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For Now, at Least, the World Isn't Making Enough Batteries (bloomberg.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the demand-and-supply dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Evidence of the battery-powered era is all around us. Electric vehicles are cruising down our freeways. Household appliances thrum with stored solar energy that was until recently a daytime-only power source. Governments from California to China and South Korea -- even Donald Trump's Washington -- have taken steps that will make battery power more ubiquitous. There's just one hitch to this battery boom: The world isn't making nearly enough. All of the new demand from North America, Europe and Asia is constrained at the moment by a market that remains heavily dependent on a few producers. Data on the global supply of batteries is hard to come by, but close observers of the industry have noticed evidence of the shortfall. "We've never seen such demand," said Yayoi Sekine, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg NEF. "But the supply is struggling to keep up."

Oddly, however, lithium-ion battery-rack prices have continued their annual decline, even in the face of constrained supply and expectations of ever-growing demand. To get a clear sense of the near future, consider battery-powered cars: Today, there are more than 3 million electric vehicles on the road worldwide; by 2025, Volkswagen AG alone plans to build as many as 3 million electric vehicles per year. Those vehicle batteries -- in addition to storage batteries for homes, businesses and utilities -- will have to come from somewhere.
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For Now, at Least, the World Isn't Making Enough Batteries More

For Now, at Least, the World Isn't Making Enough Batteries

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  • Big Battery Factory (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @01:45PM (#57405970) Journal
    Someone should make a massive battery factory [wikipedia.org] to profit off of this problem!
    • I want to invest in Panasonic but I can't find their coin on coingecko.com!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Someone should make a massive battery factory [wikipedia.org] to profit off of this problem!

      The largest football stadium in the world becomes rather fucking worthless without any football players.

      Same goes for battery factories when it comes to lithium...

      • The largest football stadium in the world becomes rather fucking worthless without any football players.

        Even without players, a football stadium is pretty fucking worthless.

        As for the battery factories, they may have to re-tool for a different type of non-lithium battery in a few years/decades but it's still going to be useful.

      • Re:Big Battery Factory (Score:4, Funny)

        by magarity ( 164372 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @03:28PM (#57406788)

        The largest football stadium in the world becomes rather fucking worthless without any football players.

        I thought football stadiums are best used for rock concerts.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        funny thing...

        additional lithium reserves are currently being developed, read up on Casa Grande where the Lithium perchlorate in the ground water _used_ to be considered contamination, but is now a mine on its own

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Hmmm ... battery boom. Then bust. Dot-com bubble, just with the profiteers milling around lithium and cobalt?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The Panasonic/Tesla gigafactory isn't even that big compared to some of the ones being built now.

  • One of the benefits, is that you don't need to replace batteries at all.
    Among other benefits.

  • No. It is not making enough *cheap* batteries (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @01:56PM (#57406060) Journal
    The demand for batteries is not some fixed quantity irrespective of price.

    At 130$ /kWh there is demand for 300,000 units of 75 kWh batteris, may be a little more or little less. Model 3

    At 160$ /kWh there is demand for just 25,000 units, (Bolt)

    At 200$ /kWh there is demand for just 0 batteries. no one would buy it at that price

    At 100$/kWh there will be demand for about 3 million units of 75 kWh a year. Tesla's projection of breakeven price between BEV and ICEV

    At 80$/kWh there will be demand for something like 30 million units of 75 kWh battery packs a year or even more.

    At 50$ /kWh the whole world will run solar and wind. We can store two or three days electricity usage of the whole world at affordable prices.

    Moore' Law for batteries, is a 7 year half life. Energy density doubles and price halves every seven years for battery packs. Right now Tesla is at 130$ /kWh. In 7 years it will be at 65$/kWh. In 14 years, @ 32$ /kWh we are possibly looking at the greatest disruption the energy sector has seen since the switch from whale oil to coal, from coal to petroleum.

    • When we switch to a pony based economy, we will go back to using whale oil.

      We'll extract it via whale liposuction (whale couches, video games and fast food).

      • When we switch to a pony based economy, we will go back to using whale oil.

        That largely depends on the relationship that Hasbro chooses to have with its fans.

    • At 50$ /kWh the whole world will run solar and wind. We can store two or three days electricity usage of the whole world at affordable prices.

      Adiabatic CAES. Batteries are for portable things; compressed air is for grid.

      • At 50$ /kWh the whole world will run solar and wind. We can store two or three days electricity usage of the whole world at affordable prices.

        Adiabatic CAES. Batteries are for portable things; compressed air is for grid.

        I've been saying that for about 20 years now...

      • Adiabatic CAES. Batteries are for portable things; compressed air is for grid.

        CAES has a round trip efficiency of about 70%. Lithium batteries have a RTE of about 90%. So if the batteries are cheap enough, they win.

