The Sun Is Down, The Battery's Up
May 7, 2024 7:06 PM Subscribe
NYT: Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity California draws more electricity from the sun than any other state. It also has a timing problem: Solar power is plentiful during the day but disappears by evening, just as people get home from work and electricity demand spikes. To fill the gap, power companies typically burn more fossil fuels like natural gas.
That’s now changing. Since 2020, California has installed more giant batteries than anywhere in the world apart from China. They can soak up excess solar power during the day and store it for use when it gets dark.
Those batteries play a pivotal role in California’s electric grid, partially replacing fossil fuels in the evening. Between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on April 30, for example, batteries supplied more than one-fifth of California’s electricity and, for a few minutes, pumped out 7,046 megawatts of electricity, akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors.
Across the country, power companies are increasingly using giant batteries the size of shipping containers to address renewable energy’s biggest weakness: the fact that the wind and sun aren’t always available. ... Over the past three years, battery storage capacity on the nation’s grids has grown tenfold, to 16,000 megawatts. This year, it is expected to nearly double again, with the biggest growth in Texas, California and Arizona.
Most grid batteries use lithium-ion technology, similar to batteries in smartphones or electric cars. As the electric vehicle industry has expanded over the past decade, battery costs have fallen by 80 percent, making them competitive for large-scale power storage. Government mandates and subsidies have also spurred growth. ...
Texas is quickly catching up to California in solar power, and batteries increasingly help with evening peaks. On April 28, the sun was setting just as wind power was unexpectedly low and many coal and gas plants were offline for repairs. Batteries jumped in, supplying 4 percent of Texas’s electricity at one point, enough to power a million homes. Last summer, batteries helped avert evening blackouts by providing additional power during record heat.
Those batteries play a pivotal role in California’s electric grid, partially replacing fossil fuels in the evening. Between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on April 30, for example, batteries supplied more than one-fifth of California’s electricity and, for a few minutes, pumped out 7,046 megawatts of electricity, akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors.
Across the country, power companies are increasingly using giant batteries the size of shipping containers to address renewable energy’s biggest weakness: the fact that the wind and sun aren’t always available. ... Over the past three years, battery storage capacity on the nation’s grids has grown tenfold, to 16,000 megawatts. This year, it is expected to nearly double again, with the biggest growth in Texas, California and Arizona.
Most grid batteries use lithium-ion technology, similar to batteries in smartphones or electric cars. As the electric vehicle industry has expanded over the past decade, battery costs have fallen by 80 percent, making them competitive for large-scale power storage. Government mandates and subsidies have also spurred growth. ...
Texas is quickly catching up to California in solar power, and batteries increasingly help with evening peaks. On April 28, the sun was setting just as wind power was unexpectedly low and many coal and gas plants were offline for repairs. Batteries jumped in, supplying 4 percent of Texas’s electricity at one point, enough to power a million homes. Last summer, batteries helped avert evening blackouts by providing additional power during record heat.
This is great, great news.
This year, it is expected to nearly double again
In one year. Wow.
Texas is quickly catching up to California in solar power
... despite the really well funded forces fighting hard to keep Texas from moving to renewables.
I really love imagining our societies being powered by solar energy, and I just love reading about the actually quite extraordinary progress in that direction.
Thank you so much for posting this, Artifice_Eternity - I really appreciate hearing about it from you, and I'm looking forward to sharing this story with friends.
posted by kristi at 7:13 PM on May 7 [16 favorites]
This year, it is expected to nearly double again
In one year. Wow.
Texas is quickly catching up to California in solar power
... despite the really well funded forces fighting hard to keep Texas from moving to renewables.
I really love imagining our societies being powered by solar energy, and I just love reading about the actually quite extraordinary progress in that direction.
Thank you so much for posting this, Artifice_Eternity - I really appreciate hearing about it from you, and I'm looking forward to sharing this story with friends.
posted by kristi at 7:13 PM on May 7 [16 favorites]
I follow the energy industry for my job at a news publication, and am always happy to share good news about the energy transition! There's a lot of climate doomerism around these days, and while the situation is undoubtedly dire, there are also rapid and immense efforts underway to shift us to more sustainable practices and technologies. People need to know.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:27 PM on May 7 [21 favorites]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:27 PM on May 7 [21 favorites]
I'd have assumed that gravity batteries would be more popular overall.
The only gravity battery technology that's actually cost-competitive with Li-ion is pumped hydro, and unless your country is Norway-shaped there's only so much pumped hydro it's feasible to deploy.
The biggest battery that will get deployed over the next ten years is the one distributed across the electric vehicle fleet. And there's no good reason for that resource to remain mostly disconnected from the grid, since most cars spend much more time parked than in motion.
Really the only reason Li-ion is currently the most commonly deployed chemistry is its having been ramped up so quickly to meet the demands of EV production. There are loads of less energy-dense, less rare materials intensive and less inherently hazardous chemistries that would work just fine as fixed utility-scale storage but none of them have had anything like the manufacturing capacity and optimization research devoted to Li-ion. The relative sloth with which alternative fixed-storage chemistries are being rolled out should tell you everything you need to know about the potential size of the fixed-storage market vs the EV market.
posted by flabdablet at 7:29 PM on May 7 [14 favorites]
The only gravity battery technology that's actually cost-competitive with Li-ion is pumped hydro, and unless your country is Norway-shaped there's only so much pumped hydro it's feasible to deploy.
The biggest battery that will get deployed over the next ten years is the one distributed across the electric vehicle fleet. And there's no good reason for that resource to remain mostly disconnected from the grid, since most cars spend much more time parked than in motion.
Really the only reason Li-ion is currently the most commonly deployed chemistry is its having been ramped up so quickly to meet the demands of EV production. There are loads of less energy-dense, less rare materials intensive and less inherently hazardous chemistries that would work just fine as fixed utility-scale storage but none of them have had anything like the manufacturing capacity and optimization research devoted to Li-ion. The relative sloth with which alternative fixed-storage chemistries are being rolled out should tell you everything you need to know about the potential size of the fixed-storage market vs the EV market.
posted by flabdablet at 7:29 PM on May 7 [14 favorites]
I really love imagining our societies being powered by solar energy
What makes me happy is imagining all of human activity powered by tapping into ongoing energy and material flows rather than continuing to run down pre-existing stores. It would be good for us to learn to live within our energy and material means and stop pissing the trust fund we inherited from the deep past up against the wall.
posted by flabdablet at 7:39 PM on May 7 [20 favorites]
What makes me happy is imagining all of human activity powered by tapping into ongoing energy and material flows rather than continuing to run down pre-existing stores. It would be good for us to learn to live within our energy and material means and stop pissing the trust fund we inherited from the deep past up against the wall.
posted by flabdablet at 7:39 PM on May 7 [20 favorites]
The article touches on it briefly, but a pretty substantial barrier to getting battery storage permitted and built is community opposition, mostly around safety concerns. That's less of an issue for colocating batteries with a wind or solar project out in the middle of nowhere, but placing batteries near where people are using power (which needs to happen because of transmission limitations) means putting batteries near people.
