People seriously underestimate both the current economic efficacy of existing lithium ion batteries, as well as the continuous and seemingly inexorable improvement in costs. This sort of improvement often doesn't get much news, but they have been happening at a very consistent rate across manufacturers.
I just hope that other technologies that are better for longer duration storage don't get overlooked for investment and development on industrial scales.
Longer duration battery storage is going to be very hard to make work financially since the capital costs are spread across far fewer charge/discharge cycles. At this point I feel it's more likely that it'll be cheaper to massively overbuild solar generation capacity to provide enough power in the winter than build seasonal battery storage.
Why do you say that? Researcher Jeff Dahn, who is a co-inventor of the lithium ion battery, has released what he termed a "million mile" electric vehicle battery. That is a pretty high level of charge / discharge cycles and seems like it would make stationary storage batteries, such as Tesla Energy's 3MWh Megapack.
I read 'duration' as the charge/discharge cycle time rather than the battery's lifetime in number of cycles. Clearly the more cycles a battery can handle the more cost effective it will be (more cycles over which to amortize the capital cost) but you still have to pay interest so even if the battery can handle infinite cycles if you only cycle it once a year (to balance seasonal differences in generation capacity) it will probably not be cost effective.
I think stationary storage batteries are great, but only for short duration storage (1 day) rather than long duration storage (months).
Yes, that's precisely what I meant for the term; storage that is economical even with few discharges cycles per month or maybe even per year.
I am somewhat skeptical that it can work, but flow batteries are still in their industrial infancy, and with the right sort of cheap stuff to add to water this could potentially scale very well for some sources.
I also strongly agree that we will likely build renewable sources to match their output to the seasonal minimum needs, rather than have many TWh of storage, it I have been so wrong in the past that I no longer want to cut off potentially promising avenues.
I see our future as being one of electrical energy abundance at nearly all times, and only a few times a year will there be a crunch to limit consumption; however as we get used to that abundance, conservation could get more difficult, and also people will get far more clever with time arbitrage of energy demand. And once there's a huge market for arbitrage, people will get more clever to serve that economic need, in ways that we have not yet anticipated.
> Longer duration battery storage is going to be very hard to make work financially since the capital costs are spread across far fewer charge/discharge cycles.
The same argument could be applied to solar panels (25 year warranty) or fibre optic cables. But as so many solar panels are required they will be producing them for decades before the market is saturated. Of course after decades the old ones have indeed started dying, so it isn't an issue.
Lithium ion battery got what internal combustion engine had in beginning of the last century. Wide spread usage. Once money is steadily coming from end user, all the Innovation will be directed towards minor efficiency improvement, which will in long term, develop the tech that seems impossible as the biggininng. I can see by end of next decade, lithium ion battery will surpass both energy and power density of gasoline, which seems impossible even from physics point of view.
> lithium ion battery will surpass both energy and power density of gasoline, which seems impossible even from physics point of view.
Sure, I can do the math on that.
Gasoline has about 45 MJ/kg[1]. 1 kg of lithium contains 868x10^23 atoms, or 13.9 megacoulombs if each atom donates a single electron. Since a joule is one volt-coulomb, every electron must average out (nominal) to 3.24 volts. Todays li-ion batteries have a nominal voltage of ~3.65 V, and the nominal voltage of li-air batteries are 2.91 V.
The actual voltage of li-air is ~90% lower than the required voltage to reach raw parity with gasoline, which makes sense
given that the theoretical limit of li-air batteries is 40.1 MJ/kg (.9 * 45 = 40.5).
Reaching the same power density as gasoline in vehicle engines (=<9 MJ/kg) isn't too bad (very close to 10x best current consumer batteries, closer to weirder chemistries), but parity with the real power of gasoline is a very hard ask. Donating more than one electron per lithium would require some serious re-evaluation of what we know about chemistry. If you only have one electron per atom, you have almost no weight left over for other materials to use to develop a voltage difference with. A battery that exceeds gasoline's full heat energy would need some very exotic materials- either lighter atoms[2], different ways of storing electrons[3], or ways to store energy besides electrons[4].
[1] divide by 5 for a realistic engine efficiency. At that rate, a gallon of gas provides 9.4 kWh- enough to get a Tesla model S over 35 miles.
[2] there are none, besides hydrogen, which itself isn't really helpful. It's not very good for electrochemistry.
[3] preferably, in a different state than me. Electrons hate each other. A 3 Ah battery has 11,000 hateful coulombs in it, each electron within a less than a nanometer of the others around it. That's a 10^9 on top and a 10^-9 on the bottom. Not positive on the math on that but I'm reasonably sure it's in the thousands of megatons. It is rapidly trying to change chemical and then geographical state.
