alt Hacker News> You install 12 hours worth of batteries at the factory
I literally laughed out loud, sorry. Providing baseload with BESS alone? That's rich. Literally. Extremely expensive. In addition to impractical amount of batteries it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation.
> Then why is no other country burning that amount of coal?
China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants. They are working on it though. Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants.
> Extremely expensive.
Battery storage has a levelized cost of ~$0.20/kWh. Solar is ~$0.04/kWh. If you're using the batteries for 50% of kWh you end up at an average of ~$0.14/kWh, which is in the same range as coal.
> it requires impractical overcapacity to compensate for seasonal variation.
Only if you're trying to do 100% of generation from one source. Solar generates more power in the summer, wind generates more power in the winter. Meanwhile you don't have to use overcapacity at all when your target isn't fully 100%. You have enough solar to not need fossil fuels in the warmer months at all, enough wind to only need them 20% of the time in cooler months, and then only 10% of your kWh come from fossil fuels.
> China does about 30% of the world's industrial production and 40% of metal production, while having around 50% of world's coal power plants.
Those are unwelcome numbers even proportional to the amount of manufacturing.
> Many of their new coal plants are peaker plants.
"New coal plants" is rather the problem in itself. The number we need to be going down is instead going up.