Lord_Snowfall

Lord_Snowfall t1_iuhlflm wrote

We were talking about using batteries for mass storage of power to power the power grid; which is storage capacity. sziehr’s comment was literally “It’s how I store for the no sun periods”. Cost isn’t really the issue; it’s having the capacity to actually store the necessary power which is storage which we haven’t really advanced on.

Edit: Since you responded then immediately blocked me in a sad attempt to avoid having your points addressed I’ll just add my reply here.

Not really. Cost is an issue and a big one, but not really the main one. Or at least not the only major one. Part of the cost issue is from not simply the battery, but the inefficiency. You need way more power than what you want to store and a battery for one house would be huge. And the batteries don’t last that long.
Building fleets of battery farms across the world to store energy just isn’t really feasible and no matter how cheap you make them they simply aren’t efficient enough to deal with things like intercontinental flights.
We’ve seen this with things like California where they built 4 massive battery farms just 2 years ago and still has to utilize rolling black outs.

As to your other comment:
Being Stationary doesn’t really change the game that much. Yes it ignores the weight/size issue for planes but space is still at a premium. Maybe you live in North Dakota and have all the space in the world but I’m not sure how you expect England or Spain or India to have the space to build massive fleets of battery farms.

For your Cathode thing, cool? Not sure what you think you’re proving but the Cathode is just one part and it’s Metal Oxide, not Lithium.

And I said the minerals for batteries, not one single mineral and the sites I linked you spell it out. Focusing on Lithium is meaningless except to pretend like you’re right when you’re not.

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Lord_Snowfall t1_iuhl6rs wrote

No; you pretending the tech has improved massively doesn’t make it true.

Lithium Phosphate Batteries are less energy dense than traditional Lithium-Ion batteries using other methods; and since we’re talking about them being used on scale as a reliable solution (I.E. being very energy dense and able to easily store mass amounts of power) being less energy dense is not an advancement.

No; the components cannot be completely recycled. In fact Lithium is considered non-renewable which is why we’re looking at things like Sodium Batteries. Even more importantly the parts that are recyclable don’t matter when they’re never recycled.

And no

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6433301

https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/canadas-hopes-to-become-a-global-critical-mineral-powerhouse-are-already-slipping/wcm/573348e3-12da-4ebb-af49-f14ed7709d57/amp/

https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/expert-warns-china-calling-shots-ev-battery-materials

The materials do not simple come from all over the world and “mainly Australia and South America” they come mainly from China who, unlike the rest of the world, has actually built up the industry and capacity for it. And the materials they don’t source locally mainly go to China. Ignorance is pretending China isn’t dominating the game in batteries just because it’s an inconvenient fact.

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Lord_Snowfall t1_iuhjkx6 wrote

Considering Sodium Batteries are less energy dense than Lithium Batteries with the benefit not being power level but cost and material availability; I won’t be saying that our battery tech has significantly advanced in terms of storage.

It’s still not like we’ll be able to replace the combustion engine in a Boeing 747 with Batteries when they’re sodium instead of lithium.

Or think of it like this: look at your phone and computer. Over the years how much has their processing power increased? How much has their storage increased? Compare that with how much their battery has increased. The original iPhone had a 1400 mAh lithium-ion battery and max 16 GB storage and 412 mhz 90nm processor. The 14 Pro Max has a 3.46 ghz 4nm processor, up to 1 TB of storage and 4323mAh Lithium-ion battery. The battery is simply the least improved part of the phone, and that’s because battery tech hasn’t really advanced that much.

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Lord_Snowfall t1_iugo4ve wrote

Which isn’t an advancement in the technology.

The simple and sad fact is battery technology isn’t improving that much; and while people like to pretend it’s all renewable batteries aren’t. In fact the minerals are quite finite and China is the source for a lot of them.

In reality we should be building nuclear power plants and investing in Hydrogen Fuel Cells but nobody wants to do that so we pay lip service and keep relying on fossil fuels.

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