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Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

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Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#171

Post by fulafel »

OtterCoder wrote: post #28
EngineerBetter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - that's a crazy amount of energy. As a Brit who's never been the south of the US, is that figure really true? 100kWh is about 300 miles in a Tesla, or boiling a kettle constantly for about 30 hours. If that's really accurate, then I'm staggered at how much energy folks must be using to keep cool, and makes my efforts at saving energy seem paltry in comparison.

Remember, the south of the US is in the subtropics, roughly level with the north of Africa. Imagine living in Egypt and not running the AC constantly.

But obviously you shouldn't make such big/poorly insulated houses then.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#172

Post by fulafel »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #47
EngineerBetter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - that's a crazy amount of energy. As a Brit who's never been the south of the US, is that figure really true? 100kWh is about 300 miles in a Tesla, or boiling a kettle constantly for about 30 hours. If that's really accurate, then I'm staggered at how much energy folks must be using to keep cool, and makes my efforts at saving energy seem paltry in comparison.

I can't find where the site now, but there was a fairly compelling argument that it was overall still more energy efficient for people to live in Arizona and AC dropping the temp from 90F to 70F than to live in a northern state where for 6 months out of the year you have to heat the house from 20-40F up to 70F.

Even if you compare poorly built/insulated houses, cooling is much less efficient (per degrees vs outside temp) than heating.

Heating can also be made more efficient easily with insulation, and heat generation through CHP or geo heatpump.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#173

Post by fulafel »

hedora wrote: post #163
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find where the site now, but there was a fairly compelling argument that it was overall still more energy efficient for people to live in Arizona and AC dropping the temp from 90F to 70F than to live in a northern state where for 6 months out of the year you have to heat the house from 20-40F up to 70F.

That seems likely. In imprecise terms: A/C efficiency ("power factor") is measured using the ratio of heat (energy) moved outside to the amount of energy put into the air conditioner , which is usually >> 1 unless there is a huge temperature difference between inside and outside. An ideal furnace has a 1:1 ratio of heat energy injected into the house to energy used to run the furnace. Heat pumps can get over 1:1 rati…

Did you mean s/likely/unlikely/?

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#174

Post by usrusr »

merpnderp wrote: post #3
nabla9 wrote: post #2

$200/kWh by 2019. Assuming that households consume between 30 kWh and 15 kWh electricity daily on average and you want to have storage capacity for 1/3 of daily electricity consumption to get wind or solar energy work, you need 10-5 kWh per household. That's $2000 - $1000 per household. If that battery lasts 10 years, its $200 - $100 per year. It's workable and scales if we are able to reuse lithium. When does that h…

That wouldn't work for much of the South where summer usage for a house can easily hit 100 kWh/day for air conditioning. The hottest part of the day usually starts at about the end of the prime solar hours. Plus you'll want massive overcapacity of your batteries as deep discharges drastically reduce their useful lifespan.

A well insulated water tank that is electrically chilled during peak solar and used to cool down air later in the day/night could solve that storage problem without any cell degradation. Theoretically, with perfect insulation, this could even reduce the total electricity demand, when the conversion from electricity to a temperature gradient happens during a time when the base temperature is low.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#175

Post by tjoff »

anovikov wrote: post #168
ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

I wonder how much of this is simply the Gigafactory coming online at full production + others trying to keep their factories running. If you look at Tesla's plan to be making 10,000 model 3's a week, with a nominal 90 kWh battery in each that is 900 MWh a week of capacity or 46 GWh capacity a year. But it is all tied up in cars of course[1]. The power companies have been screwing around with rate plans to keep grid-t…

Of course they aren't 90kWh. more like 55 and 75 in 2 options. Still that is 32GWh per year in battery production on a single factory alone. Shouldn't be hard to make it to 1TWh a year worldwide if electric vehicles to ever have anywhere like mentionable penetration. In a way, electric car batteries have demonstrated to outlive their cars by 2x-3x (there are already several Teslas who were driven beyond median lifeti…

Any (non-tesla?) source? Model S has only existed for nine years.

Also, the life-time of a car that needs a $20.000+ battery replacement will obviously prematurely make the car utterly worthless.

Usage and weather most certainly have a huge impact as well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in a used model 3 when that time comes. But that hinges on that you can replace the battery for a reasonable cost, reasonable even for an older car.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#176

Post by neltnerb »

jhall1468 wrote: post #167
wavegeek wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithium has gone up in price about six fold in the last 15 years and is currently about 4 times as expensive as lead per metric tonne. I suggest that something is wrong with your assessment.

