Thursday, June 20, 2019
The Reality of Batteries
John Hinderaker:
But the idea that batteries of any foreseeable design will combine with wind turbines and solar panels to satisfy America's need for electricity is a fantasy. For one thing, batteries of the requisite capacity would be prohibitively expensive. It has been calculated that, using the most advanced battery technology on the market, Tesla's 100 MW, 129 MWh battery in use in South Australia, it would cost $133 billion to store the electricity needs of my state, Minnesota, for 24 hours. That is more than one-third of the state's annual GDP.
Thus, for the foreseeable future, wind and solar energy will be useless add-ons to an already-sufficient electric grid. If you seriously think that CO2 emissions endanger the Earth's future, as so many environmentalists at least claim to believe, the only rational course is a massive investment in nuclear power.