[4] preferably on another planet from me. If you're storing energy with a different force than the electromagnetic force, you're pretty much guaranteed to be doing some real fuckery to subatomic particles, and they are not going to be happy.
Lol. Fabulous answer to the math, with nice humour! Unless the Gas industry learns how to make new Gas on the fly, Lion will continue to shine also because of the amazingly different ways that it's energy losses can be replenished (wind, water, sun, vibration...), even while it's doing its thing.
So, GP's comment of "develop the tech that seems impossible as the biggininng" (typo included) is the important part. It might be that in the future, because the motors and other moving parts become increasigly efficient (& are already much better than a combustion engine) then less energy is required for the same resulting work. Even more so, the ingenious ways that energy can be 'reharvested' to flow back into the system could in fact allow us to develop something that seems impossible...simply because we're harvesting energy and pouring it into our Lion dependant system better than Gas ever can.
> because the motors and other moving parts become increasigly efficient (& are already much better than a combustion engine) then less energy is required for the same resulting work
The resulting work is more important than the efficiency. Teslas have exceptionally low air drag, which is great for driving range.
However when you go from 80 to 90% system efficiency, you only increase range by 12%. Once youre at 99%, you really cant improve any more. 99% to 99.5% means the motor outputs half as much heat but goes hardly any farther.
You could make gasoline from the air. A bit inefficient, but if we somehow get to the fabled "free fusion" power plants, it could be a neat trick to have synthetic gas in pipelines flowing from fusion CO2 atmospheric scrubbers.
You don't need fusion. PV works too; you just need a lot of it. Making liquid fuel from air is currently the only viable solution for carbon-neutral aircraft, which is why the military likes the idea.
What about the weight of the entire drive system? Still not the same thing, as the weight of batteries doesn't change as you drive. Not sure, as a quick search doesn't give me the right data, but it seem like the ICE setup requires more engine/exhaust etc. weight, so it seems likely the amount of efficiency required for batteries is less than gas at the current tech level.
Last time I tried to estimate that it seemed with a passenger car you get some win there that offsets the battery weight. Something around 300lbs. My guess is if batteries got 30% more power dense the weight penalty would disappear. Part of that is as the weight of battery drops you can make the rest of the car lighter as well.
Thanks for the numbers, which I was aware of, but not exactly. The constant supply of money in Research can do impossible magic. If you look at it from social perspective, all the semiconductor progress in last 20-30 years happened just because people want to send their photo to another people. Finger crossed, but I'm hopeful.
> People seriously underestimate both the current economic efficacy of existing lithium ion batteries, as well as the continuous and seemingly inexorable improvement in costs.
Maybe because the cost of devices have skyrocketed and the battery dont last any longer... And in addition to that, you can no longer replace batteries.
How are people STILL repeating this? Does anyone actually remember what phones used to be like? Because I can stream videos for hours and listen to music all day for multiple days before I run out, and I still remember my iphone 3 dying in 6 hours playing music that was already on the device.
The iphone 11 has a 3110 mAh battery. The iphone 3 had 1220 mAh. I don't even remember the last time my phone died on me unexpectedly.
So far with every upgrade they have added features like more powerful processors and power hungry higher density screens. So most people haven't noticed the improvements in battery tech. Now I think phones have reached a point where I don't see many power hungry improvements going forward so we might start seeing longer lasting phones.
That is not exactly true. OLED can be very efficient. Not just in Dark Mode, but you need to be aware of those pitfalls and optimise for it. Since in overall package the Display is roughly the same power but you get much better quality.
Not to mention there are at least 3 - 5 years roadmap of technology in the pipeline that makes it even more energy efficient and thinner. ( Thinner equals potential for larger battery )
The higher density screen might need to require less power but the power to display on them used by the graphics etc is a lot higher. we were on 320x640 screen now we are at 3840 x 2160. Even if the individual pixel takes less power the number of pixel has gone up a huge amount.
I used to charge once a day (10 years ago), and I still do because my phone can't last 2 full days on a full charge... but it does last about 1.5 days ... it is not an iphone 11 but it is still an $800 phone
That's not true in the slightest. Energy per instruction varies a lot but has not decreased that much on recent nodes. The resistance growth just outpaces the shrinking capacitance of the gates.
On top of that processors are faster, applications and sites are hugely more intensive to render, and the hardware (mainly antennas) suck up much more energy.
The ARM11 in the iphone 3 used <1 watt. The A13 in the iphone 11 uses 6 watts.
You're right and wrong. People buy iphones despite the cost and lack of user serviceable battery.
