Dr. Lars Schernikau: Energy Economist, Commodity Trader, Author (recent book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy”)
Details inc Blog at www.unpopular-truth.com
As someone who has spent most my professional life in the global energy and commodities space both as an economist and as a trader, I have grown increasingly concerned about the way grid-scale battery storage is portrayed in public discourse. If you have paid any attention to the headlines, you would have heard that battery technology is “on the verge of solving” the intermittency problem of wind and solar energy. According to this narrative, all we need to do is build more battery storage, and the path to “net zero” will unfold automatically… magically.
If only it were that simple…
In my latest blog post “Pros and Cons of Utility-Scale Battery Storage” I unpack the many assumptions behind this belief. The facts I present may be unpopular, but they are grounded in physics, not politics.
Here a couple of key points that I feel might spark some interest.
35 million tons of raw materials for a couple of hours…
To build a 50 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system (approx. annual output of a Gigafactory), which has the ability to store electricity, for a city like New York, for only a few hours, you need ~ 35 million tons of raw materials (~ 700,000 t per GWh). That roughly covers the mining, upgrading, transport, and processing of ores like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, iron ore, bauxite, and others.
Think about it like this…a 1-ton utility-scale battery has a storage capacity of around 100 kWh and requires ~ 70 tons of mined, processed, and manufactured raw materials to be manufactured. This is the energy equivalent of about ~40 kg of coal or ~20 litres of oil.
Let that sink in: 70 tons of mining and industrial processing to store what coal already provides in a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand.
Explosive potential
These systems are not just material- and energy-intensive, but they also carry serious safety risks. The energy stored in a 1 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system is roughly equivalent to nearly 900 tons of TNT…that is not a metaphor. That is a chemical and thermal reality.
Thermal runaway events have already caused warehouse fires, ship explosions, and data centre shutdowns around the world. And with each battery pack tightly stacked in grid-scale installations, one malfunction can lead to catastrophic chain reactions.
Yet we keep building more?
Power a city for minutes
Let’s do the math.
A 1 GWh utility-scale battery system, requiring ~700,000 tons of mined and processed raw materials, can power:
- all of Berlin for about 30 minutes (assuming 2 GW peak power)
- or all of Germany for just under a minute (at peak power of 80 GW)
To back up Germany’s electricity demand for just 1 hour, we would need around ~80 GWh of battery storage, equating to ~ 56 million tons of raw materials…not to mention the energy-intensive industrial processes just to build them.
Now imagine a week long “Dunkelflaute”…seven days without sun or wind. That would require over 10 TWh of battery storage.
And remember… these batteries deteriorate at a rate of 3-7 % p.a. and must be replaced every ~10-13 years!
No country on Earth, not even with unlimited capital, can seriously consider batteries as a solution. They must know deep down, it is physically and economically unworkable.
Energy to build batteries?
What’s even more startling is the energy invested before these batteries ever store a single kilowatt-hour. Consider, a 1 GWh of utility-scale battery system requires approximately 450 GWh of energy just to be manufactured including the energy required for metals and materials. That’s ~450 times more energy input than its rated storage capacity…a multiplier often ignored in public discussions.
In other words, before a battery can deliver its first useful cycle of electricity, it has already consumed more energy than it will discharge in hundreds of cycles. This raises serious questions about the EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) and the sustainability of making use of these large-scale batteries.
The economics don’t work
I have written extensively about how Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is a misleading metric. It ignores natural capacity factors, storage and backup costs, and system integration expenses. A more appropriate measure is FCOE (Full Cost of Electricity) which includes all the invisible infrastructure required to make wind, solar, and batteries “work.”
When viewed this way, power systems that required utility-scale batteries have one of the lowest Energy Return on Investment (EROI) ratios in the energy world. It takes a lot of energy to build the system and you get very little usable energy in return.
This is the opposite of what powered human development for the last 150 years.
I want to leave you with the difficult questions …
- Will we be pro- or digressing if we rely on these so-called “green” storage solutions?
- Will the solution of wind, solar and batteries be better for the environment?
You be the judge…
Read my full blog post – Pros and Cons of Utility Scale Battery Storage. I am excited to hear your feedback on this “explosive” topic 😉
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Charging batteries to charge other batteries is a fools errand. But that is precisely what any net zero grid scale batteries are attempting to do.
Utility scale battery storage is a ridiculous myth that only dedicated eco-loons and completely ignorant people can possibly believe
Utility scale battery storage is really just an ultra expensive, acreage intensive chemical battery pod that allows for Minutes of power storage for Hundreds of Millions of dollars or the potential for costing Hundreds of Billions of dollars to store a few hours of power. Realistically they can provide only enough power to get spinning reserve reliable fossil fuel powered back-up running at capacity which does nothing to eliminate fossil powered generation. Wind and Solar can’t replace reliable fossil fuel generation while Wind and Solar + Battery is simply an even more expensive method to accomplish the same thing…nothing that can eliminate the use of fossil generation but in fact requires fossil generation to keep the grid reliable.
Trump, etc., state, those states going for wind/solar/batteries, heat pumps, EVs, etc., are having much higher electricity prices, c/kWh, than states that rely on traditional electricity sources.
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
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Utility-scale, battery system pricing usually is not made public, but for this system it was.
Neoen, in western Australia, has just turned on its 219 MW/ 877 MWh Tesla Megapack battery, the largest in western Australia.
Ultimately, it will be a 560 MW/2,240 MWh battery system, $1,100,000,000/2,240,000 kWh = $491/kWh, delivered as AC, late 2024 pricing. Smaller capacity systems will cost much more than $500/kWh
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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 (tax credits, 5-y depreciation, loan interest deduction) is 92.3c/kWh
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt
At 10% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 92.3 c/kWh
At 40% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 23.1 c/kWh
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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
COMMENTS ON CALCULATION
Almost all existing battery systems operate at less than 10%, per EIA annual reports i.e., new systems would operate at about 92.4 + 15 = 107.4 c/kWh. They are used to stabilize the grid, i.e., frequency control and counteracting up/down W/S outputs. If 40% throughput, 23.1 + 15 = 38.1 c/kWh.
A 4-h battery system costs 38.1 c/kWh of throughput, if operated at a duty factor of 40%.
That is on top of the cost/kWh of the electricity taken from the HV grid to feed the batteries
Up to 40% could 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.
See URL for Megapacks required for a one-day wind lull in New England
40% throughput is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% maximum throughput, i.e., not charge above 80% and not discharge below 20%, to perform 24/7/365 service for 15 y, with normal aging.
Owners of battery systems with fires, likely charged above 80% and discharged below 20% to maximize profits.
