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Batteries: How cheap can they get?

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Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#21

Post by hgomersall »

martythemaniak wrote: post #5

Current prices are kinda nutty and are largely determined by the size of your buy. Retail prices for home batteries (a few kWhs) are roughly $1000/kWh. A Model 3 gets you about $700/kWh (with two free motors and an ipad). A Tesla megapack is $290/kWh, but you have to spend $1000000 to get that price. Tesla probably gets cells from the factory at round $80-$90/kWh. Long-term it seems pretty reasonable that retail pric…

In the UK you can buy a battery at £160/kWh, complete with BMS and thermal management: https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage/...

For less than £130/kWh if you're willing to build it yourself, you can get a slightly less capable setup: https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage/...

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#22

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

justahuman74 wrote: post #7
martythemaniak wrote: post #5

Current prices are kinda nutty and are largely determined by the size of your buy. Retail prices for home batteries (a few kWhs) are roughly $1000/kWh. A Model 3 gets you about $700/kWh (with two free motors and an ipad). A Tesla megapack is $290/kWh, but you have to spend $1000000 to get that price. Tesla probably gets cells from the factory at round $80-$90/kWh. Long-term it seems pretty reasonable that retail pric…

At $1k for 20kw/h, I'd be very tempted to massively over-panel the roof and front/back yard on pergolas, install 200kwh of battery and never deal with pg&e again

what's pg&e?

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#23

Post by lazide »

jvanderbot wrote: post #17

I would love a 5-20kwh battery backup in my home, I even have a place for it. But when I called my local solar/battery installer they said that it was illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home. I live in Minnesota. They even told me the power from a hypothetical solar rig is sold to the grid utility, not stored, and they give a discount on future winter rates as payment. This seems like a lousy deal.

Keep in mind, they also might be lying.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#24

Post by oblio »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #22
justahuman74 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $1k for 20kw/h, I'd be very tempted to massively over-panel the roof and front/back yard on pergolas, install 200kwh of battery and never deal with pg&e again

what's pg&e?

Utility company somewhere in the US.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#25

Post by reaperman »

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…

> 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 fully on grid power. So as long as you're connected to the grid, you're still forcing the utility to spend about the same amount of money even if you only use grid power a few days out of the year.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#26

Post by jjoonathan »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #6
ss64 wrote: post #4

The cost of 50AH Li-Ion batteries is getting close to the point where they may start to compete with Lead acid for gas powered cars.

The environment be damned: Regarding price / energy density, yes. They even have weight / energy density advantage. But Lithium batteries can't be recycled. Saying "We are almost there" and "The future looks bright about it" is "moving fast and breaking things" again

They can absolutely be recycled, lol.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#27

Post by BenjiWiebe »

jvanderbot wrote: post #17

I would love a 5-20kwh battery backup in my home, I even have a place for it. But when I called my local solar/battery installer they said that it was illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home. I live in Minnesota. They even told me the power from a hypothetical solar rig is sold to the grid utility, not stored, and they give a discount on future winter rates as payment. This seems like a lousy deal.

Is a grid-charged battery backup different than a UPS? I guarantee there's UPSs in use in Minnesota.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#28

Post by GaggiX »

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…

>I purchased pallets of used panels for more or less the cost of transportation ($34 per panel 270w)

For comparison, I've seen pallets of new 24 410w panels at 58€ per panel (transportation included), hopefully I'll see similar deals in the future when I will ready to jump into solar.

Edit: I'm mostly worried because I don't know how sustainable the industry is when you can buy solar panels at such dirt cheap prices.

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#29

Post by Aurornis »

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 structure components aren’t going to follow the same downward curve. Those are fixed costs on top of the battery itself.

Finally, there’s a lot of vague futurist writing mixed in, from congratulating himself on predicting in 2017 that EV trucks would be a thing some day to something about the blockchain for coordinating power grids:

> I think this is also an area where distributed ledgers with low energy requirements (so not Proof of Work but Proof of Stake) could shine by creating an ‘trustless’ system (meaning the system justs works, also if there is no ‘trusted’ party that plays the boss).

This statement doesn’t even make sense when you read it. He defines “an [sic] ‘trustless’ system” as meaning a system that “just works” which suggests to me that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about but has been led to believe that blockchain is the future for everything.

Fun read, but I didn’t get much out of this article other than “prices are going down”

Re: Batteries: How cheap can they get?

#30

Post by jonathanlydall »

jvanderbot wrote: post #17

I would love a 5-20kwh battery backup in my home, I even have a place for it. But when I called my local solar/battery installer they said that it was illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home. I live in Minnesota. They even told me the power from a hypothetical solar rig is sold to the grid utility, not stored, and they give a discount on future winter rates as payment. This seems like a lousy deal.

Aside from it benefiting energy companies, is there any justification for such a law?

In South Africa we’ve had load shedding on and off since 2008. It’s becoming pretty standard for middle class homes to have inverters with batteries and optionally solar.

It does create an issue though that when a load shedding window ends, a whole lot of batteries start charging all at once (especially during non-daylight hours).

Also due to load shedding, I don’t get full use of my batteries. Ideally I would like my batteries to pretty much fully discharge over night with energy from my solar during the day, however, because load shedding is somewhat irregular here, I have it set to not go too low so it has enough energy to tide me over.

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