There is a LOT of lithium in the ground. The cost curve for new projects is pretty flat. There will be upward pressure on prices as the usage expands, but medium to long-term, availability of Lithium is unlikely to be a deal-breaker.
Interesting that you choose the example of “even…an electric cooker”. Electric cookers are pretty high-powered compared to many other uses of electricity in the home. Li-ion battery packs are being deployed at an industrial scale. I don’t know whether thats a good idea from an economic (or environmental) perspective, but from a technical one, scaling Li-ion storage to any size application is certainly possible. Also don’t lose sight of the fact that usage patterns (including continued advances in efficiency) can and will adapt to a different economic proposition associated with the roll out of renewables.
One issue with domestic-scale solar/battery systems is that it removes load from the network, making the fixed infrastructure cost per kwh higher for those using grid-supplied power. This means that those who don’t (can’t afford) to install such systems end up paying more for their power. There are many options (none perfect) about how to manage the market to distribute the cost of the fixed infrastructure, while not dis-incentivising those who wish to invest in local renewables. Would people be better to pool their investments and invest in industrial scale renewable plants rather than on local systems? To some extent, yes from an overall economic perspective.
I have solar PV on the roof but I would need three times as much area and three Musk Powerwalls to stop using mains electricity. I would probably have to renew the Powerwalls at least once in my expected lifetime. It is simply not economic.
The average British household does not have enough credit to buy such a system. It’s essentially a toy for the well off. (I have to say our local Green councillor is much richer than I am.)
Economics is called the “dismal science”. Engineering is applied physics and economics. Currently we have the physics but we don’t have the economics.
Note:
Where I live has slightly less sunshine than Surrey. But when I installed solar PV it wasn’t for the rate of return but more as a statement that I thought the government should be doing this, and since then a number of neighbours have followed suit. My set is 7 years old.
However if you live in the UK offshore wind has to be the best option for a variety of technical and environmental reasons - such as that we have a high population density and a large coastline. Germany relies more on PV because they don’t have our sea access.
What is the answer to storage? Batteries are currently not it because they don’t scale - a few people in rich Surrey is not 60 million people. Pumped storage has little capacity and is good for short peaks. Molten salt could have good capacity but still has a lot of technical problems to solve. Hydrogen generation is inefficient though might be economic in, say, Arizona or southern Spain where the cost per watt of solar PV is low. The one thing I am sure of is that whoever cracks the storage problem will become very very rich.
There is a lot of doom and gloom about storage, but I think it is overblown. It is true that despite the interesting R&D, there is no economic, ready to deploy storage solution for what we anticipate needing in 20 years. But here is the thing: the current market value of storage is next to zero (in most places). Right now, new renewable energy production can displace fossil fuels at nearly 1:1, especially in locations that have mostly natural gas production. Yes, it occasionally happens that the market price drops to zero on windy nights, but that isn’t enough of a factor to make a huge economic impact on the wind farms.
We can probably double the production of renewable energy without a big problem, and triple it with improvements to grid distribution capacity that are probably needed anyway. At that point, the economics of storage are going to make a lot more sense, as peak production will regularly exceed consumption by large amounts for hours at a time. That is the environment you need to make deploying storage worthwhile. We should be researching and testing storage technology now so that we have it when we need it, but nothing is going to be “proven” until it is deployed at a large scale, and nothing is going to be deployed until it is economically worthwhile. At this point, storage is neither economically nor environmentally viable. Right now, a dollar spent on storage is better spent on more capacity, which will have a bigger impact on CO2 emissions.
Certainly not an expert in this area but aren’t Vanadium redox flow batteries getting hype as scalable storage?
It seems to me the VRB’s have a Feynman problem- they can easily scale up, but not yet down to something like the Powerwall’s size. I’d imagine that’s on the horizon though? I know I’ve heard some talk of VRB’s coming to electric cars at some point.
Maybe - if the UK decides to pull out of EU climate obligations, or if it has trouble raising capital.
There was a Radio Four programme on the tidal scheme that may answer that better.
One answer to storage that I dont see being pursued, is to change the time of day we do things. Smart appliances could hold off their peak draw until the power was cheaper. Aluminum smelters could choose to run only at night. Theres a lot of potential gains to be mafe if we could smooth out that peak demand curve. But this fucks with economic assumptions, so I doubt there’s much enthusiasm for it compared to say, building new natural gas plants or fresh nukes.
Yeah, I’m very curious about the kind of network latency periods we’re talking about. I think I understand that the voltage must stay constant at all times, and that bad things happen when there’s too much fluctuation. But it’s hard to visualize the difference between the power being a little dirtier than usual, versus cascading shutdowns creating a huge blackout.
That already happens to some extent, but at least in the industrial applications, there is a practical limit to what you can do. Factories are often so capital intensive that they want to run 24/7 even if they pay more for electricity. Even if you have a 1- or 2-shift factory, there are other costs to moving to night time production, including the cost, health, and safety of your workers, and responsiveness to customers and your business office that are going to operate during standard hours. Plus, with solar added to the mix, daytime production is going to get cheaper, with the peak hours moving to late afternoon / early evening when AC demands are still high and solar production has fallen off. This is already the case in California. If peak electricity costs go way up, those economic factors will change, but for now there is a limit to what we can get.
AC and refrigeration applications are almost perfectly matched for demand shifting, on scales that range from minutes to a day. EV charging is also going to become a nice avenue for demand shifting. Beyond that, I think that storage is going to be a more attractive option once the need arises.
