Comment on why is fossil fuel still used?
blarghly@lemmy.world 3 days agoI wouldn’t attach myself to any particular battery tech - the field is innovating too rapidly.
Solar and nuclear can go hand in hand. Solar is great because the amout of potential harvestable power is massive - the trick is producing panels, connecting them to the grid, transmission, load balancing, and storage.
Wind is nice right now, as it is a relatively untapped resource. But we’ll run out of windy places far faster than sunny places.
Hydro is ecologically destructive, but has an even bigger problem, which is that we have already picked a lot of the low hanging fruit. Good locations for dams are difficult to find, and we’ve already found most of them and dammed many of them. We would rapidly face diminishing returns. Plus, silt is always a looming problem.
Though, the real solution is to simply tax carbon.
bastion@feddit.nl 3 days ago
Agreed all around, with one caveat.
On chemistry - Sodium Ion is a pretty solid bet for many reasons - material availability, energy density by weight, longevity (for some chemistries - others are only comparable to lithium), low-temperature operation for charge and discharge, cost, power (charge and discharge speed)… Also, it’s ecologically sound, in comparison with any other battery tech out there currently, and it’s at the beginning of it’s innovation arc. Also, it’s a tech heavily invested in by China, which has already spurred competition in other countries.
I’ll be attaching myself to that chemistry here in the next couple years to the tune of what I expect to be about ~$8k for about 50kwh of battery, as I’ll need a bank of them for my place soon that can handle quite a few days without sunlight while running a modest workshop and basic home needs. I might need to go larger than that, but… …energy storage isn’t cheap, and I can add to at at any time, unlike with lead acid storage.