Will Plunging Battery Prices Start a Boom In Electric Power? (utilitydive.com) 222
An anonymous reader quotes Utility Dive:
Average market prices for battery packs have plunged from $1,100 per kilowatt hour in 2010 to $156 per kilowatt hour in 2019, an 87% fall in real terms, according to a report released Tuesday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Prices are projected to fall to around $100 per kilowatt hour by 2023, driving electrification across the global economy, according to BNEF's forecast. BNEF's latest forecast, from its 2019 Battery Price Survey, is an example of how advancements in battery technology have driven down costs at rates faster than previously predicted. Three years ago, when battery prices were around $300 per kilowatt hour, BNEF projected they would fall to $120 per kilowatt hour by 2030...
The cost of lithium-ion batteries mandates the cost of electric vehicles for consumers and the ability of battery storage projects to compete in electricity markets. As they get cheaper, batteries will be used in more industry sectors. "For example, the electrification of commercial vehicles, like delivery vans, is becoming increasingly attractive," BNEF said.
Earlier this year, Amazon placed an order for 100,000 all-electric delivery vans from Michigan-based start-up manufacturer Rivian. Just this week, Reuters reported that DHL will run pilot programs for its StreetScooter electric delivery vehicles in U.S. cities, starting in 2020.
The cost of lithium-ion batteries mandates the cost of electric vehicles for consumers and the ability of battery storage projects to compete in electricity markets. As they get cheaper, batteries will be used in more industry sectors. "For example, the electrification of commercial vehicles, like delivery vans, is becoming increasingly attractive," BNEF said.
Earlier this year, Amazon placed an order for 100,000 all-electric delivery vans from Michigan-based start-up manufacturer Rivian. Just this week, Reuters reported that DHL will run pilot programs for its StreetScooter electric delivery vehicles in U.S. cities, starting in 2020.
I'm conflicted (Score:2, Insightful)
Betteridge says No but my heart says Yes.
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anything else the usual useless politicians, economists and activists wanted to use as an excuse to take our money
Solar received taxpayer-funded subsidies for decades and still does in many areas.
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It still does in ALL locations in the US, by virtue of the PURPA [wikipedia.org] regulations that require utilities to buy renewable power as soon as it's available at costs comparable to other sources. So you have to account for a highly-variable, intermittent source that MUST be used as soon as available, and that means you have to have more baseload generation just idling along to account for the times that the renewables come and go... Thereby increasing overall costs.
Do NOT overlook the subsidy of mandated purchase
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It still does in ALL locations in the US, by virtue of the PURPA [wikipedia.org] regulations that require utilities to buy renewable power as soon as it's available at costs comparable to other sources. So you have to account for a highly-variable, intermittent source that MUST be used as soon as available, and that means you have to have more baseload generation just idling along to account for the times that the renewables come and go...
Nope, that's not how PURPA works. PURPA mandates that power transmission utilities must buy power at their avoided cost, not their average cost. If they have baseline generation idle, the avoided cost would be zero, or very close to it.
In general, solar produces energy during the daytime. The time of day when baseline is idle is about 11 pm to 6am. Solar isn't selling power at this time of day.
Thereby increasing overall costs.
Nope. Avoided cost.
Do NOT overlook the subsidy of mandated purchase of all output, regardless of time of day or need for the output by the local utilities.
The law mandated competition in the electric market. Turns out, monopolies tend to raise p
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Purpose of PURPA [Re:I'm conflicted] (Score:3)
I'm not sure what site you intended to link, but the go.com site you actually did link is not about PURPA nor related in any way.
In general, competition reduces prices and monopoly increases prices. Power utilities dislike laws like PURPA that enforce competition, since they'd prefer their monopoly, which gives them higher prices.
And yes, laws do get tweaked-- this is completely unexceptional. It's not surprising that a 40 year old law, that was passed in a time of natural gas shortage, would need revisi
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Solar received taxpayer-funded subsidies for decades and still does in many areas.
Nuclear has been receiving subsidies since conception, and it still is today. I'm sure oil , gas, and coal get theirs too. Time to put the money is better places.
Battery storage through the winter (Score:2)
using renewables + battery to supply baseload power in most areas around the world is now cheaper than maintaining a coal/gas plant to do the same thing.
