Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by donbatman 874 days ago
Most of those batteries are being charged by natural gas. Batteries store electricity, they don't create it.
2 comments

For now. (And not everywhere. In Norway, 90% of that power would come from hydro plants.)

One of the most common objections to a wholesale switch to renewables is "what if it's cloudy / not windy" sort of thing. Cheap, widely deployed energy storage is key to answering that objection.

They go hand in hand. More batteries, more renewables, more batteries, more renewables, etc. etc. etc.

Eventually, the obvious goal is to charge everything via renewable power.

It frustrates me that you think this is a genuine talking point.

If we're talking about powering cars, then even if your power comes from 100% coal, it's still cleaner to drive the EV than gasoline, simply because the coal power plant benefits from the economy of scale. It merely takes longer for the trade-off of the higher carbon footprint of manufacturing an EV to happen. But it does eventually happen.

If we're talking about powering an energy grid, nobody expects them to be charged via consumables. That's just silly. But battery storage is how you make wind/solar energy work without requiring burning consumables as a backup.