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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

#111
post #28

I just bought a 12v 200ah battery for $2300 AUD. It could be done for less, but this was a premium model. Hopefully when I purchase a second one in a year or two, it will be a bit cheaper.

I've noticed that 12V lithium iron phosphate car-battery replacements tend to be very expensive. I figure part of it is that they need a built-in BMS to keep the cells balanced, but still it seems like there should be cheaper options.

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

#112

Yes, but their energy density has hardly changed and every gasoline tank beats your average LiIon battery by a factor of 10: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_rea...

Don’t forget to account for the differences in engine and drivetrain efficiency. a gasoline engine gets way less of the gasoline's energy to the wheels. The engines of today are 30-40% efficient iirc, and then you lose more in the tranmission, differentials, etc. Electric motors are ~80-96% efficient and there is less transmission losses involved after that too.

also energy density of cells and packs continues to improve and has improved a lot since 1991

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

#114
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If musk is to believed, (and I think he's on point with this), $50/kWh will likely come within the next 5 years. So next 9 years? My expectation is beyond Tesla, the rest of the industry will have hit on that sub $50/kwh price point. That is going to make a lot of things really interesting. $2000 for a 30kWh home battery backup? Who wouldn't get one? To further this, with climate change leading to more and more extre…

> $2000 for a 30kWh home battery backup? Who wouldn't get one? Very few of the people that would currently benefit from a domestic backup battery could afford $2k, and most of the people who do have $2k to spare don’t live in places with unreliable electricity. The overlap isn’t zero, but… for example, I visited Kenya with an ex of mine, we met a local friend of hers, that friend would’ve benefited from a more reliab…

"most of the people who do have $2k to spare don’t live in places with unreliable electricity"

Increasing the mix of renewables in the electricity networks will mean most people live in places with unreliable electricity going forward. The proposed $2k 30kWh home battery backup could well be the adaptation many of us have to make.

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

#115
post #29
post #2

I don't think this applies to Duracell or Energizer alkaline batteries unfortunately :( Of course reading the article they are talking about Lithium Ion batteries.

I would just buy some Panasonic eneloops(NiMH - not an ad, just the battery I have went with after researching this quite a bit) whenever you need to buy alkaline batteries. They are about twice as expensive but are rechargeable 2000+ times, hold their charge for over a year, and don't degrade very much. Eventually all of your devices will have eneloops in them and you will stop buying batteries altogeher.

eneloop is now produced by FDK, so there are many rebranded products. I often buy Fujitsu one because it's cheaper and they will never change OEM since FDK is owned by Fujitsu.

https://eneloop101.com/batteries/rewrapped-batteries/

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

#116

Yes, but their energy density has hardly changed and every gasoline tank beats your average LiIon battery by a factor of 10: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_rea...

I don't think that's fair - the energy density has been improving largely how everything else in the world does, incrementally, step by step. It's unfair to expect a magic overnight revolution.

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-io...

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's a continuation of moore's law, it's the same as having a bigger chip horizontally, or more chips. You can make giant chips but you need giants bank accounts.

It does not reduce price per transistor because each layer still has to be manufactured the same way

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

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If musk is to believed, (and I think he's on point with this), $50/kWh will likely come within the next 5 years. So next 9 years? My expectation is beyond Tesla, the rest of the industry will have hit on that sub $50/kwh price point. That is going to make a lot of things really interesting. $2000 for a 30kWh home battery backup? Who wouldn't get one? To further this, with climate change leading to more and more extre…

> $2000 for a 30kWh home battery backup? Who wouldn't get one? Because it would be a lot more than $2k to get put it in your home. If you do the math on a Tesla powerwall, the raw cost of the battery should be right around $2k too. But it actually costs more like $8k per powerwall.

That's for a few reasons.

Competition is low. There are only a few players in the home battery space and they are similarly priced.

Demand is high. Even with the higher price, the wait list to get a powerwall is more than a year out.

My expectation is a few things happen over the next 9 years.

I expect that battery production ramps up to a high degree.

I expect that the EV market will eventually be saturated

With those two things, I expect that EV manufactures and the likes of tesla will end up with more batteries than than demand. When that happens, you can expect that the cost of battery products will start to tumble as everyone that manufactures batteries starts to try and sell them for whatever application will buy them.

Things that could spoil my assumptions?

Power companies might decide now is the time to really buy batteries. That could keep demand outpacing supply.

We could see new applications of batteries that aren't currently on the table, such as battery powered trains.

The EV market could not saturate. This could be due to battery production capacity severely lagging EV demand. This could be due to anything from manufacturing plants running into major issues to supply chain problems.

But, I'm an optimist. I expect to see battery tech and manufacturing continuing to build out at a fast pace.

Oh, and eventually the expensive part of a battery system won't be the batteries but rather the install cost.

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

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of problems. First, how do you cool such a chip? Sure, you could add a bunch of transistors but the thermal costs per transistor will stay the same. Assuming similar design but adding 20 layers, how would you account for your CPU now consuming 600W? Second, The tech doesn't exist. The problem we have is that layering chips today is basically growing crystals in a controlled fashion. Defects in lower layers spo…

> Today that's already a problem (CPUs today have ~7 or 8 layers). No, I think x86 passed 14+ layers at least half a decade ago.

So I'm behind :D. What I remember is them trying to cut down the layers due to yield issues. Guess it's creeped back up again.

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

#120
post #111
post #28

I just bought a 12v 200ah battery for $2300 AUD. It could be done for less, but this was a premium model. Hopefully when I purchase a second one in a year or two, it will be a bit cheaper.

I've noticed that 12V lithium iron phosphate car-battery replacements tend to be very expensive. I figure part of it is that they need a built-in BMS to keep the cells balanced, but still it seems like there should be cheaper options.

It's not your average BMS that can support 500A cranking currents and horrifically noisy, unstable currents and voltages during charging. I wonder if crashworthiness is a factor as well.
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