The only gravity battery technology that's actually cost-competitive with Li-ion is pumped hydro, and unless your country is Norway-shaped there's only so much pumped hydro it's feasible to deploy.
And even where it is possible to build, there can be substantial environmental concerns for pumped hydro.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:41 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
The only gravity battery technology that's actually cost-competitive with Li-ion is pumped hydro, and unless your country is Norway-shaped there's only so much pumped hydro it's feasible to deploy.
And even where it is possible to build, there can be substantial environmental concerns for pumped hydro.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:41 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
Is there enough lithium and other resources to build sufficient quantities of utility-scale batteries globally to abate climate change? What is the lifetime of utility-scale batteries? Are the materials in these batteries recyclable, or will we continuously have to extract resources for new ones? Is that sustainable?
I'm not trying to argue against deploying renewable energy or against energy storage. Just some concerns that I've been wondering about. I hope there are reasonable answers to all of my above questions, but a bit of cursory googling didn't provide any simple answers.
posted by Reverend John at 7:47 PM on May 7 [6 favorites]
I'm not trying to argue against deploying renewable energy or against energy storage. Just some concerns that I've been wondering about. I hope there are reasonable answers to all of my above questions, but a bit of cursory googling didn't provide any simple answers.
posted by Reverend John at 7:47 PM on May 7 [6 favorites]
http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
The Supply Graph there shows our west-facing panels / wind generators and the batteries are each pumping out 6GW, 10X our remaining nuclear plant hidden on the coast west of San Luis Obispo.
posted by torokunai at 7:48 PM on May 7 [6 favorites]
The Supply Graph there shows our west-facing panels / wind generators and the batteries are each pumping out 6GW, 10X our remaining nuclear plant hidden on the coast west of San Luis Obispo.
posted by torokunai at 7:48 PM on May 7 [6 favorites]
Reverend John, those are all fair and good questions.
I'm by no means a true expert, but I do know the following:
- As mentioned in the article, Li-ion batteries have gotten 80% cheaper over the past decade. They've also been getting more and more efficient, thanks to myriad small technological advances. So it's possible to store a lot more energy in today's batteries than yesterday's... and tomorrow's will store more power still.
- We hear a lot about the difficulties of finding enough lithium, but there's actual a huge amount of it on and under the earth. Many of the deposits have not been economical to get to... but as demand increases, the profitability of lithium extraction grows, and therefore new supplies become more accessible. There's even lithium in seawater, and if we needed to, and could do it efficiently, we could extract that.
- The materials in lithium batteries are definitely recyclable, but there aren't a huge number of companies doing it... yet. However, the efficiency of that process, and the number of players in that space, are growing all the time as well. Basically, everything about renewable energy is scaling up at a furious rate -- especially since Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act.
- There are other promising battery technologies gradually moving into the marketplace, like sodium-ion batteries and iron-air batteries. They each have different strengths and weaknesses. Those two are made with mostly extremely abundant, cheap materials, but don't have the energy density of Li-ion batteries. However, for grid-scale energy storage that can be located in a remote area where land is plentiful, it's fine if your batteries are twice as big.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:09 PM on May 7 [10 favorites]
I'm by no means a true expert, but I do know the following:
- As mentioned in the article, Li-ion batteries have gotten 80% cheaper over the past decade. They've also been getting more and more efficient, thanks to myriad small technological advances. So it's possible to store a lot more energy in today's batteries than yesterday's... and tomorrow's will store more power still.
- We hear a lot about the difficulties of finding enough lithium, but there's actual a huge amount of it on and under the earth. Many of the deposits have not been economical to get to... but as demand increases, the profitability of lithium extraction grows, and therefore new supplies become more accessible. There's even lithium in seawater, and if we needed to, and could do it efficiently, we could extract that.
- The materials in lithium batteries are definitely recyclable, but there aren't a huge number of companies doing it... yet. However, the efficiency of that process, and the number of players in that space, are growing all the time as well. Basically, everything about renewable energy is scaling up at a furious rate -- especially since Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act.
- There are other promising battery technologies gradually moving into the marketplace, like sodium-ion batteries and iron-air batteries. They each have different strengths and weaknesses. Those two are made with mostly extremely abundant, cheap materials, but don't have the energy density of Li-ion batteries. However, for grid-scale energy storage that can be located in a remote area where land is plentiful, it's fine if your batteries are twice as big.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:09 PM on May 7 [10 favorites]
Is there enough lithium and other resources to build sufficient quantities of utility-scale batteries globally to abate climate change?
Yes. As I mentioned above, we could deploy more-than-sufficient quantities of utility-scale batteries without using any lithium at all. The reason we're not already doing that is that lithium is still cheap enough that we don't have to.
Serious pressure on lithium supplies will come from using lithium in EVs, not in fixed utility-scale storage.
What is the lifetime of utility-scale batteries?
Depends on the chemistry. Also depends on the rate at which buildout is happening, because in general, batteries don't suddenly reach end-of-life; rather, their performance degrades over time until replacing them becomes more economical than leaving them in service.
In fact, because energy density matters so much less for fixed utility-scale storage than for automotive applications, almost all vehicle batteries could potentially have at least ten extra years of service wrung out of them as fixed storage after their performance has degraded to the point of no longer being suitable to power the cars they're in. That's just taking them out of the cars, housing them in something else and wiring them up. No recycling or even remanufacturing required.
Are the materials in these batteries recyclable
Yes. The concentration of every element inside a pile of old batteries is way, way higher than that in any ore from which those elements were originally extracted.
will we continuously have to extract resources for new ones?
We will, until per-capita allocation of all these things and human population growth both top out.
Is that sustainable?
