Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade • Hacker News Board

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#51

Post by adrianN » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

_0w8t wrote: post #32

pfdietz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term = diurnal Long term = weeks to seasonal Batteries, especially that sort of cheaper battery, would be great for diurnal load leveling. Long term storage is probably more hydrogen and mass thermal storage. The tradeoff would be capital cost per unit stored energy vs. efficiency. Storage competes with and complements two other approaches: overinstallation of generation capacity w. curtailment, and dispatchabl…

Methanol is an alternative to hydrogen. With current technologies it is less efficient to produce it and then generate electricity in fuel cells, but storing it is trivial.

All countries already have infrastructure for strategic gas reserves that are sufficiently sized to cover demand for long periods. So storing renewable energy via power-to-gas processes is probably the way to go.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#52

Post by adrianN » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

dwheeler wrote: post #17

If this prediction turns out to be true, it would be a real boon for reducing carbon emissions. Changing from 7% to 40% of electrical generation is a big deal. I'm sure it's not enough, but it sounds like a start.

Let's hope we didn't just replace 40% of electricity with renewables by 2040, or we can probably kiss civilization as we know it goodbye. We need to reduce global carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 if we want a fighting chance of staying below 2°. That's much more than just electricity.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#53

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #48

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of our global storage needs do you believe are "long term" in this dichotomy? Is this at the "electric cars can't do my daily commute" or "electric cars can't tow my boat 600 miles without stopping, once a year" stage? Seems like most of the world just needs solar to last until the next day with a decent chunk of that power needed immediately after the sun sets and any wind power available could get s…

>Seems like most of the world just needs solar to last until the next day as long as it's not cloudy for a week

Did the person sizing the solar panels in this hypothetical forget that it was sometimes cloudy? Seems a rather silly mistake.

Wouldn't they have access to data predicting to within fairly narrow margins how often this would occur statistically?

I mean if cloudy weather reduces the output by a factor of 4 then you don't really need to bring long term storage into the matter to have trouble if you're going size everything on the basis that will only provide the required energy on the very sunniest days.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#54

Post by adrianN » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #49

josmala wrote: post #41

The numbers given in article the world wide battery installations are predicted in 2040 to cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption assuming it would be equal close to 2016 figures, where majority of world is in relative poverty. It definitely is at least two orders of magnitude too little to stop climate change. People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change. Nope, emissions are only r…

"..cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption..." That seems like a meaningless metric. No one is designing a global battery system to power the entire planet. What matters is how battery systems integrate with generation systems. "People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change..." Why do you assume people assume this?

Why do you think that this is a meaningless metric. It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night. Realistically we need enough storage to cover reduced production and increased demand through winter.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#55

Post by the8472 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

jhayward wrote: post #46

the8472 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that involves volumes and abundant resources. E.g. storing hydrogen or compressed air in a salt dome decouples the power rating of your storage (MW) from the storage capacity (MWh). Similarly hydroelectric dams contain water by volume but you only need to dam a cross-section of the valley.

Wouldn't the above description also fit flow batteries?

It's a little less clear-cut since you still need to pay a linear cost for the electrolyte, but it should be much lower than the same amount of Li-ion storage, at least in raw material costs.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#56

Post by the8472 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #43

the8472 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equatorial weather patterns are not all that relevant because most of the energy consumption is at higher latitudes which experience significant seasonality. And your daily commute/boat towing "analogy" is not really helpful because those problems are not comparable. Boat towing is an optional luxury and can be worked around at a slight inconvenience by visiting charging stations. Lack of long-term storage on the oth…

95% of the world population lives below 50 degrees N/S. And I suspect if seasonality really does become a problem that's costly to solve, heavy industry will move down toward the equator. Ship the finished products rather than try to make them where it doesn't make sense to.

I intentionally wrote energy consumption instead of population because those distributions differ.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#57

Post by deepnotderp » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

What happened to molten salt batteries?

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#58

Post by tim333 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

josmala wrote: post #41

The numbers given in article the world wide battery installations are predicted in 2040 to cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption assuming it would be equal close to 2016 figures, where majority of world is in relative poverty. It definitely is at least two orders of magnitude too little to stop climate change. People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change. Nope, emissions are only r…

Nitpick - I make it closer to 1 hours electricity but I agree it's way too low from a fixing global warming point of view. The figure 2,850GWh by 2040 works out about 280 Wh a head if you guess a 10bn population. For comparison a Tesla Powerwall is 13.5 kWh. Something like 100x that storage would be good if we are running on renewables.

With something like the nantenergy battery they are already talking $100/kWh and have cheap materials so it would seem quite plausible to get down to say $25/kWh by 2040 meaning you could get 40kWh for $1000 or so which I think may be a better target. (https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...)

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#59

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

volak wrote: post #31

No companies listed in article - anyone have a list of companies developing new battery technology? Been something I've tried researching in the past with little luck

This is just armchair analysis, but my perception from easily Googleable sources on mining & resource companies for battery tech is that it doesn’t actually look like a good investment for casual investors.

The lithium market seems crazy and susceptible to high volatility from Chinese stockpiles. Meanwhile, battery technologies, even at the high end, are becoming rapidly commoditized and experiencing price wars, meaning new investment even into state of the art battery tech probably isn’t exposed to a lot of upside because all the consumer markets it can feed into will have consumers expecting the highest quality at bargain basement prices.

The exceptions will likely be highly industry-specific and involve complex military or enterprise consumers with special needs, and I doubt casual investors will have access to information necessary to reliably speculate about those opportunities.

Re: Energy Storage Investments Boom as Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade

#60

Post by cesarb » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #54

standardUser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"..cover about 20 minutes of world electricity consumption..." That seems like a meaningless metric. No one is designing a global battery system to power the entire planet. What matters is how battery systems integrate with generation systems. "People assume the reducing emissions would stop climate change..." Why do you assume people assume this?

Why do you think that this is a meaningless metric. It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night. Realistically we need enough storage to cover reduced production and increased demand through winter.

> It seems to me that we need at least enough storage to last for a night.

That's only the case if all your generation is from photovoltaic solar. The wind doesn't stop blowing at night, and you need a long drought for hydro to stop producing power.