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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

#141

Post by SilverRed »

ben_w wrote: post #62
cogman10 wrote: post #41

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…

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

A home battery in many places is basically free money. Renewables mean there is an extreme oversupply at some times and an undersupply at others. Owning a battery hooked up to the grid means you buy power at oversupply times where the power goes in to negative pricing and then sell it back at other times in the same day where it is very expensive.

Reusing old car batteries for this purpose might become the next bitcoin mining with warehouses full of repurposed batteries buying and selling power.

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

#142

Post by ajsnigrutin »

quickthrowman wrote: post #66

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

Yeah, same with mobile phone batteries (just the batteries, not the extra replacement fees for new, non-user-replacable batteries).

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

#143

Post by mschuster91 »

ben_w wrote: post #62
cogman10 wrote: post #41

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…

$2k maybe not but you can grab some chinesium 1 kW generator pack for well under 200$ these days, and fuel it with distilled alcohol. Good enough for a grid backup to keep the refrigerator and lights running.

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

#144

Post by siproprio »

gameswithgo wrote: post #112
cbmuser wrote: post #110

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 imp…

Source?

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

#145

Post by taf2 »

stormbrew wrote: post #75
elihu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other commenter says that they were first introduced as a commercial product in 1991. According to Wikipedia, they were preceded by two years by the first commercially-available nickel-metal hydride cells in 1989, so that would be an interesting point of comparison. Also nickel-cadmium and lead-acid have been around for a very long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93metal_hydride_b...

I remember a lot of stuff having NiMH for a long time throughout the 90s, seemed like it took LiIon a lot longer to catch on.

We raced electric RC cars in the 90s (really my dad and brother - I mostly just liked the smells and ideas). But I know my brother said to win they always had to have fresh as new batteries and as I recall they were NiMH

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

#146

Post by thethethethe »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #127
cbmuser wrote: post #110

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...

Lithium-ion is something of an everyday miracle. I'm older and I remember previous rechargeable battery technologies and they were just terrible. Also, Gas and tiny portable batteries have nearly nothing in common. You're not going to be able to fit an ICE into my iphone. What's with the weird comparisons? I don't see how they are helpful. Its like when we talk about hate crimes or civilians killed in war, and other…

To be fair to op, lithium ion batteries are used in cars so it's not like the comparison is totally unwarranted. Energy density is one of the key factors in the viability of electric transportation so it makes sense why op would bring it up

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

#147

Post by dragonwriter »

SilverRed wrote: post #141
ben_w wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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…

> and most of the people who do have $2k to spare don’t live in places with unreliable electricity. A home battery in many places is basically free money. Renewables mean there is an extreme oversupply at some times and an undersupply at others. Owning a battery hooked up to the grid means you buy power at oversupply times where the power goes in to negative pricing and then sell it back at other times in the same da…

> A home battery in many places is basically free money.

Only if its a free battery. Otherwise, its an income stream with an up front cost.

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

#148

Post by cogman10 »

duck2 wrote: post #131
cogman10 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3d cells for nand aren't the same as 3d CPU cores. Nand is incredibly simple which makes it possible to do things like 3d cells which would otherwise be more complicated. There's a reason memory can generally beat computational cores to smaller node sizes. It's because highly uniform circuits are much easier to manufacture. A lot of problems present in CPU logic cores (such as cross talk) just aren't present to the s…

Maybe stuff like Upmem (many small CPUs embedded into memory) can take off then?

Possibly, that'd be one of the "major architectural changes" that I mentioned earlier. Things we've simply not tried yet because they are too radically different from the way hardware currently works.

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

#149

Post by gameswithgo »

siproprio wrote: post #144
gameswithgo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imp…

Source?

One source on recent energy density improvements:

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

A source on electric motor efficiency: https://insideevs.com/news/348504/tesla-improves-motor-effic...

A source on internal combustion engine efficiency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Internal_com...

As to the drivetrain losses through transmissions and differentials, I have only my own experience from working on cars, dynos (measuring the power to the wheels), and racing. It depends on drivetrain layout. front engine front wheel drive has fewer losses than front engine rear wheel drive, all wheel drive usually worst of all. You lose another 5-15% depending.

Probably you will also find this video interesting, which goes into depth on the full lifecycle of different fuels and the overall efficiencies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0MPg7DxbY

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

#150

Post by SilverRed »

dragonwriter wrote: post #147
SilverRed wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and most of the people who do have $2k to spare don’t live in places with unreliable electricity. A home battery in many places is basically free money. Renewables mean there is an extreme oversupply at some times and an undersupply at others. Owning a battery hooked up to the grid means you buy power at oversupply times where the power goes in to negative pricing and then sell it back at other times in the same da…

> A home battery in many places is basically free money. Only if its a free battery. Otherwise, its an income stream with an up front cost.

Which is why its not common, but with battery prices coming down and dirt cheap second hand batteries on the horizon, this is going to become a big industry.

An old tesla battery with only 50% capacity remaining is still perfectly good for this kind of use even if not so great for driving.

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