Reader Bob has sent me articles about the Tesla electric car and the Powerwall and Powerpack storage batteries to be manufactured by Tesla. Alan Moran has written on the Tesla electric car so I thought I would look at lithium batteries state of play and lithium prices, demand etc, whatever I can glean. There are articles boosting the Tesla Powerwall batteries and also articles more realistic. I would have thought that with Tesla and others battery production ramping up there would be a surge in demand for lithium. It refers to slow, gentle movement and deep viagra properien rest (a kind of rest you get either during sleep or meditation). Hence it is used in dysmenorrhea, primary amenorrhea and to ease delivery of baby. Besides regular courses, get viagra from india many colleges and universities offer B.Ed courses through correspondence. Some studies have estimated that more than 150 generic levitra abacojet.com million men in the world experience powerlessness. Yet looking at the price chart for the Nasdaq Lithium ETF – nothing much is happening – the price of LIT has halved since 2010. OK maybe this has nothing to do with lithium. Lets check a couple of lithium miners on the ASX – Orocobre Ltd extracting lithium from brines in Argentina and Galaxy Resources Ltd who mine lithium in Australia.
What can we draw from all this? Is there a boom in production of household scale lithium based batteries in motion? Or is there simply much Green hype? Have any readers ordered and paid for Powerwall batteries?
warwick won’t Greens say if prices have halved then that is good for lithium batteries’ potential household use as is cheaper?
Even if home batteries come out at a price too high to allow home owners to afford them, it wouldn’t surprise me if the same logic was used by some in green government to offer subsidies so a small minority could install them in the same way they did with solar panels.
As the Grattan Institude concluded in its May 2015 report
,
“By the time the subsidies finally run out, households and businesses that have not installed solar PV will have spent more than $14 billion subsidising households that have. Australia could have reduced emissions for much less money. Governments have created a policy mess that should never be repeated”
Warwick,
I think the low price for the batteries is due to the household ones being selected second-hand auto ones, being given a longer life. i.e. the get used in the Tesla cars until their capacity drops a bit and are then switched to household use. This seems to have been confused with the announcement of a new factory expanding production of batteries.
In any case the batteries will only take 80% draw, so a new 7kwh is good for 5.6 per cycle whereas a second hand one will do 4.5.
With an average 18kwh per day, 4 power packs will be needed for every day that the sunshine is inadequate. At $A10, 000 ea. plus the inverter and controller, that is going to be a bit expensive. You would be looking at about $A0.76 – 0.90 per kilowatt just to pay for the system. The first is for a 10 year life whereas the second is for a more realistic 7.5 year life.
Regarding lithium, I believe the big producer in Chile’s Atacama desert actually pumps over half the lithium stream (a byproduct) back under the salt layer. They produce around 30% of world production.
Lysander – If Lithium prices were to fall it would be good news for consumers for a while – until consumption caught up with supply again. But I do not think Li costs are a large % of many applications.
And John, thanks for the great quote from the left leaning Grattan Inst.
They see us heading to a world where the less well off will be forced to use power at off peak times.
Japanese company Power Japan Plus has announced the development and planned mass-production of “Ryden,” a disruptive carbon battery that can be charged 20 times faster than an ordinary lithium-ion cell. The battery, which is cheap to manufacture, safe and environmentally friendly, could be ideal to improve the range and charging times of electric cars.
www.gizmag.com/dual-carbon-fast-charging-battery/32121/
> They see us heading to a world where the less well off will be forced to use power at off peak times
Yes
The sharp point underlying the hype of “smart meters” – the ability to cut power to individual consumers when it is deemed they have used enough for the period
ianl8888
July 30, 2015 at 8:59 am
Yes Ian it’s the socialist’s need to control every aspect of our lives at play here, part of their DNA.
Despite assurances that smart meters would help Victorians save money by allowing them to better monitor their electricity use and to take advantage of lower off peak electricity rates at different times of the day the reality has been very different.
Victoria’s “smart” meter roll-out was foisted on the state by the Bracks ALP government back in 2006. Far from leading to the promised reductions in electricity charges the smart meter roll-out has proved an unmitigated disaster from the beginning. The Green/Left’s bleating about about “gold plating” of poles and wires has been used as a smoke screen to disguise the huge increases in electricity bills due to the RET scheme, the solar feed-in largesse, the now defunct carbon dioxide tax and (in Victoria) the huge cost impost of the smart meter roll-out. Victorian distribution and transmission cost increases since 1995 – 2013 were actually quite modest, but if you disassemble the costs you find that overwhelmingly the reason for any increase in network charges at all is the “smart” meter imposition, and the cost of the solar feed-in tariff:
With the ink barely dry on the signing in of the Andrews ALP/CFMEU/Greens government Victorians were treated to the news that they were to suffer another major impost, courtesy of the Left’s beloved “smart” meters:
@Bob in Castlemaine
I’m a New South Welshman, so I’m not well steeped in Victorian details (as my son lives in Melbourne, the only irritating thing I’ve encountered is this insane idea that one makes a right-hand turn from the farthest left lane !)
My question is this: when the “smart meters” were at the installation phase, did one have the option to refuse to change ? If so, what happened if you did so refuse ?
ianl8888
July 31, 2015 at 9:11 am
Ian
In typical totalitarian style you had no choice about whether your meter was changed over to a smart meter, unless of course you’d consider electing to go without electricity to be a choice.
It’s typical of mining that prices skyrocket when demand gets ahead of supply, and Lithium for batteries must have been the biggest mineral boom since platinum was needed for catalytic converters.
Lithium mines in WA are in the relatively populated areas of the Southwest and Goldfields, which would indicate there is more in the less/un-populated areas. I doubt supply and high prices is more than a short/medium term issue. Lithium isn’t that rare. More abundant than lead or tin for example.
I doubt household battery storage will increase demand enough to re-ignite the boom, but who knows with the Green Left’s love of mad subsidies.
“The new Tesla Powerwall home batteries come in two sizes—seven and 10 kilowatt hours (kWh)—but the differences extend beyond capacity to the chemistry of the batteries. The 7kWh version is made for daily use, while its larger counterpart is only intended to be used as occasional backup when the electricity goes out. The bigger Tesla battery isn’t designed to go through more than about 50 charging cycles a year,”
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/tesla-s-new-battery-doesn-t-work-that-well-with-solar