In the sexy but impractical category, hydrogen takes pride of place.
The technology still has the problems that make it slow to build and expensive in most jurisdictions in the world, and those problems aren’t going away while wind, solar, transmission, and storage are gathering speed, so I suspect this latest nuclear renaissance will end like the last one, at least outside of China. Redox flow technology is less mature than lithium-ion, has different key materials constraints, but most notably decouples power and energy.Īnd fission nuclear energy is having another moment in the sun, edging up from boring GW-scale steam kettles that just sit there and provide low-carbon energy - with occasional moments of global panic - to being put on life support in multiple countries, being reconsidered in Europe given the Russian invasion of Ukraine’s impact on natural gas supplies, and being built reasonably well in China. Redox flow batteries are starting to get attention, especially with China’s 100 MW/400MWh redox flow battery grid connection recently. Projection of grid storage capacity through 2060 by major categories by author
They have advantages of being built in massive numbers and fast response, but they have significant limitations in terms of the close coupling of power and energy. I like cell-based batteries a lot, and project that they will be the third largest form of grid storage in the end. Two of the biggest storage developers in the UK and US, whose leaders I’ve spoken to at length, have GW-scale battery pipelines in development, and of course Tesla’s Megapack keeps eating duck curves in California and Australia. Imagine telling a person you’d like to date or are dating that they are utilitarian.īut if something fits into this odd category, lithium-ion grid scale batteries are it, as well as similar cell-format battery chemistry such as lithium phosphate. There is a reason why utilitarian is not an adjective one uses to describe things that get your blood flowing, after all. Let’s start with the sexy yet practical stuff, which is pretty limited in electricity and energy storage. Don’t assume human nature will magically change. Don’t assume the laws of physics are mutable. Ignore history of failures of exactly the same thing.
Impractical? Ignore laws of thermodynamics. Lots and lots of numbers, and not a lot of hype. Stuck in narrow and industry specific journals. Lots of fanbois and fangrrrls who proselytize on its behalf. Promises of massive deployment and profits. Gushing talking heads who should know better.
Thank you, Peter.įor those interested in other areas I’ve spent time on, such as ground transportation, aviation, and marine shipping, you’ll be either pleased or displeased to know that I have charts on those subjects already in hand and two more in mind, and upcoming articles will address those domains. He okayed me stealing the idea, saying that as he hadn’t actually done anything with the idea at all, he couldn’t claim it as intellectual capital. Over on LinkedIn, Peter Clarkson of Woodside Energy in Australia triggered me with the idea of a way to categorize various decarbonization solutions, a standard quadrant chart with sexy/unsexy and practical/impractical as the options. What’s a day without a provocative quadrant chart that makes many people howl with outrage (or at least mutter at their screen)? Well, not this day.
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