By P Gosselin
An article at the European Institute for Climate & Energy (EIKE) website here takes a critical look at whether battery parks would be feasible to fully secure Germany’s weather-dependent power generation from wind and solar.
Storing electric power to last Germany 10 days would require a 60 million-tonne battery. Image generated by Grok AI.
Germany currently has a battery capacity of approximately 26 gigawatt-hours (GWh), the majority of which (approx. 20 GWh) consists of private home storage systems.
Only large-scale storage systems (approx. 4.3 GWh) are considered truly “grid-serving.” Currently, these could cover only about 5% of summer electricity demand for 1.5 hours.
The “Germany battery”: What would be required?
Energy expert Staffan Reveman presented a plausibility calculation for making Germany self-sufficient (without fossil fuel plants or imports). The results are sobering.
10 hour buffer
To achieve just 10 hours of buffer, a capacity of 600 GWh would be required – 24 times the current inventory and representing a material weight of approx. 3 million tonnes.
10 days of buffer
To bridge a ten-day “Dunkelflaute” (dark doldrums) in winter with a 50 GW load, 12,000 GWh would be needed. This is 470 times the current total capacity and 2,800 times the current large-scale storage. Such a battery would weigh 60 million tons. A modern factory (like CATL in Thuringia) would theoretically need 857 years to produce this amount.
Constant replacement
A central drawback is the limited durability of batteries (approx. 10–15 years). To operate a system of 12,000 GWh permanently, batteries would need to be replaced conbtinuusly. Reveman calculates that approximately 57 mega-factories would need to produce continuously just to maintain this inventory.
Astronomical cost
A simulation for the Traunstein district showed that self-sufficient supply via wind, solar, and batteries would increase wholesale electricity costs from 6 cents to 217 cents per kwh.
Moreover, a 240-hour battery (12,000 GWh) would require an area of approx. 600 square kilometers (roughly two-thirds the size of Berlin).
Conclusion
The EIKE author concludes that batteries alone cannot guarantee a secure power supply. Even under massive expansion scenarios for 2030, gaps remain (especially in winter) that would strictly require a flexible power plant reserve (e.g., gas-fired plants) or imports.
Furthermore, lack of grid stability (missing rotating mass) is cited as a significant technical hurdle.
Since another Dunkelflaute can conceivably occur within days of the end of the last Dunkelflaute, not only would 12,000GWh of battery be needed but also 12,000GWh of dedicated capacity to recharge the battery within hours. In the case of Solar 4 hours of dedicated charging from 4,000GW of dedicated capacity
Precisely. There is no guarantee that 12 TWh would be adequate to cover the initial wind no-show, Dunkelflaute, plus the critical battery recharging during the period of fickle return of the breezes
This was my comment under “A Windy Day!”
“Over the past 12 months in the UK, wind generation was 10.29GW, this from an installed capacity of 35.51GW. So these wind generation facilities operated at a capacity factor – efficiency – of 28.98%.
And generation from solar facilities was 2.03GW from an installed capacity of 22.13GW – they operated at an efficiency of 9.17%.
So wind and solar facilities together generated 12.32GW from a combined installed capacity of 57.64GW, operating at a joint efficiency of 21.37%.
If wind and solar combined installed capacity is increased 3-fold, taking it to 173GW, 12 month generation at a capacity factor of 21.37% will be . . . 37GW.
But when there’s no wind and no sun – dunkelflaute conditions, which can last for more than a week – these now 173GW of installed wind and solar facilities will generate . . . PRECISELY NOTHING.
What the total idiot that is Miliband will say, with a ridiculously smug look on his face, is, “but we’ll have batteries.” He believes we’re all completely stupid, you see.
And an LFP battery set capable of providing 37GW for a period of 7 days – a capacity of 6,216GWh – would cost £620 BILLION and weigh 65 MILLION tonnes, which is the equivalent of 1,000 Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers.
So this is the level of utter stupidity we’re actually having to deal with.”
But one could go rather further in identifying the utter engineering ignorance and stupidity behind the thinking of grid-scale battery storage . . . by looking at the massive amount of mining required to produce the quantity of metals and minerals necessary to construct 65 million tonnes of LFP battery hardware.
Indicative numbers would be – lithium: 190,000 tonnes (t); iron: 22 million tonnes (Mt); phosphorous: 1.9Mt; copper: 4.4Mt; aluminium: 3.1Mt; graphite: 7.5Mt.
And using average mining grades and recoveries for each, the amount of ore required to produce that amount of metal and mineral (graphite) would be in the order of 1 BILLION tonnes.
But this would exclude the amount of waste stripping that would be required to expose and ready the ores for mining, and the amount of quarrying required for limestone and aggregate to produce concrete foundations.
