Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

about.bnef.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 134 posts

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

#81

Post by JamesBarney »

darkerside wrote: post #62
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, mean…

Seems to me that an immature market that is on its way to becoming a commodity is a great time to invest, as opposed to post commoditization

Commoditization drives down profits which will limit the returns on your investment.

Generally you want to invest in complements to things that are going to be commoditized. The drop in price and profits for the commodity drive increased profits for the consumer of the commoditized good.

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

#82

Post by strainer »

riffraff wrote: post #33
afarrell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this, wouldn't it be better to pump water onto the top of a bunch of mountains in Wales? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station , but more.

That's the point, isn't it? Batteries are not a panacea for energy storage needs, even with a doubling of their capacity.

There is no requirement for a panacea or super neat developments that allow individual households to store seasons worth of privately generated electricity.

For seasonal and sporadic production shortfalls in solar and wind generation, biofuels and electrically synthesized fuels can fill in. On the occasions where carbon-neutral fuel resources are insufficient - gas generation can remain as fallback (increasingly rarely) until sufficient carbon neutral fuel production is developed.

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

#83

Post by Gravityloss »

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

It is in general more efficient to do basic research in universities and publish the results so that everybody does not need to do the same large amount of experiments.

Then do the productization in companies.

I don't know which part is harder regarding batteries, but I assume we have still quite a lot of basic research to do as well.

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

#84

Post by merrymoccasin »

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

Sila Nanotechnologies (https://silanano.com) is doing interesting things with battery chemistry. They recently raised a bunch of money from Daimler.

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

#85

Post by benj111 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #79
benj111 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having short days in the winter, long days in the summer isnt a UK specific thing. As you get closer to the equator it may become less of a problem as summer air con load overtakes winter heating as the dominant load, but we are talking about large swathes of the planet that will have higher heating demand that can't reasonably be covered by solar power alone.

If you could put some kind of number on how much of a not-UK thing it was on a global scale, that would answer my original question. Like, apoarently air con is currently 10% of all electricity and set to grow. 10 AC units will be sold every second for the next 30 years. It seems solar plus batteries has that covered, but I'd be interested to know the ratios.

According to this [1] it looks like about a third of energy used in commercial and residential buildings is for space heating. That only accounts for some 32 Pwh of 157Pwh [2] of energy use but is greater than the 21-23Pwh of total electricity generation.

So judging by your figure of 10% of electricity usage that's 2Pwh (10% of 21-23Pwh) for air con v 10Pwh (third of 32Pwh) for space heating.

But that energy demand is mostly based on combusting fossil fuels directly, decarbonisation would require a move to electric heating which would probably involve heatpumps, and quite a lot of insulation, so I would hope that that figure would drop quite alot in the future.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211... fig 3.

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

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

#86

Post by ahartman00 »

diafygi wrote: post #77
gwbas1c wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, I think people waking up to find out that their EV doesn't have the charge they expected it to have will put that idea in its place. The idea that someone with an EV will allow the power company to randomly deplete its battery is a fantasy. Edit: We're much more likely to see home standby generators put to that use, or home batteries (connected to solar) put to that use.

Keep in mind that we're talking about single digit percentages of a battery's capacity being used. Also, its likely that many of the EV-to-grid arrangements will be for fleet vehicles (company/city cars, plus self-driving fleets when they happen), and they will be technically sophisticated enough to negotiate that capacity sharing with the grid operators. So you won't ever actually have a scenario you describe where…

"likely that many of the EV-to-grid arrangements will be for fleet vehicles"

Wont these be out and about during the day when the sun is shining and need to be charged during the night? Seems like these are the opposite of storage, they would exacerbate the problem? Creating a lot of demand(lots of buses in lots of cities) charging at night, and driving during the day.

"will be technically sophisticated"

This is an assumption, though it does seem technically possible.

"scenario you describe where a private EV will have it's battery depleted"

Im an environmentalist myself, but if I wake up on the morning of my vacation, and my car is at I guess if we require every parking lot with > x spaces to have plugs for all vehicles to charge/store during the day. Still requires people to actually bother plugging them in. Of course, they would also have to plug them in during the night, and unless they are getting paid to, I dont see people going through the minor hassle if it is no benefit to them. I'm just not really optimistic about the vehicles as storage idea, sadly.

Sorry for the pessimism, but I feel like there is too much naive hand waving among environmentalists. I think we need a more realistic, critical discussion, focused on likely, probable solutions. Theres too much: "Everybody can just go out of their way too do x." Theres still people who think putting an aluminum can in a different bin is too much work. We have to work with these unfortunate realities, not just dismiss them.

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

#87

Post by RobertoG »

Gravityloss wrote: post #83
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

It is in general more efficient to do basic research in universities and publish the results so that everybody does not need to do the same large amount of experiments. Then do the productization in companies. I don't know which part is harder regarding batteries, but I assume we have still quite a lot of basic research to do as well.

Is that how it works?

My impression was that the basic research was done in universities (with public funding) until there are some good patents, then the patents are transferred to some kind of private company that take the profits.

I don't know the procedures very well, so, I would be happy if somebody assure me that this is not the case.

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

#88

Post by kragen »

maxerickson wrote: post #74
WanderPanda wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wont introducing net energy to the earth add to the warming?

Barely. The temperature of the earth is a function of the balance between energy inputs and energy outputs. The solar input is much much more power than total human utilization, so adding "human" amounts of power won't shift the balance very much.

We're talking “long-term” here, as in when the humans are using over a thousand times as much energy as they are now, so that it's cheaper to launch solar panels into fricking space than to upgrade the ocean-carpeting solar panel rafts blanketing much of the oceans to be 90% rather than 75% efficient. So yes, even before that point, solar energy harvesting will begin to have noticeable climatic effects.

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

#89

Post by kragen »

dwighttk wrote: post #61
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyt…

You are going to build panels that will provide enough energy for one day on the day it is the least sunny at the site? What do you do with the excess on sunny days?

You can turn it off. Solar panels can be turned off in nanoseconds with nothing more than a transistor. Or you can invest the zero-cost energy in something potentially useful that doesn't need a constant power supply: electrowinning metals, removing corrosion, heating the hot tub back up, making ice to run your fridge or air conditioner when there's less sun, running low-cost machine tools (the kind where the depreciation is insignificant compared to the cost of power and consumables), generating hydrogen by electrolysis to convert into methane or methanol or ethanol for fuel, baking some bread, washing some laundry, doing a short pottery firing in your kiln (<8 hours), recharging your electric car, in short any of a wide variety of processes.

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

#90

Post by dwighttk »

kragen wrote: post #89
dwighttk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are going to build panels that will provide enough energy for one day on the day it is the least sunny at the site? What do you do with the excess on sunny days?

You can turn it off. Solar panels can be turned off in nanoseconds with nothing more than a transistor. Or you can invest the zero-cost energy in something potentially useful that doesn't need a constant power supply: electrowinning metals, removing corrosion, heating the hot tub back up, making ice to run your fridge or air conditioner when there's less sun, running low-cost machine tools (the kind where the depreci…

or you could have some batteries, save the energy for a cloudy day, and have a smaller installation of panels.
Post reply on HN