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Raw material supply is a big issue; see Berkeley physicist Tom Murphy's calculations: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-bat...

He's mainly talking about lead but for lithium it's even worse.

A lot of things look great until you look at the scaling limits. Hydro storage is another example; Murphy's got a post on that too.




If these numbers are even close to accurate, this should be the top post.

It's no use for everyone to argue over wether a completely implausible idea is financially competitive on a small scale when the implication is we're talking about scaling on a national level.




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