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•2h 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•1h 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•2h 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.
gessha•32m ago
Yeah, let’s wait for that tech to mature just like we waited on building high speed rail because hyperloop was around the corner… \s
myvoiceismypass•2h 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•50m 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.
JumpCrisscross•31m ago
> cannot understand why an “all of the above” approach to energy production has basically no political salience
Anger is incredibly viral. In a country on social media, that means cutting opposition spreads faster than support. (Most elements of support, for this reason, scaffold themselves along opposition to something else. Even if that something is a manufactured totem.)
tokioyoyo•26m ago
Everyone wants to be "right", and prove others "wrong". It feels like building things have gotten very expensive, and margins are not that high, so it would only pay for itself in decades. Everyone is scared for committing to those numbers, and just keep running in circles until some magical thing is invented. Crazy stuff.
bee_rider•1h 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•1h 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.
thelastgallon•25m ago
Yes! And more importantly solar/wind are such an eyesore, ruining America's landscape! Coal is big and beautiful. We must have Coal plants in every city and American coal jobs. Solar and Wind are unhealthy! Wonder why the administration didn't outright make it a federal crime to use solar panels. /s
mrdoops•2h ago
_factor•2h ago
vlan0•1h ago
nradov•1h ago
polski-g•2h 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.
gessha•32m ago
myvoiceismypass•2h ago
tokioyoyo•1h ago
nocoiner•50m ago
JumpCrisscross•31m ago
Anger is incredibly viral. In a country on social media, that means cutting opposition spreads faster than support. (Most elements of support, for this reason, scaffold themselves along opposition to something else. Even if that something is a manufactured totem.)
tokioyoyo•26m ago
bee_rider•1h ago
tremon•1h ago
thelastgallon•25m ago