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I seem to recall that one of the main reasons to doubt batteries was that they relied on minerals that are just too rare on Earth to consider scaling them up to
by Yoric 1y ago
I seem to recall that one of the main reasons to doubt batteries was that they relied on minerals that are just too rare on Earth to consider scaling them up to the entire grid.
Was my understanding incorrect? Or perhaps have new technologies emerged that work around this limitation?
- jdlshore 1y agoThe linked article addresses that. Modern batteries are lithium-iron, without the rare cobalt and nickel. Sodium batteries are also in development, but lithium is turning out to be so cheap and abundant that investment in the sodium batteries isn’t economical.
- defrost 1y agoGrid storage batteries don't have the same weight constraint as vehicle batteries which opens the door to many other combinations that have a lower energy density but are cheaper per GW despite weighing more per GW.
- throwaway473825 1y agoSodium-ion batteries have extreme good performance in low-temperature environments. CATL is working on sodium-LFP dual-power batteries to get the best of both worlds: https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html That's mainly for EVs though.
- epistasis 1y agoThat was never the case. Some people looked at "current reserve" amounts for lithium or other minerals and assumed that we had already discovered all usable deposits. That was a very incorrect assumption.