there is essentially 0 infrastructure designed to handle said batteries
If we’re talking residential scale, people already have the infrastructure: it’s the existing wiring inside their household. If we’re talking Commercial & Industrial (C&I) scale, it’s often the same answer. If we’re talking utility scale, oftentimes battery developers get quoted grid improvement costs from the utility and the developer has to pay those costs in order to connect to the grid. You act like the grid can’t change, and there isn’t any money lying around to make improvements, when in reality there are a lot of investors in BESS because of the high ROI.
they wear out quite quickly at home scales
This is true at any scale, resi, C&I, or utility, but batteries are modular and you can augment your capacity over time to make up for degradation.
Elon popularized them with his “powerwall” bullshit entirely to pump the stock value of Tesla’s battery plant
There are more manufacturers than just Tesla in the battery space, many of which who would benefit if the Powerwall failed or lost market share. Even if Tesla popularized them, their decline due to their idiotic, fascist CEO will mean that the existing demand will just look elsewhere for the same product, not exit the market entirely.
Batteries in the walls are useful in niches
In my opinion, every household could benefit from home battery storage just as much as people benefit from gas generators. They have widespread, not niche, appeal. The issue with low penetration in my opinion is lack of knowledge in both policymakers and customers.
the current technology which uses lipo/lion/lifepo4 chemistries is inherently flawed
While batteries do start to degrade the moment they leave the factory, the fact they have flaws doesn’t mean they aren’t still useful. You’re using the argument that the perfect is the only solution to the imperfect, when that shortsightedness gets in the way of progress.
route to both dead linemen
BESS failures have been falling and bottoming out over the last few years while deployment has skyrocketed. Seems like you’re telling a fiction.
massive amounts of E-waste
Recycling is projected to increase, especially as more and more battery installations reach End of Life (EOL), where as much as 60-80% of cobalt and lithium could be sourced from urban as opposed to virgin mines in the next 5-15 years. There is a sizable market opportunity for recycling to take off so long as good policy paves the way.
as it stands, it’s really bad right now.
Sure, let’s throw away one of humanity’s better solutions to the climate crisis since it’s bad now. It’s not like it could get better in the future. Again, such a show of shortsightedness.
That’s everything I’ve been talking about, you even go on to exhaustively quote what I’ve said that answers this question. Did you have a reason for saying this other than being combative? No, seriously, I really care about this subject and it’s clear you do too. And the most hardline thing I’ve said is that home battery walls and solar installs aren’t very good right now, and that local-grid installs are superior (I expand on that below). Surely there’s more constructive ways this could be approached.
Anyways, a couple points:
BESSFID (the common initialism? Not sure!) does not track interlock failures, which after them falling on you is the most directly dangerous aspect of both battery walls and standby generators. Unexpectedly energized lines are not something an average user understands, which is why it’s responsible for so many dead linemen. Generators (and now battery walls) feeding back into the grid during an outage are the #1 cause of unexpectedly energized lines, and this is very basic knowledge. It’s why every municipality requires a generator interlock be installed at the box for home-consumption power generation. No grid in the world is yet robust enough to prevent this danger.
[That batteries wear out] is true at any scale, resi, C&I, or utility
Yes and no! While yes batteries will always wear out, municipal facilities are not restricted by things like space constraints or residential safety concerns. This means they can implement battery degradation mitigation techniques that are impractical (or feasibly impossible) to be implemented on a residential scale, like distributed cell charge/discharge limits (which at their most effective handicap residential units by up to 20% of their rated capacity but greatly increase the lifetime) or direct cell cooling (which benefits spectacularly from economies of scale - active cooling on small packs is a huge drain for little return, but large scale battery installs can even use geothermal cooling to additionally increase their efficiency). Neither removes the fact that cells do wear out, but it greatly reduces the rate at which they do, and at a significant energy and space savings over alternative techniques. (You’ll note that these are many of the same reasons that municipal standby generators are more efficient than large numbers of residential standby generators!)
(this bit is mostly responding to your personal attacks, I will admit that:)
Recycling is projected to increase […]
Yes, but I am talking about current battery technology. You’re rebutting comments I made criticizing current technology with projections and speculation about future technology, which just isn’t fair. I could (hyperbolically, I admit) do the same thing by speculating that giant lithium eating termites will be developed by some rogue nation state in the near future, and that having a power wall risks them being attracted to your home and consuming your family in a gore splattered orgy of B-movie tropes.
Sure, let’s throw away one of humanity’s better solutions to the climate crisis since it’s bad now. It’s not like it could get better in the future. Again, such a show of shortsightedness.
A similar thing here. You’re also assuming that the future will improve things, which while it’s laudable you’re still able to be optimistic (no I mean that, I’m a depressed pos) it’s also very biased to assume that things will improve as time goes on.
You’re using the argument that the perfect is the only solution to the imperfect, when that shortsightedness gets in the way of progress.
