In my self-designated role critiquing various schemes for total transformation of the world energy system, I get to review large amounts of poor, shoddy, and incompetent work. When people get into advocating for this “energy transition,” the stars regularly align to bring forth the most extreme levels of ineptitude. Start with the fact that the “smartest” people are filled with arrogance and hubris, but are not actually very smart. Add that many innumerate Politics and English majors have flooded into a field that cries out for engineering calculations. Add too that groupthink and orthodoxy enforcement prevent anyone from pointing out obvious flaws. And then throw in a strong dose of religious zealotry that obstructs the intrusion of anything resembling critical thinking. All in all, it’s a prescription for catastrophe.
But in a field rife with bad, worse, still worse, and even dangerously incompetent work, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything as shockingly inept as the Report just out from the International Energy Agency with the title “Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions.” The Report has a date only specified to the month of “April 2024,” but the press release came out just two days ago on April 25.
If I had been given the assignment by the North Koreans to write the Report to somehow induce the West to self-destruct, I don’t know how I would have done it differently.
Are you familiar with the International Energy Agency? It is not part of the UN, but rather a separate consortium currently of some 40+ countries, mostly Western and mostly rich, founded in the wake of the oil shocks of the 1970s with a then-goal of promoting energy security. It is based, of course, in Paris. The current (and since 2015) head is a guy named Fatih Barol. Here is a picture of Barol from Wikipedia:
Somewhere along the line the IEA completely lost track of the energy security mission, and turned into an unabashed advocate for the green energy transition. That’s where they are today.
I don’t know how many people work at the IEA, but it seems like most to all of them got in on writing this Report. On page 5 there is a list of some 35 “directors,” “lead authors,” and “principal authors” from among IEA employees, plus another 4 who provided “support,” and then, on pages 6 to 8, some 89 people said to be “high-level government representatives and international experts from outside of the IEA” who somehow “contributed to the process.” From the content of the Report, one has to wonder if any of these people ever completed the study of arithmetic at the sixth-grade level, let alone if any have read any of the important work in this area.
The thesis of the Report is that batteries, and particularly lithium ion batteries, are the key to the impending energy transition, and need to be scaled up massively and immediately with whatever amount of government subsidies and handouts that it takes. Here are a few quotes from the press release:
After their deployment in the power sector more than doubled last year, batteries need to lead a sixfold increase in global energy storage to enable the world to meet 2030 targets. . . . In the first comprehensive analysis of the entire battery ecosystem, the IEA’s Special Report on Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions sets out the role that batteries can play alongside renewables as a competitive, secure and sustainable alternative to electricity generation from fossil fuels. . . . IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol [said,] “Batteries will provide the foundations in both areas, playing an invaluable role in scaling up renewables and electrifying transport while delivering secure and sustainable energy for businesses and households.
I suppose it would be too much for me to expect these grandees to have read my energy storage report, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation in December 2022. But if you are claiming that you have at hand a “competitive, secure and sustainable alternative to electricity generation from fossil fuels,” as these guys are, there is a series of very obvious question that must be addressed. Those include:
- Quantitatively, how much energy storage, in watt-hours (or gigawatt-hours) will be necessary to provide full back-up to a national electricity grid once all fossil fuel back-up has been banished and the storage is all that is available when the instantaneous generators are not supplying the full demand?
- How much will that amount of storage cost?
- What is the maximum length of time that energy must be held in storage before it is called upon, and is the proposed storage technology capable of the task of storing energy for that period of time?
There are other comparably important questions, but at least those are absolutely essential.
The IEA Report addresses none of them.
What we get instead is endless happy talk about the wonders of lithium ion battery technology, how the costs are falling rapidly, how deployments are soaring, and how utopia (i.e., meeting UN COP 28 emissions reduction targets) is right around the corner if only we accelerate the process with massive government “support.” The full Report is some 159 pages (with appendices and references), so I can only give you a small sample. But here are a few choice quotes from the Executive Summary:
- From page 11: “Batteries are an essential part of the global energy system today and the fastest growing energy technology on the market. Battery storage in the power sector was the fastest growing energy technology in 2023 that was commercially available, with deployment more than doubling year-on-year.”
- Also from page 11: “Lithium-ion batteries dominate battery use due to recent cost reductions and performance improvements. Lithium-ion batteries have outclassed alternatives over the last decade, thanks to 90% cost reductions since 2010, higher energy densities and longer lifetimes.”
- From page 12: “Policy support has given a boost for batteries deployment in many markets but the supply chain for batteries is very concentrated. Strong government support for the rollout of EVs and incentives for battery storage are expanding markets for batteries around the world.” [For the obtuse among the readership, “policy support” is code for vast subsidies and handouts.]
- More from page 12: “Batteries are key to the transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate the pace of energy efficiency through electrification and greater use of renewables in power.”
- Still on page 12: “To triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 while maintaining electricity security, energy storage needs to increase six-times. To facilitate the rapid uptake of new solar PV and wind, global energy storage capacity increases to 1 500 GW by 2030 in the NZE Scenario, which meets the Paris Agreement target of limiting global average temperature increases to 1.5°C or less in 2100. Battery storage delivers 90% of that growth, rising 14-fold to 1200 GW by 2030.”
