Put one of these in every neighborhood please.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Check UK stories.
People leaving next to turbines hate them due to noise pollution.
People live on top of mountains?
Were are this wind turbines being placed? I hiked to a farm once and had one at work.
Now, I'm not saying they are silent but unless you put one in my back garden I never thought of them as loud.
I’m talking about putting a sodium ion backup battery in every neighborhood. They don’t make loud noises. And they are great for storing energy produced by rooftop solar panels, easing grid stress, and backing up power when the lines go down.
Well, shit. Better not build sodium ion batteries then.
What's that got to do with the price of fish?
Hell yeah
I can't wait to see this headline again but about a bigger battery somewhere else
Nice. This seems to be the future that solves a lot of problems. Right now in Australia, we’re seriously entertaining building nuclear power plants for the first time ever, to provide base load power that renewables allegedly can’t. Large sodium batteries could help us avoid that.
It's not just base load, turbines also provide grid stability. All the quick fluctuations as people turn things on and off are hard to load balance with solar, wind, or battery. A big spinning turbine has a lot of inertia. That helps keep thr grid at a constant frequency. As solar gets bigger and bigger we might need big solar powdered flywheel generators just to stabilize the grid.
Tell it to diesel propelled wind turbines.
No, wind turbines are not providers of base power. Wind is not guaranteed. Not in every case.
Solar is not a provider of base energy loads.
Lol,
Batteries are perfect for load balancing.
Please, know your facts
The main issue with using batteries for load balancing is the massive resource investment required for them at a grid level, BUT that's more of a concern with lithium based batteries due to a number of factors. Sodium batteries use way more easily accessible and abundant materials.
NGL I'm hella fuckin hyped about sodium batteries vs lithium batteries.
Batteries can't stabilise frequency. If the frequency changes too much, the grid will go down.
You literally need a giant spinning turbine for this.
It's pretty basic energy engineering, and is not related to load balancing.
Batteries balance power usage and production. But they are DC and the grid is AC. Battery and solar both need to be run through an inverter before feeding the grid.
Maintaining the grid at a constant clean 60hz is important. Inverters are very bad at maintaining that for a large grid that is constantly changing.
Know your facts asshole. https://www.power-eng.com/news/preparing-the-grid-for-more-renewables
Inverters could also provide "virtual inertia" which help to stabilize the grid frequency. However most of today's inverters don't have it, or it's disabled.
This means we don't need solar powered flywheels, which are inherently inefficient, we just need software (edit: and batteries of course) more or less.
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The other side of that is matching supply to demand is basically instant. You pull power from batteries and they give you more (provided they're not at their safe limit). There's always a lag in getting turbines to spin up and down, and so there's a non-trivial mismatch time.
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Nuclear power should be expanded, but a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
And before anyone starts whining about "radiation scary", nuclear waste is a solved problem.
You dig a hole deep into the bedrock, put the waste in dry casks, put the full drycasks in the hole, and backfill it with clay.
Done, solved!
A bigger radiation hazard is coal ash, from cosl power stations, they produce insane ammounts of ash which is radioactive.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
Storing coal ash is also a big problem:
http://www.southeastcoalash.org/about-coal-ash/coal-ash-storage/
Here is an interesting documentary about our fear of radiation, it is called Nuclear Nightmares, and was made by Horizon on BBC:
Imo “put it in a hole” isn’t exactly a great solution when the alternative is renewables but you’re definitely right about coal that shit is terrible.
So far I have not seen any real renewable energy source that can cover base demand, I am sure there will be eventually.
Nuclear is not a replacement for renewable energy, it is a shortcut to getting rid of fossil power generation and buying us time.
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Nuclear power should be expanded, a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
This 90's talking point against Greenpeace is no longer valid. The economics have changed.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/no-miracles-needed/8D183E65462B8DC43397C19D7B6518E3
I am not buying a book to prove your point.
At least here in Sweden, the high cost of nuclear power is due to artificial taxes, that are being lowered.
Oh, fuck a book, aahhhhhh
I'd check it out if it was free, but I am not paying to prove someone else on the internet right.
Your response just tells me that you are not interested in a good faith debate.
You don't have to pay to "prove" I'm right. You just have to accept that experts have looked at this, and nuclear does not need to be part of the conversation. Not beyond keeping whatever we have already, at least.
I am absolutely certain that experts have looked at it, and come to different conclusions.
I'll even go as far as to accept that there is no scientific consensus.
However, seeing that we keep outputting more and more co2, we need to do something drastic, fossil plants are one of the biggest sources of co2, so it makes sense to shut them down as soon as possible.
Nuclear power doesn't really produce co2, the radiation is a local, limited problem, co2 emmisions is a global, existential problem.
