Lithium Battery Cell Prices To Almost Halve By 2029
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Lithium-ion cell prices will fall by around 46% between now and 2029, according to new analysis from Guidehouse Insights, reaching US$66.6 per kWh by that time.
The rest of the article contains a lot more useful predictions.
I will add a prediction of my own.
The drop in prices of lithium-ion batteries will surely result in a lot more applications, in the following areas.
- Battery-electric vehicles
- Battery-electric vans and buses and light-trucks.
- Battery-electric trams and trains
- Battery-electric aircraft.
- Battery-electric ships.
- Battery-electric tractors
- Battety-electric construction plant
Lithium-ion batteries will also be used in hydrogen-powered versions of any of the above.
The cost of lithium-ion batteries, will also lead to more applications in the following areas.
- Grid energy storage or as it sometimes called; front-of-the-meter storage.
- Heavy trucks
- Double-deck buses
- Railway locomotives
These could use a very large number of lithium-ion cells.
Conclusion
Because as yet, there is no alternative to lithium-ion cells for mobile applications, I think we’ll see grid-energy storage going to one of the alternatives like Gravitricity, Highview Power or Zinc8.
US Deployed 98MW / 208MWh Of Energy Storage During First Quarter Of 2020
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Research firm Wood Mackenzie has held onto its forecast that the US will deploy around 7GW of energy storage annually by 2025 and found that 97.5MW / 208MWh of storage was installed during the first quarter of this year.
The United States may be led by a President, who doesn’t believe in global warming, but individuals and businesses in the country seem to believe in battery storage and the benefits it brings.
This is an interesting paragraph from the article.
The overall deployments were also down in megawatt-hour terms: 208MWh in total was a 43% decrease quarter-on-quarter and down 34% year-on-year. Wood Mackenzie found that this was due to a majority of front-of-the-meter projects coming online being short duration energy storage. This meant that FTM storage accounted for 13% of Q1 2020 deployments in megawatt-hours but for 22% of the total megawatts deployed.
Front-of-the-meter storage is mainly used to maintain supplies, when demand is going up and down like a yo-yo in an area. Companies like Gresham House Energy Sorage Fund seem to be funding these batteries in the UK. Gravutricity, Highview Power and Zinc8 also seem to be targeting this market.
Conclusion
It would appear that the energy storage market is healthy on both sides of the Atlantic
Explaining Gravitricity
Gravitricity is a simple way to store excess electricity, that is perhaps being produced by intermittent renewable resources like wind or solar power.
This is their explanatory video.
It may look simple, but how much energy can a typical system store.
The video says that depths can be between 150 and 1,500 metres and that the weight can be up to 5,000 tonnes.
- A quick calculation using Omni’s Potential Energy Calculator with 500 metres and 500 tonnes gives 681 kWh.
- But build a system in a four kilometre deep gold mine with 5000 tonnes and you could store 54.5 MWh.
- Perhaps, that is extreme, but you can understand why the South Africans are interested in the technology.
- Perhaps, more practically, we have some coal mines in the UK, where the winding shafts are around 800 metres, which with a 1000 tonnes would store 2.2 MWh.
These are practical amounts of power.
Gravitricity And South Africa
This article on ESI Africa is entitled Gravitricity Sets Sights On South Africa To Test Green Energy Tech.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Disused mine shafts in South Africa have been identified as an ideal location to test UK-based energy start-up Gravitricity’s green energy technology.
Remember that mine depths in South Africa are often measured in kilometres rather than metres.
Prowling for Solutions To Unleash Renewable Energy
The title of this post, is the same as this article on Toolbox.
It is a good summary of the best methods of storing renewable energy without using chemical batteries.
Gravitricity, Energy Vault and Highview Power are all mentioned.
This last paragraph, explains some of the philosophy behind Vermont looking seriously at Highview Power.
