21 ms·

The rise of batteries in six charts

278 points by simonebrunozzi 3y ago

simonebrunozzi 3y ago
What I find really interesting is the huge growth in stationary storage - I believe it's the fastest growing segment.
- beambot 3y ago
  Stationary systems for grid scale storage have amazing options - e.g. Form Energy - that needn't rely on power density benefits of Lithium chemistries. I wouldn't be surprised to see this sector dominate the GWh/yr chart in the next 6 years.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    It's difficult to see any of the alternatives displacing batteries for short-term storage. Batteries aren't a good fit for long-term storage, which is where alternatives should be competitive. But that market is essentially 0 right now.
    - smaudet 3y ago
      Batteries (High capacity chemical) are terrible for long term storage, namely they are toxic: https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/dry-cell-battery-poisoning https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/dry-cell-ba... https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002805.htm https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002805.htm https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-703-health-concerns-with-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-703-health-concerns... And cannot always be easily recycled: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-09/Lithium-Ion-Batteries-Fact-Sheet-8-2023.pdf https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-09/Lithium-I... In addition to general concerns about chemical availability, and processing issues. E.g. Demand expected to outstrip supply as soon as next year: https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/metals/012622-infographic-the-lithium-deficit-road-map-will-future-supply-meet-demand https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...
      - lukan 3y ago
        "Batteries are terrible for long term storage, namely they are toxic" Only some are toxic. But can you name the poison or danger with saltwater batteries? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
        smaudet 3y ago
        Yes, there are excellent non-"battery" technologies. I'm explicitly talking about the high capacity chemical batteries everyone's crazy for these days.
        lukan 3y ago
        Sodium ion batteries are chemical and can have as much capacity as you like. They just need a bit more space, but not too much more, as they are already used in cheaper electric cars. "Chinese automaker Yiwei debuted the first sodium-ion battery-powered car in 2023. It uses JAC Group’s UE module technology, which is similar to CATL's cell-to-pack design.[82] The car has a 23.2 kWh battery pack with a CLTC range of 230 kilometres (140 mi)." And for grid storage, "slightly bigger size" really doesn't matter.
        cbmuser 3y ago
        A nuclear reaction has a factor of one million more energy per Mol as compared to chemical reactions. Why would want to build an enery system on low-energy-density technology? That would be equivalent to using relays for building computers in 2024.
      - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
        There's also various schemes to use gravity. Pump water uphill above a dam when power demand is low like at night, also I have read speculation of trying to do this in some underground mine or something so it doesn't evaporate.
        cbmuser 3y ago
    - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
      There are lots of companies trying to build out different kinds of flow batteries for storage. Think of a shipping container filled with some substance that stores charge and just sits there, waiting for you to use it, grid storage. But they all seem like research projects. https://news.mit.edu/2023/flow-batteries-grid-scale-energy-storage-0407 https://news.mit.edu/2023/flow-batteries-grid-scale-energy-s...
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        There have already been some flow battery startups going bust since that started. But there are many battery companies for gird batteries. Flow is just one type and one that seems far less poplar now-days. They were all the hype like 10-15 years ago. The problem is the Li-commodity race has already beaten most of those designs. You need to use very, very cheap materials. Form Energy considered some flow designs but rejected them. That's why Form Energy are going to things like Iron batteries, because Li batteries will never reach those numbers. But very few of those alternative have had any real commercial success yet.
    - Phenomenit 3y ago
      What is the use case of long term storage in batteries? As some kind of reserve?
      - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
        Depends on what long term means. But batteries are used for power grid storage. Tesla is selling huge numbers of tesla megapacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack) often used to replace peaker plants. Peaker plants are power plants sitting there ready to turn on during peak power usage. I think they used to be often coal, which took a while to start up and produced lots of pollution, but then more recently natural gas plants start up faster and have much lower emissions. So during an evening power usage peak, or during really cold or hot times when power demand is high, the grid can tap that power source. Now you can replace those plants with a bunch of batteries that are ready in milliseconds to provide additional power, and then you can charge them if they get used up at night when electric usage is low.
        Phenomenit 3y ago
        Yeah, I think my question was a bit fuzzy, what is the definition of long term? Batteries are excellent for short term storage, days or weeks but they don’t have the same storage performance as fossil fuels of where talking months and years.
      - mbgerring 3y ago
        “Long term” in industry parlance means “greater than 8 hours”
  - scythe 3y ago
    Does a battery with low cycle efficiency actually beat hydrogen for seasonal storage? The major problem with hydrogen is the fuel cell efficiency. Electrolysis is above 80%, but fuel cells are barely at 60% and it gets lower when you try to make the design more practical (lower temperature, less platinum). So batteries just have to hit 50% to compete. But that 50% includes both inherent cycle efficiency and self-discharge and Form Energy isn't putting their numbers up front, as far as I can see. More importantly, seasonal storage is heavily concerned with heating, and the conversion of hydrogen to heat is a different matter. The batteries have heat pumps going for them, but you can make a gas-powered heat pump too. So rather than the fuel cell efficiency you look at the CoP difference between electric and gas heat pumps. The latter have received little attention, but could see a surge of interest if green hydrogen becomes more popular (and easier to transport). But here we exhaust my understanding of the situation.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      Efficiency is just one of many issues for hydrogen. Storage is another issue. How fast you can dispatch convert in either direction. I don't think seasonal storage will ever be thing. Having storage for a few days or weeks is practical. Non of the technologies we are talking about will work for seasonal.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Form Energy has made a huge amount of marketing before they had proven anything and claimed to have a product very fast. They have not build a single large better ever. Maybe not exactly the best example. Most of the non Li-Battery grid cell systems have not yet proven much. Many of the first generation of such system went bust. And many of the others have taken a long time and are still not deployed. So far the successful grid battery companies are mostly repackaging other cells.
- lukan 3y ago
  Yes, it was by far the most encouraging thing I read in a while, thanks for posting!
- Anth-ny 3y ago
  Does anyone here think Stem Inc. has any chance of becoming the Microsoft of stationary batteries?
  - mbgerring 3y ago
    Stem is effectively a services company. There’s a lot of room for general-use hardware and software in this space, especially as more battery storage is deployed and financial incentives for energy arbitrage emerge.
aresant 3y ago