And again, but with the additional add-in that I repeatedly say that municipal installs are better than home installs, not that batteries as power storage solutions are inherently bad. Just that the technology for home use, right now, is.
I could go on but I think I’ve addressed the major points of miscommunication, if you’re interested I would be genuinely happy to keep talking about this in a slightly less aggressive conversation.
(Edit: sorry, thought I should elaborate on this one tiny point:)
How so?
Which ones?
If we’re talking residential scale, people already have the infrastructure: it’s the existing wiring inside their household. If we’re talking Commercial & Industrial (C&I) scale, it’s often the same answer. If we’re talking utility scale, oftentimes battery developers get quoted grid improvement costs from the utility and the developer has to pay those costs in order to connect to the grid. You act like the grid can’t change, and there isn’t any money lying around to make improvements, when in reality there are a lot of investors in BESS because of the high ROI.
This is true at any scale, resi, C&I, or utility, but batteries are modular and you can augment your capacity over time to make up for degradation.
There are more manufacturers than just Tesla in the battery space, many of which who would benefit if the Powerwall failed or lost market share. Even if Tesla popularized them, their decline due to their idiotic, fascist CEO will mean that the existing demand will just look elsewhere for the same product, not exit the market entirely.
In my opinion, every household could benefit from home battery storage just as much as people benefit from gas generators. They have widespread, not niche, appeal. The issue with low penetration in my opinion is lack of knowledge in both policymakers and customers.
While batteries do start to degrade the moment they leave the factory, the fact they have flaws doesn’t mean they aren’t still useful. You’re using the argument that the perfect is the only solution to the imperfect, when that shortsightedness gets in the way of progress.
BESS failures have been falling and bottoming out over the last few years while deployment has skyrocketed. Seems like you’re telling a fiction.
Recycling is projected to increase, especially as more and more battery installations reach End of Life (EOL), where as much as 60-80% of cobalt and lithium could be sourced from urban as opposed to virgin mines in the next 5-15 years. There is a sizable market opportunity for recycling to take off so long as good policy paves the way.
Sure, let’s throw away one of humanity’s better solutions to the climate crisis since it’s bad now. It’s not like it could get better in the future. Again, such a show of shortsightedness.
That’s everything I’ve been talking about, you even go on to exhaustively quote what I’ve said that answers this question. Did you have a reason for saying this other than being combative? No, seriously, I really care about this subject and it’s clear you do too. And the most hardline thing I’ve said is that home battery walls and solar installs aren’t very good right now, and that local-grid installs are superior (I expand on that below). Surely there’s more constructive ways this could be approached.
Anyways, a couple points:
BESSFID (the common initialism? Not sure!) does not track interlock failures, which after them falling on you is the most directly dangerous aspect of both battery walls and standby generators. Unexpectedly energized lines are not something an average user understands, which is why it’s responsible for so many dead linemen. Generators (and now battery walls) feeding back into the grid during an outage are the #1 cause of unexpectedly energized lines, and this is very basic knowledge. It’s why every municipality requires a generator interlock be installed at the box for home-consumption power generation. No grid in the world is yet robust enough to prevent this danger.
Yes and no! While yes batteries will always wear out, municipal facilities are not restricted by things like space constraints or residential safety concerns. This means they can implement battery degradation mitigation techniques that are impractical (or feasibly impossible) to be implemented on a residential scale, like distributed cell charge/discharge limits (which at their most effective handicap residential units by up to 20% of their rated capacity but greatly increase the lifetime) or direct cell cooling (which benefits spectacularly from economies of scale - active cooling on small packs is a huge drain for little return, but large scale battery installs can even use geothermal cooling to additionally increase their efficiency). Neither removes the fact that cells do wear out, but it greatly reduces the rate at which they do, and at a significant energy and space savings over alternative techniques. (You’ll note that these are many of the same reasons that municipal standby generators are more efficient than large numbers of residential standby generators!)
(this bit is mostly responding to your personal attacks, I will admit that:)
Yes, but I am talking about current battery technology. You’re rebutting comments I made criticizing current technology with projections and speculation about future technology, which just isn’t fair. I could (hyperbolically, I admit) do the same thing by speculating that giant lithium eating termites will be developed by some rogue nation state in the near future, and that having a power wall risks them being attracted to your home and consuming your family in a gore splattered orgy of B-movie tropes.
A similar thing here. You’re also assuming that the future will improve things, which while it’s laudable you’re still able to be optimistic (no I mean that, I’m a depressed pos) it’s also very biased to assume that things will improve as time goes on.
And again, but with the additional add-in that I repeatedly say that municipal installs are better than home installs, not that batteries as power storage solutions are inherently bad. Just that the technology for home use, right now, is.
I could go on but I think I’ve addressed the major points of miscommunication, if you’re interested I would be genuinely happy to keep talking about this in a slightly less aggressive conversation.
(Edit: sorry, thought I should elaborate on this one tiny point:)
(this is a very self indulgent pun)