        If peak power sells for 10 cents per kwh, and trough power costs 5 cents, then a 20% difference in efficiency is going to save you one cent per kwh per cycle. If the battery has a ten year life, then it is more cost effective when the capital cost difference between Lithium batteries and CAES falls below $36.50/kwh.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          never mind about efficiency .. If you can't store something because of insufficient capacity, you have nothing. Just store the overproduction use it if neccessary.

        • Adiabatic CAES uses a different process than the last generation, whereby the energy lost in compression is retained and re-injected into the medium when driving a turbine.

          Lithium batteries require lifting, moving, monitoring, building, disassembling, and chemical scrubbing to recycle or dispose. A lot more goes into the battery around its life cycle.

          Grid-scale power is a utility service and not something you'd install at your house. Centralization of energy storage is economically more-efficient (i.

          • Centralization of energy storage is economically more-efficient

            Not necessarily. Transmission losses are minimized if the power transmitted is steady. Steady transmission is achieved if the variations of the load are filtered out at the load, i.e. by storing excess of supply above use at the load.

            • I don't mean transmission efficiency; I mean the efficiency of physically moving around, going to get things, storing them, transporting them, finding them, diagnosing them.

              We handle transmission efficiency by using HVDC, stepping down locally to HVAC, and then transforming to 240VAC at point-of-use. Three-phase power helps, too.

          • distributed power storage will be the best way. if all buildings had their own battery and they have EVs, those batteries could be accessible by the main or micro-grids in times of need. Lots of buildings will also have solar so they'll charge their own storage. Centralisation is too much of the old "put all the eggs in the one basket" idea. No real need for much centralised storage.

            • That would put load on your electric vehicle batteries, cycle them more frequently, and require earlier replacement. What's the cost of replacing a battery in an EV versus replacing it in a giant wall of batteries?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by balbeir ( 557475 )

        Adiabatic CAES. Batteries are for portable things; compressed air is for grid.

        So, basically we're going to run the grid off unicorn farts?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I concur.
      I recently was doing budgeting for an off-grid solar site (vacation use), and the batteries are a bigger expense than solar panels. (Assuming replacement every 5-8 years.)

    • I might be interested for 5-10 cents per kwh and 400+ miles range.

      The problem is that where I live, it is 28+ cents per Kwh, usage based, price goes up with usage, and we have vulnerable, limited capacity wires.

    • Re:No. It is not making enough *cheap* batteries (Score:4)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @03:32PM (#57406812)

      Moore' Law for batteries, is a 7 year half life.

      Where do you get this? I was interested to see some historical graphs to justify a "7-year" claim but I haven't yet found any.

      https://longtailpipe.com/2013/... [longtailpipe.com] - I found this article which suggested a 10-year half life

      https://www.upsbatterycenter.c... [upsbatterycenter.com] - this graph showed that improvement has flattened out completely. But the graph lacks no vertical axis so I don't even know what it's measuring.

    • Range of gas/diesel cars has historically grown to save you driving to a gas station every day or every few days. But what if you live next to a gas station, or in the case of electric vehicles, your house is the electric charge point?
      We have gotten used to plugging in our smartphones into a charger every night, didn't we? Treat your car like a smartphone and you only need 1 day of electric range, plus a bit extra for that small road deviation.
      A smaller battery is cheaper, and lighter, so your car and its b

      • Range of gas/diesel cars has historically grown to save you driving to a gas station every day or every few days.

        Within the constraint of being able to make cross-country trips without long pauses for refueling.

        Because battery charging, even when blazingly fast with recent cell types, is still longer than a human-maintenance pit stop, they don't do well on long trips. So they need to have larger range than a fuel car or they are limited to a subset of the service types and you need two vehicles.

        For instanc

        • For instance: With something close to 300 miles of range an electric in Silicon Valley could handle both commutes and weekend excursions...

          Los Angels - Las Vegas similarly, with a minimum of 350 miles range.

          SF - LA is nearly 400 miles (383.1 center-to-center), the cities are spread out and the traffic is snared at both ends. So you need about 500 mile range for an electric to be practical for trips between them.

        • You start everyday with a full tank. You are saving 10 min every week by not filling up at the gas station. The time you save is what you spend on trips
          • But you then have to waste an hour or two recharging your vehicle every time you go on a weekend trip that even slightly exceeds your range. Sounds like you aren't really 'saving' any time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      LG Chem seems to be around the $100-110/kWh mark based on the pricing of their packs. The main limitation is the rate at which they can scale up manufacturing output.

      Competition is really driving down costs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Funny thing, the fossil fuel energy companies have about $107 TRILLION in fuel reserves that have not yet been pumped/mined

      This represents a staggering loss of value if the rest of the world moves to renewables, supplanted by batteries.

