Solar/wind + battery storage is cheaper than natural gas and a hell of a lot cleaner. It makes no sense to go for a more expensive, dirtier form of energy.
I’m excited about salt batteries taking up the slack on a lot of this infrastructure in the future.
Iron-air rust batteries are also pretty intersting. Just iron, air and water to store power by exploiting how rust forms.
anything that’s outside of rare metals batt technology either lithium or sodium based right now is basically off of the table, except for silver zinc iirc, and nickel hydrogen. Those are like the two options that are probably viable, everything else simply doesn’t exist yet.
They are a lot more expensive than expected at the moment, once they start selling at the 30$/KWh they were proposed at they will be fantastic but if they stay at their current price LFP is going to be a lot cheaper.
Yep your not wrong. In my local area, they are starting to use them for the grid. I know one of the engineers over at a local makerspace. The process is getting refined ATM. Its cool this and concrete power cells are becoming a thing.
I don’t think that’s true, do you have sources for that? Because my understanding is that solar/wind is cheaper than natural gas, but battery storage makes it way more expensive at scale.
There’s a huge difference between day/night storage which is sufficient for most locations in the world that are somewhat closer to the equator, and seasonal storage. We have no good solution for seasonal storage at the moment.
Exactly. Day/night storage can probably be met (at least partially) by using EVs (i.e. arrive at work empty, recharge from solar, arrive at home full). But that’s not going to be enough to get through the winter in higher latitudes.
That’s why we need a reliable base load, and natural gas is very attractive because it’s:
- easier to build than nuclear
- way less polluting than coal
- compatible with existing supply lines
Battery storage is prohibitively expensive in many parts of the world, and there aren’t very many ready alternatives. I think we should be investing in nuclear power instead of utility grade battery backups, and we should be looking at EVs to help even out the day/night cycle.
Hydro is a good option for this, if you have a big enough lake. It can ramp up and down very fast, meaning it’s great for filling in gaps between other renewables.
Yah, downvote the guy for asking for sources for a baseless claim. I have heavy doubts that battery storage is anywhere near as cost effective as NG turbines. I’d love to see some real numbers on that.
And I say this as someone with a house running on batteries and solar exclusively.
What is your understanding based on?
Regarding production batteries might be more expensive, but they can be charged some thousand times without any additional cost
Just from looking at some government studies. This doesn’t necessarily compare longer-term costs, but it does give some direct comparisons between storage options.
I’m certainly no expert here, but just throwing out some rough estimates of battery degradation, it doesn’t seem to be cost-effective vs natural gas, which is already only slightly more expensive than solar. So solar plus battery storage seems to be significantly more expensive than natural gas.
It’s certainly more complex than that (i.e. you’d need less generation if battery backup is plentiful), but that’s the data I’m looking at.
But how can one consider natural gas? The whole point is to avoid getting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?!
No, the point is to put less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Natural gas is way cleaner than coal, and it’s quite a bit cheaper (from what I can tell) vs battery storage. Everything has a cost tradeoff, and the cost tradeoff for natural gas is very attractive right now. Maybe we’ll develop some really inexpensive energy storage (sodium batteries look promising), but regardless of what we come up with, there will be a transition period where we roll it out, and natural gas is a fantastic alternative until that’s done because supply lines are already in place.
It might be cheaper but that is a pure capitalistic point of view. And capitalism is what brought us to our worlds current state
Yes, the current state is a pretty near constant improvement on standard of living and a pretty steady decrease in greenhouse emissions (at least in the US) despite rising population and access to gadgets. Electric vehicles exist because capitalists found a niche and exploited it at a time when battery densities could finally support a reasonable range. Rooftop solar exists because people care and can afford to place them on their houses. Governments came in later to help encourage those, but the tech existed before the subsidies did.
Capitalism isn’t the enemy, it’s merely a force that can be channeled to create a lot of good in the world. If a society sets up the right incentives, capitalism is incredibly efficient at meeting the demand.
So we shouldn’t be destroying the economy to combat climate change, we should be channeling the economy to combat climate change. For example:
- carbon taxes on everything - coal would get taxed out the nose, while solar would pay pretty much nothing, with natural gas falling somewhere in the middle
- eliminate subsidies and loopholes - charge big trucks significantly more for damage to roads, which makes things like fracking a lot less attractive (if they have to pay to repair the roads they tear up, costs go way up)
- remove protections for corporations - arrest execs instead of just issuing fines for irresponsible, greedy behavior that hurts people
Most of the reason renewables are less attractive vs fossil fuels is because fossil fuels don’t need to pay for negative externalities like pollution. If we add that in, the market will adapt and change their operations to reduce costs.
I guess it kinda depends on how and where you source your batteries.
There was something in Australia I think that was using old EV batteries for grid scale power storage. As EV adoption goes up eventually old batteries will get pulled from vehicles, and reusing them for grid or even home scale power storage is a great use.
