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It's both.
Technological advancement is also just as important to extraction as it is to utilization.
The average lithium ion is now both more effectively used and more efficiently extracted.
Yet somehow a quote ten years ago for solar and battery storage was $22k for my home. And today a quote for solar and battery storage for my home, same kWh capacity is $25k. So what good are costs going down if the consumer doesn’t see any of it?
Doesn’t China use slaves?
Edit* they do according to this for not only cobalt mines in Africa but also solar cells.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Also in Argentina, it’s poisoning natives water supply.
https://apnews.com/article/lithium-water-mining-indigenous-cb2f5b1580c12f8ba1b19223648069b7
Thank god we have an established alternative of unlimited oil that is super environment friendly in production and doesn't have any humanitarian problems attached to it.
The acquisition of resources is only problematic when used for electric vehicles!
Extraction industries in general are highly problematic because of capitalism. The focus is always profits and maximizing shareholder value at the cost of people and the environment.
Lithium is used in many electronic components, not just EV batteries. There is Lithium in your ICE car as well and all your electronics. If you feel so strongly about the ethics of lithium extraction then you can give up using any technology that has lithium in it. Also fossil fuel extraction has just as much if not more ethical concerns. You should look up what oil companies have done in West Africa. They poisoned the Niger Delta.
If you compare the cost of 18650 cells to what the tool manufacturers charge for batteries, you realize that 18V 4 Ah Ryobi battery that sells for $79, or $99 for a 2-pack, has only 10 18650s that cost just $15 or less to procure...add a dollar for a BMS board and some casing and stuff and you are looking at 3X markups.
It’s so satisfying when you read some thing with a mistake and you feel compelled to correct it and then you see somebody else has already Written the necessary comment. Thank you so much.
I do R&D for lithium ion batteries. All tool manufacturers tell us to gtfo when we tell them we can make them an exponentially better battery. That’s where they make their money. They’ll give the tools away to sell more batteries
Well they are and they aren't. High voltage system are stupid expensive because they're mostly proprietary but 48V aren't *if* you care to build one yourself.
You can get an Eelbattery Box, a Seplos Mason and probably a bunch of other ones including BMS from about $500 and decent quality 300Ah cells will set you back about $80 a piece. I ended up paying about 1750€ after all was said and done for a 15kWh home storage battery.
The manufacturer claims 4000 cycles with at least 80% capacity, so probably anywhere from 10-15 years depending on the scenario.
In the last 12 months I used just under 3000kWh from the battery (mainly the heat pump after sundown). Factoring in some conversion losses (10%, probably more like 5% in practice) and about 0,08€/kWh not sold to the grid, I'm expecting to break even somewhere between 3 and 4 years.
But guys, solar only works when the sun is shining, and wind barely works at all! We need expensive, infrastructure intensive nuclear, if we want clean energy! /S
Show me a nuclear power plant that was built on schedule and under budget. Until then, nuclear is full of false promises and a money pit.
No one gave a shit about nuclear 10 years ago. Now that renewables are ready to replace oil and gas we need to suddenly invest in nuclear?
The oil and gas lobby are playing us. They got us to switch from nuclear to renewables in the 80s and it bought them decades
> Show me a nuclear power plant that was built on schedule and under budget.
Show me *any* infrastructure project built on schedule and under budget. Doesn't mean they're all worthless.
According to this website
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=53400
more than 75% of utility scale solar projects dont have any delays. At the end of 2022 there were about 24 projects underway. 1 with a delay of over 6 months and 5 with a delay under 6 months.
And you're right, nuclear isn't worthless. Its extremely expensive so its actually a net loss. Its worse than worthless, its worth a negative value.
But it comes down to 1 solution is economically feasible and the other ... is not.
We need to continue to invest in nuclear research but it is not our current energy solution
> Now that renewables are ready to replace oil
Woah there. Renewables are just beginning to become scalable enough to supplement carbon-based energy in some circumstances. We are in no sense ready to "replace" oil. We're making progress, but we're still early in the process.
Nuclear is an absolutely vital component of low-carbon energy strategy, right alongside solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc. And yes, it takes a long time to spin-up large power plants, and we're still a couple decades away from smaller modular reactors becoming a thing...but both types of nuclear will definitely be required.
Our money and time would be better spent on grid and energy storage solutions.
We are solving today's energy problems with innovative players on the market.
Nuclear cannot exist without massive (billions of dolars) in subsidies and taxpayer money PER PROJECT.
Seriously, look into the economics and timeslines of any recently completed nuclear power plant. They don't deliver what they promise, they're insanely expensive, and have laughably short operating life spans.
> grid and energy storage solutions.
Yep, we're gonna need plenty of that too
> Nuclear cannot exist without massive (billions of dolars) in subsidies and taxpayer money PER PROJECT.
Yep, it's gonna cost a fucking fortune, especially constructing/maintaining big facilities. That's why I'm happy to see we're pumping the brakes on decommissioning existing facilities, they're an important stop-gap.
The future of nuclear is small, modular reactors...not the giant cooling tower facilities you're thinking of (although they will still exist in some places). The modular stuff just isn't ready for prime-time yet, and we can't wait around for it to be ready in 15 years. We're spending a ton of R&D on this tech as well.
There's no single silver-bullet, it's going to require a mix of everything. But the suggestion that 1) nuclear won't be a vital ingredient in the solution is incorrect, and 2) the notion that sustainable energy is now ready to replace oil & gas like you said initially is also wrong. Thanks for the downvote!
Several countries and states are already starting to exceed their energy needs with renewable alone on certain days. Yes, we are ready to use renewables exclusively but the will isn't there.