This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in solar Two interesting data points to that end 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation - battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here - https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications in CA since solar energy reimbursements dropped - https://twitter.com/thomasopeters/status/1750920941868347539 https://twitter.com/thomasopeters/status/1750920941868347539 - some of that is potentially pent up demand, but I think illustrates the role state policy has to play in moving towards "renewables"
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  State policy is fundamental to the entire green revolution. None of it would have been possible without nations incentivizing it. Eventually once the entire energy generation/consumption cycle is entrenched and we are all dependent on it, they can safely take away the incentives. It's a bit like changing the tires on a moving bus. Somebody had to pay for the new tires and wheels, and the support truck to run along side the bus, and the extra fuel, and a discount for the new tires, etc. Once the new tires are on the bus can keep driving without support.
- LUmBULtERA 3y ago
  Given the dramatically lower costs of utility-scale solar vs. residential rooftop solar, is it not better at a society level for state policy to incentivize utility over residential solar? Utility-scale battery installations likewise should be much cheaper.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Residential solar may still make sense for new construction (maybe?) in the right areas. But there was a lot of scammy behavior around home solar installation at one point. Given that home solar does not effectively give you a backup generator for free (barring a lot of batteries and specific electrical hookups as I recall), it's not clear it's a big win in general. A lot of utility things aren't ideal at the individual house level if there's an option.
bejebus8 3y ago
[flagged]
- DFHippie 3y ago
  Wind? Solar? Hydro? Tide? Geothermal?
  - bejebus8 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - DFHippie 3y ago
      And that balance is changing.
      - bejebus8 3y ago
        It is a little bit for a bunch of reasons, but how does improving battery storage change the generation mix?
        macintux 3y ago
        Not an expert, but the biggest downside from renewables seems to be the swings in production. Solar is obviously not useful at night. Wind comes and goes. Batteries and other forms of energy storage to normalize distribution are more important for renewables than fossil fuels.
        speedgoose 3y ago
        Batteries can also help to handle peak demand.
        smaudet 3y ago
        Indeed. Assuming you have a sustainable source, the next most important thing is distribution and storage. The cleanest candidate (Hydrogen-from-electrolysis) suffers from storage and distribution issues. These can be overcome, but at high cost. The easiest (batteries) suffer from a combination of storage and distribution issues (heavy batteries have to be transported, you can't pipe them around, energy grids have power transmission costs/depend on batteries to work, an ouroborian problem) as well as toxicity issues. Given that batteries cannot indefinitely become cheaper, and likely that demand will outpace supply, clean hydrogen, not batteries, seem the logical ultimate choice.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
If battery growth is exponential, but mining of ore isn't, that's a pretty big red flag imo. Once raw material production hits a wall, prices go back up, profits droop, advancement declines. After a while there'll probably be a new OPEC for batteries. Batteries are here to stay, but the growth rate isn't.
- Spinnaker_ 3y ago
  The comparison to Oil is interesting. Because people have also been saying we would hit a production wall there, and have been saying that for about 90 years now.
- _visgean 3y ago
  We are still finding new deposits of lithium. Also its very likely we will eventually switch to other technologies that possibly wont require the same ingredients we need today.
- wolfram74 3y ago
  OPEC is a possibility because ease of access to petrofuels was very sporadic, but the same is not true for battery chemistries, sodium and iron batteries are being used for storage scale and even some transport cases [0][1] and even lithium can be extracted from sea water [2]. Given how ubiquitous those 3 things are, there'll be a pretty hard ceiling/competition amongst different options. I suspect we'll encounter something more like agricultural cartels than petrostate cartels. [0] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/02/10/rusty-batteries-could-hold-key-to-carbonfree-power-future https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/02/10/rusty-batteries-cou... [1]https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-by-sodium-ion-batteries-go-on-sale-in-china/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-b... [2]https://samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from...
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I hope we find that "battery" is a sufficiently broad category such that individual bottlenecks (lithium extraction, for instance) end up being worked around by using different materials. I also think that biotech has picked up some new tricks lately (alphafold, etc) that might let it branch out from academia, medicine, and agriculture and affect things like mining re: bioleeching fungi to move minerals through mycelial networks to the surface.
iSnow 3y ago
The adoption and cost decrease is so ridiculously fast that the first two charts should have been logarithmic instead of linear.
sixstringtheory 3y ago
This is a great set of charts and analysis, although I have two problems with it. 1. On the chart of energy density, I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for comparison. It's much higher, and even though extrapolation is dangerous, I'd like to see how long it could take to reach parity given some of the different forecasting models they mention. Specifically regarding their mention of air travel, I'd like to know what the minimum viable energy density would be for a vessel's fuel source, because my current understanding is that commercial air travel powered by electricity is not feasible. 2. They mention S-curve adoption, but that reaches a horizontal asymptote eventually, it doesn't go up forever. I'd like to see more analysis on where we think we're at on the S-curve, and why. I'd like to see a guess on where it levels out displayed on that chart, instead of the arrow simply pointing at the sky. If nothing else, show where the chemical limit might be based on current battery technology. I want to displace fossil fuels and reduce pollution and slow the greenhouse effect as much as possible. I think transparency and realistic expectations need to be part of the transition. The more information available to markets, the more efficiently they can work towards the goal. I find it very difficult to get answers to these types of questions when discussing renewable energy generation and storage. I'm sure part of it is my own ignorance on where to look, which is why I ask: especially here, hopefully an expert can see this and quickly point me in the right direction.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  > I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for comparison. Petrol's higher energy density doesn't matter as much as people think. Electric vehicles are around four times as efficient as petrol. In a petrol car, only 20% of the energy is converted to motion. In electric cars, this is around 80% (with some variation dependent on regenerative braking). I wrote about this extensively in a previous article: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en...
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Ok, how about "effective energy density"?
thelastgallon 3y ago
Related: Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405
scythe 3y ago
I'm a little surprised by that energy density chart. Who's selling batteries that carry 500 Wh/kg? Those are research prototype numbers; I think that Amprius and the gamma-sulfur people have hit (or passed) that mark. But cars and cellphones have been using the Ni-Mn-Al-Co oxide family of cathodes for a decade. The recent large-scale development has been bringing on LiFePO4 which actually accepts a lower density in exchange for lower cost and longer life. That doesn't discredit the predictions, but I don't think that the connection they're trying to draw between energy density and market demand really holds water. The development of higher density batteries is good for certain applications like that ground-effect electric seaplane, but it isn't necessary for cars or grid storage, where the first case is mostly viable already and the second is concerned with the cost outlook and the self-discharge rate.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  CATL is. https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/catl-condensed-battery.html https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/catl-condense...
