[HN Gopher] The Rise of Batteries in Six Charts
___________________________________________________________________
The Rise of Batteries in Six Charts
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 198 points
Date : 2024-01-26 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (rmi.org)
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| What I find really interesting is the huge growth in stationary
| storage - I believe it's the fastest growing segment.
| beambot wrote:
| Stationary systems for grid scale storage have amazing options
| - e.g. Form Energy - that needn't rely on power density
| benefits of Lithium chemistries. I wouldn't be surprised to see
| this sector dominate the GWh/yr chart in the next 6 years.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's difficult to see any of the alternatives displacing
| batteries for short-term storage. Batteries aren't a good fit
| for long-term storage, which is where alternatives should be
| competitive. But that market is essentially 0 right now.
| smaudet wrote:
| Batteries (High capacity chemical) are terrible for long
| term storage, namely they are toxic:
|
| https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/dry-cell-
| ba... https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002805.htm
| https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-703-health-
| concerns...
|
| And cannot always be easily recycled:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-09/Lithium-
| I...
|
| In addition to general concerns about chemical
| availability, and processing issues.
|
| E.g. Demand expected to outstrip supply as soon as next
| year:
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-
| insight...
| lukan wrote:
| "Batteries are terrible for long term storage, namely
| they are toxic"
|
| Only some are toxic. But can you name the poison or
| danger with saltwater batteries?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
| smaudet wrote:
| Yes, there are excellent non-"battery" technologies. I'm
| explicitly talking about the high capacity chemical
| batteries everyone's crazy for these days.
| lukan wrote:
| Sodium ion batteries are chemical and can have as much
| capacity as you like. They just need a bit more space,
| but not too much more, as they are already used in
| cheaper electric cars.
|
| "Chinese automaker Yiwei debuted the first sodium-ion
| battery-powered car in 2023. It uses JAC Group's UE
| module technology, which is similar to CATL's cell-to-
| pack design.[82] The car has a 23.2 kWh battery pack with
| a CLTC range of 230 kilometres (140 mi)."
|
| And for grid storage, "slightly bigger size" really
| doesn't matter.
| cbmuser wrote:
| A nuclear reaction has a factor of one million more
| energy per Mol as compared to chemical reactions.
|
| Why would want to build an enery system on low-energy-
| density technology?
|
| That would be equivalent to using relays for building
| computers in 2024.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| There's also various schemes to use gravity. Pump water
| uphill above a dam when power demand is low like at
| night, also I have read speculation of trying to do this
| in some underground mine or something so it doesn't
| evaporate.
| cbmuser wrote:
| That has even a worse energy density and thus requires a
| lot of space.
|
| We have nuclear energy, we don't need to use technology
| from the medieval ages.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| There are lots of companies trying to build out different
| kinds of flow batteries for storage. Think of a shipping
| container filled with some substance that stores charge and
| just sits there, waiting for you to use it, grid storage.
| But they all seem like research projects.
| https://news.mit.edu/2023/flow-batteries-grid-scale-
| energy-s...
| panick21_ wrote:
| There have already been some flow battery startups going
| bust since that started.
|
| But there are many battery companies for gird batteries.
| Flow is just one type and one that seems far less poplar
| now-days. They were all the hype like 10-15 years ago.
|
| The problem is the Li-commodity race has already beaten
| most of those designs. You need to use very, very cheap
| materials. Form Energy considered some flow designs but
| rejected them.
|
| That's why Form Energy are going to things like Iron
| batteries, because Li batteries will never reach those
| numbers.
|
| But very few of those alternative have had any real
| commercial success yet.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| What is the use case of long term storage in batteries? As
| some kind of reserve?
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Depends on what long term means. But batteries are used
| for power grid storage. Tesla is selling huge numbers of
| tesla megapacks
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack) often used
| to replace peaker plants.
|
| Peaker plants are power plants sitting there ready to
| turn on during peak power usage. I think they used to be
| often coal, which took a while to start up and produced
| lots of pollution, but then more recently natural gas
| plants start up faster and have much lower emissions. So
| during an evening power usage peak, or during really cold
| or hot times when power demand is high, the grid can tap
| that power source. Now you can replace those plants with
| a bunch of batteries that are ready in milliseconds to
| provide additional power, and then you can charge them if
| they get used up at night when electric usage is low.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Yeah, I think my question was a bit fuzzy, what is the
| definition of long term? Batteries are excellent for
| short term storage, days or weeks but they don't have the
| same storage performance as fossil fuels of where talking
| months and years.
| mbgerring wrote:
| "Long term" in industry parlance means "greater than 8
| hours"
| scythe wrote:
| Does a battery with low cycle efficiency actually beat
| hydrogen for seasonal storage?
|
| The major problem with hydrogen is the fuel cell efficiency.
| Electrolysis is above 80%, but fuel cells are barely at 60%
| and it gets lower when you try to make the design more
| practical (lower temperature, less platinum). So batteries
| just have to hit 50% to compete. But that 50% includes both
| inherent cycle efficiency and self-discharge and Form Energy
| isn't putting their numbers up front, as far as I can see.
|
| More importantly, seasonal storage is heavily concerned with
| heating, and the conversion of hydrogen to heat is a
| different matter. The batteries have heat pumps going for
| them, but you can make a gas-powered heat pump too. So rather
| than the fuel cell efficiency you look at the CoP difference
| between electric and gas heat pumps. The latter have received
| little attention, but could see a surge of interest if green
| hydrogen becomes more popular (and easier to transport). But
| here we exhaust my understanding of the situation.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Efficiency is just one of many issues for hydrogen. Storage
| is another issue. How fast you can dispatch convert in
| either direction.
|
| I don't think seasonal storage will ever be thing. Having
| storage for a few days or weeks is practical.
|
| Non of the technologies we are talking about will work for
| seasonal.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Form Energy has made a huge amount of marketing before they
| had proven anything and claimed to have a product very fast.
| They have not build a single large better ever. Maybe not
| exactly the best example.
|
| Most of the non Li-Battery grid cell systems have not yet
| proven much. Many of the first generation of such system went
| bust. And many of the others have taken a long time and are
| still not deployed.
|
| So far the successful grid battery companies are mostly
| repackaging other cells.
| lukan wrote:
| Yes, it was by far the most encouraging thing I read in a
| while, thanks for posting!
| Anth-ny wrote:
| Does anyone here think Stem Inc. has any chance of becoming the
| Microsoft of stationary batteries?
| mbgerring wrote:
| Stem is effectively a services company. There's a lot of room
| for general-use hardware and software in this space,
| especially as more battery storage is deployed and financial
| incentives for energy arbitrage emerge.
| aresant wrote:
| This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in
| solar
|
| Two interesting data points to that end
|
| 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing
| imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation -
| battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here -
| https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366
|
| 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications
| in CA since solar energy reimbursements dropped -
| https://twitter.com/thomasopeters/status/1750920941868347539 -
| some of that is potentially pent up demand, but I think
| illustrates the role state policy has to play in moving towards
| "renewables"
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| State policy is fundamental to the entire green revolution.