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
Regarding any project, the bank and Owner have to be paid, no matter what. I amortized the bank loan and Owner’s investment
Divide total payments over 15 years by the throughput during 15 years, you get c/kWh, as shown.
There is about a 20% round-trip loss, from HV grid to 1) step-down transformer, 2) front-end power electronics, 3) into battery, 4) out of battery, 5) back-end power electronics, 6) step-up transformer, to HV grid, i.e., you draw about 50 units from the HV grid to deliver about 40 units 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, battery Nirvana is just around the corner.
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NOTE: EV battery packs, at say 135/kWh, is before it is installed in the car. Such packs are good for 6 to 8 years, used about 2 h/d, at an average speed of 30 mph. Utility battery systems are used 24/7/365 for 15 years
COAL ELECTRICITY LESS COSTLY, AVAILABLE NOW, NOT PIE IN THE SKY, LIKE EXPENSIVE FUSION AND SMALL MODULAR NUCLEAR
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/coal-electricity-less-costly-available-now-not-pie-in-the-sky
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Coal gets very little direct subsidies in the US.
Here is an example of the lifetime cost of a coal plant.
The key is running steadily at 90% output for 50 years, on average
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Assume mine-mouth coal plant in Wyoming; 1800 MW (three x 600 MW); turnkey-cost $10 b; life 50 y; CF 0.9; no direct subsidies.
Payments to bank, $5 b at 6% for 50 y; $316 million/y x 50 = $15.8 b
Payments to Owner, $5 b at 10% for 50 y; $504 million/y x 50 = $21.2 b
Lifetime production, base-loaded, 1800 x 8766 x 0.9 x 50 = 710,046,000 MWh
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Wyoming coal, at mine-mouth $15/US ton, 8600 Btu/lb, plant efficiency 40%, Btu/ton = 2000 x 8600 = 17.2 million
Lifetime coal use = 710,046,000,000 kWh/y x (3412 Btu/kWh/0.4)/17,200,000 Btu/US ton = 353 million US ton
Lifetime coal cost = $5.3 billion
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The Owner can deduct interest on borrowed money, and can depreciate the entire plant over 50 y, or less, which helps him achieve his 10% return on investment.
Those are general government subsidies, indirectly charged to taxpayers and/or added to government debt.
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Other costs:
Fixed O&M (labor, maintenance, insurance, taxes, land lease)
Variable O&M (water, chemicals, lubricants, waste disposal)
Fixed + Variable, newer plants 2 c/kWh, older plants up to 4 c/kWh
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Year 1 O&M cost = $0.02/kWh x 710,046,000 MWh/50 y x 1000 kWh/MWh = $0.284 b
Year I Coal cost = $15/US ton x 353 million US ton/50 y = 0.106 b
Year 1 Bank/Owner cost = (15.8, Bank + 21.2, Owner)/50 y= 0.740 b
Year 1 Total cost = 1.130 b
Year 1 Revenue = $0.08/kWh x 710,046,000 MWh/50 x 1000 kWh/MWh = $1.136 b
For on-land wind and solar to cost 8 cents/kWh, about 50% of federal and state tax credits are needed.
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For lower electricity cost/kWh, borrow more money, say 70%
Traditional Nuclear has similar economics; life 60 to 80 y; CF 0.9 in the US.
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For perspective, China used 2204.62/2000 x 4300 = 4740 million US ton in 2024.
China and Germany have multiple ultra-super-critical, USC, coal plants with efficiencies of 45% (LHV), 42% (HHV)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/ultrasupercritical-plant
HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public-1
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People are brainwashed to love wind and solar. They do not know by how much they screw themselves by voting for the woke folks who push them onto everyone. Their ignorance is exploited by the woke folks
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This comment presents an A-to-Z picture to show the extent of the screwing.
Very few know how to create such an overview, even less have the freedom to show it to others.
The real question is affording wind and solar. There is an 11 c/kWh adder on top of 50% subsidies.
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Western countries cajoling Third World countries in the Wind/Solar direction, and loaning them money to do so, will forever re-establish a colonial-style bondage on those recently free countries.
What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S systems, the less efficient the traditional generators, as they inefficiently (more CO2/kWh) counteract the increasingly larger ups and downs of W/S output. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
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W/S systems add great cost to the overall delivery of electricity to users; the more W/S systems, the higher the cost/kWh, as proven by the UK and Germany, with the highest electricity rates in Europe, and near-zero, real-growth GDP.
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At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
The UK and Germany are hitting the wall, more and more hours each day.
The cost of electricity delivered to users increased with each additional W/S/B system
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Nuclear, gas, coal and reservoir hydro plants are the only rational way forward.
Ignore CO2, because greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is essential for: 1) increased green flora to increase fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
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Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit of 10 percent – Federal tax credit of 30 percent – State tax credit and other incentives of up to 10%);
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project;
3) Loan interest deduction
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Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixed offshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
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Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect distributed W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Total ADDER 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 11 c/kWh
Some of these values exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid
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The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth GDP is in de-growth mode. That economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
Remove your subsidy dollars using your vote, none of these projects would be built, your electric bills would be lower.
Ban Corrupt Mail-in Ballots and corruptible Voting Machines; No Valid ID, No Vote.
As somebody who regularly monitors the Western Australian SWIS grid that averages 3-4 GW, that new battery is rarely seen to deliver even 8% of the grid’s power, and only for a short time. Most of the time its output is close to zero – right now it’s 0.17%. The WA SWIS grid obtains most of its daytime power from household solar, but struggles to do this when a succession of cloudy wet days occurs. At night, coal and gas do all the heavy lifting, not the battery.
Two power systems to do one job in a piss-poor, very expensive manner, courtesy of the power of brainwashing.
The CA grid operated by CAISO sucked up a lot of excess PV yesterday into the fleet of batteries at their disposal and the batteries discharged most of that juice during the huge afternoon ramp.
https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply#section-supply-trend
They were sucking up 8000 MW around 9:30 and sending 1000 MW of power into the grid around 7 pm.
Mark
Typo alert! it was 10,000 MW filling the grid at 7PM from the fleet of stored juice in the batteries. Sorry about that… It seems the forecasted demand for juice is a bit up in the air for the CA grid-
“CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY CHOICE ASSOCIATION’S COMMENTS
ON THE AUGUST 6, 2025, IEPR COMMISSIONER WORKSHOP ON
ENERGY DEMAND FORECAST INPUTS AND ASSUMPTIONS”
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CNRA/bulletins/3eecdcd
“…PV yesterday…” being Aug 20. 2025.
Yesterday’s CA generation, up to 2150. Looks like ‘Natural Gas’ was helping. ‘Import’ at around zero.
It is a fig leaf to cover the many drawbacks of building renewables.
