What is your understanding based on?
Regarding production batteries might be more expensive, but they can be charged some thousand times without any additional cost
Comment on US grid adds batteries at 10x the rate of natural gas in first half of 2024
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks agoI don’t think that’s true, do you have sources for that? Because my understanding is that solar/wind is cheaper than natural gas, but battery storage makes it way more expensive at scale.
tmjaea@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Just from looking at some government studies. This doesn’t necessarily compare longer-term costs, but it does give some direct comparisons between storage options.
I’m certainly no expert here, but just throwing out some rough estimates of battery degradation, it doesn’t seem to be cost-effective vs natural gas, which is already only slightly more expensive than solar. So solar plus battery storage seems to be significantly more expensive than natural gas.
It’s certainly more complex than that (i.e. you’d need less generation if battery backup is plentiful), but that’s the data I’m looking at.
tmjaea@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
But how can one consider natural gas? The whole point is to avoid getting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?!
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
No, the point is to put less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Natural gas is way cleaner than coal, and it’s quite a bit cheaper (from what I can tell) vs battery storage. Everything has a cost tradeoff, and the cost tradeoff for natural gas is very attractive right now. Maybe we’ll develop some really inexpensive energy storage (sodium batteries look promising), but regardless of what we come up with, there will be a transition period where we roll it out, and natural gas is a fantastic alternative until that’s done because supply lines are already in place.
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I guess it kinda depends on how and where you source your batteries.
There was something in Australia I think that was using old EV batteries for grid scale power storage. As EV adoption goes up eventually old batteries will get pulled from vehicles, and reusing them for grid or even home scale power storage is a great use.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Sure, but that’s a) going to take some time and b) not going to be very convenient. Pulling something designed for a car (e.g. built in to the frame) and putting it into something for the grid are very different design spaces, so it could end up being prohibitively expensive to retrofit these car batteries into the grid system. Each manufacturer is going to use a different form factor, potentially different voltages, different cooling systems, etc. It’s probably easier to break down the batteries and remanufacture them than to reuse them directly for grid storage.
What I do think could be a huge boon is to use cars at rest as storage. A lot of people leave their cars plugged in all day at work (peak generation), as well as at night (no generation), which is a pretty decent fit for a base level of supply. You’d basically drive to work mostly empty and get home mostly full, and you’d get a discount on your energy bill for allowing your EV to be used for energy storage. I don’t know if any utility companies are using them that way, but that’s a fantastic way to get a bit more use out of EV batteries.
ikidd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yah, downvote the guy for asking for sources for a baseless claim. I have heavy doubts that battery storage is anywhere near as cost effective as NG turbines. I’d love to see some real numbers on that.
And I say this as someone with a house running on batteries and solar exclusively.