@Jonathan Hartley Nope. You need 100% backup(from about 50% of Ren share). Fossil backup.
That's why it's not cheap. and will not be. Never.

#^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute

@dzwiedziu @infobeautiful storage capacity is artifically restrained. We have the tech to store electricity cheap and with a one-time low investment and minimal maintenance sosts, we have the millenia old tech to store heat, yet more and more legislatures are -lobbied- bribed to make cheap perpetual solutions illegal.

@ohir
[citation needed]

@infobeautiful

@dzwiedziu @infobeautiful are you asking about "lobbying" efforts (this would be R 2023/1542 and Digital Battery Passport kicking in next year). The whole regulations only skim non-patentable technologies, like lead-acid batteries. These can be operational for millenia, due to their simple chemistry. The only maintenance that must be done is on-site processing of sulfated battery plates. Something that once upon a time (1950-1990) was being done on the massive scale in Central/East Europe countries. Then lobbied country's legislative can bar mid-sized installations as unable to met the EU demands (tried recently in Poland afair).

@infobeautiful The opposite of

@tartley @aanee @infobeautiful Well, what would be a limitting factors that would make it more expensive/more difficult to keep expanding solar?

=> running out of physical space to build panels on:
Yes but this isn't happening anytime soon and we would have beaten current world energy production well before that point is reached

=> running out or raw materials:
Plenty of time until then too, and recycling older panels could help too.

@infobeautiful

war and conflict is unfortunately a likely major contributor to this, though I'm glad the shift is happening

just look at what happened to Cuba lately, without fuel the society goes to a standstill, they desperately need more green tech and everyone will know that unless they also make the shift, the unpredictability of fossil fuel politics may hit them hard at some point, adding to all the other existing arguments to shift

@tartley The Total Addressable Market of solar panels is anywhere that can have a reasonable ROI on a solar panel given local electricity demand. As panels get cheaper they become economical in cloudier places.

@dryak @aanee @infobeautiful I totally agree. I suppose the black-pilled establishment energy industry might expect another limiting factor would be running out of loony environmentalists to sell them too, if they could only sway public opinion sufficiently. But I agree with you, they were holding back the tide.

@martin you might need access to 100% backup while still being able to reduce your need for fossil generated energy by a majority amount - those aren't incompatible.

@ohir
So you're saying that to solve energy and heat storage we need sites that will have large amounts of a poisonous, bio-accumulative heavy metal working in an highly hazardous acid, and all that working within daily deep-cycling, on an industrial scale, plus constant industrial-scale recycling, and that it will be cheap and safe?

Yeah, no citations (not counting regulation existing alone) means I'll pass.

@infobeautiful

@TechConnectify has a take on that: https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM

@dryak @tartley @aanee @infobeautiful

@infobeautiful More than enough to power a DeLorean back to the future :)

@infobeautiful the IEA is traditionally very nuclear friendly and of course aware that solar and wind are pushing nuclear from „expensive but with enough subsidies and imperialism it might work“ into „are you ducking nuts?!?“ territory

@Jonathan Hartley
That's true. But it will be expensive. Even with zero price for FV panels.

Or we could have a stable ☢️ and not have installations with 200% of the required performance, right...

@dzwiedziu @infobeautiful [...] Yes! Almost every point of anti-storage propaganda repeated (the one omitted is about hydrogen being flammable).

Debunking:
1. All components of lead-acid batteries are curently _byproducts_ of other indispensable industries. Lead itself accompanies copper ores. Sulfur is a byproduct of natural gas/oil purification. Whether "waste" byproducts end up in landfills or in batteries matters.
2. Battery plates can be renovated on-site using very simple machines. 50yrs ago operated by humans, now can be entirely autonomous. Very small storages (house) can be renovated by mobile semi-van mounted machine.
3. "Highly hazardous" acid somehow is not that hazardous if used in the car battery. Nor it was when used in warehouse lifters since 1890.

@dzwiedziu @infobeautiful

As for the heat storage: mid-temperature heat accumulator can store around 500kWh per 1 cubic meter of gravel. Insulated by the very same gravel turned into the mineral wool. My house heat accu (I can not build on my own land) is designed to the tune of 7MWh, co it could store heat from 30kW solar installation operating from March to September. This fits into the 6m diameter rotunde. In 2020 was expected to cost around €15000. 4/5 of that the insulation. In non-lobbied regulatory environment this insulation could be made on-site from the gravel (and some amount of aluminium) by simple machine known for two centuries now.
Edit: checked project. The nearest unsorted bedding was 1700kg/m³ , 0.3kWh/°C/kg. The accu core has 38m³ of bedding (way cheaper than gravel) and can store up to 7MWh at edge temperature of 560°C (60-560). Long-term safe capacity is 7MWh. Accu core is almost cylindrical cone 4m diameter x 3m height. 150m³ insulation. Fully loaded gives ~8kW at the collector with all vents closed so heat all goes thru insulation. Empty (60°C) with all vents open outputs around 6.5kW.

@bitprophet @infobeautiful there is a whole book by @solar_chase from bloombergNEF on the subject.

@infobeautiful

It’s almost like there’s an entrenched, wealthy, and powerful special interest group with a vested interest in discouraging investments in solar … 🤷‍♂️

@infobeautiful Welp, Marty and Doc Brown ought to be happy.