You really can't though. The batteries both have a capacity (kWh/MWh) and discharge power (kW/MW) rating, but it's usually the capacity that is the limiting one. And for extra fun, the discharge power goes up as the battery has more charge, and the charging rate goes down.
You mean I can't have my new plastic in a particular shape for a WHOLE WEEK? I knew the commies were up to no good when they said technology could make the world a better place.
Yes, but this shit is wrong. Imagine if I went to a shit restaurant, and I ordered shit, and instead they served me chocolate mouse. I think I would be quite rightly upset about this.
OP is stupid and thinks there are a million megawatts in a gigawatt. It's a thousand. You only need 1550 barges to supply the entire USA.
Each barge is supplying an average of 10 cities, towns, and/or villages. So if each city is paying for its own grid storage, then Zohran needs to put together funding for 45 barges.
I do think nuclear power is an important part of a healthy grid. But the problem is, nuclear power plants take a lot of very specialised knowledge. When you build a nuclear reactor with non-experts, it runs five times over budget and takes a decade. And right now, there aren't any experts at all. So we can't afford that much time, and we can't afford all that money. We need climate solutions that are capable of saving the world right now. Current generation renewables and batteries can save the world right now if our politicians are willing to pay the investment now and reap the cost savings later.
But, after a few reactor building projects, we will have a handful of experts who can build reactors on-time, on-budget, and while training a team of rookies. So I do think we should put a little bit of money into nuclear on an indefinite basis, once we're hitting our projected climate goals. I want to see what molten salt reactor technology can do in 30 years, after we've saved the world with renewables.
I may be bad at math when I'm drunk but you don't understand the difference between megawatts and megawatt hours. Each of those batteries only lasts for an hour. Now multiply by 24 then multiply by 7 because you probably want a week-long uninterrupted power supply minimum.
The battery is 1MWh, not 1MW. There are 1000 MW in a GW. Therefore, two barges could contain enough charge to run a gigawatt datacenter for one hour, so you'll need a barge to arrive every thirty minutes approximately.
This seems to imply that you just replace all fossil fuel energy sources with batteries which does not even make sense. Once the batteries have been discharged, how would you recharge them?
What should actually be done is scale up renewable power generation and then you'd use the batteries to balance out the difference between production and consumption, which takes a lot less batteries than trying to replace energy generation with energy storage (which, again, would not even work).
Have you not used batteries before? When they run out you throw them away and get fresh ones
Or sometimes you save them for a while and try to dispose of them properly, but then find out most of those programs have been cancelled, so you wait until you move and then throw them out all at once
Fun fact you can actually store power in various ways such as pumping water uphill and having it run a turbine on its way down, or even as thermal energy in an underground molten salt pit. Li-ion batteries are not the only method unless nobody is connected to the grid and even then you could still use it but only at certain times of day.
It's gigawatts but they mispronounced it because, well, in the movie it's 1955 and they much power was probably never heard of. IMO it was said wrong on purpose to show how absurd it was.
The CATL TENER grid battery system contains 6.25 MWh capacity in a single storage container that is 20' long.
A 6.25 MWh battery can output 6.25 MW continuously for 1 hour, or 1 MW continuously for 6.25 hours.
We would need 148,800 TENER batteries to output 930 GW continuously for 1 hour. We would need 3,571,200 TENER batteries (22,320 GWh of storage) to output 930 GW continuously for 24 hours. However, the average continuous power demand in the US in 2025 was 466.21 GW. Now, that is an average, so the continuous power demand is sometimes higher than that but also sometimes lower than that. According to the EIA, the peak continuous power demand in the US in 2025 was 759.18 GW. We also have to understand that there would never be a time when all the electricity demand is coming only from battery storage. Between hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and all other renewable power sources, we would always be generating some electricity somewhere. Still, we would want a significant buffer, though we probably wouldn't need 22,320 GWh of capacity. But, yes, we would likely need at least a million of CATL's TENER batteries to meet current power demand. That's a lot of batteries, for sure. Although, not an unfeasible number, imo.
That said, I think renewables with battery storage plus nuclear is the best course of action.
