
Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap - darklighter3
http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-cheap/
======
beat
One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's
decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of
remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of
cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and
more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things
will happen.

This gets to another point that bugs me in these discussions... the pushback
against wind/solar dominance by the pro-nuclear crowd. Insisting that nuclear
power is the right way to go is western-centric. It's fine for the US, Europe,
Japan, and other advanced nations that have the infrastructure to support it.
But is it a solution for Peru? For Somalia? Of course not. Wind/solar/storage,
on the other hand, is totally viable as a solution for even the poorest
nations. This alone is an argument for solar over nuclear.

~~~
DennisP
I wrote a couple pro-nuclear comments here. I'm perfectly happy with wind and
solar and think we should roll it out as fast as we can, as well as nuclear.

Many of the wind/solar advocates, on the other hand, are strongly anti-
nuclear. Given the state of the climate that just doesn't make sense to me.
All these technologies have their own advantages, and we should use each where
it's most effective.

~~~
holri
Technologies also have risks. If the risk of a technology is the vast
devastation of life it should not be used.

~~~
hyperbovine
Compared with the vast devastation of life which is already taking place as a
result of climate change? I'll take my chances with the nukes.

~~~
Lorento
Human life? Is it? Remember famines that used to regularly wipe out the
peasants in most civilizations? It's been a while since disasters on those
scales happened in most countries. Climate change doesn't sound so bad when
you compare it to normal life a few centuries ago.

~~~
saiya-jin
yes and no... climate change is not about having +2 degrees globally, we can
handle that easily even if sea rises significantly. Not even about extinction
of a lot of species, which will trash some foodchains around the world. It's
more about longer perspective - some effects are cascading, and in longer
uncontroleld run, we might end up with pretty much inhabitable planet (at
least for mankind). Life itself will handle this easily, mass extinctions
happened many times in the past for various reasons, mankind in its current
level of evolution would be probably over.

------
api
If we do get cheap scalable energy storage, it's pretty much game over (in the
long run) for everything but solar and wind. We are basically drenched in free
energy, but we can't store it cheaply enough. If that's fixed, we're done
here.

Nuclear fission may still have on-paper advantages in some markets/climates,
but the high PITA (pain in the aXX) factor would probably mean we wouldn't
bother going there. We'd just build transmission lines, more solar/wind, and
more storage even if it were marginally more expensive just to avoid the
headaches of nuclear energy.

~~~
Shivetya
Well one stumbling block is that we need to get thousands more people trained
to service these energy storage facilities, let alone the windmills and solar
panels. There is already a shortage there as the skill set is not one side,
part electrician, part mechanical engineer, and so on.

~~~
marze
Fortunately, solar photovoltaic doesn't need servicing.

Energy is big business, revenue will be there for servicing once market share
is there.

~~~
intrasight
Solar photovoltaic probably needs more servicing per kWh than any other
method. If those panels aren't clean, you don't get the expected return.

~~~
digikata
I predict at some point that something like an roomba for solar panels might
spring into existence...

~~~
patrickk
They actually already exist. Google "solar panel cleaner robot" or similar.

------
greggyb
If there's a legitimate arbitrage opportunity for individual homeowners to buy
a battery and charge it overnight to cover peak costs, there should be an even
stronger case for energy companies to buy larger batteries, install them in
low-land-cost areas, and do the thing themselves. If these peak plants are so
expensive, then a major utility can save money using batteries rather than
peak plants.

The cost should be lower for a utility to do this than for individual
homeowners to do so for equal capacities.

So I ask are we seeing this behavior?

On a slightly different note, it doesn't seem that the article is addressing
vehicles. Battery powered cars are not yet practical enough for the
mainstream, and aircraft are still entirely dependent on the energy density of
hydrocarbon fuels.

I could see batteries becoming feasible for cars "soon" with the current rate
of advance, but charging stations don't make sense to me. You want easily
accessed battery packs in cars and battery-swap stations. This is a huge
infrastructure change, but for out-of-city travel (i.e. a trip where you would
need to charge before you get to your destination), you want the equivalent of
a gas station, which is 1-10 minutes for a stop, not 45+.

