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

The rise of batteries in six charts

rmi.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 275 posts

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#261

Post by notTooFarGone »

mbgerring wrote: post #178
xbmcuser wrote: post #115

This is why I say electricity revolution is coming and a lot people and countries are going to be shell shocked by it. Solar and wind electricity costs are also decreasing at a similar rate.

It’s already here, it’s been here for a decade, renewables are a mature industry. They’ve already effectively destroyed the economics of coal, and natural gas is next.

And, what people don't want to hear here, nuclear too.

Batteries with renewables are already cheaper than nuclear and it will only get cheaper while nuclear costs are ballooning.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#262

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

tonymet wrote: post #250
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're bad faith, loaded questions. Be honest, you didn't ask them to learn something, you asked them because you think they're "Gotcha!" questions. Your responses to answers make this painfully obvious. If you want to make a point, then just make it. Don't hide behind a bullshit claim that you're just asking questions and then cry about downvotes.

My point is no one accounts for the cost and environmental impact . They are fair questions .

They're not fair questions because they've been answered. Multiple times. Every time electrification comes up.

Cost and environmental impact has been accounted for. And it turns out, using solar/wind energy for production and storing the excess in batteries for when the sun goes down or the wind gets lighter is better for the environment than constantly burning natural gas and coal. Yes, building batteries has a carbon footprint, but that footprint only needs to be done ONCE, whereas burning fuel for electrical generation requires constant burning.

For some reason, this fact upsets you, and rather than accept it, you try to act like nobody has done the studies.

I don't know how else to explain this to you. The studies have been done. This is settled science.

So again. Your questions are bad faith. You have no interest in learning.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#263

Post by erik_seaberg »

ceejayoz wrote: post #260
goodSteveramos wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, acording to wikipedia gasoline has an energy density of 46.4 MJ/Kg and LiPo batteries have an energy density of 0.36–0.875 MJ/Kg. So if your electric drivetrain has a 100% efficiency and your gas drivetrain has a 30% efficiency then the gasoline car would be able to do 16 times more work per unit of fuel.

> then the gasoline car would be able to do 16 times more work per unit of fuel OK, so we've got ~300 mile range electric cars. Where are the 5,000 mile range gasoline cars?

A Tesla Model 3 has 1060 pounds of batteries. If you replace those with a 177 gallon gas tank (at 6 lbs/gal) you should be able to go 4,780 miles at 27 MPG. It’s just that nobody wants to give up that much volume (visualize a 6x6x5 cube of gallon milk jugs).

I’m not accounting for a gas engine having more heavy parts, that mostly matters in city driving.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#264

Post by goodSteveramos »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #263
ceejayoz wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then the gasoline car would be able to do 16 times more work per unit of fuel OK, so we've got ~300 mile range electric cars. Where are the 5,000 mile range gasoline cars?

A Tesla Model 3 has 1060 pounds of batteries. If you replace those with a 177 gallon gas tank (at 6 lbs/gal) you should be able to go 4,780 miles at 27 MPG. It’s just that nobody wants to give up that much volume (visualize a 6x6x5 cube of gallon milk jugs). I’m not accounting for a gas engine having more heavy parts, that mostly matters in city driving.

27 MPG is abysmal. The 2024 Prius gets over 50 MPG so it could be closer to a 10,000 mile range.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#265

Post by goodSteveramos »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #258
goodSteveramos wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, acording to wikipedia gasoline has an energy density of 46.4 MJ/Kg and LiPo batteries have an energy density of 0.36–0.875 MJ/Kg. So if your electric drivetrain has a 100% efficiency and your gas drivetrain has a 30% efficiency then the gasoline car would be able to do 16 times more work per unit of fuel.

And yet, electric cars you can by today don’t have 1/16th the range of a gasoline car. So energy density is not enough.

Not enough for what? The energy densities of both LiPo batteries and gasoline are enough to make a passenger vehicle with an acceptable range. For gasoline it is more than enough and for LiPo it’s barely enough.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#266

Post by futevolei »

antisthenes wrote: post #141

Batteries are great, but some of those charts look off. Where are they getting batteries that are 500Wh/kg for commercial applications? Even state of the art NMC cells in the 21700 and 46800 form factors barely scrape at 300Wh/kg, and everything else (LFP) is significantly below that number.

For real. I’m trying to diy a battery now with 304ah lifepo4 cells and it works out to 125wh/kg. Doesn’t seem like even 300wh/kg will trickle down to the public anytime soon.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#267

Post by defrost »

futevolei wrote: post #266
antisthenes wrote: post #141

Batteries are great, but some of those charts look off. Where are they getting batteries that are 500Wh/kg for commercial applications? Even state of the art NMC cells in the 21700 and 46800 form factors barely scrape at 300Wh/kg, and everything else (LFP) is significantly below that number.

For real. I’m trying to diy a battery now with 304ah lifepo4 cells and it works out to 125wh/kg. Doesn’t seem like even 300wh/kg will trickle down to the public anytime soon.

The charts are reflecting bleeding edge industry results .. some may yet fail repeatable verification.

The 500wh/kg figures come from at least two companies nine months ago - one might be a US arm of the other:

https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html

https://amprius.com/the-all-new-amprius-500-wh-kg-battery-pl...

Both have asserted idependant verification.

High energy density isn't the only desirable goal of course. Really cheap, bulk storage, hard to damage, with long lifetime and many recharge cycle batteries are good for grids even if they're too heavy for the mobile | car market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

,for example, have a promising future in not { car | phone } applications.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#268

Post by Dylan16807 »

doubleg72 wrote: post #231
stcredzero wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandaid-ing plants and naively making public spaces often doesn't work in the US. It's a little more work to make spaces where people actually want to be. Look at the numerous existing city public spaces built into high profile architecture, where basically no one ever hangs out in. (There's a TED talk about this.)

Why would their worth be determined on how many people hang out there? I prefer to see green spaces and am okay appreciating them from a distance, such a in a nearby town with a tree lined main street through town. I don't think it would invoke the same aestetic pleasure with people and litter occupying these spaces.

If people are only getting little glimpses, then even if they think those glimpses look very nice it's not a very good use of space.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#269

Post by xbmcuser »

ketzo wrote: post #227
mbgerring wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s already here, it’s been here for a decade, renewables are a mature industry. They’ve already effectively destroyed the economics of coal, and natural gas is next.

I was gonna say "then why did China add so much coal last year", because I remembered reading that they added something like 50GW of coal, even as they added more than 150GW renewable. But as of Jan 1 2024, they also had to introduce a financial incentive just to keep coal plants online, because otherwise the coal plants can't compete on price, just like you said! Some weird economics going on here, but it seems like…

Yeah even I was not aware that China has from 2023 started installing more solar and wind than its annual energy consumption growth ie they have actually started replacing coal produced electricity. And with all the new solar and battery production capacity coming online in 2024 by 2030 China coal usage should be down dramatically.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#270

Post by malfist »

jeffbee wrote: post #87
Spivak wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really their point, it's do we have any reasonable hope of applications that require the energy density of fossil fuels (flight) to be powered by electricity.

Flight will never be powered by electricity, so you can stop checking. Using synthetic liquid fuels for flight is the only currently-foreseeable path to carbon-neutral, long-haul passenger flight.

Computers will never need more than 640k of memory, so you can stop checking.

You don't know what the future holds and neither do I.

Post reply on HN