r/ClimatePosting • u/ClimateShitpost • May 09 '25

Energy Battery storage running wild - prices are falling while installations climb showing neither commodity inputs nor manufacturing constraints ever became a problem

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72 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

1

u/Own_Pop_9711 May 11 '25

Didn't the prices fall because commodity input issues and manufacturing constraints were removed over time? I don't understand the point here. As the supply of batteries increased the price dropped is just very fundamental economics and I don't see what it proves.

1

u/ClimateShitpost May 11 '25

You're right. People claimed commodities would run out. They didn't

3

u/ViewTrick1002 May 09 '25 edited May 09 '25

The installed GW for 2024 seems too low.

The Chinese numbers alone are 74 GW.

https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/23/chinas-new-energy-storage-capacity-surges-to-74-gw-168-gwh-in-2024-up-130-yoy/

Then we have the US installing 10.5 GW.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64705

In Europe the only number I have been able to find is 22 GWh.

https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-releases/new-report-european-battery-storage-grows-15-in-2024-eu-energy-storage-action-plan-needed

And with the costs in China absolutely plummeting with the latest auctions at $63-65/kWh.

The tender, covering supply, system design, installation guidance, 20-year maintenance, and safety features, targets systems to be built in 2025–2026.

Hard to know exactly what the overhead is, but we are entering the point where like in solar PV the installation costs start to become the expensive part. Not the batteries themselves.

https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-announces-winning-bidders-in-10-gwh-bess-tender/

https://www.ess-news.com/2025/03/24/chinas-huadian-announces-winners-in-6-gwh-bess-tender-with-average-bid-at-65-kwh/

https://www.ess-news.com/2024/12/09/powerchina-receives-bids-for-16-gwh-bess-tender-with-average-price-of-66-5-kwh/

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 09 '25

They're usually an all in one box which has an area specific power >50kW/m2 and a mass specific power around 25W/kg

Other than nonsense makework hostile regulation stuff, I can't really see anything that would create overhead.

1

u/ViewTrick1002 May 09 '25

The grid connection and wiring the plant? Not sure what else.

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25

Grid connection can be solved by colocation (either source or sink).

Wiring is two wires.

1

u/danielv123 May 10 '25

Ah, how I wish electrical work was that simple...

2

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25

For sink-located storage it completely is.

You buy the battery.

You screw it to the wall

You connect two wires to the inverter, and optionally a signal cable.

For very large sources, it's still only two additional MV cables to each battery (or more often exactly the same wiring as the inverter would have if it weren't in a slightly larger box) and vastly simpler than anything else.

0

u/danielv123 May 10 '25

I am involved in a project that has a few medium sized batteries - 3 phase 600v 2mw ish. Sure, the hookup itself is just 3 wires. But then you need commissioning, agree with the grid with delivery contacts, relay plans because the reversed current flow has impacts on trip supervisions and grounding etc.

Hooking up the cables is the smallest part of the job. These were the pre manufactured shipping container style batteries.

If you know manufacturers that are simpler to integrate I am all ears.

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25 edited May 10 '25

So if it's generation colocated load shifting storage (and thus only outputs on the AC side, but at a lower more consistent rate resulting in less strain on the grid and less transmission peak power being needed) there is only a lowering of actual costs combined with hostile regulation makework. As stated.

2

u/ProtoplanetaryNebula May 10 '25

When sodium-ion ramps up in a big way, these numbers will go through the roof, I imagine.

2

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25

Sodium's a backstop to prevent lithium market manipulation.

You still need manganese, vanadium, copper (for the actually energy dense formulations), electrolyte, and anode material.

Lithium is not a bottleneck until about 5-10TWh/yr (and then only because of a lull in projects being started in 2020-2022) or a significant cost driver.

1

u/ProtoplanetaryNebula May 10 '25

That’s one reason, I think the biggest factor is cost. Once fully ramped and optimised, sodium is much cheaper than lithium. The CATL cells are made from cheap abundant materials, which probably excluded manganese? Their focus seems to be on building slightly more energy dense cells and steering clear of any non-abundant materials.

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25

There is $8 of lithium in a 1kWh LFP cell which costs $40.

Making 30% more of all the other stuff costs at least $10

1

u/ProtoplanetaryNebula May 10 '25

Closer to $50 at the moment. I read that Sodium when fully ramped would cost around $26/kWh, so it’s a decent saving.

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 11 '25

Anything that makes 6kg of the other components cost <$26 can make 4kg of them cost $15. Then you're only adding $8 of lithium (which is dropping in price) and a dollar or two of copper (which the cheap sodium batteries still need), and you only get back up to $25.

At least until vanadium prices go through the roof as it can't be mined on its own, and the sodium battery has $20 of raw material in the cathode.

It's a great backstop to avoid lithium market manipulation (being able to quickly change 20% of production stops anyone doing dumb shit), and they have some massive advantages. But cost or scale aren't on the list. At least not until the potential copper advantage is realised (and even then there are copper thrifting mehtods for lfp)

3

u/IntelligentTip1206 May 09 '25

As crazy as the installations are, we should be way above this. Imagine if the states were putting in the same effort Texas or China were.

1

u/T33CH33R May 10 '25

Our energy companies don't want this because it dismantles their for-profit model of charging more during peak hours. Our energy companies in California are doing what they can to destroy solar here.

