The scaling up of battery manufacturing for EVs and now solar storage has lead to prices I would have never imagined I'd see in my lifetime. It's one of the success stories that, having lived through it, has been a real joy.
I know that folks might have been able to point to a graph years ago and said we'd be here eventually, but I had my doubts given the scale required and hacking through all the lobbying efforts we saw against solar/battery. Alas, we made it here!
Does anyone know whether it makes sense to setup solar arrays closer to users or to concentrate them in sunny places and send them throughout the country?
e.g. an analysis of whether we should setup all the solar farms in Nevada for the whole country... set them up in the general south and transmit north... or will each state have their own farms?
All nice and beautiful, but I don't understand how will this work in the winter in the temperate areas. You maintain parallel natural gas installations and ramp them up in the winter? Does this doubles the cost?
Possible things are to over provision solar, and set it up further south with a high voltage dc cable. We almost had a Morocco - UK power setup but the current government said no to it.
Batteries are probably going to kill long-range transmission lines and open up remote generation at a scale never thought possible. Desert solar, remote hydro, etc etc. As the price continues to fall and the density continues to rise the economics of transmission completely change and will decouple the location of power generation from the use of that power dramatically. This decoupling of location and use will drastically reshape energy production. Right now is likely the time to buy sunny land in the middle of nowhere but near train tracks.
> Batteries are probably going to kill long-range transmission lines and open up remote generation at a scale never thought possible.
Not at current power densities.
The bandwidth of a station wagon filled with hard drives is quite high; the power delivery of station wagon filled with batteries is on the low side compared to a wire made from the same material as that station wagon and buried under the road the wagon would have been driving along.
Even for liquid and gas fuels, people make dedicated pipelines rather than doing it all by truck and train.
Too put the facts crudely, the world would be fucked climate change wise without China. The oft heard "why do anything while China is the problem" would be hilarious, if people repeating bald-faced bullshit didn't grate so much.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 35.5 ms ] threadI know that folks might have been able to point to a graph years ago and said we'd be here eventually, but I had my doubts given the scale required and hacking through all the lobbying efforts we saw against solar/battery. Alas, we made it here!
e.g. an analysis of whether we should setup all the solar farms in Nevada for the whole country... set them up in the general south and transmit north... or will each state have their own farms?
Not at current power densities.
The bandwidth of a station wagon filled with hard drives is quite high; the power delivery of station wagon filled with batteries is on the low side compared to a wire made from the same material as that station wagon and buried under the road the wagon would have been driving along.
Even for liquid and gas fuels, people make dedicated pipelines rather than doing it all by truck and train.
Now, if someone figures out how to get something like metastable pumped hafnium isomers working… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy
For all their faults, I am in awe of the scale and success of their industrial policy.
Too put the facts crudely, the world would be fucked climate change wise without China. The oft heard "why do anything while China is the problem" would be hilarious, if people repeating bald-faced bullshit didn't grate so much.