Why build a bajillion batteries with all sorts of hazardous chems if we can do nuclear that has small amounts of waste.
Let’s say you can fit the waste from a certain amount of nuclear energy in a barrel. How much energy can you create with the other methods, given you can only fill up that same barrel?
With battery-supported renewables, my guess is: a hell of a lot less.
Physics couldn't care less about your "big solutions".
All energy storage solutions we have are low capacity, slow to charge, slow to bring online, and often are extremely harmful to the environment to produce.
Of course, you can close your eyes, and pretend this will be solved by magic in the nearest future. It won't. And we need solutions now.
The implication that physics prevents renewables and storage from being able to do the job is a despicable lie.
The physical attributes of existing batteries (and related energy storage technologies, like hydrogen for long term storage) are perfectly compatible with a 100% renewable grid. We're just haggling over the cost at this point.
I was addressing the shallow objection that it's a "lot of batteries". That's fine; the budget is will allow purchase of a lot of batteries, and all sorts of other stuff too.
> The implication that physics prevents renewables and storage from being able to do the job is a despicable lie.
Pretending that I made this argument is an even more despicable lie.
> The physical attributes of existing batteries (and related energy storage technologies, like hydrogen for long term storage) are perfectly compatible with a 100% renewable grid.
It's also not what I argued against.
> I was addressing the shallow objection that it's a "lot of batteries". That's fine
No, it's not fine, and I listed the reasons why. However, you decided to invent an argument I never made and argue against that.
"All energy storage solutions we have are low capacity, slow to charge, slow to bring online, and often are extremely harmful to the environment to produce."
This is 100% bullshit. Energy storage solutions can be scaled as high as we want. They can charge as fast as is needed. By "slow to bring online" you might mean two things (cannot be switch on to deliver power to the grid from an off state quickly, or cannot be built quickly), both of which are false. As for "extremely harmful to the environment", I also see no reason to believe that is true, especially compared to either the harm of CO2 or the harm imposed by the existence of industrial civilzation at all.
So, you listed reasons, and they appear spurious. Care to defend your claims?
Current storage solutions: batteries, water in a dam, molten salt.
Energy density: low
Environmental impact:
Dams: need to flood a massive area to make a dent. For example the utterly colossal Three Gorges supplies only 1% of China’s power.
Batteries: filled with extremely bad heavy metals. It’s barely OK right now; if we covered the planet in huge battery farms, it would be a catastrophe.
Molten salt/other temperature-based methods: works with turbine-based generators, not solar/wind.
Responsiveness: low, except for batteries.
Ultimately this whole thing needs less shouting and more spreadsheets.
The energy density argument is nonsense. The energy density of batteries is perfectly fine for grid storage. The area taken up by batteries for diurnal load leveling of renewables is a small fraction of the land area of the renewables themselves. This is also true of many other energy storage schemes. Even pumped hydro is not constrained by land area in many parts of the world (off river pumped hydro, mind you).
Batteries are not necessarily filled with toxic heavy metals. Consider lithium-iron-phosphate batteries. Iron is not a toxic heavy metal, phosphate is neither toxic nor a metal, and lithium is anything but heavy. Saying batteries categorically have heavy metals is lying. And no, it would not be a catastrophe to build large quantities of batteries.
You don't even mention underground storage of hydrogen, which is by the lowest cost/kWh of storage capacity, much better than batteries for long term energy storage.
Sorry about the emotion, but I get annoyed at the cavalcade of nonsense you people spew on this issue.
The sibling comment has already showed all the ways in which you are wrong. So I'll address only this part. " I also see no reason to believe that is true". That's the problem with starry-eyed proponents of anything really: they chose belief over facts.