Taking these into account, you’re looking at a requirement of comfortably several billions of tonnes of rock and overburden to be excavated.
And here’s the thing: despite some efforts to electrify mining fleets – an exercise not much more than very expensive futile virtue-signalling – open pit mining operations are realistically conducted by diesel powered equipment.
So, what are we to do? Are we expected to forgive the pathetic hypocrisy of people promoting grid-scale battery storage . . . because this arises due to a complete absence of engineering competence?!!
Then 70% of ALL Lithium is processed and refined in China such that the lithium ore needs to be shipped, from the mine, to China for processing.
Also 80% of ALL Li-Ion batteries are manufactured in China so the processed refined Lithium, after being transformed into Batteries, needs to be shipped out and back to the countries where those afore mentioned Mines are located for use as unpredictable bombs.
Yeah, and Miliband’s battery would require 80% of global annual lithium production . . . that not even the Chinese would be able to supply!!
So what Miliband will think is, because he’s so important and so clever, and because he’s setting such a wonderfully self-beautifying example for the world to follow . . . he can simply demand the world hands over the lithium he needs!!
Being awfully polite . . . THE MAN IS A COMPLETE IDIOT.
He’s either an incompetently ignorant buffoon or is being handsomely rewarded to contribute to the destruction of Western Civilization which would make him a treacherous ly evil buffoon.
Average duration of BESS in Britain is currently just under 2 hours. NESO (National Energy System Operator) 2030 storage plan is for a total of 147.39 GWh, , around 3-4 hours
The point, though, is the idiot that Miliband broadcasts to the generally scientific and engineering illiterate public of the UK that the straightforward plan to provide battery storage as the obvious and perfect backup for renewable generation – which is intermittent, unreliable, asynchronous, without inertia, fantastically expensive, pathetically inefficient, and non-dispatchable – as THE SOLUTION, when it is . . . DEFINITELY nothing of the sort.
Absolutely agree. I was just pointing out how little storage is included in current plans.
A serious issue with the battery bank is the probability of burning out. The probability of any one cell self-immolating while charging or discharging is quite low. However, stacking the billions necessary into a large enough storage area to hold the necessary KWH of energy makes the probability of burning up to be 1.0. Spreading them out would lessen the damage but increase the land area and copper requirements.
Of course one could build Fire Brick walls between the units lessening the possibility of self immolation chain reactions. This would require even more space between the units to accommodate the walls and additional workspace requirements.
Also the battery would have to be kept at full charge at all times to be available for this demand.
It cannot be used for other circumstances like daily price arbitrage.
Or for absorbing surpluses. Other batteries would be needed for those tasks.
In his book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds”, Charles Mackay describes a number of mass delusions that would seem incredible if not well documented. The common thread is that people are not exorcized of their insanity until they hit bottom and have no choice but accepting they were wrong.
The only delusion that battery storage proponents have is that by building and instituting large electrical storage systems, is somehow the only way to cause the earth to cool.
That’s it. There are no other valid reason to even consider such nonsense. Of course, carbon free electrical generation is available now with nuclear, no batteries required. But they refuse to use it.
Of course. Nuclear supplies energy 24/7/365 for 98% of the time (2 weeks every 2 years refueling outage) so allowing for Modern Civilization to continue. It isn’t CO2 they’re concerned with, it’s the furtherance of technological society they want to curtail and eliminating reliable energy is their means to an end.
The ‘they’ we talk about are globalists born before 1950. Human frailty is solving that problem. Soon we find out, what do the globalist elite class’s kids think of what their parents have been up to while AI was writing their papers at Yale? Maybe they only looked forward to Davos for hot cocoa or skiing.
Unfortunately THOSE offspring of THEY that utilized AI to write their papers will also need to ask AI what they should think about what their parents had been up to as THOSE-THEY JRs never learned to Think at all.
I see your answer is sarcastic but probably correct.
The future belongs to programmers in Silicon Valley and Beijing.
Hopefully their sense of humor involves clever irony.
I also tried to make use of THEIR preferred pronouns
They/Them/Their
They couldn’t possibly care less about whether or not the Earth cools. They only care about de-industrializing the West and democratic governments. They want control. The way they propose to do that is though poverty and demoralization of the populace, amongst other methods.
That is far-fetched. It only makes sense if some non-western, non-democratic government wants it very badly and has a very attractive reward to offer.
What they care about is staying in power. There are enough people who believe with all their heart that net zero is possible, achievable, and easily affordable to keep voting for it.
I have a large circle of acquaintances but I can count on my fingers the number who express any scepticism about net zero. Most aren’t even neutral; they are strongly in favour of Better Stuff for Free™.
“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” (I am aware of the irony here!)
I’m basing this on the stated goals of those in the globalist union. They’ve made no bones about what they intend to do.
