All energy storage technologies proposed to date have at least one disadvantage that is so serious that it prevents them from solving the actual problem. Here are a few examples:
- Lithium-ion batteries: The efficiency is great and cars run quite well on them, but calculate how much it costs to buy batteries with a total capacity of 20,000 GWh for a country like Germany and what the electricity price would then be. Not to mention the problem of obtaining a sufficient amount of lithium.
- Pumped storage power plants: They are sufficiently efficient and cost-effective. But we can’t flood half of our Countries to get away from coal.
- Hydrogen and hydrogen-containing energy carrier materials: The overall efficiency is less than 50%. More than half of the energy is lost during storage.
… to be continued.