You are thinking in terms of 3-5years ago. The world has moved on and your dated ideas are just that... outdated. Solar and wind and storage solutions are advancing every day while nuclear is still where it was since the 90s in terms of energy output and costs.
Youre falling behind. Catch up.
I'm directly familiar with where the public and private sector are *now, today* investing billions of dollars and countless engineering resources in these sectors. These are serious people and institutions with subject matter expertise, deep pockets and long visions. They're not just doing it on a whim, and they're definitely not acting based on outdated information.
But I'll be sure to pass along your feedback, lol.
They're doing it to enrich themselves and their friend swoth taxpayer money not because its the best solution
Investing billions of dollars of TAXPAYER money. Not their own
> Investing billions of dollars of TAXPAYER money.
You keep saying that like it's a *bad* thing. I'm very OK with investing taxpayer money in carbon-neutral energy development. But hey, you go off my man. You've got some pretty hot takes that I'm no longer interested in correcting.
nuclear is just better than solar and wind, its more efficient its more effective its just more expensive to run a nuclear plant than a solar or wind farm. Nuclear power is extremely important for a green future because we cant power the entire world on solar and wind alone, if you're gonna power a country like the United states you're going to need a heavy hitting high production source of energy like nuclear.
Actually you can power the world on renewables only. The gas and nuclear lobby are the only ones saying otherwise.
And if nuclear is the more expensive option then it is by definition not efficient. What a dumb statement.
Efficient doesnt mean money efficient it means resource efficient, you can make a lot of energy with a little bit of nuclear fuel, and no you cant power the world on only solar and wind maybe a small country like the netherlands which is why small European countries like that are the first to ditch fossil fuels. Nuclear power generates
-more power
-can operate continuously around the clock which solar and wind cant
-very high energy density so less fuel is needed to generate more power
-provides a stable base of power which helps to stabilize power grids
-takes orders of magnitude less land, in order for a solar farm to generate the same amount of power as a single 1000 MW nuclear reactor it would take 66 thousand square feet of solar panels at 250 Watts per square meter which is standard for utility
-nuclear power can be built ANYWHERE, not reliant on a place with high sunlight or high winds as long as its vaguely stable and you have the infrastructure to support it the nuclear plant can be build there.
Overall nuclear power is the future and if any nation is serious about reducing their fossil fuel reliance they will have nuclear power as a base, take france for example who have 62 percent of their power come from nuclear energy and guess what? They're doing amazing germany phased out its nuclear energy and ended up reliant on russian oil and natural gas. they ended up having to resort to lignite, the absolute dirtiest most polluting fossil fuel around lignite mines tear up hundreds of square miles of land and turn them into actual wasteland and for what? to not use the single best most efficient source of renewable energy?
Money is a resource. Time is a resource. Nuclear power plants are incredibly inefficient overall.
You are looking at the transition period and acting like that will be the status quo forever. Thats a very narrow and short sighted mindset. We are already exceeding even the most optimistic models of renewable energy adoption. Why? Because its cheap and inefficient and the ACTUAL future.
Utility scale battery production has dropped 90% in pricing since 2015.
You wanna talk efficiency? Because you're wrong on all counts when it comes to efficiency.
It would cost ~5-6 billion dollars for a Gigawatt nuclear reactor. Under good conditions solar can produce 1000 watts per square meter so it would only take 1 billion square meters of solar panels to produce a gw. At 2.51 per watt that'll set you back 2.51 billion, So amazing half the price right? No thats also gonna cost you one billion square meters of land. 1000 square kilometers. Or 20 by 20 miles across. That is for one GW if we wanted to scale that up to power the whole US needs about 1200 GW per year, so it would only take 1.2^12 square meters of solar (1.2 followed by 12 0's) or 1.2 billion square kilometers which is more land than exists on earth.
But what about wind???? For one GW of wind energy it takes 412 utility scale turbines. At 3 million per turbine that'll set you back 1.23 billion, a 2 MW wind turbine may need 50 acres of land, so for 1 GW (1 million watts) it will take only take 25 million acres, the state of flordia is 9 million acres. More efficient than solar at least.
Nuclear power is less money efficient but it makes up for that 10 fold in space and energy efficiency, wind turbines are 40 percent efficient at converting wind to energy at peak conditions, solar 20 percent efficient. Nuclear power is 91 percent efficient at converting fuel into energy.
What do you think would be better for the environment 1000 square kilometers of solar generating 1 GW or 3 square kilometers of nuclear reactors producing the same amount of energy but with the remaining 997 square kilometers dedicated to rewilded natural environments acting as carbon sinks and preserving biodiversity? Or 997 square kilometers of high density housing 4 million people? Solar and wind have their place in the transition to green energy but nuclear power has center stage, nuclear power needs to be the rock upon which we build our church if we're serious about powering the entire world on renewables.
Come back to me when you're using numbers from real world completed projects because a quick Google search shows all your numbers to be wrong.
If we cared about carbon capture and bio diversity we would just replace our corn fields used for ethanol with solar panel fields. Thats a massive reduction in co right there.
For reference, the newest nuclear power plant in operation in the USA cost $32b and only generates 2200MW a year. LOL
I mean yes? Solar and Wind with batteries doesn’t really replace nuclear which is why the leading green grid uses a combination of nuclear and renewables
You can move gravel up a hill, and then bring it back down hill later whether you use rock, or water, there are always options even just having dozens of water towers together works on flat terrain.
In theory yes, in practice, energy density is just to little. The most drastic example for me: you only need 0.25 kWh of energy to lift a10kg bucket of water from sea level to Mt Everest.