As for aircraft, I don't see them using batteries soon.

~~~
mark-r
I think you missed the part about studies that make the case that utilities
could be doing this today. Utilities are conservative though, I don't expect
them to jump in with both feet right away.

~~~
greggyb
> This is, of course, speculative. We don’t know if the study findings scale
> to the whole of the United States. It’s back of the envelope math. Atop
> that, the study itself is an analysis, which is not the same value as
> experience.

Hence my question. Do we actually see any utilities making steps in this
direction?

~~~
beat
They're openly talking about it. Let's look again in ten years, given the lead
time, conservatism, and regulatory concerns at this scale. "Fail fast" isn't
really an option for the grid the way it is for software startups.

~~~
greggyb
I realize I may have come across somewhat pugnaciously above. I am honestly
curious about this, though.

What utilities/where are talking about this right now? What level of talk are
we talking about? Public statements? Designs? Construction permits in the
works?

~~~
aharonovich
My research has shown that while many utilities have purchased storage (SCE
250 mW in 2014[1]) it's still very experimental and they do it mostly for
research purposes or publicity or because the regulator makes them. However,
since the electricity business is slow moving, low margin and very capital
intensive it's clear why everyone is very interested in any new potentially
disruptive technology. Imagine owning a peaker power plant that you've paid
for in full using debt and generates a little profit each year under the
condition that it can be amortized for 15 more years - if someone built the
equivalent of a peaker plant made of batteries, even in 2025, you'd still go
under. Scary.

[1] [http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-
top-10-energ...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-
top-10-energy-storage-stories-of-2014)

------
URSpider94
One problem that will surface is that the cost of our transmission
infrastructure will have to be covered, one way or the other. Currently, with
net metering, customers are able to arbitrage power at the retail price, while
effectively making use of the grid for both pushing and pulling load. This
would be like flying a round-trip from San Jose to Tokyo and back to SFO, and
claiming that you only owe the airline for the Caltrain fare up the peninsula.

The other issue is that our current infrastructure isn't designed for peer-to-
peer transmission, with neighborhoods pumping large amounts of power into the
transmission lines during peak solar hours. Some areas of Hawaii have had to
put a moratorium on installing rooftop solar to prevent potential damage to
the branch circuits.

Long story short, it's not simply a matter of storage costs undercutting
retail power costs, there are also maintenance costs for the grid that are
invariant on demand, which will have to get paid one way or the other.

~~~
driverdan
I think you misunderstood something in this article. The only stored power
that would be on the grid would be from the power companies themselves, not
the end users. End users wouldn't resell the power, they'd use it themselves.

~~~
ridgeguy
The growth of distributed solar + storage (i.e., zillions of residences having
10kW arrays and 25kWhr storage) is accelerating. Projections I've seen suggest
that this distributed storage (which doesn't belong to the power companies)
will be far larger than utility-scale storage such as discussed in the
article. This presents real challenges in how to control that distributed
storage and pay its owners for storage-related grid services.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Why can't it just be a feed-in tariff? And if the consumer can consume using
the network they can produce, in the other direction. The cable runs both
ways, no?

~~~
ridgeguy
It can be, but that doesn't capture the value a consumer with fast response,
controllable generation/storage supplies to the grid. Compensating the
consumer for power or storage they supply at a particular time is complicated.

Existing net metering pays a fixed rate for power supplied to the grid by,
say, a solar-equipped residential grid customer.

But in fact, fast response power delivered to the grid when the grid managers
call for it commands much higher prices in the dynamic electric power market.
So does the ability to store power on demand (absorb power from the grid),
when generation briefly exceeds supply.

So imagine a residential grid customer with local solar + storage that's
controllable by the ISO (grid managers). Rather than net metering (a fixed
feed-in tariff), the ISO should pay instantaneous market rate for power
delivered, or absorbed by, the residential grid customer.