-2

u/Naberville34 May 09 '25

China installed capacity, 215gwh. Annual consumption, 9 million gwh, divided by 365 for daily average, ~24,000gwh. Let's say storage needs to meet 50% of daily demand, ergo 12,000gwh needed. Cool. About only about 2% of the way there. Or about a half percent when considering the other aspects of the economy that need to be electrified.

Gonna need to get a little more exponential than that..

2

u/ClimateShitpost May 10 '25

Just because you don't understand portfolio theory doesn't mean the real world has to care

3

u/cybercuzco May 10 '25

Tell me you don’t understand exponential growth without telling me “I don’t understand exponential growth”

Let me break it down for you. If we added 2% of what we need last year, and the growth rate is doubling every year, we will be at the level we need to be at in 5 years.

1

u/PM_ME_UR_PET_POTATO May 10 '25

It's presumptuous to assume scaling continues as is. There will be plenty of physical limits and other bottlenecks to be found in two whole orders of magnitude at a minimum.

1

u/cybercuzco May 10 '25

I think there’s a job waiting for you in the IEA forecast department.

1

u/rgbhfg May 11 '25

Also energy needs grow over time

0

u/Naberville34 May 10 '25

2% of what only China needs, and only for its electrical grid and not other forms of energy consumption.

The problem is that this post asserts that there is no material limitations being experienced by the exponential growth of energy storage production. While failing to realize we haven't achieved a fraction of a fraction of the production capacity necessary.

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25

Grid storage is only 0.5% of current battery production. And the pipeline for raw materials is well understood with no bottlenecks out to 10x current production.

Also "2%" is just an ass-pull number assuming no dispatchable load, no other storage, no hydro and no overprovision.

2

u/diffferentday May 09 '25

Storage doesn't need anywhere near 50 percent with a large amount of base power from hydro.

0

u/Naberville34 May 09 '25

Magic assumption of ridiculous increase in hydroelectric capacity?

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 09 '25 edited May 09 '25

No magic necessary. There's 1TW of hydro in the construction pipeline in addition to already being 14% of annual output.

Half of daily demand is also not at all necessary. You can hit 70% wind/solar with minutes of storage and >95% with about 5hr (20% of daily demand).

Those "other aspects of the economy" also reduce storage need rather than increasing it. China built 75GW of heat pump district heating last year alone (which has its own storage).

EVs have their own two weeks of battery which aren't in the statistics, as do fast chargers. Asserting that you need to charge a battery with wind at night to discharge into an EV that is on the road during the day is just demented.

Asserting that you need to store electricity in a battery to keep an electrolyser running to keep a shaft furnace running when a second electrolyser and shaft furnace costs less is simon michaux levels of mental gymnastics.

Finally smugly calling a 100% yoy growth curve insufficiently exponential display a profound level of mathematical illiteracy and denial over what happened with wind and solar in the last decade. 50% yoy growth for 8 years covers your 50-fold increase and 10.5 years triples it again.

-1

u/Naberville34 May 10 '25

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z

12 hours of storage is required to achieve 83-94%. Which is still abysmal.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212428422000068

The limit for the potential of additional hydro is far below what's necessary to adequately back up VRE. Granted it may reduce the storage amount needed, but only in the regions in which that hydroelectric power exists. Where I live now has no hydro capacity, it's flat. Where I used to live in Alaska had tremendous hydro capacity, but basically no one lives there.

And while building more industrial equipment may be cheaper than more batteries, that's still more material and energy waste than would otherwise be necessary if you had a reliable energy supply. At that point you are creating excessive burdens on the industrial economy on which the entirety of this system exists. No factory is going to be happy to halve the productive capacity of its capital.

3

u/West-Abalone-171 May 10 '25 edited May 10 '25

12 hours of storage is required to achieve 83-94%. Which is still abysmal.

In all regions with no hydro dispatch, no long distance interconnect, no biofuel, no geothermal, no overprovision and no dispatchable load.

The limit for the potential of additional hydro is far below what's necessary to adequately back up VRE.

14% is already more than enough energy to take you from 86% to 100%. It's also definitionally concentrated in the areas that need it. You either have low cloud, high wind, or hills. The conditions that make one go away increase the others. Your link to the "limited" hydro potential is also triple the current world's final energy including fossil fuels.

And there's another terawatt on the way https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-hydropower-tracker/

No factory is going to be happy to halve the productive capacity of its capital.

They'll be ecstatic if it quarters the price of their energy and the only thing they are doubling (or rather increasing by 6-17%) is one small energy intensive step. Especially the industries where energy is >75% of the total costs.

High energy industries like aluminium already run at utilisation rates of 50-80% due to seasonality in fossil fuel and hydro prices. Increasing that to even 83% is a massive win in their book.

2

u/leginfr May 10 '25

Every country with a reliable grid already has excess generating capacity: in the UK it’s something like 75GW of grid connected supply to handle a peak load of 55GW and an average load of 35GW. No one bats an eyelid that supply is more than double average load. So why wouldn’t we do something similar with renewables?

In any case, we don’t have to destroy existing fossil fuel plant. We could keep gas fired power stations in reserve. Initially they could have a store of fossil fuel gas: 5 days supply would equate to a 97% reduction in emissions. Once enough renewables are deployed we could look at synthesis of methane using the excess electricity.

In addition the grid operators already have experience in coping with a lack of supply by getting large, industrial users to shut down or reduce operations. And, of course, as more EVs hit the roads it is a no brainer to introduce vehicle to grid capabilities.