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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

#211

Post by irrational »

flexie wrote: post #205
rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Did anyone really read the title thinking that the article was about alkaline batteries? I think not. The title is not misleading. It's incomplete, as titles are by nature. Titles are not supposed to include all caveats and modifications. The title also doesn't say that the decline is measured in dollars. Probably the price has dropped much less or much more when measured in other currencies that have moved relative…

I did, mainly because alkaline batteries are the ones I use on a daily basis.

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

#212

Post by kungito »

arnaudsm wrote: post #206
rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Semi-related rant : I'm baffled that most AA batteries don't display their capacity. It's literally the most important spec. Models vary between 400 and 3400 mAh!

Batteries and coffee are the 2 supermarket things which amaze me. How is it possible there isn't some regulation on them having to display anything. Nescafe sometimes have "number of cups" displayed but sometimes they literally only have weight in grams. Next in line a hygienic products with also convoluted units but they seem to always have the "number of washes" at least.

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

#213

Post by tablespoon »

flexie wrote: post #205
rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Did anyone really read the title thinking that the article was about alkaline batteries? I think not. The title is not misleading. It's incomplete, as titles are by nature. Titles are not supposed to include all caveats and modifications. The title also doesn't say that the decline is measured in dollars. Probably the price has dropped much less or much more when measured in other currencies that have moved relative…

> Did anyone really read the title thinking that the article was about alkaline batteries? I think not.

I did. For me "battery" without any context or other modifiers means some kind of consumer alkaline battery.

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

#214

Post by lars512 »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

I would imagine not all technologies drop in price the same amount as production increases (the "learning rate"), and at some point there might be limits to how much cheaper something really gets to produce.

The relevance relates to climate change. Our ability to scale battery production cheaply is pretty important for a range of green technologies. My main take-away was that we haven't hit those limits yet, lithium-ion batteries are continue to get cheaper as the capacity produced increases.

The price vs market size graph is a good summary: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

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

#215

Post by londons_explore »

arnaudsm wrote: post #206
rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Semi-related rant : I'm baffled that most AA batteries don't display their capacity. It's literally the most important spec. Models vary between 400 and 3400 mAh!

If they have the word zinc on them, they're about 400 mah.

If they have the word alkaline, they're about 3000 mah.

And there isn't much in between. There are a few other weird chemistries, but they're never on the sweet price-performance curve, so avoid them.

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

#216

Post by morsch »

kungito wrote: post #212
arnaudsm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related rant : I'm baffled that most AA batteries don't display their capacity. It's literally the most important spec. Models vary between 400 and 3400 mAh!

Batteries and coffee are the 2 supermarket things which amaze me. How is it possible there isn't some regulation on them having to display anything. Nescafe sometimes have "number of cups" displayed but sometimes they literally only have weight in grams. Next in line a hygienic products with also convoluted units but they seem to always have the "number of washes" at least.

Both the number of cups of coffee you get out of 200g of Nescafe and the number of washes you get out of 1 kg of washing powder will vary (depending on how you strong you like your Nescafe and how dirty your clothes are). The same is true for deodorant or shower gel. I think weight/volume measurements are fine for almost everything.

Packages for things like dishwasher tabs usually have a number on them (in addition to weight/volume, which is mandated to be on the packaging).

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

#217

Post by _Microft »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

The article itself is clearly about something else, so maybe try to have the title fixed instead of shoehorning another topic into the discussion? Message hn@ycombinator.com and ask them to add "LiIon" to the title if you feel that it needs clarification. Just look what a mess these unrelated tangents on other battery chemistries have made in the comment section already.

Edit: I sent an email.

Edit: dang changed it, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27431665

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

#218

Post by alvah »

jrek wrote: post #196
alvah wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

um, yes, it's happening already in areas where intermittent supplies make up a sufficient percentage of the energy mix (e.g. South Australia). In an ideal world we'd keep the rollout of intermittent sources below the level at which they cause instability until grid scale batteries are invented, however that's not the world we live in.

My understanding is that neither of the major outages in SA in recent times have been related to intermittent supply issues (i.e. the first major incident was related to trips caused by weather, the second was related to a gas using supplier failing to increase supply due to some market regulation minutiae that was subsequently changed).

Regardless of the realities in SA (I’m not convinced by the offical explanation of the first outage at least, there are credible alternative theories), it’s well understood that beyond a certain level, introducing intermittent suppliers into a network designed for baseload generation will cause instability. I don’t have the figures to hand but IIRC more than very low double figures as a percentage starts causing trouble.

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

#219

Post by plantain »

elihu wrote: post #163
plantain wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess BMSs can vary in terms of what they do, but if it just has to monitor the voltages of the cells and bleed small amounts of current through a resistor if it needs to drop the voltage of one or more cells to keep them balanced, then it doesn't have to be all that complicated, nor handle very much current at a time. Crashworthiness might be a factor, though... lead acid batteries act sort of like a cushion in an…

That's if your only objective is balancing. Many BMS's go far beyond that, preventing the cells from being overloaded via excessive draw, short circuited, over charged etc.

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

#220

Post by cyxxon »

kungito wrote: post #212
arnaudsm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related rant : I'm baffled that most AA batteries don't display their capacity. It's literally the most important spec. Models vary between 400 and 3400 mAh!

Batteries and coffee are the 2 supermarket things which amaze me. How is it possible there isn't some regulation on them having to display anything. Nescafe sometimes have "number of cups" displayed but sometimes they literally only have weight in grams. Next in line a hygienic products with also convoluted units but they seem to always have the "number of washes" at least.

What other information besides weight (mass) in grams would you want? I mean sure, percentage of Arabica vs Robusta maybe, or lightness of roast, but the weight is exactly what you want and the most neutral and fair information regarding how much you get (and how much you get out of it).
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