Solar & Aluminum ion batteries

Martyn1981

ed110220 said:

You can already buy lithium iron phosphate prismatic cells for £45/kWh retail so I think batteries are now much like solar where installation accounts for most of the cost. Batteries aren't as far along as PV, but I don't expect falling cell prices and new technologies to bring installed prices down that much. Probably more important is getting home batteries from fairly niche products with corresponding high markups to more mass market level.

I think you are spot on with the main reason why other battery chemistries may now take longer to progress. When Lithium spodumeme prices were really high, technologies like sodium ion where getting a lot more support. But as lithium production ramped up and prices fell back down (despite far greater demand), that probably undermined the investment in the alternatives.

Just a random graph/article I found to show how quickly the market price dropped, as the massive increase in demand was met by an even greater increase in production.



Folk will probably recall the FUDsters telling us that there wasn't enough lithium on the planet for an all BEV transport fleet. But the truth was that there wasn't enough lithium production, at the time, but nothing to prevent it being ramped up. In fact I think China even tried to slow down production a year back, so as to prevent the market price collapsing.

Nothing wrong of course with sodium ion, and all the other possibilities. It's just that investment in their development and expansion is probably closely dependant on the cost of Li-ion batts, so may have fallen off a bit lately.

As you say, the whole product, just like PV, installed, involves far more costs. Even a largeish 6 or 7kWp PV system will only incurr about £1k of panel costs. There's probably a point where we should be discussing the potential to save on scaffolding costs rather than PV technology.