Progress of clean energy technology

[David Horn]

(11-29-2017, 04:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... Tesla is normally thought of as a car company, but this announcement underscores that Tesla is really a battery company that happens to put some of the batteries in cars. It has built a massive battery factory in Nevada and needs to make sure it can sell the correspondingly massive number of batteries that factory will be producing in the coming years.

Of course, most of those batteries are supposed to go into Tesla's cars. But developing a side business in battery packs for use by residential customers and electric utilities helps to diversify Tesla's business. If the car business hits unexpected snags—as it has with the Model 3 launch in recent months—Tesla can sell the extra batteries for non-car uses.

And it's going to take a lot more installations like the one in South Australia if the world is going to ultimately wean itself off fossil fuels. Wind and solar energy are becoming increasingly affordable, but both types of power produce energy intermittently. Huge battery installations ensure that utilities can supply households with electricity even when the supply of renewable electrons fluctuates.

Acquiring enough lithium to use batteries as the universal grid backup is unlikely in the extreme.  Pump-back storage systems are more likely for larger projects, but they don't work on flat land.  Geothermal is great, but not where the fault lines run very deep.  In fact, every back-up option has limitations, so a move to wind and solar will be a lot slower than the optimists expect.  Assume every viable option will be used where it makes sense.

We're too old to see it in anything like final form, but we'll see it developing.  Fusion is still developing too, and it has no apparent limitations except cost.  It will be the ultimate back-up when all others fail to meet expectations.