The BIGGEST problem with clean energy 

There are so many more discussions to be had around paths to using 100% renewable energy sources. I imagine some of you might suggest regulation or incentives for using energy when it’s most available to fix the supply and demand issue, i.e. the “duck curve.” Some municipalities already do this, and it works to an extent! Consider though, a supply like wind - the unpredictability makes it hard to exactly match the demand schedule to the supply. Another solution is to add other sources of energy that are more consistently available, like waves, and nuclear fission/fusion. (We actually visited a company looking into a wave energy technology!) I’d love to make more videos on these technologies, but we decided to focus this video specifically on energy storage technologies emerging as a solution to the Duck Problem.

"Many juices for many uses" needs to be on your merch

What we have to realize is that there are MANY options and we don't need just 1 solution. We need the solutions that work best in whatever area. As long as the energy is renewable it's great.

I don't know if Diana will ever read this, but I still want to express my admiration and joy to her. I remember finding her channel ages ago thanks to ViHart. The Physics Girl channel only had a handful of subscribers and a couple of videos with low views. After watching one video, I loved her content and expressed my wishes for her to get more attention. Now, she is working with Toyota after her stint with PBS, and it's been a pleasure to watch her grow. I think my favourite part, and why have supporter her at different capacities throughout the years, is that her message hasn't changed. She is still trying to explain things, and show that science is a fun endeavour where being wrong is ok and not knowing something means an opportunity to learn and grow. Thank you Diana. When it comes to me, I can say that you affected my life in a positive way. I wish you many more years of success and growth!

You have hit the nail on the head! An underappreciated aspect to "on demand" energy in bulk electric power is grid stability. We tend to think of blackouts being the result of insufficient generation, but virtually every blackout is the result of instability. The rise of "remedial action schemes" is a big plus but it is not magic. Historically, automatic grid controls were disconnections to prevent damage to equipment; the concept is that the safest state is "all fall down." Now it is about surgically disconnecting sources of instability. (Recently retired from a Fortune 100 electric company as an IT field tech with emphasis on energy delivery.)

I researched "Grid Level Energy Storage" in 2014 for my chemical engineering design class my senior year of college. I remembered a few of the storage options presented in this video, but I was actually able to find the presentation and it's interesting to me how it matches up 7 years later. Our criteria, in order of weight, were as follows. 30% - Longevity of the battery, targeting 25+ years, or ~10,000 charge cycles, of useable life and weatherability 30% - Performance, targeting 90% energy efficiency with high energy-density, ideally as good or better than Li-ion 250 Wh/kg, and ability to store up to 500 MWh of electricity (to replace the avg coal plant) 20% - Toxicity of the materials used in the energy storage- this is probably the weakest criteria in the presentation 10% - Infrastructure required to make/use the energy 10% - Cost of storage method in $/kWh The most promising energy storage we found via these criteria was a liquid metal battery. From our research we found they would last conservatively for 15+ years, have up to 90% energy efficiency with around 200 Wh/kg energy density, plentiful and (relatively) low toxicity elements Magnesium and Antimony (generally any 2 metals with different densities), and a projected cost of ~$50/kWh once production is in full swing. Nice to see that one of our sources at the time, Ambri, is still chugging along and making their batteries. ambri.com/technology/ Next best in our estimation was 'pump-storage', which as Dianna has thoroughly described it is widely used, has good efficiency and makes use of existing geographies to store energy, but the downfalls are that there's not much room to expand and there is a high capital cost to create more storage of this type. 3rd was the Vanadium flow battery, which again I don't need to rehash since the video has the same conclusions our group came to. Easier to scale than Li-ion, but otherwise not much of an improvement. Last in our estimation was scaling Li-ion batteries to grid-level energy storage. The safety concerns along with limited availability of Lithium create the need for other sources. One interesting addendum to the project was a zinc-air battery that was in early stages of research in NYC. This was essentially zinc cells in a shipping container, which was a funny picture to me. www.aiche.org/chenected/2014/07/testing-zinc-air-battery-storage-new-york-city-grid Seems like this idea (metal-air) is still being innovated 7 years later. www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/worlds-cheapest-energy-storage-will-be-an-iron-air-battery-says-jeff-bezos-backed-start-up/2-1-1044174 Anyway, this was an awesome video and it allowed me to reminisce on a project I was very passionate about 7 years ago. Maybe its time to rekindle that passion...

