human actions, global climate change, global human solutions
POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 19:38
VIEWED: 60750
PAGE 78 of 111
Solid-State EV Batteries Now Face “Production Hell”
Producing battery packs that yield 800+ kilometers remains rough-going
By Charles J. Murray | Jan 26, 2024
https://spectrum.ieee.org/solid-state-battery-production-challenges
Recent solid-state battery announcements by Volkswagen and QuantumScape are raising hopes in the electric-vehicle market, but automotive battery experts are warning that the road to widespread, solid-state success is still a long and arduous one. A single breakthrough, as if from above, is not likely to turn the whole industry on its nose anytime soon.
“Solid-state is a great technology,” noted Bob Galyen, owner of Galyen Energy and former chief technology officer for the Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. (CATL). “But it’s going to be just like lithium-ion was in terms of the length of time it will take to hit the market. And lithium-ion took a long time to get there.”
“I haven’t seen cost numbers that are even close to competing with liquid-state, lithium-ion batteries.“ —Bob Galyen, Galyen Energy
Galyen and other experts consulted by IEEESpectrum noted that recent announcements by Volkswagen, QuantumScape, Toyota, and NIO have resulted in impressive stock market performance. However, these same experts noted a pointed skepticism toward the technical merits of these announcements. None could isolate anything on the horizon indicating that solid-state technology can escape the engineering and “production hell” that lies ahead.
The remaining hurdles will involve validating existing solid-state battery technologies (currently in use for more limited, often medical, applications) for cars and trucks. The adoption curve, experts say, will depend on the product’s ability to be validated in terms of performance, life, and cost characteristics.
Solid-state cells, so-named for their use of a solid electrolyte, are seen as a key to the future of the electric car because they potentially offer greater safety and energy, as well as much faster recharge times. Solid-state cells differ from conventional lithium-ion batteries in their use of a glass or ceramic electrolyte, instead of a liquid composed of lithium salts. Automakers are keen on solid-state batteries’ future, because the technology offers greater thermal stability than liquid-based batteries, thus allowing for substantially faster recharge, among other advantages.
Solid-state has also been the subject of recent announcements from battery manufacturers and mainstream automakers alike. In early January, Volkswagen Group’s PowerCo SE battery company said it tested lithium-metal cells from QuantumScape, achieving 1,000 charging cycles with 95 percent of the cell’s capacity still intact. The company said in a statement that the cell’s life-performance was analogous to “an electric car that could drive more than 500,000 kilometers (300,000 miles) without any noticeable loss of range.”
“What happens when you’re driving down I-75 and you hit a big pit in the road? What kind of damage would be done to the solid-state matrix?” —Bob Galyen, Galyen Energy
Similarly, Toyota announced in October that it plans to incorporate solid-state batteries in an unnamed number of production vehicles by 2027. The automaker said it is targeting a 1,000-km (600-mile) range with 80 percent DC fast-charge in 10 minutes or less. In December, Chinese automaker NIO also got in the game, saying it is introducing a 150-kilowatt-hour “semi-solid-state battery” that would theoretically offer a 1,000-km range as soon as this summer.
Experts were quick to point out, however, that NIO’s battery, made by WeLion New Energy Technology Co., is not solid-state. “This is in fact a fairly conventional NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cell with a gel electrolyte that has been in production for 15 years and is typically referred to as lithium-polymer,” noted Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst for Guidehouse Insights. “Technically the gel is considered a semi-solid because it has properties of both a solid and liquid. But in a cell,
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Holdouts in the Quest for a Better Power Grid
Farmers in Missouri are opposing the Grain Belt Express, a transmission line that will connect wind farms in Kansas with cities in the East.