No form of endless growth is sustainable. That said, the amount of raw materials extraction involved in getting global energy systems as close to 100% electrified as possible is so much smaller than the amount involved in continuing to rely on fossil fuels as to make electrification the no-brainer obvious choice on sustainability grounds.
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 PM on May 7 [19 favorites]
Yes. As I mentioned above, we could deploy more-than-sufficient quantities of utility-scale batteries without using any lithium at all. The reason we're not already doing that is that lithium is still cheap enough that we don't have to.
Serious pressure on lithium supplies will come from using lithium in EVs, not in fixed utility-scale storage.
What is the lifetime of utility-scale batteries?
Depends on the chemistry. Also depends on the rate at which buildout is happening, because in general, batteries don't suddenly reach end-of-life; rather, their performance degrades over time until replacing them becomes more economical than leaving them in service.
In fact, because energy density matters so much less for fixed utility-scale storage than for automotive applications, almost all vehicle batteries could potentially have at least ten extra years of service wrung out of them as fixed storage after their performance has degraded to the point of no longer being suitable to power the cars they're in. That's just taking them out of the cars, housing them in something else and wiring them up. No recycling or even remanufacturing required.
Are the materials in these batteries recyclable
Yes. The concentration of every element inside a pile of old batteries is way, way higher than that in any ore from which those elements were originally extracted.
will we continuously have to extract resources for new ones?
We will, until per-capita allocation of all these things and human population growth both top out.
Is that sustainable?
No form of endless growth is sustainable. That said, the amount of raw materials extraction involved in getting global energy systems as close to 100% electrified as possible is so much smaller than the amount involved in continuing to rely on fossil fuels as to make electrification the no-brainer obvious choice on sustainability grounds.
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 PM on May 7 [19 favorites]
I work in this field, so a few notes: the ideal spot for utility scale storage is right where transmission lines meet, or where a transmission line ends and splits into the distribution system.
That means in a transformer substation. Close to a lot of users, but in an industrial zoned area so the visual impact is minimal. In fact, some sites my company operates were installed as a way of avoiding the need to upgrade transmission and distribution infrastructure and the visual impact that came with those. (I could rant about this for hours: if you want the lights on, you have to accept some kind of externality to deal with.) Added bonus: apart from aspiring copper thieves, nobody else wants to waltz into those spaces.
Re: lithium: Utility scale storage companies buy up castoff lithium batteries from electric cars. Cars have to be tight about space and weight. We don't. That's why everyone's doing lithium. There are other options (iron-sulfur, even lead acid) Also, since we get them in bulk, we can and do force the kind of economies of scale the get these batteries reconditioned and their capacity restored.
posted by ocschwar at 8:18 PM on May 7 [24 favorites]
That means in a transformer substation. Close to a lot of users, but in an industrial zoned area so the visual impact is minimal. In fact, some sites my company operates were installed as a way of avoiding the need to upgrade transmission and distribution infrastructure and the visual impact that came with those. (I could rant about this for hours: if you want the lights on, you have to accept some kind of externality to deal with.) Added bonus: apart from aspiring copper thieves, nobody else wants to waltz into those spaces.
Re: lithium: Utility scale storage companies buy up castoff lithium batteries from electric cars. Cars have to be tight about space and weight. We don't. That's why everyone's doing lithium. There are other options (iron-sulfur, even lead acid) Also, since we get them in bulk, we can and do force the kind of economies of scale the get these batteries reconditioned and their capacity restored.
posted by ocschwar at 8:18 PM on May 7 [24 favorites]
Yeah, there are plenty of battery choices out there that aren't lithium that might be safer at scale? When lithium decides it's going to act up and release all its energy too quickly, that's how you get nasty fires. Have we engineered that propensity out of that particular form of battery? Seems like you could build a warehouse full of lead acid batteries for a lot cheaper. Although those require a different kind of maintenance and come with different hazards.
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on May 7
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on May 7
placing batteries near where people are using power (which needs to happen because of transmission limitations) means putting batteries near people.
Opposition to doing this is largely due to novelty. People seem to have had very little trouble with the idea of putting themselves near the gas tanks in their cars or the storage tanks under the gas stations for the last hundred years, and the same will soon be true of lithium batteries.
In fact the lithium batteries with the worst per-capita injury record are the kind that almost everybody now carries around in their pockets.
The safety issue is genuine but massively overblown by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 PM on May 7 [20 favorites]
Opposition to doing this is largely due to novelty. People seem to have had very little trouble with the idea of putting themselves near the gas tanks in their cars or the storage tanks under the gas stations for the last hundred years, and the same will soon be true of lithium batteries.
In fact the lithium batteries with the worst per-capita injury record are the kind that almost everybody now carries around in their pockets.
The safety issue is genuine but massively overblown by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 PM on May 7 [20 favorites]
Seems like you could build a warehouse full of lead acid batteries for a lot cheaper
A warehouse full of lead acid batteries configured to deliver power at utility scale is completely capable of nasty.
posted by flabdablet at 8:30 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
A warehouse full of lead acid batteries configured to deliver power at utility scale is completely capable of nasty.
posted by flabdablet at 8:30 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
Batteries are expensive to make. I've always been intrigued by this version of a solar battery: weighted train cars go up a hill powered by solar, and simply sent back down to generate electricity. Obviously this would work best in rural areas, but plenty of places in the U.S. are indeed rural.
posted by zardoz at 8:52 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 8:52 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
Back in the aughts I thought if I was restarting my career I'd have found a company that was working on flow batteries for grid scale storage. Seemed like a can't miss approach! In fact, I'd have worked for a bunch of failing companies. I still think it's a promising strategy but they haven't been able to leapfrog past the Li cost improvements..
One interesting idea is that "next gen" geothermal can actually ramp up energy production at night and store it during the day, IIUC by letting the heat and pressure build up. It'd make it an excellent countercyclical source. Although take that for what it's worth, given my flow battery track record.
... despite the really well funded forces fighting hard to keep Texas from moving to renewables.
Red states are building decent amount of renewables because permitting is much easier there. A lot of the first year investments in funds coming out of the IRA (the 2022 climate bill) has gone to red states, because green energy is profitable and subsidized and they just move faster. The profit motive is moving things even when politicians do not. In California, we have the political will but it takes forever to allow people to build anything at all.
