[mikaeluman]

I don't agree. Lithium and Copper are mined and given electrification scenarios there is a projected supply deficit: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook...

Those prices are outdated now since practically all metals are surging.

There has indeed been great growth in battery capacity but it's as I said nowhere near able to supply a country like Sweden during the winter. It is off by orders of magnitude. We need 5TWh for that. It is not going to happen any time soon.

I understand California is different. Still, one would need to do these risk scenario calculations. Have they been made?

I know California has rotating blackouts already as it is. I really don't have any idea how people find that acceptable. If it happened in Sweden the government would be replaced on the day. It would be a real disaster.

I will be a bigger believer if a state like California can actually show its possible.

For sure I hope technology improves but the current ideas of solar+battery are simply highly unlikely.

[Rebelgecko]

What gives you that impression? Unless you're looking at the pre-9/11 grid powered by Enron™, rolling blackouts aren't a big deal in California. I think since 2001 there was a single 2 day event limited to certain regions, I don't know anyone personally who lost electricity due to rolling blackouts.

The CA grid has also scaled up battery storage surprisingly quickly. A few years ago it was in the single digit mWh, not really a meaningful fraction of the grid. Now it's measured in gigawatt-hours.

[mikaeluman]

You are right. Not sure where I read it but it was clearly wrong.

Still, I think the grid is very vulnerable with that amount of weather-based energy. If there can be enough batteries to sink all that power generated and have it during evening til morning then that's great.

Perhaps that _can_ work in California, I really don't know what an acceptable level of storage would be. That is, how many days worth of battery power you'd want in case of bad weather conditions.

[epistasis]

Your link does not support the idea of a supply deficit, at least that I see. Propel panicked about lithium under supply, prices surged and didn't even affect battery prices much, and now we are in oversuppply. The worst that can happen is lag time between demand increase and supply match, and there are substitutes for all key metals for most applications, even copper.

Every country will have to figure out how to supply its own power, but Sweden's seasonal variation in renewable resources is not likely to be fixed by batteries, even though batteries will be abundant and in massive supply throughout the rest of the world. If Sweden can't figure out, or merely can't, take advantage of great cheap new technology, they will be at a disadvantage compared to countries that will

> I know California has rotating blackouts already as it is

You don't know that because it's not true. Due to planning not taking into account climate change, there were a few days with demand above expected ability to provide capacity, but there were no blackouts because people were asked to voluntarily cut back on excessive cooling. That mere ask was more than enough to get through the few days. And it was fixed the next year, by what? By batteries! Adding nuclear wouldn't have helped, but batteries were the perfect solution. Perhaps nuclear can help Sweden, but it will be far more expensive than the solutions available to other countries.

It is quite funny that what I thought was US propaganda has been spread to Sweden for repetition. Even including the IEA report that doesn't say what people claim it says!

[mikaeluman]

Regarding the IEA report; I think you didn't read it carefully enough. In the near term there is no supply deficit (although current price development would seem to beg to differ) - but the point was in an electrification scenario there _would be_ in the 2030s. Given it takes many years to start up mines (as far as I know), that is the issue. For copper - the report is very clear that there already is an issue, which is understandable because copper is used everywhere. And again, looking at copper prices, you can already tell.

Regarding California; you are right. I was misinformed. I would say that the grid is still very, very vulnerable due to the huge reliance on solar and overproduction during midday. That's why these examples of "I exported power to the grid" is not very interesting.

Most grids aren't built that way anyway. The residential units are sinks, not sources. In Sweden we don't even have much solar power but already there have been policies aimed at reducing grid exports from residential units, because they are mostly redundant and even harmful.

[epistasis]

I read through the IEA document when it came out, and didn't find anything like what you say, because I remember people claiming things like you say and I couldn't find anything that supported it. If you have quotes, pages, etc. please point to them. The closest contention is also in the summary:

> For lithium, near-term markets appear well-supplied, but rapidly growing demand is expected to push the market into deficit by the 2030s

We've been pushed into lithium supply deficit in the past, and quickly got out of it. This is not a statement that there's not enough lithium or copper, rather that the market wants more than they currently see in development. The IEA document doesn't say anything about electrification not being possible, it's meant as a signal to policy makers to ensure that new copper mines can open up in the future, and that there's great opportunity for countries that do that.

When people are making 100 billion dollar bets on factories that use copper as an input, they are also ensuring their supply years out, which enables development of the necessary mines.

Say the worst case predictions from the document come true: there's a price spike in copper due to there being greater demand than supply. That drives up prices, which spurs on more copper mine development, but the existing copper is still being used to make the energy transition. The electrification trend continues, but just at the rate of current copper extraction! Clever people find substitutions for the electrification challenge. Or people substitute inferior and more expensive non-electrified traditional industry rather than the new tech.

There's a fundamental difference between metals for infrastructure and fuels like oil: if you have a fuel supply shortage it causes inflation, economic contraction, etc. With a shortage of copper and increase in prices in devices that use it, people wait a bit to replace that old appliance (maybe), or use an alternative that perhaps requires fossil fuels.

> Most grids aren't built that way anyway. The residential units are sinks, not sources. In Sweden we don't even have much solar power but already there have been policies aimed at reducing grid exports from residential units, because they are mostly redundant and even harmful.

Grid engineers are extremely conservative, and don't want to learn anything new, and always resist at first. Until somebody shows them how it works, they claim it's impossible. That allowing individual homes to feed back to neighbors will break everything. Then people do it and its fine. Then grid engineers claim that at 1-2% of variable supply the whole grid will come down. Then 1-2% of supply is variable solar and everything is great, so the engineers claim that 5% is the new limit. Or 10%. Or 30%. They are living in the past, don't want to learn anything new, and assume that anything new is impossible. It's a natural feeling for engineers that should be very conservative, but also incorrect. They complain about needing inertia, reactive power, without realizing that all that is quite possible with existing tech! Until a proper cost analysis is done by independent people that are fully honest about the costs, I wouldn't trust anybody saying that allowing a home to feed back into the grid is harmful. Plus, batteries negate the need to feed back into the grid at all. Keep homes as 100% sinks, just pulling down electricity far less. Or put batteries in homes to reduce their peak draw from the grid, so that all the rest of the grid can be far cheaper. There's so much potential that gets ignored just because batteries are new tech.