Sure, but that’s a) going to take some time and b) not going to be very convenient. Pulling something designed for a car (e.g. built in to the frame) and putting it into something for the grid are very different design spaces, so it could end up being prohibitively expensive to retrofit these car batteries into the grid system. Each manufacturer is going to use a different form factor, potentially different voltages, different cooling systems, etc. It’s probably easier to break down the batteries and remanufacture them than to reuse them directly for grid storage.
What I do think could be a huge boon is to use cars at rest as storage. A lot of people leave their cars plugged in all day at work (peak generation), as well as at night (no generation), which is a pretty decent fit for a base level of supply. You’d basically drive to work mostly empty and get home mostly full, and you’d get a discount on your energy bill for allowing your EV to be used for energy storage. I don’t know if any utility companies are using them that way, but that’s a fantastic way to get a bit more use out of EV batteries.
I’ll trust that’s true, but even still, logic has never stood in the way of any legislation passing in the US or corporate decision.
We put in 10kwh of batteries in Feb of this year with our solar panel installation. So I suppose I might be part that headline’s statistic. April was the last time we had a monthly electrical bill. Last month we ripped out our aging gas furnace and put in a cold climate heat pump. One week after we had the natural gas disconnected permanently from the house. Our cars are charged on sunlight. We’re doing what we can do de-carbonize.
I’m jealous! I’d love to do all those things to my house. Unfortunately, I’m priced out of homeownership in my area. So I rent and all the money I’d otherwise be spending on climate-friendly upgrades are instead financing my landlord’s wealth accumulation.
I’ll be the first to say de-carbonizing a home isn’t cheap to do (or the home ownership for that matter). I’m doing what I can by buying and implementing the de-carbonized solutions today to increase market demands driving the technology and solutions lower for everyone else.
We need more people like you! Thanks for helping us move forward.
Batteries and gas aren’t really comparable so I’m guessing this means batteries are expanded at a rate 10x higher than natural gas is being expanded, which makes sense because natural gas is such a mature staple that it doesn’t have that much opportunity growth.
Batteries are also not an energy source, but storage.
(Yeah I guess that’s technically true of all energy sources, but batteries are more like a tank than a consumable…)
Of course adding batteries to store energy from off peak renewables to ready them for the peak is the point of this, but I would point out I don’t think anything prevents charging batteries from fossil-fuel generated electricity. I wouldn’t be surprised if an economic equilibrium dictates this to be the case, even.
I think batteries will be highly valued equipment as a smoothing function to help reduce heavy load wear on any kind of generating equipment to help with peak loads, regardless of what’s charging them… possibly allowing fossil burning plants to run closer to a base load level at all times.
Per the article… Yes. Batteries are counted as a source by the EIA, not just the writer’s opinion. They can supply power on demand, so it counts. It doesn’t seem that gas is slow because it’s mature, but rather it’s just not as enticing. It says one single gas plant was added and provided just 2% of the increased energy production whereas wind was 7, batteries were 20, and solar was more than all of that.
Yeah my original comment here was a lot more breathy than it should have been. I’m not critical of the article it’s definitely uplifting and accurate. But I think new battery tech on the grid would see usefulness even if renewables weren’t inconsistent, but that’s a whole different topic I suppose.
I guess my point is that I don’t think batteries necessarily compete with natural gas, but they do help make renewables slightly more competitive with natural gas.
This is even more impressive when you realize that in some regions of the country, power companies are adding zero renewables. TVA, the biggest power provider in the country, is all-in on natural gas, allegedly because its board members get incentives from natural gas providers and refuse to expand predicted demand with solar, wind, or forced geothermal.
Wait they’re still adding natural gas? Geez.
The moment you realize that any clean energy we produce and have been producing for the last 20 years, that the renewable industry boomed exponentially, only serves as additive energy and not as a replacement for non-renewables, because our demands in energy have been exponentially ever-increasing since the 1950s, as the economy doubles in size every 20 years since then. So no matter the remarkable advances in solar and wind, we still needed more energy than that, because that’s how exponents work.
But yeah, let’s continue doing business as usual, this will definitely work.
I wish you were wrong. But…
This was my first thought. I guess if you’re replacing a coal plant it’s not completely terrible, but be prepared to turn it off in 10 or 20 years.
A Climate Town video convinced me natural gas actually manages to be worse.
Natural gas is methane, and it’s extremely hard to handle that without having any leaks, ever. And since methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, it doesn’t take that much leaked gas to cross the line into “worse than coal”.
And there are lots of leaks.
Good! Keep adding them!
Ill stick with natural gas, its cheaper, clean burning, and doesn’t require being reliant on the electrical grid.
Yeah…none of that is true. Onshore wind is the cheapest power generation. Photovoltaic is second cheapest. Methane is leaky and raises your risk of asthma and cancer. You do not need to be tied to an electrical grid for anything with solar panels and batteries for energy storage.
for cooking and heating? It’s worse for cooking, that shits like the equivalent of sitting in a garage with a small combustion engine running, as for heating, it’s only nice if you don’t use a heat pump system, and if you’re using a heat pump, you might as well throw in a solar system.
Modern gas based furnaces still require electricity to run anyway.
