Well, that's $489 per kWh, which is over $100 USD/kWh, but that also includes engineering, facility construction, grid integration, and all that.

I might be being pessimistic, but I'm not being massively so like the original poster, who was assuming replacement every 15 years. I was pushing that out to 20-30 and suggesting even longer. But, well, I wanted to stick to tested information. And most of that information is with EVs at this point, not grid reserve. We shall have to see.

I mentioned Sodium though? $400B AUD for LFP, $100B AUD for sodium.
And right now LFP cells are tested to last longer than Sodium Ion. But they are supposed to theoretically be able to last longer than LFP, which is why I said there's room for R&D to extend that.

Better Ukraine than my crane. *Ba-dmp-Bump!*

Really...

It's Not Just Epstein. MAGA Is Angry About a Lot of Things

I don't know who you're talking to, but while they're generally happy with him, Trump supporters call him out fairly frequently when they think he's getting squishy on something. They were mad at him for the Syrian involvement in the first term, and in just the last few months they've been unhappy about both the strike on Iran and his flip on the Ukraine war, both of which they maintain we shouldn't be involved in at all. There was criticism of the Intel purchase. There was criticism about his vacillation a few months back on H1B's. A cursory glance at any Trump-friendly forum over the post few months will show lots of threads where his supporters are questioning or opposing him on something. They're not the thralls without a will of their own you seem to think they are.

By the sound of it, he’s arguing that in a 100% renewable electric grid, to keep outages from rare production lulls—like multi-day periods that are both overcast (cutting solar) and calm (cutting wind)—to less than once per decade, you’d need about 3 days’ worth of energy storage. That’s plausible. Even a 30-day stretch producing only 90% of demand could be buffered with that reserve.

Australia’s annual electricity use is around 200 TWh, so 2 TWh is roughly 1%—closer to 3.7 days of average demand. That’s in the right ballpark, especially with rounding and overhead. Back-of-napkin accuracy is fine here; maybe the extra cost is wiring, inverters, and grid integration.

What’s not reasonable are the cost comparisons.

Australia’s public healthcare budget is about $180 billion AUD/year. A lithium-ion buildout at ~$100 USD/kWh would cost around $400 billion AUD for 2 TWh. Spread over 15 years, that’s ~$26 billion AUD/year—just 14% of healthcare spending, not more.

If they go with sodium-ion, which is emerging at ~$30 USD/kWh, the total cost drops to ~$100 billion AUD, or ~$6.7 billion/year—less than 4% of healthcare spending.

And that’s assuming a pessimistic 15-year battery lifespan. In reality, the sheer size of the system means shallow daily cycling, which dramatically extends life. Batteries degrade slower when they’re not pushed hard. A system sized for rare deep discharge could last 20–30 years, especially with smart charge management.

Plus, investing $100B+ into grid storage would naturally accelerate R&D, manufacturing scale, and chemistry improvements. LFP cells currently outperform sodium-ion on cycle life, but sodium has room to grow-and in grid use, even 40% remaining capacity can still be useful. You don’t need to scrap a battery at 80%. Just add more cells or shift its role.

What does Brexit have to do with their debt levels? Debt-to-GDP has been climbing across the EU as well, with the average debt over 88% of GDP now. Germany is the lowball figure among the major powers in the union at 68%, with with the other big boys... France, Spain, Italy... all at well over 100%. High debt is endemic throughout nearly every first world power, especially in the West. Why Britain is being singled out here is strange. The EU members with relatively low levels of debt are, ironically, the ex-Communist states (see the same link above). It's all of Western Europe that's been living it up on credit.

Accenture Makes Room for AI With Thousands of Layoffs

Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 job cuts ‘because I need less heads' with AI

Glassdoor and Indeed announce layoffs, reportedly due to AI

AI-driven job cuts may be underreported

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says company will cut jobs amid AI boom. It's already happening at Microsoft.

A cursory Google search in the News column will give you an endless line of links.

You can say "Tis but a flesh wound!" if you like, but I see limbs being hacked off.

I've made three purchases online this week, one of them large, and in every instance, an AI chatbot with "Powered by AI" was the purchase support. If you hated Clippy, you're really going to hate first level support going forward.

Yep.

Businesses: "We're laying off a bunch of people to replace them with AI"

Yale: "AI has no effect on jobs"

Reference yesterday's post about distrust of elite universities. The whole thing got bogged down into a stupid slapfest about politics, but perhaps the biggest driver of that loss of trust is right here: the perception that academics live with their heads in the clouds, out in Theory World, while reality is much different.

https://www.thewrap.com/youtub...

Look at this fucking loser.

The article is sparse on details. I don't necessarily think driverless cars should be given a free pass -- in fact, we should probably have higher fines for the manufacturers -- but 9 times out of 10 when a road is blocked, it's because of construction or an accident, not a checkpoint. I suspect it was reacting to the obstruction, because when a road is obstructed, the "no U-Turn" rule generally doesn't apply (or isn't enforced anyway). In fact, if it hadn't been a checkpoint, I doubt they would have even been looking for illegal U-Turns, which are indicative of people trying to avoid the checkpoint, presumably.

As for fines, I do think they should be higher for self-driving cars, because $300 isn't even a slap on the wrist for Google. On the other hand, that could create a perverse incentive where officers are ignoring flagrant violations by human drivers in favor of issuing a $100k ticket to a Waymo that veered out of its lane to avoid a hazard. It could also create a situation where self-driving cars are so cautious that traffic is snarled by puritanical robot cars that won't even approach the speed limit because it's not worth the risk.

Quit naming your shit after things that already exist. You make geologists scream every time we have to filter your programming crap out (never mind the fucking Steven Universe shit) from search results because you have not one iota of fucking originality. RubyGems, Spinel - come up with your own shit.

Shoot that fucker with his Narayana Murthy-esque bullshit.