  - scythe 3y ago
    That looks like a demo prototype. Farther along than I expected, though.
- martythemaniak 3y ago
  I think Amprius are further along than you might think, ready to scale commercial production, not research prototype. Super neat factory tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Hd4HfH1ss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Hd4HfH1ss
letuv 3y ago
Are these 500 Wh/kg batteries somehow available in powerbank (sub-500g) size? So far the best I found are around 250 Wh/kg (for the whole powerbank).
- cperciva 3y ago
  You'll have trouble finding powerbanks over 100 Whr, due to FAA regulations.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    I wonder when if ever we'll see this re-evaluated. It's still a terrifying amount of energy, but I'd feel much much different about someone with a 300WH LFP pack sitting next to me than I would a lipo pack.
- martythemaniak 3y ago
  It'll probably be a while before you see them widely available, much less in small consumer devices. eVTOL and other battery aircraft can't really work without this level of density so I imagine they'll consume all available supply (at premium prices) for a while.
tonymet 3y ago
Lithium Battery 0.5 kWh/kg Diesel 12.7 kWh/kg
- chris_va 3y ago
  You probably want kWh_e (electric) instead of kWh_t (thermal), and probably should include the weight of the engine/transmission. Diesel is better still, but not quite the same gap.
  - TOMDM 3y ago
    Also have to account for how many kWh are converted into motion. Again, diesel still wins, but man is that gap closing.
tonymet 3y ago
> "Enabling the phase-out of fossil fuels" How much hydrocarbon fuel is needed to produce these batteries each year? How much fuel is needed to charge them?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > How much fuel is needed to charge them? The eventual goal would be zero.
  - tonymet 3y ago
    in what year?
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Don't pull a muscle moving those goalposts around.
    - mbgerring 3y ago
      Many batteries deployed today, in 2024, spend their entire lifecycle being charged entirely from solar. Are you asking what year none of them will be charged with electricity from fossil fuels? I’d bet that we’ll hit that mark in California before 2040.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Currently used? Probably quite a bit. But usually still a net emissions win for using an EV vs a fossil fuel vehicle even with current grids. Required? None. There's nothing in EV battery production or charging or usage that requires burning fossil fuels. That fossil fuels are a major source of our current energy is part of the problem that we are also working to solve. And mass production of economical batteries is part of how we do that with renewable energy. Building grids and vehicles that burn fossil fuels means you need to keep drilling, refining, and transporting that fossil fuel for every future kWH generated or mile driven. Forever. A battery is made once and used for its lifetime, and most of its critical materials can be recycled at end of life into new batteries. If you want current stats on total lifetime emissions of manufacturing and using batteries vs fossil fuels, search for "EV cradle to grave emissions" and there are a few studies. My recollection is that the results show that an EV will have lower lifetime emissions than a fossil fuel vehicle even with today's mostly dirty grids in most cases, and break-even in the worst grid mixes. As grids shift to renewables and recycling increases those numbers should only improve.
donbatman 3y ago
Most of those batteries are being charged by natural gas. Batteries store electricity, they don't create it.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  For now. (And not everywhere. In Norway, 90% of that power would come from hydro plants.) One of the most common objections to a wholesale switch to renewables is "what if it's cloudy / not windy" sort of thing. Cheap, widely deployed energy storage is key to answering that objection. They go hand in hand. More batteries, more renewables, more batteries, more renewables, etc. etc. etc. Eventually, the obvious goal is to charge everything via renewable power.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  It frustrates me that you think this is a genuine talking point. If we're talking about powering cars, then even if your power comes from 100% coal, it's still cleaner to drive the EV than gasoline, simply because the coal power plant benefits from the economy of scale. It merely takes longer for the trade-off of the higher carbon footprint of manufacturing an EV to happen. But it does eventually happen. If we're talking about powering an energy grid, nobody expects them to be charged via consumables. That's just silly. But battery storage is how you make wind/solar energy work without requiring burning consumables as a backup.
Tade0 3y ago
Regarding price, leading manufacturers are already selling at a price below what was always understood as the point where EVs win in terms of economics: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-war-w-55-in-six-months.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-w... The recent price war in China is a testament to that.
- zardo 3y ago
  > Tesla will be saving $800 in LFP battery costs within 6 months and another $800 within about 18 months. Do they have a model using LiFePOs now?
  - jostmey 3y ago
    I got a model 3 RWD last quarter and it has a LFP battery. I think it's the only Tesla with LFP batteries
    - coryrc 3y ago
      Only one in the US. There's more in China IIUC.
    - pi-rat 3y ago
      Model Y RWD sold in europe is LFP
  - strangemonad 3y ago
    Many of the china model 3s and Ys use prismatic cells from CATL use lifepo chemistries
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      I think the reason for the wide variety of battery tech in Tesla's model range is partly to reduce/spread costs incase one battery is found to catch fire/fail when it hits 7 years old.
  - 3y ago
inasio 3y ago
Anecdotal local evidence to exhibit 3: There are a few go-kart places here, I hadn't been there for a few years, and now I learned that they all switched to electrical. Much quieter, no fumes, works great indoors
- liotier 3y ago
  Full torque at zero RPM makes motor racing much more exciting - especially compared to the low end karts with puny 2-stroke engines that took forever to accelerate my heavy ass !
deadeye 3y ago
Chart #2: Top Tier Energy Battery Density vs. Battery Cost. That seems like an odd comparison to me. Is it normal to compare the Top Tier Anything to the Average of another thing? Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn't seem to contain any REAL information. Shouldn't the comparison be the costs of the SAME cars and not include cars that aren't top tier? What am I not getting?
- dylan604 3y ago
  Chart 2 definitely seems strange as it appears that batteries are free in 2023
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The elites don’t want you to know this but the batteries in the cars are free you can take them home I have 458 KwH.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    It would be better served by a log scale if they really want to show the pre-2005 numbers in the chart.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Only because it's a wide line. Cost is $139/kWh, which on a scale of 0-9000, is pretty close to zero historically. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-hit-record-low-of-139-kwh/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
- stcredzero 3y ago
  Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn't seem to contain any REAL information. Actually, if you know the details of the development of consumer cars, you'll find that advances and levels of performance in top tier cars tends to trickle down into average cars. Not without some dilution, but that's a definite trend! So things like disc brakes, fuel injection, microprocessor control. This sort of thing definitely happens with batteries over time. It's a way of peeking into the future. Just fudge factor for a little dilution.
xbmcuser 3y ago
This is why I say electricity revolution is coming and a lot people and countries are going to be shell shocked by it. Solar and wind electricity costs are also decreasing at a similar rate.
