[pranavj]

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a fundamental barrier.

The next milestone to watch: when battery-backed solar becomes cheaper than gas peakers for evening demand across most of Europe. We might be closer than people think.

[bee_rider]

Intermittence really has always had the flavor of an engineering problem instead of a physics problem (it is about putting the energy when/where humans want it, rather than having enough of it). IMO load shifting seems like a cleverer and more engineer-y solution. Imagine a giant smart system where all of our appliances talk to each-other and can optimize the timings of their workloads. It’s a magnificent society-wide scheduling problem! The papers we could write!

Throwing batteries at it is a kind of blunt and uninteresting solution (I guess the market will prefer that one!).

[epolanski]

I ain't gonna use the dishwasher when the system wants me to, but when I can or want.

I pay low energy prices during night than day, that's normal, but I'm still not gonna do laundry at 9 pm, I'd rather pay the 10/20 cents more during the day.

[lejalv]

I do time my dishwasher and washing machine to align with peak solar where I live.

I'd like to appeal to you to evolve that frame of mind. To help avoid first world problems (I can't wash a dish by hand, I need it now) devolving into third-world ones (power cuts, crop failures, torrid tropical nights on mid latitudes, mountains disintegrated).

Sometimes its important to remind we're on a generational mission, and it's not maximising Netflix time.

[_carbyau_]

> Sometimes its important to remind we're on a generational mission, and it's not maximising Netflix time.

Get that into the society's rules and then we'll talk.

I like to think I'm modest and sensible but I'm not bending over backwards while my neighbours get to do what I perceive as ridiculous things.

I used to live in a two bedroom unit, conserving things for the environment and next generation. But next door the neighbour in his huge house, 5 SUV's, heated pool streaming heat into the air all winter can just pay for it with money.

My actions are shaped to societies rules and monetary incentives. I'm not going out of my way to "roll coal" or anything stupid. But I'm not wasting my time either.

[phtrivier]

You can't ask anyone to change society's rules by themselves. That being said, you are part of society. If you live differently than your neighbors, you might actually be the model that people will emulate, and not the gaz guzzler.

Sadly, that's pretty much the extent of your control, unfortunately (that, and maybe voting for people to change the laws, which would indirectly change the rules of society - although, usually, the relation goes the other way.)

In this case, if it's even in people best interest to change the "timing of dishwashing" to align on cheap hours - I trust people will do.

The trick is to not overpolitize it - my mum has always launched her dishwasher during "heures creuses", not caring a damn about why the electricity is cheaper at this time. If the cheapest hours end up being earlier, lots of people will just adapt to save a few bucks - it may be smarter to NOT mention solar power, or environment, or whatnot.

[mlrtime]

This whole thread (up and down) is why a lot of people like me don't do any of this mental gymnastics to 'lower my footprint'. It's exhausting, I mean if I bike to work today, that offsets that steak I ate. Just no (just an example).

When we are serious about this issue, we'll price it all in. The only way to affect change for most humans is incentive based decisions right in your face.

[bee_rider]

You should bike to work every day so you’ll be fit for the Climate Wars.

[epolanski]

I don't like your feedback, it's condescending and you know nothing about me.

1. In my area 96% of energy is gas-based. I live in Rome, Italy. It's written in my energy bill. I ain't got no solar. Night or day it's mostly a matter of relatively small changes of demand.

2. If you want to do something real for the environment change your diet! I'm sick of this neverending focus on energy when the biggest impact you can have is by eating way less meat, cattle in particular. On that I am very sensitive. And me deciding to have less burgers and steaks across an year has magnitude of order more impact than your silly dishwasher. Do the math. As I am on transport where instead of pretending to be green by buying 3 tonnes electric SUVs on a lease from US lunatics I use public transport and use my old beaten car sparely in the weekends.

Spare me your nonsense because I ain't gonna be thinking about running a noisy dishwasher in my living room at 9 pm, the only moment of relax and peace for my family because of negligible-to-nonexistent impact on the environment.

And just to add, I don't even own AC, and I can assure you it gets 40C/100+ Fahrenheit, with high humidity in Rome at summer. That's how sensitive I am to the topic.

You know nothing about the people you interact with.

[ordu]

> And just to add, I don't even own AC, and I can assure you it gets 40C/100+ Fahrenheit, with high humidity in Rome at summer. That's how sensitive I am to the topic.

