And for those nickel-free battery chemistries, what inputs are the main cost drivers? And as per my response, nickel is also experiencing shortages and cost spikes.
My core assertion remains true regardless of the fact that different chemistries require different inputs: battery production has become a resource extraction problem, rather than a manufacturing problem. Unless we find a way to somehow make mining exponentially more efficient, we're not going to be seeing exponential growth in battery production.
Your core assertion remains false because (1) lithium is not the only battery chemistry, and (2) batteries are not the only, or even cheapest, storage technology.
CAT-L, the biggest battery maker in the world, is today ramping up sodium battery production capacity. Will you now insist on a sodium supply bottleneck?
Lithium is the only viable battery chemistry we have presently. Lead acid decays after 100-200 cycles. Who knows if sodium will be viable, it'd be a lot better to argue for its efficacy when it's actually on the market.
The other forms of storage have other shortcomings: hydroelectric storage is geographically dependent. Most of the other form of storage people are mentioning in this tread have never been operated outside of prototypes: like hydrogen electrolysis or compressed air. Again, technological feasibility and market viability are two vastly different things. If compressed air storage works, but it's more expensive than nuclear power what's the point?
Lithium is not, in fact, the only viable battery chemistry. CAT-L, the world's largest maker of batteries, is today ramping up production of sodium batteries. Numerous other chemistries are also being fielded, at $billions scale.
Pumped hydro storage is not, in fact, geographically dependent: there are a lot of hills (which you knew). Compressed air is used in production (which you knew). Hydrogen electrolysis is operated in the millions of tons (which you knew).
Relying on falsehoods is a strange way to argue. It depends on your audience remaining ignorant.
I don't care about company hype and marketing. Get back to me when I can actually buy a sodium battery and throw it on a test load to see if it's living up to the promises. It's not available yet, that's the reality. Tech that's 5 years away has a nasty habit of staying 5 years a way for a lot longer than that.
I got a real kick when you insisted hydroelectricity storage is not geographically dependent and immediate followed by saying it needs hills. And it requires more than just hills. It needs a hill, with a reservoir on top, and another reservoir at the base of the hill to collect the water, and another body of water to fill said reservoirs. The conditions for hydroelectric storage are way more specific than "it needs a hill".
I agree, relying on falsehoods are a bad way to argue. That's why it's bad to insist that storage is an easy problem to solve to try and make the case for intermittent sources.
> Get back to me when I can actually buy a sodium battery and throw it on a test load to see if it's living up to the promises.
Sure, right after you get back to to inform us about the approved and operating permanent nuclear waste storage facility in the US with all the waste waiting in temporary holding facilities having been placed there.
Yucca mountain is, in fact, not an "approved and operating permanent nuclear waste storage facility in the US with all the waste waiting in temporary holding facilities having been placed there". It is not even "approved and operating".
It's ready to receive waste, it's just political grandstanding withholding approval. It would also be a waste to seal up non-reprocessed fuel since it's a future source of fissile material. Regardless, nuclear waste is a non-issue entirely. We disposable of chemicals far more toxic that never decay all the time, but people get their arms worked up over the word "nuclear".
And a nuke plant needs an unused containment vessel.
Betting that the biggest battery manufacturer in the world will default on billions of dollars in orders for sodium batteries, next quarter, would be a courageous position to take. But I doubt you are shorting CAT-L.
And then there are various thermal storage schemes. Pumped thermal (reversible thermal cycle with hot and cold storage) could have up to a 75% round trip efficiency with cheap materials and no geographical restrictions.
And has anyone actually built an electrical thermal storage system - not district heating - with 75% round trip efficiency? Or is this just more marketing hype?
In fact, nickel dominates the cost of the cathode, in case you missed what I had posted. But there are nickel-free chemistries out there.