Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

One tenth the cost of current lithium batteries....is there anywhere a breakdown of storage costs using the different technologies?  I know this is tricky because it depends on the number of cycles per time period.

QrizB

michaels said:

One tenth the cost of current lithium batteries....is there anywhere a breakdown of storage costs using the different technologies?  I know this is tricky because it depends on the number of cycles per time period.

I don't know of anywhere doing a straight comparison, but here's a selection of figures from random websites:

• Lead acid, 2000 cycles @ 50% DOD, £90/kWh nominal, 9p/kWh cycled. Requires regular maintenance.
  
• Lithium ion, 800 cycles @ 80% DOD, £85/kWh nominal, 13p/kWh cycled.
• Lithium iron phosphate, 2000* cycles @ 80% DOD, £125/kWh, 8p/kWh cycled.

A couple of caveats; (1) those are googled retail prices for batteries but I have no real knowledge of their accuracy (some sellers (esp. of lithium batteries) misrepresent their battery capacities), and (2) ltihium iron phosphate, in particular, may have a mucvh longer cycle live (talk is of 4000, 8000 or more) but very few batteries that old exist so it's mostly theoretical. The accelerated cycling trials do look promising.

This article on Recharge News includes some costings: https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/worlds-cheapest-energy-storage-will-be-an-iron-air-battery-says-jeff-bezos-backed-start-up/2-1-1044174 claims that LCOS of li-ion batteries is between $132-245/MWh (the 8p/kWh I quoted above is just below the bottom of that range) and that iron-air could be 1/10th of that (say $24/MWh, 2p/kWh).

This WSJ article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/startup-claims-breakthrough-in-long-duration-batteries-11626946330 seems to be the source of most of the latest reports, and states:

For a lithium-ion battery cell, the workhorse of electric vehicles and today’s grid-scale batteries, the nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese minerals used currently cost between $50 and $80 per kilowatt-hour of storage, according to analysts.
Using iron, Form believes it will spend less than $6 per kilowatt-hour of storage on materials for each cell. Packaging the cells together into a full battery system will raise the price to less than $20 per kilowatt-hour, a level at which academics have said renewables plus storage could fully replace traditional fossil-fuel-burning power plants.

So that's one-quarter of the current lithium battery capital cost. What we don't know (or at least, isn't reported) is the cycle life and any operational costs.

Interesting times!

Martyn1981

Hiya QrizB - I'm massively out of date now for home batts, but don't some of the Li-ion ones already have warranties of 2,000 cycles or more?

Regarding Lead acid, and I'm no fan, but I did get a load of info and prices from an off-gridder (German, living in Ireland), who uses them for their home. Based on a purchase of 50kWh (25kWh useable) and after deducting the scrap value, he was coming out at about 3p/kWh. But he knew what he was doing regarding maintenance (as you mention), far too scary for me.



Thought it would be fun to work out a storage budget based on the 50% and 25% storage needs I mentioned earlier, v's nuclear, and assuming that nuclear doesn't need storage (ignoring Dinorwig, E7, Heat Electric!!!!).

So with falling PV costs, and rising onshore wind capacity factors (now over 30% global average), we're probably looking at £40/MWh, but let's go with the latest offshore wind contracts as that'll probably be our major source of energy, so £45-£47/MWh, v's new nuclear at £106/MWh, so a difference of £60/MWh.

Obviously it'll be a long time before we reach 100% RE leccy, perhaps 2 or 3 decades, so the % of annual generation needing storage will start low, but eventually at a 50% storage basis that gives us roughly £120/MWh for the cost of storage, and at a more reasonable (I think) 25%, that would give us £240/MWh.

Pondering arbitrage, I suppose for more efficient intraday storage at say 80% efficiency, that might mean buying at £20/MWh and selling at £80/MWh or £64/MWh equivalent after losses, so that provides £44/MWh????

For longer term storage, perhaps H2 or LAES, at say 50% efficiency, buying the left overs at say £10/MWh and covering peak demands and generation shortfalls at perhaps £100/MWh, £50/MWh equivalent after losses then we have £40/MWh????


If Li-ion, or anything to be fair, can come in around £50/MWh (5p/kWh) on the large scale, then things are looking really good. And there are some pricing deals in the US for RE generation that already include ~4hrs of storage and are really cheap, I'll have to check, but I'm thinking 3-4c/KWh with onshore wind beating PV at the moment.


As you can see/tell, lots of guesses going on there, but the margins for RE are looking excellent.

QrizB

Martyn1981 said:

Hiya QrizB - I'm massively out of date now for home batts, but don't some of the Li-ion ones already have warranties of 2,000 cycles or more?

I based the 800 cycles on this battery co blog article from a couple of years ago that stated the life of lithium nickel manganese cobalt (li-ion,NMC) batteries to be 800 cycles, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) to be 2000 cycles and lithium titamate to be 10000 cycles. The numbers may have improved since then.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Hiya QrizB - I'm massively out of date now for home batts, but don't some of the Li-ion ones already have warranties of 2,000 cycles or more?

Regarding Lead acid, and I'm no fan, but I did get a load of info and prices from an off-gridder (German, living in Ireland), who uses them for their home. Based on a purchase of 50kWh (25kWh useable) and after deducting the scrap value, he was coming out at about 3p/kWh. But he knew what he was doing regarding maintenance (as you mention), far too scary for me.



Thought it would be fun to work out a storage budget based on the 50% and 25% storage needs I mentioned earlier, v's nuclear, and assuming that nuclear doesn't need storage (ignoring Dinorwig, E7, Heat Electric!!!!).

