Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's play chess. If I win, you send me some rice, ok?
Can the number of grains follow an S-curve?
A number of grains can apparently follow many different curves: http://foodfont.com/rice/
The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been in your boots for 15 years, and I barely convinced anyone. Even my thermal panels are viewed with suspiction, and people don't believe me when I told them my hot water come from them with a little help from an electric heater in the winter. They pay themselves once per year, easily. Frustratingly, the more common doubt is "if it's so good, how are there so few people doing it?" At this point I gave up. I en…
Frustratingly, the more common doubt is "if it's so good, how are there so few people doing it?" Do you think that 15 years back it was prohibitive from a cost perspective now? Was it always this economically viable? I mean ~ $200 a panel, it's a true no brainer, maybe the initial outlay was a little too much for people way back when? On the other hand, I guess with peaking electricity prices in many parts of the wor…
Yes, it make less sense 15 years ago. I got some help from the government with the loan. IIRC, I calculated the break even in 7-8 years. In fact, I also bought a sun tracker, because at the time it was cheaper than to buy more panels.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been in your boots for 15 years, and I barely convinced anyone. Even my thermal panels are viewed with suspiction, and people don't believe me when I told them my hot water come from them with a little help from an electric heater in the winter. They pay themselves once per year, easily. Frustratingly, the more common doubt is "if it's so good, how are there so few people doing it?" At this point I gave up. I en…
> my thermal panels How cold is it where you're at? I'm weighing putting in a new tankless boiler system, as well as a rooftop PV, but thermal solar might be a better bet.
Winters average 5-10ºC, summers 15-20ºC (nights included). Winter months average 100 hours/month of sun.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two years ago when I was considering installing a battery along with my solar panels, here was the estimations I did: 1. Additional cost of installing a 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall was quoted as being around £12,000 2. Warranty was 80% capacity after 10 years Now, my experience with batteries in general is that once they start to go, they deteriorate pretty rapidly; so 80% after 10 years to me basically account 10 years…
Is there a reason you did the math with a 13.5kWh battery? Do you heat a large house electrically? Do you need to charge an EV at night off that battery? Most people can get away with a significantly smaller battery - if your goal is to just get a normal house through a single night. That goal can be achieved pretty economically, especially if you're willing to use grid electricity on mornings with little sun on your…
Basically the quote we got from the local company gave us the option of a 10kWh non-Tesla battery for about £10k and a 13.5kWh Tesla battery for £12k. The math doesn't change that much between the two. I had also looked into battery sizing previously based on our annual usage; but that was over 3 years ago so I don't remember what I came up with.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US consumes approximately 4 trillion terawatts/hour of electricity. If this prediction holds true we will have 14 gigawatts of storage this year. You do the math and you tell me whether base load generation is still an issue or not.
> The US consumes approximately 4 trillion terawatts/hour of electricity. It's roughly 3800 TWh (Terrawatt-hours) per year, no need to invent new units.
My bad!
So, the issue is that the US needs 3800TW of electricity every hour, and by the end of this year it will have 0.014 TW of battery capacity. It is clear that batteries are not replacing base load generation any time soon.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US consumes approximately 4 trillion terawatts/hour of electricity. It's roughly 3800 TWh (Terrawatt-hours) per year, no need to invent new units.
My bad! So, the issue is that the US needs 3800TW of electricity every hour, and by the end of this year it will have 0.014 TW of battery capacity. It is clear that batteries are not replacing base load generation any time soon.
facepalm
Can I see the calculation how did you get from 3800 TWh per year to the same amount per hour?
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US consumes approximately 4 trillion terawatts/hour of electricity. It's roughly 3800 TWh (Terrawatt-hours) per year, no need to invent new units.
My bad! So, the issue is that the US needs 3800TW of electricity every hour, and by the end of this year it will have 0.014 TW of battery capacity. It is clear that batteries are not replacing base load generation any time soon.
You're making the same mistake again. The operation in "Terawatt-hour" is multiplication, not division. It's not Terawatt-per-hour, it's Terawatt-for-an-hour. 1 TWh is the amount of electricity you consume when you run a 1 TW machine for 1 hour. Or a 2 TW machine for half an hour. Or a 500 GW machine for two hours.
> US needs 3800TW of electricity every hour
This alone should give you pause. "3800 TW of electricity" doesn't mean anything. A Watt is a unit of power. It's the flow of electricity, not an amount.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#68Doubling in 2024 is great but the estimate for 2025 is nowhere near doubling again. How many doublings will we need to store enough energy that solar can replace all non-renewables? I imagine it's still a lot. Edit: this page claims we need 84 times what we had in 2022, the estimate for 2024 is ~3x higher, so call it ~5 more doublings after this year. https://www.alsym.com/blog/how-much-energy-storage-do-we-nee...
Storing even 10% of US electricity usage from summer to winter could be in the tens of trillions of dollars. Spending $10,000 to store $2 of electricity in a battery is not scalable. Other forms of energy storage are the future.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla Megapacks come with a 15-year "no defect" and "energy retention" warranty. A 10 or 20 year "performance guarantee" is available for an additional cost. (an example of Li-Ion based storage, I assume it won't differ wildly with other producers) I think they can in principle last longer if used well. You can control the temperature, you can use weather forecast (as part of some network-wide forecast of future requ…
Two years ago when I was considering installing a battery along with my solar panels, here was the estimations I did: 1. Additional cost of installing a 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall was quoted as being around £12,000 2. Warranty was 80% capacity after 10 years Now, my experience with batteries in general is that once they start to go, they deteriorate pretty rapidly; so 80% after 10 years to me basically account 10 years…
£50 isn’t that hard to save.
The octopus off-peak rate is 7p vs the normal 30p/kWh. If your bill is £70/month for electricity it suddenly becomes £20, so there is your £50 immediately. My bill is £140 so I would save £100.
Re: The US grid battery fleet is about to double – again
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure — all exponentials eventually turn out to be sigmoids, or some quote to that effect — but I'm unclear why this matters as I'm suggesting most people don't even know what an exponential really is and what to expect from them in even the short term?
> it's sufficient that people don't expect exponential change even when it's happening reliably for ages This sort of implied that people should have been expecting exponential change. But even if you know what exponential growth is, you couldn't know in advance with certainty if it would be the case for battery storage, renewables etc.
For batteries and renewables, the growth had already been exponential for a decade or more prior to the relevant conversations and threads, but people were (even last month on HN) looking at the currently installed capacity and responding as if that was all it could ever be.
(At some point the growth will slow, but that's never the criticism given in any replies I remember).