- mbgerring 3y ago
  It’s already here, it’s been here for a decade, renewables are a mature industry. They’ve already effectively destroyed the economics of coal, and natural gas is next.
  - ketzo 3y ago
    I was gonna say "then why did China add so much coal last year", because I remembered reading that they added something like 50GW of coal, even as they added more than 150GW renewable. But as of Jan 1 2024, they also had to introduce a financial incentive just to keep coal plants online, because otherwise the coal plants can't compete on price, just like you said! Some weird economics going on here, but it seems like China is still adding coal just to maximize total power deployed, even if it's uneconomic at the margins. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-guarantee-payments-its-coal-power-producers-based-capacity-2023-11-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-guarantee-payments...
    - xbmcuser 3y ago
      Yeah even I was not aware that China has from 2023 started installing more solar and wind than its annual energy consumption growth ie they have actually started replacing coal produced electricity. And with all the new solar and battery production capacity coming online in 2024 by 2030 China coal usage should be down dramatically.
  - notTooFarGone 3y ago
    And, what people don't want to hear here, nuclear too. Batteries with renewables are already cheaper than nuclear and it will only get cheaper while nuclear costs are ballooning.
sandworm101 3y ago
Take 25% of the money spend on EV batteries and instead spend it on domestic solar panels. I cannot stand the smugness of people who will pay $$,$$$ for a car but won't spend $,$$$ on the thing to make power for that car. Even batteries. The net carbon saved by in-home battery+solar is far more than putting batteries in the family car. The car runs a few hours a day. A total off-grid solar+batteries domestic system saves carbon 27/7. In other words, (Honda civic IC + home solar/batteries) saves more carbon than a Tesla with no actual power generation capacity. But that just isn't fashionable.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  From my interaction with local utilities/electrical companies, they _hate_ domestic solar. They'll do everything in their power to stonewall you getting them installed and make it seem like a useless/expensive option.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Then ditch the local connection and go with off-grid solar. These days, a totally off-grid solution is sometimes the cheaper option. Panels are cheap. Batteries are cheap. Interest rates are cheap. And no monthly minimums. I'm sitting in a house right now, streaming top gear on a 50-inch tv, completely off-grid.
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      How are you getting internet? Starlink?
      - sandworm101 3y ago
        Rural wifi system. Waterfront. Relay station on a island about a mile away. From there it bounces to a station on a cellbtower.
- cogman10 3y ago
  Batteries are a required part of the transition to pure renewables. When demand for EVs drops low enough you can bet grid operators will be in line to soak up the cheap batteries. Further, V2G/H is more than likely to be a thing in the near future further putting the EV batteries to work stabilizing the grid.
antisthenes 3y ago
Batteries are great, but some of those charts look off. Where are they getting batteries that are 500Wh/kg for commercial applications? Even state of the art NMC cells in the 21700 and 46800 form factors barely scrape at 300Wh/kg, and everything else (LFP) is significantly below that number.
- futevolei 3y ago
  For real. I’m trying to diy a battery now with 304ah lifepo4 cells and it works out to 125wh/kg. Doesn’t seem like even 300wh/kg will trickle down to the public anytime soon.
  - defrost 3y ago
    The charts are reflecting bleeding edge industry results .. some may yet fail repeatable verification. The 500wh/kg figures come from at least two companies nine months ago - one might be a US arm of the other: https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html https://amprius.com/the-all-new-amprius-500-wh-kg-battery-platform-is-here/ https://amprius.com/the-all-new-amprius-500-wh-kg-battery-pl... Both have asserted idependant verification. High energy density isn't the only desirable goal of course. Really cheap, bulk storage, hard to damage, with long lifetime and many recharge cycle batteries are good for grids even if they're too heavy for the mobile | car market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery ,for example, have a promising future in not { car | phone } applications.
zizee 3y ago
Given these trends, what is the predicted year that we'd expect the last fossil fuel burning power plant to be greenlit for construction in China, India, and the US? Follow-up: At what point is continued operation of existing coal become uneconomical (to simplify the question assume decent solar generation locations are available/ grid connected nearby).
- cbmuser 3y ago
  Fossil fuels are not going anywhere soon as a quick look at the world’s energy mix proves. > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
  - zizee 3y ago
    Thanks, but that does not answer my question. I guess I want to hear predictions of when fossil fuel usage will peak, and over what time period will it be reduced by 20, 30, 50%.
    - dalyons 3y ago
      The IEA says it will peak in 2025. And they have consistently underestimated predicted renewables growth VS actual every year for the last decade. https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-significantly-by-2030-based-on-today-s-policy-settings-alone https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-s...
choeger 3y ago
We have 500Wh/kg batteries by now? And they think there'll be 800Wh/kg in 2030? Wasn't that well beyond what's needed for medium-range electric flight? Is that even possible, chemically speaking?
- cbmuser 3y ago
  Jet fuel has an energy density of 12,000 Wh/kg, so there is still a little room left. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
defrost 3y ago
As a point of interest, for particular types of investors, underneath all the hoo-rah of the charts How fast will batteries continue to grow and improve? The answer is a lot faster than today’s consensus view. isn't exactly true in reality for the billion+ dollar end of the resources market who expected battery demand to be much much higher than it is, leading to temporary(?) setbacks such as: What's behind the drastic downturn in nickel and lithium prices, and what does it mean? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-26/examining-the-drastic-downturn-in-nickel-and-lithium-prices/103388902 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-26/examining-the-drastic... TLDR: Despite high expectation demand didn't meet ramped up supply at the raw material end.
DrNosferatu 3y ago
Without log axis, this is all very opaque... Also, battery-powered >=737-size passenger airplanes (also not so sure about trains and cargo ships) will need at least a revolution in battery technology - batteries won't do, they're just too heavy for the little energy they output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_energy_storage_and_fuels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_energy_stora...
- erikpukinskis 3y ago
  I doubt there’s any reason why trains couldn’t run on batteries. Anything that either stops and then starts again before refueling, or goes down and then up again before refueling, should be compatible with batteries due to regenerative braking. Trains have both of those properties. Planes have neither of those properties which is what makes them hard to run off batteries. Cargo ships also wouldn’t seem to have a problem. My understanding is that the drag on a hull increases sub-linearly relative to displacement. So a 10% increase in displacement might only increase drag by 1%. So it’s unlikely the weight penalty of batteries would be prohibitive.
  - DrNosferatu 3y ago
    Here’s why: You would need a whole other ship full of lithium batteries in tow so a useful size cargo ship would have the enormous energy required for a regular cargo trip. Trains work better, but charge time would impact operation feasibility, and just electrifying the railway with overhead cables is currently cheaper than lithium battery solutions. Hence the case for hydrogen fuel cells for train applications.
londons_explore 3y ago
The increase in battery energy density from 300Wh/kg to 500Wh/kg between 2020 and 2023 interest's me... Where can I learn more? Can I buy these 500Wh/kg batteries today?