But has battery storage proven adequate through a hemisphere's winter, when demand for electric home and office heat is at its peak and insolation is at its trough? There are two chances to prove this each year, one in the USA and one in Australia (which has the big battery at Hornsdale [wikipedia.org]).
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using renewables + battery to supply baseload power in most areas around the world is now cheaper than maintaining a coal/gas plant to do the same thing.
But has battery storage proven adequate through a hemisphere's winter, when demand for electric home and office heat is at its peak and insolation is at its trough? There are two chances to prove this each year, one in the USA and one in Australia (which has the big battery at Hornsdale [wikipedia.org]).
Storing the batteries below ground level (ideally > 6 feet) would make them immune to winter in most applications. Like in a basement if one were available.
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Storing the batteries below ground level (ideally > 6 feet) would make them immune to winter in most applications. Like in a basement if one were available.
Yes, if you bury the batteries 5-6 feet down, that puts them in a comfortable temperature range all year in most of the world. But it doesn't address the issue of where the power is coming from. Wind works all winter though, which is the obvious answer to the question posed.
Re: Battery storage through the winter (Score:2)
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"Storing the batteries below ground level (ideally > 6 feet) would make them immune to winter in most applications. Like in a basement if one were available."
Since the water pipes are 6ft below ground to prevent freezing, most places have some sort of basement (although it may be only on one side if you live on a slope)
And wind power works well during the winter.
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You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Your sig is spot on.
First of all, there was no guarantee that we'd make the battery and renewables improvements we have. Assuming that technology will solve a problem and doing nothing else about it is just idiotic. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Attacking a problem from all sides is often far more efficient than picking one option and hoping for the best.
Second, the fact we've reached price parity with fossil fuels means jack shit. CO2 emissions are still increasing, not decreasing. It will take decades to
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Which means third, now that there are real alternatives, things like the Paris accords and carbon credits can actually be useful.
Carbon credits will never be useful in lowering CO2 emissions. Any CO2 emission reductions that do come from this will be because of how the costs of energy weigh down the economy. Carbon credits will impose a tax on coal and natural gas, this tax is used to pay for the difference in costs for things like wind and solar. Lowering the permissible amount of carbon produced simply raises the costs of energy because now these carbon credits become more valuable. This just pushes up the costs of energy until
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Our local mega-utility (TVA) is dropping coal like a bad habit even with the Trump administration trying to save it. There aren't any new coal generation facilities coming online in our area, either. They're being replaced by natural gas in most places, though TVA is already under some pressure to buy cheap wind power (thus far they've resisted; we'll see how long that lasts).
Cheap is cheap. When you push costs down, the pressure to switch gets really strong, and increasing storage capabilities to smooth
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The only place in North America where wind power is "cheap" enough to actually be competitive with natgas is a couple of specific locations within Texas. That's it.
And it's not cheaper than natgas. It's just price competitive once sufficient federal subsidies are factored in. Natgas is effectively free as a byproduct of ongoing US shale boom, and it's really hard to compete on price with that.
Which is also why coal is dying. It's cheap, but it's nowhere near what natgas is going for in areas with natgas tra
You're believing the bullshit again (Score:5, Informative)
Gore and his partner just accidentally ended up with millions and millions of dollars selling carbon credits, based on a law Senator Gore sponsored requiring people to buy them.
Uh, no.
Carbon cap and trade was proposed, but it didn't happen. The law you're talking about doesn't exist. Nobody made "millions and millions of dollars" selling carbon credits based on a law that doesn't exist.
You're believing the bullshit that right-wing idiots make up to outrage their fan base.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/l... [forbes.com]
Hmm . . .
Cleverly Written Bullshit from Forbes (Score:5, Informative)
It says that Gore was a partner in an investment firm that made money, and then it talks about cap and trade, which Gore advocated, and leaves the reader to assume that the two are in some way related.
But Gore's investment didn't make the money from cap and trade. In fact, the article said this explicitly:
"As for taking their recent investment advice, it might be worth mentioning that some of GIM’s earlier low-carbon deals haven’t always worked out so great.... But unfortunately for GIM and CCX investors, trading hot air credits proved just too good to be true."Between May of 2008 and October of 2009 the CCX market value for one metric ton of carbon plummeted from $7 per metric ton to $0.10 along with the shareholders’ investment values. "
If you pay attention, by the way, the article also explicitly contradicts the statement in the original post that cap and trade was "based on a law Senator Gore sponsored requiring people to buy them." Nope. A proposal far post-dating Gore's senatorship (which ended in 1993), and even his vice-presidency.
