First link a bit under, um, powered.
If they can get the lithium, that is.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4a924a64-99df-11e5-987b-d6cdef1b205c.html#axzz3wGjrgTp3
Hopefully we do not end up with super-cheap batteries that catch fire once a month.
Argh, unreadable paywalled FT links.
3: I was thinking yesterday about how it turns out that coal plants kill something like 100X as many birds as windmills, but everyone (including the well-meaning) is worried that the latter is a problem and so maybe we should just cope with the former. There's definitely a status quo bias with alternate energy, and I wonder if there's any way around it.
I mean, it's actually plausible that a system of renewable energy + batteries that catch fire regularly (but not all that often on a rate basis) is still a win over coal, even setting aside global warming, yet we can't get there, because battery fires are scary and immediate, while mercury poisoning and dead miners and mountaintop removal are just accepted while their future absence isn't valued at all.
First link a bit under, um, powered.
Thankfully the second link provides a way to get there (I see that DeLong is to blame, actually, he left off the http in his link).
Also the comments on the DeLong post are quite interesting.
Tesla will need about 24,000 tonnes annually of lithium hydroxide, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, out of a market last year of 50,000 tonnes.
!!!
And that, as far as I can tell, is mainly for the cars, not for the battery-in-every-home stuff.
It seems like a waste disposal nightmare, too, especially if take-off is rapid. Hundreds of millions of massive lithium batteries reaching their end of life at the same time.
Wouldn't you be able to recycle them into new batteries?
Physical energy storage just seems a lot more plausible to me than batteries at that scale. I wish the article has had more details about the compressed air technology. My understanding was that moving trains full of rocks up and down hills is currently better than batteries.
8: Judging from this, maybe, but it's not trivial or necessarily economic at current prices. Presumably if lithium prices skyrocket because of demand, the economics work better.
Also, this from the paper is pretty damn scary: Many current Li-ion batteries are indistinguishable from lead-acid batteries on purpose, so their use is transparent for SLIs, motorcycles, and other applications. However, inclusion of Li-ion batteries in the input stream of secondary lead smelters has resulted in fires and explosions . How the hell is that legal?
Regarding physical energy storage:
Energy density comparable to lithium-ion batteries has been demonstrated with flywheels, and a theoretical device composed solely of toroidal carbon nanotubes could reach 100 mega-joules per kilogram.
Much neater than compressed air. Once strategy for mitigating heating loss in compressed air storage I've heard is adding in some quantity of water vapor.
10: "Indistinguishable" may mean "the same size and shape, so you can slot them into the same space in a car" rather than "absolutely identical". It does go on to say that recyclers can't visually check every battery they handle, so presumably visual checking would spot it. Lead-acid batteries are labelled as such, after all.
11: well, "a theoretical device composed solely of carbon nanotubes" could be a space elevator that gets you into orbit for $11 a kilo, so, you know. Mass production of flawless macro-scale nanotubes is going to do a lot more than allow slightly better energy storage.
No doubt. I just get much more excited by scifi-ish solutions than by pistons and water heaters.
You should really try having a water heater. It's great.
12: The paper implies that Lithium batteries are not currently labelled as such, at least not in a way useful for recycling.
eg Initial battery manufacturers can promote eventual recycling using design for recycling, including the following steps: inclusion of labels or other distinguishing features...
Separation would be facilitated if manufacturers labeled battery components by means of bar codes, RFID chips, or delegated paint color or type (e.g., visible under black light).
Also the comments on the DeLong post are quite interesting.
Is the DC guy a crank, an Edisonian deadender, or is s/he right that a DC-centric system would be better for a future of distributed power and suchlike?
I'm tired of people touting their political outsider status as a qualification, so maybe we should trust the DC guy.
The irony has not escaped me that Tesla cars all run on direct current.
In the future, that will cost some kid a Jeopardy victory.
My kid's drone runs on lithium polymer (abbreviated LiPo, although lithium-polonium would probably be much more effective) and when I looked into buying some more it's disturbing that their volatility is just sort of taken for granted. "Oh, if you buy this 10-pack, probably 1-2 will be puffy or will become so after the first use, if so just immediately submerse them in saltwater so they don't explode."
The irony has not escaped me that Tesla cars all run on direct current.
Though probably not too many have GOP elephant bumper stickers.
I own about a dozen LiPo batteries and I'm pretty sure every one of them is now puffy. No explosions yet, tho.
5: Eventually we'll run out of mountaintops to remove and the problem will solve itself.
The link is interesting but highly speculative, and I remain skeptical that large-scale energy storage is going to be practical in the near term.
More batteries should be named after poets.
I was trying to make a joke along those lines and couldn't do it.
I was trying to think of something about OuLiPo batteries but then I thought "no, this is neb's turf, I should leave it to him."
The price of solar power is plummeting incredibly fast. Here's a sample from today's news - prices in India have fallen 20% in a year and people are seriously re-assessing whether their investments in Aussie coal for Indian export will ever pay off:
http://www.theage.com.au/business/indias-solar-surge-may-slash-coal-imports-20160103-glyegl.html
There's no question that the international market for coal is collapsing; here in Alaska we've seen coal exports (historically primarily to Asia) dwindle to insignificant levels over the past couple years. Solar isn't really interchangeable with coal, though. As an intermittent power source, solar, like wind, always needs a baseload power source as a backup, and the overall cost of power needs to include this as a factor. Advances in storage technology may eventually change this dynamic, but in terms of actual market dynamics storage is nowhere near a serious consideration at this point and, as noted above, I don't see this changing any time soon.
South African coal exports have also collapsed over the past year or so, but my understanding was this was caused by the China construction bubble finally bursting.
||
No more understated yet innovative masturbating to Paul Bley.
|>