What I find really interesting is the huge growth in stationary storage - I believe it's the fastest growing segment.

beambot 3y ago
Stationary systems for grid scale storage have amazing options - e.g. Form Energy - that needn't rely on power density benefits of Lithium chemistries. I wouldn't be surprised to see this sector dominate the GWh/yr chart in the next 6 years.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  It's difficult to see any of the alternatives displacing batteries for short-term storage. Batteries aren't a good fit for long-term storage, which is where alternatives should be competitive. But that market is essentially 0 right now.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    Batteries (High capacity chemical) are terrible for long term storage, namely they are toxic: https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/dry-cell-battery-poisoning https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/dry-cell-ba... https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002805.htm https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002805.htm https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-703-health-concerns-with-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-703-health-concerns... And cannot always be easily recycled: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-09/Lithium-Ion-Batteries-Fact-Sheet-8-2023.pdf https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-09/Lithium-I... In addition to general concerns about chemical availability, and processing issues. E.g. Demand expected to outstrip supply as soon as next year: https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/metals/012622-infographic-the-lithium-deficit-road-map-will-future-supply-meet-demand https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...
    - lukan 3y ago
      "Batteries are terrible for long term storage, namely they are toxic" Only some are toxic. But can you name the poison or danger with saltwater batteries? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
      - smaudet 3y ago
        Yes, there are excellent non-"battery" technologies. I'm explicitly talking about the high capacity chemical batteries everyone's crazy for these days.
        lukan 3y ago
        Sodium ion batteries are chemical and can have as much capacity as you like. They just need a bit more space, but not too much more, as they are already used in cheaper electric cars. "Chinese automaker Yiwei debuted the first sodium-ion battery-powered car in 2023. It uses JAC Group’s UE module technology, which is similar to CATL's cell-to-pack design.[82] The car has a 23.2 kWh battery pack with a CLTC range of 230 kilometres (140 mi)." And for grid storage, "slightly bigger size" really doesn't matter.
        cbmuser 3y ago
        A nuclear reaction has a factor of one million more energy per Mol as compared to chemical reactions. Why would want to build an enery system on low-energy-density technology? That would be equivalent to using relays for building computers in 2024.
    - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
      There's also various schemes to use gravity. Pump water uphill above a dam when power demand is low like at night, also I have read speculation of trying to do this in some underground mine or something so it doesn't evaporate.
      - cbmuser 3y ago
  - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
    There are lots of companies trying to build out different kinds of flow batteries for storage. Think of a shipping container filled with some substance that stores charge and just sits there, waiting for you to use it, grid storage. But they all seem like research projects. https://news.mit.edu/2023/flow-batteries-grid-scale-energy-storage-0407 https://news.mit.edu/2023/flow-batteries-grid-scale-energy-s...
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      There have already been some flow battery startups going bust since that started. But there are many battery companies for gird batteries. Flow is just one type and one that seems far less poplar now-days. They were all the hype like 10-15 years ago. The problem is the Li-commodity race has already beaten most of those designs. You need to use very, very cheap materials. Form Energy considered some flow designs but rejected them. That's why Form Energy are going to things like Iron batteries, because Li batteries will never reach those numbers. But very few of those alternative have had any real commercial success yet.
  - Phenomenit 3y ago
    What is the use case of long term storage in batteries? As some kind of reserve?
    - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
      Depends on what long term means. But batteries are used for power grid storage. Tesla is selling huge numbers of tesla megapacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack) often used to replace peaker plants. Peaker plants are power plants sitting there ready to turn on during peak power usage. I think they used to be often coal, which took a while to start up and produced lots of pollution, but then more recently natural gas plants start up faster and have much lower emissions. So during an evening power usage peak, or during really cold or hot times when power demand is high, the grid can tap that power source. Now you can replace those plants with a bunch of batteries that are ready in milliseconds to provide additional power, and then you can charge them if they get used up at night when electric usage is low.
      - Phenomenit 3y ago
        Yeah, I think my question was a bit fuzzy, what is the definition of long term? Batteries are excellent for short term storage, days or weeks but they don’t have the same storage performance as fossil fuels of where talking months and years.
    - mbgerring 3y ago
      “Long term” in industry parlance means “greater than 8 hours”
- scythe 3y ago
  Does a battery with low cycle efficiency actually beat hydrogen for seasonal storage? The major problem with hydrogen is the fuel cell efficiency. Electrolysis is above 80%, but fuel cells are barely at 60% and it gets lower when you try to make the design more practical (lower temperature, less platinum). So batteries just have to hit 50% to compete. But that 50% includes both inherent cycle efficiency and self-discharge and Form Energy isn't putting their numbers up front, as far as I can see. More importantly, seasonal storage is heavily concerned with heating, and the conversion of hydrogen to heat is a different matter. The batteries have heat pumps going for them, but you can make a gas-powered heat pump too. So rather than the fuel cell efficiency you look at the CoP difference between electric and gas heat pumps. The latter have received little attention, but could see a surge of interest if green hydrogen becomes more popular (and easier to transport). But here we exhaust my understanding of the situation.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Efficiency is just one of many issues for hydrogen. Storage is another issue. How fast you can dispatch convert in either direction. I don't think seasonal storage will ever be thing. Having storage for a few days or weeks is practical. Non of the technologies we are talking about will work for seasonal.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Form Energy has made a huge amount of marketing before they had proven anything and claimed to have a product very fast. They have not build a single large better ever. Maybe not exactly the best example. Most of the non Li-Battery grid cell systems have not yet proven much. Many of the first generation of such system went bust. And many of the others have taken a long time and are still not deployed. So far the successful grid battery companies are mostly repackaging other cells.
lukan 3y ago
Yes, it was by far the most encouraging thing I read in a while, thanks for posting!
Anth-ny 3y ago
Does anyone here think Stem Inc. has any chance of becoming the Microsoft of stationary batteries?
- mbgerring 3y ago
  Stem is effectively a services company. There’s a lot of room for general-use hardware and software in this space, especially as more battery storage is deployed and financial incentives for energy arbitrage emerge.