The whole rotten energy transition is filled with stories like this. Arguably grid-scale batteries are the worst example of poorly invested capital, but excess transmission lines for transport of energy in those instances in which the neighboring utility has abundant energy and yours doesn’t, duplicate energy generating systems, and then overbuilding local distribution for some customers who plan to run everything on electricity but must be done also for those who don’t, well, its all poorly utilized.
This is a poor analogy because the battery can supply that energy many time over.
Take your 70,000kg and divide by 40kg and you get 1750. So as long as the battery can cycle 1750 times, it has saved its weight if it was supplied with zero cost energy. Most batteries in Australia get paid to soak up electricity.
You need to look at the whole system. And how much energy the whole system takes.
In Australia, most houses on their own block of land can generate enough power from rooftops to serve their needs. Adding a battery means they can be self-sufficient.
This is the killer for grid scale wind and solar. The energy sources are ubiquitous and households can use the same technology to make their own electricity. It will always be cheaper than making it remotely with wind and solar and paying the high cost of transmission.
This is the situation playing out in Australia’s now. Rooftops are by far the fastest growing sector and they are eating into the wholesale market. So the wholesale market is ion an upward cost vortex of higher grid costs spread across falling demand. The grid was in terminal decline once intermittent generation was permitted access on favourable terms without any availability requirement. The graph attached show why The Australian grid is stuffed. I predicted this back in 2016 in my submission to the Finkel enquiry into decarbonising the grid. Decarbonising might happen but the grid will be a much smaller version of what existed in 2016.
“Adding a battery means they can be self-sufficient.”
The opportunity cost of a home battery means that they are not economical.
If a homeowner has to borrow the money to buy a home battery the savings are cancelled out by the interest payments.
If the homeowner has the cash to buy a home battery, they would be better off investing in a dividend paying blue chip share, the dividends received would be equal to the savings from the battery, and when the battery has come to the end of its life you would still have the blue-chip share.
Technically true, so “+”, BUT:
“Rich Dad, Poor Dad’s’ Robert Kiyosaki Says He’s $1.2 Billion In Debt Because ‘If I Go Bust, The Bank Goes Bust. Not My Problem'”
ie you can make rational choices and still lose.
You are not living in Australia where the peak energy charge is 45c/kWh and the weekly connection fee is $1.40.
Battery system with their subsidy have an annual return of 30%. The TD rate is 4%. So people with solar panels are going as hard as the industry can supply household batteries.
Ausnet, (the single provider available in my area), would charge between $0.70 and over a $ a DAY for connection. Well north of the $1.40/week.
I opted to go off grid completely over 15 years ago due to the cost of running a private power line plus the poles, transformer and the design fees. Those items alone totaled more than the sum cost of my solar, batteries and inverter home grid and left me about $20k in balance.
I have just recently updated the system to a 50kWHr battery with new charge controllers, additional panels and an additional inverter, the system has reserve capacity, redundancy in all components and, noting the $20k was a ‘saving’ at the time, this has paid for the extra installations.
Free power and I’m financially in front of where the grid operations would have taken me, had I jumped that puddle.
going off grid, where the grid goes past your address is still NOT sensible in Oz but the time is fast approaching where it will be viable. If labour costs come down even a small amount or power prices continue their climb, then expect the trickle of off grid to become a torrent, then as Rick says, the grid, (domestic portion), is toast.
Key word…$ub$idie$. Other Peoples tax Money!
Both the household and the grid generator gets subsidised. It the poor that pay for the subsidies..
EVERYBODY pays for the subsidies; only those in on the grift profit from it.
Every tax payer pays for every direct government subsidy
All based on stupid government policies that the taxpayers and ratepayers will still bear, whether directly through higher taxes or indirectly through inflation.
I’m reminded of a line from the movie “Disclosure” in the form of an e-mail from a party attempting to help from “behind the scenes.”
“SOLVE THE PROBLEM.”
“Battery system with their subsidy”
The subsidies come from tax payer dollars. Taxes are a cost to everyone.
If we are to remain connected to the grid, then we have to pay the connection fee regardless. And the average Australian electricity cost is NOT A45c/kWh in all states – that sounds like a maximum figure. I only pay around A32c/kWh.
Does this price reflect actual costs, or punitive tariffs (i.e. arbitrary robbery)?
A “price with subsidy” means an arbitrary part of expenses is covered by someone else being robbed “offscreen”.
Sure, the fish seeks depths, and people seeks fish. But what of it?
Well, today they rob Joe, tomorrow Joe will be broke, and they will rob Jack. Talking about prices that are a direct function of capricious robbery in the same term as of variables that are function of economy or physics (and thus mostly predictable in the long term) is meaningless.
OK, break even on these batteries is 1,750 full cycles. In reality, full cycles are impossible, damaging, and unlikely. So more like 3,500 half cycles.
And can they really sustain that? If so, and little more, they break even. For a massive cost, they add nothing.
Can you not see a problem with that?
I was sad about “if it was supplied with zero cost energy“
Batteries in Australia often get paid to take energy to help stabilise the grid. From September through March inclusive, they get paid to charge more often than they actually pay to charge.
The grid scale batteries are making a financial killing in Australia/. They get paid to store the energy. They gat paid to provide the 5s stability service and they get paid very high raters when the discharge.
Households and businesses with sunk costs in rooftop solar can at least avoid the high cost of peak energy by charging for free through the day and using the energy at night. Payback is about 3 years on a household battery.
Solar cannot pay for itself in 15 years, you think a battery is going to solve the problem. LOL.
I figure you are not living in Australia and paying 45c/kWh for electricity.
So it works, kind of, because the government has completely distorted the market. Just how long can such an arrangement continue?
Another distortion that no one takes into account is severe thunderstorms. Australia has not seen a really severe thunderstorms for 40 years and when they return there will be a lot of broken solar panels and wind turbines.
By really severe I class that as being with tops above 45,000′. The last big storm for us was January 1985 in Brisbane when radar returns showed tops of 76,000′. In the 1960s and 1970s it was not uncommon to have lines of storms with tops around 70,000′ that produced hail over 6 inches in diameter with very high winds and that is from first hand experience from airline flying back then.
Lines of storms can be very long too. On an evening jet flight from Brisbane to Cairns in the 1970s I have seen 1600 klms of storms all the way and one evening saw every aerodrome up the Queensland coast closed with severe thunderstorms. When this weather returns the Insurance companies won’t be too interested in insuring solar panels again.
Again, your figure is wrong.
Actually it can, even with the added Opportunity Cost, which in my case added an extra one third solar system cost. I amortised the cost over ten years, and it looks like I will pay it back in 8.5 years, with an average savings of A$980/ year. But I’m living in Perth WA, which doesn’t get very cold, so the solar is mainly used to keep cool in summer, when the solar is far more efficient.