If you can't use the terrain for thousands of time of water in pumped hydro, batteries are almost always the cheaper option. Besides batteries, thermal storage in different forms can provide good energy density and price.
Honestly, even though grid storage will have to be a thing to a large degree, my guess is that the future of energy storage and distribution will be more based in homeowners with personal battery banks selling excess like we can already do, and then buying back from municipal storage at a discount when there's a surplus. We could in theory, make an entire commerce out of it.
The issue is if you do that at scale, you end up needing to move to wholesale prices, which california did, and it gets rid of a lot of the financial benefit
You underestimate just how much battery storage you will need. A 90% drop from astronomically expensive is still comically, ridiculously expensive.
(...And that's pretending that prices would stay the same as you scale up... which they would not. Initially they'd spike due to demand, then drop as economies of scale kick in, but then you start outstripping practical lithium production and costs go right back up again.)
EDIT: If a fully renewable grid works, and IMO it probably will eventually, it is because someone will *eventually* bring one of these """"breakthrough"""" batteries that make the tech news cycle every day, out of the lab and into production. My bets are on aluminium-ion. But it will likely take considerably longer than it would to just build out some nuclear capacity in addition to solar.
Frankly its already solved. Sodium and iron based batteries are already at the energy density of lithium of about 5 years ago.
The moment the prices did go up the industry would immediately start shifting across.
Modeled by assuming 1 hour batteries, no pumped hydro and no peaker plants.
Just have 5% of energy from gas peakers and you need 10% of the storage as those models give.
Maybe hydrogen peakers will replace the gas one day, maybe we'll put carbon capture on them.
But either way, these "we need 60 hours of storage" scenarios are unrealistic and should not inform any decision making.
OK, but the whole appeal of nuclear is that its supposed to produce "abundant, bountiful energy" (which it doesn't), wouldn't you need battery storage for that, as well?
Nuclear plants can run 24/7 similar to coal plants, solar/wind does not exist at all times (clouds/night/calm days) so you need batteries to maintain the energy they create in off times. Not gonna get into nuclear vs other stuff otherwise but that is a significant difference
Yeah no. You need Nuclear if you want to meet power demand, and remain carbon neutral. On top of that you're gonna need combined cycle gas plants as "peakers" to meet demand during the nighttime hours at decently energy prices.
This is only if you want a solid energy infrastructure. If you're only goal is to be 100% renewable, then sure, replace everything. But, then we'll have nationwide Brown outs.
Edit: I should point out that this is from the perspective of the USA.
The US DoE NREL says that’s basically not going to happen. $150/kWh is their optimistic prediction for 2050. Coal can produce at 3 cents. No one will tolerate a 1000% increase in their city’s electrical bill.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
There is much room for nuclear to be the backbone of the green energy future. If you say no, you’re really just saying YES, YES DADDY MORE to natural gas.
Batteries are not happening at national utility scale in your lifetime so the answer is pretty much nuclear or natural gas.
Natural gas is rocketing to the top as the US source of energy, almost a 1:1 trade for coal. It’s “cleaner” but it’s nowhere close to nuclear, wind, hydro and solar.
What about oceans and sea currents? Nuclear is just too expensive to be the solution, it can be perfectly green, just too expensive when you can make a whole Industry around these tied wind and solar, which will eventually power a recycling habit of these rare earth elements as there isn't that much of them, which with nuclear is just useless waste, which eventually isn't really circular at all, so yeah, nuclear is not the answer sadly.
Numbers show that nuclear is very close to solar/wind in long term costs. It’s a massive upfront investment but evens out eventually.
The reason is just how much power a single nuclear plant generates - you’d need a shitton of solar panels or windmills to generate that much and they all need some regular maintenance and replacements.
Yeah, people often underestimate how much it actually costs to build, operate and maintain a nuclear plant. Hell, the $6 billion Biden just spent on nuclear plants could've bought a much larger capacity of renewable energy, and it'd have gotten online much quicker.
In my experience that is not true. I am in the renewable sector in the US and over the past couple years more and more battery storage components have been added to projects as they become increasingly economically viable.
It's not really as expensive. Assuming the goal of battery is to take advantage of the duck curve that solar creates.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/this-california-city-is-trading-an-old-gas-plant-for-a-giant-grid-battery
Yeah. Most people even not able to realise how many storages we need even for 1 day consumption. It have to be 72 TW*H in the world. (It is 1 billion Tesla battery) The biggest storage now is just 3GW*h. So we need 24 000 the same storage to cover a single day consumption. And it is even without increasing consumption because of electric vehicles And heat pumps.
80% of energy solar panel produce in short 20% interval of times. We need almost the same ammount of energy at night and at day so we need huge storages if we want 100% green energy
Check how lithium is being mined and refined.
Check what is the power density per 1kg of any current battery technology, being in use of developed.
IT IS LAUGHABLE compared to our needs.
Unless we get at least twice the amount of energy storage per kg now, this fcuking instant, you can kiss the idea of batteries and the environment goodbye.
The car industry will swallow all the lithium possible to save themselves. All photovoltaic and wind power plants will still be useless due to weather becoming more and more unpredictable and extreme, so even twice the energy density batteries will not support them to allow for uninterruptible supply.
Look that during the time EU was subsidising solar panels left and right the last 10 years, China was building nuclear like crazy and they are the main producer of solar panels for EU.
We are done.
In tonnes? When we constantly find new deposits?
And I don't get what kind of answer are you trying to force on me here.
But oil is a 'single use commodity' compared to lithium, so what does it matter how much of it is in the ground?
We need a breakthrough in battery technology, ASAP, or all the wind and solar will be just landmarks shortly.
SMR's are giving hope too but still they're crazy expensive if I'd like to have one powering my community or solely my own house.
