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Batteries: How cheap can they get?

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Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#191

Post by jauntywundrkind »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #74
duffpkg wrote: post #19

Lifepo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries for the home are pretty cheap as of today. Power storage for residential use in a 48v metal rackable linkable system with battery management system (BMS) is $89/kwh shipped/duty paid from reputable chinese suppliers CATL/Seplos etc. You have to wait for sea shipping, add $30/kwh if you want to buy it in the US today. From the same suppliers sodium batteries are currently $13…

When you say $89/kwh, are you talking about just cells, or assembled packs? I’m just about to buy a 5kw Lifepo4 server rack battery from EG4 for a diy project. It’s closer to $220/kwh This is what I’m planning to buy, but you know something better I’d love to take a look. https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48...

There's some very significant additional costs of bus bars & holding racks, but holy heck man EVE LF280K batteries are amazing. Usually 300Ah cells/Building a big 14s 14kWh serial pack is really not hard, albeit those small hardware costs (bus bars) can add up. Most people don't need that much energy, probably, but these cells are just epic, maybe go 24v if you want less. 8k cycle life makes them good for a much much much longer time than most cells.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#192

Post by jauntywundrkind »

deadfoxygrandpa wrote: post #173
DaoVeles wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a controversial hypothesis that is merely from a idiot, being myself. I don't truly believe this but it something I have throught about. Energy costs are THE driving force of prices. The cost of materials is essentially the energy it takes to squire/process/ship them. If energy was free, we would just dig up random patches of dirt and sift it for every material we wanted even in trace amounts. But its not bec…

there is a name for this "hypothesis" and other people have worked on the idea. it's called the "energy theory of value"

Core belief of Howard Scott's Technocracy Now movement,

> At the core of Scott's vision was "an energy theory of value". Since the basic measure common to the production of all goods and services was energy, he reasoned "that the sole scientific foundation for the monetary system was also energy", and that by using an energy metric instead of a monetary metric (energy certificates or 'energy accounting') a more efficient design of society could be made

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

If nothing else it's a fascinating lens to view modernity through.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#193

Post by stephen_g »

Aurornis wrote: post #29

This blog post is all over the place. The 2030 price projections are taken from extrapolations of Lithium battery costs, but he’s assuming Sodium chemistry batteries will take over and become ubiquitous at rock bottom prices. The first Sodium batteries barely became available within the past year. He’s also treating batteries like the only component of the system. The associated charging, inverter, and physical struc…

I agree that applying anything to do with blockchain to electricity is dumb - these are already just regular markets, so an inverter/charger could already take price signals from the existing market and do whatever the homeowner wanted, with zero need for blockchain or central control at all. With smart meters (which are becoming more ubiquitous) it's already simple to incentivise using battery power in peak periods when the price is high...

But on inverter/chargers - they will absolutely will follow a downward trend. Maybe not as quickly as batteries but downward all the same. Wide-bandgap semiconductor FETs are getting cheaper and better all the time (higher current and voltage per device), and they allow for power topologies that are more efficient, so cooling gets easier, weight of heatsinks and the amount of material in those goes down, power per unit volume increases and unit mass will decrease, etc. Production volumes will also increase which should lead to economies of scale too.

I can get a 48V DC/230V AC, 8000VA Victron Multiplus 2 inverter/charger for $1.8K USD at the moment (I'm about to buy one for a system I'm DIYing from 31 kWh of AGM batteries I managed to get basically free from a test site of a company that closed down). I wouldn't be surprised if I could get the same capacity inverter/charger for something nearer to half the price by 2030, and a few percent more efficient to boot (this is 95% max efficiency but hopefully 97-98 will be more common by then).

You probably can get plenty of cheaper ones from China already but I want to be absolutely sure it'll meet Australian Standards since this will be grid tied for backup (but able to operate independently during outages), and since it's going under my house I want to know it's safe! Victron have a good track record, especially with a lot of use in maritime and caravan applications where you really don't want them catching on fire so that gives me confidence!

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#194

Post by Scoundreller »

gpm wrote: post #109
eichin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often surprising that most of the US is south of most of Europe (the common reference is that Chicago and Rome are both 42N. The jet stream complicates the effect on overall climate , but latitude is pretty much the only thing that matters for solar power.)

Solar panels are mildly more efficient when colder, the same latitude in an area with similar cloud cover in north America is probably generally slightly better for solar than Europe because it is colder, not sure if it would ever be more than a rounding error though.