While I very much appreciate your write-up, and your math which is definitely better than my drunken attempt. Your battery does not appear to be commercially available and apparently is only used in use and state-backed projects in China. If you see my link at the top, I've referenced a commercially available 1 megawatt hour battery that you can buy today
I'm just looking forward to the innovations of sodium ion batteries from BYD, CATL, and Goshen. They're doing a lot of large scale large capacity batteries that're cheaper and safer to produce and operate. Hopefully BYD implements into more vehicles, and I think CATL will too since they made the F150 lightning and Mustang Mach E lithium batteries. (Technically let Ford use the technology to make them iirc in Ford plants to be called American made or something)
The technology thats basically still being tested by every major country across the world vs one that can and does exist with scalability and can be implemented today?
Yeah I can probably find a future battery that can do that too, let's look at the reactors that are everywhere today that take up miles and miles of space first.
Nuclear reactors are incredibly expensive, take forever to build, test, and ensure they are safe, often require additional not-so-green/renewable secondary materials/processes that are conveniently ignored (mines, for example) and waste disposal is a semi-serious non-solved issue.
All of these factors combined are significantly more important than the land the power is generated on, as 99% of the world has space somewhere.
The reality of nuclear power is that it doesn't make sense in 95% of scenarios anymore because battery + solar / wind is effectively free in comparison, can be built and scaled extremely fast, and is many times more renewable because basically everything is recyclable.
The US produces 200GWh of batteries per year total, and is projected to reach 4-500 in the near future with new construction coming on line, and large portions of that ear marked for grid scale storage. So it's probably a couple decades to accomplish the whole project, maybe less if we really push.
67 Comments
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz · 62 pts · 11d
Batteries don't come in MW, GW, or even W. That's a measure of power. As in how fast it is being created or consumed.
Batteries don't create or consume power, they store it.
That is measured in Wh, MWh, or GWh.
ArfArfWoof@europe.pub · 5 pts · 11d
You could measure their max. output in W.
But yeah, you are technically correct
Forester@pawb.social · -18 pts · 11d
Sir this is my shitpost not a Ted talk. I am referring to 1 MWh batteries.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 31 pts · 11d
Memes can be misinformation, too, so that isn't an excuse.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · -11 pts · 10d
Are people this devoid of humor. Relax, Francis.
Robin@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 10d
Maybe they'd get away with it if it were funny
DoubleDongle@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10d
There's no joke though. It doesn't fail to be funny, it's not intended to be funny at all. It's just propaganda.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 10d
The op sure is!
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 11d
Oh, sorry.
Come to think of it, you can actually pull 930 gigawatts from any battery. Just not for very long.
Does that solve the problem?
logi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10d
You really can't though. The batteries both have a capacity (kWh/MWh) and discharge power (kW/MW) rating, but it's usually the capacity that is the limiting one. And for extra fun, the discharge power goes up as the battery has more charge, and the charging rate goes down.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 10d
It's just a rating. All cells are rated for some given amount of amps, but you can actually exceed that rating in bursts.
So I'm jokingly pointing out that you can theoretically pull as many watts as you want.
You can turn a MWh of energy into a GW of power, as long as you compress it into a short enough duration.
The battery (or any part of the circuit) just won't survive the event :D
poVoq@slrpnk.net · 36 pts · 11d
The calculation is wrong by a factor of 1000, and even if it were correct, that's like a week of typical container imports to the US 🤡
prime_number_314159@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10d
You mean I can't have my new plastic in a particular shape for a WHOLE WEEK? I knew the commies were up to no good when they said technology could make the world a better place.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · -3 pts · 10d
Good thing it's a shitpost, in the shitpost sub, for shitposting, thus not to be taken seriously.
draco_aeneus@mander.xyz · 9 pts · 10d
Yes, but this shit is wrong. Imagine if I went to a shit restaurant, and I ordered shit, and instead they served me chocolate mouse. I think I would be quite rightly upset about this.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10d
How deep can the "ACKSHUALLY" go? Let's find out.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 10d
RELAX ITS JUST A JOKE 🔫
chunk6235@piefed.social · 1 pts · 4d
People would take the horrendously bad math if it were funny. So without the humor, this is just a shit post
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one · 30 pts · 10d
Anything but metric.
FluidBeef@quokk.au · 3 pts · 10d
How many times the size of Wales is this?
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 10d
happy cake day
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 29 pts · 11d
OP is stupid and thinks there are a million megawatts in a gigawatt. It's a thousand. You only need 1550 barges to supply the entire USA.
