Comment by iso1631
6 hours ago
Which just emphasises the point -- density and thus land use isn't really a major concern
You could store an entire years worth of energy (not just electricity) for a fairly dense country like the UK and still have 95% of the country left for other usage.
Definitely! However I frequently encounter people on energy discussion forums that assume that we need 2-3 months of battery storage, perhaps because they see natural gas or other storage and assume that batteries need exactly the same thing, so I'm perhaps overly eager to respond to claims about month-long battery storage.
I had previously been hopeful that battery storage would allow more shared used of land, but the fire risks of batteries have been pretty severe. And since the land usage requirements are fairly low, there's no need to enhance the risk by putting batteries, say, in enclosed spaces of former natural gas generation facilities [1].
I'm hopeful that we'll see a lot more storage, say a shipping container's worth, at the end of distribution feeders, which helps suck up residential solar with minimal resources, but solving the problem of "who pays for the benefits for all" when the utility is incentivized to keep grid costs high means that nobody is knocking down doors to make that happen...
[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/moss-landing-fire-battery-s...