Congrats, that's $1.277 Trillion in batteries to match the $5 billion Bath County Pumped Storage station.
Its not about whether or not someone can produce the batteries. Its about whether or not its cheaper to build centralized storage. Frankly, Pumped Hydro is extremely cheap in contrast to batteries.
Do you want to spend $5 Billion on a pumped hydro station? Or do you want to spend $1,200+ Billion mining a volatile metal out of the ground and building chemical batteries?
I think it is clear which solution is better for America in the long run.
The 365 million is 18650 cells, they retail for ~$8-10.
So hopefully less than $3.6 billion in cells (factory direct, new factory aimed at reducing costs). There is a bunch more of stuff in the integrated units, at the quoted $3000 price, 4.3 million of them would be ~$14 billion.
I think pumped storage is great (I've posted enthusiastically about it here in the past), but the sneaky factor is that they did a good job siting the ones they built decades ago, many of the great spots to build them are in use already.
(I edited in the $14 billion after I realized I was talking about a product with a proposed price, I had originally said something about less than $10 billion)
Technically, the Bath County station was built with $1.6 Billion. I adjusted up to $5 Billion for an off-the cuff "inflation" estimation, also because other pumped hydro solutions are coming around $5 Billion as well.
Something to note is that the Bath County station has been running since the 1970s. That's a useful lifespan well of 40 years at this point. I don't think Lithium Ion (especially when they are cycled daily) will achieve that lifespan.
It's hard to do a facile comparison. The fancy batteries from Tesla obviously lose right now against places with an existing grid and convenient site for a storage plant, but Bath County serves something like 60 million people, which is a lot of grid, with a lot of ancillary equipment in between the station and those users.
And there are reasons to expect the benefits of new pumped storage to decline over time (the best, most cost effective sites get built first, that sort of construction is well developed technology), and conversely, some reasons to expect the costs of batteries to decline over time (chemistry is still inching forward, as costs come down the number of uses goes up).
Ultimately, I can see that I'm not running out to buy solar panels and house batteries, so my real opinion on what is best right now is clear enough.
Comments
Congrats, that's $1.277 Trillion in batteries to match the $5 billion Bath County Pumped Storage station.
Its not about whether or not someone can produce the batteries. Its about whether or not its cheaper to build centralized storage. Frankly, Pumped Hydro is extremely cheap in contrast to batteries.
Do you want to spend $5 Billion on a pumped hydro station? Or do you want to spend $1,200+ Billion mining a volatile metal out of the ground and building chemical batteries?
I think it is clear which solution is better for America in the long run.
The 365 million is 18650 cells, they retail for ~$8-10.
So hopefully less than $3.6 billion in cells (factory direct, new factory aimed at reducing costs). There is a bunch more of stuff in the integrated units, at the quoted $3000 price, 4.3 million of them would be ~$14 billion.
I think pumped storage is great (I've posted enthusiastically about it here in the past), but the sneaky factor is that they did a good job siting the ones they built decades ago, many of the great spots to build them are in use already.
(I edited in the $14 billion after I realized I was talking about a product with a proposed price, I had originally said something about less than $10 billion)
Ah, that at least makes them reasonable.
Technically, the Bath County station was built with $1.6 Billion. I adjusted up to $5 Billion for an off-the cuff "inflation" estimation, also because other pumped hydro solutions are coming around $5 Billion as well.
Something to note is that the Bath County station has been running since the 1970s. That's a useful lifespan well of 40 years at this point. I don't think Lithium Ion (especially when they are cycled daily) will achieve that lifespan.
It's hard to do a facile comparison. The fancy batteries from Tesla obviously lose right now against places with an existing grid and convenient site for a storage plant, but Bath County serves something like 60 million people, which is a lot of grid, with a lot of ancillary equipment in between the station and those users.
And there are reasons to expect the benefits of new pumped storage to decline over time (the best, most cost effective sites get built first, that sort of construction is well developed technology), and conversely, some reasons to expect the costs of batteries to decline over time (chemistry is still inching forward, as costs come down the number of uses goes up).
Ultimately, I can see that I'm not running out to buy solar panels and house batteries, so my real opinion on what is best right now is clear enough.