US grid adds batteries at 10x the rate of natural gas in first half of 2024
Submitted 2 months ago by SeaJ@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 2 months ago
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
We put in 10kwh of batteries in Feb of this year with our solar panel installation. So I suppose I might be part that headline’s statistic. April was the last time we had a monthly electrical bill. Last month we ripped out our aging gas furnace and put in a cold climate heat pump. One week after we had the natural gas disconnected permanently from the house. Our cars are charged on sunlight. We’re doing what we can do de-carbonize.
BigBenis@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m jealous! I’d love to do all those things to my house. Unfortunately, I’m priced out of homeownership in my area. So I rent and all the money I’d otherwise be spending on climate-friendly upgrades are instead financing my landlord’s wealth accumulation.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’ll be the first to say de-carbonizing a home isn’t cheap to do and the de-carbonization (or the home ownership for that matter). I’m doing what I can by buying and implementing the de-carbonized solutions today to increase market demands driving the technology and solutions lower for everyone else.
recapitated@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Batteries and gas aren’t really comparable so I’m guessing this means batteries are expanded at a rate 10x higher than natural gas is being expanded, which makes sense because natural gas is such a mature staple that it doesn’t have that much opportunity growth.
Batteries are also not an energy source, but storage.
(Yeah I guess that’s technically true of all energy sources, but batteries are more like a tank than a consumable…)
Of course adding batteries to store energy from off peak renewables to ready them for the peak is the point of this, but I would point out I don’t think anything prevents charging batteries from fossil-fuel generated electricity. I wouldn’t be surprised if an economic equilibrium dictates this to be the case, even.
I think batteries will be highly valued equipment as a smoothing function to help reduce heavy load wear on any kind of generating equipment to help with peak loads, regardless of what’s charging them… possibly allowing fossil burning plants to run closer to a base load level at all times.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Also at least in my country, new natural gas installs are banned
recapitated@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I guess my point is that I don’t think batteries necessarily compete with natural gas, but they do help make renewables slightly more competitive with natural gas.
fpslem@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is even more impressive when you realize that in some regions of the country, power companies are adding zero renewables. TVA, the biggest power provider in the country, is all-in on natural gas, allegedly because its board members get incentives from natural gas providers and refuse to expand predicted demand with solar, wind, or forced geothermal.
Eiri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wait they’re still adding natural gas? Geez.
sweetpotato@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
The moment you realize that any clean energy we produce and have been producing for the last 20 years, that the renewable industry boomed exponentially, only serves as additive energy and not as a replacement for non-renewables, because our demands in energy have been exponentially ever-increasing since the 1950s and that the economy doubles in size every 20 years since then. So no matter the remarkable advances in solar and wind, we still needed more energy than that, because that’s how exponents work.
But yeah, let’s continue doing business as usual, this will definitely work.
Eiri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I wish you were wrong. But…
iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
This was my first thought. I guess if you’re replacing a coal plant it’s not completely terrible, but be prepared to turn it off in 10 or 20 years.
Eiri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A Climate Town video convinced me natural gas actually manages to be worse.
Natural gas is methane, and it’s extremely hard to handle that without having any leaks, ever. And since methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, it doesn’t take that much leaked gas to cross the line into “worse than coal”.
And there are lots of leaks.
spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Ill stick with natural gas, its cheaper, clean burning, and doesn’t require being reliant on the electrical grid.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Yeah…none of that is true. Onshore wind is the cheapest power generation. Photovoltaic is second cheapest. Methane is leaky and raises your risk of asthma and cancer. You do not need to be tied to an electrical grid for anything with solar panels and batteries for energy storage.
spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
for cooking and heating? It’s worse for cooking, that shits like the equivalent of sitting in a garage with a small combustion engine running, as for heating, it’s only nice if you don’t use a heat pump system, and if you’re using a heat pump, you might as well throw in a solar system.
Modern gas based furnaces still require electricity to run anyway.
reddig33@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good! Keep adding them!
SeaJ@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Solar/wind +battery storage is cheaper than natural gas and a hell of a lot cleaner. It makes no sense to go for a more expensive, dirtier form of energy.
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m excited about salt batteries taking up the slack on a lot of this infrastructure in the future.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Iron rust batteries are also pretty intersting. Just iron and water to store power by exploiting how rust forms.
BrightCandle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They are a lot more expensive than expected at the moment, once they start selling at the 30$/KWh they were proposed at they will be fantastic but if they stay at their current price LFP is going to be a lot cheaper.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I 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.
ikidd@lemmy.world 2 months 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.
tmjaea@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months 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.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
there’s not enough lithium on this planet to store enough energy for like half of europe nevermind entire world
you know how to do this the right way? use pumped-storage hydropower. need more? build more, then dump power into heaters (or better yet heat pumps) on demand from grid since fossil fuel heating will be replaced anyway. (we’re nowhere close to this, but it can sink a lot of energy quickly while not using it at some other times)
Fermion@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Pumped hydro is both very geologically limited and environmentally detrimental. That technology alone will not substantially reduce the need for other power storage technologies/ peaker plants.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lithium Ion is more advanced battery technology because it’s got high energy density which means it’s used in consumer electronics. Lower energy density technologies exist with better properties for storing at grid scale. They’re heavier and bigger than lithium ion batteries, but can store energy a lot longer and use much more available materials. One example is Form Energy’s Iron/Air battery, which uses rusting iron to store electricity for hundreds of hours.
