"If every stove in America were shipped with a battery, it would add up to tens of gigawatts of power, Calisch said. That’s capacity that can be aggregated and tapped when the grid is stressed."

Back of an envelope calculation: 100 million distributed batteries × 10 kWh each = 1,000 GWh = 1 TWh. If those batteries could each provide 5 kW: 100 million × 5 kW = 500 GW. That would be comparable to, or larger than, the entire short-duration storage requirement in some US 100%-clean-grid scenarios.

Of all the many forces working in renewables favor, here's another. The grid storage a 100%-renewables grid needs can be largely self-building. Decentralized self-building systems always win out against inefficient centralized systems in the end.

How smaller, distributed batteries could help the grid

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[–] -2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

Oh yeah, all those super batteries that are made of readily available materials and can be built to scale at no environmental impact and can easily fit in household appliances...

Yeah, I forgot we had all of those laying around, you're right bro.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Do you know that "rare earth" refers to 17 specific elements? I don't know of any battery technologies that use any of them, which is why I asked.

    I'm being a pedantic ass but I'm taking issue with your terminology, not your overall point.

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