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For the third time, battery prices aren't going down anymore. They've actually started to rise. You're right that improvements in chemistry and manufacturing me

For the third time, battery prices aren't going down anymore. They've actually started to rise. You're right that improvements in chemistry and manufacturing means that battery costs of 2018 were nearly two orders of magnitude lower since 1990. But after that the cost history has been mostly flat. And in recent years, following large increases of input material costs they've actually started to creep upwards. Improvements in manufacturing aren't keeping up with the current costs of inputs. Again, were going down years ago but aren't going down now. So the entire premise of this comment is on a broken foundation.

epistasis 4y ago
Wait, are you seriously asserting that because they have risen in price now, that's evidence that batteries won't continue their march downwards over the next decade? Would you actually be willing to put money behind that assertion? As new markets open up and new applications become feasibly, prices will experience temporary spikes due to supply constraints, but it would be foolish to think that these somehow stop the future drop in prices. You see it all over the drop in solar prices; every temporary price increase results in a huge influx of capital, new production capacity, and improvements to manufacturing tech that comes with that.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Yes, because the bottleneck of lithium battery production has shifted to extraction. You are correct that the higher prices might justify more expensive extraction options, but said options are only profitable if the price remains high. This is why cars don't cost $10: the price of steel would have to be pitifully low, and no mines or steel mills can profitably operate at such a low cost. Solar, similarly, isn't seeing the same order-of-magnitude improvements anymore. It was, back when it was new technology and big improvements could be made. But now the cells themselves are near the thermodynamic maximums: there's fundamentally only so much energy you can store with a gram of lithium. Consequently, the price drops are miniscule compared to what they used to be.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    At present the grid/stationary storage battery market is essentially a sideline for vehicle battery makers.[1] Vehicle batteries have to balance between energy density, power performance, tolerance for temperature extremes, structural factors (vibration), safety, cycle life, and cost. As stationary batteries become a market of their own, some of these requirements can be relaxed; engineers can focus on capital cost and cycle life. (This is already happening with early-stage technologies like carbon polymer, redox flow, and molten salt, which are already competitive with lithium chemistries.) This allows, and will almost certainly result in, speeding up the rate at which battery costs fall. 1. Similar to the situation for PV cells up to about 2004 - 2005: they were a sideline business for wafer makers focused on logic semiconductors. After crossing over to having their own silicon production (by 2009) the fall in PV cell costs accelerated.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    On PV price drops, they are pretty much on trend, using Wright's Law. There's about a 16% reduction in cost per doubling of cumulative production.[1] If announced capacity expansions and renewables commitments come true, we can expect four cumulative doublings of installed PV modules in the next decade, which drops their price by half. However perovskites could gazump that. If their calendar lifetime can be made acceptable (currently around 10 years), they offer capital PV module costs about a tenth of today's. Also a version of Amdahl's law applies. Modules are now under 20% of total system cost: cost like the inverters, the connection to the grid, earthworks, structures and wires, installation labor, and so on, add up. Putting batteries on the PV farm means most of these costs are only incurred once, for much more electricity produced. 1. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X
ben_w 4y ago
> For the third time, battery prices aren't going down anymore. They've actually started to rise. What's your source? This was a surprising claim, so I tried googling, but none of my first 50 or so results were more recent than by 2020.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Google seems to have a massive inability to deliver lithium ion battery information. It's nearly impossible to find recent articles I know about unless I bookmark them and skip Google entirely. That said, I don't have the numbers whining battery price increases, but I would expect that when Lazard releases 2022 data in the coming weeks it will show an increase in cost over 2022. There is absolutely massive demand, and supple chain shortages for all sorts of parts on battery installs which is increasing costs. And all the car manufacturers are about 3-5 years behind where they should be in securing their own production capacity, leading to massive shortages of batteries for cars. And since cars are a higher margin product than utility installs, the car market is going to get served before the utility scale storage market when it comes to allocating limited production capacity. (That said most utility storage is LFP, which is not usually the preferred chemistry for US cars where customers still want massive batteries).
- tuatoru 4y ago
  There was a story about this three or four weeks ago. There is a temporary shortage of lithium refining capacity, taking in lithium ore from the mines and producing lithium carbonate /lithium oxide in the purity required for battery manufacturing. That drove up the price of refined lithium carbonate and therefore finished lithium cells and battery packs. Note the "temporary". It's fairly quick and easy to expand refining capacity, but it had been in oversupply for a long time, so people were caught napping. There may soon (2 years?) be a shortage of lithium mining capacity, but miners are jumping on the bonanza, so I don't expect that to happen.