Check out that last bullet point. Yes, they are so dumb that they discuss energy storage capacity in GW rather than GWh. How did they come up with the line that to reach their goals “energy storage needs to increase six-times” when they don’t even know the right units to do the calculations? You won’t find an answer in this Report. In my own energy storage report, I calculated that to reach a zero-emissions electricity sector that could get through a year without fossil fuel back-up would require increasing energy storage by something around 10,000 times. I used the correct units and showed how my calculations were done.
And how about the question of the length of time that energy must remain in storage to back-up a wind/solar powered grid, and whether the proposed technology is up to the task? In my own report, which only considered scenarios of getting through a single year, I showed that much of the stored energy would need to be held for 6 – 12 months before use. In a further blog post on September 28, 2023, I covered a new report then out from the UK’s Royal Society (described by me as “semi-competent”), which used 37 years of data. Based on the 37 years of data, that report concluded that hundreds of hours worth of grid peak usage would need to be held in storage for multiple decades in order to get through worst-case sun and wind droughts. I had this quote from the Executive Summary of the Royal Society report:
Wind supply can vary over time scales of decades and tens of TWhs of very long-duration storage will be needed. The scale is over 1000 times that currently provided by pumped hydro in the UK, and far more than could conceivably be provided by conventional batteries.
(Emphasis mine.). I’m ready to forgive these IEA guys for not being familiar with my own report, but not for complete ignorance of the Royal Society’s effort.
The entire discussion that I can find in the IEA Report on the problem of need for massive amounts of very long duration storage consists of a chart and one paragraph of text on page 47. Here is the chart:
And the text:
Iron air and other battery technologies that potentially could enable the storage of electricity over longer durations measured in weeks, are still in their infancy. Currently it is not clear whether those technologies can be developed so as to provide what is required in a cost-efficient way. For even longer duration storage, such as seasonal storage, battery technologies are not fit for purpose, and other mechanical, e.g. pumped storage hydro, and chemical, e.g. hydrogen storage, technologies need to be deployed.
So 90 plus percent of the storage needed to back up the intermittently-supplied grid needs to be stored for months and years, but the only battery technologies that can even last for “weeks” are things that are “in their infancy” and where it is “not clear” that they can be provided in a “cost-efficient way.”
Overall, a shockingly inept and embarrassing piece of work from the IEA. Undoubtedly our government will react by piling forth a few more hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize batteries to do a job for which they are completely “unsuitable.”
The obvious take away from the IEA paper is they do not understand the subject they are writing about.
One of the un explained not spoken about issues with energy storage, is where does the energy come from ,that will be needed when the storage has been consumed? What will be available to recharge that storage back up?
It is not something that can be simply ignored. Clearly if the collection of energy systems in use all focused on fossil free production mostly using wind and solar are incapable of meeting demand thus back up is essential, then the total capacity of such ‘renewables’ has to be capable of meeting full demand plus full storage charging requirements.
I suspect the numerate members of the IEA wherever they may be hiding, know, the scale of that mostly unused but essential over capacity, makes the whole green energy Net Zero policy a pipe dream.
I love the timescale too. 2028 and 2030 are regularly put forward as target dates to achieve the impossible. The good news being, that is just four/six years hence, so we don’t have long to wait to watch it all collapse into reality.
“One of the un explained not spoken about issues with energy storage, is where does the energy come from ,that will be needed when the storage has been consumed?”
That’s actually fairly straightforward, if you look at the patterns of energy production, at least for the UK, wind and solar tend to be seasonal, so recharge (with wind) from October to April, use solar to minimize the discharge across the summer, and you can build a system that would supply an amount of power consistently.
The big problem, if you do the maths, is that to consistently supply about 9 GW, which is roughly the UK’s average “renewable” output, and is about 1/4 of UK energy demand, requires 7,000 GWh of battery storage, costing perhaps two trillion US dollars, which, to put that number into some kind of context, is:
roughly the country’s entire annual GDP;approximately three times the planet’s entire battery production in a year;about 2,000 times the size of the largest battery storage facility under construction, on earth;35,000 times the size of the largest battery storage facility currently in use in the UK;and that’s just for 1/4 of the amount of power required today.
Clearly, this is unachievable at the most fundamental level, and yet somehow, the party that’s almost certain to be in government by the end of the year, thinks this is going to happen by 2030.
Madness, and UK energy policy, at the same time.
Edit:
Link, if anyone wants to do the numbers for themselves: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/data-portal/historic-generation-mix/historic_gb_generation_mix
Eric 9 GW is not 1/4 of UK power demand It is 1/4 of UK’ electric grid power demand Current UK Power including transportation and heat is between 100 and 150 GW. But I am splitting hairs and as you say astronomical costs and total infeasibity
Fair point, but as you say, just to provide 1/4 of current electricity demand already requires battery storage on a scale that’s orders of magnitude greater than anything that’s remotely feasible, and to supply all of our energy needs from renewables would entail a cost that’s tending towards the entire global GDP.
Thanks Eric for explaining is so clearly. It makes one wonder, why couldn’t the IEA do that?
I think we all have our suspicions why?
Getting it right, isn’t in their job description.
Supporting those who pay their salaries is.
