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Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

economist.com

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Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#321

Post by tyingq »

kragen wrote: post #319
tyingq wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think you will be very surprised if at some point you travel outside the US" I'm not quite sure what prompted you to drag this down to that level. FWIW, I spent several years living in Europe and the Middle East. In homes that weren't air conditioned even. And a fair amount of travel to many other places. "The rest of the world does not consist of Elbonian mud farmers as you seem to think" Wow. You have no reason…

Haha! I didn't realize you were imagining a battery bank as some kind of toy. I was thinking more like an alternative to a gasoline generator, which is not really "discretionary spending".

Discretionary spending doesn't imply toy. What's with the taunting?

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#322

Post by godelski »

hristov wrote: post #71

This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete. Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. It relies on a scientific paper published in a technical journal 2 years ago. The scientific paper does not perf…

> This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete.

My understanding is that phone batteries are extremely different from batteries for large storage. They have vastly different cycle and draw requirements (you can't quick draw on your phone battery). I don't think these studies are being nefarious, but looking at different batteries, where this article is averaging. Reading the article it doesn't give any inclination that they are differentiating these types of batteries.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#323

Post by kragen »

tyingq wrote: post #321
kragen wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha! I didn't realize you were imagining a battery bank as some kind of toy. I was thinking more like an alternative to a gasoline generator, which is not really "discretionary spending".

Discretionary spending doesn't imply toy. What's with the taunting?

The taunting was uncalled for. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have accused you of ignorance. Your response was definitely not what I expected.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#325

Post by Reason077 »

sokoloff wrote: post #281
Reason077 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be economically viable in 2030" Why not? There are already companies who specialize in replacing early-model LEAF batteries with new, higher-capacity ones. By 2030, I imagine this could be a pretty widespread industry - perhaps even rebuilding/remanufacturing OEM battery packs with new cells. And so long as the battery still works, that LEAF will always be "economi…

Because it will cost around $2-3K for the battery replacement on a car chassis that’ll be worth around $2K to get back to a range and set of features that won’t be competitive with the then-current (no pun intended) EVs or other $5K cars. If you want to spend $5K on a car in 2030, you’ll have way better options than a 75 mile range, 6kW charging (20-24 miles per hour) 2015 LEAF (CHAdeMO will be fully dead by then and…

A $5k, 75-mile used EV still offers a lot of utility and value because it will cost almost nothing to run and maintain.

No doubt you’ll be able to buy great $5k combustion cars in 2030, but ongoing fuel and maintenance means their true cost is a lot more than that! And in some parts of the world, increasingly stringent emissions controls mean that combustion cars become more expensive, or even illegal, to drive in cities.

You’re right about CHAdeMO, but anyone buying a 75 mile EV isn’t going to care too much about fast charging anyway. And by 2030, someone may have come up with a retrofit and/or adapter to make old LEAFs compatible with CCS?

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#326

Post by AnthonyMouse »

hristov wrote: post #71

This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete. Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. It relies on a scientific paper published in a technical journal 2 years ago. The scientific paper does not perf…

> Furthermore, nuclear plants take 5 to 10 years to even build.

But that's the problem.

The cost of solar and batteries is declining rapidly. For how long? We don't know. Exponential curves eventually flatten out. We had Dennard scaling until we didn't.

So the question is, do they get cheap enough before they hit the wall?

We have two choices. Choice one, build new nuclear plants, and then if alternatives are even cheaper, we pay the current/historical price for electricity for a while instead of some lower price (or the investors in the nuclear plants lose money, take your pick). This also gives us new nuclear plants to use to destroy all the stupid plutonium created by old nuclear plants, even if it costs more, and we really do have to get rid of that stuff.

Choice two, we don't, and bet everything that the alternatives get cheap enough before we hit the wall. In which case we're completely screwed if we bet wrong, because it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so if we don't start now by then it'll be too late.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#327

Post by kumarvvr »

dragosmocrii wrote: post #2

The article says that today a battery pack the size of a backpack and that weighs about 40kg, can power a house for a day. Is that really so? Would that be a normal house, being powered for an entire day? I find it hard to believe that battery would pack that much energy

A tesla 2 powerwall, weighs about 120 kg and holds about 14 kWh of power.

In India, the average household has a 2.5 kW Peak Power meter and usually, about 10 kWh per day is consumed.

So, not exactly a back-pack, but yeah.

The average individual house in India, is constructed in a plot of about 200 Square Yards. Usually available roof space is about 1000 sft.

Assuming no shadows or high rises in the vicinity (80% of homes have good sunshine even in dense cities), this area is sufficient for about 5 kW of installed capacity.

Most of the deccan plateau gets about 6 hours of good sunshine year-round. So that translates to about 30 kWh of power generation capability.

So, a 3 kW installed capacity, with 1 powerwall will be sufficient to power an average household for most of the year.

Of course, this does not take into account usage of ACs (a fast increasing power consumption category in India)

However, it costs about Rs. 100,000 for 1 kW of installed capacity (including inverter and grid connected meter, no batteries) For 5 kW, that is 500,000 Rs. (about 7000 USD) of investment.

Average annual salary of an Indian household in an urban area is about 15000 USD. About half of that in rural areas.

If there are good financing options and grid connected reverse selling meters (they are being encouraged by many local and state governments), there could be a revolution in installed solar capacity and utilization.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#328

Post by cookiengineer »

hristov wrote: post #71

This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete. Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. It relies on a scientific paper published in a technical journal 2 years ago. The scientific paper does not perf…

In general I agree with the renewable energy movement, and also with the ideas that come with modern approaches to electric mobility (like car sharing etc).

The only point I have left that I have to agree with, and that's a huge one, is recycling.

Our governments across the planet have failed to enforce sustainable recycling pipelines in the plastics industry, how would this be any different?

Why is my laptop battery useless after a year and has only 60% power capacity?

How is this even legal that warranty for batteries is 6 months?

I think that in order to make more sustainable battery tech, we need better recycling pipelines for it. And more important: all the plastics, chips, and pcbs needed around it need to be 100% recycled, not upcycled. And manufacturs reusing only 10% of their materials aren't worth a shit.

The ironic thing today is that a simple plumbum/acid based battery is more sustainable than a lithium ion one. It's energy density, however, is a joke. But it never gets useless, and is maintainable, and, more importantly, doesn't lose energy density over time so it's ideal for buildings that have a longer lifetime than a car.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#329

Post by ComodoHacker »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #326
hristov wrote: post #71

This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete. Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. It relies on a scientific paper published in a technical journal 2 years ago. The scientific paper does not perf…

> Furthermore, nuclear plants take 5 to 10 years to even build. But that's the problem. The cost of solar and batteries is declining rapidly. For how long? We don't know. Exponential curves eventually flatten out. We had Dennard scaling until we didn't. So the question is, do they get cheap enough before they hit the wall? We have two choices. Choice one, build new nuclear plants, and then if alternatives are even ch…

So, diversify and do both?

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#330

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #329
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, nuclear plants take 5 to 10 years to even build. But that's the problem. The cost of solar and batteries is declining rapidly. For how long? We don't know. Exponential curves eventually flatten out. We had Dennard scaling until we didn't. So the question is, do they get cheap enough before they hit the wall? We have two choices. Choice one, build new nuclear plants, and then if alternatives are even ch…

So, diversify and do both?

Exactly.

And for extra points, this phases out oil and coal faster. 1TWh of solar replaces 1TWh of coal, but 1TWh of solar and 1TWh of nuclear replaces 2TWh of coal.

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