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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

How long do these batteries last?

At least a decade. This is why most grid services/frequency response revenue is going to be cannibalized from legacy thermal by utility scale battery storage.

Energy arbitrage is still a thing, but a smaller percentage of revenue compared to grid services (at least in Australia).

Disclaimer: TSLA investor

Long enough for this to be a no brainer.

Also the biggest issue with consumer batteries is typically heat management. Industrial batteries with proper thermal control systems will exhibit much better lifespans than a typical iPhone. Thus you should adjust your expectations for these batteries compared to what you’ve seen in consumer electronics.

That's true and the reason that electric cars will work much better than most expected, with no need for a battery change during the life of the car. Here though part of the reason for the huge savings in one year is the market was in such dire need they've worked the battery hard. The return on investment is still stellar I'm sure, beating even the best initial estimates. But the battery will most likely not last as long as in the original estimates either.

if it lasts even 2 years it was already a good investment

...if disposal is free

Actually, lithium is quite valuable and can be recycled into new batteries. I don't have the numbers, but AFIAK, disposal is cashflow positive.

Edit: see hwillis's comment down below, he/she is obviously more knowledgeable about the topic than I am. I was wrong.

I’ve heard quite the opposite: recycling lithium is difficult.

Maybe the other metals in the batteries make it worth recycling, but not for the lithium recovery (with today’s tech).

I read on Wikipedia quite the opposite: we don't recycle Lithium it because it costs 5 times more than freshly extracted lithium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_recycling#Lithium_ion_...

If my math is correct, the battery needs to last at least 10 years to break even if you factor in the cost of recycling the lithium.

Recycled lithium might cost 5x more. Not that the disposal cost of a battery is 5x the purchase price.

If the battery pays for its purchase price in 2 years and the disposal cost is 1/2 the price of a new battery (doubt it's anywhere near that), then the it would still pay for the total cost of ownership in 3 years.

From what I understand, used-up lithium batteries are fairly non-toxic and can be safely dumped in a landfill. Still not zero-cost, but probably about as low as you can get. And they can probably recover some of that cost by recycling some of the other metals from them.

EV batteries can be repurposed for small-scale grid storage applications, and therefore can have a second life for many years before they are finally broken down to raw ingredients for recycling:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-27/where-3-m...

Do aged lithium batteries lose charge efficiency, discharge efficiency or capacity?

Each loss would encourage different kinds of secondary uses.

I believe they experience all of those. But yes, there are many secondary uses, especially in situations where high energy density isn't required.

After the last economically viable use for electricity storage, however, there has to be an economic incentive to actually recycle the raw materials. Presumably this is when value of the raw materials exceeds the cost of their reclamation.

>> Do aged lithium batteries lose charge efficiency, discharge efficiency or capacity?

> I believe they experience all of those.

Hmm...would that explain the CPU performance loss of an aging cell phone battery? Lower discharge efficiency = less power available for the CPU = CPU throttles itself to lower power usage?

That is exactly what happened, yes. Without the throttling, the battery can't deliver peak power, and the device crashes.

Yes. Eventually, Li-Ion batteries will "puff up" due to chemical degradation and may even spontaneously catch fire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/55q7py/why_do_l...

This always makes me nervous. If I have some old laptops lying around, how worried should I be about them exploding? Does it only apply if they're in use?

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