lots of exciting battery developments in general, especially if donut labs by some miracle is not a fraud.
it was a bit worrying as there was somewhat of a stagnation in battery chemistry, but having non toxic/dangerous battery storage is going to make off-griding so much more attractive.
technically speaking, if every household had solar panels and batteries it would not only be cheaper than the grid it would also have complete independence from oil fluctuations, weather disasters and centralization.
now if you combine that with electric cars that charge off your off-grid system and transition to eletric appliances instead of something like gas the benefits keep stacking all while being pretty much net neutral post manufacturing.
I have had a set of panels on my roof for years, but I think going off grid is overrated unless it becomes drastically cheaper than being on grid.
Grid level batteries are going to be a more efficient way of using the same materials to achieve a particular level of supply. It's just at the moment there's a "competency arbitrage" where infrastructure is way slower than building it yourself.
I can attest that. I installed panels on my house, they are not enough to cover my electrocity needs, let alone gas (heating). Even if it would be enough to cover electricity needs, the cost was (upfront) more than the equivalent of the next 20 years in bills.
To be fair, many of the costs are because of high demand (artificial, because the gov. mandates it to be installed) and lots of work to be integrated in the national grid. But as things are right now, it not economically convenient (at least where I live) and for what I have heard, in other places is not much different.
But land is not distributed equally in the two hemispheres. In the southern hemisphere it's generally concentrated near the equator, where it gets more sunlight.
I think if energy storage is cheap enough and solar panel pricing continues to go down (especially with this new tech) a time where you can have 10 days of reserve and 50%+ overproduction is not that far away IMO. Small 2-3 floor apartments especially can benefit from a mini local grid, each roof + shared land is a lot of sun real-estate.
It doesn't have to be perfect a generator with ~7 days of fuel can go a really long way for any kind of low solar activity event. 7 days of fuel is roughly half the size of the generator.
At the end of the day it's math, figure exactly what is needed, if it works out then great, if not, continue waiting.
nothing stops them from also using swarms of solar panels on their roofs to at minimum offset the energy needs, localized power plants to save on transmission costs, raw high voltage power.
yah, this is more for low density/mid density housing, I am sure the roots of 2-3 floor apts should be more than enough to sustain it as energy needs of apartments are lower to begin with. They can also bleed them into parking lots and have cover from the sun.
>technically speaking, if every household had solar panels and batteries it would not only be cheaper than the grid
Absolutely not, economies of scale. To say nothing of the cost incurred when an issue appears with your installation (lightning strike, water damage, etc) would be much higher.
It's surprising how far there is from discovery to production for these kinds of things. It's 14 years ago now that I designed the front cover for Advanced Energi Materials[1] wherein my friend described his similar discovery of the incredible properties of LiMnO4 with Carbon Nanotubes. Even though he had it working with measurable improvements in the 20-40x range he said it would take 10-20 years to reach a state for mass production.
"CATL’s “Naxtra” sodium-ion batteries achieve an energy density of up to 175 Wh/kg, the company said, putting it on par with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries."
Useful, but not a "breakthrough" in energy density. More like another good low-end option.
People posting claims about EV charging time should be required to also post the size of cable required. And the grid capacity needed to provide their fast charging at a typical 8-bay charging site.
How much assumption we can make here that advanced AI systems, kinda like Google's Alphafold, but customized for chemistry, is helping accelerate such breakthroughs?
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it was a bit worrying as there was somewhat of a stagnation in battery chemistry, but having non toxic/dangerous battery storage is going to make off-griding so much more attractive.
technically speaking, if every household had solar panels and batteries it would not only be cheaper than the grid it would also have complete independence from oil fluctuations, weather disasters and centralization.
now if you combine that with electric cars that charge off your off-grid system and transition to eletric appliances instead of something like gas the benefits keep stacking all while being pretty much net neutral post manufacturing.
Grid level batteries are going to be a more efficient way of using the same materials to achieve a particular level of supply. It's just at the moment there's a "competency arbitrage" where infrastructure is way slower than building it yourself.
To be fair, many of the costs are because of high demand (artificial, because the gov. mandates it to be installed) and lots of work to be integrated in the national grid. But as things are right now, it not economically convenient (at least where I live) and for what I have heard, in other places is not much different.
Everyone has panels on their roofs and they own a shared grid-scale battery that they feed into.
While I don't regret getting them, they are absolutely not good enough to be the only solution.
however in the southern hemisphere - solar is a win .
Solar is a win everywhere with a sunny weather.
It doesn't have to be perfect a generator with ~7 days of fuel can go a really long way for any kind of low solar activity event. 7 days of fuel is roughly half the size of the generator.
At the end of the day it's math, figure exactly what is needed, if it works out then great, if not, continue waiting.
Which is fine if your fantasy includes offshoring all of that and shipping the finished products in to the local market.
Which, no matter how you slice it, has to be more energy intensive than manufacturing locally.
Hetzner does this!
High density housing is unlikely to be compatible with that.
Also rental dwelling owners and people with limited economic resources tend to be less likely to make those kinds of capital investment.
>technically speaking, if every household had solar panels and batteries it would not only be cheaper than the grid
Absolutely not, economies of scale. To say nothing of the cost incurred when an issue appears with your installation (lightning strike, water damage, etc) would be much higher.
(Pardon me if you live in another country. I'm starting to wish I did.)
[1] https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aen...
Useful, but not a "breakthrough" in energy density. More like another good low-end option.