Why such fascination with Al Gore? (Score:3)
So the $218 million that Gore claimed for GIM is a lie? He defrauded all of the investors?
GIM is an investment firm. It made money on investments.
It did not make money on carbon credits.
A few years later, after being involved with carbon trading exchange CCX and founding GIM, he had over $200 million.
Very cleverly written. You put in two things, connect them with "and", and allow people to assume that there's a connection.
There are any number of sites that analyze how Al Gore made his money. You could look it up if you cared; it's a very popular topic among some segment of the political punditry blogosphere. A large portion of it came from his stock options from serving on the board of Apple over a time
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And look at that - it was all done through free enterprise without the need for Paris accords, carbon trading/taxes or anything else the usual useless politicians, economists and activists wanted to use as an excuse to take our money without giving anything in return.
Citation?
People who call for a citation every time they read something they disagree with are my least favorite form of internet denizen. Obviously I can't prove a negative, so there is no way to provide a citation for that statement. Your call for a citation isn't as clever as you think it is. I can point to facts that support my position - for example the fact that despite the Paris accords, carbon trading schemes, and taxes; global carbon emissions have increased. By now it should be obvious that the political so
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I can point to facts that support my position - for example the fact that despite the Paris accords, carbon trading schemes, and taxes; global carbon emissions have increased.
Increased by how much?
How much would they have increased without the Paris accords?
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I can point to facts that support my position - for example the fact that despite the Paris accords, carbon trading schemes, and taxes; global carbon emissions have increased.
Increased by how much? How much would they have increased without the Paris accords?
Who cares? To spend that much, and negatively impact economies and billions of people's lives that much, then despite all that not achieve a reduction is abject failure. Globally $4.4 billion was provided to the GEF in the period 2014-2018 alone for minimal results (US provided $1B of that) http://www.thegef.org/about/fu... [thegef.org]
That money would have been far better spent elsewhere. If it had been spent on renewables and battery tech research we would be far ahead of where we are today. Instead it gets spent o
I hope not (Score:5, Funny)
I really hope there isn't a boom in electric power, that sounds unsafe!
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Seriously? Is that unsafe compared to gasoline? Or unsafe compared to natural gas? Both those are seriously flammable and tend to fry humans every year, one way or another.
Electricity is the most easily controlled source of energy, and the most efficient.
But yes, the demand for electricity is going to go to the moon as electric cars consume a KwH to go 4 miles, and Americans drove 3.22 trillion miles in 2015, so that is about 750 Billion KwH that is going to be ADDITIONAL usage on top of current residen
Re:I hope not (Score:4, Funny)
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Boom!
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No boom today. Boom tomorrow - there's always a boom tomorrow!
Already there (Score:5, Interesting)
I am too lazy to look up a citation but Tesla already claims $100 per kWhr for battery alone and is projecting the full battery pack (which includes extra packaging costs) to reach that price level soon, maybe as soon as next year.
Re:Already there (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, some citations:
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
https://cleantechnica.com/2018... [cleantechnica.com]
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I love citations
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Do you? Citation please.
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I just wish Elon Musk wasn't obsessed with making Tesla vehicles look like they're from outer space, either on the inside (Tesla Model 3, with no real instrument panel, just a touchscreen) or on the outside (Cybertruck).
Just give me a regular looking electric car with Tesla technology that is affordable!
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Just give me a regular looking electric car with Tesla technology that is affordable!
I agree. There is a reason that cars are shaped like they are, and the dashboard built like it is, it's because decades of research and development went into this.
I will point out that a large part of how a car is shaped today, and why a dashboard looks like it does, is because of technological limitations of the internal combustion engine. Until we had practical electric cars we needed this large blocky internal combustion engine. Because of factors like weight distribution and cooling this normally mea
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He is trying to make them different on purpose. Breaking into a packed market is no small deal. I do not think most of these changes are driven by improved ergonomics or safety but rather playing on the "space age" theme. Good for him, not good for drivers. With that said, it is still "cool" (and is one of the reason I still drive my gas car - I can afford a space toy).