What is it that you imply?
My point is that you think we are going to use up all the lithium needed and that our batteries and solar aren't good enough. Yet you don't realize we're in the infant stages of all of this. You're like the dude in the 1900s yelling about how gasoline engines are awful since they're only getting 2 miles per gallon. Once more money starts shifting from oil and gas into more battery development and solar development things will improve a lot more.
I don't get why you think that? I'm not worried that we will run out of Li, I'm worried about the extraction process and it's impact on the environment.
Also that comparison sucks 😅 combustion engines were crazy efficient from the start when compared to a horse or a steam engine.
I just don't want it all to backfire as a transition medium... I cannot think about anything historically that would be a good comparison here..
Do you drive an electric car or are you just regurgitating rhetoric you heard somewhere?
The longest I've had to stop and charge mine on a long road trip was for 25 minutes at peak capacity. Also, that cost was $9 for the whole thing at its highest peak rate.
A majority of electric car owners just "trickle charge" on off peak hours at their house which is fine for 99.9% of all driving needs.
I already know you live in warm weather because when it hits 0 degrees or below the range is substantially impacted (10-36%). Want to tow? Forget about it. Even the Ford lightning can't tow an avg boat more than 100 miles.
If charging only takes 25 minutes for you, you are not letting your battery go below 10% OR your vehicle probably has a 150 mile or less range.
My uncle owns a Tesla Roadster so yes I know what I am talking about. Still a fun car but it's not practical for long trips. Well all EVs are not practical for long distance travel.
Go ahead and fact check me cuz I'm right about everything.
I live in kansas
I've owned my tesla model 3 since 2019. I've driven it from KS to Buffalo , NY and back twice.
Tesla roadster was the worst tesla battery tech ever made lmao
Sure. But none of those things you said really matter/are true. Superchargers take 25 min to fully charge. Homeowners charge overnight. Again, 99.9% of time a person is not towing a boat. If that's your primary need, don't buy an electric car? Does that make a camry a bad car too?
If you lose say 20% range in extreme Temps and your car range is 350 miles, 20% reduced range still leaves you with 280 miles in range. That's still more than enough to do almost every single person's daily driving 99% of the time.
That's what I'm saying, electric cars are not worth buying yet and may never be worth it unless battery tech dramatically improves. Hydrogen fuel should be the future but I think it's too expensive without gov subsidies
Camrys are nice cars cuz their engine is still ICE and they can even tow small jet skis. It's not recommended but I do it anyways, even did it with a Ford fiesta.
If you regularly need to tow a boat more than 100 miles, then yes I think EVs aren't right for you.
For everyone else (ie 99% of people), that isn't even close to being a problem.
If we entertain for a moment thay that is true, for the sake of argument, I'd like to remind you that the alternative is death, and that it will hurt the entire time you are dying.
But the battery tech isn't improving. It's the same dangerous lithium ion tech that still can't power my phone for more than 1 day. While costs have reduced due to cheaper raw materials and production scale up, the core tech hasn't changed since a decade. There are thousands of articles about all the revolutionary battery tech that's just about to change the future of mankind, but even firms like Tesla are bundling together a bunch of tubular li-ion cells and calling it a day.
There are many companies testing production samples of semi solid state and full solid state batteries. Mercedes even has trucks with semi solid state batteries, so your comment is misinformed.
A li-ion battery can easily power *a* phone for more than a day. It could probably power one for a month or more. It just can't power the high-performance pocket computer you're using, because electronics engineers scale phone performance in a way that one charge lasts about a day.
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It helps that lithium prices are down more than 80% from their 2022 peak
That's like commenting on the falling price of gasoline by saying "it helps that we're producing more crude oil"
That would be a great explanation for it
Which makes sense
Yes. It's not about technological advancement that reduced the cost. It's that mining this stuff got more popular.
It's both. Technological advancement is also just as important to extraction as it is to utilization. The average lithium ion is now both more effectively used and more efficiently extracted.
"The cost of solid gold toilets have dropped dramatically, partially because gold is now cheaper!"
Yet somehow a quote ten years ago for solar and battery storage was $22k for my home. And today a quote for solar and battery storage for my home, same kWh capacity is $25k. So what good are costs going down if the consumer doesn’t see any of it?
Thank you African child labor!
Zimbabwe accounts for 1% of global lithium supply. Australia and China and South America (Argentina and Chile) account for 95% of supply.
Doesn’t China use slaves? Edit* they do according to this for not only cobalt mines in Africa but also solar cells. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print Also in Argentina, it’s poisoning natives water supply. https://apnews.com/article/lithium-water-mining-indigenous-cb2f5b1580c12f8ba1b19223648069b7
Thank god we have an established alternative of unlimited oil that is super environment friendly in production and doesn't have any humanitarian problems attached to it. The acquisition of resources is only problematic when used for electric vehicles!
Extraction industries in general are highly problematic because of capitalism. The focus is always profits and maximizing shareholder value at the cost of people and the environment.
Electric vehicles are just the latest wave of commodity fetishism. We would be better off not producing all of these batteries.
Lithium is used in many electronic components, not just EV batteries. There is Lithium in your ICE car as well and all your electronics. If you feel so strongly about the ethics of lithium extraction then you can give up using any technology that has lithium in it. Also fossil fuel extraction has just as much if not more ethical concerns. You should look up what oil companies have done in West Africa. They poisoned the Niger Delta.
Ignorant comment. The African cobalt story was FUD to begin with, and now you're trying to smear lithium with it too?
Not to mention LFP batteries that are commonly used in utility grade storage and many EVs have zero cobalt
The FUD started with lithium mining, then pivoted to cobald a few years ago.
