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Regardless of how cheap it may be, the storage of solar power is still a big problem. If we're on the topic of cost trends and batteries, the price of lithium i
by S201 4y ago
Regardless of how cheap it may be, the storage of solar power is still a big problem. If we're on the topic of cost trends and batteries, the price of lithium is up ~500%.[1] That's making batteries more expensive than in the past and given all of the demand for them I don't really see it going down any time soon, at least not until new lithium mining plants are built mainly in South America, which still isn't likely to drop prices again in the near future.[2]
1. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
2. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/06/09/will-there-soon-be-a-surplus-of-lithium https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/06/09/...
- VintageCool 4y agoGlobal production of lithium has doubled since 2015. I think it's reasonable to expect energy storage to become cheaper purely by the mechanisms of capitalism. The market for energy storage scarcely existed 4 years ago -- there were a handful of pumped hydro storage plants and one compressed air energy storage plant and that was it. The US had 1.5 GW of battery capacity in 2020; we added 5.1 GW of capacity this year and currently scheduled projects will bring 30 GW of battery capacity online by 2025 (per the EIA). It's clear from the current buildout and the current price of solar that there will be a large market for energy storage in the next 10-20 years. That means there is a large market opportunity to build grid energy storage and to increase production of the entire supply chain for grid energy storage. I would be surprised if it is not met.
- mayama 4y agoThere are alternatives for grid storage that are being deployed right now. Sodium or Flow batteries, CAES and underground pumped hydro. As lithium prices increase, alternative technologies will be deployed in scale and come down in cost.