This addition doesn't really add anything. Your tone says it much clearly. You don't like advice, do you? I'm sorry, but I can't help myself. I'd recommend you to try to lower your sensitivity.

But really I can't understand you. You've said:

> I ain't gonna use the dishwasher when the system wants me to, but when I can or want.

I need a bit of a guesswork to understand what you are implying, but still... I think you are sure that system will do no better than you from an effectiveness standpoint, while making things less comfortable to you. So you are enraged from mere proposition of such a system. It seems to me like a hyper sensitivity.

You see, if such a system would work as proposed and your allocation of resources is close to an optimum, then the system will do the same or something close to it. Nothing to be enraged of.

Also, I like how you combined:

> If you want to do something real for the environment change your diet!

with

> You know nothing about the people you interact with.

There was nothing about their diet but you kinda guessed it just by looking at their writing?

[ericd]

Pretty sure your diet is a relatively small part of your carbon footprint.

[danans]

Like everything else, it depends. In the extreme case, if you eat beef every day but use a bicycle for transportation, live in a mild climate with little need for heating and cooling, and rarely fly in an airplane, your diet could be a significant part of your carbon footprint in percentage terms.

[asymmetric]

I think you’re wrong, especially if you consider more the just carbon (eg land use, deforestation, …) https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact

[crote]

I couldn't care less when it runs, as long as it's done when I want to unload it.

The diswasher will by full after dinner, so I close it and press "start". It has to be done at the latest by next dinner. Does it run immediately, during the night, or during the day? Irrelevant, let the damn thing pick the best (cheapest) time.

Same with laundry. On average I run less than one load a day, so I'm happy if it finishes either when I wake up, when I get home from work, or when I am about to go to bed.

[ragazzina]

Laundry and dishwashing are completely different though?

Recent dishwashers can open by themselves and dry the dishes, washing machines need a (awaken) human to remove the wet clothes when they finish their cycle.

[bee_rider]

If I had a combined washer/dryer and could just load the clothes up and say “do it whenever” I’d go for that. But that’s very dependent on only needing to do one load per day.

[lambdaone]

But it's not you, it's everyone. And some people will be swayed even by that 10 to 20 cents. Put them all together, and you have a substantial "virtual battery" capacity, and all you need to do it is to make sure people have price awareness.

Don't knock small gains like this. Even a couple of percentage difference is worth having; all the marginal gains add up to make large scale gains.

[jopsen]

Yeah, but your dishwasher or washing machine isn't the big electricity eater.

Your car is. And honestly, you'd rather charge the car at night so that you don't blow a fuse when you're running the dishwasher, microwave, dryer, oven, induction stove and charging your car :)

I have never blown a fuse being getting an EV, and so far still only once.

But charging at night is preferable for that reason, and I couldn't care so long as it's ready by 7am.

Load shifting EVs is easy, and this moves a lot of load. It was never about moving all load.

[jijijijij]

It would be preferable to charge the car in solar panel shaded parking lots at work during the day. You have to charge it at home, because charging EVs has only recently entered architectural and city planning. For the most part, EVs are the battery to buffer peak sun energy.

[ViewTrick1002]

But you will charge your car when it’s cheaper. And add a cheap home battery to remove expensive peak usage.

[matthewdgreen]

A typical dishwasher load requires 1-3kWh, so you'll just use your home battery and do it whenever you want.

[DoctorOetker]

a lot of that energy could have been recuperated with a heat exchanger when the water is refreshed, also in laundry machines.

[matthewdgreen]

That's more or less what heat pump clothes dryers do. They draw in air, heat it, and then blow the humid air back over the cold side of the heat pump loop to condense it. They save tons of energy. I don't think there's anything similar for water (in clothes or dish washers) but the quantities might just be too small to bother with.

[DoctorOetker]

a counter current heat exchanger might be more reliable than a refrigerant heat pump and more efficient than peltier heat pumps, but yes in theory you can quasistatically move the water out for almost no energy (only the adsorption / mixing energies). And peltiers can be much more efficient at tiny temperature gradients, so a theoretical frictionless positive displacement pump, and a heat pipe between the condensing compartment and the evaporatig compartment (so keeping the 2 compartments at ambient temperature (so no heat losses).

Compressing humid air releases heat which marginally increases the temperature of the condensing compartment, and marginally cools the evaporating compartment with the wet clothes; thus the heat pipe will quickly equilibrate the 2 compartments.