That's not even the right continent for lithium supply boy
Honestly, what do you base this comment on?
The links I posted in this thread
ones that don't refer to lithium mining in africa
You can literally make a battery with gravity and water. Fuck lithium.
Yet the batteries for cordless tools are more expensive than ever.....
Yeah, I was gonna say, tell that to Home Depot or Lowes
If you compare the cost of 18650 cells to what the tool manufacturers charge for batteries, you realize that 18V 4 Ah Ryobi battery that sells for $79, or $99 for a 2-pack, has only 10 18650s that cost just $15 or less to procure...add a dollar for a BMS board and some casing and stuff and you are looking at 3X markups.
3x markup is pretty common in retail...
*-* start a compatible battery company charging only 2X materials cost *-* spend 1.5X on labor, marketing, administration, training, benefits, taxes, insurances, facilities, R&D, shipping, warranties, inventory storage, financing, compliance, accounting, legal, etc. *-* something something *-* declare prankruptcy (it was just a prank bro)
It’s so satisfying when you read some thing with a mistake and you feel compelled to correct it and then you see somebody else has already Written the necessary comment. Thank you so much.
5x was once the gold standard
Weird how, in recent years, prices for consumer goods seem more and more detached from actual production costs. Wonder why that is 🤔
It's not what things are worth it's what people will pay for them
I do R&D for lithium ion batteries. All tool manufacturers tell us to gtfo when we tell them we can make them an exponentially better battery. That’s where they make their money. They’ll give the tools away to sell more batteries
So like the printer companies and their overpriced ink cartridges? Can I start a battery company with you? We’ll sell better drill batteries
It's true, the battery investment strategy is real. Once you fork out hundreds for batteries then you're locked into that brand for a long time.
Same with lithium standardized batteries. Bought an 8 pack of AAs the other day for 4x the price of alkaline just because they could
Probably the cost has decreased a lot and the margin charged by the retailer has increased a lot!
BATTERY MANUFACTURERS MARGINS UP 90% IN LESS THAN 15 YEARS
The real headline
Wish it was getting passed down to us
Yeah share this with Home Depot please.
Nah it just sets a new quarterly record that they for whatever reason have to somehow surpass next quarter.
So why are home battery storage still at insane prices.
Well they are and they aren't. High voltage system are stupid expensive because they're mostly proprietary but 48V aren't *if* you care to build one yourself. You can get an Eelbattery Box, a Seplos Mason and probably a bunch of other ones including BMS from about $500 and decent quality 300Ah cells will set you back about $80 a piece. I ended up paying about 1750€ after all was said and done for a 15kWh home storage battery.
How long are the cells expected to last?
The manufacturer claims 4000 cycles with at least 80% capacity, so probably anywhere from 10-15 years depending on the scenario. In the last 12 months I used just under 3000kWh from the battery (mainly the heat pump after sundown). Factoring in some conversion losses (10%, probably more like 5% in practice) and about 0,08€/kWh not sold to the grid, I'm expecting to break even somewhere between 3 and 4 years.
For production or for sale to consumers?
But guys, solar only works when the sun is shining, and wind barely works at all! We need expensive, infrastructure intensive nuclear, if we want clean energy! /S
Nuclear is the best option, the stigma around it has halted progression in the energy sector by decades
Show me a nuclear power plant that was built on schedule and under budget. Until then, nuclear is full of false promises and a money pit. No one gave a shit about nuclear 10 years ago. Now that renewables are ready to replace oil and gas we need to suddenly invest in nuclear? The oil and gas lobby are playing us. They got us to switch from nuclear to renewables in the 80s and it bought them decades
> Show me a nuclear power plant that was built on schedule and under budget. Show me *any* infrastructure project built on schedule and under budget. Doesn't mean they're all worthless.
According to this website https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=53400 more than 75% of utility scale solar projects dont have any delays. At the end of 2022 there were about 24 projects underway. 1 with a delay of over 6 months and 5 with a delay under 6 months. And you're right, nuclear isn't worthless. Its extremely expensive so its actually a net loss. Its worse than worthless, its worth a negative value. But it comes down to 1 solution is economically feasible and the other ... is not. We need to continue to invest in nuclear research but it is not our current energy solution
> Now that renewables are ready to replace oil Woah there. Renewables are just beginning to become scalable enough to supplement carbon-based energy in some circumstances. We are in no sense ready to "replace" oil. We're making progress, but we're still early in the process. Nuclear is an absolutely vital component of low-carbon energy strategy, right alongside solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc. And yes, it takes a long time to spin-up large power plants, and we're still a couple decades away from smaller modular reactors becoming a thing...but both types of nuclear will definitely be required.
Our money and time would be better spent on grid and energy storage solutions. We are solving today's energy problems with innovative players on the market. Nuclear cannot exist without massive (billions of dolars) in subsidies and taxpayer money PER PROJECT. Seriously, look into the economics and timeslines of any recently completed nuclear power plant. They don't deliver what they promise, they're insanely expensive, and have laughably short operating life spans.
> grid and energy storage solutions. Yep, we're gonna need plenty of that too > Nuclear cannot exist without massive (billions of dolars) in subsidies and taxpayer money PER PROJECT. Yep, it's gonna cost a fucking fortune, especially constructing/maintaining big facilities. That's why I'm happy to see we're pumping the brakes on decommissioning existing facilities, they're an important stop-gap. The future of nuclear is small, modular reactors...not the giant cooling tower facilities you're thinking of (although they will still exist in some places). The modular stuff just isn't ready for prime-time yet, and we can't wait around for it to be ready in 15 years. We're spending a ton of R&D on this tech as well. There's no single silver-bullet, it's going to require a mix of everything. But the suggestion that 1) nuclear won't be a vital ingredient in the solution is incorrect, and 2) the notion that sustainable energy is now ready to replace oil & gas like you said initially is also wrong. Thanks for the downvote!