They are a luxury item and a way to signal status. If people stopped buying iphones due to battery life then Apple may change. But Apple has a strong brand and the status of the item is important to people so they act against their own interests and pay lots of cash rather than use a $100 dollar android that's 90% as good.
Batteries aren't a feature to most people.
Also there's lots to be said about the scope of what most 'phones' do these days. The batteries are powering serious computers rather than just phones.
This comment has a pet-peeve of mine, which is using the word "efficient" where it's unclear what the cost and benefit are. Efficiency is just cost per benefit, so it's not a very meaningful word if you don't know what the cost and benefit are.
I don't think you're wrong, I just am not entirely clear on what claim you're making. I'll venture based on context that the cost you're talking about is either electrical charge or time, but it's very unclear what benefit you're talking about.
The issue with a million mile battery is one of testing. If your car has 500 miles of range, a million miles means 2000 charges and discharges. At a standard C/5 rate, that's 2.3 years to finish testing. Even at a fairly brisk 1 C that's 83 days. It makes iterating on a design -which can mean changing component amounts by fractions of a percent- incredibly time consuming.
Dahn's research is so well respected because he was incredibly good and thorough in measuring tiny amounts of heat and voltage changes in batteries so that you could trace their degradation over a much smaller number of cycles, then try them out at longer scales. Tesla has been funding much of his lab. There are very few people who can do this kind of research outside his lab, and IMO he's a wizard who will end up with a Nobel if he makes a few more big contributions.
The bottom line is that the only way to really tell if a battery will last a year or a decade is to watch it for a year or a decade. No amount of technology lets you forecast the future with perfect accuracy, and battery longevity testing takes time. That's the only reason we don't have a million mile battery.
>One could equally argue that the fact we don't have a million mile battery already suggests that there may be intractible problems to solve.
That would be a good argument if batteries had been stuck for decades at a much lower limit. But the fact is their lifetime has been steadily increasing, and will reach a million miles within a few years at most.
I'm confused by this. A million mile battery would make ICEs obsolete today. It would be more cost effective to spend $50k on a Tesla Model 3 than to buy 5 Hyundai i10 and driving those to dust.
A 1 million mile battery is kinda like fusion. Once it happens there is no going back so I don't think that failing to solve this problem is a blow to EVs.
Musk says modern Tesla's are designed to last a million miles because he wants them all to become taxi's. Full self driving taxi's that return more then they cost to the owner after Tesla takes it's take from the taxi earnings.
I don't know whether to believe this, but he has the motive, opportunity, and is definitely present at the crime scene.
I just ran numbers for Tesla Cybertruck. Depending on gas vs electricity prices, a "Tri FSD" CT, built to million-mile specifications, will pay for itself on gas savings by 0.5-1.5M miles.
I think "free truck" operated to design specifications constitutes cost effective.
You have to factor in the time value of money though. Car purchase price is an immediate cost while gas and electricity are costs over the life of the vehicle. Your average personal cars only gets driven about 15,000 miles a year and thus those gas and electric costs would be spread out over decades to reach a million miles. Probably still cost effective considering the average truck isn't that much cheaper though.
No one is actively trying to build nuclear cars however. Additionally, no one has a prototype nuclear car, because that is a stupid and very dangerous idea.
There is a prototype cybertruck, and Tesla is about to announce the location for the factory to build them. It will be either Tulsa, OK or just outside of Austin, TX.
attempts to mimic the performance of the leading lithium-ion battery cathodes, nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) and nickel-cobalt-aluminium (NCA) by carefully synthesizing the cobalt-free hybrid nickel-manganese-aluminium (NMA) to mimic the crystal structure of NMC and NCA. In all cases, the largest fraction of the cathode is nickel, and cobalt/manganese/aluminium are essentially dopants. The authors note that manganese and aluminium produce opposing effects on the crystal structure of lithium-nickel-cobalt oxides, and go on to say:
>Strikingly, a natural combination of Mn and Al in high-Ni layered oxides, i.e., LiNi 1−x−y Mn x Al y O 2 (NMA; suggested by us earlier [8] ), has not been reported to our knowledge.
It is definitely surprising that the missing "third leg" between NMC and NCA has not received more serious attention, if that is true. Manganese and aluminium are both far more common than cobalt.
That about half of the world's production comes from the Congo(DRC) also makes it undesirable. Both because the Congo is unstable but also because it destabilizes the country. It's like a spiral of chaos for them, which is too bad because in theory it should be good for them to have an export that brings in money. The resource curse is unfortunately real.
