In the end, China will have us by the balls while laughing all the way to the bank.
I think they already do.
When considering the environmental cost of mining etc. for battery production, you need to compare that to the environmental cost of ‘mining’ petroleum which often gets left out of the equation. As to monetary cost, battery production isn’t there currently, but if its cost curve ends up being anything like solar panels, they will be cheaper soon. Also, solar and wind for domestic use are often close to the consumer (Fintry in Scotland for an example of a village owning its own wind turbines), and require less grid investment. For industrial use or large cities, it can of course be quite different.
I think it is too easy to look at the current state of technology and be pessimistic about the cost and environmental impact, but one should really look at the trends, with solar panels being the most extreme example. We should also ask what our best guess for the state of technology in five or ten years time is. If you are comparing to nuclear, then you need to look at fifteen to twenty years time, as building significant nuclear capacity in five years time is totally unrealistic.
derek wrote:
. As to monetary cost, battery production isn’t there currently, but if its cost curve ends up being anything like solar panels, they will be cheaper soon.
Good point. Solar panels came down massively in price in the last few years and with it the cost of initial installation on a roof or so. The major factor there is battery still, but also there, quite a bit of price dump has happened.
About 5 years ago, the cost to put up a non-battery solar solution to my house with excess feed into the grid was at around 30k€, today I am looking at options to get a 6 kw solar array plus a battery of between 30 and 40 kw/h installed for about half that and I am still looking. Our house is a typical 3 kw home, which means that this setup might even allow the switch from oil to heat pump eventually.
The thing is: with the original pricing and what we pay for electricity here, amortisation of the whole thing would have been beyond my life expectancy, whereas today, there is a real possibility to get a setup which pays for itself within 10 years or so. This puts it from something for rich idealists to have to something where also smaller incomes can say, there is something in it for me.
Prices for 2nd hand electric vehicles also have come down considerably and several people I know who were violently opposed now own one. Pal of mine got his hands on a Tesla S with free supercharging for life these days for less than 15k CHF, it’s high mileage but the battery still yields over 93 % and he is super happy never to have to pay for fuel again. I did drive a bz4x as an exchange car when mine had to go to the body shop recently and was also quite surprised what a fun car it is. My local dealer sold a 3 year old demo car with less than 5k km on it for about 50% of the new value recently, I have to say I was tempted, but it was the 1st generation which does not allow 22kw charging, so I left it.
I also found out that if you become savy in charging options, you can get real cheap deals, such as the current Lidl chargers here, which are about 30% below what you pay if you charge at home and which allow you to charge while shopping there anyway. The BZ4X took up about 120 km range in a 40 min charge exercise I did there just to get the idea how it works, that is not too shabby if you do that regularly. And long haul you can supercharge them from 10 to 80% in about 30 mins at a price which is much more expensive but still below todays insane gas price.
I guess people will go this way once they realize they can afford it and once the prices become so that they really correspond to similar conventional cars. Idealism aside, in the end it is the money which will make a difference. Currently it is still too expensive for me to change to a fully electric car so I stay happily with my hybrid, but eventually once the current generation EV’s become available 2nd hand at 30% market value, it’s a real possibility.
Roof panels remain a difficult area, with often bodged installations, dodgy 25 year contracts, people having trouble selling the houses…
In a previous life I was making controllers for solar water heating and it was the same borderline criminal cowboy scene, but most notably stuff subjected to the elements and UV does not last long.
The proper neat and leak-free way is glass roof solar tiles and these are very expensive. A neighbour did it recently.
Anything that bolts on is likely to cause trouble because the fittings etc penetrate the tiled roof.
Peter wrote:
Roof panels remain a difficult area, with often bodged installations, dodgy 25 year contracts, people having trouble selling the houses…
Well here roofs are covered on a daily basis and there are quite a few companies to choose from. What I think makes a difference here is that in order to get subsidies, you have to present a project drawn up by a company and then get the installation accepted before money flows and before you can actually connect back into the grid, which is what most of those installations are, self use and feed the overflow in the grid and feed from the grid if there is not enough sun. Those inspections are quite vigorous I am told. This I guess keeps the cowboys out of it.
Friends of mine have done their roof installs in the last 5-6 years and none of them had any problems with their installers, nor with the technical side of things. What I am told was that initially the biggest problem were building permits to get the actual installation approved. That has however improved now as the federal government has come down on some of the more restrictive folks as their concern was purely ideological.
So what still keeps some people including myself from doing it is mainly cost. But that one is coming down to a degree that it may well become possible.
Yes I expect some countries are tighter but here I would not touch it with a 20ft bargepole unless a) it was the solar tiles (IIRC, Tesla made/make them, and they have been hard to get sometimes, in the UK) and b) I owned the system. AFAIK most systems here are done under a subsidy, with a contract longer than the firm is ever likely to be around for, with punitive damages to be paid if you decide to remove the system… so if there is an issue you have fun selling the house.
I know from my solar heating controller days that it is genuinely hard to seal a tiled roof for decades, and that is in addition to the equipment rotting. There are special cables for solar panels which are better under UV radiation but not guaranteed for 30-40 years. Commercial farms throw the stuff out periodically but on a house you don’t want that. And UK wx is punishing 
5-6 years is nothing. Even plated mild steel fittings will look ok…
Peter wrote:
AFAIK most systems here are done under a subsidy, with a contract longer than the firm is ever likely to be around for, with punitive damages to be paid if you decide to remove the system… so if there is an issue you have fun selling the house.
Not really – 80-90% of UK installations are fully owned by the homeowner, and there is absolutely no need to do anythinhg else. Financed / rent a roof deals are still available but they are rather silly these days if you have the money or can get a personal loan / draw down on a mortgage. The only subsidy is that there is no VAT on these installations.
Anyone installing a system they don’t own has only themselves to blame.
There also is no real problem with watertightness of the roof if the installation is done properly – but there is the rub, I would not trust a random solar installer to work on my roof. Maintenance might also be a bit harder; if a tile slips under a panel it is harder to fix.
In the news right now. Finally there will be an end to one of the most insane (void of any realism whatsoever) industry ventures ever to have been started in Norway. Floating sea wind farms will be stopped by the majority in the Parliament. There’s still hope for humanity
derek wrote:
As to monetary cost, battery production isn’t there currently, but if its cost curve ends up being anything like solar panels, they will be cheaper soon.
Sodium ion will reshape entire industries. EVs, solar power, storage, everything.