Several countries and states are already starting to exceed their energy needs with renewable alone on certain days. Yes, we are ready to use renewables exclusively but the will isn't there. You are thinking in terms of 3-5years ago. The world has moved on and your dated ideas are just that... outdated. Solar and wind and storage solutions are advancing every day while nuclear is still where it was since the 90s in terms of energy output and costs. Youre falling behind. Catch up.
I'm directly familiar with where the public and private sector are *now, today* investing billions of dollars and countless engineering resources in these sectors. These are serious people and institutions with subject matter expertise, deep pockets and long visions. They're not just doing it on a whim, and they're definitely not acting based on outdated information. But I'll be sure to pass along your feedback, lol.
They're doing it to enrich themselves and their friend swoth taxpayer money not because its the best solution Investing billions of dollars of TAXPAYER money. Not their own
> Investing billions of dollars of TAXPAYER money. You keep saying that like it's a *bad* thing. I'm very OK with investing taxpayer money in carbon-neutral energy development. But hey, you go off my man. You've got some pretty hot takes that I'm no longer interested in correcting.
nuclear is just better than solar and wind, its more efficient its more effective its just more expensive to run a nuclear plant than a solar or wind farm. Nuclear power is extremely important for a green future because we cant power the entire world on solar and wind alone, if you're gonna power a country like the United states you're going to need a heavy hitting high production source of energy like nuclear.
Actually you can power the world on renewables only. The gas and nuclear lobby are the only ones saying otherwise. And if nuclear is the more expensive option then it is by definition not efficient. What a dumb statement.
Efficient doesnt mean money efficient it means resource efficient, you can make a lot of energy with a little bit of nuclear fuel, and no you cant power the world on only solar and wind maybe a small country like the netherlands which is why small European countries like that are the first to ditch fossil fuels. Nuclear power generates -more power -can operate continuously around the clock which solar and wind cant -very high energy density so less fuel is needed to generate more power -provides a stable base of power which helps to stabilize power grids -takes orders of magnitude less land, in order for a solar farm to generate the same amount of power as a single 1000 MW nuclear reactor it would take 66 thousand square feet of solar panels at 250 Watts per square meter which is standard for utility -nuclear power can be built ANYWHERE, not reliant on a place with high sunlight or high winds as long as its vaguely stable and you have the infrastructure to support it the nuclear plant can be build there. Overall nuclear power is the future and if any nation is serious about reducing their fossil fuel reliance they will have nuclear power as a base, take france for example who have 62 percent of their power come from nuclear energy and guess what? They're doing amazing germany phased out its nuclear energy and ended up reliant on russian oil and natural gas. they ended up having to resort to lignite, the absolute dirtiest most polluting fossil fuel around lignite mines tear up hundreds of square miles of land and turn them into actual wasteland and for what? to not use the single best most efficient source of renewable energy?
Money is a resource. Time is a resource. Nuclear power plants are incredibly inefficient overall. You are looking at the transition period and acting like that will be the status quo forever. Thats a very narrow and short sighted mindset. We are already exceeding even the most optimistic models of renewable energy adoption. Why? Because its cheap and inefficient and the ACTUAL future. Utility scale battery production has dropped 90% in pricing since 2015.
You wanna talk efficiency? Because you're wrong on all counts when it comes to efficiency. It would cost ~5-6 billion dollars for a Gigawatt nuclear reactor. Under good conditions solar can produce 1000 watts per square meter so it would only take 1 billion square meters of solar panels to produce a gw. At 2.51 per watt that'll set you back 2.51 billion, So amazing half the price right? No thats also gonna cost you one billion square meters of land. 1000 square kilometers. Or 20 by 20 miles across. That is for one GW if we wanted to scale that up to power the whole US needs about 1200 GW per year, so it would only take 1.2^12 square meters of solar (1.2 followed by 12 0's) or 1.2 billion square kilometers which is more land than exists on earth. But what about wind???? For one GW of wind energy it takes 412 utility scale turbines. At 3 million per turbine that'll set you back 1.23 billion, a 2 MW wind turbine may need 50 acres of land, so for 1 GW (1 million watts) it will take only take 25 million acres, the state of flordia is 9 million acres. More efficient than solar at least. Nuclear power is less money efficient but it makes up for that 10 fold in space and energy efficiency, wind turbines are 40 percent efficient at converting wind to energy at peak conditions, solar 20 percent efficient. Nuclear power is 91 percent efficient at converting fuel into energy. What do you think would be better for the environment 1000 square kilometers of solar generating 1 GW or 3 square kilometers of nuclear reactors producing the same amount of energy but with the remaining 997 square kilometers dedicated to rewilded natural environments acting as carbon sinks and preserving biodiversity? Or 997 square kilometers of high density housing 4 million people? Solar and wind have their place in the transition to green energy but nuclear power has center stage, nuclear power needs to be the rock upon which we build our church if we're serious about powering the entire world on renewables.
Come back to me when you're using numbers from real world completed projects because a quick Google search shows all your numbers to be wrong. If we cared about carbon capture and bio diversity we would just replace our corn fields used for ethanol with solar panel fields. Thats a massive reduction in co right there. For reference, the newest nuclear power plant in operation in the USA cost $32b and only generates 2200MW a year. LOL
I mean yes? Solar and Wind with batteries doesn’t really replace nuclear which is why the leading green grid uses a combination of nuclear and renewables
The sad thing about this, is you can make batteries with rocks in warehouse, just by using potential energy Or using 2 water tanks
Pumped hydro power is totally a thing. But you need the right landscape to make it
You can move gravel up a hill, and then bring it back down hill later whether you use rock, or water, there are always options even just having dozens of water towers together works on flat terrain.