      Expect them to lie, foot drag and employ every delay tactic available while they try and glean money from their bad investment

      • Funny thing, the fossil fuel energy companies have about $107 TRILLION in fuel reserves that have not yet been pumped/mined

        Not to mention unproved reserves. When you have enough found for the next 25 years or so you lose drastically if you spend current money looking for more, which you won't use for decades, rather than waiting and using the money for something that will pay off sooner. So you only have more than that amount when a big discovery has pushed the total above that limit by accident.

        (That's w

  • cobalt mines and rubber trees (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @02:09PM (#57406176)
    At one time, the growth of the automobile industry was limited by the number of rubber tree plantations in the world (all those cars need tires you know). Then someone invented synthetic rubber made from the byproducts of the petroleum all those cars were using. Problem solved.

    Now the limit on electric cars is cobalt for lithium-ion batteries. Until some clever person develops zinc-air batteries or carbon nanotube batteries or something even better. One way or the other, electric cars are coming.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )

      You may not know this, but the all-time best-selling EV on the planet, the Nissan Leaf, does not use cobalt in its lithium-ion batteries.

      • Most cars lose 20% of value as you drive off the dealer's lot.

        Leaf loses 20% battery capacity on the drive home from the dealer.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Trogre ( 513942 )

          Bullshit. Perhaps you're thinking of the widely advertised problems with the 30kWh batteries, which turned out to be an easily-fixed firmware problem.

          Or perhaps you live in Arizona, where batteries tend to cook.

  • "Governments from California to China and South Korea -- even Donald Trump's Washington"

    Why this and not simply "Governments from California to China and South Korea and even the US Federal Government"

    This extreme bias is persistent and spreading.

    • Re:This needs to stop (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @02:25PM (#57406298)

      Not exactly. They were making the point that even an administration hostile to renewable energy still acknowledges the issue.

      • Donald Trump is just one guy not all of Washington. The EPA is not "Donald Trumps Administration", it is the EPA. The department of highway safety is not "the Trump administration", etc. These are government agencies and the US government is the US government not Donald Trump.

        As for battery shortages, batteries don't care about whether the power charging them came from a coal plant or not. There is nothing renewable about the electric cars and other portable and mobile devices requiring batteries. Most rene

        • Donald Trump is just one guy not all of Washington. The EPA is not "Donald Trumps Administration", it is the EPA.

          It is the standard convention that you refer to departments of the government as "President's agency" or even the "President agency [freebeacon.com]." If you find this to be difficult to grasp, perhaps political debate is not for you.

        • It really is. There's a reason that 'The [president]'s administration' is a common term. The president appoints a large number of officials that head important government agencies, and once a new president takes office one of the first things they do is set about expelling everyone who might be loyal to the last president or their policies and replace them with people who are loyal to the new president and their policies. These people in turn hurry to replace lower level administrators with people more symp

    • "Governments from California to China and South Korea -- even Donald Trump's Washington"

      Why this and not simply "Governments from California to China and South Korea and even the US Federal Government"

      This extreme bias is persistent and spreading.

      Calm down!

      We're not laughing at him, we're laughing with him!

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )

      This extreme bias is persistent and spreading.

      Not all bias is incorrect. There is also an extreme bias in the media for support of the "spherical earth" theory.

      The fact that the current chief of the US Federal Government is a fossil fuel-loving ignoramus is indisputable.

  • Volkswagen AG says..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @02:39PM (#57406398) Journal

    Yeah I believe them. They would never lie to us. /end sarcasm

  • You mean Zinc Air batteries? (Score:3)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Monday October 01, 2018 @02:54PM (#57406514) Homepage Journal

    Dude, we are making them.

    Maybe you fail to realize that the entire West Coast is going to 100-120 percent Renewables. And, yes, we're using those batteries.

    Wake me when you guys stop whining and start doing. We're most of North America's economy.

    • Yeah, no. California is 11%, Oregon is about 1% and Washington is about 3% of the US economy (apparently you don't know what North America is). You have a wild overblown sense of your importance.

      • Those numbers are ignoring the pot exports. All three states number one cash crop.

      • Only someone from back East would think WA OR CA were the West Coast.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jezwel ( 2451108 )
          As someone from another country entirely, those three states (plus Alaska and Hawaii I guess) make up the West Coast. Am I missing something?
          Are you counting states *not* on the coast?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nwaack ( 3482871 )

      Wake me when you guys stop whining and start doing. We're most of North America's economy.

      Wake me when you West-coasters get your heads out of your arses and stop being so incredibly self-important and arrogant.

  • batteries still got a ways to go.

  • where is the cobalt (a conflict resource) coming from? where's the lithium coming from? and how's the recycling coming along? also, do we have enough copper to supply absolutely everyone currently owning a car with their own personal 2 tonne electric vehicle? and what's the environmental cost of neodymium refining? https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • In the world, I mean

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