I think we'll soon converge on bidirectional power delivery/sink services that
are controlled by either the ISO or perhaps by local smarts on the resident's
grid-tie interface. That would engage the resident's system as a grid
stability enhancement tool, and would bring more revenue to the resident than
simple feed-in tariff schedules. One assumes the resident would participate by
an opt-in choice in exchange for enhanced revenue.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Thanks, very informative. The biggest challenge seem to be that the current
people running both te grid and power companies are so conservative that they
seem to be the biggest blocker against something line this being created.

~~~
aharonovich
IMO It only seems that way. They do their best to stay on top of all new
technology, but as consumers are used to _very_ high level of service
(>99.99%) they can afford few risks if any.

------
cwal37
It stands out to me that pumped storage only gets a passing mention. We've had
that as a proven energy storage technology for decades. People in the industry
love to talk about it and file FERC applications for preliminary permits on
the same sites over and over (I would know, I've had to read nearly all of
them over the last year at work), but it's never deployed at the scale people
expected.

It'll be interesting to see if if PSH ever really takes off, or if it really
does get left in the dust by batteries and other things.

~~~
dredmorbius
Pumped hydro _is_ virtually all deployed grid-scale storage -- 90%+ (and plus
quite a bit as memory serves).

It's cheap, effective, scalable, and highly efficient.

It's also got limited sites and localized environmental impacts.

Where you been hiding?

~~~
cwal37
It is most of deployed storage atm, but the bulk of that wasn't deployed
recently. I'm staring at a very informative figure I just made last week that
I can't share since it's a draft for a report, but if you glance at EIA 860
data you'll see the breakdown for storage by nameplate capacity is:

Battery - 0.7%

Compressed Air - 0.5%

Concentrated Solar Power Storage - 1.3% (which doesn't always exactly count)

Flywheels - 0.2%

Pumped Storage - 97.4%

You can also see that the average operational year for pumped storage is 1974,
not anytime recent. You could weight the years by capacity, but most plants
are pretty big, and it shouldn't change it too much. Also, pumped storage
capacity only totals 21.6GW.

As for where I've been, I've just been stupidly busy. I keep meaning to jump
back in, but I never seem to have the time.

------
IanDrake
>This leads to what seems to be a paradoxical situation. A battery that is
more expensive than the average price of grid electricity can nonetheless
arbitrage the grid and save one money. That’s math.

Missing in the math is logic. If enough people do this, the price will even
out and the arbitrage opportunity will vanish.

It's like an arbitrage trading a model that makes money when paper trading but
loses money when live because the effects of live trades on the market wasn't
considered.

~~~
Guvante
The fact that an arbitrage opportunity will not always be available does not
mean that arbitrage opportunity does not exist.

Also electricity companies would be very slow to adjust to reduced demand by
lowering prices, making this work for longer than a naive analysis would
predict.

~~~
hueving
>The fact that an arbitrage opportunity will not always be available does not
mean that arbitrage opportunity does not exist.

Spotting a leftover cookie on the table means you will probably be able to get
a free cookie. It doesn't mean that you have found a way to solve world
hunger.

~~~
Guvante
Everything you have said can be said about literally every possible
opportunity to make money outside of those that leverage sweat equity.

If you want to say something about his idea that is specific you could add
value.

For instance attempting this arbitrage is a risk transference since you are
betting that the technology of batteries won't catch up before you have made
back your capital investment.

------
fennecfoxen
The other reason energy storage could get big in the next several years is an
elevated risk of blackouts due to aggressive retirement of coal-fired power
plants -- blackouts like the one in Washington last week that shut down
several government agencies (e.g. the _Department of Energy_ ) and which was
probably related to the shutdown of the Potomac River Generating Station.

~~~
tertius
Either that or more Gen3+ Nuclear. Why not both I would say.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Nuclear plants take years to build and have shitty failure scenarios. Best to
stopgap coal until renewables take over with combined cycle natural gas
plants, fueled by cheap natgas from fracking.

It's not perfect, but those natural gas plants will still be kept around as
peaking plants and they're an order of magnitude cleaner than coal plants (as
well as producing much less CO2 per unit of power generated).

~~~
jimktrains2
> Nuclear plants take years to build and have shitty failure scenarios

That's only because we won't build any newer designs that don't have shitty
failure modes and insist that we keep old reactors with very shitty failure
modes online, though.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I don't disagree that we can build better designs. I disagree that we can
build them quickly and cheap.

According to the OECD:

"As nuclear power plants are complex construction projects, their construction
periods are longer than other large power plants. It is typically expected to
take 5 to 7 years to build a large nuclear unit (not including the time
required for planning and licensing)."

