Comment by cornholio
1 year ago
I think the assumption you need to use batteries alone for seasonal storage or that you need a pure zero emissions system is missing the point.
A system that has a gas turbine backup for that non-windy week of winter that happens every 5 years is something of substantial value. Use batteries for capital maximizing daily cycles, and leave coal and gas as "storage" for seasonal emergency cycles, this would be a major, major achievement for humanity.
A general principle of backup systems: if you didn't test it this month, it's broken.
You wouldn't have such a capacity mothballed and forgotten for years, it would have to be maintained and tested regularly. There's a concept in energy market design that helps finance such standby operation called a "capacity market". The plant would sell emergency capacity and get paid for not emitting, just staying available. Failure to respond to an emergency cycle would presumably carry hefty contractual penalties, erasing all the previous revenue.
So this makes the battery and the gas plant compete in the market place, each with it's own economic strengths. The gas plant won't handle daily cycles since the emissions cost would kill it, but it can provide emergency power at a rate and for a duration that would make batteries monstrously capital expensive.
By slowly sliding up the emissions pricing, you will tradeoff the long term emissions versus the energy cost, and let the market efficiently allocate the resources until net zero, or near zero, becomes economically attainable.
And eventually, when the CO2 charge gets high enough, you transition those turbines to burning some e-fuel (or maybe biofuel) rather than fossil fuels.