This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in solar Two interesting data points to that end 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation - battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here - https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications in CA since solar energy reimbursements dropped - https://twitter.com/thomasopeters/status/1750920941868347539 https://twitter.com/thomasopeters/status/1750920941868347539 - some of that is potentially pent up demand, but I think illustrates the role state policy has to play in moving towards "renewables"

0xbadcafebee 3y ago
State policy is fundamental to the entire green revolution. None of it would have been possible without nations incentivizing it. Eventually once the entire energy generation/consumption cycle is entrenched and we are all dependent on it, they can safely take away the incentives. It's a bit like changing the tires on a moving bus. Somebody had to pay for the new tires and wheels, and the support truck to run along side the bus, and the extra fuel, and a discount for the new tires, etc. Once the new tires are on the bus can keep driving without support.
LUmBULtERA 3y ago
Given the dramatically lower costs of utility-scale solar vs. residential rooftop solar, is it not better at a society level for state policy to incentivize utility over residential solar? Utility-scale battery installations likewise should be much cheaper.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Residential solar may still make sense for new construction (maybe?) in the right areas. But there was a lot of scammy behavior around home solar installation at one point. Given that home solar does not effectively give you a backup generator for free (barring a lot of batteries and specific electrical hookups as I recall), it's not clear it's a big win in general. A lot of utility things aren't ideal at the individual house level if there's an option.

bejebus8 3y ago

[flagged]

DFHippie 3y ago
Wind? Solar? Hydro? Tide? Geothermal?
- bejebus8 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - DFHippie 3y ago
    And that balance is changing.
    - bejebus8 3y ago
      It is a little bit for a bunch of reasons, but how does improving battery storage change the generation mix?
      - macintux 3y ago
        Not an expert, but the biggest downside from renewables seems to be the swings in production. Solar is obviously not useful at night. Wind comes and goes. Batteries and other forms of energy storage to normalize distribution are more important for renewables than fossil fuels.
        speedgoose 3y ago
        Batteries can also help to handle peak demand.
        smaudet 3y ago
        Indeed. Assuming you have a sustainable source, the next most important thing is distribution and storage. The cleanest candidate (Hydrogen-from-electrolysis) suffers from storage and distribution issues. These can be overcome, but at high cost. The easiest (batteries) suffer from a combination of storage and distribution issues (heavy batteries have to be transported, you can't pipe them around, energy grids have power transmission costs/depend on batteries to work, an ouroborian problem) as well as toxicity issues. Given that batteries cannot indefinitely become cheaper, and likely that demand will outpace supply, clean hydrogen, not batteries, seem the logical ultimate choice.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

If battery growth is exponential, but mining of ore isn't, that's a pretty big red flag imo. Once raw material production hits a wall, prices go back up, profits droop, advancement declines. After a while there'll probably be a new OPEC for batteries. Batteries are here to stay, but the growth rate isn't.

Spinnaker_ 3y ago
The comparison to Oil is interesting. Because people have also been saying we would hit a production wall there, and have been saying that for about 90 years now.
_visgean 3y ago
We are still finding new deposits of lithium. Also its very likely we will eventually switch to other technologies that possibly wont require the same ingredients we need today.
wolfram74 3y ago
OPEC is a possibility because ease of access to petrofuels was very sporadic, but the same is not true for battery chemistries, sodium and iron batteries are being used for storage scale and even some transport cases [0][1] and even lithium can be extracted from sea water [2]. Given how ubiquitous those 3 things are, there'll be a pretty hard ceiling/competition amongst different options. I suspect we'll encounter something more like agricultural cartels than petrostate cartels. [0] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/02/10/rusty-batteries-could-hold-key-to-carbonfree-power-future https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/02/10/rusty-batteries-cou... [1]https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-by-sodium-ion-batteries-go-on-sale-in-china/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-b... [2]https://samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from...
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I hope we find that "battery" is a sufficiently broad category such that individual bottlenecks (lithium extraction, for instance) end up being worked around by using different materials. I also think that biotech has picked up some new tricks lately (alphafold, etc) that might let it branch out from academia, medicine, and agriculture and affect things like mining re: bioleeching fungi to move minerals through mycelial networks to the surface.

iSnow 3y ago

The adoption and cost decrease is so ridiculously fast that the first two charts should have been logarithmic instead of linear.

sixstringtheory 3y ago

This is a great set of charts and analysis, although I have two problems with it. 1. On the chart of energy density, I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for comparison. It's much higher, and even though extrapolation is dangerous, I'd like to see how long it could take to reach parity given some of the different forecasting models they mention. Specifically regarding their mention of air travel, I'd like to know what the minimum viable energy density would be for a vessel's fuel source, because my current understanding is that commercial air travel powered by electricity is not feasible. 2. They mention S-curve adoption, but that reaches a horizontal asymptote eventually, it doesn't go up forever. I'd like to see more analysis on where we think we're at on the S-curve, and why. I'd like to see a guess on where it levels out displayed on that chart, instead of the arrow simply pointing at the sky. If nothing else, show where the chemical limit might be based on current battery technology. I want to displace fossil fuels and reduce pollution and slow the greenhouse effect as much as possible. I think transparency and realistic expectations need to be part of the transition. The more information available to markets, the more efficiently they can work towards the goal. I find it very difficult to get answers to these types of questions when discussing renewable energy generation and storage. I'm sure part of it is my own ignorance on where to look, which is why I ask: especially here, hopefully an expert can see this and quickly point me in the right direction.

thelastgallon 3y ago
> I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for comparison. Petrol's higher energy density doesn't matter as much as people think. Electric vehicles are around four times as efficient as petrol. In a petrol car, only 20% of the energy is converted to motion. In electric cars, this is around 80% (with some variation dependent on regenerative braking). I wrote about this extensively in a previous article: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en...
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Ok, how about "effective energy density"?

thelastgallon 3y ago

Related: Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405

scythe 3y ago

I'm a little surprised by that energy density chart. Who's selling batteries that carry 500 Wh/kg? Those are research prototype numbers; I think that Amprius and the gamma-sulfur people have hit (or passed) that mark. But cars and cellphones have been using the Ni-Mn-Al-Co oxide family of cathodes for a decade. The recent large-scale development has been bringing on LiFePO4 which actually accepts a lower density in exchange for lower cost and longer life. That doesn't discredit the predictions, but I don't think that the connection they're trying to draw between energy density and market demand really holds water. The development of higher density batteries is good for certain applications like that ground-effect electric seaplane, but it isn't necessary for cars or grid storage, where the first case is mostly viable already and the second is concerned with the cost outlook and the self-discharge rate.

kccqzy 3y ago
CATL is. https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/catl-condensed-battery.html https://www.evlithium.com/lifepo4-battery-news/catl-condense...
- scythe 3y ago
  That looks like a demo prototype. Farther along than I expected, though.
martythemaniak 3y ago
I think Amprius are further along than you might think, ready to scale commercial production, not research prototype. Super neat factory tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Hd4HfH1ss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Hd4HfH1ss

letuv 3y ago

Are these 500 Wh/kg batteries somehow available in powerbank (sub-500g) size? So far the best I found are around 250 Wh/kg (for the whole powerbank).