| None of it would have been possible without nations
| incentivizing it. Eventually once the entire energy
| generation/consumption cycle is entrenched and we are all
| dependent on it, they can safely take away the incentives.
|
| It's a bit like changing the tires on a moving bus. Somebody
| had to pay for the new tires and wheels, and the support truck
| to run along side the bus, and the extra fuel, and a discount
| for the new tires, etc. Once the new tires are on the bus can
| keep driving without support.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| Given the dramatically lower costs of utility-scale solar vs.
| residential rooftop solar, is it not better at a society level
| for state policy to incentivize utility over residential solar?
| Utility-scale battery installations likewise should be much
| cheaper.
| ghaff wrote:
| Residential solar may still make sense for new construction
| (maybe?) in the right areas. But there was a lot of scammy
| behavior around home solar installation at one point. Given
| that home solar does not effectively give you a backup
| generator for free (barring a lot of batteries and specific
| electrical hookups as I recall), it's not clear it's a big
| win in general. A lot of utility things aren't ideal at the
| individual house level if there's an option.
| mbgerring wrote:
| A lot of home solar installers now include grid tied
| batteries as part of a standard installation, which is what
| NEM 3 was intended to do (secondarily, after its primary
| goal of giving CA IOUs a massive free lunch).
| epistasis wrote:
| This argument ignores the cost of transmission and
| distribution, which are higher costs than the generation
| itself.
|
| And as electricity prices are driven down even further, T&D
| will come to dominate over energy generation costs.
|
| Few models account for this, but Christopher Clack made one,
| and the lowest cost energy path was a small amount of
| investment in distribution now, paired with massive
| deployment of solar on homes and industrial/commercial.
|
| This won't happen unless utilities are forced into it or
| their allowed profit model is changed to deliver ratepayers
| the lowest cost energy, however.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| Unless every home is completely off the grid, you're going
| to need to pay for most or the majority of that
| transmission and distribution anyway. Peak winter and
| summer I also would imagine many or most residential
| deployments aren't going to cover their own need, unless
| they're incredibly over built with massive batteries. In
| any case, I should check out your Christopher Clack
| reference.
| epistasis wrote:
| The modeling is a few years old now, but here's a podcast
| episode diving into details:
|
| https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-146-why-local-
| sol...
|
| (And of course, perhaps one modeler can get it wrong. But
| over here in California where the majority of our sky
| high electricity cost is from T&D, it definitet feels
| very true. And last national stats I saw had T&D as
| higher than generation costs)
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| As long as the houses are still connected to the grid you
| will indeed by paying for distribution costs. But I think
| that you should expect to see transmission savings since
| you'll have more of the demand met locally.
| nerdbert wrote:
| You don't need as much grid capacity if houses have their
| own generation and storage.
| harryseldon wrote:
| My PG&E bill would make you think so.
|
| But that is a PG&E problem (well problem for the consumer
| and great for their bottom line).
|
| Generation is the majority of the cost across the US:
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/prices-
| and-f...
| conradev wrote:
| Generally, yes, but a few items:
|
| - Distribution systems today can only handle some percentage
| of EV penetration in a given area, not 100%. Charging an EV
| from the roof skips the grid entirely
|
| - The bulk of the cost is labor and permitting, not the
| modules themselves. Given that, California requires solar on
| newly constructed homes
|
| - California updated their net metering program so that
| ratepayers aren't subsidizing rooftop solar anymore (in NEM
| 3.0, homeowners get paid wholesale rates)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Charging an EV from the roof skips the grid entirely"
|
| As long as you have enough sunshine hours in your region.
|
| Southern Spain is fine year-round, but you won't get any
| meaningful output out of a solar panel in Finnish winter.
| The rest of Europe lies between those two extremes.
|
| Northern winter will be made _more_ challenging by addition
| of EVs to the grid, because a lot of electricity is being
| used for heating as well.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| As far as rooftop solar, it makes a big difference if solar
| PV is built into the design process at the beginning, rather
| than tacked on as an afterthought. Similarly, a household
| battery might be as common in the future as a household hot
| water heater (with a similar footprint, size-wise).
|
| There's also regional variability - cities absolutely require
| utility-scale solar, just as they require dedicated
| agricultural land to feed the population, because there's not
| enough surface area in a city. Rural/suburban areas on the
| other hand are ideal for integrated rooftop solar.
| bsder wrote:
| > There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar
| applications in CA since solar energy reimbursements dropped
|
| People also learned that the cheap Chinese solar cells die in
| 5-10 years and aren't worth installing unless your electricity
| costs are really high.
| jbm wrote:
| Is this something documented? I haven't heard of this and
| I've been following the space for a while.
| radium3d wrote:
| It's super cool you can watch California's grid level batteries
| "breathe" every day here,
| https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html#sectio...
|
| Yesterday we peaked out at 3GW discharging rate, and 4GW
| charging rate. We are plowing ahead in the transition to
| utilizing all of our excess solar! We peak at 25GW expected
| today, so we have a little ways to go but it's incredible how
| far and how fast they're replacing everything. Clean air FTW!
| Thanks sun!
| ketzo wrote:
| the CAISO website is super rad in general -- so many real-
| time charts!! demand trend is really cool to watch during
| heat waves; things get spiky on both the demand side (for
| obvious reason) and the supply side (peaker plants &
| "virtual" power plants coming online)
| usefulcat wrote:
| Kind of unrelated, but I'm wondering why TX uses so much more
| electricity than CA. Right now (afternoon of 1/26) happens to
| be a good time to compare:
|
| -- Temperatures are mild throughout most of TX (50s and 60s
| F); temps in CA are similar, perhaps a bit warmer;
|
| -- It's roughly mid-day in both places (3PM TX, 1PM CA);
|
| -- TX has a population of ~30M, CA has ~39M
|
| ..yet somehow right now TX is consuming ~47GW (per ercot)
| while CA is only consuming ~23.5GW (per caiso). What gives?
|
| ERCOT: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| There are a few reasons.
|
| 1. TX has more heavy industry than CA.
|
| 2. CA has spent decades and billions on energy efficiency
| improvements.
|
| 3. CA prices are higher, which encourages lower demand, and
| encourages investments in efficiency. TX has lower prices
| which encourages more demand.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| California takes a much more european approach to energy
| efficiency.
| dgacmu wrote:
| It's a mix of a bunch of things. CA is more heating day
| dominated than TX, and as a result of that, more households
| use natural gas for heating, whereas you're more likely to
| see supplemental electric heat in TX than, particularly,
| NorCal.
|
| (2) high energy costs lead to more investment in electrical
| efficiency in CA;
|
| (3) high energy costs mean that if you're running an
| aluminum smelter (for example), you don't run it in CA. Or
| building a new mega data center. so there are fewer
| electricity-intensive industrial facilities in CA than
| there would otherwise be.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The amazing thing is there basically were no batteries three
| four years ago. And they can supply about 10% of the max
| power demand already. So it feels like the technologies we
| need are now good to go on an engineering an accounting
| basis. And adoption can be quite rapid. We're not saying in
| 50 years, 25 years, 10 years. We're looking at 5 years.
