Comments on: Grid Storage Battery Cost to Fall to $500/kWh by 2022, Lux Research Projects

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:34:00 +0000

In Queensland electricity retails for about 25 cents a kilowatt-hour while the feed in tariff for solar is 8 cents. This means a $500 battery that is used to store 300 kilowatt-hours a year will have a return of about 10%. So still worth it in this situation even at that price. But with electric car battery packs down 14% from a year ago to $689 in the first quarter of this year, my guess is batteries for stationary storage will be under $500 a kilowatt-hour in a decade.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:13:00 +0000

I’d go along with that.

By: Captivation

Captivation — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Agreed, not quite apples to apples, but not exactly oranges either. Lets say McIntosh apples to Golden Delicious? The 85% capacity after 1k is still good, but unfortunately, we don’t know the performance curve after that. Does degradation slow down or speed up? My guess is that durability could be improved if the chassis wasn’t made of duct tape But my intent was to show that we’ve essentially arrived at affordable storage.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Not completely apples for apples that as the cycle count is only 1k not 5k or 10k. So $0.50/kWh over its life instead of $0.05/kWh.

By: Captivation

Captivation — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:02:00 +0000

A 5 second ebay search (more thorough searches would likely yield better deals) shows a 1 kWh lithium unit for $529. But wait, it also includes free shipping from Asia and a free high power charging unit. So I’m going to take $130 dollars off the price to arrive at $399 for a single unit plus further discounts for bigger quantity orders. Todays prices are already well below $500/kWh.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/48V-20AH-LiFePO4-Li-ion-Battery-Electric-Scooter-/290443861361?pt=Battery_Chargers&hash=item439fcd9d71

By: Dcard88

Dcard88 — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:16:00 +0000

How is this not a wasted predicition? The idea that we wont have any improvements in technology is silly at best. If we stop all R & D today we could still get to $500/kWh based on economies of scale and manufacturing refinements. If on the other hand, 10% of the current lab experiments that have already been fully tested in labs, end up working as expected in production quantities, we could get to $500 by 2017 or even sooner.
I have to go with Elon Musk on this one.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:07:00 +0000

There was a story on Cleantechnica in May 2012 with a good discussion in the comments section also suggesting that $500 per kW.h of storage will be beaten a lot earlier than 2022.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/09/new-battery-system-could-reduce-buildings-electric-bills/