"Between 2002 and 2008, for example, cost estimates for new nuclear plant
construction rose from between $2 billion and $4 billion per unit to $9
billion per unit, according to a 2009 UCS report, while experience with new
construction in Europe has seen costs continue to soar."

~~~
fennecfoxen
All the modern design proposals are to mass-produce smaller units --
sometimes, completely sealed units -- which would then be installed several to
a site, and maybe sent back to the manufacturer to be refurbished at periodic
intervals. This is the "save money by mass production" economies-of-scale
approach, as opposed to "save money by being more efficient with large custom-
built plants" economies-of-scale approach which has failed the industry and
led to many of those ballooning costs.

(Whether we have the regulatory wherewithal to go with that plan is another
matter, but the very idea of reusing the same design over and over does help
keep compliance costs down, and you can focus on site-selection costs.)

------
mathgeek
One thing that kept coming to mind while reading all of this article's details
on different methods for storing and selling and buying power at the peaks and
valley of pricing was this:

Electricity in our homes is so widespread and popular because it just works.
We don't need to think short-term about how or when we use it (although we
should and can if you want to). You flip a switch, the light comes on, and you
flip the switch again when you're done.

In my mind, there are only two factors that need to be there for widespread
adoption: the price needs to come down, and the battery or other storage
medium needs to just disappear into the background of in-home electricity
usage. Most people will just want to see a lower bill without any costs to
their ease of use regarding electricity.

~~~
james-skemp
Renters.

Every time I hear about advances in renewable energy I get a little sad. I've
rented for the last decade plus, and unless I get married and decide to settle
down, will probably continue to rent for the next decade plus.

Homeownership would allow me to take advantage of these sorts of advances, but
so would the ability to take advantage of this as a renter.

Looks like only ~35% of US households rent, according to
[http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708%20](http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708%20)
, so perhaps that's why.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Where I live, in Sweden, you can. I purchased shares in a wind power coop. It
feeds me all the electricity I need wherever I live in the country, at cost of
production. And with interest rates at effective zero here the investment is
significantly better than having the money in the bank.

~~~
patrickk
Interesting. Would you mind posting details? I would like to know more, if
it's possible in Germany, expected ROI etc.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
A quick and dirty calculation: I bought 28 shares from OX2 windpower coop,
which entitles me to 28,000 kWh at cost price. Which is what our house/home
office uses per year. The price is about €700/share. But I bought shares from
the market (people that want to sell their shares), which for some reason are
cheaper. I paid about €590/share.

Over the last seven years (I haven't had my shares that long), the saving on
cost of electricity, which is tax free, would have been about €960/year. Which
is about 5.7% ROI /year. Better than bank rates but worse than index linked
stock market investments (I think).

[http://www.ox2.com/en/wind-power/private-users/](http://www.ox2.com/en/wind-
power/private-users/)

I don't think OX2 offer electricity in Germany, but maybe in Finland and
Poland. Even if they did, it would also depend on how the German regulator has
structured how this can work, as well as how taxation on this is structured.

~~~
patrickk
Thanks!

------
jhallenworld
Push a train up a hill to store energy. Yes, someone is really doing this:

[http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/](http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/)

~~~
teamonkey
That uses more-or-less the same principle as pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)

~~~
brownbat
Except it takes a really big train to weigh as much as a lake.

Pumped hydro is unbelievable. Tour a pumped hydro facility if you ever get the
chance, and ask about the economics. They're buying a dollar of energy at
night in Spring and selling it on hot summer days for something like five
hundred. (Probably not quite that much, but it was a crazy ratio, to the point
where efficiency barely matters - also, free energy from rain!)

~~~
ulrikrasmussen
The ARES website claims that the cost of their train technology is only 60% of
an equivalent pumped hydro facility [1]. This is pretty impressive, and I
wonder how they do that. Maybe because a water pump is not just a turbine
operating in reverse, and thus pumped hydro needs separate equipment for
charging/discharging, whereas ARES can use the same?

[1] [http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/santa-barbara-energy-
storage...](http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/santa-barbara-energy-storage-
environmental-integrity)

~~~
brownbat
Interesting.

From site: "3GW Regional Energy Storage Hubs. Energy capacity may range from 4
to 16 hours duration at full power output."

