[…] I looked at the raw materials: iron and phosphate cost less than 20 cents per kWh. The same is true for the carbon for the anode. In theory cathode and anode materials could all of a sudden become less than one dollar per kWh! All of a sudden lithium is 90% of raw material costs but these costs would be only $11/kWh or so.
That’s crazy talk of course! I mean, getting below $50/kWh is already crazy. But then we got clarity on battery prices in 2024 and it turned out LFP was already at around $50/kWh! In 2024! Not 2030! Fully installed grid batteries (so not just cells) are rumored to be offered at below $100/kWh (which the IEA expects after 2050 by the way).
But now it’s time for sodium. In LFP batteries, the raw material costs are dominated by lithium while sodium costs about 30x less. The result would be raw material costs for the cathode and anode crash again to around $1/kWh! And energy density is pretty good. Sodium is already at 160 Wh/kg, which would e.g. mean a 60 kWh battery still weights less than 400 kg on the cell level.
So extrapolating the learning curve gives us $8/kWh in 2030 while material costs could become a few dollar per kWh. And this is without even talking about e.g. Lithium Sulfur batteries that would cost just as little but would also be extremely light.
The renewable energy community I’m part of has proven by now that we can have an affordable energy system on mostly wind and solar. But the community of practice that I’m part of in the Netherlands is faced with enormous problems due to grid congestion: over 10 000 companies cannot get the electricity they need and the number is growing fast. We are planning to spend 236 billion on the grid in the next ten years. I’m now convinced that cheap batteries (e.g. 5 hours of storage for the entire country or 7 TWh costing ‘just’ 5 billion euro or so) will replace most of these grid investments.
I know very little about battery manufacture and economics, so I cant really speak to his predictions, but its an interesting read. Id be interested to see future elaboration on how that OSI grid...
I know very little about battery manufacture and economics, so I cant really speak to his predictions, but its an interesting read.
Id be interested to see future elaboration on how that OSI grid equivalent mentioned at the end would work. Shifting to a Wind/Solar/Battery dominant grid might require a change in how frequency monitoring and regulation would work, if its even using AC anymore.
I don’t know what they meant either, but I suspect it’s about a way to deliver information about what the batteries should be doing. Should they be charging from the grid or powering the grid?...
I don’t know what they meant either, but I suspect it’s about a way to deliver information about what the batteries should be doing. Should they be charging from the grid or powering the grid?
Making big changes to existing electrical grids doesn’t seem too likely. It would be an addition.
I think big changes might end up being necessary depending on how people choose to implement it. There are a number of ways I could see it shaking out, but I rarely get to hear someone else talk...
I think big changes might end up being necessary depending on how people choose to implement it. There are a number of ways I could see it shaking out, but I rarely get to hear someone else talk about the technical details of their unique vision of how they would want to do it.
From a speculative blog post:
I know very little about battery manufacture and economics, so I cant really speak to his predictions, but its an interesting read.
Id be interested to see future elaboration on how that OSI grid equivalent mentioned at the end would work. Shifting to a Wind/Solar/Battery dominant grid might require a change in how frequency monitoring and regulation would work, if its even using AC anymore.
I don’t know what they meant either, but I suspect it’s about a way to deliver information about what the batteries should be doing. Should they be charging from the grid or powering the grid?
Making big changes to existing electrical grids doesn’t seem too likely. It would be an addition.
I think big changes might end up being necessary depending on how people choose to implement it. There are a number of ways I could see it shaking out, but I rarely get to hear someone else talk about the technical details of their unique vision of how they would want to do it.