| meandthewallaby wrote:
| That duck curve tweet is disingenuous. That curve in the tweet
| is for the lowest net load day (net load is actual load or
| usage minus generation from renewables). In 2023, if you took
| the day that had the least amount of net load, yes, it was
| almost entirely covered by solar power. That does _not_ mean
| the claim made in the tweet that California is run totally by
| solar power from 10am-4pm every day (today at 11:56 AM PST,
| it's about 51% run by solar power). California's grid has
| enough good things going for it that we don't need to lie about
| it.
|
| You can look this up for yourself:
| https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| If battery growth is exponential, but mining of ore isn't, that's
| a pretty big red flag imo. Once raw material production hits a
| wall, prices go back up, profits droop, advancement declines.
| After a while there'll probably be a new OPEC for batteries.
| Batteries are here to stay, but the growth rate isn't.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| The comparison to Oil is interesting. Because people have also
| been saying we would hit a production wall there, and have been
| saying that for about 90 years now.
| _visgean wrote:
| We are still finding new deposits of lithium. Also its very
| likely we will eventually switch to other technologies that
| possibly wont require the same ingredients we need today.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| OPEC is a possibility because ease of access to petrofuels was
| very sporadic, but the same is not true for battery
| chemistries, sodium and iron batteries are being used for
| storage scale and even some transport cases [0][1] and even
| lithium can be extracted from sea water [2]. Given how
| ubiquitous those 3 things are, there'll be a pretty hard
| ceiling/competition amongst different options. I suspect we'll
| encounter something more like agricultural cartels than
| petrostate cartels.
|
| [0] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/02/10/rusty-batteries-
| cou... [1]https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-
| powered-b... [2]https://samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-
| extract-lithium-from...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I hope we find that "battery" is a sufficiently broad category
| such that individual bottlenecks (lithium extraction, for
| instance) end up being worked around by using different
| materials.
|
| I also think that biotech has picked up some new tricks lately
| (alphafold, etc) that might let it branch out from academia,
| medicine, and agriculture and affect things like mining re:
| bioleeching fungi to move minerals through mycelial networks to
| the surface.
| crote wrote:
| Plenty of ore deposits simply haven't been exploited yet
| because the demand wasn't there, or the market price made it
| economically nonviable.
|
| Lithium is more abundant than lead, tin, or tungsten. We're not
| going to run out any time soon.
| ccheney wrote:
| The near-total recyclability of batteries supports a circular
| economy, which should ease worries about raw material shortages
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| It's not "exponential" it's "exponential in the S-curve", which
| is just some bizarro marketing way of saying "sigmoid growth".
|
| Sigmoids (the most well know being the logistic curve) begin to
| tapper off overtime approaching no growth and reaching an upper
| bound.
| ggreer wrote:
| This is unlikely to happen for several reasons.
|
| First, battery technology has changed to require only one rare
| ore: lithium. Older battery chemistries required nickel and
| cobalt, but the most popular chemistry in electric vehicles
| today is lithium iron phosphate.[1] It has lower energy density
| than nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) or nickel cobalt aluminum
| (NCA), but lasts longer and is safer.
|
| Second, lithium is everywhere. The reason why most lithium
| comes from salt flats in Australia, Chile, and China is because
| that's the cheapest way to get it. But there are plenty of
| other salt flats around the world, and the oceans themselves
| contain over 100 billion tons of lithium (1,000x more than
| known land resources). If today's biggest producers form a
| cartel and try to control prices, other sources will become
| economically viable.
|
| Third, lithium is a tiny fraction of the cost of an electric
| vehicle. LFP batteries have around 160 grams of lithium per
| kWh, so a typical car battery (60-90kWh) has 10-15kg of
| lithium. The spot price for lithium is $15/kg, so the materials
| cost per car is around $150-250. If lithium prices went up by a
| factor of 10, the cost of the car would only go up by 5%. In
| contrast, doubling the price of petroleum almost doubles the
| cost of driving.
|
| Fourth, demand for lithium extraction will go down in the long
| run. This is because unlike petroleum, lithium stays in the
| car. Older EVs contain lots of lithium (and other raw
| materials) that can be recycled into new batteries. Old
| batteries are basically very high quality ore. Lithium
| recycling may sound unlikely to some, but we already have
| existence proofs of recycling happening with other cheaper
| elements. 80% of all copper ever mined is still in use. The
| number for aluminum is almost as high. Remember that the cost
| per kg of copper is half that of lithium, and aluminum is 1%
| the cost of lithium.
|
| I'm really not worried about rare ores being the bottleneck for
| electric vehicle adoption. In 2022, world lithium production
| was around 130,000 metric tons. That's enough to produce 9
| million cars. In that same year, 85 million motor vehicles were
| built. Assuming we wanted all vehicle production to be EVs, and
| assuming an average battery capacity of 90kWh, that would
| require 1,224,000 tons of lithium. If lithium production
| increases at the same rate it did from 2016-2022 (3.5x)[2], it
| will take another 12 years before there is enough capacity to
| make every vehicle electric. I doubt things will take off that
| quickly, but you never know. EV designs are simpler than
| combustion vehicles, and the raw materials costs are similar.
| As EV production volumes increase and manufacturers design for
| farther down-market, we should see prices continue to drop.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
|
| 2. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lithium-
| production?tab=ch...
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| > Third, lithium is a tiny fraction of the cost of an
| electric vehicle. LFP batteries have around 160 grams of
| lithium per kWh, so a typical car battery (60-90kWh) has
| 10-15kg of lithium. The spot price for lithium is $15/kg, so
| the materials cost per car is around $150-250. If lithium
| prices went up by a factor of 10, the cost of the car would
| only go up by 5%. In contrast, doubling the price of
| petroleum almost doubles the cost of driving.
|
| From what I've read this causes the lithium market to be very
| chaotic.
|
| Supply is complicated and capital intensive to bring online
| while the demand is essentially inelastic.
|
| Time it right and you make a fortunes.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| A large growth for batteries is going to come from sodium ion
| batteries not lithium so there will be no problem for the
| growth rate.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Lithium is abundant and recyclable, and the main thing holding
| recycling back at the moment is the supply of depleted
| batteries. It is highly unlikely that the market for lithium
| will ever look like oil.
| iSnow wrote:
| The adoption and cost decrease is so ridiculously fast that the
| first two charts should have been logarithmic instead of linear.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| This is a great set of charts and analysis, although I have two
| problems with it.
|
| 1. On the chart of energy density, I'd like to see the the energy
| density of petrol for comparison. It's much higher, and even
| though extrapolation is dangerous, I'd like to see how long it
| could take to reach parity given some of the different
| forecasting models they mention. Specifically regarding their
| mention of air travel, I'd like to know what the minimum viable
| energy density would be for a vessel's fuel source, because my
| current understanding is that commercial air travel powered by
| electricity is not feasible.
