Unscheduled Battery Blowups Turning Electric Vehicles Into Mobile Time Bombs

The transition to electric vehicles is hardly going to plan: sales have collapsed in the US, EV manufacturers are bleeding cash and insurers are cranking up premiums to account for an uptick in the number of unscheduled battery blowups – aka ‘thermal runaways’. The vehicle doesn’t go anywhere, it simply self-immolates in a plume of … Continue reading Unscheduled Battery Blowups Turning Electric Vehicles Into Mobile Time Bombs

Grand Delusion: Why Battery Storage Can’t Fix Wind & Solar’s Intermittency Problem

Claims that mega-batteries will fix wind and solar’s natural intermittency problem turn out to be mega-myths. First, lithium-ion batteries of the kind pitched by Tesla (see above) - like every kind of battery - do not generate a single watt of power and are net consumers of electricity during their charge/discharge phase. Second, they are … Continue reading Grand Delusion: Why Battery Storage Can’t Fix Wind & Solar’s Intermittency Problem