Re: Already there (Score:3)
Speak of safety, an interesting side effect of batteries in electric cars is that they put the center of mass really low to the ground, so rolling these cars is really hard to do, and even if you do manage to roll them (for a Tesla, it literally requires deliberately skidding sideways into a long concrete block that is below the center of mass at a very high rate of speed) they very quickly flip back to the upright position. So long as you survive the initial impact, it's no more dangerous than a rollercoas
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The Tesla cars are very regular looking, even a bit bland. I'm not a huge fan but the minimalist interior is also a cost saving - it's cheaper to stick a single standard touchscreen in there than to design, manufacture and install a billion little custom buttons and dials.
The truck... well that's certainly a bit out there.
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Just give me a regular looking electric car with Tesla technology that is affordable!
There is a problem with that notion.
The size of the battery and and way the volume is distributed, and the size of an electrical engine don't fit very well with the regular looking car. This was build that way it is because the engine is quite large, and it needs a lot of additional equipment, and the transmission is large either.
It took some experimentation in the early stages, but since the 1900s, cars have basicly the same layout: Engine in front, passengers between the axles, and luggage behind the
Re: Already there (Score:2)
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So... maybe find some place more reasonable to live? My electricity is 9.2Â/kWh for the first 1400 kWh and 10.0Â/kWh after. Gas is also only $2.17/gallon, and I get about 30 MPG in an SUV.
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> $0.24 per kWh. Above the cost of fuel. Given that a gallon of gas is around $4, and you get about 30 MPG in a model 3 sized vehicle (Toyota Camry)
At $0.24/kWh and the Model 3's ~3.7 mi/kWh you're paying ~$0.065 per mile. (Side note: 3.7 mi/kWh isn't all that impressive these days)
At $4/gallon and 30mi/gallon you're paying $0.13 per mile.
So I guess if "Double the cost" is "really close" then sure.
It should also be noted that the heaviest factory-optioned Toyota Camry weighs about 400 pounds LESS than th
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Gasoline powered cars have been doing burnouts for at least 70 years.
That reminds me of the time back in the 70s when my high school buddy tried to get full torque at 0mph in front of my house in his dad's land yacht.
Several gallons of automatic transmission fluid and random pieces of TorqueFlite were left splattered all over our street.
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i still donâ(TM)t get why this price matters.... power from a coal grid is $0.09c/kwhour.
fuel is about 0.20$ per kilowatt hour.
Why have battery anything, even at $100?
Because for the life of the battery and the life of the "collectors" it's all totally free. And those prices you mentioned are subsidized. If you are going to quote a current price for a fossil fuel you should really be factoring in the amount of subsidy.
And of course there is the environmental impact. Even if the cost per kilowatt hour was the same, wouldn't you want the cleaner solution?
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You comparing the cost of one gallon of water, to 1% of the cost of a 100 gallon water tank.
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Are you one of those lunatics who believe that "big oil" is holding back the 100mpg carburetor? It's a simple physics problem of how much energy is contained in a gallon of gas and how much the car weighs. Then it comes down to efficiency. Nobody is running a car from water. You'll waste more energy extracting the hydrogen than burning what comes off.
Re: Already there (Score:4, Insightful)
Independent inventors can run vehicles on water and yet, not one in the public market. Why?
The short answer is that those "independent inventors" are lying to you; they have done no such thing.
Water is not fuel. That's why we use water to put out fires rather than to start fires.
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Tesla and Panasonic are not in good terms now. Pana is committed to 35 GWh/year capacity at Navada but it is not going to renew or expand beyond that. Tesla's battery pack plans for Navada was around 105 GWh/year.
The Maxwell acquisition and the "dry electrode" manufacturing process is expected to produce 20% reduction in cost and some 30 o
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So their 14kWh PowerWall2 battery should cost ....$1400? Ok with packaging and electronics it's x $130 so still less then $2k?
Bigger impact for the grid. (Score:5, Informative)
First South Australian wind farms used the power packs to stabilize the grid. They were shrugged off as unique situation due to distributed nature and high percentage of unreliable wind power. Then came announcement that CA is retiring three peaker gas turbine power plants. Then three more in Florida. Then Texas wind farms. Now solar/wind with storage is becoming viable.
The gauge the size of the market, the daily power consumption in USA is 10 TeraWh. About 2 TWh were used in the neck of the duck curve. We would need 2000 GWh of batteries for it. The global batter production capacity is around 70 GWh now. By the time the battery capacities scale up to address these markets, the prices will fall faster than predicted.