The entire global GDP is Shirley a small price to pay to signal your virtue (and ignorance).
It’s not a small price, and please don’t call me Shirley. 🙂
That was directed at another Shirley, not you. It reflects the same problem as does the observation that Murphy did not write ‘Murphy’s Law;’ it was written by another man named Murphy.
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
EXCERPT:
Annual Cost of Megapack Battery Systems; 2023 pricing
Assume a system rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, and an all-in turnkey cost of $104.5 million, per Example 2
Amortize bank loan for 50% of $104.5 million at 6.5%/y for 15 years, $5.484 million/y
Pay Owner return of 50% of $104.5 million at 10%/y for 15 years, $6.765 million/y (10% due to high inflation)
Lifetime (Bank + Owner) payments 15 x (5.484 + 6.765) = $183.7 million
Assume battery daily usage for 15 years at 10%, and loss factor = 1/(0.9 *0.9)
Battery lifetime output = 15 y x 365 d/y x 181.9 MWh x 0.1, usage x 1000 kWh/MWh = 99,590,250 kWh to HV grid; 122,950,926 kWh from HV grid; 233,606,676 kWh loss
(Bank + Owner) payments, $183.7 million / 99,590,250 kWh = 184.5 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (ITC, depreciation in 5 years, deduction of interest on borrowed funds) is 92.3c/kWh
At 10% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 92.3 c/kWh
At 40% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 23.1 c/kWh
Excluded costs/kWh: 1) O&M; 2) system aging, 1.5%/y, 3) 20% HV grid-to-HV grid loss, 4) grid extension/reinforcement to connect battery systems, 5) downtime of parts of the system, 6) decommissioning in year 15, i.e., disassembly, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites. Excluded costs would add at least 15 c/kWh
NOTE: The 40% throughput is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% maximum throughput, i.e., not charging above 80% full and not discharging below 20% full, to achieve a 15-y life, with normal aging
NOTE: Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the Owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia. They excessively charged/discharged the system. After a few years, they added Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and added more Megapacks to increase the rating of the expanded system.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
COMMENTS ON CALCULATION:
Regarding any project, the bank and the owner have to be paid.
Therefore, I amortized the bank loan and the owner’s investment
If you divide total payments over 15 years by throughput during 15 years, you get the cost per kWh, as shown.
According to EIA annual reports, almost all battery systems have throughputs less than 10%. I chose 10% for calculations.
A few battery systems have higher throughputs, if used to absorb midday solar and discharge it the during peak hour periods of late-afternoon/early-evening. They may reach up to 40% throughput. I chose 40% for calculations.
Remember, you have to draw about 50 MWh from the HV grid to deliver about 40 MWh to the HV grid, because of A-to-Z system losses. That gets worse with aging.
A lot of people do not like these c/kWh numbers, because they have been repeatedly told by self-serving folks, low-cost battery Nirvana is just around the corner.
Addition
Levelized Cost of Energy Deceptions, by US-EIA, et al.
Most people have no idea wind and solar systems need grid expansion/reinforcement and expensive support systems to even exist on the grid.
With increased annual W/S electricity percent on the grid, increased grid investments are needed, plus greater counteracting plant capacity, MW, especially when it is windy and sunny around noon-time.
Increased counteracting of the variable W/S output, places an increased burden on the grid’s other generators, causing them to operate in an inefficient manner (more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh), which adds more cost/kWh to the offshore wind electricity cost of about 16 c/kWh, after 50% subsidies
The various cost/kWh adders start with annual W/S electricity at about 8% on the grid.
The adders become exponentially greater, with increased annual W/S electricity percent on the grid
The US-EIA, Lazard, Bloomberg, etc., and their phony LCOE “analyses”, are deliberately understating the cost of wind, solar and battery systems
Their LCOE “analyses” of W/S/B systems purposely exclude major LCOE items.
Their deceptions reinforced the popular delusion, W/S are competitive with fossil fuels, which is far from reality.
The excluded LCOE items are shifted to taxpayers, ratepayers, and added to government debts.
W/S would not exist without at least 50% subsidies
W/S output could not be physically fed into the grid, without items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. See list.
1) Subsidies equivalent to about 50% of project lifetime owning and operations cost,
2) Grid extension/reinforcement to connect remote W/S systems to load centers
3) A fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the variable W/S output, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365
4) A fleet of power plants to provide electricity during low-W/S periods, and 100% during high-W/S periods, when rotors are feathered and locked,
5) Output curtailments to prevent overloading the grid, i.e., paying owners for not producing what they could have produced
6) Hazardous waste disposal of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. See image.
Dear wildest,
Unfortunately there is a rather major flaw in your calculations, buried in the line starting “Battery lifetime output.” As I read it, you are assuming charge and discharge once per day of 10% of battery capacity (in the case shown), and presumably of 40% of the battery capacity in the other case that gets to the 23.1 c/kWh cost, which seems kind of close to affordable. The problem is that most of the storage capacity needed to fully back up wind and solar is only needed for seasonal usage, thus only 1 charge/discharge cycle per year instead of 365. Another large amount of storage is only needed for use once per decade or less. Making this correction will multiply your costs per kWh by a factor of somewhere between 100 and 1000. But don’t worry, no known battery can hold charge that long anyway.