The 3GW is big but the duration is small, so I'd guess they're doing short
term grid stabilization, competing more with flywheels than hydro. That's just
a hunch, but if that were true, it'd explain how you could get something
really effective without a lake-sized train. (Some videos online suggest they
move a bunch of heavy cars on the same track independently, so they probably
also get much more weight than a normal train.)

My limited understanding of pumped hydro specifically was that it really was
basically just a turbine operating in two directions, crazy as that sounds.
Even so though, I can easily imagine big cost savings just from not having to
engineer around water. That stuff doesn't compress, you design or run these
wrong and they'll just mercilessly explode:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVUeNp3o3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVUeNp3o3M)

Being able to build anywhere is really neat too.

So, grid storage tends to fracture into a half dozen specific types of
storage, all based on duration, spin up time, geography, fuel, etc. There are
like 18 different tradeoffs, and you can specialize in any one of them. Pretty
much any new grid storage technology is going to add to the field rather than
displacing anything, because the grid needs arbitrage in basically all 18
different dimensions.

Thanks for the link. There are some cool ARES videos on youtube too.

------
nine_k
Let's calculate a bit.

> _Most flow battery companies have $100 / kwh capital cost as a target_

With typical power plants generating e.g. 500 MW 24 hours long, the storage is
going to be 100000 $/MWh * 500 MW = 50M/hour. If we assume that a solar plant
generates power for 12 hours, and the batteries feed the consumers for 12 more
hours, it's going to be 600M for _storage alone_. The solar power plant with a
peak power well above 500MW (to feed the day load + charge the batteries for
the night) will cost you extra.

I still think that a Thorium molten salt reactor is a strong contender in a
price landscape like this. (It also has a nice ability to burn our current
stockpiles of radioactive waste from Uranium reactors.)

------
D_Alex
One thing to add: Electric cars. They come with energy storage in-built.

By rough calculation, if 10% of cars in my city (Perth, Australia) were
electric, their batteries could supply the entire city's demand for duration
of about 2 hours (or 10% of demand for 20 hours etc). This could work really
well for demand balancing and peak shaving - overcapacity (which in Perth is
massive, since the policy is to maintain supply even on extremely hot days,
when demand shoots up and generation capacity goes down) and spinning reserve
could be tremendously reduced.

I suspect some good software and a little hardware will be needed to account
for the owners' needs optimally.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
There is going to be an interesting startup market around this is my
prediction.

------
notlisted
Silly question perhaps… If alternative energy sources in combination with
batteries increase independence from those who supply it, and reduced demand
during peak times allows rates to fall, isn't there a point where investments
in infrastructure (or maintenance thereof) will stop being profitable, etc
etc.

~~~
ridgeguy
Yes. This is the grid owners' nightmare at the moment. Their old business
model is rapidly dissolving as the price of solar + storage falls ever further
and more electricity users essentially disconnect from buying grid power. That
revenue loss hits grid maintenance expenditures directly.

------
mrfusion
Random idea, if batteries are cheap enough could we charge them up and ship
them on trains back forth instead of building high voltage transmission lines?

~~~
jeffasinger
I had the same thought reading the article, but after some thought, I doubt
it.

Grid transmission can be as low as 0.5% per 100 miles already. Batteries lose
about 10% of the energy by storing it, that leaves you with needing to go at
least 2000 miles in order to make up the battery loss difference, plus needing
the energy to move the batteries physically.

~~~
ch4s3
Float them down a river.

\s

~~~
intrasight
True. They float plenty of coal on the rivers here in Pittsburgh

------
mrfusion
If utilities install these batteries near the last mile, would that also cut
down on power outages during storms?

~~~
eigenvector
Probably not since most radial power systems are not designed to support
islanded operation for a segment of the system. Grid batteries will likely be
designed to automatically disconnect during grid outages just like distributed
generation.

~~~
aharonovich
but grid-edge storage does help a bit to resiliency of grid.

------
aharonovich
How lucky for me, I've just finished doing the same back of the envelope
calculation for using a home storage system that would take advantage of Time-
Of-Use rates, my conclusion was opposite - when he is concentrating on the gap
between ~34c peak rate to ~15c minimum rate I've chosen to focus on the gap
between the minimum rate to the ~19c standard tiered rate. the 3-4 cent
difference means that you can only save, at the maximum, 3-4 cents per kwh
consumed your storage. And storage is very far from this range. Nonetheless,
I'm still very optimistic about other uses of storage and I am confident that
I would find the right company to short, maybe a company that builds peaker
plants.