Individuals who do the economics for themselves, make the investment based on their own cost-risk-benefit analyses are welcome to do whatever they choose to do.
Freedom is working personal issues out for yourself.
Liberty is making personal decisions without interference.
The difference is between individuals exercising freedom and liberty versus government mandates.
I was more curious about who walks around carrying 40 kg in one hand. That’s about 100 pounds my fellow americans,
The main idea stands, I think he was correct on most points, but it took special moment to write “a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand”
I’m 77 y/o and can carry around 90lb sacks of cement.
I’m 71 and I can too, but I avoid it
Hoping you don’t get sciatica or a hernia. I’ve had both.
I suspect some of us have to use both hands. 🙂
‘By hand’ does not mean ‘one hand’ Technically speaking, if you carry 40 Kg in a wheelbarrow you are still moving it ‘by hand’.
Words matter:
“a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand.”
Note the quote specifically stated “carried by hand.”
Humor is a wonderful thing. Thank you.
A battery alone can not provide power unless it is charged/recharged. Power Supply input is required to make the potential for any output AND the input is over and above current demand. Recharging batteries requires power input from someplace while demand is being met.
Almost every day in Australia there is economic offloading. The batteries get paid to tale power to help stabilise the grid.
Australia’s NEM average demand is around 21GW. There is already 22GW of installed rooftop solar that only backs off on over voltage. So on a good summers day, the entire grid can be supplied from rooftops during lunch time. The grid is on a knife edge for stability and charging batteries helps stabilise. The batteries get paid to charge because the wholesale price is negative.
How do they avoid a Spanish situation, with all that solar input and presumably less spinning capacity in the background providing grid inertia?
Oh it’ll come, just need the right weather conditions plus a bit too much reliance on stupid things like grid connected wind and solar.
Our day will come, and we’ll have everything…
OK. A curious question then…
What happens to that “Knife Edge” grid when Solar is overcapacity, the Wind is blowing strong, Morning Peak Demand drops and the battery is fully charged?
Or, for that matter when the opposite is true…
A week long winter blocking high covers Australia eliminating wind, the battery is depleted in hours and solar only produces 4 hours a day?
There was an example of that in June, except it only lasted 4 hours:
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/06/a-cold-windless-evening-shakes-600m-out-of-the-australian-electricity-grid/
Like right now, when my home solar that can deliver 35kWh on a good summer day, is currently struggling to produce even 4kWh on a cloudy wet winter’s day. The solar cannot deliver enough power for my home, let alone recharge a battery.
“Rube Goldberg” comes to mind.
You stole that from my posts on earlier threads! LOL 🙂
Well done!
Great minds and all.
Does Australia have Take or Pay WRT renewable generation? If so those solar installations get paid either way and since this involves paying them more for providing nothing really jacks up the end cost of electricity.
Therein lies the problem. You’re trying to solve a problem which has only arisen in the first place due to stupid, delusional and unnecessary policies. Fix the stupid policies, build what works, and you render the entire “need” for “battery storage” moot.
And most places with large populations are “not Australia.” Solar is a lousy way to generate electricity at high latitudes where there are lots of trees, for example. And in most places, adding a battery to solar will not even be close to “self-sufficient.” I guess you can then add a generator powered by fossil fuels, which just shows you what, once again, you are actually dependent on to keep the lights on.
Furthermore, I wouldn’t have a large storage battery anywhere near my home, because I’d prefer not to assume that risk. And I’m sure as insurance companies begin to see that risk reflected in losses, they will be charging enough for it to wipe out any savings.
It is much more the political mandate than the technical issues (not to minimize those).
If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.
New technological innovations stand or fail based on demand. If the demand is there, the technology thrives. The governments are interfering in commerce if violation of their respective Constitutions (Russia, China, etc., excluded).
“Take your 70,000kg and divide by 40kg and you get 1750. So as long as the battery can cycle 1750 times,“
Assumption 1: if the battery can cycle 1750 times.
Assumption 2: if each battery cycle is 100% (no battery degradation)
Assumption 3: if the battery is only used at optimum temperature (degrades by 50+% at cold)
Assumption 4: each cycle is 100% charge-discharge. Currently something like 60% of the rated capacity is usable. Do not discharge below 20% to not recharge above 80% for maximum life.
A battery in a SV or WTG system will be discharged and charged daily (if not more frequently).
1750/365 = 4.8 years, given the life due to cycling is 1750.
No Rick. An Australian residence would have to save an extra A$1000 a year to pay off the household battery during its short lifetime, on top of having to save around A$700-850 a year to pay off their home solar system. These costs include Opportunity Cost. While it’s possible to save the cost of the solar system, it is NOT possible to save the extra to pay off their the home battery. That is why only one in 40 home solar systems also have a battery.
Indeed. Learning to always keep one eye on dimensions of a quantity before talking about «grounded in physics» can save one much embarrassment.
That said, what needs to be compared is the entire system considered, not arbitrarily picked parts. Both as the initial investment and as amortization + repairs + expendables.
Eyeballing it suggests that a windmill+accumulator will lose to fuel delivery+smaller generator (direct heat usage such as hot water and cooking don’t need conversion back and forth) in other categories even more than they can win on expendables.
Except in the places where some humans live, yet regular delivery of fuel (whether by road, water or pipe) is too expensive, or hard to perform reliably. Of course, there are not many of those. Which is why the largest windmill generators observed in the wild were on a small farm scale. The airbus sized windmills are an obvious product of certain distinctly artificial environment, thus it’s reasonable to expect that once the parties protecting them from competition and routine risks disappear, they will cease to exist as well — much like chihuahua or broiler chickens left to fend for themselves.
But the real answers needs real calculations. With actual costs, of course, not BS arbitrarily fudged by subsidized prices and punitive tariffs.
So a one gigawatthour battery is equivalent to .9 kt. So very safe to have near anything.
Sort of like having a Minuteman silo in your back yard, eh?
More like if the solid fuel rocket deflagrated.
I am a Rocket Scientist/Engineer. I work with solid fuel rockets.
The energy is great but not as much as a 1 kiloton TNT explosion.
OTOH, the Henderson Nevada blast looked like a small scale nuke. I’ve known a number of people who worked on SRM’s, and the large motors can be made to detonate.
Assuming a 33% efficiency for a LWR plant, the 100kwhr capacity is equivalent to 0.012 grams of 235U. Assuming a 3,000 cycle lifetime for the battery, that’s still only 36 grams of 235U or about 1 kilogram of typical LWR fuel.
There are several SRM designs. Some bigger, some smaller.
