When size and weight don't matter, lots of other battery chemistries can work.
  • ericjmorey@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    8 hours ago

    Batteries are the bottleneck now that solar PV equipment is so cheap. I’m excited to see how ot plays out.

    • gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      4 hours ago

      I don’t think that batteries will be a bottleneck.

      First of all, solar power can be installed even when there’s not enough batteries. The solar power producers during the day, and fossil legacy plants in the night. There’s no reason to stop transitioning our energy grid 50% just “because we can’t do it 100%”.

      California is partially already doing this: (didn’t find a newer image)

      Also, it is unnatural - highly even - that our electricity demand is roughly constant on a 24-hour cycle. It is more natural - for various reasons - that demand for electricity is higher in the daytime. For example, because energy alone is not enough, you also need human workers, and wages are lower in the daytime.

      So, the problem of “how do we keep provide energy 24-hours a day” is not relevant. It’s more like “how can we transition our industry away from the unnatural cycle of producing 24-hours straight and how can we turn back to primarily producing in the daytime” together with "it’s not just solar, we also have other renewables.

  • PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works
    14·
    17 hours ago

    The more that aren’t lithium, the better. Lithium is about as good as we can get currently in respect to energy density and weight. Neither of these things matter for grid-scale, where service life, safety, and environmental cost should be much more of a priority

    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
      12·
      16 hours ago

      All of which the new sodium batteries solve. Massively improved cycle life, completely safe, and the environmental cost is a tiny fraction of what it is with lithium-based.

      I don’t get why there aren’t 50 companies rushing to produce it at-scale for in-place batteries. They should be chomping at the bit trying to get government contracts to install massive battery parks.

      Maybe it is just too new that they want to see how the small batteries do in the field.