epistasis 4y ago

Wait, are you seriously asserting that because they have risen in price now, that's evidence that batteries won't continue their march downwards over the next decade? Would you actually be willing to put money behind that assertion? As new markets open up and new applications become feasibly, prices will experience temporary spikes due to supply constraints, but it would be foolish to think that these somehow stop the future drop in prices. You see it all over the drop in solar prices; every temporary price increase results in a huge influx of capital, new production capacity, and improvements to manufacturing tech that comes with that.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Yes, because the bottleneck of lithium battery production has shifted to extraction. You are correct that the higher prices might justify more expensive extraction options, but said options are only profitable if the price remains high. This is why cars don't cost $10: the price of steel would have to be pitifully low, and no mines or steel mills can profitably operate at such a low cost. Solar, similarly, isn't seeing the same order-of-magnitude improvements anymore. It was, back when it was new technology and big improvements could be made. But now the cells themselves are near the thermodynamic maximums: there's fundamentally only so much energy you can store with a gram of lithium. Consequently, the price drops are miniscule compared to what they used to be.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  At present the grid/stationary storage battery market is essentially a sideline for vehicle battery makers.[1] Vehicle batteries have to balance between energy density, power performance, tolerance for temperature extremes, structural factors (vibration), safety, cycle life, and cost. As stationary batteries become a market of their own, some of these requirements can be relaxed; engineers can focus on capital cost and cycle life. (This is already happening with early-stage technologies like carbon polymer, redox flow, and molten salt, which are already competitive with lithium chemistries.) This allows, and will almost certainly result in, speeding up the rate at which battery costs fall. 1. Similar to the situation for PV cells up to about 2004 - 2005: they were a sideline business for wafer makers focused on logic semiconductors. After crossing over to having their own silicon production (by 2009) the fall in PV cell costs accelerated.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  On PV price drops, they are pretty much on trend, using Wright's Law. There's about a 16% reduction in cost per doubling of cumulative production.[1] If announced capacity expansions and renewables commitments come true, we can expect four cumulative doublings of installed PV modules in the next decade, which drops their price by half. However perovskites could gazump that. If their calendar lifetime can be made acceptable (currently around 10 years), they offer capital PV module costs about a tenth of today's. Also a version of Amdahl's law applies. Modules are now under 20% of total system cost: cost like the inverters, the connection to the grid, earthworks, structures and wires, installation labor, and so on, add up. Putting batteries on the PV farm means most of these costs are only incurred once, for much more electricity produced. 1. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X

ben_w 4y ago

> For the third time, battery prices aren't going down anymore. They've actually started to rise. What's your source? This was a surprising claim, so I tried googling, but none of my first 50 or so results were more recent than by 2020.

epistasis 4y ago
Google seems to have a massive inability to deliver lithium ion battery information. It's nearly impossible to find recent articles I know about unless I bookmark them and skip Google entirely. That said, I don't have the numbers whining battery price increases, but I would expect that when Lazard releases 2022 data in the coming weeks it will show an increase in cost over 2022. There is absolutely massive demand, and supple chain shortages for all sorts of parts on battery installs which is increasing costs. And all the car manufacturers are about 3-5 years behind where they should be in securing their own production capacity, leading to massive shortages of batteries for cars. And since cars are a higher margin product than utility installs, the car market is going to get served before the utility scale storage market when it comes to allocating limited production capacity. (That said most utility storage is LFP, which is not usually the preferred chemistry for US cars where customers still want massive batteries).
tuatoru 4y ago
There was a story about this three or four weeks ago. There is a temporary shortage of lithium refining capacity, taking in lithium ore from the mines and producing lithium carbonate /lithium oxide in the purity required for battery manufacturing. That drove up the price of refined lithium carbonate and therefore finished lithium cells and battery packs. Note the "temporary". It's fairly quick and easy to expand refining capacity, but it had been in oversupply for a long time, so people were caught napping. There may soon (2 years?) be a shortage of lithium mining capacity, but miners are jumping on the bonanza, so I don't expect that to happen.