Deflagration is burning, not exploding, although those monster batteries can do both, with burning the higher probability.
I’ve heard about the detonating SRM’s from someone who involved with the process and said the detonations left quite a crater. Normal process for an SRM is deflagration (same is true for gun propellants) and the burning rate is remarkably well controlled.
All true. SRMs can be made to explode. It is ignition and containment then build up of pressure the boom.
The same technique with a fire cracker. You can make it flame or explode. All it takes is a minor alteration of the containment.
I was thinking of the payload when I made the post, not the motor. My bad.
Let that sink in: 70 tons of mining and industrial processing to store what coal already provides in a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand.
Carry 40KG by hand?
Maybe I can but not very far.
That’s about what standard cement bags come in, 90 pounds.
And people carry those around all day.
One handed carry? Maybe.
You can certainly carry it further than 70 tons! That’s a 1950s railroad hopper car load!
“in a (40kg) bag, small enough to be carried by hand.”
You must be a super stud.I would lift with both legs and use both arms to hold it. Even then I could not carry it very far. But, I am an old man and much weaker than i was in my salad days.
I believe the “carried by hand” note was to indicate that you didn’t need a forklift or a bucket loader to move a single bag about.
It was, indeed, a metaphor.
A silly post, just Ooh, isn’t that a big number stuff.
“which has the ability to store electricity, for a city like New York, for only a few hours”
Well, yes. But with solar, it can be a few hours every day. That isn’t nothing.
“The economics don’t work”
The ecoonomics are working. Batteries continue to drop in cost, and hard headed business firms are putting money in. And no, subsidies are only a minor factor.
Here is a listing of the new batteries commissioned just in the last four quarters in the NEM (Oz). As they say, year on year growth near doubling.
Nick, batteries can decline until they cost about what the automobile battery does on a kWhr basis and then most of the cost for grid scale will be in the facilities to house and enable the storage. Add maintenance and it isn’t ever going to be “cheap”.
The ;hotter those batteries get, the more quickly they deteriorate. This means that unless they are being kept in the Arctic, those batteries need to be cooled year around. This goes double for those times when the batteries are charging, discharging, or in direct sunlight.
I would too, with subsidies they are viable economically. Subsidies in the form of price guarantees too. Because all that free wind and soar isn’t available when required.
I seriously considered making a small solar farm and batteries for evening sales on my property, funded by my superannuation.
But, guess what? Big Battery doesn’t want me competing with them. They have the clout to negotiate (legally or otherwise) a better price. Paid for by all us poor customers and taxpayers.
Batteries do not get price guarantees.
Of course they do.
They get the highest price on the grid, because that is when they are used…
… as a last final supply when wind and solar invariably FAIL when most needed.
(Unless you have a batch of diesel generators like SA does.)
Diesel generators … Well something has to recharge those batteries.
Not a price guarantee, but a demand guarantee. They know that as long as the government mandates wind and solar, under penalty of law, that power companies are going to have to buy their products. Read up on the law of supply and demand and how that impacts price. That is, assuming you actually want to know what you are talking about.
Are really as stupid as you appear or are you just a dumb tool of the elite that are currently losing their wealth and perceived power as the climate change scam implodes.
I’ve never seen or read an intelligent post from you over the last 30 years.
A person of even normal IQ would have learned from the intellectual beatings like those you have received over the years from as example Stephen McIntyre who has more than once exposed you as a liar and a total fool, or maybe that should be tool.
Go look in the mirror you idiot. The game is over and you lost big time.
Actually, about 6 years ago, Nick published on WUWT a reasonable article. He also pointed out a flaw many years ago that was received with acclaim.
Even a clock that has stopped shows the correct time twice a day.
Let him pick the nits. It is a form of “peer review” although his presentations skills need a lot of refinement.
This _could_ be a strong point _if_ accompanied by a 20-year cost-per-kWH vs time chart in those areas – from the consumer perspective.
A “few” hours is only useful if its need is small and predictable. NYC winter nights are 14 hours, meaning battery power for 16-18 hours. Throw in a cloudy winter day, now it has to last 40 hours.
A few hours my derriere.
“Few” is one of those weasel words that mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean.
Compared to a whole year, 20 hours is a few.
““which has the ability to store electricity, for a city like New York, for only a few hours”
Well, yes. But with solar, it can be a few hours every day. That isn’t nothing.”
What happens when it is cloudy for six weeks as happened in the southern states of Australia last winter, at the same time there was a big high-pressure system for several days and no wind.
Not long ago South Australia had 27 consecutive days without wind, nationally there was 4 consecutive days without wind.
How many TWH of storage would be needed to run Australia for several days?
I don’t believe that batteries are viable for more than very short-term storage as this short-term storage can be used frequently and generate income.
Who would invest the $billions in longer term battery storage that would only be used infrequently and not be giving a return to the investor.
The whole renewable grid would have to be backed up 100% by something like gas turbines for wind and solar droughts.
Who would be willing to invest in gas turbines that also would be used infrequently and not generate a return’
Because of the very low capacity factor of renewables they need to install 3 or 4 times their rated capacity as there needs to be enough capacity to recharge storage as well as running the grid.
Add to that cost is the thousands of kilometers of transmission lines to gather it all, the storage requirements and then the gas turbine backup.
Renewables are cheaper??????
“Who would be willing to invest in gas turbines that also would be used infrequently and not generate a return’”
We actually know that, from capacity auctions. That is the amount that will induce them to provide that service. And it is quie manageable.
Eliminate the unreliable, short lived, costly Wind and Solar generation sources and those same gas turbines work flawlessly 24/7 without the need for Wind or Solar back-up. No infrequency required!
And once again, Nick lies by omission.
He’s comparing what exists today, with some glorious future, that he is being paid to promote.
In the present day, the bidders in those capacity auctions are power plant owners, who’s plants are already running and already producing most of the power that is being consumed. In this case they are being asked to increase their plant output by a few percent to cover the failings of wind and solar.
In the furute that Nick envisions (but will never happen), we just have a few peaker plants that only fire up when needed. Completely different economic circumstances, but Nick either can’t understand that, or doesn’t want you to understand that.
“subsidies are only a minor factor.”
According to Alan Moran from Access Economics subsidies for renewables are costing Australians $16 billion per year, probable enough to build 2 coal fired power stations a year.
Again, just throwing everything in to get a big number (maybe). But the topic here is batteries.
Batteries that cost big numbers. Covered by subsidies.
“But the topic here is batteries.”
And the COSTS are big, and the electricity produced is ZERO.
(you did know that batteries don’t actually produce electricity, didn’t you.) !
Per Google AI…
While some $29 billion was paid out from 2014-2023
It’s all part of the same scam.