Francis,
After you read my article, you will see, almost all existing battery systems have throughputs less than 10%, per EIA reports, which makes their costs 4 x 23.1 = 92.3 c/kWh, for only paying the bank and paying a return to Owner, with certain costs not included.
Higher throughput % would occur by absorbing midday solar peaks and discharging during late afternoon/early evening, which occur every day in California and other sunny states. The more solar systems, the greater the peaks.
We are not even talking about longer-term storage, as during a multi-day w/s lull.
Yes. Even thermal needs backup generation, but its fraction of that for wind. For a thermal station thats older the rated generation is already split into multiple units , so if one goes down/tripped ( say lose 20%) only that fraction needs backup.
For wind a fraction doenst work , instead its multiples of the rated generation. Yes they dont trip so easily and a wind farm has dozens of small generation units ,2-3kW, but the whole farm has the same wind. So other farms elsewhere are required are required to make the difference. Weather systems can cover 100s km and isnt reliable enough which is why they talk of batteries. What they really means is load shedding has to occur alongside the battery drawdown as battery might only give up to half an hour.
Other small grid perturbations of less than 60 sec are handled nicely by grid batteries – but at massive cost to be the standy by reserve [there are instances of them failing to do even this job]
Grid scale batteries can only to their job when load shedding occurs at the same time when load is exceeded by generation. The half or so of full discharge – probably much less as they are still paid to be reserve after drawdown- just keeps the grid stable while everyone else has blackouts
There are plenty of hours and days, when wind and solar are minimal.
What would serve user demand?
The not yet shut down traditional plants?
Increased imports from nearby grids that also have minimal wind and solar?
It is a nightmare, of late recognized by the UK, Germany, Denmark, all of which have the highest household electric rates in Europe.
Calls to go nuclear are cries of desperation, because the aged nuclear infrastructure is gone, except in France
Please do not call them farms. They are power systems
Wind farm just a common term. Apt in the sense they are large numbers spread across the farmland.
I’m in similar climate as Germany and yes winter solar is bad. For reasonable installation you need backup. But math here is simple, you need 75% backup during 4 winter months.
My energy need is 12kWh daily, my solar system 3.4kWh is able to provide around 3kWh/day during winter and around 25kWh during summer.
It is not impossible to increase my system 4 fold from 3.4kW to 13.6kW that would bring my winter average yield to my average consumption.
13.6kW. That is roughly 59m2 of solar panels.
My house roof has around 250m2 total.
Solar panels are down to around 180eur/kW so price of 13,6m2 panels would be somewhere around 2500Eur (plus price of installation material and work).
I live in Houston. 13.6 KWH will keep my house cool in the summer for about 2 hours….
You are doing something wrong. 13.6KWh in AC with COP 4 is making you 54.4kWh of “cold”. That is a lot. This is enough to cool down around 100m2 of decently insulated house during 40C-103F for one day.
Wilpost is appropriately careful to avoid the term storage preferring “Expensive support systems/battery systems” the appropriate terms. Storage implies a reserve of electricity for when the wind isn’t blowing, and the sun isn’t shining. The fact that most “battery systems” operate at <10% tells that the systems are used to stabilize the grid because of the need to compensate for W&S grid poison such as the need for frequency control and frequent up/down/off/on switching.
What the Hell is the matter with most of you readers? Seven upvotes for the only detailed exacting explanation that’s ever been on the internet about the folly of wind and solar storage. The first posting on this topic received 48, how can this posting not get 48? Whatever.
Dont always think about up down votes. Its not a beauty contest, and its quite technical for most.
You stay “non-technical” by calling them farms
We have seen that post multiple times. Hence no need to vote.
Votes are irrelevant here. You can make a factual statement and receive down votes. Some people here are slave to their biases and others filled with hate.
You could no doubt add that this would use more of the elements needed to make batteries than have been mined on the planet for something like a decade or even longer.
The by 2030 deadline has already failed as there does not exist the capacity in the UK to build the windmills, power lines etc needed. The only cable laying ships are already booked out until 2030 on existing projects that barely scratch the surface of what is required. So we can sit back and watch as Sir Kneeler Flip Flop Starmer, Miliband and Co explain how they are failing as each year passes. 2029 will be an election year unless Sushi holds out to the last minute and goes to the polls in January, or the Labour government collapses in chaos before it reaches a 5th year. Oh, to see their faces each time an adult explains to them that what they want is impossible to deliver by 2030 physically. They have already had to row back on borrowing the money to piss away on green nonsense in fear of the markets reactions.
“I love the timescale too. 2028 and 2030 are regularly put forward as target dates to achieve the impossible.”
I’d hazard a guess that by 2028-30 the most senior contributors to this report will have retired on gold-plated pensions, leaving it to others to back-track when reality does bite them on the proverbial.
There are days when I get the impression that these guys think batteries fill themselves up. No need for external charging.
That speculation my have root in reality. Unknown, but quite within the realm of possibilities.
It’s obvious the crowd at the IEA who authored that were only thinking of the energy requirements to charge their cell phones and Teslas.
Whatever batteries they are imagining not only do not exist, but cannot come into existence using all of the known resources of our little planet.