cperciva 3y ago
You'll have trouble finding powerbanks over 100 Whr, due to FAA regulations.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I wonder when if ever we'll see this re-evaluated. It's still a terrifying amount of energy, but I'd feel much much different about someone with a 300WH LFP pack sitting next to me than I would a lipo pack.
martythemaniak 3y ago
It'll probably be a while before you see them widely available, much less in small consumer devices. eVTOL and other battery aircraft can't really work without this level of density so I imagine they'll consume all available supply (at premium prices) for a while.

tonymet 3y ago

Lithium Battery 0.5 kWh/kg Diesel 12.7 kWh/kg

chris_va 3y ago
You probably want kWh_e (electric) instead of kWh_t (thermal), and probably should include the weight of the engine/transmission. Diesel is better still, but not quite the same gap.
- TOMDM 3y ago
  Also have to account for how many kWh are converted into motion. Again, diesel still wins, but man is that gap closing.

tonymet 3y ago

> "Enabling the phase-out of fossil fuels" How much hydrocarbon fuel is needed to produce these batteries each year? How much fuel is needed to charge them?

ceejayoz 3y ago
> How much fuel is needed to charge them? The eventual goal would be zero.
- tonymet 3y ago
  in what year?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Don't pull a muscle moving those goalposts around.
  - mbgerring 3y ago
    Many batteries deployed today, in 2024, spend their entire lifecycle being charged entirely from solar. Are you asking what year none of them will be charged with electricity from fossil fuels? I’d bet that we’ll hit that mark in California before 2040.
stetrain 3y ago
Currently used? Probably quite a bit. But usually still a net emissions win for using an EV vs a fossil fuel vehicle even with current grids. Required? None. There's nothing in EV battery production or charging or usage that requires burning fossil fuels. That fossil fuels are a major source of our current energy is part of the problem that we are also working to solve. And mass production of economical batteries is part of how we do that with renewable energy. Building grids and vehicles that burn fossil fuels means you need to keep drilling, refining, and transporting that fossil fuel for every future kWH generated or mile driven. Forever. A battery is made once and used for its lifetime, and most of its critical materials can be recycled at end of life into new batteries. If you want current stats on total lifetime emissions of manufacturing and using batteries vs fossil fuels, search for "EV cradle to grave emissions" and there are a few studies. My recollection is that the results show that an EV will have lower lifetime emissions than a fossil fuel vehicle even with today's mostly dirty grids in most cases, and break-even in the worst grid mixes. As grids shift to renewables and recycling increases those numbers should only improve.

donbatman 3y ago

Most of those batteries are being charged by natural gas. Batteries store electricity, they don't create it.

ceejayoz 3y ago
For now. (And not everywhere. In Norway, 90% of that power would come from hydro plants.) One of the most common objections to a wholesale switch to renewables is "what if it's cloudy / not windy" sort of thing. Cheap, widely deployed energy storage is key to answering that objection. They go hand in hand. More batteries, more renewables, more batteries, more renewables, etc. etc. etc. Eventually, the obvious goal is to charge everything via renewable power.
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
It frustrates me that you think this is a genuine talking point. If we're talking about powering cars, then even if your power comes from 100% coal, it's still cleaner to drive the EV than gasoline, simply because the coal power plant benefits from the economy of scale. It merely takes longer for the trade-off of the higher carbon footprint of manufacturing an EV to happen. But it does eventually happen. If we're talking about powering an energy grid, nobody expects them to be charged via consumables. That's just silly. But battery storage is how you make wind/solar energy work without requiring burning consumables as a backup.

Tade0 3y ago

Regarding price, leading manufacturers are already selling at a price below what was always understood as the point where EVs win in terms of economics: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-war-w-55-in-six-months.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-w... The recent price war in China is a testament to that.

zardo 3y ago
> Tesla will be saving $800 in LFP battery costs within 6 months and another $800 within about 18 months. Do they have a model using LiFePOs now?
- jostmey 3y ago
  I got a model 3 RWD last quarter and it has a LFP battery. I think it's the only Tesla with LFP batteries
  - coryrc 3y ago
    Only one in the US. There's more in China IIUC.
  - pi-rat 3y ago
    Model Y RWD sold in europe is LFP
- strangemonad 3y ago
  Many of the china model 3s and Ys use prismatic cells from CATL use lifepo chemistries
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    I think the reason for the wide variety of battery tech in Tesla's model range is partly to reduce/spread costs incase one battery is found to catch fire/fail when it hits 7 years old.
- 3y ago

inasio 3y ago

Anecdotal local evidence to exhibit 3: There are a few go-kart places here, I hadn't been there for a few years, and now I learned that they all switched to electrical. Much quieter, no fumes, works great indoors

liotier 3y ago
Full torque at zero RPM makes motor racing much more exciting - especially compared to the low end karts with puny 2-stroke engines that took forever to accelerate my heavy ass !

deadeye 3y ago

Chart #2: Top Tier Energy Battery Density vs. Battery Cost. That seems like an odd comparison to me. Is it normal to compare the Top Tier Anything to the Average of another thing? Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn't seem to contain any REAL information. Shouldn't the comparison be the costs of the SAME cars and not include cars that aren't top tier? What am I not getting?

dylan604 3y ago
Chart 2 definitely seems strange as it appears that batteries are free in 2023
- bombcar 3y ago
  The elites don’t want you to know this but the batteries in the cars are free you can take them home I have 458 KwH.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  It would be better served by a log scale if they really want to show the pre-2005 numbers in the chart.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Only because it's a wide line. Cost is $139/kWh, which on a scale of 0-9000, is pretty close to zero historically. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-hit-record-low-of-139-kwh/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
stcredzero 3y ago
Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn't seem to contain any REAL information. Actually, if you know the details of the development of consumer cars, you'll find that advances and levels of performance in top tier cars tends to trickle down into average cars. Not without some dilution, but that's a definite trend! So things like disc brakes, fuel injection, microprocessor control. This sort of thing definitely happens with batteries over time. It's a way of peeking into the future. Just fudge factor for a little dilution.

xbmcuser 3y ago

This is why I say electricity revolution is coming and a lot people and countries are going to be shell shocked by it. Solar and wind electricity costs are also decreasing at a similar rate.