Winter Dunkelflaute gets the headlines, but it is misleading and NOT the biggest challenge, though it is easier to explain..
Surprisingly, the real challenge for a battery energy storage system would be the Summer months.
Wind turbine capacity factor is much lower than the annual average from April to early October, falling below 10% for much of July and August. There would be almost continuous demand on the storage system throughout this period with only relatively short periods of excess capacity to recharge the storage system. Therefore, there just isn’t enough wind to recharge the system and it would be progressively drained through the Summer, approaching minimum safety margin in late September.
For Ireland, I have created a model that calculates the renewable generation capacity and ESS requirement for 100% replacement of fossil fuels to be about 15% of annual demand, i.e., 54 days or 1,300 hours. (31 TWh annual demand in 2022 at 15% = 4.5 TWh)
BESS to date requires about 40 m2/MWh.
4.5TWh storage for Ireland would therefore require about 180 sq km of land. This is approximately 150% of the area of Dublin City and equal to the total urban area of the cities of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
Scale that up to Germany and other larger European countries with higher energy demands!
“Even under massive expansion scenarios for 2030, gaps remain (especially in winter) that would strictly require a flexible power plant reserve (e.g., gas-fired plants) or imports.”
Whether imported or not, they’re admitting that fossil fuels or nuclear energy are needed. Even if you could somehow, theoretically build all of the battery storage necessary, at what cost would that be? And I don’t mean how many Euro, but what cost to the environment? To wasted human capital building, installing, and maintaining the monstrosity? And for what, a rounding error of difference in CO2 concentrations?
The best solution for Germany now would be to restart all it’s coal, nuclear, and gas power stations, and use those exclusively for dispatchable baseload power. The wind and solar that has already been installed should be allowed to live out its lifespan, but it should be disconnected from the grid entirely and instead used for power-to-gas generation. That gas would simply be “extra.” It can be used for industry, for chemical feedstock, and to top off gas storage reserves.
Because the decommissioning processes have gone too far, only three of the 22 power reactors Germany shut down in the last two decades might be recovered. And it’s not completely certain even those three remain in good enough shape to allow a restart.
Restoring Germany’s nuclear power sector to what it was at the beginning of the 2000’s will require two to three decades of diligent effort to achieve. And at a capital cost which is possibly three times what the shuttered nuclear capacity originally cost.
It isn’t going to happen. The Germans have made a firm and conscious decision to de-industrialize, and that decision isn’t easily reversed.
Some really smart German kids who picked Nuclear Engineering as a college curriculum would love to make it happen.
And I wonder how long will those 10 days of battery backup last?
How much material would be required to build such a system, both in terms of the battery itself and all of the supporting infrastructure, even if it were distributed across the country?
How long would it take to build, install and test the system?
How long would it take to recharge, would a second backup system be required to cover the recharge period of the primary backup?
Are the nuclear reactors already present in Germany fully decommissioned or are they in a position to be recommissioned?
The last three were shut in April 2023. Perhaps the land and the connections to the grid are still there. With the large anti-nuke crowd, it is unlikely anything can or will be done.
As I said above, because the decommissioning processes have gone too far, only three of the 22 power reactors Germany shut down in the last two decades might be recovered. And it’s not completely certain even those three remain in good enough shape to allow for their restart.
That same 12000GWH would required some gas or oil tanks on a piece of land the size of a football pitch.
A better solution …
From Copilot AI …
“A turbine backup system is typically a gas turbine—either an aeroderivative unit (derived from aircraft engines) or a heavy‑duty industrial turbine—coupled to an electrical generator.
Municipalities use them because they can deliver tens to hundreds of megawatts within minutes, something diesel fleets struggle to match.
GE Vernova specifically markets aeroderivative turbines like the LM2500XPRESS, LM6000VELOX, and TM2500 to municipalities for “fast‑response, easy‑installation” backup and flexible power needs.”
The objective should never be to completely eliminate all CO2 release into the atmosphere but to reduce CO2 release so that it amounts to nothing more than a rounding error. That’s how serious engineers and utilities do it. Kind of like those space-saver spare tires that are standard in modern cars.
CO2 is the stuff the Biosphere NEEDS to thrive. Why try and starve it any? All (99.9%) Terrestrial life is Carbon Based and CO2 is the FIRST LINK in the food chain
You assume that is even possible. As long as the system relies on wind and solar, it isn’t. Not without such massive over building that there will be no room left for people.
It is possible. It’s called Nuclear Generation. 98% reliable 2% refueling outage.
So reliable that backup generators ARE never needed
I was wondering why they were not releasing any of their wind power and sunshine reserves.
So, you’re saying the only obstacles are taxpayer money and grid failure. Sounds exactly like a green light to the people in charge.
