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It's difficult to see any of the alternatives displacing batteries for short-term storage. Batteries aren't a good fit for long-term storage, which is where alternatives should be competitive. But that market is essentially 0 right now.


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Why not? Home storage batteries are available.

Batteries are not feasible economically or capacity wise.

The applications where additional batteries are not preferable to this complicated system are vanishingly slim IMO. I've seen this proposed over the years over and over, with people designing similar systems, and i've always ended up disappointed in the objective performance characteristics of them.

Another option is to simply repurpose old batteries to stationary storage applications. Even if it’s only holding a five percent charge, who cares if they’re just sitting in a building somewhere.

How many of us have phones and laptops with batteries built into them?

Sadly there are no reasonable alternatives. We're funnelled into this mindset/system.


They're not cost competitive with batteries for diurnal storage, but they are competitive for low duty cycle demand on much longer time scales (like covering Dunkelflauten).

It is dishonest to pretend batteries are the only viable storage method.

There are many alternatives with replaceable batteries. None have 10/10, but most are much better than 0/10.

No one is using batteries at a large scale at this point.

Batteries will always be the most expensive alternative.

Batteries are the most expensive storage alternative.

There are myriad other, cheaper methods. India will use many of them, in different places and scales.


If we don't have to move the battery around, why not use cheaper but less compact techs for storage?

It's not exactly like i miss the old days of having AA batteries being spread around and that needs replacement all the time. It's more the lack of something with equivalent modularity, but bigger and with modern higher expectations on energy, power and charging. Like what we are used seeing in laptops, power tools, e-bikes, drones, cameras, torch, appliances, etc.

Batteries are still a long way from being useful for ships, long-haul trains and trucks, and large aircraft.

I hope you aren't making the assumption that storage = batteries, then arguing because weeks and months of batteries would be needed, it's impossibly expensive.

But costumer devices that use interchangeable standard size batteries have become super niche, at least outside a few fields where you expect years on a set of batteries.

But costumer devices that use interchangeable standard size batteries have become super niche, at least outside a few fields where you expect years on a set of batteries.

But costumer devices that use interchangeable standard size batteries have become super niche, at least outside a few fields where you expect years on a set of batteries.

But costumer devices that use interchangeable standard size batteries have become super niche, at least outside a few fields where you expect years on a set of batteries.
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