Vermont may well be tempted by liquid air energy storage because of its flexibility — simply requiring a two-acre site anywhere. One possible location could be near an abandoned power station. That’s a beautiful solution because the transmission lines that once transported the electricity from the plant are built and ready to use in the renewable era.
Note that a two-acre site is slightly smaller than a football pitch.
It is rather elegant to replace a coal- or gas-fired power-station with an environmentally-friendly energy storage system on the same site, which effectively does the same job of providing energy.
The article doesn’t mention employment, but surely many of the existing workforce can be easily retrained for the new technology.
Gravitricity Gets An Imperial Seal Of Approval
This article on Renewable Energy Magazine is entitled Gravitricity Technology Turns Mine Shafts into Low Cost Power Storage Systems.
This is the first paragraph.
A report by independent analysts at Imperial College London has found that Scotland-based Gravitricity’s gravity-fed energy storage system may offer a better long-term cost of energy storage than batteries or other alternatives – particularly in grid balancing and rapid frequency response services.
I am starting to believe that Gravitricity’s simple, but patented system has a future.
The Imperial report says the system has the following advantages.
- More affordable than batteries.
- Long life.
- No long term degredation.
The main requirement is a shaft, which can be newly sunk or an old mine shaft.
Hopefully, reusing old mine shafts, must save costs and remove hazards from the landscape.
No-one can say the system isn’t extremely scientifically green.
I have some thoughts.
Eco-Developments
Could clever design allow a mine shaft to be both capped and turned into an energy storage system?
Perhaps then housing or other developments could be built over the top, thus converting an area unsuitable for anything into something more valuable. with built in energy storage.
More Efficient Motor-Generators
One of the keys to efficient operation of a Gravitricity system is efficient motor-generators.
These are also key to efficient regenerative braking on trains, trams and other vehicles.
So is enough research going into development of efficient motor-generators?
Report: Gravity-Based Energy Storage Could Prove Cheaper Than Batteries
The title of this post, is the same as this article on Business Green.
This is said.
Storing energy by suspending weights in disused mine shafts could be cheaper than batteries for balancing the grid, new research has found.
According to a report by analysts at Imperial College London and seen by BusinessGreen, gravity-fed energy storage systems can provide frequency response at a cost cheaper than most other storage solutions.
This was the conclusions of the Imperial College report.
According to the paper, gravity-fed storage providing frequency response costs $141 per kW, compared to $154 for a lithium-ion battery, $187 for lead acid batteries and $312 for flywheel.
Despite its high upfront cost, the paper argued that unlike battery-based storage systems, gravity-fed solutions have a long lifespan of more than 50 years and aren’t subject to degradation. This means they could cycle several times a day – allowing them to ‘stack revenues’ from different sources.
I always puzzle why this idea hasn’t been seriously tried before.
Huisman Weighs Into Storage
The title of this post is the same as thia article in RENews.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Edinburgh start-up Gravitricity is teaming up with Dutch lifting specialist Huisman to develop gravity-fed energy storage projects at the sites of disused mines in Scotland.
The partners plan to develop a 250kW demonstration project and test it early next year, and ultimately aim to scale up to 20MW commercial systems.
I think that this idea has a chance to be a success.
As an aside, one of my first experiences of industry was working at Enfield Rolling Mills. On one of their rolling mills, there was a ninety-three tonnes two-metre ring flywheel, which was attached to the mill. The flywheel was spun to 3000 rpm, before the copper wirebar was passed through the mill. You could see the flywheel slow, as it passed it’s energy to the mill, as it turned the wirebar into a thinner strand of copper, so that it could be drawn into electrical cable.
I think, that flywheel had an energy storage of over a MwH. Shimatovitch, the Chief Engineer reckoned that if had come of its mountings at full speed, it would have gone a mile before the houses stopped it.
Would The Gravitricity Concept Work At Sea?
The North Sea and other similar places have lots of oil oil and gas platforms, that are coming to the end of their lives.
Many are being dismantled and scrapped.
But could some be used to store energy by replacing the refitting the deck with a Gravitricity energy storage system. The massive weight would be hauled up and down from the sea bed.