At least here’s a video talking about this subject from the correct angle: there is plenty of energy, we just lack effective ways to store what is generated.

I found your channel by mistake but now I love your videos! Keep em coming, great job!

Tom Scott released a video in the last few days showing similar problems in the Orkney Islands. With all the different tech being tested, there's far more supply than demand most of the time, and the interconnect to the main grid is nowhere near robust enough to export all of it. Nobody wants to upgrade the interconnect unless they can be guaranteed to increase the amount of energy produced, but nobody will commit without the upgrade being done 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Very good presentation. I worked in power generation design for almost 50 years. Over that time we constantly worked on projects to make our systems better for the environment. I also did some work in wind and solar plants. One thing that has always concerned me is the shear amount of area that it would take for enough renewable energy to make the required amount for our nation’s usage. If electric vehicles become mandatory it would increase substantially. The costs to produce this amount of power will be staggering and I’m not sure the population realizes what their costs for power will be. Finally, I’m not sure if anyone has quantified the actual carbon footprint for renewables “from cradle to grave”. We need reliable base loaded units to cover all the weaknesses of renewables and I agree with a lot of the comments that nuclear is the answer.

Hey, here's a great idea. How about nuclear? You can plug a reactor into the current grid and don't have to worry about lithium battery storage farms.

I think if Nuclear energy is developed properly, there'll be far less need to develop storage. Also, there'll be a massive excess of energy in the form of heat and electricity available, no need to focus on efficiency or worry about storage capacity limiting use. I could be wrong, but I feel like there is massive potential there.

1:48 "Supply of lithium is supposed to run out by 2080". [citations needed]. lithium is the 25th most abundant element on Earth. The total lithium content of seawater is 230 billion tonnes. Newer methods of extraction will soon make all of this readily accessible. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial

There was a symposium in 2008 at MIT about alternative energy. It looked at availability, cost, environmental impact, and ability to use/store in a variety of environments and locations. The consensus was geothermal provides the best option. I think you would find it interesting. It should still be available online maybe through MIT open courseware open university.

The first battery technology ever was thermal storage, and it's been in use for 10s of 1000s of years. Rocks around a campfire.

'Not sure they've ever seen a duck' 😂😂😂

Makes me really hopeful seeing so many of people coming up with these great ideas and efforts to solve the energy problem. thanks for sharing!

In our rural district we have frequent power outages due to bad weather. We will soon have a system in place to store water in two man-made lakes which will be released to create power for the area when the lines are down. The water will be released when the main line electricity is out and then pumped back up from a lake below using solar power. Nice solution for an area with lots of water and lots of outages.

Many juices for many uses! That is great!👍🏽 This video increased my understanding of the technologies needed for energy storage. Thank you.🙏

Thank You very much, for mentioning mechanical energy storage. Here is more available. For longer storage period - Iron-air batteries ("Reversible Rust" Battery) For shorter storage time, more dynamic use - Flywheel energy storage (FES) For quick access - Supercapacitor (SC) Complex solutions may be needed to meet all needs.

I am in college right now learning about energy storage and I just HAVE to let you know; Diana you are amazing!!!!

“Many juices for many uses” - pure genius😹😂😂😎

What would be good, is mini hydrogen separators (from water) for use at home. You use solar and wind to run it during the day, and you use it to fill your fuel cell in your car, and for heating the home at night. But this will never happen, because no company gets the repeat income as is the case for a gasoline infrastructure for example. It would mostly be a one-time (or rare repeat) purchase of the unit.

