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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

> without massive investments in storage and transmission upgrades

So, we build storage and transmission. Storage cost is falling even faster than generation, and there are zero physics problems to be solved, just practical civil engineering.

The cost of this much civil engineering will be very large, but much smaller than e.g. for that much nukes, and we will pay it, because the only other choice is global collapse when the degraded biosphere becomes unable to sustain our population.

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  > Storage cost is falling even faster than generation,

Citation please. The high demand for EVs and other battery-hungry devices has led to a situation where grid scale energy storage costs are currently increasing year over year and expected to continue doing so [1]. And pumped hydro storage is not something that will flexible enough for general deployment.

  > and there are zero physics problems to be solved,
  > just practical civil engineering.

Alchemy is not a solved problem, and there is only so much lithium to go around.

[1] https://cleanenergynews.ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/grid...

Batteries are the most expensive storage. The overwhelming majority of storage will not be batteries. Of what is batteries, the overwhelming majority will not be lithium. Lithium batteries are well adapted for cars and phones. Other qualities are favored for utility storage.

> Alchemy is not a solved problem

Ah, trolling. OK.

Making a substantive point using humor != trolling.

What form of grid/utility energy storage do you expect will dominate in 20 years?

I provided a reference to back up my assertion. Do you have any?

a mix of hydro and non-lithium batteries. for grid scale batteries, you don't care about weight, and if you make it big enough can hear the battery if it helps. as such there are a lot of very cool battery technologies in various stages of commercialization that will never go in a phone, but make a lot of sense when you scale them up to a few thousand pounds.

What kind of storage is falling in price faster than batteries?

CAES, ammonia synthesis, hydrogen electrolysis...

Everything comes down as manufacturing volume goes up.

Everything comes down, but it's hard to compete with >95% over 25 years.

Battery cost is not falling as fast as it was. The others have only just started down.

>the overwhelming majority will not be lithium

I'm seriously hoping that aluminium-chalcogen batteries [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04983-9] can be scaled and commercialized soon

There are lots of exciting battery chemistries, and some boring ones. It is impossible to say which ones will win out, in the end. The one thing certain is that whichever wins will have the best performance per unit cost, and thus better than all the others.

Other exciting chemistries include molten antimony/calcium, zinc/bromine, and iron/air. The antimony/calcium one would never wear out or catch fire. Zinc/bromine is most compatible with current lead/acid battery tech. Iron/air is very, very cheap. None are very attractive for cars, so utilities will not be in competition with the car industry for access to batteries.

> Alchemy is not a solved problem, and there is only so much lithium to go around.

We can make it -- in a fusion reactor :)

> The cost of this much civil engineering will be very large

Remember they were replying to a claim that it would be "inexpensive"

The absolute cost of anything world-scale is unavoidably very large. Pretending serves no one.

At issue is how this cost compares to that. Renewables and storage costs, as big as they will be, will be overwhelmingly less than alternatives, and can be fielded faster.

>So, we build storage and transmission.

Oh is that all. How could nobody have thought of this yet?!?!

Strangely enough, people have thought of it. Just not you.

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