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Today, lithium is the king of batteries. Plain and simple; but there are new energy storage technologies. Which we will show you in this article wood mackenzie reports that lithium-ion batteries made up 99% of all [chemical] Battery deployments in q4 2018. Technological mastery is an understatement. But nobody is perfect. Consequently, lithium-ion batteries, with their six main chemical variations, suffer from the following weaknesses. Safety: overheating and explosion duration: maximum download duration of four hours performance over time: 10-year lifespan, plus round-trip efficiency losses costs: high energy density is priced too high for conventional use material availability: uncertainty about lithium and cobalt (“slavery in the supply chain? No thanks”). In response to these achilles heels, entrepreneurs, angel investors, billionaires, venture capitalists, chemists, have been working hard to create new storage technologies. The three main types of new lithium-free storage technologies are the most promising: thermal storage, I.E.
Heating water (heaters) or cooling (often in ice) flow batteries, usually including vanadium, but sometimes zinc or iron chemicals. Long-lasting batteries: extravagant ideas like molten batteries or underground fluid compression do we really need new storage technologies? On the one hand, the answer is no. Lithium-ion's energy density and safety continue to improve, while its costs continue to decline, about 85% since 2010. Additionally, as the electric Email Marketing List vehicle market grows, it brings more lithium-ion manufacturing online to further reduce costs and improve performance. Unfortunately, we have no idea where the ev market will land: bloomberg sees evs as 55% of all new car sales globally in 2040, while opec and big oil think the number is about 10%. On the other hand, lithium alone won't cut it. With analysts projecting that solar and wind plants are likely to receive 73% of all new energy capacity investment globally between now and 2050, we need to cover days, weeks or months of stored energy, not just minutes and hours.
Case in point: from 2017 to 2018, wood mackenzie shows that energy storage in the us grew 44% in terms of mw but 77% in terms of mwh. The market is already demanding longer discharge durations. As its analyst mitalee gupta says: "Four years ago, we weren't even talking about a 4-hour duration." but now we are talking about more than 4 hours of discharge duration. Additionally, the energy storage market is changing rapidly. If you thought you understood it six or twelve months ago, forget it. It's time to refresh with lazard's latest report on the levelized cost of energy storage, now in version 4.0, with new additions released each fall. For example, in 2017, they reported that the 5-year cost reduction for lithium-ion would be 36%, while flow battery costs would fall 19% and 28% for zinc bromide and vanadium chemistries, respectively. . However, the latest report shows the opposite: flow battery costs are projected to fall by 38% and 45%, while lithium-ion costs may fall by only 28%. To some extent, that's to be expected: the rate of cost decline can't continue to fall at the same rate as a technology reaches maturity.
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