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The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

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Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather spend a few thousand more for a natural gas generator, it will run indefinitely as long as you have natural gas.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st... If the whole grid goes down, your gas likely won't be there. If you add solar, then you could indefinitely run in most circumstances.

I don’t live in Texas, I live somewhere that the natural gas doesn’t go out because people will die if it does, so our infrastructure is winterized and maintained. We get some -30F every winter and the natural gas service is always there.

You could swap out the NG generator for a diesel one with a day tank and then you don’t have to worry about NG service :)

A 30kwH battery wall is going to last 6-12 hours at most anyways.

I can’t recall NG service disruptions on a large scale in my state, and I’m 37.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#83
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP meant price for alkaline batteries did not come down. Another point to consider is if you leave the alkaline battery in for too long will the chemical leak and ruin your device? The damage to your device from a broken battery could easily exceed the cost differential. I don't have solid evidence that brand names work better in this regard but I have definitely experienced repeatedly generic batteries having white…

People should quit buying alkaline batteries anyway. NiMH batteries are great for just about every application you'd use a throway for, and you only have to recharge them about twice to "get your money back."

The starting voltage is lower and drops faster making them not ideal for some applications and just annoying for some others (ie. motors start slow and get slower quicker than Alkaline).

Charge speeds also suck unless you get some of the fancy expensive chargers.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#84

I’ve been buying 18650 cells for 6 years and they’re always the same price shrug

Has the capacity gone up?

No, I’ve been buying 2500 mAH batteries rated for 20A draw for 5.50 a piece, mostly Sony and Panasonic from illumn

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather spend a few thousand more for a natural gas generator, it will run indefinitely as long as you have natural gas.

And when the natural gas runs out you use what?

It doesn’t go out where I live, but you could instead get a diesel generator and not have to worry about utilities

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#86

I’ve been buying 18650 cells for 6 years and they’re always the same price shrug

They even went up. I bought many various LG and Sony 18650 for around 2 dollars each (high quantity) 3 years ago. Now I pay about 2.80 for the exact same type.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should quit buying alkaline batteries anyway. NiMH batteries are great for just about every application you'd use a throway for, and you only have to recharge them about twice to "get your money back."

The starting voltage is lower and drops faster making them not ideal for some applications and just annoying for some others (ie. motors start slow and get slower quicker than Alkaline). Charge speeds also suck unless you get some of the fancy expensive chargers.

Yeah, there are some things they aren't great on but for most things they are fine.

> Charge speeds also suck unless you get some of the fancy expensive chargers.

This has been a total non-issue to me. I have 30 or 40 batteries running around total, keeping 4 spares on the charger is no big deal

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#88
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you tell the difference between a battery brand that is more expensive because the battery has greater capacity (“heavy duty”, “extra long life”, etc.) and a brand that is more expensive because of the brand name? Last time I looked in the supermarket there were no comparable metrics printed on the packaging.

You can't, and you don't know who is private labeling what, either. If you can get a data sheet, the better companies have more detailed data sheets. Personally, I like the Energizer (primary, i.e. disposable) lithiums for nice things like my old HP logic dart that will sit in a drawer for a long time between uses, and Panasonic (formerly Sanyo) Eneloop NiMH batteries for most other things, and the cheapo Costco batt…

I have a unproven suspicion that Rechargeable Energizer may actually be Panasonic cells. I tend to see them both marked as made in Japan and they both seem to be great quality.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#89
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think Moore's Law, which is dead now. Look again. Moore's law in terms of single threaded performance is dead. In literal terms of number of transistors on a wafer, it's still increasing exponentially, just slower. And in terms of what mattered when people cited Moore's law, the decrease in price/performance, it's still exponential, just slower and multi core. It will end, as all exponential trends must end lest th…

With the current silicon manufacturing processes, I'd say the end is in sight. Every node shrink is taking longer and longer and getting more and more expensive to fabricate. We've been reliant on node shrinks to push things further. That hard limit is 0.2nm (silicon atom size) we are at ~2nm gate features. It remains to be seen if we can get to that 0.2nm size, I honestly don't think we can push much further past th…

3d chips. Imagine current size with 1 million layers. Sure it will start with just a few layers. And many obstacles to be overcome like temp and delay. But one day our cpus will look like little cubes. Moore's law can continue for at least another 30 years
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