There's a lot of discussion in the climate community about trying to get out of a mindset that has historically been about blocking construction. Since construction used to be fossil fuel plants. The argument is that (1) green energy is more viable economically so that's what will be built and (2) to beat global warming we need to move very quickly to replace old power sources. Whether you buy that depends on optimism levels.
posted by mark k at 9:12 PM on May 7 [8 favorites]
One interesting idea is that "next gen" geothermal can actually ramp up energy production at night and store it during the day, IIUC by letting the heat and pressure build up. It'd make it an excellent countercyclical source. Although take that for what it's worth, given my flow battery track record.
... despite the really well funded forces fighting hard to keep Texas from moving to renewables.
Red states are building decent amount of renewables because permitting is much easier there. A lot of the first year investments in funds coming out of the IRA (the 2022 climate bill) has gone to red states, because green energy is profitable and subsidized and they just move faster. The profit motive is moving things even when politicians do not. In California, we have the political will but it takes forever to allow people to build anything at all.
There's a lot of discussion in the climate community about trying to get out of a mindset that has historically been about blocking construction. Since construction used to be fossil fuel plants. The argument is that (1) green energy is more viable economically so that's what will be built and (2) to beat global warming we need to move very quickly to replace old power sources. Whether you buy that depends on optimism levels.
posted by mark k at 9:12 PM on May 7 [8 favorites]
and (2) to beat global warming we need to move very quickly to replace old power sources.
If we want to beat global warming/climate change, our best tack would be to have gone to carbon zero twenty years ago, and right now there is currently no way we are going to be below 3 degrees and I plan on watching the planet become inhabitable as I move into old age. Everything hinges on technology we haven't developed yet and a willingness to disrupt the carbon economy to make a rapid shift that I haven't seen displayed anywhere. Everyone wants things to happen without their current lifestyle being disrupted, but hey! Isn't progress all about "disruption"? Best get with the times and accept maybe 30% of your current quality of life for a while to save the planet. But nobody will do that, so... tick tick tick tick
posted by hippybear at 9:18 PM on May 7 [2 favorites]
If we want to beat global warming/climate change, our best tack would be to have gone to carbon zero twenty years ago, and right now there is currently no way we are going to be below 3 degrees and I plan on watching the planet become inhabitable as I move into old age. Everything hinges on technology we haven't developed yet and a willingness to disrupt the carbon economy to make a rapid shift that I haven't seen displayed anywhere. Everyone wants things to happen without their current lifestyle being disrupted, but hey! Isn't progress all about "disruption"? Best get with the times and accept maybe 30% of your current quality of life for a while to save the planet. But nobody will do that, so... tick tick tick tick
posted by hippybear at 9:18 PM on May 7 [2 favorites]
The train car thing looks intriguing because that's what it was primarily designed to do, but seriously, pretty much any gravity battery that isn't using water as the movable mass is guaranteed to be an investor-fleecing scam. Water is way easier to move and to store than an equivalent mass of train cars, or huge concrete blocks, or sand or whatever.
Any time you're looking into a gravity battery, just imagine replacing whatever masses it's designed around with tanks of water. Sure, concrete or steel or whatever is denser than water by a factor of maybe four, which would mean that the water tanks would need to be bigger, so scale the proposed plant size up accordingly.
Now consider the cost effect of replacing whatever complicated scheme is proposed for shifting the weights around with a pipeline and a pump.
Now consider the total size of the masses involved in the proposed system, and compare that to the volume of any existing pumped hydro scheme's reservoirs. That will give you a rough idea of the number of such schemes that you'd need to build in order to match a typical pumped hydro project's capacity. Typical scaling factors will work out in the hundreds to tens of thousands.
But, but, but, the gravity battery boosters will always say, we can put these things in places where the geography doesn't let you build a pumped hydro plant. To which the response is pretty much always yeah, you could, but you could build a tank-based pumped hydro scheme with the same storage and power capacity as what you're proposing, in the same location, at lower cost.
And the simple fact is that no gravity battery scheme, pumped hydro included, can come anywhere close to the mass or volumetric energy densities achievable from even the shittiest electrochemical battery.
There is one genuine use case I'm aware of that essentially amounts to a workable non-hydro gravity battery, and that's electrifying the timber trucks used to harvest mountain timber in Canada. That's because the gravitational potential energy being tapped into already exists by virtue of the timber growing at a higher altitude than the sawmills; it doesn't need to be created by lifting anything. Load a truck with cut timber up in the mountains, and regenerative braking on the way back down will put more energy into the battery than it took to get the empty truck up there in the first place.
our best tack would be to have gone to carbon zero twenty years ago
No question. But as they say about trees, the best time to plant one is twenty years ago and the second best is right now.
posted by flabdablet at 9:21 PM on May 7 [23 favorites]
Any time you're looking into a gravity battery, just imagine replacing whatever masses it's designed around with tanks of water. Sure, concrete or steel or whatever is denser than water by a factor of maybe four, which would mean that the water tanks would need to be bigger, so scale the proposed plant size up accordingly.
Now consider the cost effect of replacing whatever complicated scheme is proposed for shifting the weights around with a pipeline and a pump.
Now consider the total size of the masses involved in the proposed system, and compare that to the volume of any existing pumped hydro scheme's reservoirs. That will give you a rough idea of the number of such schemes that you'd need to build in order to match a typical pumped hydro project's capacity. Typical scaling factors will work out in the hundreds to tens of thousands.
But, but, but, the gravity battery boosters will always say, we can put these things in places where the geography doesn't let you build a pumped hydro plant. To which the response is pretty much always yeah, you could, but you could build a tank-based pumped hydro scheme with the same storage and power capacity as what you're proposing, in the same location, at lower cost.
And the simple fact is that no gravity battery scheme, pumped hydro included, can come anywhere close to the mass or volumetric energy densities achievable from even the shittiest electrochemical battery.