I'm surprised a few HNW individuals with the help of the UN haven't just mediated and purchased the land that represents the DRC? It's clear these people have no clue how to control the land, feed their people or prevent war-lords from exploiting their own people for slave labor. Why not setup a situation where the people of the DRC are housed, fed and provided healthcare from the proceeds of their rare-earths while allowing the western beneficiaries to use their military to oust violent barbaric war-lords?
> Why not setup a situation where the people of the DRC are housed, fed and provided healthcare from the proceeds of their rare-earths while allowing the western beneficiaries to use their military to oust violent barbaric war-lords?
> feed their people or prevent war-lords from exploiting their own people for slave labor.
Uh, what warlords? The huge majority of cobalt goes to china and the slightly smaller majority is directly influenced or controlled by china. This has nothing to do with the DRC, it's because of foreign interference.
Not to mention that one of the first effects of the liberalization required by the IMF and UN was to cause the state to sell off all its mining equipment and effectively destroy all local non-artisanal mining.
> from the proceeds of their rare-earths
Yeah can you give me any answers to any of these questions:
1. Which rare earth is in batteries?
2. Which rare earth is mined in Congo?
3. Is cobalt a rare earth element?
> oust violent barbaric war-lords?
Maybe update your priors to more recent than a decade ago
How likely is it that the people who "purchased the land" would have an interest in anything other than strip mining the resources as fast as possible getting the hell out?
Selling the country or its mineral rights is not how to feed the people.
This is an incredibly racist and supremely ignorant comment, displaying the same justifications that fuelled the colonialism in Africa hundreds of years ago that is still at the root of deeply systemic problems in that continent.
What is your proposed solution? The reason war lords control the region is to exploit rare earths. Why not create some kind of mediatory influence to reinforce the UN? I'm not pretending to have all the answers here.
Your comment is abhorrently condescending and shallow. Yes, you have highlighted a historic atrocity and grievance of the region - why is this a reason why the west shouldn't try to help these people? In your mind, are the people of the DRC "beyond" help? That's an awfully charged and deconstructive opinion my friend.
The problem is that your 'solution' is worse than the problem. It'll begin with a bloody war, which will create plenty of grievance against the invading forces, followed by an occupation which will be all able what is good for the invading forces, usually at the expense of the locals.
The 'good' way it ends is the invaders draw down and leave in defeat, nothing good having been accomplished.
The bad way it ends is the invaders deciding they want to get something for all the money they spent, and them going into full colonisation mode.
I acknowledge the horrific history of colonizing / private exploitation of the African continent. Europeans as a whole are 100% on the hook for this. This is also HN, so any mention of this region / situation is just going to result in the poster being downvoted, flagged and labeled every kind of horrible term other users can come up with.
However, it's painfully evident that the UN is incapable of keeping the peace or trying to stabilize the region. In short, I'm trying to start a discussion here as to how nations with some sense of diplomacy and interest in these minerals could mediate in a meaningful way. There simply must be a better way. Not to be blunt, but we need a similarly over-regulated private offering equivalent to the "public" option of german healthcare. Curious if an impact fund of some kind could cooperate with NGO's and the UN? The formation of some kind of demilitarized zone? There has to be a way to improve this situation and prevent more of their own people being killed?
Mostly in order to prevent China from coming in and clearing house like they have in other regions of Africa.
What you said is like cheating on a test by looking up the answers. That doesn't work. The DRC has to find a solution on its own or it will become entirely dependent on western influence.
I can't find a free version (much love to anyone who hosts) but Matt Lacey's energy density estimator is always good for situations like these: http://lacey.se/apps/cell-energy/
One of the many mistaken arguments of the fossil fuels forever crowd is that if there is anything wrong today with ff replacements, we can be absolutely certain technology will never in the future correct it.
Yes it's a step in the right direction. But we mustn't forget about sulphur. Key component in all electronics that make up the basis for our careers and fortunes. Yet who are we forcing down into the sulphur mines?
What do you honestly think happens to these labourers, children and adults, and their communities if cobalt mining is stopped where they live because of lack of demand?
I'm sure they enter and exit the mining camps whenever they like at their own free will. Without this job opportunity, they may be more destitute than before.
I felt the same way when Epstein got arrested. What happened to those poor girls he employed on his private island?
Children don't have to work so they have time to go to school. After school they can get a better job than artisanal cobalt mining. It's not like artisanal cobalt mining is an industry that needs to be protected. Commercial scale cobalt mining also exists and is far more effective at extracting cobalt and if you have an education it's far easier to get a job at a real cobalt mining company.
I've been designing and building an ebike, and were at the point where even if I threw out weight and size off the equation there's not really anything better than Li-ion for capacity at significant C-rates versus price.
I just hope that other technologies that are better for longer duration storage don't get overlooked for investment and development on industrial scales.