Douglas_Knight comments on Open Thread for February 11 - 17 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Coscott 11 February 2014 06:08PM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 13 February 2014 11:12:15PM *  0 points [-]

Your lithium-ion numbers match my understanding of batteries in general: they cost as much energy to create as their lifetime capacity. That's why you can't use batteries to smooth out erratic power sources like wind, or inflexible ones like nuclear.

I'm skeptical that it's a good idea to focus on the energy used to create the battery. There's energy used to create all the rest of the car, and certainly energy to create the gasoline-powered car that you're using as a benchmark. Production energy is difficult to compute and I think most people do such a bad job that I think it's better to use price as a proxy.