I think it would be cool if appliances started coming with batteries. You could give them times of day to charge, and to not use the outlet. And they could work in power outages.
Batteries: How cheap can they get?
161–170 of 311 posts
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't there a distinction between the house wiring and the solar/battery stuff? P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.
> P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie. When I moved into a new house in Australia I asked the real estate agent if I could extend the fence, and he said I'd need a cheapie to do that. I said ok but scratched my head as to why it needs to be cheap, only to find out later what he actually said was chippy, slang for a carpenter.
Yeah, it's all fun and games until you're at Macca's and someone says, "Oi, can you pass me a chippy?" and they get real confused when you go find a carpenter.
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#163this might not be the right thread to ask this question, but I have an older car and the battery inside went. In the past the battery was $50 to replace. Post-COVID, it runs for a whopping $250 at most automotive places... sometimes cheaper on sale. So why not swap it out for a lithium battery (which still run around $50)? Are there any downsides beyond rewiring the connector types I'm not aware of? *the battery type…
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0013ZGZ9Q?context=searc...
The price jump from $150 to $250 was in 2017.
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I have a hybrid car - it has both a traditional lead acid battery and a lithium ion battery. And while I also have a lithium ion jump starter battery, they have issues in many situations that make them ill-suited for a cranking starter battery.
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the forum I followed. The failures often came from BMS or other parts, too. There’s a lot of focus on the cells, but people are buying whole packs with a BMS.
Then that’s more the issue with the BMS rather than the cells
In many of the systems, the BMS and battery are one in the same.
This article blurs the lines between the cells and battery system, too.
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't there a distinction between the house wiring and the solar/battery stuff? P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.
> P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie. When I moved into a new house in Australia I asked the real estate agent if I could extend the fence, and he said I'd need a cheapie to do that. I said ok but scratched my head as to why it needs to be cheap, only to find out later what he actually said was chippy, slang for a carpenter.
Chippies are also known as "wood butchers" apparently. Amused me ;)
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people cold knocked on my dad's door and 3 weeks later he's got a wall of batteries in the garage. Rural Australia. So yeah, there are businesses that'll do it.
Australia has become SO competitive for solar and battery installation you can actually be fairly safe nowadays just picking any old supplier that has >4.7* on google and there'll almost definitely be Going with a door knocking sales rep for home batteries would be madness in most countries but chances are pretty good that in Australia you would get a perfectly decent product.
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Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might as well just buy an electric vehicle with V2L or V2H functionality, and then add a generator outlet to your electric panel. The added benefit is that well, it's a battery strapped to a car. So if you have an extended power outage, you simply drive your car to a charger elsewhere and come back with a full charge. I'm sure Minnesota wouldn't be stupid enough to outlaw EV charging.
There have been weather events and suchlike where it has been impossible to charge an EV, though gas was still available.
You charge the EV before the weather event. Not during.
Then when the weather event comes, you still get electricity at home supplied by your car. If the weather event is localized, drive your car to a place with electricity and charge it there and drive back. It's the best.
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a lot of new chemistry the risk of fire is greatly reduced. It seems to be an issue mostly with lithium based systems. Things like Iron or sodium based are much safer, energy density is also lower because of this but it is a reasonable trade off. Also tend to have much greater life time charge cycles. Potential to go tens of thousands of cycles rather than just a thousand or so.
> an issue mostly with lithium based systems. Things like Iron or sodium based are much safer The iron battery you are thinking of is a lithium battery. It is not the lithium that is a fire risk; lithium ion batteries do not contain metallic lithium. In an LFP battery the phosphate-oxide bond is much more stable and not subject to thermal runaway compared with e.g. cobalt-oxide.
That sounds much better than the dribble I was spouting. Thanks!
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#169I'd rather hear a projection from an engineer/scientist/operations person in the industry. This kinda reads like it's written by an armchair expert who thinks about batteries a lot, but doesn't have much to do with building that future being described. Sometimes the technical details matter and projected scaling trends aren't an inevitability.
It does seem to be written by someone who's very far above the ground — even managing to throw the blockchain in there at the end. But the point they're making is reasonable. Just because the author isn't deeply technical doesn't mean they can't fit an exponential and extrapolate correctly. Exponential growth always has to stop somewhere, but that's not in and of itself a reason to think this year is the year that it…
> they can't fit an exponential and extrapolate correctly.
Anyone fitting an exponential isn't extrapolating correctly pretty much by definition. As you note:
> Exponential growth always has to stop somewhere, but that's not in and of itself a reason to think this year is the year that it will.
This is a god of the gaps argument. There's no reason it should stop this year, there's also no reason it shouldn't. Fitting the curve is only useful if you're actually presenting an argument as to why for the relevant interval it should continue.
Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
He claims the expert estimates have been wrong every year (too conservative).
To the extent that have been expert estimates out there, they do have been consistently wrong. The same happens to solar and wind generation. But well, I haven't seen any that don't have a conflict of interest into claiming fossil fuels will continue to be required. And that's a large part of the problem: you just won't find uninterested experts publishing estimates.
Well the other issue though is that people looking for predictions want conservative predictions because they're investing. Over-estimate and you lose money, under-estimate and you leave money on the table but don't trade away future possible gains.