Much of the money the wind and solar companies are spending on batteries comes from the subsidies that they receive. (These subsidies include govt mandates that require consumers to buy their product, regardless of cost.)
LOL.. Not one of those would last more than 2 hours…
The SA battery, when it has to supply because of lack of wind, lasts 30 minutes to 1 hour maximum, and provides only a tiny fraction of even SA’s tiny electricity use.
Not much use even on a windless night.
Only needed while get their DIESEL gensets up and running.
Good thing NSW, Qld, and Victoria still have enough COAL and GAS, hey !
In November 2024 the UK underwent a period of dunkelflaute when unreliable generation was minimal. It lasted 5 days, far longer than the capacity of any batteries available to operate. The average available battery ‘fleet’ only operates for around 1.5 to 2 hours.
We were totally dependent on gas.
You are so utterly deluded. You’re just making a fool of yourself
With Solar it’s far more than a couple hours a day. Solar only functions at anywhere near nameplate for a couple hours a day and produces absolutely NOTHING for 14 hours a day. Likewise Solar +Wind produces nothing on Still Summer Nights.
Add up the build costs .. that doesn’t include maintenance and year to year replacement costs
Greenbank – $300 million
Tarong – $514 million
Ulinda Park – $225 million
Western Downs – $244 million
Eraring – $600 million
Waratah – $700 million
Blyth -$337 million
Mannum – $130 million
Templers – $200 million
Koorangie – $400 million
La Trobe Valley – $150 million
Rangebank – $400 million
Total $4.2Billion that the consumer ultimately pays for and they end up paying the annual maintenance and replacement costs.
As an idea of maintenance the Eastern States will shortly need a few of these
https://www.ess-news.com/2025/02/10/tesla-to-build-battery-re-manufacturing-facility-in-western-australia/
This scale of the costs of the super cheap renewable energy should start to dawn on you. Please don’t be stupid and claim they aren’t a cost of renewables because if you used traditional generation these aren’t required.
You wonder why electricity costs in Eastern States is so high 🙂
You could have built a couple of large gas power stations for less … oh wait Eastern States doesn’t have any gas reserved 🙂
I suggest you read my note below on copper supply. Hopefully it will make you feel, well, rather idiotic.
LOL, all that battery storage…
… and yet over the previous 48 hours, batteries have provided basically nothing to the NEM in eastern Australia.
Those tiny little purple bits at the bottom.. maximum of an hour or two at peak time when they can grab the highest cost.. looks like the battery providers are acting like parasites. 😉
COAL, GAS and Hydro continue to provide the bulk of the electricity
(black, brown for coal, aqua for gas, light blue for hydro.)
The size of the numbers is a very important parameter, in fact its critical, because the problem is scale. The question is whether, as the activists seem to propose, you can run a country on wind+solar+batteries.
People who think you can have to state how much battery that would require, what it would cost, what the manufacturing feasibility is.
They also have to explain how this compares to running a conventionally powered grid – coal, gas, nuclear.
The author is claiming that for the case of Germany, its not possible or affordable. The Royal Society in the UK came to the same conclusion for the UK. This is why they proposed excavating 100s of caverns, sealing them, and filling them with hydrogen, which, they noted, would have to be kept stored for decades.
I don’t know whether they really believed this was feasible or if it was maybe a ‘Yes Minister’ tactic to show the absurdity for what it is.
To make a constructive and convincing case you need to take a particular case – take Germany or the UK. Then just list what you expect to see in the way of generation for a cold, calm evening in December or January, when the dream has been realized, and when there has been a wind calm for a week over North Western Europe. Peak demand in the UK is about 47GW, will be more like 60GW when heat pumps and EVs reach their targets. So just tell us, where is the power going to come from? Germany is apparently 80GW. Same.
Wind
Gas
Nuclear
Other (specify).
I do not see how you get by, in the 60GW scenario, with less than 60GW of gas + nuclear. And even that is probably not enough to be safe. Wind, which the UK is planning to ramp up to 90GW, will have been delivering under 10GW for ten days. Any batteries will be long exhausted. Solar in winter is negligible. Where is it going to come from?
Interconnect? No way, Europe will be in the same boat. And if you say gas, then explain why in that case you need the wind. Yes, I know, because the wind is free….
Batteries may have a small role in running a grid, but they are no solution to real world intermittency.
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/large-scale-electricity-storage/Large-scale-electricity-storage-report.pdf
Just read it!
“Just read it!”
I have read it. The main conclusions section starts out:
“In 2050 Great Britain’s demand for electricity could be met by wind and solar energy supported by large-scale storage. “
Of course you’ll tell me that the fools think they can do it with hydrogen. This is very WUWT; the fools suddenly become very wise when they think batteries would be too expensive.
The report is published in 2021, but seems to use 2019 data. Almost all the huge development of grid scale batteries has happened since 2019, driven by rapidly dropping costs.
Is that more stupid than someone who believes in cheap renewable power even when the lefty loon organization he used to work for says different
https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/news/2025/july/2024-25-gencost-final-report
Even they report Black coal is currently the cheapest energy for generation with solar on par with gas because they can’t hide current costs. So then to make a better story they report on a 2030 cost where solar with firming suddenly drops to the cheapest and that is there “summary”.
Care to place a bet that the idiots at CSIRO are wrong and in 2030 solar with “firming” is still is not the cheapest?
And there are those mythical rapidly dropping costs again.
I guess Nick beleives that if he repeats it enough, it will magically come true.
There are m;any things that CAN be done. The question is, at what cost.
How many lives are you willing to ruin in order to acheive your green fantasies?
The Royal Society later said that there was a “weakness” in their report because they used only one year of electricity demand (2018) and repeated that for the next 32 years.
“Obviously turning everything over to electricity is going to require far more electricity production than in 2018”.
Based on delta time stamps, 54 minutes, it is highly improbable that you read the entire 100 page report.
Your quote is from Pg. 5, Executive Summary, Major Conclusions, first bullet. Note Pg. 5 is preceded by cover sheet and table of contents.
The report is very heavy into hydrogen, but not exclusively. It also defines the need for tens of TWh of storage to handle the vagaries of weather:
“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. “
That does seem to counter your point.
So tell me, its 5pm in early January 2035 in the UK. Demand has hit 60GW. There is 90GW of wind installed which is delivering 5GW tonight. Its day 6 of a prolonged calm, caused by the usual blocking winter high pressure system to the southwest. There is no solar output from the 35GW installed, it being both dark and winter. Its very cold, because of the clear skies associated with the high. Almost all the nuclear has reached end of life, the gas systems which currently deliver about 30GW have also reached end of life. Europe is in much the same situation as the high covers most of North West Europe, so there is minimal interconnect.
