Posted on 03/11/2013 7:38:01 AM PDT by grumpa
Over the last three decades, I've worked as counsel for several clients in the mining, oil & gas and battery industries. Because of that experience, I've always understood that battery manufacturing is extremely energy intensive. After all, the entire value chain from mining and purifying metals through component fabrication and final assembly requires massive fossil fuel and electric power inputs. Until last week, however, I didn't truly understand the magnitude of the energy inputs required to make a battery.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
Its NOT about the Greens electrical power..its about their POLITICAL power.
They're recyclable, but essentially worthless. The cost to the company for the "switchouts" is always pretty substantial.
Forgetting the manufacturing cost of batteries, there is energy loss whenever there is a conversion. The work that can be done by the coal in heating water is far great than the amount of work that can be done by the same coal creating electricity to heat water.
Batteries are handing portable energy devices where portability is traded fore efficiency, batteries are not an alternative energy source, as some greens appear to think.
“I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with facts” — Al Gore & fellow travelers.
Way back in a previous life I was an engineer at Ford Aerospace in Newport Beach - it no longer exists. However there was on the facility a battery mfg plant.
It takes a lot to make a battery.
TNSTAAFL.................
To put energy into a battery first requires that you have more energy than the battery can hold.........
The only electricity more expensive than solar electricity is no electricity.
On a side note, batteries are an excellent barter item during a SHTF or TEOTWAWKI scenario.
No energy storage unit is 100% efficient. Batteries give back less power than you put in. Also, with time, a battery will eventually lose all the power that you put in.
At some time in the future, the battery will no longer be able to hold a charge, and it will have to be discarded.
Envirowackos never factor all this in.
“To put energy into a battery first requires that you have more energy than the battery can hold.........”
“Im pretty sure that comment is racist, or something else bad. In any event, I’m plugging my ears because my worldview won’t allow for that sort of fact!”
1. Batteries are not typically used to store solar energy. Excess solar energy is sold back to the energy companies like Edison and pumped into the "grid". This reduces the demand on power plants during the day and that does make some economic sense. If the whole process required no government subsidies then it would make a lot of sense. In fact, that is the direction things are moving because the cost of panels is falling like a rock and most of the costs of putting up a solar system is the labor and ancillary hardware. (And that labor isn't coming from China.)
2. From what I could read, the author is worried about the cost per Kilowatt Hour to manufacture a battery versus the capacity of that battery. That's an important figure for sure but it doesn't consider the number of times that battery can be recharged and the cost to recharge it. If the former is large and the latter is small the use of a batteries could still come close to making economic sense.
3. A comment about electric cars: IMHO, it is not ever going to be practical to power automobiles with batteries until something comes along that is better and cheaper than current Lithium technology. The reason: there just isn't enough Lithium to support a large (multimillion scale) electric automobile industry.
At least that's my opinion.
That is a odd statement.
There are simply too many calculations to say what is a waste.
For example, using batteries combined with wind and solar generation is a great combination. What determines what the 'waste' is purely up to the consumer. Ie, being able to live out off the grid is a huge price, and certainly not a 'waste', imho.
None of this is why batteries are too important. Batteries are too vital to the vibrator industry to sacrifice to something as everyday as travel.
Here’s another fact to rock your worldview:
You won’t get out of the battery as much energy as you put in.............
An extremely honest indicator of how much total energy something uses is its price. If option A costs twice as much as option B, half the cost of option A is energy waste and unnecessary pollution.
Nice way of putting it.
Which is exactly why hybrid cars cost more than their IC equivalents....:^)
Total lifetime energy should always be considered.
If the product the batteries power [electric cars, for example] is unwanted and unprofitable, then the resources used in its production were wasted. It isn't a difficult calculation at all.
Those resources could have been directed into the production of goods that consumers demand at prices that allow the manufacturer to cover his costs. It's the opportunity cost that determines whether a process is wasteful.
I agree with that. But, the price and expense is up to the consumer. As long as their is no subsidizes and the battery company is profitable, that is all that matters.
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