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Comment by Gibbon1 | Hacker News Reader

> because we couldn’t magic enough battery capacity into existence to compensate for base load

Lets look at California's ISO supply page right now.

   Renewables: 14.3GW.
   Nat Gas: 3.5GW
   Nuke: 2.2GW
   Imports: 1.3GW
   Batteries: -3.5GW (Charging)

All the utility grade battery capacity was added in the last three years.

What's kind annoying about solar, wind and batteries is we could have done a moon shot program in the 70's to develop the industry but we didn't. So we wasted 40 years and trillions on fossil fuels and nuclear. If we had taken the money spent on nukes in the 50's and 60's we would have been switching over in the 70's.

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Is battery storage cheaper than nuclear though?

> annoying

Wasn’t nuclear supposed to be the “moonshot” of the 50s and 60s? I guess another problem is that they would’ve had to solve both solar panel and the battery issue at the same time.

My dad said when he was a young engineer nuclear and space was going to be the future and it didn't pan out. Friends dad was a nuclear engineering professor and said I retired just in time.

I think battery storage costs something like $100/MWh or 10 cents per kwh. (Don't quote me/find a reliable source). Batteries increase demand when there is excess supply and increase supply when there is under supply. The result is lower price swings. The price differentials are higher than the cost of storage which makes them balance sheet profitable. The notable thing is the buy low sell high cycle is 24 hours, not weeks or months. From an arbitrage point of view that's exceptionally attractive. Better than buying wheat futures in the spring and trying to offload them in August and sometimes losing your shirt.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-insights/buy-l...

No.

I’ll just copy my comment from elsewhere verbatim:

Projected battery production capacity makes this a a pie in the sky. Every western country + China will be clamoring for batteries, on top of virtually every industry.

The only solution I hear from “green” people is the “future battery technology” MacGuffin.

> Every western country + China will be clamoring for batteries, on top of virtually every industry.

Yes, which by the power of "hey look there's a lot of demand for that, we should invest in some factories to make money servicing that demand" means a lot of people make battery factories. And mines. And processing plants.

Which is why it's clear that if…

> The only solution I hear from “green” people is the “future battery technology” MacGuffin

You're not listening to the sound of money being made.

Imagine we build 3kwh worth of batteries per world capita. Or 8 billion people. And the batteries cost $100/kwh. That's 2.4 Trillion/Year. No ones leaving that kind of money on the table.

Indeed, and despite that being not too dissimilar to annual fossil fuel costs, that figure also assumes the batteries have to be replaced each year, it's probably more like every three to ten years.

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