[salynchnew]

It's a great idea, but I feel like that way ends up with the nightmare scenario of each of us managing an AWS-style admin console for washing the dishes, etc.

That way lies madness, although I suppose there might be one or two family members I would want to lock out of the dishwasher.

[terj74]

This is already happening with market pricing of electricity energy demands that can be shifted. Our car charges, and our dishwasher/clothes washer run when pricing is low. The price differential is not big enough yet between high and low demand times for us to invest in a battery to soak up cheap power. If battery prices continue to go down, or if the price differential goes up that equation will change. The other main expensive energy user is HVAC and we don't have a way of moving that demand to a different time of day other than a batterv. :(

[evan_a_a]

In engineering the simple solution is often the best solution. Creating a demand-side network of devices is not that.

Plus, such a system would provide even more ways for nefarious actors to sabotage the grid, by influencing the demand side. For example, setting every appliance to run its load at the same time. The grid would be fucked.

[pcchristie]

I don't disagree with your broad comment but it's not hard to fix by slightly dispersing the control/responsibility.

1. Electricity moves for 5/10 min clearing intervals with defined caps at either end (currently in Western Australia it's simply 2 intervals, peak & off-peak). 2. Expose the pricing/market data via API 3. Develop existing home automation frameworks/tools/device IOTs/routers to access that. 4. End user grants permission/configures it on their smart phone when they set their dishwasher and washing machine on set up ("would you like to enable this smart-go button by connecting to Wi-Fi? It could save you $150 per year").

No control ceded to third parties to turn on equipment whenever they want, just allows the end user to cue jobs for when the PowerCo anticipates lowest prices.

PowerCo not any more of a honeypot for attack, at least not more than they are now with control over critical generation/tx/dx infra.

[tsimionescu]

If the devices are accessing a 3rd party API over the Internet to get this info, that control is still ceded, and attackers can still exploit vulnerabilities in all of these devices to attack large swaths of the network at once.

[IshKebab]

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar.

The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero.

I don't know what the answer to that is. In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Space based solar is a scam. Maybe we just have to live with it until fusion works (if it ever does).

(But it's still academic at the moment because we're still far from the point where building more renewables is a bad idea.)

[MakersF]

It's unfair you're being down voted, you're right. I used to think that we could get by with just solar wind and batteries, but then after collaborating with people on an ideal energy mix the numbers were obvious: there is a (small) fraction that cannot be covered. Not with storage (the discharge cycles are so few that the cost is prohibitive. How can a battery pay for itself with 10-20 discharges a year? And this applies to any kind of battery that needs to be built, including hydro). Likely there will need to be some baseload nuclear (which then increases average prices, since to make it economical you need to buy all the electricity it produces, and so it partially displaces renewables). The alternative is overbuilding solar+wind+battery something like 5/8 times the average need. Maybe if the prices drop enough that could be feasible.. The big win would be if there is some way to get predictable power at a lower cost than nuclear (e.g. tidal), which could be used to smooth the troughts, or alternatively a low capex but potentially high opex solution which is turned on only when needed (gas is an option, but not co2 free. And sizing the power needed is not super cheap, although now it's not a problem since we have enough gas capacity which is going to be displaced, so it won't be needed to be built)

[blackjack_]

Yeah but we are nowhere near the end of the scaling curve. For now, we can use the natgas plants during the unexpected outages while solving for green hydrogen / whatever backup plants. Like when a household has one EV and one gas car, they can always just take the gas car when they have range anxiety and don't know about chargers. NBD.

[jopsen]

Falling back on gas 10-20 times per year sounds very reasonable.

It's not net zero, but nearly zero will probably do fine?

Politicians like to say net zero, but when we are 90% there will we maybe not stop caring and find other more pressing problems?

[tsimionescu]

Net zero is barely enough to help with climate goals, given how late we are. It's not a huge goal, it is the absolute bare minimum to avoid >2 degrees of warming.

[lambdaone]

Achievable near-future net-nearly-zero in the near future is a lot better than waiting longer until we can achieve full net zero. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The real issue is the cost of keeping gas peaker stations around that are mostly idle and fire up only a few days a year, but that's an economic issue, not an engineering one.