One issue that I never hear discussed by this Net-Zero objective is the mining and manufacturing of the materials needed for the panels, wind turbines, etc-including the oil for the moving parts and I’m glad to hear her mention the Li supply potentially running out by 2080. Ultimately, the best set of energy production and storage is carbon, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, etc-in other words, all available power sources to ensure we can keep growing our energy usage without the constantly increasing prices like we are seeing now due to policy away from carbon based systems. So much more to say here...but really would like Physics Girl and others to use real investigative methods and looking at science from a holistic perspective rather than from a subjective view.

Kind of sad flywheels weren't mentioned, it is also up and coming and the great thing about them is that they are like 90% recyclable.

I have been one of the most critical persons of the previous video, and I am a believer that is important to complain as much as to gratify. I have found this video extremely complete and precise, it is a very good compendium of really interesting technologies and does not aim at presenting one as better than other ones. I think is a great video =)

You might want to investigate "Liquid Metal Battery" as maybe, in the end, a better solution to grid storage, not so much for a single home, but for solar farms or wind. This incredible technology came out of research at MIT. As for renewable fuel, a humble plant that grows in saltwater could be planted on the coastline of 25,000 miles of desert lands and be used to both store excess CO2 in its roots, but also recreate a very clean oil in its seeds becoming a forever source of oil needed for not just energy but all the many other chemistry-related uses coming from it.

Love you and what you do! Thank you for the wonderful videos ❤

This series is really cool and has helped me understand energy challenges in a much more tangible way, thanks!

My company has looked at compressed air energy storage with an interesting twist : a “normal” compressed air storage tank (on land) requires a strong tank or pressure vessel to keep it in, and such tanks are heavy and expensive. An alternative is to build a thin walled tank with little inherent strength (hence cheaper) but place it in deep water, eg in the ocean hundreds of meters deep. At that depth the hydrostatic pressure of the water acts to provide all the containment pressure. The tank is open to the sea at the bottom and is initially filled with water at the same pressure as the water outside, so there is no net force on the tank walls. Compressed air is piped from the surface down into the tank, displacing the water inside which exits through the bottom. The air pressure inside is automatically equalized with the water pressure outside , again resulting in no net force on the tank walls, sort of like a diving bell. To recover the energy water is allowed back in, forcing the high pressure air back up the pipe to (you guessed it ) drive a turbine.

I’ve had this video on my Watch Later for a long time, and it’s interesting that you talk about flow batteries. It was recently discovered that the US spent atrocious amount of tax payer dollars into flow battery technology, and even had working models. Then they shut down the whole research facility and sent all schematics and data to China. I cannot comprehend why they would do that.

Great video, I am glad to see people investigating and developing diff energy sources, because we need them, only one couldn’t achieve all the objectives

Great video as always. From someone in the industry, I have one minor comment though - pumped storage hydro still has a lot of room for growth. There are lots of potential sites still available, and opportunities are not nearly as limited as traditional hydropower. With newer concepts such as “closed loop”, the environmental footprint is decreasing. It is only one of many options, but it’s still one of the cheapest for very long duration storage. There are several very large projects just in North America moving full steam ahead, and it will likely play a key role in energy storage for some time yet (until some of the newer concepts such as flow batteries come down further in cost).

Physics Girl has recently turned into Energy Girl.

I am 60, takes me to watch twice to understand 10% of it. But I enjoy to see the future energy storage. Love your way of explaining in simple way. Keep it up. I have subscribed yr channel too.

Just stumbled onto your channel recently, some pretty interesting stuff!! I work at a Pump Storage plant, and one thig that you failed to mention was in order to pump the water up, you need an outside source of power. Since most Pump cycles for these plants are in the middle of the night when bulk power is cheapest, (Buy low, sell high), you are reliant on Fossil Fuel or Nuclear Plants

one thing i take slight issue with: you mentioned "just look at all those oceans" for hydrogen production. yes, but thats salt water. that produces chlorine gas in electrolysis. small problem :P

This makes the future feel a little less bleak when it comes to renewable energy and the steps that are being taken to be carbon neutral.

thanks for the information and hopeful outlook.

