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Comment by spupe | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's a great idea. But the problem is the specifics. For example, the electricity storage you describe, do you have any idea of its cost or feasibility? For example, all the battery capacity in the world right now is about 1000 GwH, and optimistic estimates project a 5x growth by 2030 [1]. Even if we take the 2030 figure, 5500 GwH, that number would be enough to power... Less than 500 thousand American people, if my math is correct? [2] Meanwhile, nuclear is currently responsible for 20% of electricity generation in the US, and could be even more, there's no fundamental obstacle in the way except money.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global...

[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...

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Electricity storage is only one of the six elements I mentioned... When it comes to storage, thermal storage is cheaper and have a huge potential (and heat and cold represent about half of the US electricity consumption)

Then batteries is only one technology out of several to "store electricity". Pumped hydro and Hydrogen are probably the 2 biggest alternatives, with mature technology and innovation. There are also more niche technologies like flywheels, compressed air, thermal to electricity storage...

Then lithium-ion battery (your figures are for lithium-ion battery) is only one type of battery - the most used, and the one with price decreasing the most. For example there are different types metal air or flow batteries that are interesting.

Then when batteries are needed (e.g. when energy efficiency + diversified energy mix + overproduction + demand response + thermal storage were not enough), they are needed only for a part of the electricity need at the given time in the grid.

Keep also in mind that 5500 GwH of battery can inject it the grid (or in cars:) 5500 GwH every cycle (oversimplification: everyday) if needed.

You conclude by "there's no fundamental obstacle in the way except money"... well that was the very point of my initial post. While managing intermittence has a cost currently nuclear Kwh are 3 to 10 times more expensive than utility wind and solar kwh. And the gap between nuclear and wind & and solar keep widening...

I feel sad when I see replies like yours, because honestly I don't think you understood my point at all. If you combine all the other things you mention here, all of them together, right now, are incapable of addressing even 1% of our energy use, let alone be the backbone of a grid to manage intermittence. The cost analysis you describe is imaginary, because again, those technologies simply don't exist at scale. There is not a single country in the world that operates with any of your strategies, but most developed economies regularly use nuclear in their mix.

We could address climate change with nuclear today, or we could wait until these technologies are mature and cheap, which may come too late.

5500 GwH seems to be the yearly batteries manufacturing capacities projected in 2030. That is what will be produced every year, not the total installed capacity of batteries. And as mentioned earlier those batteries could technically inject 5500 GwH (+ 5000 GwH of 2029, 4500 GwH of 2028...) in the grid every day...

My energy usage estimate is also based on daily use. And even if we extrapolate it to a 10x increase, 55000 GwH, and it could be available now, we would not even achieve the same levels that nuclear already does just in the US, today. Every discussion we have on debating batteries as alternative to nuclear must tackle this obvious issue.

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