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The rise of batteries in six charts

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Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#81

Post by meandthewallaby »

aresant wrote: post #4

This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in solar Two interesting data points to that end 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation - battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here - https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications…

That duck curve tweet is disingenuous. That curve in the tweet is for the lowest net load day (net load is actual load or usage minus generation from renewables). In 2023, if you took the day that had the least amount of net load, yes, it was almost entirely covered by solar power. That does _not_ mean the claim made in the tweet that California is run totally by solar power from 10am-4pm every day (today at 11:56 AM PST, it's about 51% run by solar power). California's grid has enough good things going for it that we don't need to lie about it.

You can look this up for yourself: https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#82

Post by strangemonad »

zardo wrote: post #72
Tade0 wrote: post #67

Regarding price, leading manufacturers are already selling at a price below what was always understood as the point where EVs win in terms of economics: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-w... The recent price war in China is a testament to that.

> Tesla will be saving $800 in LFP battery costs within 6 months and another $800 within about 18 months. Do they have a model using LiFePOs now?

Many of the china model 3s and Ys use prismatic cells from CATL use lifepo chemistries

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#83

Post by ketzo »

radium3d wrote: post #77
aresant wrote: post #4

This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in solar Two interesting data points to that end 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation - battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here - https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications…

It's super cool you can watch California's grid level batteries "breathe" every day here, https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#sectio... Yesterday we peaked out at 3GW discharging rate, and 4GW charging rate. We are plowing ahead in the transition to utilizing all of our excess solar! We peak at 25GW expected today, so we have a little ways to go but it's incredible how far and how fast they're repla…

the CAISO website is super rad in general -- so many real-time charts!! demand trend is really cool to watch during heat waves; things get spiky on both the demand side (for obvious reason) and the supply side (peaker plants & "virtual" power plants coming online)

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#84

Post by ggreer »

zardo wrote: post #72
Tade0 wrote: post #67

Regarding price, leading manufacturers are already selling at a price below what was always understood as the point where EVs win in terms of economics: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-w... The recent price war in China is a testament to that.

> Tesla will be saving $800 in LFP battery costs within 6 months and another $800 within about 18 months. Do they have a model using LiFePOs now?

Since Q2 of 2022, the majority of Teslas produced have been LFP. As of right now, the standard range and long range Model 3 and Model Y are LFP. The Model S, X, and the Performance versions of the 3/Y are NCA.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#85

Post by semi-extrinsic »

amluto wrote: post #49
crote wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have billions of people living in the wilderness. And technology has reached a price level where off-grid solar is actually an affordable and superior alternative to propane and diesel for household use in rural Africa.

Heat pump heat, in the wilderness or otherwise, is about 4x as efficient as resistance or fire. This is somewhat silly, since a gas-fired heat pump can be very efficient, but gas-fired heat pumps are quite rare. (California has a pricing/policy problem here, IMO. Electricity is absurdly expensive, gas is somewhat reasonable, and the result is that electric heating is not nearly as economical as it should be.)

Gas-fired heat pumps are neither economical nor efficient for single-apartment or single-house systems. Internal combustion engines with shaft power output of 1-2 kW are inefficient, loud and maintenance intensive.

They can start to make sense from around 50 kW heating/cooling capacity and upwards, so the smallest units are suitable for 8-15 apartments depending on size.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#86

Post by epistasis »

LUmBULtERA wrote: post #51
aresant wrote: post #4

This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in solar Two interesting data points to that end 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation - battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here - https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications…

Given the dramatically lower costs of utility-scale solar vs. residential rooftop solar, is it not better at a society level for state policy to incentivize utility over residential solar? Utility-scale battery installations likewise should be much cheaper.

This argument ignores the cost of transmission and distribution, which are higher costs than the generation itself.

And as electricity prices are driven down even further, T&D will come to dominate over energy generation costs.

Few models account for this, but Christopher Clack made one, and the lowest cost energy path was a small amount of investment in distribution now, paired with massive deployment of solar on homes and industrial/commercial.

This won't happen unless utilities are forced into it or their allowed profit model is changed to deliver ratepayers the lowest cost energy, however.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#87

Post by jeffbee »

Spivak wrote: post #43
malfist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing energy density between batteries and oil is not "transparency and realistic expectations" Once the oil is used it's gone. Batteries can be recharged

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.

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#88

Post by schiffern »

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #76
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some very early stage tests, there is some kind of island hopper electric airplane that flys regular service, and it's only like 5 or 10 miles across water. Batteries will get more energy dense, the range will increase a bit. But yeah, it's hard to see it getting to a few 100 miles.

Hello, do you have a link or name?

Here's the link, but the range isn't as bad as they said.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eviation-announces-...

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

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

Re: The rise of batteries in six charts

#90

Post by PaulHoule »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #30
sixstringtheory wrote: post #15

This is a great set of charts and analysis, although I have two problems with it. 1. On the chart of energy density, I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for comparison. It's much higher, and even though extrapolation is dangerous, I'd like to see how long it could take to reach parity given some of the different forecasting models they mention. Specifically regarding their mention of air travel, I'd like…

The mention of air travel was strange. I wasn't aware of anyone who thought long range flight would ever be electrified. At least not without some fundamental breakthrough. S-curves are hard to predict. Basically every time someone attempts to do it, they are way off. This [0] is a neat paper that addresses the question. We've blown past every single prediction. [0] https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_p…

I read a book in the 1980s about how you could fit S-curves to predict everything.

When I've actually tried it with tools like

https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.o...

it's frequently been terribly, terribly wrong.

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