By Michael Holtz | Jan 26, 2024
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of-energy/the-holdouts-in-the-ques
t-for-a-better-power-grid
The Sprouse family farm covers thousands of acres of fertile glacial till, ??remnants of the last ice age, in northwestern Missouri. Each day, billions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of thousands of barrels’ worth of crude oil pass underneath its fields and cow pastures. The only visible signs of this subterranean activity are three posts—one metal and two plastic—spaced about thirty feet apart along a barbed-wire fence at the edge of a field. Each corresponds to a pipeline, and each has a warning label with a number to call in an emergency. “At least the pipelines are out of sight, even if they aren’t out of mind,” Loren Sprouse, the youngest of three Sprouse brothers, said one morning in May as we were driving around in a utility terrain vehicle. “We’d rather have them than the transmission line.”
The transmission line Sprouse was talking about is the Grain Belt Express, a planned eight-hundred-mile-long power line that will connect wind farms in southwestern Kansas to more densely populated areas farther East. The Grain Belt Express is designed to carry five thousand megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 3.2 million homes. The project has been in the works since 2010. It was taken over by Invenergy, a Chicago-based energy company, in 2020. After years of lawsuits and legislative wrangling, regulators in Missouri granted it final approval in October, 2023. If all goes as planned, construction will start in early 2025 and be completed in 2028.
One of the biggest obstacles that the United States faces in its fight against climate change is getting renewable energy to the places that need the most electricity. Many of the best locations for wind and solar farms are, by their very nature, remote. And moving that energy elsewhere requires navigating a byzantine permitting process for transmission lines and winning over landowners—or, if they can’t be won over, then deciding whether and when the need for a given project outweighs their concerns. “The scale of the undertaking and the speed at which it needs to occur are incredibly daunting,” Romany Webb, the deputy director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, at Columbia Law School, told me. “We’re talking about a massive build-out of new, large-scale infrastructure across the country, and we need to do it, like, yesterday.”
Sprouse and I headed south on a gravel road, past a tumbledown chicken coop and a white farmhouse that his grandparents had moved into in 1911. Across the way, his brother Weldon was servicing a tractor. The brothers had finished planting their corn crop a couple of weeks earlier; soybeans were next. We got out at the top of a hill above the farmhouse. To the east was a machine shed and several rows of hay bales, to the west a green pasture. “I was going to build my retirement home right here,” Sprouse said, leaning against a fence post. “Could you ask for a better view?” He told me that he abandoned his plans for the house after he learned that the Grain Belt Express would be built directly in front of it. As we spoke, a surveying team subcontracted by Invenergy pulled up in two white pickup trucks. They had come to search for archeological remains along the planned route, a step required by the National Historic Preservation Act. Sprouse asked them to come back another day.
Sprouse said that he wasn’t against renewable energy, but he couldn’t support something that would interfere with his family’s farming operations and, in his words, “be the dominant scar on the landscape.” The transmission towers that Invenergy plans to build are around a hundred and fifty feet tall. One of Sprouse’s main concerns is whether G.P.S.-guided equipment, like tractors and combines, would work near t
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It’s not just solar that’s getting cheaper
Kevin Drum / Feb 1, 2024 at 5:49 PM
https://jabberwocking.com/its-not-just-solar-thats-getting-cheaper/
Dave Roberts recommends that I take a look at Nat Bullard's deck of climate-related charts.
https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations
Here's a chart that should be familiar:
The price of solar has plummeted over the past decade. But as conservatives are constantly reminding us, the sun doesn't always shine. Then what? The price of battery storage has plummeted too.
All utility-scale solar plants now include battery storage so they can supply power 24 hours a day, and they can do this because the price of storage is a quarter what it was a decade ago.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s not just solar that’s getting cheaper
Kevin Drum / Feb 1, 2024 at 5:49 PM
https://jabberwocking.com/its-not-just-solar-thats-getting-cheaper/
Dave Roberts recommends that I take a look at Nat Bullard's deck of climate-related charts.
https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations
Here's a chart that should be familiar:
The price of solar has plummeted over the past decade. But as conservatives are constantly reminding us, the sun doesn't always shine. Then what? The price of battery storage has plummeted too.
