Four factors are preventing renewables like wind and solar from supplying the world’s energy needs: cost, storage, scale, and land use. This month, let’s look at the problem with battery storage.

The math behind the amount of battery storage needed to couple with renewables is akin to science fiction. 

According to Robert Bryce in his book, “A Question of Power – Electricity and the Wealth of Nations,” a 2018 analysis says for California to reach its renewable energy goals would require 9.6 terawatt hours of battery storage. What does a big number like that look like?

The Tesla Powerwall 2 (a battery system for a home) can hold about 13 kWh of energy. So the state would need 700 million Tesla Powerwalls to meet its renewable energy goals. That is roughly 18 Tesla Powerwalls per resident. That comes out to $120,600 per resident. 

And that is to reach California’s goal of 80% renewables. A full 100% renewable mandate would require 36 terawatt hours of storage, or 71 Tesla Powerwalls per resident, at a cost of $479,000 per resident.

That’s just for one state. What happens when the battery needs maintenance or repair? And do you know about the amount of mining required to supply the materials needed for those batteries?

To overcome seasonal cycles, daily cycles, and unpredictable weather events, a renewables mandate would require having several weeks’ worth of energy storage. Nationwide, Bryce says the cost would be roughly $1 trillion, according to a 2018 study. That’s just for the storage. That doesn’t include all the wind turbines, solar panels, and transmission lines needed to meet a national mandate.

By the way, batteries have a relatively short life span, and that life span can be reduced if the batteries are charged and discharged frequently.

Tesla’s $5 billion Gigafactory near Reno, NV, is one of the world’s largest battery manufacturing facilities. Bryce wrote that its total annual production could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand, according to a Manhattan Institute study. To store just two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production at the Gigafactory. It doesn’t seem like our nation’s push to renewables is based on sound science.

The intermittent nature of renewables requires grid operators to have sufficient amounts of backup generation capacity. The chaotic nature of renewable energy supply, particularly wind and solar, is the opposite of what we actually want in the electric grid.

Batteries may become a future resource, but today’s technology is woefully inadequate. Utility scale batteries discharge within 4 hours. Plus we don’t have enough of it; the U.S. only has enough utility scale battery capacity to back up about 0.5% of installed renewables in the U.S., according to Bryce.