There is one genuine use case I'm aware of that essentially amounts to a workable non-hydro gravity battery, and that's electrifying the timber trucks used to harvest mountain timber in Canada. That's because the gravitational potential energy being tapped into already exists by virtue of the timber growing at a higher altitude than the sawmills; it doesn't need to be created by lifting anything. Load a truck with cut timber up in the mountains, and regenerative braking on the way back down will put more energy into the battery than it took to get the empty truck up there in the first place.
our best tack would be to have gone to carbon zero twenty years ago
No question. But as they say about trees, the best time to plant one is twenty years ago and the second best is right now.
posted by flabdablet at 9:21 PM on May 7 [23 favorites]
The thing is, most municipalities are fed by water tanks of various sorts already. We already know how to do gravity fed water systems because we do them for our showers and our toilets.
posted by hippybear at 9:23 PM on May 7 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 9:23 PM on May 7 [2 favorites]
I was actually just looking at the numbers and the total GWH of EV batteries is expected to be like 20x the GWH of stationary storage by 2030. There is a goo opportunity but are a lot of challenges to V2G
One big catch is that stationary batteries are expected to charge a discharge almost daily. Vehicles OEMS are rightful concern about adding extra strain on the batteries. VW in Europe limits its to 400 hours or 10,000 KWH in a vehicles lifetime. With this kind of limitations use v2g for Grid Emergencies which can pay $2/KWH in California or up to $7/KWH in Texas makes a lot of sense, but I don't want to wear out by EV battery for $0.25/KWH.
I am very excited for pumped storage too. My local water authority is looking at adding a big project. Of course the best thing to do is just to shift more of your more use to noon if possible. I set my dishwasher with a delay when I leave the house in the morning, I also alternately charge my car or my bike mid-day, whatever I am not using that day.
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:24 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
One big catch is that stationary batteries are expected to charge a discharge almost daily. Vehicles OEMS are rightful concern about adding extra strain on the batteries. VW in Europe limits its to 400 hours or 10,000 KWH in a vehicles lifetime. With this kind of limitations use v2g for Grid Emergencies which can pay $2/KWH in California or up to $7/KWH in Texas makes a lot of sense, but I don't want to wear out by EV battery for $0.25/KWH.
I am very excited for pumped storage too. My local water authority is looking at adding a big project. Of course the best thing to do is just to shift more of your more use to noon if possible. I set my dishwasher with a delay when I leave the house in the morning, I also alternately charge my car or my bike mid-day, whatever I am not using that day.
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:24 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
the total GWH of EV batteries is expected to be like 20x the GWH of stationary storage by 2030
and that differential is only going to grow until the entire fleet is electrified, which is going to take a lot longer than six years. Which means that the amount of extra capacity being demanded of vehicle batteries in any V2G scheme proposed as an alternative to more fixed storage is going to see a corresponding drop. By the time V2G at scale is a thing, the total available capacity of vehicle batteries is going to be ridiculously huge, and extra wear on vehicle batteries due to V2G use is going to be a rounding error compared to the effects of driving style and/or fast charging.
In fact if it becomes normal for vehicle batteries to spend less of their service life at 100% state of charge and less of their charging time at high rates because slow-charge grid-interactive parking is everywhere, you might see that extend rather than degrade their service life.
posted by flabdablet at 9:35 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
and that differential is only going to grow until the entire fleet is electrified, which is going to take a lot longer than six years. Which means that the amount of extra capacity being demanded of vehicle batteries in any V2G scheme proposed as an alternative to more fixed storage is going to see a corresponding drop. By the time V2G at scale is a thing, the total available capacity of vehicle batteries is going to be ridiculously huge, and extra wear on vehicle batteries due to V2G use is going to be a rounding error compared to the effects of driving style and/or fast charging.
In fact if it becomes normal for vehicle batteries to spend less of their service life at 100% state of charge and less of their charging time at high rates because slow-charge grid-interactive parking is everywhere, you might see that extend rather than degrade their service life.
posted by flabdablet at 9:35 PM on May 7 [4 favorites]
the best thing to do is just to shift more of your more use to noon if possible. I set my dishwasher with a delay when I leave the house in the morning, I also alternately charge my car or my bike mid-day, whatever I am not using that day
I have my hot water service set to take advantage of the daily solar price dip and it's saving me heaps.
posted by flabdablet at 9:37 PM on May 7 [6 favorites]
I have my hot water service set to take advantage of the daily solar price dip and it's saving me heaps.
posted by flabdablet at 9:37 PM on May 7 [6 favorites]
Everything hinges on technology we haven't developed yet
This is a fossil fuel industry talking point that we'd all be well advised to eject from our own thinking. We have the technologies required, it's just that we haven't deployed enough of them. Even if energy conversion and storage tech stopped improving today, which it won't, deploying enough of it to cut humanity's greenhouse gas emissions to zero much faster than we have been would remain both feasible and profitable.
The main thing slowing us down is the existing fossil fuel industrial complex's resistance to seeing those profits shifted away from them. Which is so fucking stupid. These are global organizations that already have vast and far-reaching networks of established business relationships in energy markets, and watching them need to get dragged kicking and screaming toward the new opportunities in those markets is just depressing.
As in so many things, a lot of it comes down to the wealth and political clout of corrupt actors. The Saudis want to keep cosplaying Ozymandias, and Putin wants to keep his stranglehold on Europe's energy, and the complacent ultra-wealthy empty suits making policy decisions at the top of Big Fuel just want their own passive incomes maintained and the passiver the better.
And yet renewable energy keeps winning market arguments everywhere despite these headwinds, which is good to see.
posted by flabdablet at 10:04 PM on May 7 [21 favorites]
This is a fossil fuel industry talking point that we'd all be well advised to eject from our own thinking. We have the technologies required, it's just that we haven't deployed enough of them. Even if energy conversion and storage tech stopped improving today, which it won't, deploying enough of it to cut humanity's greenhouse gas emissions to zero much faster than we have been would remain both feasible and profitable.
The main thing slowing us down is the existing fossil fuel industrial complex's resistance to seeing those profits shifted away from them. Which is so fucking stupid. These are global organizations that already have vast and far-reaching networks of established business relationships in energy markets, and watching them need to get dragged kicking and screaming toward the new opportunities in those markets is just depressing.
As in so many things, a lot of it comes down to the wealth and political clout of corrupt actors. The Saudis want to keep cosplaying Ozymandias, and Putin wants to keep his stranglehold on Europe's energy, and the complacent ultra-wealthy empty suits making policy decisions at the top of Big Fuel just want their own passive incomes maintained and the passiver the better.
And yet renewable energy keeps winning market arguments everywhere despite these headwinds, which is good to see.
posted by flabdablet at 10:04 PM on May 7 [21 favorites]
The new episode of Ezra Klein's podcast gets into the questions of 'can we build all the solar power we need' with guest Hannah Ritchie. The answer is, as others have said in this thread, is an emphatic yes.