So with falling PV costs, and rising onshore wind capacity factors (now over 30% global average), we're probably looking at £40/MWh, but let's go with the latest offshore wind contracts as that'll probably be our major source of energy, so £45-£47/MWh, v's new nuclear at £106/MWh, so a difference of £60/MWh.

Obviously it'll be a long time before we reach 100% RE leccy, perhaps 2 or 3 decades, so the % of annual generation needing storage will start low, but eventually at a 50% storage basis that gives us roughly £120/MWh for the cost of storage, and at a more reasonable (I think) 25%, that would give us £240/MWh.

Pondering arbitrage, I suppose for more efficient intraday storage at say 80% efficiency, that might mean buying at £20/MWh and selling at £80/MWh or £64/MWh equivalent after losses, so that provides £44/MWh????

For longer term storage, perhaps H2 or LAES, at say 50% efficiency, buying the left overs at say £10/MWh and covering peak demands and generation shortfalls at perhaps £100/MWh, £50/MWh equivalent after losses then we have £40/MWh????


If Li-ion, or anything to be fair, can come in around £50/MWh (5p/kWh) on the large scale, then things are looking really good. And there are some pricing deals in the US for RE generation that already include ~4hrs of storage and are really cheap, I'll have to check, but I'm thinking 3-4c/KWh with onshore wind beating PV at the moment.


As you can see/tell, lots of guesses going on there, but the margins for RE are looking excellent.

It is hard to see any role for nuclear if H2/LAES can provide long term storage for those sort of prices, especially as we already have most of the infrastructure in place - just overbuild renewables and interconnectors and use storage whenever prices are low and you can go 100% co2 free - arbitrage will cut profits but the equilibrium price would appear to be less than for nuclear.

The only delay might be from the risk of prices going so low people are afraid to invest but if we are willing to use long term contracts for nuclear to avoid this then we should be willing to do the same for renewables and storage.

If we were willing to offer green hydrogen electricity the same CFD as HPC I suspect the CO2 zero electricity 'problem' might be solved very quickly by the market.

Martyn1981

QrizB said:

Martyn1981 said:

Hiya QrizB - I'm massively out of date now for home batts, but don't some of the Li-ion ones already have warranties of 2,000 cycles or more?

I based the 800 cycles on this battery co blog article from a couple of years ago that stated the life of lithium nickel manganese cobalt (li-ion,NMC) batteries to be 800 cycles, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) to be 2000 cycles and lithium titamate to be 10000 cycles. The numbers may have improved since then.

Thanks that's helpful.

I've been for a quick play on the Google machine today, and been shocked (shocked I tell's you) at how things seem to have moved on, since I last looked ....... assuming the manufacturers aren't lying!

I found Li-ion's from LG Chem at ~£500/kWh with >6,000 cycles @ 90%DoD, didn't expect that.


Then, same site, had lithium-iron-manganese-phosphate batts from Tesvolt with 30yr life expectancy (not warranty) but £poa, so I went on a hunt for them and found this info giving an incredible 6,000 cycles, 100% DoD at 1C, 8,000 cycles at 0.5C. And this info with prices at around £1k/kWh, but falling as you go bigger.

For large scale commercial systems, I wonder if the storage cost could get low enough in time, for my (admittedly made up) arbitrage profit figures of £40/MWh to cover. That would be nice.


For large scale storage such as H2 and LAES, I appreciate that the electrolysers / plant are expensive, but presumably the storage tanks are relatively cheap as you increase energy (not power).

Man, this is an interesting time to be alive.

EVandPV

Martyn1981 said:

Thanks that's helpful.

I've been for a quick play on the Google machine today, and been shocked (shocked I tell's you) at how things seem to have moved on, since I last looked ....... assuming the manufacturers aren't lying!

I found Li-ion's from LG Chem at ~£500/kWh with >6,000 cycles @ 90%DoD, didn't expect that.

Yup, that's the claimed spec for the latest Pylontech batteries at around £800 for a 2.4kwh module.

Martyn1981

Very, very early days, but floating off-shore wind is progressing towards trials:

Celtic Sea floating demos pass Crown Estate milestone

Three floating offshore wind projects totalling 300MW, which have been identified through The Crown Estate’s test and demonstration leasing opportunity, have been given the green light to progress to the next stage of assessment.

The projects, each located in the Celtic Sea, have satisfied the initial application criteria set out by The Crown Estate, demonstrating technical competence, delivery capability and technological innovation.

The next stage will see the projects subject to plan-level Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) to assess possible impacts on protected marine habitats.

Subject to the outcome of this assessment, the applicants could then be granted seabed agreements for lease.

Coastalwatch

At last a government initiative to incentivise development of much needed energy storage options. Of course in order to power it in the first place huge Wind and Solar farms will be a pre requisit, so let's hope encouragement for these will also be forthcoming!

UK government launches competition to spur longer duration energy storage innovation

The U.K. government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is overseeing a ‘longer duration' energy storage competition, with millions up for grabs for innovative entrants.

As part of the U.K.’s £1 billion (€1.2 billion) Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, the competition has as much as £68 million (€79.5 million) available in capital funding for new technology projects which can store energy for longer than four hours, to support renewable power generation.

The storage technologies listed in the scope of the competition include electric, thermal, and “power-to-x” projects and exclude “widely deployed U.K. commercial demonstration” tech such as lithium-ion, pumped hydro, or large water tanks.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/07/26/uk-government-launches-competition-to-spur-longer-duration-energy-storage-innovation/

michaels

Don't we run 'competitions' in the power supply market where things like diesel generators win contracts to be able to provide back up supply.  Couldn't we combine these with green incentives and perhaps green h2 or laes could instead supply?