In the longer term, you could even run them off net-zero renewable syngas that you make the rest of the year using low-cost electrical power at peak solar generation times; you only need to store a relatively small amount of it, and old fossil fuel reservoirs are ideal for this.

[jopsen]

Also once we're nearly-net zero, we should focus on airlines, shipping, industry, etc. not the last 5% of electricity.

[pfdietz]

> Likely there will need to be some baseload nuclear

Baseload nuclear is entirely feckless as a backup for a renewable grid. You either go with a long term storage technology (and then don't need nuclear), or you go to an entirely nuclear grid. Wind/solar and nuclear don't mix well.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Forget tidal, it’s dead in the water.

Everyone who’s tried it suddenly realises that anything you put in the ocean is almost immediately covered in marine growth, or destroyed by the ocean itself.

And that wave / tidal energy is very diffuse, or that where it isn’t diffuse it’s also extremely destructive.

[kieranmaine]

Regarding long term storage keep an eye on the UK's Cap and Floor scheme which offers guaranteed revenues to long term storage technologies [1].

Page 7 of https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/LDES%20... lists the technology types of the project applications. The majority are Li-Ion BESS, but there are also other battery chemistries and Liquid/Compress Air Storage

1. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/super-battery-project...

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> offers guaranteed revenues

Government picking winners?

When did that ever work out well?

[kieranmaine]

I think in this case it's because LDES can't compete in the UK energy market, but it's a capability that needs to be developed, so this scheme address that by providing a guaranteed revenue.

The floor is a minimum revenue guarantee, to protect investors at times when the wholesale price is low and the cap is a maximum revenue limit to protect consumers when the wholesasle price is high.

It seems like these limits haven't been set yet, so I don't know what the potential impacts on energy prices will be.

[lambdaone]

Airbus.

[micwag]

> In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Hydro doesn’t really care about a calm cloudy winter week and is the reason my state was 100% renewable last year. So it’s definitely not a problem for ALL renewables.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Effectively all renewables.

When was the last time a new dam and hydro electric power plant was built in your country?

Either all of the favourable geography has already been dammed, or good luck getting environmental approval.

[lambdaone]

Alas, this is absolutely right. It's trivial to find places to put hydropower using global elevation data and GIS tools, but almost all of the good ones are already either being exploited, or in the process of being readied for use, or facing barriers such as the side-effect of destroying cities or heritage sites.

[kilroy123]

Just over build the solar. Build out solar so demand in winter is met.

Use the excess power in summer for some kind of industrial use.

[pfdietz]

This can lead to a solution, but at high latitude it becomes infeasibly expensive. Insolation varies too much from summer to winter. Low round trip efficiency long term storage becomes much cheaper than doing (just) this.

[kilroy123]

This assumes prices for the solar panels and batteries continue to fall as this build-out happens. I don't think it should or could happen in a single year, but slowly over the next 5-10 years.

[lambdaone]

Syngas (infinitely better than hydrogen, which was always a stupid idea), or huge-scale Carnot batteries (the square-cube law is your friend) would do the trick nicely in both cases.

[pfdietz]

Syngas has the problem of where do you get the carbon. With hydrogen, the exhaust (water) just gets released to the atmosphere. Syngas would require capturing and storing the CO2 of combustion for reuse in making more syngas, which adds to the cost.

But yes, resistively heated ultra low capex thermal storage ("hot dirt") is very attractive.

[IshKebab]

You would have to overbuild by a factor of 20 at least. Not at all practical or economical.

[aitchnyu]

Citation? We get 25 units in the sun and 5 in heavy rains.

[IshKebab]

I'm in the UK. I covered my whole roof with 6.5kW of panels (it's pretty ideal south facing etc.)

I just checked our stats. Average consumption 16kWh/day. Sunny summer day we get 30-40kWh. Sunny winter day 10-20kWh. Cloudy winter day it's 0.5-2kWh.

Also that's without a heat pump... Which you mainly use in the winter.

And without an electric car but I doubt they're as big of an issue because you can charge them from cheap overnight power anyway.

[ViewTrick1002]

Keep some of the existing natural gas plants around as an emergency reserve. Run them on hydrogen or hydrogen derivatives for zero carbon fuel, if the emissions are large enough to matter.

[PunchyHamster]

that costs a lot of money

[ViewTrick1002]

Not really. That is how the grid works today. Especially open cycle turbines, which are essentially stationary aircraft engines.