So what we’re looking for are solutions that are much, much, much better than fossil fuels. And the reality is that we have them.And some really fun stuff on the land-use question for solar:
Estimates for the amount of material requirements for mining is something like tens of millions of tons per year at an upper limit. Compare that to how much fossil fuels we’re currently extracting: That’s 15 billion tons every single year.
We’re talking about mining orders of magnitude lower amount of materials compared to fossil fuels. It’s vastly, vastly different. And these are very, very vastly different systems. With fossil fuels, you extract them, you burn them. You extract them, you burn them. You get nothing back in return.
What’s going to happen with the energy transition is that we’re going to need this massive ramp up period where we’re building stuff. Right? So we are extracting a lot of materials out of the Earth. But you can reuse that stuff at the end of its life.
And I think we will also see massive leaps in terms of recycling or refurbishing these materials back into the system later. So we will have this big ramp up period, but we’ll move to a much more circular and sustainable system, which is vastly different from a fossil fuel system where it’s just extract, extract, extract.
So there are some studies that say if you take account of the mining, and the transport, and the full life cycle, actually sometimes the land footprint of coal is higher than it is for solar. But the fact that you get for some of these estimates is touch and go would suggest that the land footprint of solar is not massively bigger than it is for coal. The question of land use for these technologies is a perfectly valid one. But I think it’s important to highlight that these are choices.posted by kaibutsu at 10:37 PM on May 7 [13 favorites]
And what I often think is a bit suspicious or people don’t take account of is that there are current land uses that we have that we don’t really question. But as soon as solar and wind come along, the guardrails go up and we shouldn’t build this stuff.
To give context, if you were to put solar panels in the U.S. on all of the land that’s currently used to produce biofuels, you could power the U.S. three times over. You would be able to easily decarbonize the U.S. and meet its energy requirements. That land use is a choice, and you can make a different choice.
Because of this, the nuclear shills have been working extra hard lately.
It's a game of hot potatos as the the clock runs down on a big bag of industrial power assets.
The world will have more batteries and more seasonal intermittent renewable energy. Commodification of energy demand response is where money will flow. Optimistically I expect a new goldrush of enterprises attempting to capitalise on intermittent renewable power. Including investments to monetise direct carbon capture powered by intermittent renewables.
Now that renewables are muscling out other energy sources the economies of scale will only increase leading to the emergence of new industries.
posted by neonamber at 12:00 AM on May 8 [5 favorites]
It's a game of hot potatos as the the clock runs down on a big bag of industrial power assets.
The world will have more batteries and more seasonal intermittent renewable energy. Commodification of energy demand response is where money will flow. Optimistically I expect a new goldrush of enterprises attempting to capitalise on intermittent renewable power. Including investments to monetise direct carbon capture powered by intermittent renewables.
Now that renewables are muscling out other energy sources the economies of scale will only increase leading to the emergence of new industries.
posted by neonamber at 12:00 AM on May 8 [5 favorites]
the nuclear shills have been working extra hard lately
aided and abetted by the usual mendacious fuckwits.
posted by flabdablet at 12:19 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
aided and abetted by the usual mendacious fuckwits.
posted by flabdablet at 12:19 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
Including investments to monetise direct carbon capture powered by intermittent renewables.
I'm trying to think this through. To use the variable RE (VRE) you would want to take it when supply is high and demand low, so it doesn't cost you much, but without storage in the mix that means you are running your FF(+CCS) plant when prices & demand are low. So are you basically relying on a really high carbon price to make money? I am genuinely interested in what you are thinking.
posted by biffa at 2:44 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
I'm trying to think this through. To use the variable RE (VRE) you would want to take it when supply is high and demand low, so it doesn't cost you much, but without storage in the mix that means you are running your FF(+CCS) plant when prices & demand are low. So are you basically relying on a really high carbon price to make money? I am genuinely interested in what you are thinking.
posted by biffa at 2:44 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
I am hoping that the growing renewables economy of scale allows folk like Terraform Industries to succeed in making carbon capture economically viable and thus scalable.
posted by neonamber at 3:42 AM on May 8
posted by neonamber at 3:42 AM on May 8
Rosie Barnes responds to our ambulatory potato:
Four Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Dumb Idea for Australia (Engineering with Rosie, YouTube/Piped/Invidious, 11m7s)
posted by flabdablet at 4:19 AM on May 8
Four Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Dumb Idea for Australia (Engineering with Rosie, YouTube/Piped/Invidious, 11m7s)
posted by flabdablet at 4:19 AM on May 8
Australia, like many places, gets about 2 MW/h of insolation per square meter per year. The power is just lying on the ground. You only have to pick it up. It's literally insane to build any kind of power generation other than solar at this point if you have dirt, rock or sand underfoot on the same continent as your load. And if you have grass or crops you probably should still build solar, just spaced a bit further apart.
Anyone pushing nuclear at this point is just in it for the graft.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:01 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
Anyone pushing nuclear at this point is just in it for the graft.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:01 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
Opposition to doing this is largely due to novelty.
Get ready for “Solar powered batteries: the ticking time bomb in your back yard—next on Fox News.”
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:22 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
Get ready for “Solar powered batteries: the ticking time bomb in your back yard—next on Fox News.”
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:22 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
The timer attachments are expensive, though. I think most people will go for the cellphone detonators. Neighbours pissing you off? BLOW THEM THE FUCK UP. Pretty sure that's a compelling advertiser pitch for Fox.
posted by flabdablet at 5:36 AM on May 8
posted by flabdablet at 5:36 AM on May 8
There are discussions of renewable energy on David Roberts' Volts podcast. He interviews a variety of people with expertise in the technology, but also the economics and politics of renewables. Fascinating stuff (or at least I find it fascinating).
posted by Surely This at 5:40 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Surely This at 5:40 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
Who'd have thought that clustering population where the sun sets over the ocean would be a problem?
One of the problems with using EVs as distributed storage is that it relies on have a strong local distribution system. Distribution is typically heavily regulated, and designed to be just good enough to get power to consumers. Using local DX to feed back into the grid is something that local power companies will want paid for, and since they own they wires, they control the game.
posted by scruss at 7:18 AM on May 8
One of the problems with using EVs as distributed storage is that it relies on have a strong local distribution system. Distribution is typically heavily regulated, and designed to be just good enough to get power to consumers. Using local DX to feed back into the grid is something that local power companies will want paid for, and since they own they wires, they control the game.
posted by scruss at 7:18 AM on May 8
Opposition to doing this is largely due to novelty. People seem to have had very little trouble with the idea of putting themselves near the gas tanks in their cars or the storage tanks under the gas stations for the last hundred years, and the same will soon be true of lithium batteries.
