Really gives me the warm fuzzies when someone looks at changes to physical systems over time then draws a trend line into the future indefinitely without any citations or discussion of plausibility for the part they drew on.

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Which part specifically do you take issue with? It's a bounded timeframe with over 60 references. We're already 4 years into their predicted trends and on track so it seems like they are into something.

[–] suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

All the charts on page 15. The ones where they extrapolate exponential improvement for a decade while only citing themselves. Their prediction is 15% annually for storage cost improvements in Li-ion batteries which they call 'conservative'

Our analysis conservatively assumes that battery energy storage capacity costs will continue to decline over the course of the 2020s at an average annual rate of 15% (Figure 3).

Let us check if their souce updated. $139 for 2023? That isn't a 15% decrease since 2019's $156, let alone year over year since then, which would be under $90. In spite of last year's drop that is still more than the 2021 price of $132. I don't know what 'on track' means to you but it must be something different than it means to me.

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

Thank you, appreciate you showing specifically what your issue is. I agree the timeline for the battery costs hasn't worked out exactly because of some anomalies over the last year or two but the trend is sharply down again. So it seems like we are on track to achieve a cost of around $90 by 2025 now rather than 2024 at least according to Goldman Sachs.

If your issue is with the exact timeline, I say that's fair enough, but being off by a year with battery costs isn't too bad I don't think. Of course as with all forecasting we'll have to see exactly how it pans out in reality but it's a pretty big risk if you want to start building a nuclear reactor now, factoring in construction time plus payback period.

[–] someacnt_@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Why do they do this? The battery companies would want compensation, too!