Lowest possible fixed costs, high operating costs.

[pfdietz]

This just shows batteries shouldn't be the only storage technology, at least at high latitude. There needs to be a complementary long term storage technology with low capacity capex, even if its round trip efficiency is bad. Examples: green hydrogen, ultra low capex thermal storage.

To see the effect of including such, go to https://model.energy

Using a long term storage technology (in addition to wind/solar/batteries) can cut the cost in half at high latitudes.

[neilwilson]

The most sensible solution is synthesised natural gas. Then we can use the existing LNG storage and plant.

It’s a lot easier to store and transport than hydrogen and the capital items already exist.

Curtailment fees should be replaced with purchases of green LNG.

[ViewTrick1002]

The problem with that is how dispersed carbon atoms are in the atmosphere.

Another option is ammonia, which is quite nasty to deal with.

[PunchyHamster]

We can start with non-dispersed carbon atoms coming off industrial processes. Green hydrogen and CO2 into methane

[pfdietz]

This is just one-time repackaging of the CO2 from fossil fuel combustion. It's not an answer.

[pfdietz]

It's more expensive than hydrogen because you need to capture and store the CO2 of combustion. Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere as part of the cycle would be even more prohibitively expensive.

[KaiserPro]

> In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days

True, but then for the UK solar power isn't the right thing for winter, hence why we need a massive mix of other stuff.

Also we have the advantage that france isn't that far away.

In the UK battery is about grid stabilisation, as in making sure that it hums at 50hz rather than 49.

[kieranmaine]

Battery revenues are shifting away from stabilisation now from https://cn-cob.com/info-detail/2026-uk-energy-storage-market...:

> the focus of energy storage has shifted from frequency services to energy arbitrage. Due to market saturation, the share of frequency services in the revenue stack has significantly declined, from 80% in 2022 to just 20% in 2024. Looking ahead to 2030, we expect energy arbitrage to dominate the revenue stack, with most revenue coming from participation in the balancing mechanism.

[KaiserPro]

Indeed, in the same way that solar has now peaked in spain/portugal in its current config. They are moving to solar+battery to absorb solar mid day and replay that in the morning/evening. (that doesn't really apply in the UK because of the rain)

As more renewables come on stream and the grid gets more complex, batteries are going to plug holes.

Energy Arbitrage is usually a good thing, so long as its regulated to for the customer, not the battery people. the point is that battery capacity is being deployed to even out the 5-9pm peak, which means that we are much much less dependent on gas turbine generators (which means less price pressure linked to LNG prices, if you're not into the co2 aspect)

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> (which means less price pressure linked to LNG prices, if you're not into the co2 aspect)

No it doesn’t.

The arbitration is only possible because the battery storage providers can ever so slightly undercut the gas peakers.

The price pressure is still linked to the LNG price.

[KaiserPro]

> The arbitration is only possible because the battery storage providers can ever so slightly undercut the gas peakers.

I think you underestimate the cost of running a grid battery, you need to be able to undercut significantly to make profit.

Its not like you can practically keep the battery at 98% for 7 days waiting for the right time to discharge, its not that simple.

The aim is to make as much money, but the markets you can join are regulated (in the UK)

You can be a grid stabilisation service (paid to be at % percent battery and turn on/off in milliseconds to keep the frequency from going too high or low)

You can be intra day, or day ahead. but you're not likley to be dayahead because you're rated at x Mw for n hours. The stuff that I know about in iberia is ~100-300Mw for 3 hours. Again spain is a special case because the market is peer to peer through PPA.

I digress.

The point is sure last year there wasn't really enough battery to affect peak price(in the UK), but now there is 19 gwhr. assuming its all rated for 3 hours, that around 18 % of total generating capacity for 5-8pm.

Now as there is a mix of cfd and other financial things that actually affect price, it doesn't quite work like that in the UK.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Your answer to renewables being intermittent is: France!.

Good, we agree the solution is: Nuclear!.

[KaiserPro]

well yeah, I wanted tony blair to have allowed EDF to build those 10 nukes at 2004 prices.

[tremon]

Space based solar is a scam

It's not a scam, it's a weapon. The same proliferation arguments that have been used against nuclear also apply to space-based solar.

