Solid State Batteries will reach mass production in the next 2-3 years, lowering the price for electricity storage to (far) below €100/kWh while also offering more safety. US and European firms are however not part of this upcoming megamarket, because we prefer to waste our energy (pun intended) on glorified autocorrect solutions and deepfake (moving) pix. #SarcasmButOnlyHalf 1/5
Graph source: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/11/01/solid-state-batteries-enter-pilot-production-costs-expected-to-drastically-drop/
Combined with the impressive downward curve of cost for battery storage in general, this WILL lead to something the big power companies really fear: decentralised, local grids. With renewables and storage combined in ways, when done right, that gets us to effectively free electricity for private households. See you at #FOSDEM in the devroom on Energy Transition with open source and open standards? Let’s build the Fedigrid! https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2024q4/003573.html 2/5
The big markets for these decentralised, federating grids will however not be in Europe. Think Africa, South America. Where renewables will be used to create power grids that simply don’t exist yet. Converting existing grids, like here in Europe, opens a giant can of worms. 3/5
But we have a big opportunity here in Europe, IMHO: the brains and tools to help define an open infrastructure for these new grids. To avoid this becoming another oligopoly. Take Software Freedom principles to create Energy Freedom. That’s going to be the next frontier, IMHO. Open standards, open hardware, open protocols, open source for energy production, storage and distribution. 4/5
I’ve been talking about this for some years now. And I am very happy to see that more and more people share similar thoughts and there now is a dedicated devroom at #FOSDEM for this. I am NOT involved in that, BTW. And that’s just the way I like it! Ideas are bigger than people, so I am looking forward to learn from far more involved people about all the other things I can’t even imagine that are defining in this field! See you in Brussels! 5/5
@jwildeboer Does anyone know what's the state of the predecessor technology sodium battery at #Northvolt? AFAIK the only european company with R&D in this field.
@jwildeboer Can't wait to see what's possible for apartment buildings. You have heaps of residents buying electricity, EVs storing energy, and roof space that could be used for solar panels. There's a lot of potential for cost savings (and more efficient energy transmission) if it can be coordinated properly.
I'm on the board of an organisation that governs for good governance of apartment developments in New Zealand and would love to contribute to progress in this space.
@jwildeboer Imagine telling your car when you want to leave so it knows it can sell energy back to the grid and earn you money during peak periods if you're going to be parked all day. This could happen in any apartment building, public carpark, office building, etc.
@jwildeboer you may be a dreamer, my kind sir!
@jwildeboer
What you write about here is economic hersey. This is the sort of thing people get killed for trying to effect. The present state of American politics has more to do with our reliance on petro-dictatorahips (and their sovereign wealth autocrats) than any grassroots desire for authoritarian policies.
All that being said, it's my fervent desire to see that yoke thrown off! God I hope we can before biosphere collapse becomes a global phenomon.