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.
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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I'm excited about salt batteries taking up the slack on a lot of this infrastructure in the future.
Iron-air rust batteries are also pretty intersting. Just iron, air and water to store power by exploiting how rust forms.
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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.
Yep your not wrong. In my local area, they are starting to use them for the grid. I know one of the engineers over at a local makerspace. The process is getting refined ATM. Its cool this and concrete power cells are becoming a thing.
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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.
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.
I'll be the first to say de-carbonizing a home isn't cheap to do (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.
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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.
Per the article.... Yes. Batteries are counted as a source by the EIA, not just the writer's opinion. They can supply power on demand, so it counts. It doesn't seem that gas is slow because it's mature, but rather it's just not as enticing. It says one single gas plant was added and provided just 2% of the increased energy production whereas wind was 7, batteries were 20, and solar was more than all of that.
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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.
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