If solar were free, but we still needed to pay for battery storage, how would it then compare in cost to fuel-based alternatives (fossil fuel, nuclear etc)?
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It's used in cars and consumer devices because it can store a lot of energy for its size and weight and you don't have to mollycoddle it to avoid memory effects.
Those are much less important concerns for this application. You'd build you battery facilities somewhere outside your cities, perhaps near where you build your solar farms, and you don't need the batteries to move. Batteries that take up more room and/or weigh more than lithium batteries for a given capacity should be fine.
Partially this is because we have similar views on a lot of the challenges facing a move to renewables. I think sometimes this comes across as being sceptical of the progress of renewables.
In my case, and I suspect in yours, that's not really the case. In fact I'm excited and interested in how we will solve these problems in a variety of different ways.
I think we are in agreement that lithium isn't going to be the answer to energy storage at grid scale. If for no other reason than being in direct competition with the electrification of transportation isn't ideal.
Personally I'm hopeful that Ambri's liquid metal battery will materialize.
What developments do you have your eye on?