[hexbin010]

Try 2 weeks of seemingly endless cloud up this way lol. This winter has been seriously depressing so far

[lambdaone]

Remarkably, even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in. And it doesn't stop the wind from blowing. The threat is when the wind stops blowing at the same time it's very, very cloudy and in the middle of winter (short days). This happens, but it's very intermittent.

However, as seen above, there are lots and lots of ways to store (or equivalent) power over long periods, it's just the economic incentive to build them that is needed - and is now on the way. Renewable-gas low-duty-cycle gas peakers, Carnot batteries, and sodium-ion batteries are top candidates, with the first being the low-hanging fruit because they already exist.

[hexbin010]

> Remarkably, even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in

Lol give over. Who told you that - solar panel companies? Companies selling holidays to the UK?

You ever been to England?

[IshKebab]

> even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in

It really doesn't. Clouds absolutely kill solar. In the winter we get 10-20kWh/day on sunny days and 0.5-2kWh/day on cloudy days.

I dunno where you got that info but it's dead wrong.

[mekdoonggi]

I looked into sodium-ion batteries for which factories are coming online in China. The theoretical manufacturing cost of those is very very low, which will make solar + batteries very cheap. I suspect China will reach those costs ahead of schedule.

[danny_codes]

IMO this is a classic case of underestimating how far manufacturing improvements can get you on the cost scale. You see a promising technology in the lab and it’s hard to imagine a 1 million x reduction in price, yet we see that time and time again as tech gets scaled out.

What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself

[crote]

Easy: the GOP doesn't care about future competitiveness.

They are currently getting lobbied by oil executives, who are trying to maximize short-term profit while they still can. The wider industry doesn't have the long-term vision to preemptively outlobby them, so the GOP is doing what oil wants.

Dealing with competition in a post-oil world is a problem left for the next generation: the current GOP will be long-dead by then and will have enjoyed the fruits of accepting decades of oil bribes.

[mlrtime]

Not true, energy is cheap in the US. Politicians rise and fall with energy prices, fossils fuels are still cheaper. America (outside of California which is not governed by the GOP) has some of the cheapest energy costs of competitive countries.

[tremon]

And the Grand Old Pedophile party will ensure that fossil fuels remain the cheapest by killing all alternatives before they reach scale.

[toyg]

> ow the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper

By forcing oil prices to get 10x cheaper, at the barrel of a gun. See: Venezuela and Iran. Will it work? I would not bet on it.

[matthewdgreen]

Seems unlikely that we'll be selling oil for $5, unless fossil fuels are completely replaced and it becomes a side-of-the-road novelty.

[ljlolel]

Then it loses economies of scale and capital wasted so price won’t go down

[matthewdgreen]

At that point, who really cares? As scale goes down and economies of scale go away, it just becomes an irrelevant novelty. But the actual question is: how much will industrial applications matter.

[mlrtime]

>What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself

I almost paid < $1USD/gal gas a couple months ago ($1.20 89 octane). My electric is ~ $.12USD/kwh. Gas is just as inexpensive.

Where in the EU can I get energy for 10x cheaper?

[monero-xmr]

I mean where are all the factories making batteries in Europe? It’s not like the US is purposefully preventing battery tech. It’s why all of the government-funded solar companies imploded as well. The manufacturers do not compete

[troyvit]

They're in Europe and they produce a lot of batteries. The caveat is that 80% of the investment money came from LG, a South Korean company.

https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/europe-has-solid-basis-batt...

[monero-xmr]

There’s the former darling Northvolt. Took a lot of state money and then imploded https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/12/ev-battery-...

[slavik81]

The comments on Reddit from folks who claim to have worked for Northvolt are pretty wild. I would take them with a grain of salt, but they're interesting to read. https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1fl8d4y/c...

[xorcist]

Some people like to say they did, but when you look at the money it was almost all private capital, from big banks and large infrastructure and private pension funds.

That does not make the investment any better. Private capital can be misallocated too.

[mlrtime]

US has Gigafactory Texas and Lithium Refinery now too.

[bryanlarsen]

Those are two thresholds: cheaper than peakers using piped gas from Russia, and cheaper than peakers using LNG shipped via tanker ship. I imagine the latter threshold has already been met, only depending on the amortization period you choose for the battery purchase.

[epolanski]

A huge part of this calculus though is that the gas we buy since Russia disappeared as a provider is insanely high.

Our economics may not match Canadian or US ones.

[Gibbon1]

For an example one can look at California. Batteries deleted the duck curve.