I totally agree that battery storage today is not feasible. Why do the energy strategists not think of these contingencies. Please show your assumptions and calculations when it is convenient.
Here is a Win-Win. 🙂 Consider Germany a lost cause so instead of wasting money to try to recover, why not just shut the place down? Including Germany, many places have falling birthrates and for obvious reasons Russia and Ukraine will be in need of new citizens. Move all the people to other places, move any serviceable equipment and so on. Then shut the place down. The part in Germany of the North European Plain could revert to its natural state. Plants and animals would proliferate and birds, bats, and rodents would find the abandoned structures great new homes.
The alternative – keeping the place going – will be a great waste of talent and wealth. 🙂
But you don’t understand, there are miracle batteries being worked on in various labs that nobody has ever heard of, that will solve all these problems.
All we have to do is believe, and provide funds.
Just clap your hands and repeat…
“I do believe in Climate Change”
“I do believe in Climate Change”
“I do believe in Climate Change”
The Royal Society in the UK made the same point – less dramatically, but clearly enough, and dismissed batteries as a way of making wind and solar work. Instead they proposed what seemed to them a more reasonable cost effective and practical solution. That was to excavate caverns, to seal them, and fill them with hydrogen. Sometimes the storage would have to be for a decade of so to cope with calm years. There were supposed to be 900 of these caverns.
Scale of the caverns (typical assumptions in the modelling)
This mad proposal seemed more reasonable to them than the battery alternative. Both seem about equally insane, the difficulty with the hydrogen proposal is not just wher to store it, but where you get the stuff in the first place.
This whole thing is indeed mass madness on the part of the supposed elite. First the idea that there is a climate crisis caused by CO2 emissions. But then the even madder idea that doing this kind of thing is any sort of rational response to it. Our political elites have gone barking mad.
What does it cost to store a MWh until you need it?
Coal: $2. Battery: $200.
That’s a VERY cheap battery.
A typical 5kWh battery, (48V nominal), is around $2000 (Oz dollar, cost to the installer). It would take 200 of these to make a MWh.
. . . not to mention that by the time Germany got around to installing the increment of 30 to 40 million tonnes of battery capacity, the first 0-10 million tonnes will have been consumed by fire.
Spain, “Yeah, let’s just ignore that lack of spinning mass stability part of solar and batteries. What could go wrong?”
Wind and solar can’t support a modern society, everybody knows that. We need to stop allowing people to lie to us. Lying is not okay.
Actually, 1.5 hour battery backup is allowing to use solar + nuclear combination. Without battery, only solar + natural gas is viable, able power up, down in matter of seconds.
With 1.5 hour battery backup, it is possible to ramp up, down power of nuclear plant which according Google is able to increase/decrease power with rate 10% in 5 minutes.
And sodium ion batteries are real and on the market. Using materials like Aluminum, most abundant metal on Earth, Carbon and Chlorine, which is abundant in seas. There is no problem with millions tones of those materials.
Is there even 60 million tons of the needed material to build such a stupid thing.
Kudos to the author for not undercutting the post with the caveat: “barring a technological breakthrough.” All too often a post or article will absolutely drive a stake through the heart of “salvation by battery”, only to render all of it pointless by throwing in those four horrible words. “Renewable” advocates will remember only that all we need is a technological breakthrough in batteries, and everything will be ducky. Such a breakthrough is physically impossible. I know, I know; everyone, whether technically challenged or savvy, regards such a statement as “closed-minded.” After all, they might say, look at how a series of technological breakthroughs allowed us to land on the Moon. To which I reply, “Don’t hold your breath waiting for the technological breakthrough that will allow you to go to the Moon by jumping.”
Batteries are as good at storing electricity as sieves are at storing liquid.
Even thinking about how to store electricicty is futile and not worth the attention.
Again electricity is a service where gas and oil are goods. Major difference from economic but above all practicial viewpoint.
Having solar and battery for 4 years I have to concur. My whole household works on 23kWh battery, which is able to provide around 20kW peak power.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries are curently at 6000-10000 cycles, that means 16 to 27 years of theoretical cycle life. With shelf life around 15 years. I have day and half back up, possibility charge electric car from solar during night.
Yesterday my house solar provided 37kWh. 12 for my house consumption, 10 for house heating by AC and 15 charging my battery back after one cloudy day.
Some years ago I studied ERCOT and concluded that with optimal overbuilding the required storage would be only about three days’ worth for a wind-only system. So in response to your post I asked Grok what the storage would be for an optimal mix of wind and solar. Here is its response:
I went back and double-checked in light of that seemingly wrong system cost, and it turns out that Grok assumed that most of the storage would be hydrogen, not batteries.
Here’s the link to Grok: https://x.com/i/grok/share/b4eb86d483a64448b5f8efaf9f233f8a