[pranavj]

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a fundamental barrier.

The next milestone to watch: when battery-backed solar becomes cheaper than gas peakers for evening demand across most of Europe. We might be closer than people think.

[bee_rider]

Intermittence really has always had the flavor of an engineering problem instead of a physics problem (it is about putting the energy when/where humans want it, rather than having enough of it). IMO load shifting seems like a cleverer and more engineer-y solution. Imagine a giant smart system where all of our appliances talk to each-other and can optimize the timings of their workloads. It’s a magnificent society-wide scheduling problem! The papers we could write!

Throwing batteries at it is a kind of blunt and uninteresting solution (I guess the market will prefer that one!).

[epolanski]

I ain't gonna use the dishwasher when the system wants me to, but when I can or want.

I pay low energy prices during night than day, that's normal, but I'm still not gonna do laundry at 9 pm, I'd rather pay the 10/20 cents more during the day.

[salynchnew]

It's a great idea, but I feel like that way ends up with the nightmare scenario of each of us managing an AWS-style admin console for washing the dishes, etc.

That way lies madness, although I suppose there might be one or two family members I would want to lock out of the dishwasher.

[terj74]

This is already happening with market pricing of electricity energy demands that can be shifted. Our car charges, and our dishwasher/clothes washer run when pricing is low. The price differential is not big enough yet between high and low demand times for us to invest in a battery to soak up cheap power. If battery prices continue to go down, or if the price differential goes up that equation will change. The other main expensive energy user is HVAC and we don't have a way of moving that demand to a different time of day other than a batterv. :(

[evan_a_a]

In engineering the simple solution is often the best solution. Creating a demand-side network of devices is not that.

Plus, such a system would provide even more ways for nefarious actors to sabotage the grid, by influencing the demand side. For example, setting every appliance to run its load at the same time. The grid would be fucked.

[IshKebab]

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar.

The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero.

I don't know what the answer to that is. In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Space based solar is a scam. Maybe we just have to live with it until fusion works (if it ever does).

(But it's still academic at the moment because we're still far from the point where building more renewables is a bad idea.)

[MakersF]

It's unfair you're being down voted, you're right. I used to think that we could get by with just solar wind and batteries, but then after collaborating with people on an ideal energy mix the numbers were obvious: there is a (small) fraction that cannot be covered. Not with storage (the discharge cycles are so few that the cost is prohibitive. How can a battery pay for itself with 10-20 discharges a year? And this applies to any kind of battery that needs to be built, including hydro). Likely there will need to be some baseload nuclear (which then increases average prices, since to make it economical you need to buy all the electricity it produces, and so it partially displaces renewables). The alternative is overbuilding solar+wind+battery something like 5/8 times the average need. Maybe if the prices drop enough that could be feasible.. The big win would be if there is some way to get predictable power at a lower cost than nuclear (e.g. tidal), which could be used to smooth the troughts, or alternatively a low capex but potentially high opex solution which is turned on only when needed (gas is an option, but not co2 free. And sizing the power needed is not super cheap, although now it's not a problem since we have enough gas capacity which is going to be displaced, so it won't be needed to be built)

[kieranmaine]

Regarding long term storage keep an eye on the UK's Cap and Floor scheme which offers guaranteed revenues to long term storage technologies [1].

Page 7 of https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/LDES%20... lists the technology types of the project applications. The majority are Li-Ion BESS, but there are also other battery chemistries and Liquid/Compress Air Storage

1. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/super-battery-project...

[micwag]

> In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Hydro doesn’t really care about a calm cloudy winter week and is the reason my state was 100% renewable last year. So it’s definitely not a problem for ALL renewables.

[kilroy123]

Just over build the solar. Build out solar so demand in winter is met.

Use the excess power in summer for some kind of industrial use.

[ViewTrick1002]

Keep some of the existing natural gas plants around as an emergency reserve. Run them on hydrogen or hydrogen derivatives for zero carbon fuel, if the emissions are large enough to matter.

[pfdietz]

This just shows batteries shouldn't be the only storage technology, at least at high latitude. There needs to be a complementary long term storage technology with low capacity capex, even if its round trip efficiency is bad. Examples: green hydrogen, ultra low capex thermal storage.

To see the effect of including such, go to https://model.energy

Using a long term storage technology (in addition to wind/solar/batteries) can cut the cost in half at high latitudes.

[KaiserPro]

> In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days

True, but then for the UK solar power isn't the right thing for winter, hence why we need a massive mix of other stuff.

Also we have the advantage that france isn't that far away.

In the UK battery is about grid stabilisation, as in making sure that it hums at 50hz rather than 49.

[tremon]

Space based solar is a scam

It's not a scam, it's a weapon. The same proliferation arguments that have been used against nuclear also apply to space-based solar.

[hexbin010]

Try 2 weeks of seemingly endless cloud up this way lol. This winter has been seriously depressing so far

[mekdoonggi]

I looked into sodium-ion batteries for which factories are coming online in China. The theoretical manufacturing cost of those is very very low, which will make solar + batteries very cheap. I suspect China will reach those costs ahead of schedule.

[danny_codes]

IMO this is a classic case of underestimating how far manufacturing improvements can get you on the cost scale. You see a promising technology in the lab and it’s hard to imagine a 1 million x reduction in price, yet we see that time and time again as tech gets scaled out.

What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself

[bryanlarsen]

Those are two thresholds: cheaper than peakers using piped gas from Russia, and cheaper than peakers using LNG shipped via tanker ship. I imagine the latter threshold has already been met, only depending on the amortization period you choose for the battery purchase.

[epolanski]

A huge part of this calculus though is that the gas we buy since Russia disappeared as a provider is insanely high.

Our economics may not match Canadian or US ones.

[Gibbon1]

For an example one can look at California. Batteries deleted the duck curve.