Where is the 60GW coming from? Its a simple enough question, why can’t you or won’t you tell?
You think its going to come from batteries? How many? At what cost?
Somehow you need either to supply the country with power which neither your wind nor solar are doing, and you have needed to supply it for 6 days now, and there are another 4 of the same coming.
If you have no answer, physics is going to give you one. Its a nation wide blackout. For a lot longer than 10 days, unless your answer provided spinning reserve, and a lot of it.
I think the Royal Society’s idea of hydrogen is ludicrous, because there is no source, and no proven way of storing it on the scale and timescales required. Or using it, for that matter. It is so ludicrous that I have wondered if its ‘crazy like a fox’. They posed an apparently simple question, how do you get through a weather spell like the above, in a low wind season like the ones they mention, using intermittent generation technology?
Their answer may possibly have been written to bring home to the fanatics ruling UK energy policy just how mad their policies are. If this is the best answer, are you sure you want to ask that question?
Hydrogen seems to be sinking without trace now, but nothing has come along to replace it. And the important part of their paper is the sheer scale of what weather dependence means in terms of storage requirements. That you have not addressed at all.
I don’t believe you could get enough batteries to power the UK for 10 days, at any price. If you could, you couldn’t afford them. If you could afford and get them, you couldn’t operate them safely. This is like Nongqawuse and the Xhosa cattle slaughtering. Its a completely mad idea.
“And no, subsidies are only a minor factor.”
Then they can be dropped, right? Let’s see what happens when Trump stops all green subsidies.
Funny how the green zealots fight tooth and nail for those subsidies, even though they claim to not need them.
I live in a nice blue collar (mostly) neighborhood in central Wokeachusetts. About half of the homes now have solar on their roofs. I’m sure that not one would have installed solar without massive subsidies and tax breaks. Many seem to me to not be properly installed. Some have big trees next to the house shading many of the panels. Few of the homes face south. I know the claim that solar on west or east facing roofs is fine, but I think it must be inferior to south facing roofs. But the salesmen are very pushy. The come knocking on my door every summer- mostly college students on summer break. In every case, I ask for their business card. They never have one. Several have said, “we don’t have business cards because paper has a carbon footprint”.
even though they claim to not need them.
Didn’t we just see this play out with PBS?
Except that batteries are only necessary because they are a supposed answer to back-up weather dependent and unreliable wind and solar. Fossil fuel backup would be far less expensive and far more reliable. Also consider that the goal is to rid ourselves of fossil fuels. So, given that goal, please explain how you plan to build wind turbines, solar panels and batteries without using fossil fuels give that none can produce sufficient energy to power the machinery used in their production starting with the use of a lot of very heavy fossil fuel powered machinery needed to extract the enormous amounts of minerals needed.
Imagine trying to make a production run of solar panels or WTG blades with the grid batteries depleted, the wind still, and no sunlight.
Nick,
Curious questions…
What is the power source recharging them? (Dedicated renewable generation or grid)
And (if grid)
How many additional MWhs demand do those batteries place on the grid when they need recharging?
And here comes Nick with his half-truths and complete distortions. Right on schedule.
With solar you only need batteries a few hours a day? Really? 20 hours is just a “few hours a day”? And how do you plan to charge those batteries in 4 hours so that they can provide 20 hours of power.
Oh, and that’s assuming there wasn’t a single cloud over the solar panels during those 4 hours.
While it may be true that batteries are dropping in price, that drop is nearly imperceptible.
As for subsidies being minor, that is in the eye of the beholder. Remember this is the guy who a paragraph earlier declared that batteries are only needed for “a few hours a day”.
As usual, Nick also ignores the mandates. People are switching to solar generation, not because it is cheap, but because the government will put you in jail if you don’t.
They are buying batteries, not because they make sense, but because they need something to cover the many times when wind and solar are producing nothing.
Nick and his tired lies. Nothing if not consistent.
MW, not MWh.
74MW delivered in 2024 versus the 985 MW rated capacity?
The question is, why double the capacity with so much not used?
Hafta laugh when folks say that technology always becomes cheaper. If that was true, we would all have $50 mobiles/cellphones/handys, and be driving $500 cars. It’s an absurd statement.
Grid scale electrical battery storage is a fools goal today. Install it, test it for a year, then let me know it’s ready.
And pay for it with money taken from ONLY those who support such stupidity.
One of these things is not like the others, and yet is added into the total as tho ’twere.
August 20, 2025
U.S. developers report half of new electric generating capacity will come from solar
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964
“U.S. developers report half of new electric generating capacity will come from solar”
Prediction based on ?
+ Which U.S. developers report something else
+ Half of whose new electric generating capacity?
I do not have a counterargument number, just I’ve looked at the same “Primary Source by Year” line charts since I was a kid. Same sh–, fossils 75%, nuke and hydro flat around 10% each, and renewables….
If it is half of the new generating capacity but operates at 20% efficiency, is still 50% of the generated electricity?
(I know the answer)
EIA MW capacity addition data are horseshit. MWh (on demand) is the appropriate metric for evaluating total electric power system operations and economics. Additionally, batteries do not supply electric energy; they only store and release energy supplied by other energy generation resources. The short lifetimes and annual deterioration percentages of solar and batteries have to be considered in any system studies and economic analyses.
As subsidies and mandates are withdrawn we will see how electric generation and transmission systems develop in rational marketplaces.
We have already seen…
The key word is capacity. That measures how much power solar can produce when conditions are perfect.
What other people refer to as faceplate power.
The reality is that to compare power delivered between solar and fossil fuel, you have to divide solar by a factor of at least 5 to 10.
Speaking of resources there are a number of global considerations-
Australia’s ‘critical’ offering to the US
Lefties don’t do tradeoffs but they do like their UN gangsters and overlooking their precious CO2 emissions when it suits.
My mental calculations come up with 70 tons for 100kWh battery which weighs about 0.7 tons. So that leaves about 69 tons of waste per BEV.
I’m old enough to remember coal and oil shale bings in central Scotland, now either landscaped or removed. I don’t suppose there are any plans where these raw materials are being mined to do anything with the waste but leave very large piles of barren waste. We’ve just swapped one dirty and land despoiling technology for another and called it progress.
Actually the resource extraction (Congo, Indonesia) are 100 times worse than the open pit coal excavations.
Um, there are one or two pretty important fundamentals that have to be looked at as well, I’m afraid.
Take copper . . . and there are many more metal and mineral examples.