In fact the lithium batteries with the worst per-capita injury record are the kind that almost everybody now carries around in their pockets.
The safety issue is genuine but massively overblown by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
I completely agree. But in the US, where almost all energy siting permits (county, state, and federal) include public comment and input both directly to the permitting process and also via elected officials, community opposition is a huge obstacle and is growing worse, not better. Personally I think the safety concerns are about 50 percent genuine worries and 50 percent just a cynical way to gin up opposition, but regardless of the actual factual/scientific answers, the opposition it creates is blocking battery storage implementation. More and more counties and municipalities are imposing either full moratoriums on building battery storage, or simply much more restrictive siting ordinances, for example.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:38 AM on May 8
In fact the lithium batteries with the worst per-capita injury record are the kind that almost everybody now carries around in their pockets.
The safety issue is genuine but massively overblown by fossil fuel industry propaganda.
I completely agree. But in the US, where almost all energy siting permits (county, state, and federal) include public comment and input both directly to the permitting process and also via elected officials, community opposition is a huge obstacle and is growing worse, not better. Personally I think the safety concerns are about 50 percent genuine worries and 50 percent just a cynical way to gin up opposition, but regardless of the actual factual/scientific answers, the opposition it creates is blocking battery storage implementation. More and more counties and municipalities are imposing either full moratoriums on building battery storage, or simply much more restrictive siting ordinances, for example.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:38 AM on May 8
I completely agree. But in the US, where almost all energy siting permits (county, state, and federal) include public comment and input both directly to the permitting process and also via elected officials, community opposition is a huge obstacle and is growing worse, not better.
And we have companies using "community opposition" is a weapon against their competition on a regular basis. The people submitting comment are the ones with a light enough schedule to show up. Retired and semiretired people with Fox rainworms. If you have a job and kids, showing up is difficult.
FWIW, utility batteries are safer than any other batteries. They're in container-sized boxes on concrete pads (because that's how they're transported and delivered), with ventilation slats on all sides. They come with self-contained emergency cooling systems to prevent thermal runaways (hence the slats). The visual impact is just new hardware in the neighborhood substation. If the Swiss and Austrians can figure out the esthetics, so can the rest of us. The real impact is what happens when the cooling system kicks into gear. Which does sound like a Mongolian biker gang offering battle. But all this is safer than the battery in your Tesla power wall (run away, really. Buy a cybertruck before you buy a power wall), the battery in your car, the battery on your bike, or even the battery in your phone.
posted by ocschwar at 9:54 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
Can a cybertruck still interact via the charge port after it's bricked its drivetrain from being driven through a puddle? Could be cost-competitive with the powerwall if so.
posted by flabdablet at 9:57 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 9:57 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
If I was going to buy a battery backup for my house, I'd want it to be mounted on wheels so I could push it out of my house in case of a thermal problem.
Tesla does make those battery packs, and they can transport you around town.
posted by ocschwar at 10:00 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
Tesla does make those battery packs, and they can transport you around town.
posted by ocschwar at 10:00 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
The best use of a Cybertruck might be using it to power a garage converted into a Battlezone themed vintage arcade.
posted by eckeric at 10:57 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
posted by eckeric at 10:57 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
the nuclear shills have been working extra hard lately
Yes, and that's exactly why the line from the NYT article about the combined output of California's battery storage being "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" caught my eye.
I quoted that on social media when posting this article there, and as I expected, it brought the nuke dudes (they're always dudes) out of the woodwork, to wield their Facts and Logic.
But when wind, solar, and batteries have fallen in price by 80%(!!!!) in 15 years, nuclear shills are finding that fewer and fewer people are interested in their pitch.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:25 PM on May 8 [2 favorites]
Yes, and that's exactly why the line from the NYT article about the combined output of California's battery storage being "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" caught my eye.
I quoted that on social media when posting this article there, and as I expected, it brought the nuke dudes (they're always dudes) out of the woodwork, to wield their Facts and Logic.
But when wind, solar, and batteries have fallen in price by 80%(!!!!) in 15 years, nuclear shills are finding that fewer and fewer people are interested in their pitch.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:25 PM on May 8 [2 favorites]
Reminds me of this The Onion article from ten years ago:
Scientists Politely Remind World That Clean Energy Technology Ready To Go Whenever
We could have had this decades ago. The technology has improved, sure, but it was always mostly a matter of economics, scaling, and subsidies to get the price down. We could have had this decades ago.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:10 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
Scientists Politely Remind World That Clean Energy Technology Ready To Go Whenever
We could have had this decades ago. The technology has improved, sure, but it was always mostly a matter of economics, scaling, and subsidies to get the price down. We could have had this decades ago.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:10 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
The Texas grid operator ercot has a web page graphing the solar and wind output in their system. One thing I've noticed is that the wind production often picks up around the time the solar is tapering off, with substantial output overnight. Maybe battery time-shifting could help fill in the gaps.
posted by Surely This at 3:46 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
posted by Surely This at 3:46 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
→
The sun heats the ground all day, but the ground keeps warming the air after the sun's intensity has dropped. So that warmer, expanded air gotta go somewhere ...
posted by scruss at 1:36 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
wind production often picks up around the time the solar is tapering off
The sun heats the ground all day, but the ground keeps warming the air after the sun's intensity has dropped. So that warmer, expanded air gotta go somewhere ...
posted by scruss at 1:36 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
FWIW, utility batteries are safer than any other batteries. They're in container-sized boxes on concrete pads (because that's how they're transported and delivered), with ventilation slats on all sides. They come with self-contained emergency cooling systems to prevent thermal runaways (hence the slats). The visual impact is just new hardware in the neighborhood substation. If the Swiss and Austrians can figure out the esthetics, so can the rest of us. The real impact is what happens when the cooling system kicks into gear. Which does sound like a Mongolian biker gang offering battle. But all this is safer than the battery in your Tesla power wall (run away, really. Buy a cybertruck before you buy a power wall), the battery in your car, the battery on your bike, or even the battery in your phone.The safety problem with a large utility battery farm is just how many chances there are for an individual battery to fail. I attended an industry presentation last year where the presenter had checked the records and estimated that 5% of large scale battery installations had already had a serious fault, and 10% of those serious faults had included a lithium gas explosion.
