Giant Batteries and Cheap Solar Power Are Shoving Fossil Fuels Off the Grid
July 12th, 2019If the electricity from solar plus storage is, “Cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel,” why aren’t these systems shooting up like weeds?
The availability of batteries is the bottleneck.
We’ve heard about Tesla’s rumored 1GWh energy storage system and things like the 800MWh system below. This is a drop in the bucket, in terms of overall energy mix, and yet, cell availability is already constrained.
Electric vehicles are the priority. As a result, fixed storage is, literally, taking a backseat.
Volkswagen said that by 2025, it needs 150 gigawatt hours worth of battery production capacity in Europe and another 150 in Asia. By 2030 this figure will double.
The German automaker is retooling 16 factories to build electric vehicles and plans to start producing 33 different electric cars under the Skoda, Audi, VW and Seat brands by mid-2023.
300GWh for VW alone by 2025?
Hmm.
China is clearly aiming to dominate this situation:
It’s notable that China keeps extending its already substantial lead in planned lithium-ion battery capacity. Currently, over 70% of planned capacity for 2023 is in China. Significant additions in March came from Great Wall Motors/SVolt (Jiangsu factory), Sunwoda (Nanjing factory), and EVE Energy (Huizhou factory), amongst many others.
Finally, in other news: Pentagon Races to Track U.S. Rare Earths Output Amid China Trade Dispute:
The Pentagon is rapidly assessing the United States’ rare earths capability in a race to secure stable supply of the specialized material amid the country’s trade conflict with China, which controls the rare earths industry, according to a government document seen by Reuters.
I hug my Tesla Powerwall 2 everyday.
Via: Science:
This month, officials in Los Angeles, California, are expected to approve a deal that would make solar power cheaper than ever while also addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. The deal calls for a huge solar farm backed up by one of the world’s largest batteries. It would provide 7% of the city’s electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. That’s cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel.
…
The new solar plus storage effort will be built in Kern County in California by 8minute Solar Energy. The project is expected to create a 400-megawatt solar array, generating roughly 876,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity annually, enough to power more than 65,000 homes during daylight hours. Its 800-MWh battery will store electricity for after the sun sets, reducing the need for natural gas–fired generators.