One good thing to come out of that report is that there is some really, really good hallucinogen that they have discovered. Hopefully they will be willing to share that with the billions of people in developing countries whom they are condemning to slow starvation by taking away their fertilizer, agricultural technology and fuel, access to clean water, and pharmaceuticals.
One should never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to stupidity. However, in this case I strongly suspect malice.
With enough ayahuasca you’ll think you’re fully charged. Time to start mass producing it. 🙂
That smarmy face appears to be saying – I deserve more public money for all the propaganda I ensure the IEA publishes on behalf of the greatest hoax ever. Please don’t ever stop worshiping me and the essential work I do. Besides I love it here in Paris …
The world could do with a purge and how.
In the UK according to police enforcement rules we have a new 4 letter F word that must not be used it is F L A G and you are right he does look like a flagging smarmy little git
The batteries at best only last a few years before they have to be scrapped.
If they don’t burst in to flames first.
self-recycling. phase-changing batteries–solid/gel to liquid to gaseous, very quickly.
Poof!
Thermal runaway temperature for classic li-ion is 120-150C.
For LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries it is 250C, for LTO (Lithium Titanate Oxide) batteries it is 290C.
Those two are not bursting in flames.
True, but LiPOs are the ones being pushed.
LFP is cheapest option now and standard for house installations.
In other words, long before you can fully build out all the battery storage that will be needed. Most of your new batteries are going to replace worn out or self immolated batteries, instead of expanding capacity.
LFP battery lasts around 15 years, with 4000-10000 cycles.
LTO batteries lasts up to 30 years, with 20000-30000 cycles.
This is little bit more than few years.
I have LFP batteries for my house for 2.5 years, with 600 cycles and still working without problems.
During that times my solar produced 7000kWh, 600 cycles with 5kWh batteries is 3000kWh through batteries.
How about:
Every car in the world also needs to be electric, all requiring batteries, and the entire rest of the world is also simultaneously needing to get their grid backed up, and there is no way to mine and haul and process the metals and other materials needed for just the batteries, using only electricity, and places like the US are working hard to prevent a single new mine from opening up anyway, and it is nearly impossible to build even a single new additional line onto existing power transmission corridors, and then there is all of the materials needed for the panels and the turbines, plus factories to refine, to build, workers for all of these new mines, factories, refineries, power installations…
And then all of the above are wearing out and needing replacement faster than they can ever be built to begin with…
The truth is, people who have no idea about anything real, have invented an impossible idea, and politicians are so stupid they have made the impossible, mandatory, and that right soon, even though we could not replace all of the infrastructure we have built out over 150 years with something else that uses more materials, is far less reliable, and wears out an order of magnitude more quickly, in even 20 years, even if we all had the will to do so, the money, the skill, the manpower, the resources…
And all of that is only a few of many more reasons why this will not and cannot work.
Oh, and all to “solve” a fake crisis that does not exist regarding a big lie and a gigantic hoax, by means that would not work even if the problem was real.
Hey, does anyone recall how fast riots and looting and an outbreak of general mayhem started in NYC and LA and other places, the last time a regional blackout occurred?
One point to add. The belief that we can continue to consume our natural resources without consequence.
We have no means available for longterm storage of energy that make any sense. To store hydrogen for more than 3-4 weeks you need to use a metal or a liquid carrier. In both cases it takes a tremendous amount of energy to store. In fairness, storage is exothermal and release is endothermal, leading some to believe you could harness the exothermal from storage and use it in the release. But from tha fact that you can’t, since it makes no sense to store and release at the same time when you lose that much energy in the process.
Using hydrogen as storage means you need to build many multiples of generating capacity.
If by “energy” you actually mean electricity, then I agree with you. Fossil fuels are an excellent means of long term storage of easily useable energy.
And easily transported.
‘So it is written, so it shall be done.’
Ramses II
And at some point he told his people “make gigantic statues of me”- or else.
The socialist mantra that always leads to privation and death. The the socialist countries’ 20th Century body count alone should be enough of a caution for any thinking person.
There are socialists that think the planetary population needs drastic reduction.
Electric car batteries are problematic enough when they pop, can you imagine what would happen if a whole lithium-ion battery facility of the size needed to power a city were to be sabotaged and go up in (highly toxic hydrogen fluoride) smoke? Thanks but no thanks.
I suspect no local fire department will want on in their area.
Lithium Ion use for solar or wind is marginal. They are limited by their low cycle life 500-900 cycles. Currently for solar mostly Lithium Iron Phosphate is used, which has cycle life 4000-10000 cycles.
“The IEA has become, so to speak, our armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement,” said French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, 13 February.
Beware friendly fire!!
Let’s not forget that CO2 does not affect the climate and that there is not a. chance that the upward Keeling curve will be checked
This article reminds me of Mark Mills’ (an engineer) 2019 paper: The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking.
The last bullet point in the summary that is expanded upon in the report:
“The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced”.
It also reminds me of Weissbach et al. (2018) that shows that wind and solar PV including storage (buffering) with their very low EROI values are in no way viable substitutes for technologies with high energy density and low volatility and their wholesale adoption would lead to economic collapse.