|
| 2. They mention S-curve adoption, but that reaches a horizontal
| asymptote eventually, it doesn't go up forever. I'd like to see
| more analysis on where we think we're at on the S-curve, and why.
| I'd like to see a guess on where it levels out displayed on that
| chart, instead of the arrow simply pointing at the sky. If
| nothing else, show where the chemical limit might be based on
| current battery technology.
|
| I want to displace fossil fuels and reduce pollution and slow the
| greenhouse effect as much as possible. I think transparency and
| realistic expectations need to be part of the transition. The
| more information available to markets, the more efficiently they
| can work towards the goal. I find it very difficult to get
| answers to these types of questions when discussing renewable
| energy generation and storage. I'm sure part of it is my own
| ignorance on where to look, which is why I ask: especially here,
| hopefully an expert can see this and quickly point me in the
| right direction.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| > I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for
| comparison.
|
| Petrol's higher energy density doesn't matter as much as people
| think.
|
| Electric vehicles are around four times as efficient as petrol.
| In a petrol car, only 20% of the energy is converted to motion.
| In electric cars, this is around 80% (with some variation
| dependent on regenerative braking). I wrote about this
| extensively in a previous article:
| https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Ok, how about "effective energy density"?
| treflop wrote:
| Batteries aren't just used in cars man.
|
| Really hard to beat propane or diesel for heat in the
| wilderness right now.
| vvern wrote:
| "Heat in the wilderness" must be so small in terms of
| global emissions footprint to be almost irrelevant, no? The
| wilderness implies ultra low density sort of by definition.
| crote wrote:
| We don't have billions of people living in the wilderness.
| And technology has reached a price level where off-grid
| solar is actually an affordable and _superior_ alternative
| to propane and diesel for household use in rural Africa.
| amluto wrote:
| Heat pump heat, in the wilderness or otherwise, is about
| 4x as efficient as resistance or fire.
|
| This is somewhat silly, since a gas-fired heat pump can
| be very efficient, but gas-fired heat pumps are quite
| rare.
|
| (California has a pricing/policy problem here, IMO.
| Electricity is absurdly expensive, gas is somewhat
| reasonable, and the result is that electric heating is
| not nearly as economical as it should be.)
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Gas-fired heat pumps are neither economical nor efficient
| for single-apartment or single-house systems. Internal
| combustion engines with shaft power output of 1-2 kW are
| inefficient, loud and maintenance intensive.
|
| They can start to make sense from around 50 kW
| heating/cooling capacity and upwards, so the smallest
| units are suitable for 8-15 apartments depending on size.
| treflop wrote:
| Yeah but the article is just about batteries and someone
| asked to see a graph about energy density.
|
| Plus they asked about airplanes and somehow you made it
| about cars.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| The person you are responded to did not make it about
| cars. They were responding to someone talking about cars
| Veserv wrote:
| That is not even comparing apples to oranges, that is
| comparing apples to steel. You are correct in that energy
| density does not matter very much for weight-insensitive
| generation such as grid-scale generation, but energy density
| matters for weight-constrained applications such as airplanes
| and rockets as the poster mentioned.
|
| However, assuming that the renewable generation cost curve
| continues to improve exponentially then the most likely
| outcome for a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future will
| be using electricity to manufacture high density combustible
| fuels out of atmospheric carbon, effectively using it as a
| high density "battery" for use cases that demand high energy
| density.
|
| To the extent that your analysis is relevant to the concerns
| of the poster, all it means is that batterys are actually ~4x
| better than the raw energy density would indicate. As to the
| specifics, Wikipedia claims petrol is ~12,888 W*h/kg or ~24x
| the battery energy density in the article, so ~6x better with
| respect to car motion. Note that the current curve has only
| gone from ~100 W*h/kg to ~500 W*h/kg, so we would need to see
| density growth comparable to the last 30 years to happen
| again.
| aswanson wrote:
| What are the theoretical limits of electrical energy
| density?
| slingnow wrote:
| "Doesn't matter as much as people think"
|
| Doesn't matter for WHAT? You start out talking about energy
| density, and then cite some numbers regarding efficiency.
| What does one have to do with the other? You've done nothing
| to support your opening claim here.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| "Energy" value of gasoline and "energy" value of a battery
| pack are measuring two very different things even though
| they are both units of energy. When you burn gas in an
| engine, the engine has a theoretical upper limit on its
| efficiency which is FAR below 100%, and electric vehicle
| does not. So saying that gasoline has an energy content of
| 115,000 BTU/gal doesn't mean much since you'll be lucky to
| see 30% of that be turned into useful work.
| nerdbert wrote:
| > In a petrol car, only 20% of the energy is converted to
| motion. In electric cars, this is around 80%
|
| How does it settle out when you take into account the
| significantly higher weight of EVs?
| vel0city wrote:
| By "significantly heavier" it is often a difference of a
| few hundred pounds on a few thousand pound vehicle. A 2L
| engine is about 400lbs, an automatic transmission is
| another 220lbs, 20 gallons of gas is 120 lbs, add another
| 100ish pounds for a much larger cooling system. So sure,
| the battery is like 1,000lbs but you traded 840 pounds for
| 200 pounds of EV motors (assuming two of them!) so in
| reality you're up like 360lbs.
|
| Combined with regenerative braking, it doesn't make that
| big of difference in total energy usage. A massive chunk of
| the energy used in an EV is aero drag which makes little
| difference about weight. Weight makes a bigger impact with
| stop and go traffic on non-regen cars as slowing down that
| extra mass turns more energy into heat. An object in motion
| wants to stay in motion and all, once you're up to speed
| you're using about the same energy. This is why a lot of
| the EV trucks have close to the same range if the bed is
| full or not assuming it has the cover on the bed, but
| towing even a small trailer becomes a massive range hit.
|
| I get on average 3.5mi/kWh in my EV, ~1MJ/mi. A gallon of
| gas is like 120 MJ, an average hybrid will get like 40mpg,
| so 3 MJ/mi being burned. You'd need to get like 120mpg to
| match my average efficiency of energy usage, and my EV
| isn't even that incredibly efficient of an EV.
| drtgh wrote:
| >Petrol's higher energy density doesn't matter as much as
| people think.
|
| When vehicles uphill, ramp, and fight with the increasing
| wind resistance due speed, it is needed a high torque for to
| motion.
|
| The petrol's energy density is translated in high torque,
| that the gearbox turns into high torque with speed.
|
| Generating high torque and cooling the overheated coils for
| to obtain such high torque drains the battery quickly in
| electric vehicles, so the range drops quickly.
|
| And for to increase the range, more weight is added (more
| batteries), that requires higher torque for motion, that
| requires more energy again, and so on.
|
| This is why the energy density it is important, in batteries
| are the watts hour per kilogram. As also it is important the
| number of cycles before such batteries start to drop energy
| density until to fail (to note the weight keeps being the
| same along all of this).
