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Also, sodium batteries are now coming online. Slightly lower energy density, but potentially vastly lower cost. From looking at cost trends and increased produc
by matthewdgreen 1y ago
Also, sodium batteries are now coming online. Slightly lower energy density, but potentially vastly lower cost. From looking at cost trends and increased production, it also seems pretty obvious at this point that we probably are going to get those vast quantities of battery storage everyone is so surprised about.
- legitster 1y agoI'm still a little bit skeptical because chemical energy storage is inherently corrosive and unstable and so maintaining installed capacity is more expensive. Unlike power generation, where you can build a facility and it can more or less run for decades with basic maintenance, batteries effectively have a limited number of cycles they can be relied on for. So you would effectively have to remanufacture your entire storage capacity every 10-15 years. So scaling up on storage would theoretically get exponentially more expensive the more of the grid you take over. Obviously battery technology is improving and each 1% gain in improvement represents drastic savings. But I think there is still lots of reason to diversify technologically and continue to look into complementary sources of base power like nuclear.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoI think the exponential works in the opposite direction. Let’s say your manufacturing capacity is increasing by 30% per year. That means hypothetically at the end of a 15 year period you’re building fifty times what you were able to install in year one. We don’t know if that will happen for batteries, but for solar PV the rate was about a 37% average yearly increase over the past 20 years.
- ponector 1y agoCan't you apply same workflow as there is for storage in data center: install, monitor and constantly replace degraded modules with new?