4 ms·

> If we're at 2-3 TWh of world battery production capacity in 2025, that's 4 days of California demand. By 2031 or 2032, we're going to have 20-30TWh of batter

> If we're at 2-3 TWh of world battery production capacity in 2025, that's 4 days of California demand. By 2031 or 2032, we're going to have 20-30TWh of battery production. The 2,200 GWh of batteries produced in 2025 amounts to a bit under 3 days of California's average 750GWh daily electricity consumption, not 4 days. And more broadly, I'm not sure how pointing out that a year's worth of global battery production amounts to just 3 days of one US state's electricity demand is supposed to demonstrate that battery storage is feasible. To put this in perspective, global daily electricity demand is 60,000 GWh. Of the ~2,200 GWh of batteries produced in 2025, only ~300 GWh was used for grid storage. Most of it went to EVs. Battery production costs are already dominated by the cost of anode and cathode material. The bottleneck is resource extraction. And the nature of scaling resource extraction is that the easiest-to-exploit reserves are extracted first, and increasing producing involves reaching for the more and more difficult to access reserves. Even if production continues to rise, any serious investment into battery grid storage will delay EV adoption as batteries are diverted to grid storage instead of EVs.

epistasis 6mo ago
> I'm not sure how pointing out that a year's worth of global battery production amounts to just 3 days of one US state's electricity demand is supposed to demonstrate that battery storage is feasible. It was pointing out that the comment making off-the-wall requirements of battery storage was already not aware of the order of magnitude of existing batteries. You don't know the exact > To put this in perspective, global daily electricity demand is 60,000 GWh. Of the ~2,200 GWh of batteries produced in 2025, only ~300 GWh was used for grid storage. Most of it went to EVs. What's your implication here? If you are trying to say this means that batteries can never scale, it's certainly not making that point. Even the distinction between grid and EVs is immaterial, because where do EVs get their power? The grid. That's all flexible demand, that can be shifted a huge amount. > Battery production costs are already dominated by the cost of anode and cathode material. The bottleneck is resource extraction. And the nature of scaling resource extraction is that the easiest-to-exploit reserves are extracted first, and increasing producing involves reaching for the more and more difficult to access reserves. The implication seems to be that batteries will get more expensive at some point. Perhaps. Or more chemistries will be discovered or used. Lithium got very expensive for a short while, then cheap. The cure for high prices is high prices, because unlike oil there are tons of substitutions available for all aspects of batteries. Unlike oil, we are in the early days of discovery for battery materials, because we never looked for them before. Just recently fracking in the southeast quarter of the US turned out to be producing a fair amount of lithium, which nobody had bothered to even investigate before. Batteries are a new technology, not an old technology like oil, and the dynamics are far different. One can't simply recycle reasoning that applies in oil without examining the first princiles. > Even if production continues to rise, any serious investment into battery grid storage will delay EV adoption as batteries are diverted to grid storage instead of EVs. "Even if" is a preposterous thing to say, of course it will! EVs are higher value destination for grid batteries, so more batteries will go towards that right now. And as long as there might be "diversion" as you say, there is need for more production capacity, and production capacity will expand.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- Manuel_D 6mo ago
  > The implication seems to be that batteries will get more expensive at some point. Perhaps. Or more chemistries will be discovered or used. Lithium got very expensive for a short while, then cheap. The cure for high prices is high prices, because unlike oil there are tons of substitutions available for all aspects of batteries. Such as? Is your proposal that we use lead acid batteries instead of lithium based batteries? Those have much shorter lifespans, which drives up cost. Sodium batteries? 9 GWh of sodium batteries were shipped in 2025. To be blunt, you're just hand waving away the massive disparity in scale between battery production and the storage demands of a predominantly wind and solar grid.
  - ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
    Or an iron air. Or flow battery. Or sodium. Or all manner of different lithium chemistries across NCA, NMC, LFP and so on. We’re seeing the Cambrian explosion of battery technology. From early BEVs utilizing the highest performance to even deliver a viable product to a plethora of options depending on your use case. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/25/google-to-deploy-worlds-largest-iron-air-battery-for-us-data-center/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/25/google-to-deploy-worl... Wasting trillions of tax money and decades of opportunity cost on new built nuclear handouts is extremely shortsighted.
    - Manuel_D 6mo ago
      How about we don't bother with either fission or wind and solar? Just build fusion plants and be done with it. If we're comfortable betting trillions of dollars in infrastructure projects on the hopes that a heretofore unproven technology will pan out, let's be more ambitious than batteries! Of course, there's no guarantee that any of those fission ideas will actually pan out. Likewise with these battery chemistries. Investing loads of money into intermittent sources with just the hope that some future battery chemistry will solve storage at grid scale is not what I'd call a wise plan.

