cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17558715
That’s pretty neat.
Hell yeah
I can’t wait to see this headline again but about a bigger battery somewhere else
Nice. This seems to be the future that solves a lot of problems. Right now in Australia, we’re seriously entertaining building nuclear power plants for the first time ever, to provide base load power that renewables allegedly can’t. Large sodium batteries could help us avoid that.
It’s not just base load, turbines also provide grid stability. All the quick fluctuations as people turn things on and off are hard to load balance with solar, wind, or battery. A big spinning turbine has a lot of inertia. That helps keep thr grid at a constant frequency. As solar gets bigger and bigger we might need big solar powdered flywheel generators just to stabilize the grid.
Inverters could also provide “virtual inertia” which help to stabilize the grid frequency. However most of today’s inverters don’t have it, or it’s disabled.
This means we don’t need solar powered flywheels, which are inherently inefficient, we just need software (edit: and batteries of course) more or less.
The other side of that is matching supply to demand is basically instant. You pull power from batteries and they give you more (provided they’re not at their safe limit). There’s always a lag in getting turbines to spin up and down, and so there’s a non-trivial mismatch time.
Sounds like a way to waste loads of money and keep people on fossil fuels.
Must be way cheaper to build more batteries and build out inertia. (Would still need backup power at this point though).
Nuclear power should be expanded, a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
And before anyone starts whining about “radiation scary”, nuclear waste is a solved problem.
You dig a hole deep into the bedrock, put the waste in dry casks, put the full drycasks in the hole, and backfill it with clay.
Done, solved!
A bigger radiation hazard is coal ash, from cosl power stations, they produce insane ammounts of ash which is radioactive.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
Storing coal ash is also a big problem:
http://www.southeastcoalash.org/about-coal-ash/coal-ash-storage/
Here is an interesting documentary about our fear of radiation, it is called Nuclear Nightmares, and was made by Horizon on BBC:
Imo “put it in a hole” isn’t exactly a great solution when the alternative is renewables but you’re definitely right about coal that shit is terrible.
Nuclear power should be expanded, a lot, it is the only realistic way to replace fossil plats for base demand.
This 90’s talking point against Greenpeace is no longer valid. The economics have changed.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/no-miracles-needed/8D183E65462B8DC43397C19D7B6518E3
Context is important here. The conversation here was about Australia’s nuclear capacity. A country where nuclear power is banned at both state and federal levels. Where the plan for it’s use is currently uncosted, the planned sites have been selected without environmental protection studies and several of which are supposed to be SMRs.
Would you build a bleeding edge nuclear reactor without a legal framework to govern its construction or operation? Without a workforce trained in its functions? Without considering the environmental factors of its geography? Without considering the cost?
Probably not. But that’s the current plan put forward by the reactionary right in Australia and this from a party who doesn’t believe in climate change, have no emissions targets, and whose whole plan is to continue to run and build coal power until whatever time they work out the details on nuclear.
The LNP doesn’t have a legitimate interest in transitioning to nuclear power or they would’ve begun over the last decade or so that they were in power.
Instead they’ve proposed - now that they’re in opposition - a technology which is banned at the Federal level and individually at the state level, because they know that gives them years of lead time before they ever have to begin the project.
On top of that, all of the proposed sites are owned by companies who’ve already begun transitioning to renewable generation or renewable storage, and most of them are in states in which the state Premiers have publicly stated that they will not consider overturning their bans on nuclear power.
All this talk about nuclear only does one thing, keeping fossil fuels relevant for longer.
Put one of these in every neighborhood please.
Check UK stories.
People leaving next to turbines hate them due to noise pollution.
People live on top of mountains?
Were are these wind turbines being placed? I hiked to a farm once and had one at work.
Now, I’m not saying they are silent but unless you put one in my back garden I never thought of them as loud.
Doesn’t California have some insane battery too?
Yes, but that is Lithium-ion. These batteries are Sodium-ion which are better for the environment and can potentially be made a lot cheaper… It’s still pretty new technology so it’s not really in any consumer products yet.
Sodium batteries are already in electric cars many months ago
Also you could buy individual cells on AliExpress
Sodium batteries will not replace lithium in cars, as the density is too low.
It means the battery weighs more but contains less power.
For an EV, that wouldn’t work, as the heavier the car is, the more power it uses.
With sodium you will probably half the range of the EV, which is already low.
Economy of scale matters, so does practicality. Which one is generally lasting longer per number of charges and what’s the long term viability of both given the time they were build and the available tech at that time? I totally understand the greater availability of sodium vs lithium. However, will it last? Last time I read much about it, reliability was weak, charge capacity over time dropped drastically, and failures were high. (It has been a couple of years, so things may be changing. )
Something new and shiney can be nifty, but past that, what is this? It seems like an expensive hood ornament that will rust in the rain. Lithium is expensive and toxic to mine, but so are all metals to some extent, and this has plenty.
It seems like it’s buying something 25% off on a $100 thing that won’t last well. Sure, you saved $25 once, but you’re buying 3 of them in the same time frame.
I love how these look like Lego pieces snapped onto a green base.
Even if all that is painted cement or something it is also just really refreshing to see architecture, especially the sort of necessity eyesore that tech architecture/engineering requires, also being mindfully the environment it will exist in to some degree. Even if it is only visual.