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Only airborne gas turbines might survive. All ground based gas turbines will just be attritioned away ....
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That would be devastating the turbine makers...
The local Telegraph operators union agrees completely.
But I doubt they would do away with them immediately. We need a back-up plan for a bit , just in case.
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Honestly, the price was around $200/kWhB based on numbers I had from 2015 and 3,000 cycles. Right now the only thing keeping natural gas in business is limited battery supply.
Re:Bigger impact for the grid. (Score:4, Informative)
Believe it or not, if supply was not an issue on batteries at the current $150/kWh for an integrated module (around $225-250 for an integrated system), the duck curve would be eliminated from what I see. Right now we are at about a 6-month lead time for the batteries (with paying a premium) for something around 500kWh for a 50,000 SF commercial building with solar. There are pretty easy business cases for doubling that and eliminating backup generators and reducing other backup power systems, which could make the building a net exporter from 4-9PM. In the summer, net export could easily run to 11PM.
Once the battery capacity exists, the real-time value of energy is more closely linked to seasonal effects rather than diurnal, and peakers will need to justify themselves based on fall heat waves. Combined cycle plants should be able to break even from midnight to 8AM 4-5 months of the year though for another decade, if they can cover operations with 15% capacity factors.
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Here in CA, we may kill our peakers (I live within 5 miles of two of them, here in Ventura, CA) but I assume we will just go without power since a battery to provide backup simply isn't feasible (given the daily power use of Los Angeles averages around 9 GW per hour), because it would take a ginormous battery bank to just provide those two hours of use - let alone 4-5 hours of use (5 hours would use more than 100% of the entire Gigafactory annual output - and would need to be replaced every 3 years or so, a
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The PG&L peaker retirement plan calls for 350 MW x 4 hour pack, 175 MW x 4 hour pack and two smaller experimental packs. https://www.utilitydive.com/ne... [utilitydive.com]
The neck of the duck is 39 GWh, 13 GW x 3 hours for CA. They are not retiring ALL the gas plants right away. Just 2 GWh. About 16% of the load. Battery prices are low enough to compete with building a new gas plant to replace a retired gas plant. Battery prices are falling, new gas plant prices are rising or holding
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Watts already incorporate time, as in energy per unit time.
1 watt is one joule per second.
"Watts per hour" is bogus unless you are talking about a rate of change or maybe a solar cell manufacturing plant...
Rgds
Damon
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Joule is the unit for energy. Watt-hours and Joule have fixed relationship. 1 watt = 1 joule/sec. 1 Wh = 3,600 joules. 1 kWh = 3.6 million j/s
I gave a link to the pdf that talks about energy use through the day in CA.
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After all, when we have high winds, we shut our power grid down...
But batteries can keep charging, assuming they are local to generation. Smarter grids might even be able to keep power up to all but the most severely impacted areas.
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"Smarter grids"
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The battery-based grid stabilizers are only used on very short timescales: tens of milliseconds to tens of seconds. They are orders of magnitude smaller than the total energy in the duck curve.
When they say "stabilizing", they don't mean "filling in the gap when the wind dies down". It's more like leaning on the sine wave so the phase doesn't wander too far on a second-by-second basis. The peakers pick it back up a few seconds later, and even heavy baseload generators (like nuke) can adjust a few percent
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The battery pack reacts in milli second far faster than any other device. But the storage is good for hours. The plan calls for 350 MW x 4 hours, 175 MW x 4 hours and such time frames.
hot water (Score:2)
Re:hot water (Score:5, Funny)
I believe Samsung may have some batteries available that have the potential to keep you warm for the rest of your life. Is that adequate to meet your needs?
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No (Score:2)
No. :D
Obviously if you have enough batteries, you can do almost anything - except fly long distances. But seriously, heating is power-hungry. A hair dryer uses as much power as 200 light bulbs.
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A hair dryer is typically 1000 W, or 1 kW. It could be 200 LED bulbs, or 10 incandescents of 100 W. Max rating for any appliance that can plug into the standard US 120 V residential outlet is 1.5 kW.
Check yourself when you correct people :) (Score:3)
If you pop open Walmart.com and click the button to see hair dryers in stock at your local Walmart, you'll see most of them are 1875 watts. Some over 2,000.
