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Europe is locking itself in to US LNG

(davekeating.substack.com)
151 points hunglee2 | 1 comments | 16 Sep 25 13:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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probablypower ◴[16 Sep 25 14:53 UTC] No.45263135[source]▶
There are a lot of posts here pushing batteries.

Batteries are an expensive solution that doesn't scale well at the grid level. It is useful for grid stability (fast frequency response) but simply a non-starter when you're dealing with national grids.

Batteries are an added cost to the system, without producing more electricity, and as a result prices will go up.

A far cheaper source of flexibility is Demand Side Response. Particularly data centres that are willing to be market actors. Compute can happen anywhere, so it should happen where the wind blows and the sun shines. It is cheaper to transmit bits than Megawatts.

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1. myrmidon ◴[16 Sep 25 15:33 UTC] No.45263663[source]▶
Demand side management is a nice concept, but it is neither free nor a cure-all:

It has real costs because it limits the utilization of involved infrastructure and is simply not feasible for a lot of industries. It does not help when residential demand exceeds the available supply either.

The most practical solution will probably be a mix of overprovisioning (especially considering how cheap solar panels have become), battery storage and fuel powered fallback, with the balance shifting as long as batteries and panels get cheaper.

Grid level battery storage is already coming online at scale (e.g. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/08/18/statera-energy-powers-up...).

LiFePo cells are already down to ~$60 for 1kWh (8000 cycles), which is pretty palatable for a lot of applications and prices still trend down.