It would be fed generated electricity from nearby offshore wind turbines and would store or feed the electricity to the shore as required.
Remember that some of these oil platforms have been built to support decks weighing thousands of tonnes, so would be strong enough to support the massive weight needed for a Gravitricity system.
If the height was say 500 metres and the weight was 10,000 tonnes, this would equate to just under 14 mWh.
Gravitricity Sets Sights On South Africa To Test Green Energy Tech
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on ESI Africa, which describes itself as Africa’s Power Journal.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Disused mine shafts in South Africa have been identified as an ideal location to test UK-based energy start-up Gravitricity’s green energy technology.
The company announced plans to transform disused mine shafts into hi-tech green energy generation facilities through a system that uses gravity and massive weights.
This is surely a classic fit, as Africa has plenty of sun and some of the mine shafts in South Africa, like the TauTona mine are getting towards two miles deep.
A weight of 1,000 tonnes in a two mile deep shaft would store nearly nine MWh. By comparison, Dinorwig Power Station or Electric Mountain, has a capacity of 500 MWh.
But Electric Mountain was built in the 1970s, cost £425 million and took ten years to construct.
Funding Gives Weight To Idea For Storing Electricity
The title of this post, is the same as that of an article on Page 45 of today’s copy of The Times.
It talks of a company called Gravitricity, which has used the same principle as every weight-operated clock to store energy and especially energy generaed from intermittent sources like wind and solar power.
The company has just secured a £650,000 grant from Innovate UK.
In Solar Power Could Make Up “Significant Share” Of Railway’s Energy Demand, I looked at how solar farms and batteries could be used to power third-rail railway electrification.
Because of energy losses, third-rail electrification needs to be fed with power every three miles or so. This gives a problem, as connection of all these feeder points to the National Grid can be an expensive business.
A series of solar farms, wind turbines and batteries, controlled by an intelligent control system, is an alternative way of providing the power.
In an article in the October 2017 Edition of Modern Railways, which is entitled Celling England By The Pound, Ian Walmsley says this in relation to trains running on the Uckfield Branch.
A modern EMU needs between 3 and 5 kWh per vehicle mile for this sort of service.
If I assume that trains are five cars and will be efficient enough to need only 3 kWh per vehicle mile, then to power a train along a ten mile section of track will take 150 kWh.
As the control system, only powers the track, when a train needs it, the whole system can be very efficient.
So why will Gravitricity battery ideas be ideal in this application?
Appropriate Size
By choosing the right weight and depth for the Gravitricity battery , appropriate energy storage can be provided at different points on a line.
Some parts of a journey, like accelerating away from stations will need more electricity than others, where trains are cruising along level ground.
Supposing my five-car example train is travelling at 60 mph, then to cover ten miles will take 10 minutes, with 15 kW being supplied in every minute.
If the train weighs 200 tonnes, then accelerating the train to 60 mph will need about 20 kWh.
I’m sure that a Gravitricity battery could handle this.
I would suspect that batteries of the order of 100 kWh would store enough power for the average third-rail electrified line.
A proper dynamic simulation would need to be done. I could have done this calculation in the 1960s, but I don’t have the software now!
Response Time
For safety and energy-efficiency reasons, you don’t want lines to be switched on, when there is no train present.
I suspect that if there is energy in the battery, response would be fast enough.
Energy Efficiency
The system should have a high efficiency.
How Big Would A 100 kWh Gravitricity Battery Be?
A quick calculation shows the weight would be 400 tonnes and the depth would be 100 metres.
Installing the batteries
Each battery will need a 100 metre deep hole of an appropriate diameter.
This sequence of operations would be performed.
- A rail-mounted drilling rig would drill the hole.
- The heavy weight of the battery would arrive by train and would be lifted into position using a rail-mounted crane.
As the equipment will generally be heavy, doing all operations from the railway will be a great help.
The Anonymous Widower 