%20operational%20U.S.,Preliminary%20Monthly%20Electric%20Generator%20Inventory.&text=Battery%20storage%20projects%20are%20getting%20larger%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61202#:~:tex.... Again, global battery production is only about 6-700 GWh (be careful with figures that cite capacity, which is distinct from actual production). And very little of that is dedicated to grid storage.
      - oezi 2y ago
        Those figures are about maximum dispatchable power usually for a time of more than 1 hour (2 to 4 seems typical). So 16 GW battery allow you to power the US similarly to 3x times the power of the largest US nuclear reactor for probably 3 hours. If such projects are economically feasible now, the economics are just getting better and better and this means we will see exponential growth. California is seeing improved grid stability and reduction in CO2 emissions due to batteries today. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/batte...