> Exponentially" is very unlikely. It may become somewhat cheaper, at first, if supply increases. Which btw. is also true for nuclear power.
Not “at first” but demonstrably over time and ongoing. Yes it will cease eventually but it seems like that’s not near.
> But then what? We cannot power the world with solar alone, for the simple reason that we cannot store that much energy during the dark hours. Hydro storage is geographically limited, and batteries, well, let's just say the entire world output of Lithium over the last 3 decades didn't make enough to even store the electricity the US alone requires in a single day. And that is before be electrify further.
Powering the us on batteries for a full day is not a realistic goal. But batteries are already cost competitive and shuttering gas peaker plants.
> Yes, we should build more solar. There is no reason to have roofs not covered in panels. But all solar can do, is help. It is not the solution to our energy demands.
Rooftop solar is actually more expensive than nuclear actually. Or at least a year or two ago.
If you build a bunch of nuclear you will not be able to compete on price with cheap renewables during the day. But you can’t just turn a nuclear reactor on and off so you’ll have to still generate and operate at a loss. Which means to be profitable you have to raise prices to make up for it in the off hours. Which, in turn, makes you less competitive and makes it more commercially viable for batteries.
Tl;dr, market forces will punish you. Renewables and batteries and fossil fuels as backup are the clear winners
> But you can’t just turn a nuclear reactor on and off
No, but I can regulate its output up and down. You don't have to turn a reactor off entirely, its output can be regulated up and down without shutting down completely.
> and makes it more commercially viable for batteries.
The problem with batteries isn't commercial viability. The problem is physical availability. There simply isn't enough Li in the world to make Solar as powerful as it would need to be to stem a majority of our energy requirements, and as of now, we don't have another battery technology that would be suitable.
At a macro view, the whole thing isn't an economic question.
Here are the three facts:
1. We cannot continue with fossil fuel power as we did before (because climate change)
2. Solar isn't up to the task of taking (among other reasons because we don't have the storage required)
3. The worlds energy demands are increasing. Maybe it could be made to grow slower, but reversing it is unlikely
So, what options does that leave us with? Wind suffers from similar problems as Solar. Hydro is geographically limited, as is Tidal. Geothermal is likely too weak. Fusion power doesn't exist yet. And as cool as a Dyson-Swarm would be, that's even further away than Fusion.
1) lithium mining is up 6x since 10 years ago. You shouldn’t assume the average over ten years is a good indicator about capacity to mine. Mining rates are growing quickly.
2) there are competing materials for new battery tech besides lithium
3) battery capacity deployed per year is growing exponentially
4) when you have large over supplies of energy you can pursue hydrogen. Green hydrogen should be at parity with grey hydrogen in less than a decade. Not cost competitive with just using fuels or batteries for utility scale, but slowly getting there.
5) commercial viability absolutely matters. Subsidizing an expensive source of energy rather than building more and more capacity for cheap energy is a bad strategy while using fossil fuels as a crutch in the interim is a bad strategy. Running a nuclear plant at low capacity craters its financial viability.
> there are competing materials for new battery tech besides lithium
And which of those are mass-production ready and are being deployed? Maybe one day, one of them will. Until such time, this argument is about the situation as-is.
> when you have large over supplies of energy you can pursue hydrogen.
The over supply would need to be truly enormeous, because Hydrogen is a cryogenic gas. It needs to be pressurized and cooled, both of which requires a constant expenditure of energy which is lost as usable power. It also carries [safety risks][1], and is [infamously hard to keep under control][1].
> commercial viability absolutely matters.
Long term, preventing climate change matters more. Alot more.
> And which of those are mass-production ready and are being deployed? Maybe one day, one of them will. Until such time, this argument is about the situation as-is.
Sodium ion batteries are doing just fine. The drawbacks are not significant. Lithium is simply cheap enough to be preferable at the moment and likely will continue to be.
> The over supply would need to be truly enormeous, because Hydrogen is a cryogenic gas.
