Hacker News Reader

Comment by omgJustTest | Hacker News Reader

Grid scale batteries would immediately impact electricity costs. The potential is 2/3 of the cost of current electricity costs.

View on HN

Grid scale batteries are not very sensitive to energy density. Car batteries are very sensitive to it.

Lighter vehicles also mean cheaper vehicles

I'd argue grid scale batteries are sensitive to energy density as a second order effect. Higher energy density -> More EV demand -> Eventual increasing flow of last-generation cheap used cells that can be used in the grid.

_Vast_ Chinese EV subsidies & mandates have already gotten us there over the past several years. In the developing world EVs are cheaper than new gas vehicles to buy and to operate. Prices have come down to ~$50/kwh in 2025 dollars, lower than Tesla et al even hoped for.

This is less than estimates I've seen for major new pumped hydro projects in 2005 dollars (when I did more formal research into energy transition), and it requires no site selection, no complex approvals, no environmental mitigation policies.

Grid-scale battery projects are lighting up at scale for the first time throughout the world.

Am I being too pessimistic to think we would actually get the same electricity costs if we are lucky and 1/3 more profits going up to the executive portion of the company?

It could even go up, the customers will cover the cost of transitioning to new tech!

If you have enough space for distributed solar generation, you buy the batteries and go off grid (if your local jurisdiction will allow it; if they don't, prepare to politik and fight for the right to so you're not trapped into their profit extraction through local code and/or financial and regulatory mechanisms [see below citations]).

The Secret Society Raising Your Electricity Bills - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43151865 - Feb 2023

https://prospect.org/environment/2025-02-21-secret-society-r...

I think the most likely case is that electricity prices go down but demand goes up as devices more eagerly use power so you end up with an electricity bill that stays consistent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com