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A comment on Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading. Parent comment

Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by PakG1 on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @10:29PM (#11859594)
2,000 cycles sounds great, but at just once per day that's only 5.5 years. Grid storage needs to be really cheap AND last for 20-50 years.

5.5 years is about the lifespan of servers in a datacenter. What's wrong with managing energy storage the way we manage datacenters? We don't expect servers to last 20-50 years. And no doubt, as battery tech improves, the lifespan will improve too. But the infrastructure to get good storage needs to start somewhere. Run them as datacenters for now while waiting for battery tech to get better.

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by Retric on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @09:12AM (#11862010)
It's just a question of cost. If it's cheap and lasts for 50 years, great. If it's 1/8 the cost and lasts for 5.5 years that also works. But battery's are still a long way from cheap let alone 1/8th of cheap.

Don't forget computer investment has long operated under the assumption of rapidly declining prices. With that slowing data centers may go to a 10+ year cycle.

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