------
lancewiggs
Shocked at the amount of support for nuclear here. Use the data - how much
solar, wind and nuclear capacity had been installed in the last 5 years?

Nuclear is not getting cheaper, not significantly, so what does this imply for
the next five years? The answers are obvious, and non nuclear.

New Zealand, where I live, declared itself nuclear free in 1984. We are
currently generating 70-80% of our electricity using renewable/low/zero
emission methods.

~~~
maccard
Apologies for the mobile link, but [0] says that in 2014 over 50% of your
energy was from oil and coal. Have you a source on your claims? I know that
many of the non-nuclear countries in Europe end up importing a lot of their
power from neighbouring countries like France, who's main supply is nuclear.

The big advantage of nuclear is it's relatively safe and readily available.
How many people have been killed in nuclear related incidents in the past 30
years vs people killed in coal mines, for instance?

[0]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_New_Zealand](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_New_Zealand)

~~~
olau
Energy consumption != electricity consumption.

Regarding France, that argument works both ways.

And whatever advantages nuclear may or may not have, that doesn't matter if
it's too expensive.

~~~
maccard
Ah, I missed the electricity part, sorry!

------
rjurney
If you haven't read Ramez's books, you're missing out. Check out Nexus, and
then the sequels. Without a doubt, the best sci-fi I've read in a long time

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_%28Ramez_Naam_novel%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_%28Ramez_Naam_novel%29)

------
mauricemir
Interesting though the Compressed Air storage could have some "interesting"
failure modes.

Back when I was an Engineering Technician my thermo fluids lecturer commented
that if the main reservoir for the labs compressed air system burst it would
flatten the entire lab block.

------
fokinsean
I don't know about that.

/r/april30th2015

------
kumarski
There's still more ROI for humanity in changing our consumption behavior.

There's resource limitations on lithium ion, lest we run into the same
scenario.

~~~
crpatino
Would you care to elaborate? I am not sure I understand your point.

------
melling
Got any real numbers to back that up? I'm guessing that it just feels good to
bang on your chest and make that call. The reality is probably a lot
different. How are all the megacities going to get enough solar and wind
power, for example? Tokyo, NYC, Mexico City, Shanghai, etc. all running from
solar? How big will the grid need to be to power NYC? Anyway, I'd love to see
a deeper analysis and less chest pounding.

~~~
diminoten
HN isn't where you go to _learn_ , HN is where you go to expand the realm of
possible information for you to consume.

When you read a comment like the above, your response shouldn't be to demand
for sources, your response should be to go research the topic on your own.

This site would be _much_ better if folks understood that HN itself isn't a
place for someone to "get wonky".

On my debate team, we had a rule of "no wonking". HN would be a better place
if it too had the same rule.

~~~
melling
It certainly could and should be a place to learn. How do chest pounding
statements add value, especially when they fall apart after the first
question?

There are definitely a lot of knowledgable people who read this site. Why
wouldn't you want them to contribute and take deeper dives? Superficial
conversations are essentially noise.

~~~
diminoten
If you don't see a qualitative potential difference between a quick reply
(HN's comments section), and a well thought out article (HN submissions), then
I can't help you.

HN comments sections _cannot_ be more than superficial. Anything more than
superficial deserves to be put in a more accessible and readable place, as a
topic in its own right.

~~~
melling
Of course replies can be more than superficial. They can contain facts,
historical perspective, personal experience, back of the envelope
calculations, or qualitative statements from people with specific domain
knowledge.

