this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
592 points (98.2% liked)

Progressive Politics

2714 readers
916 users here now

Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)

(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com -5 points 6 days ago

@Viking_Hippie No I'm not conflating anything, what we have NOW determines how long the grid can tolerate under production and that is about five minutes. But wind might not blow for days, the sun is on average not in the sky 12 hours out of the day and the majority of those hours it is at an angle that makes less than peak production possible. But even if we used every gram of lithium we have we couldn't produce enough storage. There are some alternatives, vanadium flow batteries, but again vanadium is expensive and in short supply, or sodium ion batteries, here we've probably got adequate materials, but sodium has a two step discharge curve that make the electronics more expensive. In short we don't PRESENTLY have enough storage and it is doubtful that we will ever have enough to last overnight.