epistasis 6mo ago

> I'm not sure how pointing out that a year's worth of global battery production amounts to just 3 days of one US state's electricity demand is supposed to demonstrate that battery storage is feasible. It was pointing out that the comment making off-the-wall requirements of battery storage was already not aware of the order of magnitude of existing batteries. You don't know the exact > To put this in perspective, global daily electricity demand is 60,000 GWh. Of the ~2,200 GWh of batteries produced in 2025, only ~300 GWh was used for grid storage. Most of it went to EVs. What's your implication here? If you are trying to say this means that batteries can never scale, it's certainly not making that point. Even the distinction between grid and EVs is immaterial, because where do EVs get their power? The grid. That's all flexible demand, that can be shifted a huge amount. > Battery production costs are already dominated by the cost of anode and cathode material. The bottleneck is resource extraction. And the nature of scaling resource extraction is that the easiest-to-exploit reserves are extracted first, and increasing producing involves reaching for the more and more difficult to access reserves. The implication seems to be that batteries will get more expensive at some point. Perhaps. Or more chemistries will be discovered or used. Lithium got very expensive for a short while, then cheap. The cure for high prices is high prices, because unlike oil there are tons of substitutions available for all aspects of batteries. Unlike oil, we are in the early days of discovery for battery materials, because we never looked for them before. Just recently fracking in the southeast quarter of the US turned out to be producing a fair amount of lithium, which nobody had bothered to even investigate before. Batteries are a new technology, not an old technology like oil, and the dynamics are far different. One can't simply recycle reasoning that applies in oil without examining the first princiles. > Even if production continues to rise, any serious investment into battery grid storage will delay EV adoption as batteries are diverted to grid storage instead of EVs. "Even if" is a preposterous thing to say, of course it will! EVs are higher value destination for grid batteries, so more batteries will go towards that right now. And as long as there might be "diversion" as you say, there is need for more production capacity, and production capacity will expand.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
Manuel_D 6mo ago
> The implication seems to be that batteries will get more expensive at some point. Perhaps. Or more chemistries will be discovered or used. Lithium got very expensive for a short while, then cheap. The cure for high prices is high prices, because unlike oil there are tons of substitutions available for all aspects of batteries. Such as? Is your proposal that we use lead acid batteries instead of lithium based batteries? Those have much shorter lifespans, which drives up cost. Sodium batteries? 9 GWh of sodium batteries were shipped in 2025. To be blunt, you're just hand waving away the massive disparity in scale between battery production and the storage demands of a predominantly wind and solar grid.
- ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
  Or an iron air. Or flow battery. Or sodium. Or all manner of different lithium chemistries across NCA, NMC, LFP and so on. We’re seeing the Cambrian explosion of battery technology. From early BEVs utilizing the highest performance to even deliver a viable product to a plethora of options depending on your use case. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/25/google-to-deploy-worlds-largest-iron-air-battery-for-us-data-center/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/25/google-to-deploy-worl... Wasting trillions of tax money and decades of opportunity cost on new built nuclear handouts is extremely shortsighted.
  - Manuel_D 6mo ago
    How about we don't bother with either fission or wind and solar? Just build fusion plants and be done with it. If we're comfortable betting trillions of dollars in infrastructure projects on the hopes that a heretofore unproven technology will pan out, let's be more ambitious than batteries! Of course, there's no guarantee that any of those fission ideas will actually pan out. Likewise with these battery chemistries. Investing loads of money into intermittent sources with just the hope that some future battery chemistry will solve storage at grid scale is not what I'd call a wise plan.