Why is there anything wrong with his assessment. Availability affects price, sure, but demand does equally so. Pretty sure lithium has higher demand than lead.

Lithium is a lot harder to produce than lead. That's certainly most of the price difference, regardless of abundance in the crust.

But statements like this should really be talking about the "economically extractable ore", and it needs to include economic thresholds. There's a price curve there, and I suspect that for lithium it is a steep one because of how complicated its manufacturing is relative to lead.

I don't know if we're near the limit though. I don't really buy it personally, I'm much more worried about rare earths.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#177

Post by ldp01 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #151
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utilities are actually planning on using parked electric cars for storage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Hell no! As soon as someone departs for a long trip and the battery isn't charged, there will be a huge class action lawsuit. The lemon law attorneys will also have a field day! This is a really dumb idea.

I'm ignorant as to existing implementations but the system I heard of to solve this is:

Your car or charger module has electricity spot prices available to it and you can select a strategy for it to automatically follow.

E.g.

* Rapid charge (charge battery, ignore price)

* Economise (charge battery at low price)

* Make money (charge/discharge according to price to profit from the difference)

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#178

Post by Gravityloss »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #31
merpnderp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't work for much of the South where summer usage for a house can easily hit 100 kWh/day for air conditioning. The hottest part of the day usually starts at about the end of the prime solar hours. Plus you'll want massive overcapacity of your batteries as deep discharges drastically reduce their useful lifespan.

100 kWh/day is just incredible. The average consumption per person in the nordics is about 1500 kWh per YEAR.

If it's 10 cents per kWh, that's only 10 dollars per day or 300 per month.

Investing in insulation or other things might or might not make sense. High electricity price for a long future period would also encourage investment.

Alternatively, constructing your house in a benign climate, if you do a lifecycle analysis and look at the upkeep cost.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#179

Post by anovikov »

tjoff wrote: post #175
anovikov wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they aren't 90kWh. more like 55 and 75 in 2 options. Still that is 32GWh per year in battery production on a single factory alone. Shouldn't be hard to make it to 1TWh a year worldwide if electric vehicles to ever have anywhere like mentionable penetration. In a way, electric car batteries have demonstrated to outlive their cars by 2x-3x (there are already several Teslas who were driven beyond median lifeti…

Any (non-tesla?) source? Model S has only existed for nine years. Also, the life-time of a car that needs a $20.000+ battery replacement will obviously prematurely make the car utterly worthless. Usage and weather most certainly have a huge impact as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in a used model 3 when that time comes. But that hinges on that you can replace the battery for a reasonable cost, reasonable ev…

It only existed for 7 years, but some small fraction of cars are driven much more than others. Typical lifetime of a car is 15 years, so why are you surprised that some are driven 2x more than average? Of course there are many such cars, maybe whole 1% of those made in the first year - hundreds of them. That is not an extreme, one in a million case - one in a million case looks like this: http://www.tilburyautosales.com/used/Ford/2014-Ford-F-250-2d...

No, Teslas will never need battery replacement. Contrary, batteries outlive cars severalfold (yes they can be bricked by grossly violating their usage rules in a way BMS can't prevent, but this is not wear and tear - it is equally easy to do with a brand new or 10 year old car - that's approximately an equivalent of what happens if you fill a gasoline car with diesel). With a normal averagely intense usage and a good driver, a battery will last 40-50 years which is much, much more than it makes sense to keep using a car itself.

Re: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake

#180

Post by tjoff »

anovikov wrote: post #179
tjoff wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any (non-tesla?) source? Model S has only existed for nine years. Also, the life-time of a car that needs a $20.000+ battery replacement will obviously prematurely make the car utterly worthless. Usage and weather most certainly have a huge impact as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in a used model 3 when that time comes. But that hinges on that you can replace the battery for a reasonable cost, reasonable ev…

It only existed for 7 years, but some small fraction of cars are driven much more than others. Typical lifetime of a car is 15 years, so why are you surprised that some are driven 2x more than average? Of course there are many such cars, maybe whole 1% of those made in the first year - hundreds of them. That is not an extreme, one in a million case - one in a million case looks like this: http://www.tilburyautosales.…

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-life-expectancy-of-a-Tesla-M...

"Tesla Tech Talk (06/13) - Speaker's main points: 1) battery degrades everyday 2) battery degradation is non-linear over time; meaning it starts very very slow, but after 4-5 years, it gets faster 3) after the first 5 years, degradation may be as low as 5%. But by the 8th year, they expect about 30% degradation."

Batteries will without any doubt seriously affect second hand markets for EVs. Especially when considering cold climates and the fact that the range can be quite limiting even when the battery is brand new.

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