mbgerring 3y ago
It’s already here, it’s been here for a decade, renewables are a mature industry. They’ve already effectively destroyed the economics of coal, and natural gas is next.
- ketzo 3y ago
  I was gonna say "then why did China add so much coal last year", because I remembered reading that they added something like 50GW of coal, even as they added more than 150GW renewable. But as of Jan 1 2024, they also had to introduce a financial incentive just to keep coal plants online, because otherwise the coal plants can't compete on price, just like you said! Some weird economics going on here, but it seems like China is still adding coal just to maximize total power deployed, even if it's uneconomic at the margins. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-guarantee-payments-its-coal-power-producers-based-capacity-2023-11-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-guarantee-payments...
  - xbmcuser 3y ago
    Yeah even I was not aware that China has from 2023 started installing more solar and wind than its annual energy consumption growth ie they have actually started replacing coal produced electricity. And with all the new solar and battery production capacity coming online in 2024 by 2030 China coal usage should be down dramatically.
- notTooFarGone 3y ago
  And, what people don't want to hear here, nuclear too. Batteries with renewables are already cheaper than nuclear and it will only get cheaper while nuclear costs are ballooning.

sandworm101 3y ago

Take 25% of the money spend on EV batteries and instead spend it on domestic solar panels. I cannot stand the smugness of people who will pay $$,$$$ for a car but won't spend $,$$$ on the thing to make power for that car. Even batteries. The net carbon saved by in-home battery+solar is far more than putting batteries in the family car. The car runs a few hours a day. A total off-grid solar+batteries domestic system saves carbon 27/7. In other words, (Honda civic IC + home solar/batteries) saves more carbon than a Tesla with no actual power generation capacity. But that just isn't fashionable.

candiddevmike 3y ago
From my interaction with local utilities/electrical companies, they _hate_ domestic solar. They'll do everything in their power to stonewall you getting them installed and make it seem like a useless/expensive option.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Then ditch the local connection and go with off-grid solar. These days, a totally off-grid solution is sometimes the cheaper option. Panels are cheap. Batteries are cheap. Interest rates are cheap. And no monthly minimums. I'm sitting in a house right now, streaming top gear on a 50-inch tv, completely off-grid.
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    How are you getting internet? Starlink?
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      Rural wifi system. Waterfront. Relay station on a island about a mile away. From there it bounces to a station on a cellbtower.
cogman10 3y ago
Batteries are a required part of the transition to pure renewables. When demand for EVs drops low enough you can bet grid operators will be in line to soak up the cheap batteries. Further, V2G/H is more than likely to be a thing in the near future further putting the EV batteries to work stabilizing the grid.

antisthenes 3y ago

Batteries are great, but some of those charts look off. Where are they getting batteries that are 500Wh/kg for commercial applications? Even state of the art NMC cells in the 21700 and 46800 form factors barely scrape at 300Wh/kg, and everything else (LFP) is significantly below that number.

futevolei 3y ago
For real. I’m trying to diy a battery now with 304ah lifepo4 cells and it works out to 125wh/kg. Doesn’t seem like even 300wh/kg will trickle down to the public anytime soon.
- defrost 3y ago
  The charts are reflecting bleeding edge industry results .. some may yet fail repeatable verification. The 500wh/kg figures come from at least two companies nine months ago - one might be a US arm of the other: https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html https://amprius.com/the-all-new-amprius-500-wh-kg-battery-platform-is-here/ https://amprius.com/the-all-new-amprius-500-wh-kg-battery-pl... Both have asserted idependant verification. High energy density isn't the only desirable goal of course. Really cheap, bulk storage, hard to damage, with long lifetime and many recharge cycle batteries are good for grids even if they're too heavy for the mobile | car market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery ,for example, have a promising future in not { car | phone } applications.

zizee 3y ago

Given these trends, what is the predicted year that we'd expect the last fossil fuel burning power plant to be greenlit for construction in China, India, and the US? Follow-up: At what point is continued operation of existing coal become uneconomical (to simplify the question assume decent solar generation locations are available/ grid connected nearby).

cbmuser 3y ago
Fossil fuels are not going anywhere soon as a quick look at the world’s energy mix proves. > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
- zizee 3y ago
  Thanks, but that does not answer my question. I guess I want to hear predictions of when fossil fuel usage will peak, and over what time period will it be reduced by 20, 30, 50%.
  - dalyons 3y ago
    The IEA says it will peak in 2025. And they have consistently underestimated predicted renewables growth VS actual every year for the last decade. https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-significantly-by-2030-based-on-today-s-policy-settings-alone https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-s...

choeger 3y ago

We have 500Wh/kg batteries by now? And they think there'll be 800Wh/kg in 2030? Wasn't that well beyond what's needed for medium-range electric flight? Is that even possible, chemically speaking?

cbmuser 3y ago
Jet fuel has an energy density of 12,000 Wh/kg, so there is still a little room left. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

defrost 3y ago

As a point of interest, for particular types of investors, underneath all the hoo-rah of the charts How fast will batteries continue to grow and improve? The answer is a lot faster than today’s consensus view. isn't exactly true in reality for the billion+ dollar end of the resources market who expected battery demand to be much much higher than it is, leading to temporary(?) setbacks such as: What's behind the drastic downturn in nickel and lithium prices, and what does it mean? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-26/examining-the-drastic-downturn-in-nickel-and-lithium-prices/103388902 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-26/examining-the-drastic... TLDR: Despite high expectation demand didn't meet ramped up supply at the raw material end.

DrNosferatu 3y ago

Without log axis, this is all very opaque... Also, battery-powered >=737-size passenger airplanes (also not so sure about trains and cargo ships) will need at least a revolution in battery technology - batteries won't do, they're just too heavy for the little energy they output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_energy_storage_and_fuels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_energy_stora...

erikpukinskis 3y ago
I doubt there’s any reason why trains couldn’t run on batteries. Anything that either stops and then starts again before refueling, or goes down and then up again before refueling, should be compatible with batteries due to regenerative braking. Trains have both of those properties. Planes have neither of those properties which is what makes them hard to run off batteries. Cargo ships also wouldn’t seem to have a problem. My understanding is that the drag on a hull increases sub-linearly relative to displacement. So a 10% increase in displacement might only increase drag by 1%. So it’s unlikely the weight penalty of batteries would be prohibitive.
- DrNosferatu 3y ago
  Here’s why: You would need a whole other ship full of lithium batteries in tow so a useful size cargo ship would have the enormous energy required for a regular cargo trip. Trains work better, but charge time would impact operation feasibility, and just electrifying the railway with overhead cables is currently cheaper than lithium battery solutions. Hence the case for hydrogen fuel cells for train applications.

londons_explore 3y ago

The increase in battery energy density from 300Wh/kg to 500Wh/kg between 2020 and 2023 interest's me... Where can I learn more? Can I buy these 500Wh/kg batteries today?