Wow! Only .12 cents per watt! What a deal!
What a fucking sucker I am for paying .13 cents per kWh!
Oh... That's right. You and obese, dying Kevin Drum went to public school in America
and you're both idiots. You don't understand the Metric system or the difference between
a single watt being generated vs. sustaining a watt of power for an hour.
Quote:
All utility-scale solar plants now include battery storage so they can supply power 24 hours a day, and they can do this because the price of storage is a quarter what it was a decade ago.
Nice! Only what, about $160 to $175 more to store a kWh? Score!
Let's just forget to mention that it all still costs this much even with all the Government subsidies in place.
FAIL
I don't hear you idiots pushing Coal Burning Cars much anymore. That didn't work out either, did it?
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:In a five-year contract I am paying Shell Energy 9.3 cents per kilowatt/hour for 100% Green energy. At night, Shell does not turn off the lights because they have batteries. 6ix, you know less than nothing because most of what you know is wrong.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow! Only .12 cents per watt! What a deal!
What a fucking sucker I am for paying .13 cents per kWh!
Oh... That's right. You and obese, dying Kevin Drum went to public school in America
and you're both idiots. You don't understand the Metric system or the difference between
a single watt being generated vs. sustaining a watt of power for an hour.
Nice! Only what, about $160 to $175 more to store a kWh? Score!
Let's just forget to mention that it all still costs this much even with all the Government subsidies in place.
FAIL
I don't hear you idiots pushing Coal Burning Cars much anymore. That didn't work out either, did it?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:In a five-year contract I am paying Shell Energy 9.3 cents per kilowatt/hour for 100% Green energy. At night, Shell does not turn off the lights because they have batteries. 6ix, you know less than nothing because most of what you know is wrong.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow! Only .12 cents per watt! What a deal!
What a fucking sucker I am for paying .13 cents per kWh!
Oh... That's right. You and obese, dying Kevin Drum went to public school in America
and you're both idiots. You don't understand the Metric system or the difference between
a single watt being generated vs. sustaining a watt of power for an hour.
Nice! Only what, about $160 to $175 more to store a kWh? Score!
Let's just forget to mention that it all still costs this much even with all the Government subsidies in place.
FAIL
I don't hear you idiots pushing Coal Burning Cars much anymore. That didn't work out either, did it?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Those contracts were all government subsidized and are all going away, dummy. Tell us what you're paying when you're forced to renew it.
I mean, just how fucking stupid are you? Look at the prices on those graphs for solar/battery energy and then explain to everyone how Shell can even afford to keep their doors open if they sell it at such a staggering loss for the long haul, and to the millions upon millions more customers that you incorrectly predicted would be driving coal burning cars in the future.
You were catfished. Your F150 Lightning is worthless and you'll get nothing for it when it comes time to sell so you'd better drive it into the ground. And don't bitch at me when the new contract makes it completely unaffordable to drive. Enjoy whatever is left of those 5 years while you can.
No sympathy for you.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:You know already that I am prejudiced against Trumptards because of my long experience with their half-baked ideas about how America works. 6ix, you should start hiding your nonsense and false facts from normal people, assuming you want to eventually expand your life beyond what $7,000 per year can buy.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Those contracts were all government subsidized and are all going away, dummy. Tell us what you're paying when you're forced to renew it.
I mean, just how fucking stupid are you? Look at the prices on those graphs for solar/battery energy and then explain to everyone how Shell can even afford to keep their doors open if they sell it at such a staggering loss for the long haul, and to the millions upon millions more customers that you incorrectly predicted would be driving coal burning cars in the future.
You were catfished. Your F150 Lightning is worthless and you'll get nothing for it when it comes time to sell so you'd better drive it into the ground. And don't bitch at me when the new contract makes it completely unaffordable to drive. Enjoy whatever is left of those 5 years while you can.
