ralphpnj wrote: > On a related note concerning the lack of understanding of basic > scientific principles check out this article on batteries published in > yesterday's Christian Science Monitor: > > http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy/2015/0830/How-a-new-battery-revolution-will-change-your-life > > Basically the article fails to fully understand that the batteries being > discussed are storage batteries and the power being stored by the > batteries has to come from another power source. So while the article > does mention that these batteries can used to make solar and wind power > available during times of no sun or wind, it fails to understand that > the vast majority of electricity that goes into the vast storage > batteries initially comes from a power plant burning fossil fuels, > particularly those being used in electric automobiles. Add to this the > fact the article manages to discuss the future batteries and energy > without even the slightest mention of climate change, climate change > that is being driven by the burning of fossil fuels.
I disagree. I think the author understands the scientific principles very well; the undertone of the article is very much about energy storage being an very important part of a renewable energy future. Numbers are important though - and this article fails to put the few numbers it has into proper context, as is usual... Some numbers I can see there are: current battery storage is 100GWh, expected to increase to 160GWh by 2020 - these are meaningless figures to most readers. Better is "Musk calculated it would take roughly 2 billion Powerpacks to electrify the entire world". If those are his 10kWh packs, I make that 2e13 Wh of storage capacity, or 200 times current battery storage capacity above. I big step up, but doable I guess. Is even that enough though? Here's some numbers I've just extracted from http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/keyworld2014.pdf : 2012 total annual worldwide energy consumption: 1.04e17 Wh/year. Only 20% of that is electricity, the rest of it is basically fossil fuel burnt at point of use in an engine, for heating or some chemical process. In a renewable energy future the whole lot would essentially need to be electricity. And that number is only going to get bigger... Musk's 2e13 Wh of storage would keep the world running for 100 minutes. I'd venture to suggest that at least a whole day's worth of storage capacity would be needed to buffer out the variability in solar and wind power. I.e. 14 times as much as Musk suggests - 28 billion of his Powerpacks or 2800 times current battery storage capacity... Perhaps a more practical energy storage technology is kinetic energy storage, ultimately in the very useful form of a Launch Loop: http://launchloop.com/PowerLoop. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ utgg's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=40900 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=104207 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