|
| With the current technology, due the magnetic fields strength
| generated in the coils, and the energy density of the
| batteries, EVs just can not compete with petrol vehicles.
|
| What is needed? batteries with bigger energy density (more
| Wh/Kg with absurdly high number of recharge cycles), and/or
| higher efficiency in motor's magnetic fields
| (superconductivity, or also stronger magnets would help with
| some coil's topologies).
|
| Other very different thing is if humanity has to do it for
| some weighty reason, the thing changes, we obviously have to
| adapt. I'm not particularly convinced of the compelling
| reasons given, I hope it's something they're not telling me
| because otherwise I'm going to get really pissed off, as cold
| fusion may no arrive in time for to generate all the needed
| energy, and I'm only seeing toys for to generate a fraction
| of the energy needed, that at same time produce high amounts
| of CO2 to manufacture, and also to renew.
| malfist wrote:
| Comparing energy density between batteries and oil is not
| "transparency and realistic expectations"
|
| Once the oil is used it's gone. Batteries can be recharged
| Spivak wrote:
| That's not really their point, it's do we have any reasonable
| hope of applications that _require_ the energy density of
| fossil fuels (flight) to be powered by electricity.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Flight will never be powered by electricity, so you can
| stop checking. Using synthetic liquid fuels for flight is
| the only currently-foreseeable path to carbon-neutral,
| long-haul passenger flight.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Flight will never be powered by electricity, so you can
| stop checking._
|
| Fuel cells could well enable 30X better power densities.
| That would count to me as flight powered by electricity.
| There's also beamed power. Perhaps this wouldn't be
| practical, but it's a thought experiment that shows
| there's nothing impossible from first principles for
| electrical powered flight.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Long haul yes, but it's a little known story that
| regional airlines are on the edge of disaster because:
| (1) they can't find pilots, (2) manufacturers have
| stopped making the 50-seat jets that are the mainstay of
| that business. Airports like ITH are already at the top
| of the "regional development problems" in third-tier
| cities and it is not so clear they're going to be able to
| have service in 20 years the way things are going.
|
| Given that the status quo is "go out of business when old
| planes can't be maintained anymore" the possibility of
| some radical change like electrification or a change in
| the scope rules is increasingly likely.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Perhaps I am missing your broader point, but the fact
| that ITH exists and only has scheduled service to New
| York is a bit ridiculous. That should be a high-speed
| rail route that takes you from city center to center, if
| America intends to become a developed nation.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| God it's gotten worse. Last time I looked they had
| flights to PHL and DTW.
|
| As it is now there is fierce competition for bus service
| from Ithaca to NYC (budget to various grades of premium)
| and I find it almost unimaginable that I'd fly to NYC _to
| get to NYC_ because flying to JFK or atrocious EWR (never
| once made a transfer at EWR that didn 't involve re-
| entering the secure zone) wouldn't save time to get to
| Midtown.
|
| If you try to take the bus in the other direction you
| find you can't get from here to there. A friend of mine
| who used to ride the bus through Canada to get to the
| Detroit suburbs now takes the bus up to Syracuse, then
| takes Amtrak and gets out at 4am. On the way back one
| time there was no room on the bus although he paid for a
| ticket ahead of time.
|
| The real significance of the regional airport is that it
| connects to a hub that goes everywhere. As it is if I
| have to fly somewhere I'll probably have to go up to SYR
| where at least I can fly on Jetblue and know I'm flying
| on an Airbus.
|
| ITH used to get
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_Dash_8
|
| which I really enjoyed flying in, but they got replaced
| with 50-seat regional jets because regional jets are less
| likely to break down at a small airport requiring a crew
| to travel two hours to repair them.
|
| As it is, academics at Cornell and Ithaca College will
| struggle to bring in speakers and it's just one more bit
| of "stave the countryside" that will drive knowledge
| workers to go to blue cities where their votes don't
| count -- it's how you hand the next election to a
| Demagogue.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You're right I was not thinking of the probable more
| common use case that a trip originating at ITH is only
| connecting at JFK and eventually arriving elsewhere. For
| that traveler a train to Manhattan doesn't work as well.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If it was all integrated it could be great. I have always
| been puzzled about how few Americans will use public
| transit to the airport. When I go to a conference in San
| Francisco I run into European conference goers on the
| BART but if I am with American coworkers they always
| insist on taking the SuperShuttle. Similarly I've usually
| taken the subway to JFK even when it meant riding on an
| insipod shuttle bus
| histriosum wrote:
| ...which 50 seat jets are you talking about? At that size
| I would expect turboprops to be preferred, and turboprops
| of that size are definitely still being built..
| PaulHoule wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_ERJ_family
|
| both of which stopped manufacturing circa 2020. We used
| to get the DASH-8 which I liked to fly more but they
| stopped using it because it breaks down more often which
| is no problem if it happens at PHL but takes hours to get
| a crew to fix if it breaks down at ITH.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| The mention of air travel was strange. I wasn't aware of anyone
| who thought long range flight would ever be electrified. At
| least not without some fundamental breakthrough.
|
| S-curves are hard to predict. Basically every time someone
| attempts to do it, they are way off. This [0] is a neat paper
| that addresses the question. We've blown past every single
| prediction.
|
| [0] https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_paper-
| INET...
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| There are some very early stage tests, there is some kind of
| island hopper electric airplane that flys regular service,
| and it's only like 5 or 10 miles across water.
|
| Batteries will get more energy dense, the range will increase
| a bit. But yeah, it's hard to see it getting to a few 100
| miles.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| Hello, do you have a link or name?
| schiffern wrote:
| Here's the link, but the range isn't as bad as they said.
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eviation-
| announces-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eviation_Alice
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Air
| kccqzy wrote:
| There's also an electric "flying water taxi"
| https://sfstandard.com/2024/01/18/san-francisco-navier-
| elect...
| pramsey wrote:
| Testing and development by an actual operational airline,
| but running into regulation and certification issues. Could
| be a while even for this relatively narrow use case of
| seaplane flights of under an hour duration. Interesting
| update. https://harbourair.com/earth-day-eplane-update/
|
| In terms of battery density, the fact that they have an
| operational, flyable aircraft, just stuffing batteries and
| an electric motor into a 60 year old air frame... pretty
| good and only going to get better!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I read a book in the 1980s about how you could fit S-curves
| to predict everything.
|
| When I've actually tried it with tools like
|
| https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.o.
| ..
|
| it's frequently been terribly, terribly wrong.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Can we use excess solar energy to create synthetic fuel
| (hydrogen?) to power jets?
|
| I know almost nothing about this space. I would appreciate a
| comment on why this is feasible or not...