It is. Negative energy prices at peak generation times are increasingly a thing.
> Long term, preventing climate change matters more. Alot more.
Having 5x more energy available to do useful work, per dollar, is going to enable a lot more… useful work. if you’re willing to increase the cost of energy by 5x, then you should probably also be willing to just raise the price of energy during off generation hours to try and align usage to generation and mitigate the battery necessity altogether. Because that would STILL be cheaper for customers than the high prices you’re introducing by suggesting we go for nuclear
Again, this discussion is about the as-is situation. If and when Na-ion enters mass production on a comparable scale, I will happily discuss it.
> Negative energy prices at peak generation times are increasingly a thing.
That does not indicate that we over-produce to a degree that would make H2 as a storage vector viable. Plus, alot of over-capacity has more to do with lagging infrastructure (e.g. Germany has enormeous problems getting SOlar power to where it is needed) than it has with actual net-overproduction.
> f you’re willing to increase the cost of energy
Again: Economic concerns lose lose long term to environmental and physical ones.
Sodium ion batteries are mass produced at a comparable scale today
Your complaint about hydrogen seems indefensible in light of industry forecasters all saying hydrogen is likely to grow pretty darn fast over the next two decades
> Again: Economic concerns lose lose long term to environmental and physical ones.
My dude, Economics is the allocation of scarce resources. The most efficient way per dollar to remove carbon from our systems is by definition the most efficient way to do so.
Given a fixed budget, choosing a less efficient method will result in removing carbon more slowly. Even if you want to say “fuck the budgets man”, those newly inflated budgets are still better off spent on the more efficient tools
> Sodium ion batteries are mass produced at a comparable scale today
Since we were talking about economic viability:
"The global Lithium-ion Battery Market in terms of revenue was estimated to be worth $56.8 billion in 2023 and is poised to reach $187.1 billion by 2032" [Source][1]
"The global sodium-ion battery market was valued at USD 0.5 billion in 2023, and is projected to reach USD 1.2 billion by 2028" [Source][2]
Please explain how a difference between 0.5bn and 56.8bn constitutes "comparable scale".
1) they are mass produced which was your original point of contention
2) they are growing very fast
3) 1:100 is pretty comparable. Utility storage batteries are only commercially feasible within the past several years. Sodium batteries aren’t a great choice for EVs so those numbers aren’t apples to apples as we’ve largely been talking about utility scale power.
4) the biggest reason sodium is not growing even faster is because lithium is better and cheaply available in large supplies.
And so we are here again. If you have x billion dollars, and you want to remove the most carbon; you would very likely remove more carbon, faster, by building a battery plant of either variety than building a nuclear plant.
The limiting factor of our clean power right now is in fact just hooking it up to the transmission grid tbh
Not “at first” but demonstrably over time and ongoing. Yes it will cease eventually but it seems like that’s not near.
> But then what? We cannot power the world with solar alone, for the simple reason that we cannot store that much energy during the dark hours. Hydro storage is geographically limited, and batteries, well, let's just say the entire world output of Lithium over the last 3 decades didn't make enough to even store the electricity the US alone requires in a single day. And that is before be electrify further.
Powering the us on batteries for a full day is not a realistic goal. But batteries are already cost competitive and shuttering gas peaker plants.
> Yes, we should build more solar. There is no reason to have roofs not covered in panels. But all solar can do, is help. It is not the solution to our energy demands.
Rooftop solar is actually more expensive than nuclear actually. Or at least a year or two ago.
If you build a bunch of nuclear you will not be able to compete on price with cheap renewables during the day. But you can’t just turn a nuclear reactor on and off so you’ll have to still generate and operate at a loss. Which means to be profitable you have to raise prices to make up for it in the off hours. Which, in turn, makes you less competitive and makes it more commercially viable for batteries.
Tl;dr, market forces will punish you. Renewables and batteries and fossil fuels as backup are the clear winners