Gathering solar power isn't a problem, but storing it is. Lithium-ion batteries can be cheap now, but I am afraid that we just have not enough lithium sources to build as many batteries as we need.
Also it's unclear for me how to deal with winter. Storing energy gathered in summer for consuming it during winter isn't viable, sine it requires too much storage capacity. The only way left is to have enough solar cells to produce enough energy in winter, but it may be too costly, since typical winter power output is several times less than during summer.
Please don't project lithium shortages as a compelling story. Firstly, unmined resources are large. Secondly battery technology is changing. Thirdly, you need to cite sources if you want to assert we can't make enough.
You ignore pumped hydro as well. Battery stacks are not the only storage.
I'm not a power engineer or any kind of engineer but I think you are repeating fright memes not actual information. I read widely and nothing I read suggests we face any lack of capacity to install battery storage, or pumped hydro.
I'm fascinated with seasonal heat storage using large underground water tanks. Apparently one drains the heat in winter, and dumps heat during the summer?
As @blahlabs notes in peer comment sand batteries / heating buried dirt works better than heating water for seasonal power storage and smoothing.
In simple terms there's better efficiency and ease of use from having a higher delta (temperature difference) and dirt / sand / salts heated to 600C are significantly hotter than water at 100C.
Once water turns to steam drama and expenses climb.
The problem with pumped hydro seems to be that the places with the topography needed to create artificial lakes that lend themselves to hydro storage are rather limited. Other than that, it seems to be doing well!
Mining at scale is a very dirty business, we're just displacing the problem, the root cause is our unlimited quest for "more", electric or fossil it doesn't end well
Because we have relatively cheap lithium batteries mostly because we exploit third-world countries (often including child-labor) and conveniently ignore that part.
Had lithium to be extracted paying regular wages i doubt it would be as cheap as it is today.
Basic weekly pay rates ~ $1,000 (AU) .. plus public holiday and Sunday loading, increases for specialized skills, Night shift rates, trade skills, more paid vacation time than in the US, long service leave, etc.
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Currently a good many lithium mines are shuttered, closed down until the market demand rises, after many of them were opened in anticipation of much greater demand.
Moreover, lithium batteries are not essential to the problem of large scale grid storage; they are energy per kilogram of weight efficient and ideal for cars and battery power on the go; for grid storage there are much heavier batteries that deliver less energy per kilogram .. and that doesn't matter as the battery farms don't move.
> Gathering solar power isn't a problem, but storing it is
I would agree that storage should not be ignored when we talk about the cost but even without storage solar is not useless. Solar + peaking gas power plant is better then gas alone 24x7.
Many sunny countries still burn coal and gas in the middle of the day when solar can provide 100% of energy demand (e. g. in Algeria and many other African countries share of solar is <1%). Dropping cost of PV may help to change this.
Producing some sort of fuel using excess electricity to burn it later is a possible approach. But conversion has losses and storing fuel and maintaining facilities for burning it (basically gas power plants) adds more costs to initially cheap solar energy.
Also it's unclear for me how to deal with winter. Storing energy gathered in summer for consuming it during winter isn't viable, sine it requires too much storage capacity. The only way left is to have enough solar cells to produce enough energy in winter, but it may be too costly, since typical winter power output is several times less than during summer.