Each barge is supplying an average of 10 cities, towns, and/or villages. So if each city is paying for its own grid storage, then Zohran needs to put together funding for 45 barges.
midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 10d
*for one hour
OP not only fucked up conversion, but confused energy and power. Battery capacity is a measure of energy while grid usage is a measure of power.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 6 pts · 10d
Oh lmao. What the fuck OP
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · -3 pts · 10d
What do you think shitpost means?
Forester@pawb.social · 1 pts · 10d
The dangers of shitposting when you're drunk at 5:00 a.m.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 10d
Yeah but those are being used to import Labubu dolls, so this is impossible.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 5 pts · 11d
I do think nuclear power is an important part of a healthy grid. But the problem is, nuclear power plants take a lot of very specialised knowledge. When you build a nuclear reactor with non-experts, it runs five times over budget and takes a decade. And right now, there aren't any experts at all. So we can't afford that much time, and we can't afford all that money. We need climate solutions that are capable of saving the world right now. Current generation renewables and batteries can save the world right now if our politicians are willing to pay the investment now and reap the cost savings later.
But, after a few reactor building projects, we will have a handful of experts who can build reactors on-time, on-budget, and while training a team of rookies. So I do think we should put a little bit of money into nuclear on an indefinite basis, once we're hitting our projected climate goals. I want to see what molten salt reactor technology can do in 30 years, after we've saved the world with renewables.
Forester@pawb.social · 2 pts · 10d
I may be bad at math when I'm drunk but you don't understand the difference between megawatts and megawatt hours. Each of those batteries only lasts for an hour. Now multiply by 24 then multiply by 7 because you probably want a week-long uninterrupted power supply minimum.
Siegfried@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 10d
1GW = 1000 MW = 1000000kW = 1 10^9 W
Barge = 600 MW
1 GW = 1,67 barges
Forester@pawb.social · 9 pts · 10d
Pro tip. Don't attempt to do math while you're drunk at 5:00 a.m.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 10d
But that's math! Liberals use math!
Cort@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10d
Yeah 1700 barges would be 90gw more than enough
midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 11d
The battery is 1MWh, not 1MW. There are 1000 MW in a GW. Therefore, two barges could contain enough charge to run a gigawatt datacenter for one hour, so you'll need a barge to arrive every thirty minutes approximately.
Mok98@feddit.it · 8 pts · 11d
How big is that compared to an abandoned mall building?
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 11d
I'd like the area in football fields and the weight in elephants, please. You need to standardize these things.
Mok98@feddit.it · 6 pts · 11d
The abandoned mall building is standard for volume duh
Pelicanen@fedia.io · 6 pts · 11d
This seems to imply that you just replace all fossil fuel energy sources with batteries which does not even make sense. Once the batteries have been discharged, how would you recharge them?
What should actually be done is scale up renewable power generation and then you'd use the batteries to balance out the difference between production and consumption, which takes a lot less batteries than trying to replace energy generation with energy storage (which, again, would not even work).
theneverfox@pawb.social · 0 pts · 10d
Have you not used batteries before? When they run out you throw them away and get fresh ones
Or sometimes you save them for a while and try to dispose of them properly, but then find out most of those programs have been cancelled, so you wait until you move and then throw them out all at once
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 10d
This post is definitely shit, with math.
Opisek@piefed.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 10d
One issue. How to picture the scale if you've never met a woman?
Forester@pawb.social · 4 pts · 10d
Easy. That's why there's a 40-ft container so you can see how big the woman is
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 5 pts · 11d
1 Wh = 3600 Joule
Fun fact you can actually store power in various ways such as pumping water uphill and having it run a turbine on its way down, or even as thermal energy in an underground molten salt pit. Li-ion batteries are not the only method unless nobody is connected to the grid and even then you could still use it but only at certain times of day.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 10d
Shitpost!
jh29a@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 10d
+1 for not using the energy from the inconvenient truth for literal doomerism
GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10d
About as ridiculous as "1.21 jigo-watts!"
Great Scot!
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 10d
It's gigawatts but they mispronounced it because, well, in the movie it's 1955 and they much power was probably never heard of. IMO it was said wrong on purpose to show how absurd it was.
GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10d
I read on the wiki that the expert they brought in used that pronunciation, and (not knowing any better), it was the one the actor used.
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 10d
Oh no kidding?! I mean, I never knew until the computer age when hard drives hit giga-bytes.
TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10d
The CATL TENER grid battery system contains 6.25 MWh capacity in a single storage container that is 20' long.
A 6.25 MWh battery can output 6.25 MW continuously for 1 hour, or 1 MW continuously for 6.25 hours.
We would need 148,800 TENER batteries to output 930 GW continuously for 1 hour. We would need 3,571,200 TENER batteries (22,320 GWh of storage) to output 930 GW continuously for 24 hours. However, the average continuous power demand in the US in 2025 was 466.21 GW. Now, that is an average, so the continuous power demand is sometimes higher than that but also sometimes lower than that. According to the EIA, the peak continuous power demand in the US in 2025 was 759.18 GW. We also have to understand that there would never be a time when all the electricity demand is coming only from battery storage. Between hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and all other renewable power sources, we would always be generating some electricity somewhere. Still, we would want a significant buffer, though we probably wouldn't need 22,320 GWh of capacity. But, yes, we would likely need at least a million of CATL's TENER batteries to meet current power demand. That's a lot of batteries, for sure. Although, not an unfeasible number, imo.
That said, I think renewables with battery storage plus nuclear is the best course of action.
^sorry if any of my math is wrong^
Forester@pawb.social · 1 pts · 10d
While I very much appreciate your write-up, and your math which is definitely better than my drunken attempt. Your battery does not appear to be commercially available and apparently is only used in use and state-backed projects in China. If you see my link at the top, I've referenced a commercially available 1 megawatt hour battery that you can buy today
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 10d
You FIGJAMs know this is a shitpost thread?
Right?
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 10d
I'm just looking forward to the innovations of sodium ion batteries from BYD, CATL, and Goshen. They're doing a lot of large scale large capacity batteries that're cheaper and safer to produce and operate. Hopefully BYD implements into more vehicles, and I think CATL will too since they made the F150 lightning and Mustang Mach E lithium batteries. (Technically let Ford use the technology to make them iirc in Ford plants to be called American made or something)
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 10d
DmMacniel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 11d
How about batteries (doesn't have to be chemical) AND renewable power generators?
Forester@pawb.social · 1 pts · 11d
Its way too early in the AM for me to do the math to make it a clean 1 GW
remon@ani.social · 5 pts · 11d
It would be 1667.
Forester@pawb.social · 4 pts · 11d
1 Paradise Lost please
Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 11d
Wow that's a lot of space! how much does a nuclear reactor take up?
Forester@pawb.social · 1 pts · 10d
A single SMR the size of one of those containers can produce 300mwh ideally you'd want a external containment pool as well to soak it in.
Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 10d
The technology thats basically still being tested by every major country across the world vs one that can and does exist with scalability and can be implemented today?
Yeah I can probably find a future battery that can do that too, let's look at the reactors that are everywhere today that take up miles and miles of space first.
Forester@pawb.social · 0 pts · 10d
What has been tested and proven. It's just it hasn't seen large-scale deployment because nimbyism
Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 10d
well yes but also not really.
Nuclear reactors are incredibly expensive, take forever to build, test, and ensure they are safe, often require additional not-so-green/renewable secondary materials/processes that are conveniently ignored (mines, for example) and waste disposal is a semi-serious non-solved issue.
All of these factors combined are significantly more important than the land the power is generated on, as 99% of the world has space somewhere.
The reality of nuclear power is that it doesn't make sense in 95% of scenarios anymore because battery + solar / wind is effectively free in comparison, can be built and scaled extremely fast, and is many times more renewable because basically everything is recyclable.
Skyrmir@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10d
The US produces 200GWh of batteries per year total, and is projected to reach 4-500 in the near future with new construction coming on line, and large portions of that ear marked for grid scale storage. So it's probably a couple decades to accomplish the whole project, maybe less if we really push.
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 10d
Woman for sale?
the_q@piefed.social · 1 pts · 11d
It's crazy to think that electricity isn't a necessity outside of the relatively modern human experience. Humans are architects of suffering.
chunk6235@piefed.social · 1 pts · 4d
Lol, the math is off by so much that the meme is only worth laughing at. What comes between MegaWatt and GigaWatt? ImaginaryWatt? BadMathaWatt?