{"id":94922,"date":"2019-08-18T02:11:20","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T09:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/how-cheap-must-batteries-get-for-renewables-to-compete-with-fossil-fuels"},"modified":"2019-08-18T02:11:20","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T09:11:20","slug":"how-cheap-must-batteries-get-for-renewables-to-compete-with-fossil-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/how-cheap-must-batteries-get-for-renewables-to-compete-with-fossil-fuels","title":{"rendered":"How Cheap Must Batteries Get for Renewables to Compete With Fossil Fuels?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-cheap-must-batteries-get-for-renewables-to-compete-with-fossil-fuels2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While solar and wind power are rapidly becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2018\/04\/03\/this-planned-solar-farm-in-saudi-arabia-would-be-100-times-bigger-than-any-in-the-world\/\">areas with lots of sun<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/04\/04\/china-is-taking-the-worldwide-lead-in-wind-power\/\">wind<\/a>, they still can\u2019t provide the 24\/7 power we\u2019ve become used to. At present, that\u2019s not big a problem because the grid still features plenty of fossil fuel plants that can provide constant baseload or ramp up to meet surges in demand.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s broad agreement that we need to dramatically decarbonize our energy supplies if we\u2019re going to avoid irreversible damage to the climate. That will mean getting rid of the bulk of on-demand, carbon-intensive power plants we currently rely on to manage our grid.<\/p>\n<p>Alternatives include expanding transmission infrastructure to shuttle power from areas where the wind is blowing to areas where it isn\u2019t, or managing demand using financial incentive to get people to use less energy during peak hours. But most promising is <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2018\/07\/02\/the-new-energy-storage-tech-gates-bezos-ma-and-branson-are-investing-in\/\">pairing renewable energy with energy storage<\/a> to build up reserves for when the sun stops shining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While solar and wind power are rapidly becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in areas with lots of sun and wind, they still can\u2019t provide the 24\/7 power we\u2019ve become used to. At present, that\u2019s not big a problem because the grid still features plenty of fossil fuel plants that can provide constant baseload or ramp [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,45,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-finance","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}