You might wonder how can that be when you're not supposed to put more than 13 amps on a 15 amp circuit? A house isn't a data center. You don't derate circuits when they aren't in a rack with a bunch of heat-generating equipment. In a home, as opposed to a dense rack, a 15 amp circuit can carry - 15 amps continuous.
Current NEC code is that bathrooms (w
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Is there a battery that can get me hot water through a week long power failure?
Yes. An average hot water heater uses 12 kwh per day. So for a week that is 84 kwh.
The battery pack in my wife's Tesla is 80 kwh.
Nonetheless, you may want to cut back on the long showers until the grid is restored.
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Won't your wife miss the Tesla for that week ?
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Yes, it is called a big tank of water and a lot of insulation. If you really want to go wild and crazy add a heat pump with battery backup.
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Is there a battery that can get me hot water through a week long power failure?
Is there an absence of a battery that can get you through a week long of power failure?
A gas powered generator? A powerwall, connected to solar cells and possibly a small windmill? An inverter that you can connect to your car/truck? Geothermal? Those black baffles full of water you put on your roof?
Re:hot water (Score:5, Informative)
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A week longer power is a rarity in the first world. Living without power for a week is not a ton of fun, but lack of hot water is not the biggest issue with dealing with that.
Heating the house/pipes in sub-freezing weather tops the list. Cooking comes next. Going a couple days with no hot shower is no big deal. Taking a sponge bath is not great, but is survivable for all but the weakest of souls.
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And yet APC charges a thousand times that. (Score:2)
And yet the only consumer APC UPS that uses lithium ion batteries costs $15,483 per kilowatt hour ($320 USD for roughly 20 watt-hours).
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Think of the code costs that went into that with every sale. Keeping up with OS changes. Version drift.
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Nice UI? Their desktop application looks like it hasn't changed in twenty years.
i prefer to wait for the Dr.Goodenough new battery (Score:2)
Because it sounds like it could be absurdly cheaper as you use literally sodium with it.
Even if the battery don't come even close to the improvements he's talking about, the fact it's made out of something so absurdly abundant would be enough to at least solve the problems with the intermittent power sources.
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off grid hybrid solar (Score:3)
We have decided to invest enough money in solar electricity and storage, to be independent from the grid for everything electrical other than heating or cooling. The only limitation is that there has to be at least five hours of sunshine in the day to recharge the battery and supply normal daytime use. That limitation is because of the size of the battery storage. The excess solar electricity generated is stored in the grid if available. That energy is used later for heating and/or cooling
In case the grid is off, any excess electricity generated by the solar panels is used by the water heater for showers and other domestic use if the batteries are 80%+ charged. In case the sun doesn't shine at all, there is a small RV sized generator, that charges the batteries. If the grid shuts off, which it often does in the winter, the batteries take over instantly. If it were not for an indicator light, we would not know that the grid is off until we notice that the heating/cooling system is not working. In the living room/kitchen area, there is a wood stove we can use for heat and the kitchen cookstove runs on propane gas.
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So yes, you are off the grid, barely.
But no, you are not solar powered 100% (calling it "hybrid" just hides the ugly truth).
If you dropped gas generator you could perhaps claim you are 100% renewable...considering wood a renewable resource.
So in essence, completely self sufficient solar powered you are not - what would made it possible?
Electric trucks can't tow caro (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw a couple interesting videos on the Tesla Cybertruck, both pointing out how poorly an electric truck performs when pulling a load. This has everything to do with the terrible energy density of the electric battery.
The Tesla Cybertruck claims a 500 mile range with the largest battery pack. If pulling something like a camping trailer this range will drop significantly to something like 100 miles. They did the math and this has everything to do with the air resistance, rolling resistance, and moving mass up and down hills. There's not much that can be done with moving this mass up and down hills, and before anyone brings it up in a reply the regenerative braking will not return this lost energy in any meaningful way.
If there is some kind of technological advancements in reducing rolling resistance and air resistance then this can be applied to diesel trucks as well. Any means to reduce the weight of the truck, such as with use of aluminum instead of steel, can also be applied to diesel trucks. Adding more batteries to add range will add to the mass that needs to be moved up and down hills. This weight on the wheels also adds to the rolling resistance.
