Battery Advance Could Lead To a Cleaner Way To Store Energy

sciencehabit writes: With the continuing rise of solar and wind power, the hunt is on for cheap batteries that are able to store large amounts of energy and deliver it when it's dark and the wind is still. Last year researchers reported an advance on one potentially cheap, energy-packing battery. But it required toxic and caustic materials. Now, the same team has revised its chemistry, doing away with the noxious constituents—an advance that could make future such batteries far cheaper and simpler to build.

Comments

Re:Batteries and Buffers

[tinkerton]

You underestimate the value of boring solutions. There's always this hope that high tech is going to save us but if you want to reduce the carbon footprint, the best place to start would probably be to isolate the house as much as possible and get a high yield gas furnace. And get a small low power car instead of a big one. These are boring low tech solutions but they make a large difference. It's hard to find hightech solutions with the same impact.

Re:Batteries and Buffers

[silentcoder]

Electric cars right now are in an odd place - the initial capital outlay is way beyond my budget but the monthly cost over their lifetime so enormously cheaper (both in fuel and maintenance costs) that if I could get one today I would be significantly wealthier in my monthly budget. Of course if I get it on credit the payments would probably dwarf the difference.

The thing is though - that initial high capital outlay is primarily a factor of production scales rather than cost of materials - the potential cost at which they could be made is at least an order of magnitude cheaper.
Right now - a Tessla Model S would cost me around R1.2 million - but a huge chunk of that is the cost of custom shipping an import, so as soon as they are actually for sale here by a large scale importer, you cut that at least in half. That puts it on par with a new upper-end BMW. Give it a couple of years to ramp up production I strongly suspect I'll be able to get a Tessla-like car for the same amount I paid for my 6-year old A3, which I've added 5 good years to since then.
At the point, there is no sane reason to buy a fossil-fuel car, it simply cannot compete.

Now granted, I despise long-distance driving and avoid it like the plague, anything over 100km and I prefer to fly - which for anything under 4 people is cheaper anyway, so I'm not factoring that in - my daily commute is 99% of my driving needs, and electrical would be so much more ideal for that purpose. For the other 0.1% - I can hire a car fit for that purpose.
The problem with your assessment is, I'm also 99% of the world's drivers.
And don't come with America has long roads and cities far appart... I live in Africa dude, you aint seen nothing yet.