I'm sure the farms will be less likely to explode in the future as people build more of them and thermal runaway protection becomes more effective, but currently I wouldn't live next to one for the same reason I wouldn't live next to a large chemical plant.
posted by zymil at 4:41 PM on May 9
I attended an industry presentation last year where the presenter had checked the records and estimated that 5% of large scale battery installations had already had a serious fault, and 10% of those serious faults had included a lithium gas explosion.
Maybe they mean something more contained, but I really doubt 0.5% of battery storage facilities have had full-scale explosions. It would be a lot more in the news, for one, and it would also be a near-total impediment to permitting if the risk was that high.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:47 PM on May 9
Maybe they mean something more contained, but I really doubt 0.5% of battery storage facilities have had full-scale explosions. It would be a lot more in the news, for one, and it would also be a near-total impediment to permitting if the risk was that high.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:47 PM on May 9
but currently I wouldn't live next to one for the same reason I wouldn't live next to a large chemical plant.
Well, that's a bit silly in my understanding.
I've been around large chemical plants and they are full of fumes and noxious things all the time. Living next to one would be similar to living near a petroleum refinery, full of odors you probably wouldn't want. I've driven past places that are major fertilizer distribution depots, and they really smell bad for miles all around them.
Living near one of these battery depots would be nothing like that. It would carry some risk from fire, as you admit likely lessening as time goes on and the technology develops, but the chances against one of these actually burning down, let alone releasing something in a direction that could threaten you during the time of the fire, is pretty minimal. I have no math, but it's probably about the same that your house might burn down if you live in the exurban zone where fires run and houses dwell amongst trees.
If lithium ion batteries put out harmful fumes at the rate that chemical plants do, you'd never carry one in your pocket.
posted by hippybear at 5:56 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]
Well, that's a bit silly in my understanding.
I've been around large chemical plants and they are full of fumes and noxious things all the time. Living next to one would be similar to living near a petroleum refinery, full of odors you probably wouldn't want. I've driven past places that are major fertilizer distribution depots, and they really smell bad for miles all around them.
Living near one of these battery depots would be nothing like that. It would carry some risk from fire, as you admit likely lessening as time goes on and the technology develops, but the chances against one of these actually burning down, let alone releasing something in a direction that could threaten you during the time of the fire, is pretty minimal. I have no math, but it's probably about the same that your house might burn down if you live in the exurban zone where fires run and houses dwell amongst trees.
If lithium ion batteries put out harmful fumes at the rate that chemical plants do, you'd never carry one in your pocket.
posted by hippybear at 5:56 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]
The safety problem with a large utility battery farm is just how many chances there are for an individual battery to fail. I attended an industry presentation last year where the presenter had checked the records and estimated that 5% of large scale battery installations had already had a serious fault, and 10% of those serious faults had included a lithium gas explosion.
Yes, when you scale up thousands of lithium cells in one facility, the probability of a thermal runaway becomes meaningless. The frequency becomes to thing to worry about, and you have to plan for these events.
1. you have to figure out how to prevent a thermal runaway in one cell from triggering the same in nearby cells.
2. you have to have a full response plan, starting with emergency cooling, then potentially with fire suppression, and you have to make sure the nearby fire department knows what to do.
Most importantly
3. you have to make sure there is no conventional fuel near the cells ready to ignite. A lithium gas explosion, as you call it, releases a lot of heat. But just heat. If there's nothing to ignite, the heat dissipates, and now you just have to figure out the environmental remediation and just how much money you lost. And that's the thing with battery facilities. These events can release a lot of heat, but if the heat doesn't translate to embers rising in the hot air and landing on your property, then no, you don't really have much to worry about.
posted by ocschwar at 11:46 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]
Yes, when you scale up thousands of lithium cells in one facility, the probability of a thermal runaway becomes meaningless. The frequency becomes to thing to worry about, and you have to plan for these events.
1. you have to figure out how to prevent a thermal runaway in one cell from triggering the same in nearby cells.
2. you have to have a full response plan, starting with emergency cooling, then potentially with fire suppression, and you have to make sure the nearby fire department knows what to do.
Most importantly
3. you have to make sure there is no conventional fuel near the cells ready to ignite. A lithium gas explosion, as you call it, releases a lot of heat. But just heat. If there's nothing to ignite, the heat dissipates, and now you just have to figure out the environmental remediation and just how much money you lost. And that's the thing with battery facilities. These events can release a lot of heat, but if the heat doesn't translate to embers rising in the hot air and landing on your property, then no, you don't really have much to worry about.
posted by ocschwar at 11:46 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]
IMO, the question of whether the US can effect a timely transition to renewables isn't whether it's technologically or economically viable, it's political. The rapid drop in cost is driven by massive scaling up in China (and I do mean massive - in 2023 they added more photovoltaic energy than the US did in its entire history) so the question to answer is whether the US is willing to take advantage and import it, or will it put up protectionist barriers to try and (belatedly) develop its own industry.
posted by ndr at 3:41 PM on May 11 [1 favorite]
posted by ndr at 3:41 PM on May 11 [1 favorite]
The Lunatic Party is all about the barriers; the Complacent Party, less so.
posted by flabdablet at 5:55 PM on May 11
posted by flabdablet at 5:55 PM on May 11
so the question to answer is whether the US is willing to take advantage and import it, or will it put up protectionist barriers to try and (belatedly) develop its own industry
The answer to that will almost certainly be "both." But the real barriers to building out renewables in the US currently are transmission capacity and interconnection bottlenecks, followed by permitting and siting delays and stoppages. These aren't technological barriers; like you say, it's political at heart. Either the impediments get removed and we scale up the build-out, or we don't and things move slowly.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:15 PM on May 11 [1 favorite]
The answer to that will almost certainly be "both." But the real barriers to building out renewables in the US currently are transmission capacity and interconnection bottlenecks, followed by permitting and siting delays and stoppages. These aren't technological barriers; like you say, it's political at heart. Either the impediments get removed and we scale up the build-out, or we don't and things move slowly.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:15 PM on May 11 [1 favorite]
In somewhat related news, Biden is going to raise the tariff on Chinese EVs to 100%. I think they'll still be competitive even at that price point, but it doesn't bode well for the future. A bit annoying that the same people who pooh-poohed the Green New Deal are now scrambling to catch the train after it has already left the station.
posted by ndr at 12:47 PM on May 12
posted by ndr at 12:47 PM on May 12
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