I’ve been in northern France for a couple weeks in a January and didn’t see the sun once…

Not really a thing in Toronto.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#195

Post by ValentineC »

duffpkg wrote: post #19

Lifepo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries for the home are pretty cheap as of today. Power storage for residential use in a 48v metal rackable linkable system with battery management system (BMS) is $89/kwh shipped/duty paid from reputable chinese suppliers CATL/Seplos etc. You have to wait for sea shipping, add $30/kwh if you want to buy it in the US today. From the same suppliers sodium batteries are currently $13…

> Lifepo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries for the home are pretty cheap as of today. Power storage for residential use in a 48v metal rackable linkable system with battery management system (BMS) is $89/kwh shipped/duty paid from reputable chinese suppliers CATL/Seplos etc.

I'm probably not the only one wondering: does ordering from these Chinese suppliers require reaching out to them over email? I looked at both websites, and while Seplos asks to write in, CATL doesn't even have battery listings or sales contact information.

I'd love to order LiFePo4 batteries to put in some old UPSes of mine.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#196

Post by jjeaff »

ValentineC wrote: post #195
duffpkg wrote: post #19

Lifepo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries for the home are pretty cheap as of today. Power storage for residential use in a 48v metal rackable linkable system with battery management system (BMS) is $89/kwh shipped/duty paid from reputable chinese suppliers CATL/Seplos etc. You have to wait for sea shipping, add $30/kwh if you want to buy it in the US today. From the same suppliers sodium batteries are currently $13…

> Lifepo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries for the home are pretty cheap as of today. Power storage for residential use in a 48v metal rackable linkable system with battery management system (BMS) is $89/kwh shipped/duty paid from reputable chinese suppliers CATL/Seplos etc. I'm probably not the only one wondering: does ordering from these Chinese suppliers require reaching out to them over email? I looked at both…

you can order through Alibaba, but there are so many suppliers and not all are reputable, so it's a good idea to search around on some of the solar forums for recommendations.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#197

Post by soci »

fouc wrote: post #142
iamthemonster wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach may vary by country. Not a single sparky in Australia will sign off on someone else's solar/battery install.

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.

in Spain we call them “chispas”, which literally means sparks. An electrician is someone who knows the home electrical wiring stuff, while a chispas is someone who is skilled in repairing home appliances.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#198

Post by chickenbig »

duffpkg wrote: post #31
reaperman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to rising power costs I moved one of my homes completely to solar and battery Were you able to disconnect that home from the grid? Most places you're required to maintain a grid connection unless the home is in an exceptionally remote location. While pricing tends to be usage-based, true costs tend to be dominated by the capital expense of building base-load capacity for the few days your home might need to run…

Yes. Totally disconnected, zero power bill. That home is in a jurisdiction where that is permissible.

> Totally disconnected, zero power bill.

Great job! Over the last half a year my feelings about rooftop grid-connected solar (net energy metering, feed in tariff which are subsidised by the electricity bills of others) have changed somewhat, but going off-grid you've put in the investment to be energy independent.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#199

Post by taneliv »

gpm wrote: post #109
eichin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often surprising that most of the US is south of most of Europe (the common reference is that Chicago and Rome are both 42N. The jet stream complicates the effect on overall climate , but latitude is pretty much the only thing that matters for solar power.)

Solar panels are mildly more efficient when colder, the same latitude in an area with similar cloud cover in north America is probably generally slightly better for solar than Europe because it is colder, not sure if it would ever be more than a rounding error though.

The difference between surface solar radiation levels in the US and Europe are wild[1], fully agree on the rounding error view. Anchorage seems to receive the same level of watts per area as Germany and Poland.

[1] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I5kzJIeV4Ds/VFSHUX3374I/AAAAAAAAA...

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#200

Post by Dylan16807 »

jseutter wrote: post #174
cyberax wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if these batteries be used as a replacement for batteries of a lead-acid UPS? I have a Tripp-Lite rack-mount UPS with an extension battery, but its battery has degraded and it can only sustain my computing load for 3-4 hours. It'd be great to replace it with an LFP battery.

You can't use LFP batteries as a direct replacement in your UPS, no. The voltages and charge characteristics are different. What you can do is replace the UPS with a portable battery solution, like another poster suggested. I believe the Anker units are one of the few that can function as a UPS. Most sorta-can, but the key difference most of them lack is that they don't turn on automatically after fully discharging w…

The Anker units that are at minimum $600 per kWh? At that point we've completely lost the cheap factor.
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