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Wall Street Journal-The Birth of the Super Battery >>>

Loren Beach

O34 - Portland, OR
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
That's a good read. Thanks.
Some friends of ours now have 2 Tesla's and a backup battery system for a house and workshop using the Tesla Powerwall.
Several other friends are driving Tesla's and Leaf's.

This technology is indeed slowly becoming 'main stream'.
 

Filkee

Sustaining Member
In Vermont we swapped out the backup generator at the State House with a bank of batteries. Now, instead of just cranking up a machine once a week to make sure it’s not dead, we charge overnight and sell back to the grid during peak demand.
 

Kenneth K

1985 32-3, Puget Sound
Blogs Author
From the linked article:

"Prices have come down a long way since January 2010, when Boston Consulting Group estimated battery costs at between $1,000 and $1,200 per kilowatt-hour. It said getting to $250—a level car makers were targeting—“ is unlikely to be achieved unless there is a major breakthrough in battery chemistry.......” Today, battery prices are about $125 per kilowatt-hour......"

The average price of electricity in the U.S. is about $0.14 per kW-hr. This article touts the cost of storing that electricity (in batteries) dropping from 9000 times the cost of generating it ($1200 per kW-hr) to 900 times the cost of generating it ($125 per kW-hr). Despite all the hoopla, I think this really says we are still in the baby-steps phase of developing electric vehicles capable of replacing existing ICE vehicles in an economically rational way. Give me another example of an economically rational system where storage costs are 100s of times the generation cost of the good/commodity/energy source.

"Right now, we’re basically scratching the surface,” he said. “The ICE age is coming to an end.”

The first half of that statement seems to agree. The second half.....sure, but that's pretty cheap prognostication when you don't even begin to hint at "when" your forecast is speculated to occur. And the fact that the two statements, side by side, are basically contradictory, will be overlooked by many of those caught up in the hoopla.
 
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