The Tesla Powerwall is a home battery storage system designed to store electricity generated from sources like solar panels or the grid for later use. As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, the Powerwall comes in two different models: Powerwall 2 and Powerwall 2+ (also known as Powerwall 3). Here are the specifications for the Powerwall 2, which was the latest model at that time:
Physical Dimensions (for Powerwall 2):
Dimensions: 45.3″ x 29.7″ x 5.75″ (1150 mm x 755 mm x 147 mm)
Weight: 251.3 lbs (114 kg)
Energy Capacity (for Powerwall 2):
Usable Capacity: 13.5 kWh
Total Energy: 14 kWh
Keep in mind that these specifications might have changed since my last update, as Tesla often updates their products and introduces new versions.
Assuming that UK power requirementis 100 GW1 weeks energy storage comes to 16,800 GWhr. Divide this by 13.5 KWhr to get number of Powerwalls needed
and then multiply by the volume of a single Powerwall 2. Here’s the calculation:
Total Volume = (16800 GWhr / 14 kWh) * (Volume of one Powerwall 2)
That is a building 1km *1km and 153 metres high with a cost of about 6 trillion pounds
In practice the building would be 8 times that size at least to allow for space between the battery units and would have the capacity to explode with the energy release of many Hiroshimas
Francis you are far too kind to these gormless morons in evaluating their gibberish
I suppose one way around that is to have a Powerwall or 2 in every home – but that wouldn’t change the cost of it, or the danger should the thing pop. There are plenty of homes at risk of flooding in the UK, and I can’t imagine many home insurance companies being willing to take on the risk of both flood and battery fire.
Usable capacity: 13.5 kWh is grossly overstated, because that means from 100% full to 0% full.
No-one in his right mind would operate a battery like that and expect it to last for years, because the anode will be coated with li-ions
Better to operate from 80% full to 20% full, with NORMAL aging, as recommended by Tesla, or 0.6 x 13.5 kWh.
Please, adjust your calculations
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
That just strengthens the points made.
Classic LFP Lithium Iron Phosphate battery used for solar now has 16 cells, 5.1kg each, somewhere around 85kg whole battery. It uses 304Ah cells, containing 15,5kWh.
Such battery has dimensions around 36cmx30cmx60cm
It can be discharged to 0% and charged to 100% freely, doing around 4000 cycles.
References, user statements, not mfr brochures
LFP is already proven and widely used technology. Newest cells are able to do 10000 cycles.
Event new Teslas are using LFP already.
Cells in my cellar have around 600 cycles on them in two years, still going strong.
That is $1.50 worth of electricity, less than an hours worth where I live during hot days or cold nights.
Please provide a link directing me to where I can buy 1000 square feet of PV panels for a few hundred dollars, there’s a good lad.
While we are on cost, how much for this amazing battery you speak of?
One Powerwall cost nearly $10,000.
Most in the US could not meet an unexpected emergency that cost them even $500.
We have 330,000,000 people here, many of whom live in apartments and congested cities with no chance to have even a single panel, let alone a safe place for a Powerwall or 30.
But if they all did, who installs all of them in a few years for that many people?
A couple of years ago, Biden passed legislation authorizing many tens of billions of dollars for charging stations for electric cars. Years later, we are still working on the first 8 new charging stalls. Zero have been finished. That is 8 stalls, not facilities.
That is how fast stuff actually gets done.
From my practical experiences I see that 1kWh going through batteries I have another 2kWh directly from solar. So when my daily gain is 15kWh, there is only 5kWh cycled through battery.
Where I live you can buy 550W panel, which is 2m2, around 22 square feet for around 100Eur, that is around 110$
https://dom.bazos.sk/inzerat/164197767/555-w-fotovoltaicke-panely-tw-solar.php
Those panels are new.
My main solar system on house is 8 panels 460W, 3.4kW total.
So price of panels for similar system currently would be 6 panels 550W, 600Eur.
That is 12m2 (260sqf).
Forget overpriced Powerwall, using explosive li-ion with 900cycles lifetime.
There are LFP batteries which are smaller, safer, and 6000 cycles lifetime.
I don’t like big cities, only fool is going to live on such heap with so many other people. It is their problem.
LFP even with the 0 to 100% offer 30% usable capacity and are more costly in present time.
LFP has around 80% energy density of li-ion. For static implementations as house battery it does not matter.
There is no 30% usable capacity for LFP. You can freely use it 0% to 100% with some 99% efficiency 4000 times.
They are not more costly as li-ion, actually LFP prismatic cells used for house systems are much cheaper than li-ion.
Current price is somewhere around 70Eur/80$ per one cell which has around 1kWh.
You forgot the heating and cooling requirements. LiPO batteries do not like hot and do not work at cold.
It would be very interesting to know who contributed from the British side of the report team; their employment positions and their professional qualifications. Too often remarks about such people are made in vague terms, but I have yet to see anyone demand to see the writers position and qualifications published.
There are other comparably important questions, but at least those are absolutely essential.
Picky! Just immerse yourself in the feels about conquering the dooming and saving Gaia from your deplorable fellow humans.
Whether 6 times or 10,000 times- they’ll need to be charged- so how much extra “renewable energy” will be need just to charge so many batteries? And that’s when we arrive at net zero nirvana when the total demand will be so much higher than now.
