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> Solar and batteries are still more expensive than gas (as the article admits) but prices are continuing to decrease. Exactly, gas is heavily subsidized and g

> Solar and batteries are still more expensive than gas (as the article admits) but prices are continuing to decrease. Exactly, gas is heavily subsidized and government supported in the US. And even with that support it only barely scrapes ahead. Courtesy of current and future tax payers coughing up the interest payments on the trillions of dollars in debt. That's not going to last indefinitely. The key point here is that the difference is a bit artificial. In the rest of the world where installing solar is something like a third of the cost (no tariffs, less installation bureaucracy, less crippling rules and legislation, etc.) and where batteries can be imported closer to cost price from China, the picture is very different. If it's importing LNG vs. cheap solar panels + batteries, the latter is already very attractive in many places. Even at higher latitudes than the 49th parallel below which most of the US is. And it's on track to get a lot better. Production for sodium ion batteries is starting to come online in China. It will be a while before those make it to the US due to the politics. But some are now projecting cost as low as 10$/kwh for those mid term. 1 mwh battery would cost about 10K$ at those prices. And they have quite long lives (thousands of charge cycles). You can run a house on one of those for well over a month in the US. Much longer in places where houses are better insulated and more efficient. It will be a few years before we can get these obviously. But it's a nice mental model for what a reasonably affordable battery will be able to do soon.

bjourne 1y ago
> And it's on track to get a lot better. Production for sodium ion batteries is starting to come online in China. It will be a while before those make it to the US due to the politics. But some are now projecting cost as low as 10$/kwh for those mid term. Is that a typo? Just a year ago ago batteries were expected to drop to $80/kWh around 2026-2027... $10/kWh in the near future is absolutely insane.
- nicoburns 1y ago
  What counts as "soon" is pretty subjective of course, but $10/kWh is only 3 halving's from $80/kWh. So it wouldn't be too surprising if $80/kWh in 2026 corresponded to $10/kWh in 2030.
  - jillesvangurp 1y ago
    2030 only five years. And the original was not a typo. But it is a best case prediction. Whether that's 2028 or 2038 is a bit immaterial. What matters here is the basic principle that sodium ion batteries don't contain any hard to get or expensive materials. So the materials are cheap to source and the manufacturing process is well understood and should benefit from economies of scale, learning effects, etc. The point is that prices are coming down and the further these come down the worse it gets for gas. It's also worth noting that we've been on a bit of a journey with solar panels. Prices for those have also fallen quite a bit in the last decade and might fall further. That puts any investments to do with gas plants solidly under water within just a few years. Which is why there is a reluctance in the market to invest in that sort of thing despite considerable political pressure in parts of the US to do so.

bjourne 1y ago

> And it's on track to get a lot better. Production for sodium ion batteries is starting to come online in China. It will be a while before those make it to the US due to the politics. But some are now projecting cost as low as 10$/kwh for those mid term. Is that a typo? Just a year ago ago batteries were expected to drop to $80/kWh around 2026-2027... $10/kWh in the near future is absolutely insane.

nicoburns 1y ago
What counts as "soon" is pretty subjective of course, but $10/kWh is only 3 halving's from $80/kWh. So it wouldn't be too surprising if $80/kWh in 2026 corresponded to $10/kWh in 2030.
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  2030 only five years. And the original was not a typo. But it is a best case prediction. Whether that's 2028 or 2038 is a bit immaterial. What matters here is the basic principle that sodium ion batteries don't contain any hard to get or expensive materials. So the materials are cheap to source and the manufacturing process is well understood and should benefit from economies of scale, learning effects, etc. The point is that prices are coming down and the further these come down the worse it gets for gas. It's also worth noting that we've been on a bit of a journey with solar panels. Prices for those have also fallen quite a bit in the last decade and might fall further. That puts any investments to do with gas plants solidly under water within just a few years. Which is why there is a reluctance in the market to invest in that sort of thing despite considerable political pressure in parts of the US to do so.