Solar is great but the bottleneck is on battery capacity to carry those noon hours into evening for peak usage. Last I checked we had plenty of lithium and are mostly held back on refinement.
_factor•1h ago
Discarded EV batteries with 70% life remaining seem like a viable path to energy storage for households.
vlan0•1h ago
I hope we see this more at the municipal level. Just thinking about dense neighborhoods with sizable lithium storage solutions raises eyebrows. One house fire could spread so quickly.
nradov•55m ago
It's tough to turn that into a scalable, sustainable business. There are so many different types of EV battery packs and you can't just pull one out of an old car and hang it on someone's garage wall. You would typically have to break the old pack down, test the individual cells, and use them to construct a new pack. This is such a labor intensive process that it might not really be cost effective.
polski-g•1h ago
New sodium battery tech just came out, allegedly 1/10 the price.
ddxv•1h ago
"Compared to lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries have somewhat lower cost, better safety characteristics (for the aqueous versions), and similar power delivery characteristics, but also a lower energy density (especially the aqueous versions)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#cite_note-:...
Also, recent CATL PR releases about sodium ion only mention 'future cost savings' rather than anything about a 90% reduction in prices.
myvoiceismypass•1h ago
Battery capacity is not what this article is about.
tokioyoyo•1h ago
You know, this gets brought up every time, and I scratch my head as China and some other countries are just mass implementing any possible energy source. There's no one solution to the problem that will keep being the best solution. You just build, maintain, then build more and more and more and more and more to generate more energy. We shouldn't be debating "what is the most efficient" and only build that, because with that attitude, we just end up building nothing.
nocoiner•19m ago
I really cannot understand why an “all of the above” approach to energy production has basically no political salience. I guess because it has something for someone of any political stripe to dislike (fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables and storage - take your pick!) but in a few years when we’re all paying twice the electrical rates we’re paying today, we will probably wish we hadn’t been so doctrinaire.
bee_rider•52m ago
Yes, both. Sure, build batteries, but also over-provision to avoid dipping into batteries. As a society we’ll find ways to waste excess energy!
tremon•47m ago
For non-mobile energy storage, I have my hopes on sodium or even saltwater batteries. They are less energy-dense than lithium-based batteries, but they have a longer lifetime, require less maintenance and you avoid the risk of a lithium fire.
mrdoops•1h ago
_factor•1h ago
vlan0•1h ago
nradov•55m ago
polski-g•1h ago
ddxv•1h ago
Also, recent CATL PR releases about sodium ion only mention 'future cost savings' rather than anything about a 90% reduction in prices.
myvoiceismypass•1h ago
tokioyoyo•1h ago
nocoiner•19m ago
bee_rider•52m ago
tremon•47m ago