They must think that their job is to be cheer leaders and let the engineers figure out the details. The whiz kids at the top have the grandiose ideas and let the little people worry about the details, don’t you know.
Thought it was quite humorous that before reading this article, I had read another article about an author that was finding it rather difficult to find candidates for assistance with their research.
https://spectator.org/snowflake-work-habits/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=snowflake-work-habits
Perhaps the IEA was using a few of these applicants?
“A Shockingly Inept Report From The IEA”??
It is not shocking
It’s not inept
It is a fake report for a fake engineering project with as few numbers as possible, and meaningless GW rather than GWh.
The goal is to promote a green dream … and NOT include data that can be easily proven to be wrong.
It’s yet another vision statement, not a plan. It’s politics, not engineering.
IEA promotes the fake engineering project and avoids giving the opposition numbers to beat them up with.
That’s politically astute,
Bureaucrat’s specialty.
Did you expect a detailed plan that would allow decent feasibility studies, cost estimates and critical path timing analyses?
Don’t make me laugh.
When there is no Nut Zero plan, no one can say with any authority that the project is not going according to the plan.
No cost estimate provided = no second guessing the costs.
Leftists will just keep pretending Nut Zero is going to happen even as very little progress is made from an engineering point of view.
From a political point of view, leftists are large and in charge. When they seize more power, it will be to save the planet and the children:
(1) CO2 is a satanic gas
(2) Nut Zero is moving ahead to save the planet
(3) Leftist fascism will force you to follow orders … but you will eventually find out the climate really did not matter.
The Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog: Nut Zero is a political power strategy and it is working as planned.
The farcical report backs up my pet theory that Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, wants to become the first Turkish Secretary General of the UN and he will do anything to support the IPCC and net zero to achieve that.
“GW rather than GWh.“
They ought to have to state both.
The instantaneous maximum output, in GW… and the total capacity output over time in GWh.
eg, The SA battery has a large output capacity…. but only for a very short period of time.
They ought to have to state both
It’s kinda funny. The little LiPo batteries they use for RC cars & planes have that info. Total rating (mAh) and “burst” capacity (max short-term amps deliverable)
Watts, obviously, easily determined by simple calculation.
But but…..the new sodium battery will fix things….no, wait, ….the new calcium battery is where its at…..or the water battery?
Are IEA and IAEA the same?
NO IAEA is the International Atomic Energy Agency
Thanks. Just curious why the gents picture was from IAEA.
The “Age of Experts” has been more than disappointing
I have no problem with experts.
I have a massive problem with people rummaging in the dress-up box for a lab coat, then being received as experts by those who want experts like that.
The problem is that the people who declare who are and who are not experts, are not themselves experts.
Those responsible for sacking those who have just been sacked have been sacked.
A reminder of what the UK Royal Society’s Report (Sept 2023) said about large scale electricity storage policy for the UK
“A study modelling solar and wind generation using 37 years of weather date found variations in wind supply on a multi decadal timescale, as well as sporadic periods of days and weeks of very low generation potential. For this reason some tens of TWhs of very long duration storage will be needed. For comparison the TWhs needed are 1000 times more than is currently provided by pumped hydro, and far more than can be provided cost effectively by batteries”
They concluded
“Conventional batteries are not expected to provide large scale storage, although they are likely to play a role in stabilising the grid”
People just don’t get what I realized in the 1980s as a utility system planning engineer: The actual Leftist energy plan is rationing for the peons. Demand side management is the euphemism.
It’s incompetence like this and the media support that leads many people to believe wind and solar alone are able to power society.
The whole objective of authoritarian countries is to take over democracy. This is done by spreading false fears over what is being done to the planet. It is those massively profiteering through so called green investments who are in power and are spreading these falsehoods. We, the people need to wake up fast.
Not to mention fires.
Lithium Ion Polymer Organic (LiPO) batteries are famous for their fires.
Once the first massive battery storage site goes up, there will be changes, but only for the survivors.
Take all the electricity that can be stored in a battery in its lifetime of charge and discharge cycles
Multiply this by the cost of electricity and the resulting amount will closely approximate the cost of the battery.
If the costs of batteries is going down so dramatically, how come the price of batteries for EVs have been going up in recent years?
Big improvements in battery performance? Where?
Can someone point to some actual numbers from real world batteries?
A simple estimate can be made by using the data available from the existing “Pumped Storage System.” That is size of the two reservoirs, Cost to develop Power consumed and generated. Salary of staff needed. Of the three I know of in the US all were designed for over night storage to supply the nearby city power loads for the power peak the next day and actually were a profit looser but necessary to maintain power. Cursory calculation shows that they can not provide 100% power for a full day. They alas are not suitable as a “Recreational” use lake, creating increased NIMBY attitude.
Francis I always enjoy your articles. As a retired electrical engineer engaged in power supply planning and economics for decades (and still consulting) I once respected the projections of the IEA. This latest report extinguishes any credibility that remained after pivoting about 15 years ago to become a superficial and cheesy cheerleader for the “green” renewable transition.
Thank you for your lucid dismantling of this effort to promote intermittent renewables through the unbridled fantasy of infeasible levels of battery installation, demonstrating that the IEA no longer concerns itself with even the most rudimentary numerate analysis, or collection of credible data.