MrVilliam@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I am hopeful that developments in sodium ion battery tech will yield different strategies. The weight and energy densities vs cost and abundance mean that it makes more sense (at this time at least) to reserve lithium ion battery tech for more mobile use cases like handheld devices and EVs, but use sodium ion battery tech for things like grid storage or home energy management solutions. I dream of a day in the next decade or two in which virtually nobody bothers to have a generator for emergency home power and instead opts for a UPS with inverters and chargers hooked up to a home battery, allowing not only emergency power, but a “smart” system to power the home via battery during high grid demand and charge during low demand, normalizing grid supply curves and making power bills cheaper for all. The path to this starts with big scale early adopters like hotels and apartment buildings, which could easily supplement energy needs through solar panels on their large roofs at the same time.
For all the enshittification we’re seeing across most industries, I am cautiously optimistic that we might be living at the edge of an energy revolution. We may see fucking huge fundamental changes to our energy infrastructure within our lifetimes, and that’s one of the few things I’m excited about for the near future. It’s unfortunate that it’s taking a crisis to force these changes, but it would be a great pivot nonetheless.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sodium batteries are already being produced (only in one factory in the US and one in China so far but its a start to commercial production), there’s enough of that stuff to build batteries for the entire planet a thousand times over.
cygnus@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
This is a good use case for sodium batteries. They’re less energy-dense so not great for vehicles, but for a stationary application like this they’re perfect.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Oh there’s enough lithium. Not enough lithium production, surely, but there’s enough lithium in the ocean and in brines easily.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 2 months ago
You know what pumped storage hydro is? A battery. Unfortunately that is not an option everywhere and takes up a massive amount of space. The space portion is not a huge issue for grid energy storage for the most part but it can definitely limit where you can do it and its capacity.
As for the amount of lithium available, there is absolutely more than enough considering it is one of the most abundant materials on our planet. Not that we need to use lithium for grid energy storage. Lithium is very high density energy storage which you are correct that is not a high priority for grid energy storage.
Basically there is no one solution for grid energy storage. There are mechanical batteries, medium density chemical batteries, and even “depleted” EV batteries. We just need to apply what is right for each particular scenario.
I’m not disagreeing with you overall. But I figured more info and context is helpful.
Addv4@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There are plenty of alternatives for lithium batteries, chiefly sodium and a redox flow. Heating/cooling is good as well to store, but not every structure is energy efficient enough that it would make much sense. Good thing to work towards, but grid batteries would probably be faster and easier to implement. I have reservations towards pumped hydropower, in part due to watching how hard it is to decommission a lot of hydroelectric dams these days in US as well as the cost to create the areas to hold the water (a lot of the areas that are geographically advantageous for pumped hydropower tend to be nature reserves or national parks, soo…).
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Of course, Li-ion batteries will never cover large-scale power demand. Not primarily because of lack of lithium, but because it’s a technology that scales far too poorly into the MWh/TWh scale, and has a far too short lifetime.
The battery tech we need for truly large scale storage is different from what we need for small, portable storage. Stuff like redox-flow batteries are looking promising.
There’s also hydrogen, with different storage methods being actively researched- from direct storage to using ammonia as a carrier.
The issue with using mechanical storage (like pumped hydropower) is threefold (off the top of my head):
I’m not saying pumped hydropower isn’t part of the solution: I believe the solution is that we need many solutions. I just think it’s important to point out that battery tech isn’t some monolithic thing, and that there are issues with pumped hydropower (and mechanical storage in general).
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
How exactly is the production of batteries cleaner and cheaper than the production of natural gas?
mriguy@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You make the batteries once, and the pollution due to production is spread over the 10-15 year lifetime of the battery. During that time gigawatt hours of clean power sloshes in and out of them. This in contrast to having to produce enough gas to make all of those gigawatt hours once, then throw the gas away as co2 and get more, along with the attendant pollution.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Mostly because natural gas is a one and done thing when it is used. Batteries can be recycled. Production of natural gas is largely done through racking which destroys the groundwater. While batteries often require mining (excluding mechanical ones), they often can be broken down and reused in new batteries. And of course there is the greenhouse gas emissions from methane that are horrible. Methane is extremely leaky. Methane usage emits about as much greenhouse gas emissions as coal does.
knightly@pawb.social 2 months ago
Do you want the math or would you prefer less reading and more pictures?
JayDee@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I’ll trust that’s true, but even still, logic has never stood in the way of any legislation passing in the US.