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| There are people researching it, I believe Airbus is about
| to test flying with hydrogen. It's the usual thing though
| for "green hydrogen", there's not much green hydrogen,
| there are some testbeds but just like for cars it seems to
| be mostly extracted from natural gas. You can extract it
| with any energy source like solar power. There's still the
| challenge that hydrogen fuel is not very compact, so it's
| hard to carry enough energy (in a car or plane) for much
| use, you end up with very very high pressure tanks. I think
| hydrogen will make sense eventually for trucks, tractors
| maybe. The question is will the massive investments in
| improving batteries make hydrogen vehicles obsolete or not.
|
| There are also research programs about making fuel from
| other sources, like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a
| rticle/pii/S016523702...
| audunw wrote:
| Why do you mention long range flight? I don't see anything in
| the article saying batteries will take 100% of the airplane
| market.
|
| It does say batteries will start to take market share in
| 2030. That's almost certainly true. It's a high priority for
| the Norwegian company to electrify the short distance
| airplane network in the next coming years. There are already
| battery electric planes coming out. And battery chemistries
| suitable for short range planes are starting early
| production.
|
| I suspect battery electric plane will get a surprisingly good
| range once we start to get highly optimized battery
| chemistries and optimized airplane designs for that market.
| The hardest part is to get the first few products to mass
| market.
|
| They might creep into the medium range market by 2050.
|
| But long range? It might never happen. Unless we get
| something like aluminum-air batteries that can exploit oxygen
| in the air somehow. But it doesn't matter. Long range flights
| are not the majority of flights. It's a small enough market
| that e-fuels could cover it.
|
| Since flying battery electric will be so much cheaper it's
| also possible people will have to switch planes multiple
| times on a journey. Maybe there will be some
| innovations/optimizations that make that faster and easier.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| 2. If batteries are growing exponentially right now then we are
| in the beginning of the S curve.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| #1: certainly decades. Probably several, not few, decades.
| Unless a BIG breakthrough happens.
| tonymet wrote:
| Lithium Battery 0.5 kWh/kg
|
| Diesel 12.7 kWh/kg
| api wrote:
| Diesel is more like 3.175 (25%) due to the inefficiencies of
| small heat engines. You're throwing away like 3/4 of the
| energy as waste heat. Electric motors are >95% efficient and
| lithium batteries are in the high-90s percent efficient.
|
| Electricity is already low-entropy, whereas energy from
| burning petrol is high entropy and thus contains less useful
| work.
| wizardwes wrote:
| Also, a kilo of diesel can emit that energy _once_. A kilo
| of battery can emit that energy hundreds or even thousands
| of times
| tonymet wrote:
| it's not waste half the year
| api wrote:
| True if you are cogenerating, but few people do that.
| Only a miniscule fraction of waste heat from a car engine
| is required to heat a car.
|
| Tangent but: I've always wondered why home cogeneration
| never took off. Too bad we don't have gas water heaters
| and gas furnaces that generate electricity and dump the
| excess onto the grid and heat with the waste heat.
|
| Even a low-efficiency thermoelectric generator would
| recover _some_ useful energy that is otherwise kind of
| wasted.
| nerdbert wrote:
| It's still waste, because if you're in a fixed location
| (which you'd have to be in order to benefit from much of
| the heat) you'd be better off running a heat pump.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| Diesel has efficiency of 40% not 25%.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Who cares, we need to stop burning fossil fuels, relative
| energy density in the abstract does not matter in the context
| of climate change
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Related:
|
| Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405
| scythe wrote:
| I'm a little surprised by that energy density chart. Who's
| selling batteries that carry 500 Wh/kg? Those are research
| prototype numbers; I think that Amprius and the gamma-sulfur
| people have hit (or passed) that mark. But cars and cellphones
| have been using the Ni-Mn-Al-Co oxide family of cathodes for a
| decade. The recent large-scale development has been bringing on
| LiFePO4 which actually accepts a lower density in exchange for
| lower cost and longer life.
|
| That doesn't discredit the predictions, but I don't think that
| the connection they're trying to draw between energy density and
| market demand really holds water. The development of higher
| density batteries is good for certain applications like that
| ground-effect electric seaplane, but it isn't necessary for cars
| or grid storage, where the first case is mostly viable already
| and the second is concerned with the cost outlook and the self-
| discharge rate.
| kccqzy wrote:
| CATL is. https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/catl-
| condense...
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I think Amprius are further along than you might think, ready
| to scale commercial production, not research prototype. Super
| neat factory tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Hd4HfH1ss
| letuv wrote:
| Are these 500 Wh/kg batteries somehow available in powerbank
| (sub-500g) size?
|
| So far the best I found are around 250 Wh/kg (for the whole
| powerbank).
| cperciva wrote:
| You'll have trouble finding powerbanks over 100 Whr, due to FAA
| regulations.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I wonder when if ever we'll see this re-evaluated.
|
| It's still a terrifying amount of energy, but I'd feel much
| much different about someone with a 300WH LFP pack sitting
| next to me than I would a lipo pack.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| It'll probably be a while before you see them widely available,
| much less in small consumer devices. eVTOL and other battery
| aircraft can't really work without this level of density so I
| imagine they'll consume all available supply (at premium
| prices) for a while.
| tonymet wrote:
| Lithium Battery 0.5 kWh/kg
|
| Diesel 12.7 kWh/kg
| chris_va wrote:
| You probably want kWh_e (electric) instead of kWh_t (thermal),
| and probably should include the weight of the
| engine/transmission. Diesel is better still, but not quite the
| same gap.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Also have to account for how many kWh are converted into
| motion.
|
| Again, diesel still wins, but man is that gap closing.
| tonymet wrote:
| > "Enabling the phase-out of fossil fuels"
|
| How much hydrocarbon fuel is needed to produce these batteries
| each year?
|
| How much fuel is needed to charge them?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > How much fuel is needed to charge them?
|
| The eventual goal would be zero.
| tonymet wrote:
| in what year?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Don't pull a muscle moving those goalposts around.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Many batteries deployed today, in 2024, spend their entire
| lifecycle being charged entirely from solar. Are you asking
| what year _none of them_ will be charged with electricity
| from fossil fuels? I'd bet that we'll hit that mark in
| California before 2040.
| stetrain wrote:
| Currently used? Probably quite a bit. But usually still a net
| emissions win for using an EV vs a fossil fuel vehicle even
| with current grids.
|
| Required? None. There's nothing in EV battery production or
| charging or usage that _requires_ burning fossil fuels. That
| fossil fuels are a major source of our current energy is part
| of the problem that we are also working to solve. And mass
| production of economical batteries is part of how we do that
| with renewable energy.
|
| Building grids and vehicles that burn fossil fuels means you
| need to keep drilling, refining, and transporting that fossil
| fuel for every future kWH generated or mile driven. Forever.
|
| A battery is made once and used for its lifetime, and most of
| its critical materials can be recycled at end of life into new
| batteries.
|
| If you want current stats on total lifetime emissions of
| manufacturing and using batteries vs fossil fuels, search for
| "EV cradle to grave emissions" and there are a few studies. My
| recollection is that the results show that an EV will have
| lower lifetime emissions than a fossil fuel vehicle even with
| today's mostly dirty grids in most cases, and break-even in the
| worst grid mixes. As grids shift to renewables and recycling
| increases those numbers should only improve.
