Rethinking Energy 2020-2030 - 100% Solar, Wind, and Batteries is Just the Beginning

Nice analogy, Bob. I pretty much agree.

A few quibbles: while the scale problems for deployment of the required amount of battery capacity are formidable and underappreciated, I think they could almost be satisfied. If one requires battery storage sufficient for diurnal cycling, we could probably get there. With daily cycling of battery capacity and batteries at $100 per kWh capacity good for 10,000 cycles, the cost of storage adds only a cent or two to the cost of electricity from storage. The amount of storage capacity would actually be less than the amount present in the EV fleet once the majority of vehicles on the road are EVs. V2G (or C2G, where 'C' = charging station) will allow substantial overlap.

The real problem is that diurnal storage isn't enough. It runs out during any multi-day period of adverse weather. If reserve storage to cover periods of adverse weather were built, it would cycle at most a dozen or so times per year. To make such low throughput affordable, the specific cost of storage capacity would need to be only a few dollars per kWh. No existing or reasonably foreseeable batter technology can get anywhere near that.

And then there's the seasonal storage issue ...