Can We Overcome The Last Few Hurdles For Renewable Energy?
Forbes Oct. 2019
Storing renewable energy at a large scale is one of the most pressing tasks for the renewable energy industry.
While recent advances in battery capacity and longevity (as well as battery chemistry itself) are encouraging, the cost is always the most significant factor that limits the adoption of new technology.
There are 2 major factors affecting the effective cost of the Lithium-ion battery system
1/ Cost per Capacity ($ per Wh)
Capacity, with a factor of time, determines how long the energy storage system will last to support the power requirement of the facility.
For example, a premise of equipment with total 10MW can be supported by an energy storage system with 10MWh capacity for one hour.
The battery chemistry for Telsa is NCA or NCM, while Winston and CALB are LFP types.
NCA/NCM has a higher energy density than LFP types, but it does not affect the cost per capacity ($ /Ah) very much.
2/ Cost Per Battery life ($ per year)
Telsa NCA/NCM
There isn’t any data available to show the cycle life of the Tesla battery.
Wired.com Sept. 23rd, 2019,
Last April, Elon Musk promised that Tesla would soon be able to power its electric cars for more than 1 million miles over the course of their lifespan… That’s more than double the mileage Tesla owners can expect to get out of their car’s current battery packs…
To achieve a million miles, the battery pack needs a minimum of 2,700 life cycles to achieve 1 million miles as each charge can get up to 370 miles. This is double the current performance, therefore, the cycle life is about 1,350 currently.
We will expect the cycle life for Telsa NCA/NCM is round 2,000 at 80% D.O.D.
CALB
The specification of the CALB CA series with 2,000 cycle life at 80% D.O.D
Winston
The specification of Winston WB-LYP with 5,000 cycle life at 80% D.O.D.
The cycle life improvement is stemmed from the fact that Yttrium (rare earth) is added to the new series of Winston WB-LYP comparing the old series LFP.
Conclusion
Megawatt or Gigawatt Solar energy storage facilities are our hope for our future renewable energy and they are expected to be used for a very long period of time.
Therefore, the real cost of the system is highly dependent on the battery life.
The author has 30 years of experience in the Lithium-ion battery industry from the laptop application, electric vehicle, to large energy storage.
To learn more about Lithium-ion batteries, please visit everspring.net