Absolutely brilliant presenter taking on an important subject is a very accessible way. Makes me feel very positive about the future

The notebook doodling was really creative !!

A really great overview of the options out there. And I especially like that you included information about round-trip efficiencies for most of these. Thanks!

Instant subscribe! Really enjoyable and educative content. I would love to see this video without the crazy fast cuts, sped-up footage etc. I know millennial’s attention spans seem to dictate everything these days but this video has such gorgeous footage but there was no space for reflection, no quiet, no slow transitions. Too much like an advert where the brand pays for each millisecond. YT doesn’t need to be this way! An example of a channel I like is Great Scott. Compare his video footage of writing on a page to get across concepts: all very zen.

Excellent video. I just finally subscribed! Thank you.

1:38 "A 40 hour battery will cost about 10 times as much as a 4 hour battery" Wow... That's like, insane to even think about!!

I'd love to see a sprawling city with decentralized pumped hydro: pretty waterfalls everywhere! Probably rainbows, too.

07:56 Oh ya.. The view toward the north of the Boulder Flatirons... Sweet!

Storage is one way of doing it, another way is to transport the electricity to nearby timezones so we could extend that duck curve and need less energy to store in the first place. Then optimize the electric networks to go from East to West instead of North to South.

I love that when you plug in your tv, car and Hedron collider Like I have 1 in my backyard 😂😂😂😂😂

Hey Diana, I love your videos, and I'm happy to see you're posting with such a good frequency. I hope you stay productive and post these great videos.

at first i did'nt wanted to watch ur videos but after watching few now I think best thing i found that u talk so calm, u r not hyper that the other science videos creaters do They talk so fast building all the hype n music also in their videos serves the same purpose

Great work, I absolutely love the content.

Thank you for doing this series. It started out feeling a bit like a Toyota *Hydrogen* EV Infomercial. But it progresses into an even-handed overview of EV / energy tech options. This video in particular, is a great introduction to various electricity storage options to help scale-up "the grid" for a greener, low-carbon energy economy. I hope it inspires more young people to enter the alternative energy technology field.

Thnx to physics girl and veritasium for helping me fall in love with physics. Hoping to get into physics and astronomy at UiO here in Norway, and its all thanks to these channels 🥳

Thanks so much for creating and sharing this educational and entertaining video. Great job. Hope that each day you are feeling better than the day before.🙏

Would sure like to see an emphasis on developing reliable, inexpensive and safe nuclear energy answers. Energy storage is important, but reliable supply is critical.

Love that your going large on energy Diana.

"another solution is to add other sources of energy that are more consistently available, like waves, and nuclear fission/fusion. " - even with a constant energy source, storage makes more sense to smooth out the peaks.

Omg I grew up in Fremont, CA! Had no idea my old hometown was one of the leaders in renewable energy

Great video - one technology I have been tracking for a few years is hot batteries - Ambri's liquid metal hydride batteries - that operate on common elements operating at around 600 - 800 degrees Celcius. Very interesting that they love heavy use, aren't subject to thermal runaway and have no apparent fade over time - perfect for grid scale operation! A shipping container holds about a mega watt hour of power.

What I love about studying, and building energy storage is the versatility. I've been experimenting with solar and turbines as my generators, I would say what I've storage, but 60 percent of the storage devices have been successful failures.

One of the best creators to ever bless this platform. Thank you so much for doing the things you do.

This video was very informative and explained energy storage very well

This shows how much co-operation is needed in the future to keep us afloat. We have to pull on the same rope (and in the same direction)

Make half of the installed capacity, nuclear power. Then compensating for renewable intermittency is far cheaper.