No sympathy for you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump Allies Plan to Gut Climate Research if He Is Reelected
Dozens of conservative organizations have banded together to provide Trump a road map — known as Project 2025 — to boost fossil fuels and limit government climate science
By Scott Waldman & E&E News | February 2, 2024
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-allies-plan-to-gut-cl
imate-research-if-he-is-reelected/
https://www.eenews.net/articles/reversed-and-scrubbed-how-a-second-tru
mp-term-could-gut-climate-research/
CLIMATEWIRE | Former President Donald Trump’s second term could begin with a clear direction on climate policy: Trash it.
Dozens of conservative organizations have banded together to provide Trump a road map — known as Project 2025 — if he prevails in November. It outlines a series of steps that the former president could take to reverse the climate actions taken by the Biden administration.
Trump has already said that boosting fossil fuels would be one of his top priorities. A proposed executive order in Project 2025 offers him a path for that goal, laying out a total restructuring of the U.S. Global Change Research Program to diminish its role across more than a dozen federal agencies.
Project 2025 also calls for replacing the White House climate adviser with an "energy/environment" adviser who would pivot to serving the needs of the fossil fuel industry.
“The Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding,” the plan states. “As with other federal departments and agencies, the Biden Administration’s leveraging of the federal government’s resources to further the woke agenda should be reversed and scrubbed from all policy manuals, guidance documents, and agendas.”
The Washington-based Heritage Foundation worked with conservative organizations to produce Project 2025, which offers 920 pages of policy prescriptions to ensure the chaos of Trump’s first term is not repeated if he gets a second. The think tank did not respond to a request for comment.
But Tom Pyle, a Project 2025 contributor and president of the American Energy Alliance, said Heritage is now recruiting Trump loyalists ready to implement the agenda on Day One. Installing personnel who can carry out such executive orders will be the key step in determining if they are followed, he said.
“Project 2025 has the potential to be an essential tool for President Trump should he be elected for a second term,” Pyle said. “But a plan is only as good as the people who implement it, so getting competent and committed conservative personnel into the administration will be more critical.”
The Trump campaign declined to provide comment to E&E News but has stated in the past that the former president will determine his own policy priorities, regardless of outside pressure.
Trump’s climate record suggests that the proposed executive order would be in line with his energy agenda.
In recent months, he has repeatedly promised to be a “dictator for a day” to ramp up oil and gas drilling. And allies expect that he will seek to unwind President Joe Biden’s climate policies much faster than he did the policies of President Barack Obama.
'Who knows what will happen'
Project 2025 calls for the president to use an executive order to “reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program and related climate change research programs.”
The program was established by Congress in 1990 to coordinate federal research and spending to better understand how climate change affects the country. One of its key successes was to reveal how the depleted ozone layer was harming Americans, which led to regulations that successfully addressed the issue.
A top target of Project 2025 is the program’s National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report that is due again in late 2026 or early 2027. The proposed executive order would require a “critical analysis” of the assessment and a rejection of all related climate science work prepared by the Biden administration.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Greenhouse Effect
https://xkcd.com/2889/
Once he had the answer, Arrhenius complained to his friends that he'd "wasted over a full year" doing tedious calculations by hand about "so trifling a matter" as hypothetical CO2 concentrations in far-off eras (quoted in Crawford, 1997).
Arrhenius greenhouse effect
https://www.google.com/search?q=Arrhenius+greenhouse+effect
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Today, the state gets 47.13% of its electricity from wind and 0.33% from solar.
Yet now, 14 of the 105 counties in Kansas block wind turbines and 12 block solar farms.
These efforts mirror those in hundreds of counties and townships across the nation, where the merest hint of a potential project quickly brings forth a Facebook group, yard signs, organized protests and – increasingly – zoning rules and laws that make new renewable energy impossible to build.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/02/04/solar-po
wer-in-kansas/71920670007/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME