We have the excess electricity already, but I’m not yet at the legally required amount of solar panels.

At work we are investing in energy storage, both batteries and heat storage and looking for more solutions.

For any but the largest commercial solar/wind providers, batteries and heat storage (or cold storage actually too!) are the best uses of overproduction of electricity. Batteries at your location are 90%+ efficient round trip, meaning for every 1kWh you shove into the battery, even after all the conversion and storage costs, you’ll be able to get 900Wh or more out of the battery when you have a use for it. Many PV tied batteries are upwards of 97% efficient even!

Heat storage is another great use, whether in water (to mitigate need for new energy expenditure to heat water for use), or in thermal batteries for space heating. Although the biggest downside to thermal batteries are their size. If you’ve got spare space then they can be effective in a home or business.

I’m looking at hydrogen, because it’s known tech and I dream of finding a way to use it in a more stable chemical form for storage.

I did the same looking at Hydrogen, and its pretty bleak. Not only is creating hydrogen safely (from electrolysis) difficult, but storage is a nightmare. Any kind of gaseous storage is incredibly difficult because of how small a molecule H2 is, and if you’re storage is inside a building that leakage creates explosion risks.

The safest way I saw to store and consume hydrogen is absorbed into a metal hydride. The problem there is that fillers (because of pressure) are expensive $2k for the cheapest one I saw, and you need many metal hydride cylinders to store any appreciable amount of hydrogen. So they end up being large, heavy and bulky or relatively little energy storage.

For home use, a regular lithium battery is so much more efficient and safe.

What it looks like this company is building would be partially compatible with that approach.

For the Haber-Bosch process needs input H2 (plus the atmospheric Nitrogen). 33% of what this company is building is an electrolyser. Further, the Sabatier reactor they’re using (another 33% of their process) could possibly be swapped out for a Haber-Bosch reactor.

I don’t know enough about the environmental conditions needed for handling ammonia vs methane to understand if there are any “gotchas” to creating ammonia in situ.

What are the other options you see for the excess electricity that would be more feasible than this methane approach?

This has the same problem as CO2 capture technologies, that is the relatively low CO2 concentration in the air.

You’re correct that the CO2 concentration in atmospheric air is low: 0.04%. Consider the following:

• Each molecule of C02 has a single carbon atom.
• Each molecule of methane also has a single carbon atom.
• So we could say that atmospheric air has 0.04% of methane production capacity.

I would agree with you this would be a waste of time if the goal was CO2 sequestration, but it isn’t. The goal is to use otherwise 100% wasted electricity to produce something useful that can be stored long term that there is a market for, in this case methane.

The only way to make this even remotely feasible

What is your definition of “feasible” here? Economically compared to fossil based methane? Volume of production?

… are end of pipe solutions where you directly capture the exhaust of a fossile fuel combustion process. But that in turn is at best a temporary band aid.

The company agrees with you. They called out that being able to direct capture pure CO2 from an industrial application would be ideal, but as they also concluded, thats not where the excess electricity is that is really the primary economic driver of this technique.

LFP

Thank you for that.

Its odd calling LFP “new” and “a change is coming”. The first production EV to ship in the USA with an LFP was in late 2021 I think.

I would have thought this might be talking about cheaper chemistry Sodium Ion batteries, which are already on the road in small quantities in China.

Now, what ever happened to regularly riding horses around?

Besides the issue with horse excrement, other issues occurred (Hayden, 2016):

Dead horses often clogged city streets;
In New York City in 1880, 15,000 horses died on the streets, or 41 dead horses a day (which had to be removed);
Some place to stable the 100,000+ horses that operated within New York, and food to feed them;
On a per capita basis, 19th century horse-drawn vehicle accident rates were similar to those of the automobile in the 20th century.

source

Guess you’ve never heard of a fistulated cow before, they can totally connect tubing or pipes to cows to harvest methane straight out of their intestines.

And the cost for fistulating each cow? And how much methane will such a cow produce? How contaminated will the methane be? What methods would be required to refine it to pipeline grade? Further, can you feed a cow with the output overproduction of a PV solar panel?

This is what I meant when I said cows wouldn’t be economically viable sources of methane from electricity. If you think cows are they, then I won’t stop you though.

Confused, how is this useful?

There are many MANY useful applications of carbon neutral methane. The most beneficial and obvious to me are:

• Useful method of storing excess generated solar and wind power
• Entire industries, markets, and infrastructure already existing for the storage, transportation, and consumption of methane

You can get methane out of a cow’s ass all day long

You cannot get pipeline grade methane out of cows ass, and even if you could, you wouldn’t have the technology to capture it for use in the marketplace in any quantity that would be cost effective against fossil fuel based methane. As in, even if you could (and you can’t), it would cost so much that no one would buy it and instead just pull more out of the ground. The solution proposed here is on the path to being worth skipping the fossil fuel route for methane and using this instead.

and methane is a greenhouse gas,

So is the CO2 that is being used as the feedstock to create the methane. This would be reducing atmospheric CO2, which I hope you would agree is a useful element when directly combating climate change from C02 emissions.

I thought we wanted less methane, not more.

This wouldn’t be producing net more methane. The market is already consuming all of methane it demands. This would replace some of the supply that is currently being fulfilled by carbon positive fossil fuel sources.

I didn’t see anything in the article at all regarding speculation or futures markets of electricity with the one exception being a mention of some industrial operators signing long term contracts to buy oversupply.

Can you refer me to the section of the article you’re responding to?

I think the “swapping” may be a different use case the author is talking about. I don’t think the author was referring to an end-user executed swap to simply put in a charged battery.

This would be a service center option where a mechanic would have to take tools and removed panels and connectors to make the swap. Something done maybe only a few times, if ever, for a car during its life.

A structural battery pack is constructed to not be serviced in parts. The author calls this out with his comments on “replacing a single bad cell”. He’s right that this is a concern for structural battery packs. Here’s a Tesla structural battery pack when it was attempted to be disassembled:

There was more of that pink foam wrapping around the cells now exposed. All of that pink foam is needed for strength and its thermal properties because the battery pack is part of the structure of the vehicle carrying load forces.

Clearly replacing a bank of cells would be difficult to do if there was a cell failure, and no wear near cost effective for a consumer to have done on their car. The author is suggesting having some of THIS type of battery, but also another part of the battery in the standard hard plastic modular cases where the whole module could be removed and replaced (“swapped”)

The author is suggesting SOME of the battery be the pink foam type that is unserviceable, and SOME of the battery be behind panels in cases that a technician can swap at a service center when the module has reached the end of its life.

I had spare batteries for my smartphone for events like all-day conferences/conventions to swap batteries in the afternoon.

Sure, but how often are you going to all-day conferences. Once a year? Twice? Is it worth having the possibly 20% less battery capacity the other 363 days a year for that swapability?

Something seems missing from the description. What would make the most sense with the articles description is if there were two packs each with different chemistries. One cheap and low density, such as NA-Ion (Sodium-Ion) that could take care of 90% of EV driving needs for trips under, say, 100 miles. The second pack being a much higher density chemistry like NMC (Nickel, Manganese, Cobalt) which could add significantly more range for the same cubic cm of volume in the vehicle, but the battery would have far fewer cycles compared to other chemistries.

The idea being, beat the heck out of the Sodium Ion battery and make it easily serviceable/replaceable at the cost of range for the same volume consumed, while the NMC battery would be gently cared for and only called on in the more extreme demands of range.

If that’s what the author was trying to say, it was not clear.

This article is a bit confusing because its talking about the theoretical use cases of structural battery packs in EVs, the possible problems, and possible mitigations.

The Tesla Model Y has been using a structural battery pack for over 2 years (since 2022 model year, I think). While Hyundai/Kia may make different choices, the pros and cons from Tesla’s choices can be used as at least one path for what Hyndai/Kia want to keep or what they would want to change from Tesla’s choices.

Here’s the articles cited problems:

However, placing cells inside load-bearing components would also make them hard to replace, offsetting this practice.

In practice almost no service of the battery is done at the shop where the car is. If there is a fault anywhere in the pack, from a cell to a BMS component, the entire pack is swapped.

Most EV drivers rarely use all of their battery range; they only need it on long trips. Therefore, batteries built into load-bearing automotive components would not be needed for daily use; they could be maintained at the ideal charge level for the battery formulation and rarely used except for long trips.

This is such a strange description. This isn’t how EV batteries are used at all today, as far as I know, because it would be very inefficient in regular use. You wouldn’t want to put extra strain/stress/charge/discharge on specific cells in the battery. That would lead to unbalanced packs. Further it would be much less efficient and slower to charge the segregated pack that the article is describing. The more full a cell gets of charge, the harder/more power you need to work it to take additional charge. Also, deep discharge of cells significantly shortens their life. The author’s design description of a segregated pack would also experience much worse cold weather range reduction.

if the carmaker were to use modular battery packs, it would reduce the related cost of repairs across all of the car batteries; if they had better batteries, the need to replace them would be substantially reduced

Several automakers have tried making modular packs the way the author is describing them here. They turn out to be a bad choice because of all the extra stuff you have to do to make it flexible to accept fewer or more modules. This same thing happened to mobile phones. You used to have a removable battery, which was nice. However to make the battery removable, you had to add spring contacts, a separate tray to hold the battery, and a battery door. All of these things took space. The only time you’d ever use these, practically, would be years into the phone’s life you’d open it up to replace the battery once, maybe twice in the phone’s entire life. Manufacturers could just put a larger battery in and make it cheaper. Many phones don’t live long enough to ever kill their first battery.

The author of the article is well credentialed and has worked in the tech and automotive industry for years, so I’m very confused as to the content of this article. Its almost like it was written 3 years ago, even though it is showing a Feb 14th 2025 dateline.

there are multiple scenarios and budgets that can support these initiatives. In fact, many of the ideas I’ve proposed have already been implemented quickly in places I’ve lived:

All of those things still require dense urban environments. There’s a whole bunch of the world that doesn’t apply to that ICE vehicles rule. EV replacement of any of those ICE vehicles is a net gain for the CO2 reduction movement.

We could even argue that the carbon footprint associated with the early replacement of functioning vehicles, driven by fear of ICE vehicle restrictions, should be considered in the total cost.

That would be a valid argument if the replaced ICE vehicles were immediately going to the scrapyard, but I think you’d agree with me that isn’t what is happening with a replaced ICE vehicle. Further, I stipulated that I wasn’t advocating for people with nearly new ICE vehicles to immediately got out and buy an EV, but instead when they are planning on replacing their ICE with another ICE, and EV would be a better choice for the environment.

Here’s some data. 6.8% of new cars in the USA are EVs. That 6.8% replaced otherwise ICE vehicle purchases. I think if you’d ask most climate scientists if nearly 7% of new cars no longer running on fossil fuels they would say thats a substantial improvement.

Okay, I think I understand your position better, thank you.

The biggest flaw that I see in your approach is that nearly all of those changes require the population to decide to make the changes together. If that agreement isn’t there, the only other way to implement most of those would be with authoritarian decrees. There are places in the world where that is possible, but I wouldn’t call that a recommended solution to apply. A number of your suggestions would require additional funding too. That has to come from somewhere and the origin of that funding is also likely a contentious debate. Without everyone agreeing on the need for these things, few, if any will be implemented and that means more CO2 being emitted.

For example, ADEME (a French organization) estimates that: “A reduction in average meat consumption of 10 grams per day per person leads to a decrease of approximately 200 square meters in land footprint, as well as a 5.2% reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions.” (Source).

This is a good one that can be done at an individual level. It requires no agreement other than the person making the choice for themselves. This definitely resonates well on the “punk” of solar punk.

The meat reduction is the closest thing EVs for your cited solutions. Its an individual choice on the part of the consumer that can have the intended positive impact. That makes it extremely realistic as far as a component on the path to a full solution.

First, I see your post before mine was downvoted. That wasn’t me. I share a different opinion than yours, but your opinion is equally valid in this discussion. I see nothing in your post which is insulting or takes away from the discussion to deserve a downvote.

It seems way more sensible to act on what we know works now rather than hoping for future discoveries to save us.

So I don’t put words in your mouth, what do we “know works now” in your opinion that could be implemented in a faster time frame than EVs that would have a positive impact on the reduction of CO2?

You should also take into account for your analysis that sustaining a world with EVs as a drop-in replacement for ICE vehicles would require extracting significantly more rare earth metals than we currently do, requiring new mines that are known to impact biodiversity through significant earth and water pollution (not all environmental impacts are CO2-based).

Does this analysis work under the assumption that technology remains static and unchanging? Does it account for the efforts to decouple from exotic materials? We’ve already seen two very large steps that are in place commercially in EV consumer products, so this isn’t simply theoretical:

• Cobalt and Nickel used to be required for any usefully sized EV battery. Many current EVs now ship with zero Cobalt or Nickel in their batteries with the wide adoption of LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate).
• Lithium is another element that is pointed out as a downside for EVs because the environmental impacts from its extraction from nature. However, there are EVs in China on roads with zero lithium and instead use Sodium based batteries.

Considering how short a time it has taken industry to not only identify cleaner alternatives and get them into use, it suggests that an assumption in analysis that EV technology of one day projected over an infinite future may be flawed logic.

Full disclosure, I’m a EV owner/driver. Its not going to surprise you for me to say EVs are not a scam.

The most obvious and easy to understand part of problem solving is to define the desired end goal. In that picture for what many see as the solar punk vision, most people see few if any cars. So the natural conclusion would be to say that EVs are not part of the solution.

However, what far too many people ignore when problem solving is the transitional period between the start toward the goal and reaching it. For most solarpunk visions this will require decades of changes with massive impacts all around the world. This is why I believe EVs are not a scam. They are an important part of the transition.

Most “EVs are a scam” folks immediately point to public transportation as the reason why EVs are unnecessary. In developed urban centers this is true! While New Yorker may curse the MTA when waiting on a delayed train or a Dubliner waiting for the Tram, they cannot deny that they are able to perform nearly all functions of daily life with intercity trains, metro rail, and buses. However, when we look at the land where people live there are vast vast regions that are non-urban. Most of the people that live in those regions have limited access to public transportation. If cars disappeared overnight, it would be catastrophic for those populations and all of us that rely on them for portions of our food chain (as an example). The very closest bus stop to my house is 5.4 miles away, and only runs service for 8 months out of the year. The next closest one with daily service year round is 7.3 miles away, and that one has only two stops in the morning and two in the evening. Public transportation simply doesn’t serve my area at this time.

So realistically even if we had the money and the mandate right now (and we don’t) to throw our efforts behind wider access to public transportation, it would mean accepting many decades more of burning carbon based fuels in cars and trucks. Consumers will replace their vehicles during that time, and if and EV can be a choice that is less carbon (or no carbon at all!) being emitted into our atmosphere for its operation that is only a good thing.

Replacing an ICE car with an EV actually (for those that don’t have public transit options) moves the needle in the positive direction if the other choice is yet another ICE car.

Further, specifically for solar punk visions, the “punk” part for my understanding is a sense of independence or self reliance. A “do it yourself” or “don’t simple accept what is force upon you”. So an EV actually fits that well. That doesn’t mean a rejection of public transportation, but it does recognize that there’s more than one way to do something and sometimes that way is doing it yourself.

In my mind, EVs are a critical part of the transition to a solar punk future. We don’t get the luxury of skipping right to the end goal. We have to go through the long, messy, and less efficient transition. EVs are an important part of that.

I’ve seen this in the USA too. A local water co-op put a 1.2MW array floating on top of one the municipal water reservoirs. Along with carport and building PV arrays, they offsets 50% of the electricity consumed by the facility.

Their floating array also offsets some water lost to evaporation, but its too early for measurable numbers on that front so far.

PDF source

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That was true then and true now, but it doesn’t change that we are where we are today.