We're talking power station level storage, as in it doesn't have to be light, cheap and consumer durable.
Risks of fire or toxicity from consumers doing dumb things doesn't have to be worried about for instance. A pet gnawing at it and getting sick? Not happening.
So not unobtainium but expensivium can be used. Also operating environments can be dictated, such as temperature, humidity, water cooling or say if the battery technology required a contraption the size of a house, etc.
And lastly it doesn't have to be produced at scale. The lead time for some power station equipment is already months to years. Clunky awkward manufacturing is production ready.
There's many more possibilities given those possibilities. Right now it's Li-ion and nicad at installation sites but look for that changing soon
The problem is complicated.
> A pet gnawing at it and getting sick? Not happening.
Power outages are often caused by animals. 11% are from squirrels[0]. SQUIRRELS!
> Also operating environments can be dictated, such as temperature, humidity, water cooling or say if the battery technology required a contraption the size of a house, etc.
This just adds to the nuance from above. Because now you need to power your containment. This needs priority over powering homes actually. So now you need more excess and more backups because this is going to be expensive if it fails and take a long time to get back up.
A lot can be reduced if people start building battery systems in their homes. But most people don't have $5k-$15k to drop on a powerwall. But that is shifting the burden to consumers and I'm not sure that's a fair comparison because this consumer cost isn't included in our pricing comparisons. Though this would be a much more robust system (assuming we ignore increase in risk of fire) and greatly reduce damage done by events like what we saw in Texas, even if there is a lot of human error involved.
Climate and power is an extremely difficult topic. Anyone saying otherwise is uninformed.
[0] https://gesrepair.com/what-are-the-most-common-causes-of-pow...
For instance Lithium–air batteries have about the energy density of oil but comes with loads of problems that make them currently impractical for consumer devices. There's fewer hurdles however in making it power station ready.
Same thing with liquid electrodes research. There could be large reservoirs that are on multiday flow cycles for capacity smoothing.
It's like comparing a drainage pipe to a hydropower river dam, it's fundamentally a different problem space
Battery technology still has a bit to go before it can perform this task though. Even if we don't account for freak weather events (which are becoming more common).
> When demand is high, inexpensive natural gas can be turned on quickly.
Is this a good option though?
I think the only good argument against nuclear is cost, so I agree with that. But if we consider the cost of emissions, storage (these aren't counted in solar and wind and don't make for fair comparisons to base loads like coal, gas, or nuclear), or other factors that fall under "tragedy of the commons" (i.e. putting sources on even playing fields) the prices become more comparable (depending how you weigh factors). But it really does come down to how much you value the cost of climate and human lives (since nuclear is about 50x safer than natural gas).
Cost is a good argument, but we have to define our priors because "cost" means different things to different people. I for one would rather pay more for electricity and save human lives and reduce emissions. Just at $50/ton tax (low) would make it competitive[0], assuming that we couldn't regain economies of scale.
[0] https://www.axios.com/nuclear-energy-could-be-competitive-bu...