After a good HN discussion, there would be enough information for another
blog.

~~~
diminoten
No, they can't, because the folks who are commenting at what you think is that
level are actually completely unqualified to do so.

The folks who _are_ qualified to write articles and papers on the topics that
might interest you, do exactly that. There is no inherent value in wasting
intellectual effort on an HN comment. The people who comment on HN are not the
people who are the most qualified to speak on a topic in depth, or if they
are, their efforts within HN's comment framework will be very limited, and
most certainly hindered by the medium, not to mention the audience.

I am personally aware of a handful of _genuine_ experts on HN who comment on
articles in their "wheelhouse", and they've _never_ risen to the level of
their capabilities while doing so. I don't begrudge them this, it's
unreasonable to think they're going to put in the level of effort in an HN
comment they put into their professional work, but to suggest HN comments
could ever rise to the level of what experts are capable of producing is not
only naive, but also greedy, and perhaps more than a little lazy.

If you want to know more about a topic, that's _your_ responsibility. There
are a _number_ of ways around which one could wander to learn more about
what's currently known regarding a topic, and the folks who are experts and
are commenting in HN don't have the time to go through the proper motions of
releasing new information. Even if they had the time/inclination, they
wouldn't do it here.

If you take nothing else away from my comment, consider the following: This
(HN comments section) is a back channel, if anything. You don't scrutinize a
back channel, you verify it independently.

You're putting HN on a pedestal. Don't do that.

~~~
wallyhs
> No, they can't, because the folks who are commenting at what you think is
> that level are actually completely unqualified to do so.

> The folks who are qualified to write articles and papers on the topics that
> might interest you, do exactly that.

How could you possibly know who is qualified and who is not? Given that the
authors of submitted articles frequently comment on HN themselves, it must be
true that at least some HN comments are made by qualified people. But that
assumes that writing an article is the sole requirement for being "qualified".
Not all articles are written by qualified people. Additionally, many articles
are watered down by journalists, and HN threads can provide broader
perspectives.

> There is no inherent value in wasting intellectual effort on an HN comment.

There is as much inherent value as there is in wasting intellectual effort in
a conversation at a dinner party. If I am talking to someone whose life
experience is completely different from mine, I am _learning something_ even
though they are not rising to the level of their capabilities. I am allowed to
learn subjects superficially out of curiosity and without the blessing of an
authority figure. I have to choose who to listen to and who to ignore just
like I do with other sources of information such as HN submissions.

Asking for sources in response to an unfounded claim is common on HN. I've
never seen anyone called naive, greedy, and lazy for it, though. At any rate,
asking for a source does not preclude one from researching the topic
separately.

I agree that HN should not be put on a pedestal. Neither should the
submissions.

~~~
diminoten
So you think I'm speaking to you as an authority figure?

~~~
wallyhs
No, but you seemed to imply that one can only learn from certain people in
certain contexts. I find that I gain surprising insight from unexpected people
at unexpected times. HN is not an exception.

~~~
diminoten
I wasn't implying anything, I was directly stating that the folks who are most
beneficial to learn from aren't making elaborate posts on HN, and you
shouldn't demand that they do.

You're just being lazy by demanding someone to do your research or write an
article for you. Think of it from their perspective: why would they? Any
reason someone might post on HN with a comment containing original or well-
thought content can be better accomplished by putting that effort elsewhere,
in a blog post or website article, and then _posting_ that article as a
submission to HN.

Only a small fraction of HN users even visit the comments page, not to mention
the additional exposure one might achieve by getting their message out to
folks who _don 't_ go to HN.

So yes, there are things to be learned from HN comments. Just not the way
you're suggesting.

In other words, stop asking folks for citations on HN (or any other comments
section, for that matter). You're wasting everyone's time.

~~~
escape_goat
I believe you should reread the previous parts of the thread, including your
own, because it seems like your understanding of the positions in this
argument have shifted. melling isn't demanding that arbitrary experts make
elaborate posts on HN for his or her education and betterment. Rather, melling
seems to believe that people who present information as knowledge in the
comments section should be able and willing to explain the source of their
certainty.

You're positing that people with expert knowledge have an inherent interest in
exposing that knowledge to as large an audience as possible, and that this
interest is so significant that they would always preferentially invest the
extra effort and resources required to write a blog post or website article
that properly contextualized and presented the information.

You're positing that the prospect of writing an article or blog post would
preclude the possibility of responding to the comment on HN.

You're positing that the nature of this interest implies that these experts
would wish to submit their own writings to HN.

To me, it seems that these terms must imply that this interest is not so much
in the distribution of information, but in publicity and the tacit validation
of expertise brought by the ownership of the information as an original
source.

