Based on current deployment rates, it is likely that solar will surpass wind as the third-largest source of electricity. And solar may soon topple coal in the number two spot.
Looking ahead, through July 2028, FERC expects no new coal capacity to come online based on its “high probability additions” forecast. Meanwhile 63 coal plants are expected to be retired, subtracting 25 GW from the 198 GW total, and landing at about 173 GW of coal capacity by 2028. Meanwhile, FERC forecasts 92.6 GW of “high probability additions” solar will come online through July 2028.
Batteries
Batteries are nice, but they’re insanely expensive at this scale and ruin the entire point of helping the environment. Carbon emissions from huge batteries are unbelievable.
What batteries exactly? The capacity required is huge.
They can be distributed though. I Install solar, most of the systems we install with batteries end up selling back a significant portion of their charge to the grid (iirc our system wide average is 40% nightly resale)
So not only is each house with a battery not using grid power at night, its powering almost half of an equivalently sized house.
Granted, batteries are still on the expensive side, so these systems aren’t coming enough ( I think we’re at ~10% of our systems have a battery)
A competent government that believes in basic science, would give tax breaks to encourage this.
Sure, but even then we don’t have a solution today. It’s all in the fuzzy future.
Yeah, that’s a step in correct direction, but can you guarantee that everybody can be powered 24/7 through renewables/batteries, specially during winter? Unless that’s the case you still need a shit-ton of non-renewable energy that’s coming either from fossil fuels or nuclear. And if you want to avoid (co2) emissions, then you need nuclear to cover everybody, and if you have nuclear then it has to run 100% 24/7. OTOH if you don’t have nuclear, you’ll emit all sort or crap during those periods. And so on. Also, it’s not just that batteries are sort of expensive, they are big. Also you are talking houses, but masses live in apartments where placing solar panels or batteries isn’t possible (at least in quantity).
No one will ever have the idea of simply having more batteries right? It’s all in capacity not quantity, because quantity would be to easy right? Got it.
Where do you have TWhs of batteries? As you said, both quantity and capacity matters, when lower capacity you need bigger battery which is harder to put somewhere.
Also not renewable, are incredibly environmentally destructive, and have short lifetimes - kinda the opposite of what the push for “renewables” is supposed to be about lol.
Are you talking about batteries?
Yes.
I think you are wrong then. First, even Li-ion batteries are recyclable to a huge amount, usually the problem is that different manufacturers pack them differently without any blueprint and then it’s much harder to recycle them. Then there are a ton of different chemistries with ones really harmless (i.e. using sodium instead of lithium) but they come with less energy density. Which isn’t that important when it comes to energy storage for the network purpose but it’s important when it comes to cars and portable electronic devices. Also different chemistries have different lifetime, i.e. LFP batteries have better durability and are less fire prone than the standard li-ion.
Being “recyclable” doesn’t mean that they get recycled, because it’s often not economically feasible - like with solar panels. Are there lots and lots of recyclable materials in them? Absolutely. Does it cost more to extract them out than it does to buy a new one? Absolutely.
Most batteries, especially those used for home batteries, will never be recycled. They’ll end up in landfill, leaching toxic chemicals into the earth.
Also the materials used to make new batteries are not renewable. There are finite resources of them. They require mining. Mining equipment and trucks aren’t running on solar or batteries. As more and more are needed, more and more mining is needed.
The entire “renewables” push is based around endlessly manufacturing non recyclable things that end in landfill, using non-renewable materials, creating large amounts of toxic emissions - but the ones pushing it don’t care because the emissions happen somewhere else by someone else so they can claim to be carbon neutral.
You have some valid points. Yes, economical aspect is crap, countries should push laws demanding that producers guarantee recycling and/or state clear lifecycle of the battery (actually it should be applied to all products). Even still, there are companies that do recycle batteries for profit, so it’s not that absurd. But you miss the whole other aspect with different chemistries, many even harmless to the environment. You are focused only on current li-ion it seems which are not very network storage friendly anyway.
I’m focused on current battery tech because that’s what we have. There is no grid storage level battery tech yet - entire countries are basing their economic livelihood on the promise that there will be soon. It’s looking like a bad bet. We still can’t make phones that last a week.