No. Renewables and batteries ARE the problem; a problem that didn't exist until the loons came up with global warming and idiotic claim that this natural phenomenon was caused by CO2. There was actually no 'problem' before the dim-witted politicians hopped on the band wagon and started to shut down coal - the biggest advantage we had over the rest of the world for cheap, efficient energy. Now, the very people who caused the problem in the first place are again lying to us by claiming that the can solve something we never had to suffer in the first place. Jail is the best place for them.

"How efficient are different types of batteries/energy sources? A key metric is 'energy density'."

NO!

The key metrics are total system cost of electricity

Renewables….corruption Australian style!

The most energy dense material on the planet is thorium! Thorium contains 200 times the energy of uranium and 2.000 times less waste.

Moreover the 1% waste produced by thorium, in walk away safe, molten salt, thorium reactors, is far less toxic, is stable within a decade and eminently suitable for long life space batteries.

Why in the name of economic sanity, would you use renewable part time, just so you can use a vastly more expensive form of intermittent energy?

Why!? Unless the real, unspoken goal, is to KILL THE ECONOMY?

Especially if your backup produces power with a PKH median under 2 cents!

Thorium needs no enrichment, but like all minerals needs some refining to produce the metal. And it needs kick starting with an isotope of thorium, thorium 303? Or enriched uranium!

A 350 MW walk away safe molten salt thorium reactor uses just one ton of its unenriched fuel for it entire operational life!

Whereas the solid fuelled uranium equivalent will use 2250+ tons. And rods that need to be moved every eighteen months and completely changed every 4.5 years, just to avoid becoming another Chernobyl!

Whereas the LFTR can just keep on keeping on and can even be left completely unattended for as long as 120 days.

Further, can be tasked with burning nuclear waste and or, weapons grade plutonium! [Objectors obviously prefer it be left in the weapons!?]

And as we burn the waste and very safely, earn annual billions for providing the service. We have enough thorium in our dirt to power the planet for a thousand years, and thousands more if we mine igneous rock.

Renewables are not as benign as the enthusiasts would have us believe. e.g., a wind turbine would have to turn for up to thirty years to offset the carbon produced during its manufacture?

And solar voltaic creates mountain of toxic waste that remains toxic and in the environment for centuries, is intermittent and unreliable without backup and mile of expensive transmission towers to make them viable/ and connected! TBC
Alan B.

There's no way we will power aluminium smelters and sewage systems with batteries. SA is installing the world's biggest battery of 129 Mwh which might give 30 MW or so for 4 hours. Trouble is in heatwaves the state uses 3100 MW for much of the day, then the next day.

Batteries may be economic for local grid frequency stabilisation and households with spare cash but not for bulk energy storage. Contrast SA's 129 Mwh 'giant' battery with Snowy 2 and its 350,000 Mwh of pumped hydro storage. Realtime generation to back up wind and solar will work out cheaper than energy storage even with expensive diesel and gas. The obvious replacement for coal baseload is nuclear. We prohibit that technology yet we have the most uranium.

If I wanted an all electric car/ And yes please! I'd want batteries that would have a reliable range of at least 500 kilometres and rechargeable in just five minutes, as I take a comfort/coffee break.

Is there such a battery?

Maybe? Manufacture licences are apparently available?

And if half the hype is to be believed, that battery will be the sodium ion battery.

And apparently promises to be a very long life battery indeed. Just make absolutely sure they are double sealed and waterproof!

As for other options, none seems more promising or robust than very lightweight graphine capacitors?

Back to Thorium and economic sanity!

Thorium in a walk away safe, molten salt reactor, can have miracle cure Bismuth 213 harvested from the LFTR, while operational! Meaning the very short half life of just 45 hours of the alpha particle isotope, can be fully deployed to the maximum time saving effect.

It's attached to an antibody that then goes directly to the cancer cells! And more precise than the scatter gun effect of beta decay nuclear medicine, that not only kills some cancer cells but many perfectly healthy ones as well!

Not what one wants, if those cells are very important brain cells!

[Duh, wadda ya mean brain cells, what are dey? Hey, who turned da lights out!? Will somebody talk to me!] Understand?

Folk like high profile Mike Willisee will thank us, as will thousands of kids fighting for their lives against leukaemia and every adult with death sentence brain or pancreatic cancer!

Finally LFTR's do not need to be shut down for the occasional refuelling and will self moderate! Just routine maintenance.

The pioneer economies the ones to reap the tsunami of wealth creation that will ensue from energy with an energy price of PKH median of less than 2 cents!

All we risk is valuable time, as visionless, ignorance personified, pollies pointlessly prevaricate, in a science free bubble!
Alan B.