| tonymet wrote:
| a quick check showed about 21 Billion Gallons annually to
| make 130k tons of lithium batteries are produced.
|
| so 273 billion kWh of hydrocarbon fuel burned to make
| batteries that can hold only 51.5 million kWh of energy.
|
| And then roughly a few billion or more to fill them up each
| year.
|
| What year will we make enough solar & wind power to
| compensate for the 21 billion gallons of fuel?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| A quick check shows the 21 billion gallon number you're
| (not) citing is likely bullshit.
|
| https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/environment-
| v...
|
| > David Checkel, a professor at the University of Alberta
| and an electric car expert, did some back-of-the-napkin
| math to dispute the claim. Checkel calculated that if each
| gallon of fuel costs $3, then 21 billion gallons would cost
| $63 billion annually. If $63 billion was the price tag for
| 250,000 batteries, then the cost of raw materials for each
| battery would be more than $250,000.
| tonymet wrote:
| what's the correct figure? it's easily 100x the output
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Is that number pulled off a Facebook meme, too?
|
| You seem confused by the concept of a reusable battery.
| It's not a AA battery; you don't throw it away every 300
| miles and get a new one.
| stetrain wrote:
| > Nonetheless, it is shown that conventional gasoline and
| diesel vehicles emit the highest amount of total life-cycle
| GHGs in comparison to vehicles powered by other available
| energy resources. When using green electricity, plug-in
| hybrid electric and fully electric vehicles can reduce the
| total life-cycle emission in comparison to combustion
| engine vehicles by 73 % and 89 %, respectively.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S13640321
| 2...
|
| Plenty of other papers with similar results. Current total
| lifecycle emissions are already net negative for EV vs ICE
| including production of the battery and vehicle, and
| production of the electricity using the current grid. That
| margin improves as the grid gets cleaner.
| tonymet wrote:
| typical hackernews climate thread -- don't ask any important
| questions
| donbatman wrote:
| Most of those batteries are being charged by natural gas.
| Batteries store electricity, they don't create it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| For now. (And not everywhere. In Norway, 90% of that power
| would come from hydro plants.)
|
| One of the most common objections to a wholesale switch to
| renewables is "what if it's cloudy / not windy" sort of thing.
| Cheap, widely deployed energy storage is key to answering that
| objection.
|
| They go hand in hand. More batteries, more renewables, more
| batteries, more renewables, etc. etc. etc.
|
| Eventually, the obvious goal is to charge everything via
| renewable power.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| It frustrates me that you think this is a genuine talking
| point.
|
| If we're talking about powering cars, then _even if your power
| comes from 100% coal_ , it's still cleaner to drive the EV than
| gasoline, simply because the coal power plant benefits from the
| economy of scale. It merely takes longer for the trade-off of
| the higher carbon footprint of manufacturing an EV to happen.
| But it does eventually happen.
|
| If we're talking about powering an energy grid, nobody expects
| them to be charged via consumables. That's just silly. But
| battery storage is how you make wind/solar energy work without
| requiring burning consumables as a backup.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Regarding price, leading manufacturers are already selling at a
| price below what was always understood as the point where EVs win
| in terms of economics:
|
| https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-w...
|
| The recent price war in China is a testament to that.
| zardo wrote:
| > Tesla will be saving $800 in LFP battery costs within 6
| months and another $800 within about 18 months.
|
| Do they have a model using LiFePOs now?
| jostmey wrote:
| I got a model 3 RWD last quarter and it has a LFP battery. I
| think it's the only Tesla with LFP batteries
| coryrc wrote:
| Only one in the US. There's more in China IIUC.
| pi-rat wrote:
| Model Y RWD sold in europe is LFP
| strangemonad wrote:
| Many of the china model 3s and Ys use prismatic cells from
| CATL use lifepo chemistries
| ggreer wrote:
| Since Q2 of 2022, the majority of Teslas produced have been
| LFP. As of right now, the standard range and long range Model
| 3 and Model Y are LFP. The Model S, X, and the Performance
| versions of the 3/Y are NCA.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > the point where EVs win in terms of economics
|
| _If_ ubiquitous and cheap charging infrastructure is not being
| priced in, which is still a blocker for many.
|
| For example, I cannot reasonably run lengths of 110v extension
| cords down the block to charge a car overnight, and acquiring
| my own house with a garage is dramatically more expensive than
| any fuel savings. :p
| stcredzero wrote:
| _I cannot reasonably run lengths of 110v extension cords down
| the block to charge a car overnight_
|
| I used to run extension cords out of windows and across the
| sidewalk to charge a Fiat 500e.
| breischl wrote:
| Works if you live in a first-floor, street-facing unit and
| can reliably park in front of it. Otherwise it can be
| tough.
|
| It's unfortunate that EVs make the most immediate sense in
| high-density urban settings, but those same settings have
| lots of people who can't use the simple kinds of charging
| infrastructure (eg, Level 1/2 chargers).
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Cities are going to have to invest in lamppost and curb
| charging. These already exist. The good news is that with
| a modest surcharge to the base electricity cost, they
| will produce a stream of revenue that can be
| financialized to pay for the install cost (which is
| basically AC wiring.) The billing needs to be
| standardized (this is already mostly done with NACS/CCS.)
| It's low hanging fruit and will happen within the next
| few years.
| vel0city wrote:
| IMO EVs work best in _medium_ density urban settings,
| where people still probably have their own garages or at
| least private parking spots but aren 't likely to need to
| do 100+mi drives constantly.
|
| Truly high-density urban settings should ideally find
| transportation solutions without cars.
| lancewiggs wrote:
| And stop using streets for car storage, opening them up
| to people and plants.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Works if you live in a first-floor, street-facing unit_
|
| I was not exactly in that situation. First time, I lived
| in a room on the 3rd floor of a house, but I'd run the
| extension cord out of the house owner's workshop basement
| window. I could reliably park in front of the house,
| however.
|
| 2nd time, I ran the cord out of a 2nd story window from
| my room, but the parking space was behind the house's
| fence under my window.
|
| 3rd situation, I would run the cord from the apartment
| exercise room, out the window to the fenced in parking
| lot behind the building. However, the building management
| actually _removed_ those outlets! Then, that law
| requiring them to let us charge passed, but by then, it
| was time for us to move out. Now, I have a garage of my
| own!
| audunw wrote:
| True. Good point. But that will change surprisingly rapidly.
| We've experienced it in Norway already. It's been a _huge_
| change over the last 5 years.
|
| I don't have a garage attached to my house, it's a shared
| garage building. But once a few owners got EVs, and it became
| clear to others that EVs were the future, we got some minimal
| renovations done that allowed anyone to pay to have a slow AC
| charger installed.
|
| Oslo has been rolling out street-side AC charging poles.
| There's never quite enough but the growth is steady.
|
| Other countries may not have the same incentives, but that
| just shifts the point where the rapid transition starts by a
| few years I think, since cars get cheaper and better all the
| time. And remember that Norway is fairly cold, which is
| brutal on range in the winter, so it's not really a fully
| ideal place for EVs (though at least the car starts reliably
| every time unlike diesel)
| tonymet wrote:
| why aren't consumers seeing this price yet?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Demand far outstrips manufacturing capacity at the moment.