This is why I got into energy storage :D yay! Thanks for sharing ^_^ keep shining ☀️

Solved by gravity battery build in Switzerland, operating just fine. 3 new are about to be build 🙌

Well done and extremely insightful. Thanks!

Next topic. "Why We Should Be Talking About _Baseline_ Energy Generation": Specifically, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMR's) and Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (LFTR's).

AS always a great video but I am disappointed you had not mentioned Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries which are safer and have extended cycle charging but instead kept comparing each technology to the more dangerous older Lithium Ion.

Storing energy inform of inertia also looks as a promising option. In the presence of electricity the energy is imparted to disks to rotate them up to a certain RPM. Later when there is need for energy, the energy is extracted using a dynamo. The machinery used is engineered to minimise the frictional losses.

everyone needs to understand, renewables aren't just about one "style" of them. wind / solar/ thermal/ waves/ hydro power... the more systems we incorporate into the system the better... but yes, after the systems of acquisition.... the power reserve system IS the most important of them all. ty for telling folks and trying to inform the public.

The tech is so interesting and we are leaping forward. Thank you

I recently heard about sodium-ion batteries. They seem to have a quite decent energy density and are made from overly abundant materials. Maybe we could even use NaCl from desalination plants for these.

love love your hand writing style, and this video.

I liked this video. It got me thinking what are the most important criteria to rate the different methods. So far I think... Cost per kWh (incl. operation over time) Scalability (small or big) Safety Geographic dependency Raw materials (lots of supply) Efficiency (round trip of course) What others seem important? Also, with lots of criteria, it seems like a good use of a "spider graph"

I would love to see every single house have it's own battery, like a Tesla power-wall, to help decentralize the power grid and add durability during short interruptions to power production. You wouldnt even feel the effects of a short power outage caused by a storm like you do now.

I absolutely love this series of videos, thank you!

Excellent synopsis of the pros-cons of each technology. A famous scifi author (Heinlein? Asimov?) said it was raining energy, but we just don't have a bucket.

The critical problems of storage become vastly simpler and less expensive, and therefore easier to implement, if you don't try to get to 100% intermittent renewables. Providing even 20% of our electricity from nuclear would be a huge help, and between uranium and thorium fuel cycles, along with reactors burning existing nuclear waste for energy, we have enough fuel for many centuries if not millennia. The cost difference of storage needs between 80% renewables and 100% is huge. For example, a major study on storage needs for California by The Clean Air Task Force (a respected climate change charity and think tank), found that at 80% renewables you would need 9.6 million megawatt-hours of energy storage and 36.3 million mWh at 100%. Almost 4 times as much storage just to get the last 20%. Maintaining that storage reserve (a great deal of it unused most of the time) is expensive and that cost has to be paid for by electricity users, resulting an an effective net production cost of $1612 per mWh at 100% renewables. Compare that to about $160 pr mWh, the high end of costs for electricity from new nuclear power plants... often derided as 'too expensive.' In reality, it is *not* including nuclear in our clean energy mix that is too expensive. It is certainly possible to make 100% renewables work. It just takes even longer than building new nuclear plants and costs 10x as much. As for safety, the reality is that we have been misled for decades about nuclear power by activists who, however well meaning, can't or won't understand that nuclear power and nuclear weapons aren't the same thing. Even when waste and accidents are considered, the number of lives lost per mWh for nuclear is comparable to that from solar and wind power, all vastly less than the death toll from fossil fuels. Just the small particulates alone from coal kills as many people every 7 hours as the high end calculation of the eventual total death toll at Fukushima. The problems of waste are far more manageable when you don't use 5% of the energy in the fuel and call the rest waste like we do now. Instead use it for fuel in other type of reactors. Nuclear waste is as manageable a problem as the toxic heavy metal and other chemical pollution produced making solar panels. And both are trivial compared to the problem of climate change that both help address.

