Macroscien said..
All wrong. Flow battery are going to replace nowadays expensive lithium battery for stationery storage.
Based on cheap Sodium, sulfur and iron and aluminium.
About 5 years ago on these very forums somebody else proclaimed that bromine based batteries were "the thing" and that coal was now dead because bromine was coming.
What has happened since then is the rate at which coal gets dug up and burnt has increased and the number of bromine based batteries in use is..... zero. That person was so wrong, so often, they seem to have just vanished without so much as an adieu.
Problem I have with "batteries" is that they have been around for 100+ years but the efficiency hasn't really improved that much. If you project that rate of improvement forward it doesn't get to where people say it will be.
It seems the idea of a metallic anode and cathode and electrolyte in between just isn't getting us to far too quick.
You can proclaim lithium or sodium or bromine will be better than copper or lead or iron, and that the next great element to try is just around the corner - and I am sure it is, but different elements doing the same thing just doesn't seem to be delivering the revolution people have been proclaiming for several generations now.
The whole discussion about generation seems pretty irrelevant to me. We can generate power relatively easily using many, many methods.
But until we can sort out how we store, distribute and use that energy nobody is getting out of the circle we seem stuck in.
- and contrary to Macro I'm guessing the answer is local (generation, storage and use), not global distribution via thousands of kms of very expensive, very vulnerable, very lowly efficient giant extension leads.
Only a few posts ago Macro was complaining that no nuclear power plants are designed against 'terrorist threats', now he wants the entire humankind to be dependent on giant global power cables. How you gonna protect them from the same "terrorist threats" ??
