this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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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.
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)
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).