One of the most fascinating things I've been picking out of these videos is the need for adaptability. It's human nature to try and look for the _one_ best solution. But in situations like this, it'd be best if we create a system that uses different sources of energy at different times. This has been a fascinating ride so far!! Looking forward to the next installation of this series 😁

There’s also the flywheel batteries, I find them rather interesting as a mechanical engineer

Most impressive thing about this entire video is your penmanship in your little tablet!

Nice to see a video not saying that these problems mean we should abandon renewables. We need to develop them and find new renewable ideas and technology. There is plenty of energy to be had, we just need to be able to store it or generate it all the time. We really need to find a way to be free from coal and nuclear.

I am really loving this renewable energy series. The number of variations in the way researchers have tackled this problem is amazing!

So li-ion can catch fire but no word about it in the case of hydrogen? If just hydrogen refueling station damaged tens of houses around it what would happen with larger-scale storage?

Good to see the problem is being worked on, great video

As the general public, we don't get to see all the types of experimental technology being performed by all sorts of people, this video set is going some way to addressing that, I appreciate that very much. Sometimes, we think nothing is being done, or not enough, but that's obviously not true.

Thumbs op for "effiency": I think it's is more effient than "efficient"

You are making a difference. Thank you

I am deeply inspired by this series!!!! My mental health often suffers from the futility of our current culture. The practical science of this series and the choice of subjects to focus upon, is very level headed and actually useful. We have a very long way to go, this series is giving me hope. Not because of inflated vision or egos; but rather simple analysis of pros and cons!!! Thank you soooo much !!!!!! Please continue and don’t be afraid to talk about the cons of systems. This series might very well be the roadmap to our future, it’s good to know the difficulties as well as the benefits!!!!!!

Short term energy storage, battery. Medium term energy storage, water elevator. Long term storage, bio-diesel, from compressed panst and other longer chain hydrocarbons. (possibly even sugar)

Super fascinating. The length in these developments though is absolutely the reason I wish we used nuclear at least for the next 50 years so these could have time to grow while limiting carbon emissions right now.

I think you should talk more about nuclear power.

Compressed air power storage has a couple of other benefits as well. One is that you don't just get air you get atmospheric air which comes with pollutants and water which means that you can isolate the pollutants and you can extract the water and you can even use the compressed air to do work in the process of releasing it you can use it to run machines you can use it to generate power you can use it to do other forms of work. You can also use the compressed air in fractioning plants that extract nitrogen oxygen and hydrogen which are used in rocket fuel farming and so forth

The multiple options for renewable energy as demonstrated by your presentation are fascinating - and increasing. And as you show it will be a combination of these emerging technologies in additon to techologies that have yet to be harvested working in tandem with what we know today will be the key to backing away from fossil fuels in a seriously meaningful way in the future. Your explanation of hydro-electric generation from lake storage where the freefall of water from an upper lake drives a turbine / generator at the lower level and in turn can be pumped back up to the upper level was very interesting. You used the term pumping up and pumping down .. I'm not sure if the action to get the water from the upper lake to the turbine is 'pumping' .. more freefall than pumping. I look forward to your future presentations. Thanks

For stationary home storage, a heavy-mass flywheel magnetically levitating in a vacuum being magnetically driven to store energy at tens of thousands of rpm and then being braked down electromagnetically in order to extract energy would also be a neat technology.

I'm loving this series 🤩

Accessibility, Charging Speed (for transportation), and Storage are the three I see. I want us to fix this so badly. Here is East Tennessee, we could so easily do Pump-Storage Hydro generation, via the TVA dam system. Gravity Storage is amazing. Compressed Air is new to me, as is Cryo Cooling. Producing scalable hydrogen and oxygen fuel storage storage is not new, but very cool, if less efficient; only steam comes out. Thermal Photovoltaic is new to me. So cool. Flow Batteries is also so new to me. Scalable, no fire danger, and cheaper ions available... so cool. All of it is easier and less damaging than batteries.

energy storage significantly improves the grid. Energy can be generated and stored/used locally reducing transmission losses.