Renewables are still not ready to deal with base load in a power grid long term, hydro power messes with local fish and environment, solar doesn't work during the night, wind is quite unpredictable, batteries degrade over time and can't supply AC without extra equipment.
So what is left but Nuclear power?
Nothing, nuclear power will buy us time to develop reliable renewable power while cutting our co2 emmissions drasticly.
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The LNP doesn't have a legitimate interest in transitioning to nuclear power or they would've begun over the last decade or so that they were in power.
Instead they've proposed - now that they're in opposition - a technology which is banned at the Federal level and individually at the state level, because they know that gives them years of lead time before they ever have to begin the project.
On top of that, all of the proposed sites are owned by companies who've already begun transitioning to renewable generation or renewable storage, and most of them are in states in which the state Premiers have publicly stated that they will not consider overturning their bans on nuclear power.
All this talk about nuclear only does one thing, keeping fossil fuels relevant for longer.
Exactly. They've brought up nuclear because they're desperate to have some kind of energy policy, but one they know they'll never have to bring to fruition because that allows them to continue with coal and gas for as long as possible.
I tend to agree. The right time to build nuclear was like 30 years ago.
The same people who opposed it then are the same people saying it's the future now. If anybody agrees to build it, the you'll have 15-20 years of renewable energy being cancelled because the "nuclear is on the way".
Sounds like a way to waste loads of money and keep people on fossil fuels.
Must be way cheaper to build more batteries and build out inertia. (Would still need backup power at this point though).
Reminds me of Elon's Hyperloop. Not intended to actually work, but instead be a distraction to deflate interest in public transportation.
That’s pretty neat.
I love how these look like Lego pieces snapped onto a green base.
Even if all that is painted cement or something it is also just really refreshing to see architecture, especially the sort of necessity eyesore that tech architecture/engineering requires, also being mindfully the environment it will exist in to some degree. Even if it is only visual.
Doesn't California have some insane battery too?
Yes, but that is Lithium-ion. These batteries are Sodium-ion which are better for the environment and can potentially be made a lot cheaper.. It's still pretty new technology so it's not really in any consumer products yet.
Sodium batteries are already in electric cars many months ago
Also you could buy individual cells on AliExpress
Sodium batteries will not replace lithium in cars, as the density is too low.
It means the battery weighs more but contains less power.
For an EV, that wouldn't work, as the heavier the car is, the more power it uses.
With sodium you will probably half the range of the EV, which is already low.
For medium distance commuter cars and inner city travel those things dont matter and will probably be outweighed by the cost savings, safety and reliability of sodium batteries. The main issue right now with getting EVs into more peoples hands is cost.
The newer sodium batteries are comparable to LFP batteries from a few years ago.
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Yes, but you pretty much have to do a full battery test and pen test like the great Scott video because it is really a 60/40 of getting fake sodium ion batteries from Aliexpress 😅
Economy of scale matters, so does practicality. Which one is generally lasting longer per number of charges and what's the long term viability of both given the time they were build and the available tech at that time? I totally understand the greater availability of sodium vs lithium. However, will it last? Last time I read much about it, reliability was weak, charge capacity over time dropped drastically, and failures were high. (It has been a couple of years, so things may be changing. )
Something new and shiney can be nifty, but past that, what is this? It seems like an expensive hood ornament that will rust in the rain. Lithium is expensive and toxic to mine, but so are all metals to some extent, and this has plenty.
It seems like it's buying something 25% off on a $100 thing that won't last well. Sure, you saved $25 once, but you're buying 3 of them in the same time frame.
The draw-back with sodium batteries needs to be known, because they won't replace lithium anytime soon.
The density is lower, which is a great problem in EVs.
Not trying to be negative, but for an EV, or anything handheld, you get more weight for less power. Which is essential in a car, that uses more power the heavier it is.
What sodium IS the best at, are use cases where weight and size doesn't matter. Like with battery farms.
In this case they are much better than lithium.
Yeah I see these as the answer to the people who think solar energy is bad because the sun goes down.
What other benefits do they have? Do they have less wear or are cheaper per Wh to produce?
Or at least, about to be when production ramps up further?
They are dirt cheap, don't have the fire safety issues as some lithium chemistries (not all lithium chemistries do that), and sodium is abundant.
Well, sounds great for any non mobile storage then. Don't think anybody cares whether their 10kWh solar battery is twice the size and weight if it's half the price.
Thank you :)
While you're not wrong, sodium batteries coming on the market have 200 Wh/kg. This is comparable to where LFP batteries were a few years ago. That means the newer sodium batteries are about as good as what's in lots of EVs right now.
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