[ricardobeat]

In numbers (cell production capacity, 2025):

    [1] USA         70 GWh
    [2] China     1755 GWh
    [3] Europe     252 GWh

That's excluding small battery production for electronics etc.

[1] https://reasonstobecheerful.world/us-grid-battery-storage/

[2] https://english.news18a.com/news/english_224842.html

[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-swelling-wav...

[paulmist]

According to IEA[1] most capacity in Europe is from South Korean companies.

[1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/share-of-manu...

[JumpCrisscross]

Still physically in Europe. That’s mostly what counts.

[throwaway85825]

Not exactly. Most of the people who work on site at semi conductor fabs actually work in the office building next door. Batteries are similar.

[JumpCrisscross]

That doesn’t change that the fab is physically in Europe. Not Korea. That’s what matters. Not whose name is on the paperwork.

[usrnm]

Not really? The questin is, if South Korea stops all cooperation with the EU tomorrow, will that fab continue to be operational? If the answer is "no", then it matters. It matters a lot

[twoodfin]

This is fan fiction. The reason it matters is as a proof point that the farrago of EU regulation, labor markets, supply chains, trade policy, … is adequate to support battery production at scale.

[toomuchtodo]

You walk in, as the EU, and assume control of the facility, by force if needed. The value is that the capacity exists within the bounds of your nation state control.

China knows this, developed countries that lost their manufacturing capacity are relearning this.

[mmooss]

> if South Korea stops all cooperation with the EU tomorrow

That doesn't happen between democracies and hasn't for generations, except for one democracy recently. I don't know that it happens between any significant economies, outside of wars (when and where has it happened?), except one recently. Trade is reliable, despite the nationalist attempt to use FUD. That's how countries get access to the best products and sell their best products.

[embedding-shape]

If it does go both ways (say "EU stops all cooperation") and the effects are the same, and no one wants the factory to actually shut down, does something start to matter more/less then?

[bauldursdev]

Unless by next door you mean a different continent I think they'd still be in Europe. Although there are edge cases, such as if the fab is turkey but the office managing it is in a neighboring central Asian country.

[fakedang]

Doesn't matter if it's humans or robots, as long as they're producing batteries within reasonably stringent environmental constraints.

That being said, extremely disappointing that the world's most populous country can't be arsed to maximize battery output. They don't seem to be anywhere in the rankings.

[dyauspitr]

I disagree. If the majority of workers aren’t European and the supply chain comes directly from Asia then the local ecosystem is not developed and if the Asian company pulls out there is no way to keep doing it locally.

[jweir]

According to projections this year will hit 300 GWh in the US

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufactur...

[embedding-shape]

That article claims:

> As for the underlying cells, it’s a similar story with a slight delay. By the end of 2025, 20 gigawatt-hours of dedicated storage cell lines had opened, and the industry is on pace to hit 96 gigawatt-hours by the end of this year.

Not sure where you're getting 300 GWh from?

[epistasis]

Production and production capacity are getting swapped a lot in this thread. The top level numbers above, US 70 GWh, are straight production.

Your 300GWh is likely production capacity but the number doesn't come from your article (which is excellent).

[lysace]

Not according to this article.

[leonidasrup]

How much battery storage would you need to cover 12h electric energy consumption on average for each of this regions?

Let's look at electricity yearly production (2025 data)

USA 4519790 GWh

China 10583360 GWh

Europe 4626240 GWh

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...

Average 12h consumption:

USA 6187 GWh

China 14487 GWh

Europe 6332 GWh

How many years of cell production capacity would be needed to cover 12h electric energy consumption on average for each of this regions?

USA 88 years

China 8 years

Europe 25 years

Currently electricity is only about 19.8% of primary energy consumption.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-as-a-share-of...

[triceratops]

You mean we've barely begun building battery plants and China can already build more than enough batteries for themselves in less than a decade? Holy crap that's amazing news!

[leonidasrup]

As you are predicting increase in the production capacity of future battery plants, I'm predicting increase in the future electric energy consumption - especially China. It will interesting to see how the fraction battery production to electric consumption, will evolve in the future.

