{"id":65286,"date":"2023-04-17T19:30:56","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T00:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65286"},"modified":"2023-04-17T19:30:56","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T00:30:56","slug":"stable-electricity-a-long-slow-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65286","title":{"rendered":"Stable Electricity: A Long Slow Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Stable Electricity: A Long Slow Goodbye<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>
Photo by\u00a0Dan Meyers<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Electricity shortages are\u00a0<\/em>looming<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for the UK and Europe, and then later for the rest of the overdeveloped world as well. Blackouts will become common, and you will get power only for a couple of hours a day \u2014 just like in countries with a less favorable economic position. Most likely not this summer though, maybe not next year. Perhaps not even the year after. Losing a stable electric grid is a slow grind and will go in tandem with the long decline of fossil fuels.<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/span>lthough most people, who got used to receiving a stable supply of power from the magic wall socket, don\u2019t realize this as an immediate danger, the stability of the grid depends on the availability of fossil fuel (mainly natural gas) power plants ready to fill in the gaps during peak consumption hours. Contrary to the magical thinking pouring in on all channels, we are lacking the infrastructure to switch to a grid powered by \u2018renewable\u2019 electricity alone. As\u00a0ecologist William E. Rees<\/a>\u00a0has pointed out:<\/p>\n

\n

The U.S. consumes about 4000 terawatt-hours of electricity every year, or 563 times the existing battery storage capacity\u2026<\/p>\n

An\u00a0entire year<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>of battery production from the multi-billion Gigafactory could only store a mere\u00a0three minutes\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0worth of annual U.S. electric demand\u2026<\/p>\n

Storing only 24 hours\u2019 worth of U.S. electricity generation in lithium batteries would thus\u00a0cost $11.9 trillion<\/strong>, take up\u00a0345 square miles<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0weigh 74 million tonnes<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2026and would take 10 years for 48 Nevada sized Gigafactories to produce the battery cells\u2026 For storing one, single day worth of electricity. One day, not months needed to cover the supply and demand gap in the winter. All this would come at an enormous\u00a0ecological\u00a0<\/strong>as well as\u00a0resource cost\u00a0<\/strong>(lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and their resulting toxic waste streams). Not to mention the fact that we simply neither have these resources at hand nor the mining capacity to get them (if would find them).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stable Electricity: A Long Slow Goodbye Photo by\u00a0Dan Meyers\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash Electricity shortages are\u00a0looming\u00a0for the UK and Europe, and then later for the rest of the overdeveloped world as well. Blackouts will become common, and you will get power only for a couple of hours a day \u2014 just like in countries with a less favorable economic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[256,1574,15442,769,786,32578],"class_list":["post-65286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-electricity-grid","tag-power-grid","tag-renewables","tag-sustainability","tag-technology","tag-the-honest-sorcerer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65287,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65286\/revisions\/65287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}