One small point, his name is Birol, not Barol. I don’t want you to leave any target for IEA defenders!
Another factor rarely discussed when trying to figure how many batteries are going to be needed to provide backup, is system efficiency.
Most of these so called reports assume that if you put 100GWh into a battery, you will get 100GWh out of the battery. In most cases, when you factor in the losses in the converters that take AC and make it DC, then take DC and make it AC, plus the charging and discharging losses in the batteries themselves, you will be lucky to get 90GWh back.
And that’s before you add in the distribution losses from getting the power from where it is generated to the battery farm, then the losses getting the recovered power from the battery farm to wherever it is needed.
You could try to co-locate the battery farm with the wind and solar farms.
To avoid wasting land, you would have to place solar panels on top of the battery facilities.
Of course that makes the panels more difficult (and hence more costly) to clean and maintain. You also run the risk of burning up some of your solar panels everytime a battery decides to self immolate.
There is probably enough room in a wind farm to put these batteries. Though you do have to factor in that the batteries will on average make the ground rougher, which will have a negative impact on how much wind each tower is able to generate. Also you have to make sure that the blades of the individual turbines is far enough away from the battery assemblages that the heat from any fires doesn’t damage the blades.
Add in the power loss/inefficiency of AC transformers and you get an even lower number plus the I^2xR losses in the transmission lines.
A few of the activist “analysts” behind this fraud may be deluded, but overall they are pursuing an efficient strategy for achieving their actual goal, which is the total destruction of capitalism and freedom. As a particular example, they are trying to force everybody to buy EV, while making sure to block any and all of the infrastructure build-out that would be necessary to charge them. This is obviously just a scheme for achieving the eco-left’s long stated goal of eliminating the automobile. Multiply times 1000.
And where is the lithium going to come from? Mars?
See https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/fact-sheet-lithium-supply-in-the-energy-transition/#:~:text=Leading%20experts%20estimate%20a%20supply,%2Das%2Dusual%20demand%20scenario.
I don’t know how much the US pays to fund this outfit but we need to stop all payments to them.
Long term storage to batteries doesn’t make sense, that is true.
But short term storage to batteries for households makes a lot of sense now.
More than 2 years ago I built small hybrid solar system for my house, 3,4kW of panels and 5kWh LFP battery.
This system is able to provide 75% of my electric energy needs in rough central European weather, where is very little of production during winter months. My yearly energy consumption is 4.6MWh, 3.5MWh is now provided by solar.
Such small battery is able to take me through nights and smooth peaks in energy usage.
That means that solar intermittency is measured not in seconds, but in days. Giving grid time to respond with increased/decreased demand.
Now for same price I would be able to buy 16kWh battery.
this is 1.5 of my daily energy need. Such battery could take me through 2 bad solar days. Smoothing my energy consumption to 3 days. So only periods of bad solar weather longer than 2 days would bring need to connect grid energy.
This is putting no stress on grid, because it has a lot of time to respond on increasing demand.
You have a home with over 2600 square feet of south facing roof, and it only uses about 10.5 kWh of electricity a day? Less than 500 watts of power draw averaged over the whole 24 hour cycle?
I call BS on your ridiculous malarkey.
Hot water, lights, well pump, pool pump, TV, computers, cooking, cleaning, drying clothes…and the big one, air conditioning, which for a huge number of people in the US, is not a luxury, it is mandatory, for over half the year, 24/7, or you will have mildew on all your walls and furniture inside of two weeks.
A tiny space heater suitable to warm up a single little bathroom or bedroom, uses 1500 watts!
Nearly every item on my short list of power draws, uses substantially more than 500 watts, and your house sound over 5 times as large as mine.
Heating is provided with Natural Gas heater. I have AC capable to heat as heat pump. Which I’m using when I have surplus of electricity. This shortened my heating season from October – May to November – January.
Your math is little off, I wrote that my energy consumption is 4.6 MWh, that is 12.6kwh per day.
One third of roof on my house is not heated garage.
House is two floors around 190m2 (roughly 2050 square feet) of living space.
Hot water is prepared with separate solar system with 2.7kW panels. 100% of hot water during summer, 50% during winter, 75% overall.
Cooking is done with Natural Gas stove, averaging 0.25m3 per day. This is around 2.5kWh per day, cold by easily provided by solar energy, but me and my wife are liking Natural Gas cooking more.
I have well insulated house, reconstructed 5 years ago. Triple pane windows, 10cm of insulation over my walls, 23cm of insulation on roof. This lowered my heating energy to 40%. No mildew in any conditions.
I have AC, using it during summers, but during summer I have such surplus of solar energy, that it is 100% covered with my production.
I designed system all by myself, recounted everything to be optimal, I can provide you all numbers if you want.
For example here are my numbers for last month April:
8.6kWh average per day gain from hot water solar system
15.2kWh average per day gain from electric solar system
2.7kWh average per day consumed from electric grid
0.5m3 average per day consumed Natural Gas, 0.25 is cooking, rest is heating water during overcast days. Equals around 2.5kWh+2.5kWh.
At first glance I thought the article was about the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) with headquarters in Geneva and Vienna.Very familiar with that organization as they bought a lot of our software back in the 80’s and 90’s. These guys really understand long term energy storage!