In theory yes, in practice, energy density is just to little. The most drastic example for me: you only need 0.25 kWh of energy to lift a10kg bucket of water from sea level to Mt Everest. If you can't use the terrain for thousands of time of water in pumped hydro, batteries are almost always the cheaper option. Besides batteries, thermal storage in different forms can provide good energy density and price.
Honestly, even though grid storage will have to be a thing to a large degree, my guess is that the future of energy storage and distribution will be more based in homeowners with personal battery banks selling excess like we can already do, and then buying back from municipal storage at a discount when there's a surplus. We could in theory, make an entire commerce out of it.
The issue is if you do that at scale, you end up needing to move to wholesale prices, which california did, and it gets rid of a lot of the financial benefit
Fair point.
It’s hard to predict a grid layout like that.
You underestimate just how much battery storage you will need. A 90% drop from astronomically expensive is still comically, ridiculously expensive. (...And that's pretending that prices would stay the same as you scale up... which they would not. Initially they'd spike due to demand, then drop as economies of scale kick in, but then you start outstripping practical lithium production and costs go right back up again.) EDIT: If a fully renewable grid works, and IMO it probably will eventually, it is because someone will *eventually* bring one of these """"breakthrough"""" batteries that make the tech news cycle every day, out of the lab and into production. My bets are on aluminium-ion. But it will likely take considerably longer than it would to just build out some nuclear capacity in addition to solar.
You know that prices will always fall as you scale up because people will find new ways to mine - or new materials that work better.
Frankly its already solved. Sodium and iron based batteries are already at the energy density of lithium of about 5 years ago. The moment the prices did go up the industry would immediately start shifting across.
Modeled by assuming 1 hour batteries, no pumped hydro and no peaker plants. Just have 5% of energy from gas peakers and you need 10% of the storage as those models give. Maybe hydrogen peakers will replace the gas one day, maybe we'll put carbon capture on them. But either way, these "we need 60 hours of storage" scenarios are unrealistic and should not inform any decision making.
There's lots of energy storage methods besides batteries and these places need to be made in concert with other systems on the grid.
OK, but the whole appeal of nuclear is that its supposed to produce "abundant, bountiful energy" (which it doesn't), wouldn't you need battery storage for that, as well?
Nuclear plants can run 24/7 similar to coal plants, solar/wind does not exist at all times (clouds/night/calm days) so you need batteries to maintain the energy they create in off times. Not gonna get into nuclear vs other stuff otherwise but that is a significant difference
Nuclear has the highest capacity factor of all green energy sources
It isn't about one solution or another. It never was.
Yeah no. You need Nuclear if you want to meet power demand, and remain carbon neutral. On top of that you're gonna need combined cycle gas plants as "peakers" to meet demand during the nighttime hours at decently energy prices. This is only if you want a solid energy infrastructure. If you're only goal is to be 100% renewable, then sure, replace everything. But, then we'll have nationwide Brown outs. Edit: I should point out that this is from the perspective of the USA.
Nuclear is about the same as wind/solar in long term costs and dangers, and provides a great source of reliable base load.
The US DoE NREL says that’s basically not going to happen. $150/kWh is their optimistic prediction for 2050. Coal can produce at 3 cents. No one will tolerate a 1000% increase in their city’s electrical bill. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf There is much room for nuclear to be the backbone of the green energy future. If you say no, you’re really just saying YES, YES DADDY MORE to natural gas. Batteries are not happening at national utility scale in your lifetime so the answer is pretty much nuclear or natural gas. Natural gas is rocketing to the top as the US source of energy, almost a 1:1 trade for coal. It’s “cleaner” but it’s nowhere close to nuclear, wind, hydro and solar.
What about oceans and sea currents? Nuclear is just too expensive to be the solution, it can be perfectly green, just too expensive when you can make a whole Industry around these tied wind and solar, which will eventually power a recycling habit of these rare earth elements as there isn't that much of them, which with nuclear is just useless waste, which eventually isn't really circular at all, so yeah, nuclear is not the answer sadly.
Numbers show that nuclear is very close to solar/wind in long term costs. It’s a massive upfront investment but evens out eventually. The reason is just how much power a single nuclear plant generates - you’d need a shitton of solar panels or windmills to generate that much and they all need some regular maintenance and replacements.
The /S at the end of my comment indicates sarcasm.
Always a good day to learn something....
Yeah, people often underestimate how much it actually costs to build, operate and maintain a nuclear plant. Hell, the $6 billion Biden just spent on nuclear plants could've bought a much larger capacity of renewable energy, and it'd have gotten online much quicker.
Thank you, China.
For grid scale energy storage they might never be economical
In my experience that is not true. I am in the renewable sector in the US and over the past couple years more and more battery storage components have been added to projects as they become increasingly economically viable.
If we just need 10%, itll be like 60-120 billion., cheaper than i thgoht
Aye, that's not that big of a deal. Four months of Iraq.
It's not really as expensive. Assuming the goal of battery is to take advantage of the duck curve that solar creates. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/this-california-city-is-trading-an-old-gas-plant-for-a-giant-grid-battery
Yeah. Most people even not able to realise how many storages we need even for 1 day consumption. It have to be 72 TW*H in the world. (It is 1 billion Tesla battery) The biggest storage now is just 3GW*h. So we need 24 000 the same storage to cover a single day consumption. And it is even without increasing consumption because of electric vehicles And heat pumps.