Another problem with such large batteries needed to make towing with an electric truck practical is putting this energy into the batteries in a short enough time. Ignoring any problems of the heat from a charging battery, or other such issues, the problem is making a large enough cable to move this electricity and still have it something a person can handle without needing protective gear and/or mechanical assistance.
Do the math on how much energy a common diesel fuel pump at a filling station can move. Just grab some numbers that sound close, like perhaps moving 20 gallons in 5 minutes. Figure in the efficiency gains from using electric motors and batteries instead of diesel fuel and an internal combustion engine, then see what kind of power needs to be moved. Now, do the math on finding some logical voltage and current to move this power in an electrical cable. Again you can take into account that people might be willing to wait for more than 20 minutes to fill up. Perhaps they can wait an hour, maybe even two, but they can't wait all day.
Electric trucks are not practical. Not now and given the physical limits of batteries this is not something that is likely to ever get resolved.
Go ahead and do that same math on weight, volume, and recharge times for other means of transportation, such as for ships at sea and aircraft. Like with the math for the typical passenger car that only needs to carry one to five people some short distance, these other forms of transportation might possibly be practical to be electric for recreational use and short commutes. What they will not do is carry large amounts of cargo over long distances.
Lowering the prices on batteries won't change this, because it's not the cost that is the limitation. The problem with batteries is the energy density.
If you want a carbon neutral transportation system then the most logical means to resolve this is with a carbon neutral fuel for vehicles much like, or identical, to what we have already. There are people working on this now, and it appears that they are very close to bringing carbon neutral hydrocarbon based fuels to market at a price competitive with petroleum fuels. We might see more vehicles with electric motors to make them move but they will be burning hydrocarbons to produce the electricity. This is common already on trains, and becoming more common on large ships. So, we might see more electric vehicles but it won't be because of lowered prices for batteries.
Re: (Score:3)
thats a grand claim which will more than likely bite you in a few years
Re:Electric trucks can't tow cargo (Score:3)
thats a grand claim which will more than likely bite you in a few years
Then I shall be more precise...
Battery electric trucks are not practical for towing cargo, not now or likely ever.
I can imagine someone coming up with some kind of diesel-electric truck, similar in many ways to a diesel-electric train locomotives that are so common, then claiming I am wrong. Another possibility is some kind of fuel cell technology that makes electric trucks practical. The way fuel cell technology is going I have many hopes and many doubts on a fuel cell that is practical outside of an orb
Re: (Score:3)
Do you have a link for the math showing those range estimates?
My gut instinct is they're using some very pessimistic numbers. If a diesel-powered truck goes from 15mpg unladen to 10mpg towing (losing 1/3 of its range), then I'd expect the electric truck to have a similar drop from 500mi to 333mi... I'm interested to see what numbers they plugged in. Maybe there's some change in efficiency that I don't anticipate.
Re: (Score:3)
and before anyone brings it up in a reply the regenerative braking will not return this lost energy in any meaningful way.
Here is a mining company moving rock from top of a hill to the bottom. The regen braking was totally sufficient to fully charge the batter in downhill runs, enough to take the truck back to the top. No diesel fuel, no charging from the grid either! Before anyone brings up citations [greencarreports.com]
responsible disposal (Score:2, Interesting)
Getting away from internal combustion engines is a great goal. Breaking the oil addiction would give the United States a great deal more economic and geopolitical flexibility. Fossil burning cars smell horrible, make a lot of noise, and generally foul up the city.
But we must be careful not to replace one known evil with another unknown evil. Current battery technology is pretty toxic. We ought not just toss those things in a scrapyard when they're worn out. Our children and grandchildren don't want that kin
Re: As if... (Score:4, Funny)
This is a reminder to take your meds.
Re: As if... (Score:3)
This is a reminder to take your meds.
So says big pharma?
Back at the turn of the last century, the war of the currents was real. Edison (DC) and Tesla (AC), the result was that AC became the power system du jour and Edison an American "hero" in the text books with Tesla relegated to obscurity.
Tesla's contribution to science and energy still outweigh Edison's lightbulb. I'll leave it to you discover that. One of Tesla's assistants was Otis T. Carr, good luck in finding any extensive information on him. You might start with Ralph Ring and wrap
Re: (Score:2)
Have a read of "Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon" by Jenny Chase of BNEF. ISBN 978-1-78634-745-9.
Candid about the limitations and successes of BNEF's predictions since it was NEF.
Rgds
Damon