Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by nl on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @11:42PM (#11859840)

Flow Batteries[1]!

They work (as in: are being used in Africa & South America to power mobile networks). Also my (office) building is powered by one.

They don't cost much more than lead-acid

They last much, much longer than lead-acid or lithium*

There is no limit to the number of power cycles(!!) and they can be deep-discharged.

They do have disadvantages - they aren't suitable for cars, and are currently fairly noisy when cycling, and have lower power density than lithium* batteries. They also need to be periodically complete discharged (although most have software to make sure each individual cell does this as part of the normal use)

Disclaimer: An investor in Redflow owns my building (hence the power source)[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery

[2] http://redflow.com/

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by mavhc on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @02:52AM (#11860490)

167 Wh/l = 167kWh per cubic metre, say 16 hours of no sun, 16kW output at night, seems reasonable

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by masklinn on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @06:19AM (#11861203)

167Wh/l is a relatively recent prototype, Redflow uses the older zinc-bromide which is only around 70Wh/l.

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by nl on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @05:45AM (#11861087)

Yep. Next time someone claims base load means renewables don't work do that math. Also point to the experience in developing countries where they don't have reliable base load, yet have similar uptime.

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by mavhc on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @09:42AM (#11862205)

Wind provides base load anyway, always windy somewhere

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by imaginenore on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @12:55PM (#11863661)

That's a bad argument. Arbitrary energy transportation is not a solved problem. Power grids are designed to deliver from power plants to the consumers.

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by Yaggo on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @01:34AM (#11860241)

Interesting, haven't heard about such batteries being commercially sold. Any idea who sells those for private consumers in Europe?

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by beefield on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @05:48AM (#11861106)

Not sure about the private consumer part in Europe, but following seems to be in Austria:

http://www.bluesky-energy.eu/project/redflow-zinc-bromide-ba...

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by nl on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @05:42AM (#11861079)

I believe Redflow will have a consumer offering this year, (under another brand). Not sure about European availability.

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Re:Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla c... by bubuga on Saturday June 11, 2016 @03:55AM (#11882569)

> Flow Batteries[1]!

From the wikipedia article, it appears that typical flow batteries only reach 10% to 20% of lithium polymer's power density.

That means that it would take a flow battery that weights 5 to 10 times as the standard lithium polymer batteries that equip a Tesla/Nissan Leaf/whatever electric car you imagine to deliver the same power.

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