|
| For batteries not put in EVs a slightly lower price will get
| them installed in grid storage solutions.
|
| Consumers will be the last to see lower prices while demand
| outpaces supply.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Why would they?
|
| Companies will gladly pocket the difference between what they
| charge the customers and their $100/KWh bulk price.
| tonymet wrote:
| Ok what's not working properly then?
| robocat wrote:
| From linked link[1]: CATL is marketing 173-Ah VDA spec
| (Rectangular cells: 148mm length, 26.5mm width, 91 mm height -
| German specification).
|
| I presume manufacturers make packs using whatever cell sizes
| they can source?
|
| I had thought the trend was away from cylindrical (eg 4680) and
| towards prismatic or pouch cells? Whatever happened to the 1
| metre long BYD cell: https://pushevs.com/2020/05/26/byd-blade-
| prismatic-battery-c...
|
| [1] https://cnevpost.com/2024/01/17/battery-price-war-catl-
| byd-c...
| inasio wrote:
| Anecdotal local evidence to exhibit 3:
|
| There are a few go-kart places here, I hadn't been there for a
| few years, and now I learned that they all switched to
| electrical. Much quieter, no fumes, works great indoors
| liotier wrote:
| Full torque at zero RPM makes motor racing much more exciting -
| especially compared to the low end karts with puny 2-stroke
| engines that took forever to accelerate my heavy ass !
| deadeye wrote:
| Chart #2: Top Tier Energy Battery Density vs. Battery Cost.
|
| That seems like an odd comparison to me. Is it normal to compare
| the Top Tier Anything to the Average of another thing?
|
| Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn't
| seem to contain any REAL information. Shouldn't the comparison be
| the costs of the SAME cars and not include cars that aren't top
| tier?
|
| What am I not getting?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Chart 2 definitely seems strange as it appears that batteries
| are free in 2023
| bombcar wrote:
| The elites don't want you to know this but the batteries in
| the cars are free you can take them home I have 458 KwH.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Only because it's a wide line.
|
| Cost is $139/kWh, which on a scale of 0-9000, is _pretty_
| close to zero historically.
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-...
| zamadatix wrote:
| It would be better served by a log scale if they really want
| to show the pre-2005 numbers in the chart.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn 't
| seem to contain any REAL information._
|
| Actually, if you know the details of the development of
| consumer cars, you'll find that advances and levels of
| performance in top tier cars tends to trickle down into average
| cars. Not without some dilution, but that's a definite trend!
| So things like disc brakes, fuel injection, microprocessor
| control.
|
| This sort of thing definitely happens with batteries over time.
| It's a way of peeking into the future. Just fudge factor for a
| little dilution.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| This is why I say electricity revolution is coming and a lot
| people and countries are going to be shell shocked by it. Solar
| and wind electricity costs are also decreasing at a similar rate.
| mbgerring wrote:
| It's already here, it's been here for a decade, renewables are
| a mature industry. They've already effectively destroyed the
| economics of coal, and natural gas is next.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Take 25% of the money spend on EV batteries and instead spend it
| on domestic solar panels. I cannot stand the smugness of people
| who will pay $$,$$$ for a car but won't spend $,$$$ on the thing
| to make power for that car. Even batteries. The net carbon saved
| by in-home battery+solar is far more than putting batteries in
| the family car. The car runs a few hours a day. A total off-grid
| solar+batteries domestic system saves carbon 27/7.
|
| In other words, (Honda civic IC + home solar/batteries) saves
| more carbon than a Tesla with no actual power generation
| capacity. But that just isn't fashionable.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| From my interaction with local utilities/electrical companies,
| they _hate_ domestic solar. They'll do everything in their
| power to stonewall you getting them installed and make it seem
| like a useless/expensive option.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Then ditch the local connection and go with off-grid solar.
| These days, a totally off-grid solution is sometimes the
| cheaper option. Panels are cheap. Batteries are cheap.
| Interest rates are cheap. And no monthly minimums.
|
| I'm sitting in a house right now, streaming top gear on a
| 50-inch tv, completely off-grid.
| antisthenes wrote:
| How are you getting internet? Starlink?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Batteries are a required part of the transition to pure
| renewables. When demand for EVs drops low enough you can bet
| grid operators will be in line to soak up the cheap batteries.
|
| Further, V2G/H is more than likely to be a thing in the near
| future further putting the EV batteries to work stabilizing the
| grid.
| breischl wrote:
| >V2G/H is more than likely to be a thing in the near future
| further putting the EV batteries to work stabilizing the
| grid.
|
| Yes. Even before we get to full V2G, managed charging
| provides a helpful degree of flexibility.
|
| An EV is a giant battery (several times the size of a Tesla
| PowerWall, for example) that happens to move sometimes. The
| battery can be used for other things when the car isn't
| moving - and it will be.
| SECProto wrote:
| Single digit thousands of solar panels might reduce emissions
| more in your case, but it certainly wouldn't in mine (grid here
| has very low gCO2/kWh)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Domestic solar isn't as efficient as solar power plants. If we
| took this 25% and instead built solar farms, we would be
| farther ahead. Domestic battery power plants do make sense
| however.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yes but a solar panel literally feet from the EV it is
| charging avoids massive transmission infrastructure.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. Very few EV owners will recharge
| over the length of the day while sitting at home.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Most EVs, like any other personal cars, spend more time
| in a garage at home than they do anywhere else.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Yes, at night without the sun.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I bought an EV because I assumed the dollars I had to spend
| would have more "leverage" by incentivizing an electric-car
| business, which would in turn drive improvements and reduced
| cost in battery production, and that would have follow-on
| benefits well beyond the car industry. I think the recent drop
| in battery prices is good evidence that this process is a real
| one. It goes without saying that any individual's contribution
| is negligible.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Batteries are great, but some of those charts look off.
|
| Where are they getting batteries that are 500Wh/kg for commercial
| applications? Even state of the art NMC cells in the 21700 and
| 46800 form factors barely scrape at 300Wh/kg, and everything else
| (LFP) is significantly below that number.
| zizee wrote:
| Given these trends, what is the predicted year that we'd expect
| the last fossil fuel burning power plant to be greenlit for
| construction in China, India, and the US?
|
| Follow-up: At what point is continued operation of existing coal
| become uneconomical (to simplify the question assume decent solar
| generation locations are available/ grid connected nearby).
| cbmuser wrote:
| Fossil fuels are not going anywhere soon as a quick look at the
| world's energy mix proves.
|
| > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
| choeger wrote:
| We have 500Wh/kg batteries by now?
|
| And they think there'll be 800Wh/kg in 2030? Wasn't that well
| beyond what's needed for medium-range electric flight?
|
| Is that even possible, chemically speaking?
| cbmuser wrote:
| Jet fuel has an energy density of 12,000 Wh/kg, so there is
| still a little room left.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
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