The amount of copper required to achieve NetZero2050 worldwide – one or a few countries stupidly attempting to do it on their own is pretty much pointless unless ALL countries do it, after all – this to build the first generation of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries for EVs, increase grid sizes by 3-fold, and provide 28 days of grid-scale battery storage, would be 6.1 BILLION tonnes (Bt). And at current rates of global production, which is about 25 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa), that would take 244 years . . . which sort of puts things into perspective, I reckon. (Figures from Dr Simon Michaux, an Australian Geologist, Mining Engineer, Metallurgical Engineer, and Physicist, of the Finland Geological Survey.)
But, quick as a flash, an ignorant and utterly stupid politician would inevitably say, “just build more mines” . . . wouldn’t he!!
But there’s a problem – current global copper Reserves are 880 million tonnes (Mt). And if mining rates are to be increased to allow 6.1Bt to be produced between now and 2050, which means current global rates of production of 25Mtpa would have to be increased to a rate of 244Mtpa – and this would need to happen right now overnight by tomorrow morning – those Reserves would be depleted in . . . less than 4 years.
And then there’s another rather inconvenient mining fundamental:
From the discovery of a mineral Resource (a mineralised deposit, which takes years of painstaking geological exploration work in itself), to the establishment of an operational producing mine, is a 15 year exercise AT BEST.
It is therefore perfectly rational to say . . . it ain’t going to happen.
And what is unfortunately as plain as bloody daylight is that the feasibility of the NetZero2050 concept has not even been subjected to a scoping-level study level of evaluation, by any government, as very simply demonstrated above.
A new huge copper deposit has just been announced here in the US-on Native ground, possibly sacred ground, depending on who says what. They;re trying to force the tribe off that part of the Rez so I rather think that even15 yrs is not going to be near enough time. The tribes have wised up to being pushed around-note that the Osage tribe won a huge lawsuit against a windfarm owned by Enel which must remove 84 turbines and restore the land, in Oklahoma I think. The company had pretty much bulled their way in-somehow- and just raped the land…so we’ll see.about a new copper mine.
In May 2024 the University of Michigan published a report “Copper can’t be mined fast enough to electrify the US”
“Copper cannot be mined quickly enough to keep up with current US policy guidelines to transition the country’s electric and vehicle infrastructure to renewable energy”
The report was used as a basis for a paper by the International Energy Forum ‘Copper Mining and Vehicle Electrification’ also May 2024.
Imagine for a moment a sane world; one where an anti-human, anti-life, and anti-freedom ideology hadn’t come along and taken over the world. Fossil fuels would still be hailed as a boon, not a bane to mankind. All of humanity would be wealthier, even those in poor countries. All energy would be far cheaper and more reliable. Industries would prosper everywhere, and actual pollution would be less. The countryside would not be blighted with massive environmentally destructive installations. And, there would certainly be no need for backup power of any type, including batteries. These batteries are a necessity only because of a false, evil ideology, and yes, they are a huge cost.
But sanity is returning. All of this money being dumped into “renewables”, required grid upgrades, and backup systems including these mega batteries will eventually become stranded costs. And then, I suppose, the lawyers will get rich from all the lawsuits.
Missing from the math is the number of times the battery can charge/discharge over its life. Not that it makes the battery any more attractive but 700 000/n would give a better representation of tonnes per GWh.
We are not progressing nor digressing. We are on a side track with an unmovable buffer not far ahead.
These batteries are famously single use, after all. Great stuff, guys, good propaganda. Dr. Schernikau seems like a first rate contrarian economist.
“These batteries are famously single use,”
Unable to find where Dr. Schernikau wrote that.
So not prepared to challenge any point in the article, just the usual Ad Hominem?
This Virginian enjoys learning more about how things work in Australia, but please spell out some of the acronyms for us. 🙂
Always make sure to use Western Australia instead of WA, and to add an A in front of dollar amounts. But should have explained that most of the population in Western Australia lives in the lower south-west corner, which is powered by the SWIS grid. The rest of Western Australia, mostly up north, has a number of small isolated power grids.
Lets work out how much it would cost to backup wind/solar with batteries at grid scale, using the UK as an example.
Last time I checked, it would cost ~$300,000/MWh, so x1,000 for $300,000,000/GWh.
The best estimates I’ve seen is that the UK would need 25TWh of storage for an average year, so $300,000,000 x1,000 again for $300,000,000,000/TWh x 25 = $7,500,000,000,000, aka SEVEN AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS, or slightly over double the annual GDP.
It gets worse, if they want to protect against a rare multi-year low-wind event, which happened in 2008-10, they’ll need more like 70TWh, so not far off 3x an average year and more like 6 times GDP.
Clearly this is so far outside the realms of affordable that it’s absurd, and that’s before we even start to factor in the move towards EVs, heat pumps etc.
Fortunately it’s also 10-30 times global annual battery production, so it can’t happen anyway.
But, but, but, wait until the next electrochemical breakthrough!
/s
That mythical solution will never occur. There are a fixed number of known elements (periodic table) and most of those are useless for electrochemical electricity outputs.
The reality:
Chemical reactions vary significantly with temperature.
Charge and discharge cycles degrade the anodes and/or cathodes reducing available capacity.
Self-discharge is a real phenomenon,. Not only do you need to recharge the battery, you have to replace the self-discharge losses, something that always seems missing in the calculations.
Then there is the voltage turn-on delay phenomenon. No battery or cell (a battery is an array of cells) can output instantaneously (it is a chemical reaction that creates ions that ultimately become electrons in the output wires) and the voltage droops. Does not matter what the cell chemistry is, all of them exhibit this phenomenon. And it gets worse with age, temperature, use cycles.
Unless there is a weather event damaging the WTG or SV system, the battery will wear out first.
And remember… these batteries deteriorate at a rate of 3-7 % p.a. and must be replaced every ~10-13 years!
The voltage turn-on delay degradation (use and/or internal passivation) will shorten that by as much as 50%.
It will be interesting to see the new Washington state hybrid ferries performance with recharging every hour or so.
the Wenatchee has been converted, with diesel generators on board to charge. The shore power system is still in design.
This article was just posted on Komo news.
https://komonews.com/news/local/washington-state-ferries-wsf-washington-state-hybrid-electric-bainbridge-island-seattle-colman-dock-john-vezina-deputy-director-inspection-eagle-harbor
Hmmm…. Maybe they should add solar sails???
Or wind turbines…😎
Reminds me of an old Goofy cartoon.
In a sailboat. No wind. Turns on a fan to fill the sails. Races across the water.
How many GWh of energy are required to build a 1 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system? How many GWh can a 1 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system cycle, (store then discharge,) over its service life?
A 1 GWh battery system will be able to do a minimum of 500 GWh (store then discharge) and depending on too many unknowns, could be more.
Except, the battery does not generate any energy to offset it’s production energy.
How does the “only a few hours” change in the winter months when power from renewables drop considerably, replaced by 2 oil, propane and NG?