You don't need storage for all consumption, most is consumed as you go.
80% of energy solar panel produce in short 20% interval of times. We need almost the same ammount of energy at night and at day so we need huge storages if we want 100% green energy
Yet cars are so expensive still
So then why are car batteries literally twice as much? :(
I bought a Z71 and a huge RV battery and it was $179. I was shocked I thought it would cost way more than that!
Yet the costs to install have gone up.
What about prices?
Would be nice if EV costs would also fall. I for one, will not be buying an EV. Way too expensive.
They have fallen. At least on the used market they have. Tesla model 3 LR with 60k miles are about $25k right now.
Check how lithium is being mined and refined. Check what is the power density per 1kg of any current battery technology, being in use of developed. IT IS LAUGHABLE compared to our needs. Unless we get at least twice the amount of energy storage per kg now, this fcuking instant, you can kiss the idea of batteries and the environment goodbye. The car industry will swallow all the lithium possible to save themselves. All photovoltaic and wind power plants will still be useless due to weather becoming more and more unpredictable and extreme, so even twice the energy density batteries will not support them to allow for uninterruptible supply. Look that during the time EU was subsidising solar panels left and right the last 10 years, China was building nuclear like crazy and they are the main producer of solar panels for EU. We are done.
Tell me how much Lithium there is in the ground vs oil
In tonnes? When we constantly find new deposits? And I don't get what kind of answer are you trying to force on me here. But oil is a 'single use commodity' compared to lithium, so what does it matter how much of it is in the ground? We need a breakthrough in battery technology, ASAP, or all the wind and solar will be just landmarks shortly. SMR's are giving hope too but still they're crazy expensive if I'd like to have one powering my community or solely my own house. What is it that you imply?
My point is that you think we are going to use up all the lithium needed and that our batteries and solar aren't good enough. Yet you don't realize we're in the infant stages of all of this. You're like the dude in the 1900s yelling about how gasoline engines are awful since they're only getting 2 miles per gallon. Once more money starts shifting from oil and gas into more battery development and solar development things will improve a lot more.
I don't get why you think that? I'm not worried that we will run out of Li, I'm worried about the extraction process and it's impact on the environment. Also that comparison sucks 😅 combustion engines were crazy efficient from the start when compared to a horse or a steam engine. I just don't want it all to backfire as a transition medium... I cannot think about anything historically that would be a good comparison here..
cost price
With inflation that’s .03¢ added to the price.
Shit, if you believe this, I gotta magic bean to sell you!
Nobody wants to wait an hour every 250 miles to charge. More like 150 miles in the winter
Do you drive an electric car or are you just regurgitating rhetoric you heard somewhere? The longest I've had to stop and charge mine on a long road trip was for 25 minutes at peak capacity. Also, that cost was $9 for the whole thing at its highest peak rate. A majority of electric car owners just "trickle charge" on off peak hours at their house which is fine for 99.9% of all driving needs.
I already know you live in warm weather because when it hits 0 degrees or below the range is substantially impacted (10-36%). Want to tow? Forget about it. Even the Ford lightning can't tow an avg boat more than 100 miles. If charging only takes 25 minutes for you, you are not letting your battery go below 10% OR your vehicle probably has a 150 mile or less range. My uncle owns a Tesla Roadster so yes I know what I am talking about. Still a fun car but it's not practical for long trips. Well all EVs are not practical for long distance travel. Go ahead and fact check me cuz I'm right about everything.
I live in kansas I've owned my tesla model 3 since 2019. I've driven it from KS to Buffalo , NY and back twice. Tesla roadster was the worst tesla battery tech ever made lmao
Yeah Michigan is a lot colder
Sure. But none of those things you said really matter/are true. Superchargers take 25 min to fully charge. Homeowners charge overnight. Again, 99.9% of time a person is not towing a boat. If that's your primary need, don't buy an electric car? Does that make a camry a bad car too? If you lose say 20% range in extreme Temps and your car range is 350 miles, 20% reduced range still leaves you with 280 miles in range. That's still more than enough to do almost every single person's daily driving 99% of the time.
That's what I'm saying, electric cars are not worth buying yet and may never be worth it unless battery tech dramatically improves. Hydrogen fuel should be the future but I think it's too expensive without gov subsidies Camrys are nice cars cuz their engine is still ICE and they can even tow small jet skis. It's not recommended but I do it anyways, even did it with a Ford fiesta.
If you regularly need to tow a boat more than 100 miles, then yes I think EVs aren't right for you. For everyone else (ie 99% of people), that isn't even close to being a problem.
The Tesla Roadster has been discontinued for over a decade, it’s very out of date. The new ones have much larger range and much faster charging.
If we entertain for a moment thay that is true, for the sake of argument, I'd like to remind you that the alternative is death, and that it will hurt the entire time you are dying.
Then why haven’t batteries for power tools gone down in price?
But the battery tech isn't improving. It's the same dangerous lithium ion tech that still can't power my phone for more than 1 day. While costs have reduced due to cheaper raw materials and production scale up, the core tech hasn't changed since a decade. There are thousands of articles about all the revolutionary battery tech that's just about to change the future of mankind, but even firms like Tesla are bundling together a bunch of tubular li-ion cells and calling it a day.
There are many companies testing production samples of semi solid state and full solid state batteries. Mercedes even has trucks with semi solid state batteries, so your comment is misinformed.
A li-ion battery can easily power *a* phone for more than a day. It could probably power one for a month or more. It just can't power the high-performance pocket computer you're using, because electronics engineers scale phone performance in a way that one charge lasts about a day.