Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem
Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem
arstechnica.com
Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem
11 comments
11 comments
Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem
Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem
Meh. plenty of storage options, sodium ion batteries being a cheaper one. Having more energy than you need is a good problem to have.
For buyers, yes. For sellers, no.
So much of the "we need more energy storage!" guys are ultimately in the market of creating a bottleneck they can exploit. The solution of nuclear as a base load and orienting industrial/commercial needs around peak solar/wind generation isn't appealing to a business that can make $3000/Mwh selling onto the ERCOT grid during a demand crunch.
And that's the problem we need renewables to solve. As long as the price can be pushed skywards as soon as there is no wind, reactors will unfortunately have to be brought offline for emergency maintenance or somesuch.
But the solution we need isn't as limited as regular batteries, regardless of chemistry. We need more. Much more. And that's the challenge. If we can't store electricity, we need to store something that easily can be turned into electricity or, worsr case, store it as something that can reduce the need of electricity.