In my experience, this does not reflect the general behaviour of domain
experts, who routinely correspond on mailing lists, usenet, and comment
forums, including HN. There are in fact extensive comments made by at least
one electrical engineer in response to this HN submission.

There is a subset of experts who already blog, for whatever reason, and stand
to gain in some way by presenting themselves as an authortative source of
knowledge and thought to the HN audience. However, many such persons (patio11
comes to mind) routinely write extensive responses to comments on HN.

Personally, the specific reason I began to routinely read the comments on HN
was precisely because I could read fascinating domain-expert knowledge,
presented in dense paragraphs, regarding topics that interested me. I usually
read the comments about a submission before reading it.

Personally, I _do_ wish to know whether someone's thoughts on a topic reflect
domain expertise, or hobby interest; I _do_ wish to know whether an assertion
is established fact within a domain, controversial, sourced from an article or
a blog post, et cetera, especially if that assertion seems dubious to me; the
alternative is to simply continue believing what I believe, and to disregard
such statements. In my experience, however, it is sometimes I who is wrong,
and the dubious assertion which is correct.

In closing, I'd like to mention that melling, as the new OP of this now
detached comment thread, was censured for describing someone's assertions as
'chest beating', which I think was appropriate. However, in the course of your
comment here, you have accidentally or deliberately asserted that he was both
"lazy" and "wasting everyone's time." I don't think that this sort of
argumentation is useful, and I doubt that it is acceptable in your team
debates. dang[a moderator]'s comment in reply to melling about "jabs"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899))
is relevant, well-written, and interesting, and I think that you could benefit
from reading it.

~~~
diminoten
You've taken what I wrote and pushed it much further than I did. If you re-
read what I've written, I'm not nearly as extreme as you present.

Your argument hinges on me being extreme in my position, when in actuality I
am not. I have not said anything nearly as absolute as you've implied. For
example, I don't believe me using the words "lazy" or "wasting everyone's
time" were an example of what dang refers to as "jabs" \-- I was describing an
activity. My words were not used as personal insults, but as descriptions of
behavior. It _is_ lazy to ask for sources on HN comments, and it _is_ a waste
of everyone's time, for the reasons I specified. These aren't insults, because
they're specific, and directed at an activity, rather than a person, and I
provide reasons for why those activities are as described.

I'm sure some SMEs do make the mistake of posting on HN in an elaborate and
detailed fashion, as another example. I've never said it's _impossible_ ,
that'd be an absurd thing to say. I just said it's not in a) their best
interest, and b) many won't for the reasons I outlined.

Coming to HN for the reasons you do is an absolute and unambiguous mistake.
What you get here is _bad_ quality, for what you're looking for. You can get
_much_ better elsewhere, in the form of blog posts, articles, wiki pages,
published papers, etc.

I'll repeat my thesis -- HN holds value as a "back room" where experts can
speak without the same rigors with which they usually have to speak. There is
value in informal discussion, and that's what happens on HN. Citing sources is
a waste of time on HN, because you shouldn't take anything you read here at
face value.

Besides, next time you're in a conversation, are you really going to say, "a
post I read on HN said..." as a way of citing the source of your knowledge?

~~~
escape_goat
Actually, you used the personal pronoun 'you', which is not used in English to
describe an activity, but rather a person. This is unambiguous.

To me, your response on this matter indicates that I'm likely to get
argumentation in reply to anything I say rather than discussion or honest
reflection.

This is fine, if one likes argumentation for its own sake, which it is
established that you yourself do; I, however, do not, so I'm going to
disengage from this conversation.

Scanning your points briefly, I would in another context be happy to go back
and re-examine my representation of your position, but will not do so, as I
can't take the assertion at face value, and would anyways be wasting my time
as per above. I will remember it as a possibility. I do not exactly remember
your thesis in the terms in which you have now restated it, but it seems
likely that we are largely talking at cross-purposes with regards to the
nature of valuable discussion on HN. Experts seldom fail to speak with
sufficient rigor or mind correction when they do so. And 'citing sources' can
be a waste of time, or a courtesy to others, depending on the context.

I would not hesitate to link to information on HN if that was the source of my
knowledge. It is more important to me that I be (eventually) correct than that
I maintain an appearance of correctness.

~~~
diminoten
"You" can also be used as a substitute to "one".

