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I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. Misleading to some, flat-out useless to others. The replacement cost of the 24KWh batte

I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. Misleading to some, flat-out useless to others. The replacement cost of the 24KWh battery in our Nissan Leaf is about $5K. So I'll take two of those $187 MWh batteries, please. Oh, of course they're not speaking the same language as I am with that kind of price difference. But then I guess I don't know what in the hell they're talking about if not XWh of energy storage.

sp332 7y ago
Person A: I'd like you to store one megawatt-hour of electricity that I will give you, and then later, I want you to give that electricity back to me. Person B: Certainly. That will be $187. It's not the cost of the battery. It's the cost of storing and releasing one megawatt-hour of electricity once. This has to pay for the capital cost over time, as well as overhead and depreciation.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  How would this type of sales pitch work with nuclear? Person A: I'd like to buy power from you. Person B: Certainly. That will be $50/MwH. Accurate, but misleading.
  - sp332 7y ago
    Yeah those are different things. Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) tells you if your prices are competitive (i.e. if anyone will buy from you). Capital costs tells you if you can afford to build the plant in the first place. You probably can't get investors to cover the capital costs if you can't convince them that you can make a decent profit on a low LCoE, so of the two, LCoE is actually more important in determining whether a plant will be built and if people will use it. Edit: I don't know what the equivalent of LCoE is for a power-storage facility, but hopefully you get the idea.
- mikestew 7y ago
  Cool, that makes more sense. I will still complain that the terms are overloaded unnecessarily, but at least I know what they’re talking about.
- pauljurczak 7y ago
  Fine, except that the author uses "cost of utility-scale lithium-ion batteries" term instead of "cost of energy storage" you are referring to.

sp332 7y ago

Person A: I'd like you to store one megawatt-hour of electricity that I will give you, and then later, I want you to give that electricity back to me. Person B: Certainly. That will be $187. It's not the cost of the battery. It's the cost of storing and releasing one megawatt-hour of electricity once. This has to pay for the capital cost over time, as well as overhead and depreciation.

merpnderp 7y ago
How would this type of sales pitch work with nuclear? Person A: I'd like to buy power from you. Person B: Certainly. That will be $50/MwH. Accurate, but misleading.
- sp332 7y ago
  Yeah those are different things. Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) tells you if your prices are competitive (i.e. if anyone will buy from you). Capital costs tells you if you can afford to build the plant in the first place. You probably can't get investors to cover the capital costs if you can't convince them that you can make a decent profit on a low LCoE, so of the two, LCoE is actually more important in determining whether a plant will be built and if people will use it. Edit: I don't know what the equivalent of LCoE is for a power-storage facility, but hopefully you get the idea.
mikestew 7y ago
Cool, that makes more sense. I will still complain that the terms are overloaded unnecessarily, but at least I know what they’re talking about.
pauljurczak 7y ago
Fine, except that the author uses "cost of utility-scale lithium-ion batteries" term instead of "cost of energy storage" you are referring to.