[triceratops]

No doubt. At least until now battery production capacity has by far outstripped growth in electricity consumption.

[myrmidon]

Those numbers sound worse than they are.

Storage production capacity is still rising much faster than energy consumption in all those nations, and the situation is probably quite similar with other pieces of infrastructure that last for decades; replacing all big electric transformers would similarly need many years of production.

Primary energy considerations are also somewhat iffy if the first step involved is often a ~40% efficient conversion into a form similarly "valuable" to electricity (like gasoline => motion).

[leonidasrup]

The numbers are as they are now.

For future energy consumption I would look to India, which is on the same energy growth path as China 20 years ago. And there are many countries with low per capita energy consumption but high potential. Like Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt,..

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/indonesia

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/malaysia

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/egypt

I agree that efficiency of electric motor + battery is much higher that ICE. ICE cars are now slowly replaced with EV cars. About 42% of oil is refined to gasoline, but much of oil is refined to diesel, jet fuel and used in transportation which is harder to convert to EV, like long-haul trucking, or much harder to convert to EV, like international shipping, air transport.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

" efficiencies of up to 43% for passenger car engines, up to 45% for large truck and bus engines, and up to 55% for large two-stroke marine engines"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine#Efficiency

"By generating power from multiple streams of work, the overall efficiency can be increased by about 50–60%. That is, from an overall efficiency of say 43% for a simple cycle with the turbine alone running, to as much as 64% net with the full combined cycle running"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined-cycle_power_plant

[crote]

Electricity consumption isn't linear (people use far less when they are sleeping), and production isn't zero at night (wind and hydro exist). Covering 12 hours is almost certainly overkill.

[embedding-shape]

> Covering 12 hours is almost certainly overkill

"640k ought to be enough for anybody" :) I'm sure with more electricity available, prices would drop, meaning people will use more electricity and so on. Just like desktop applications and available system RAM, I guess some things just consume what becomes available.

[cogman10]

Maybe a business, certainly not the average person. And whether or not they use it will be determined by price more than anything. If the added batteries and renewables don't translate to appreciable decreases in energy prices then I don't see people using more electricity just because it's available.

The other thing that prevents an individual from using more is that electricity usage creates heat.

[crote]

Of course. It just means the estimation of "years of battery production" (and its implicit "we can't possibly produce that much so the transition is doomed to fail") isn't as big of a deal as it might seem at first glance.

[causal]

Okay then makes me wonder if this recent trend is just one particularly large manufacturer ramping up production? Tesla?

[toomuchtodo]

Ford in partnership with LG is one example. Stationary storage replacing EV demand that did not materialize. Gigafactories intended for EV batteries are now for stationary storage.

U.S. battery industry cuts losses, shifts to new ventures amid EV bust - https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0303 - March 3rd, 2026

[vinajuliette]

The US is the bronze medalist meme

[DaSHacka]

I mean, I'd be more than happy to be in the top three. The issue is before we were even lower.

[om8]

Cool way to think about GWh/year:

  1 GWh/year = (10 ** 9) / 24 / 365.25 / (10 ** 6) MW = 0.11 MW

  70 GWh/year = 8 MW
  1755 GWh/year = 200 MW
  252 GWh/year = 29 MW

[amalcon]

Haha. Reminds me of how volt-amperes are technically the same unit as watts, but if you see VA in an electrical specification you know it means a different thing than it would if you saw W.

[om8]

> volt-amperes are technically the same unit as watts

volt-amperes are joules

[gnabgib]

Volt-amperes are watts... watts/second are joules

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt

[lefra]

You got it backwards, Watts are Joules/second (or joules are Watt•second).

[om8]

Oh, yes, you are right about watts. My bad

[Skunkleton]

Watts * seconds are joules. Joules is a unit of energy. Watts are power.

[epistasis]

But not a very relevant for batteries, unless talking about discharge only once a year.

Grid batteries are discharged on average 80% per day, if not more. EV batteries... well, probably about 5%-10% per day at most.

[bogwog]

Source?