I often see posted about how covering a relatively small area in a desert with solar panels could power the world – but transferring that energy is too difficult. Why can’t we just use that to charge batteries and ship them places/ everywhere?
In: Physics
You can! Mostly.
Many green power installations also use large scale power storage like enormous ranks of batteries (or other options like pumped water storage or flywheels.). However, this is not a flawless solution. Batteries require special materials to be built, such as Lithium, which is not a very abundant element world wide, making it expensive. Mining Lithium can have negative environmental impacts, and we need an incredibly large amount. Like, it’s hard to really articulate how much electricity we use to power everything. Batteries, even our very best designs, just aren’t that efficient at storing electricity, not when it comes to the scales of powering a whole home or city. If we wanted to power everything off of solar and batteries, we would need *millions* of huge batteries. On top of that, rechargeable batteries degrade over time. Many are only rated for ~1,000 discharge cycles, or in other words, about 3 years of lifetime before they need to be refurbished or replaced, and hopefully recycled. And, batteries, even if they aren’t terribly efficient, are still storing a lot of power, which means that if they fail or break they can be dangerous and start fires.
The problem isn’t really about moving the electricity from place to place, but in the immense expense and environmental impact of building huge numbers of batteries or other power storage options. This means that an ideal power grid would probably use a mixture of options, like solar, wind, tidal, and nuclear power generation alongside substantial batteries in order to provide a consistent stable supply of power all day long.
Latest Answers