Lithium batteries, not worth it

Or.... £446 for 100Ah, when you an get a 130Ah lead acid for £75:

But, But, But, But lithium batteries rape the earth to extract the lithium and are a nightmare to recycle so they are considered green!!!!

With a brand name of Growatt obviously aimed at the home cannabis farm - they can afford it.

I've got a gro-something else, an LED lamp with UV and er.... I must have got it for my parrots. Yes that's it, they like pure daylight.

Anyway, I've looked at many places to buy Li Ion and Lead Acid, and it's pretty much 7 times more expensive for Lithium for no good reason. I'm even thinking of using Lead Acid in an electric car to extend the range. Sure, heavier, but no more than a 3 adults sat in the back. And if it's at home for solar, no point in saving weight whatsoever.

I read lithium performs better in cold conditions. Yesterday I was looking for the difference between cr123 and cr123a for my flashlight. They give a steady output too. Go go go then dead. No slow fade.

No lead-acid can provide the performance that is *claimed* here. Recommended depth of discharge for even cyclic l-a is 50% for maximum quoted lifetime, which is up to 1000 cycles but in the real world usually rather less. Recharge time is normally much less for lithium. The maximum charge current for SLA normally means at least six hours' charging time, preferably twice that for maximum lifetime.

Of course, lead-acids tend not to burn...

Horses for courses.

And similar for Li Ion. 50% discharge 900-1500 cycles.

Irrelevant. Nobody needs to charge that fast for solar for example, yet people are fitting them into their homes.

And why are you quoting SLA? Deep cycle flooded is cheapest and best.

SEVEN TIMES CHEAPER.

Or.... pay the same and have 7 times the capacity, which of course means you're also charging them slower....

You seem to misunderstand units of energy. Wasn't your claimed degree in Physics?

Lead acid batteries shouldn't be discharged to less than 50% or irreparable damage ensues. So in practice you will need 1,000 Ah at 12V

A lead acid battery will have at most a 2,000 charge discharge cycles. The cheap varieties you're comparing with will be 80-200 charge/discharge cycles.

In practice Lithium can manage 3,000 cycles or more, as long as they are looked after by a decent BMS. Furthermore you can discharge them down to

A bit of googling and you could have found this all out by yourself.

In short Lithium is an economic alternative to lead acid. As you have since discovered there are cheaper lithium batteries around.

I find this hard to believe unless the Lithium one has been priced wrongly. The power weight and size density is far better in Lithium cells than in Lead acid ones. It depends if size and weight and max current are an issue or not.

Brian

I was listening to a science program a couple of weeks ago, and they seem to be wondering that when they look at the spectrum of some asteroids they seem to be giving a high indication of Lithium content. If that is the case, is it not odd that as the earth was apparently built from this stuff that its not abundant here as well? Who nicked it all? Brian

Come on it's The Kinsey Troll your responding too. He's just out to see how much noise he can create.

A leisure battery is 200 cycles, LiPo is 5000-7000 cycles.

That means the Lithium battery lasts 25x as long, for 6x the price.

Paul

A leisure battery is over 1000.

Not what I've read. More like 1500 for basic Lithium, and LiPo is a piece of s*it: ""The maximum charge cycles for most LiPo batteries tends to be around 300," said Thomas Bradbury. But even 300 recharge cycles is optimistic. Bradbury said that only applies to higher quality batteries. "Many LiPo batteries will not even last for 300 charges," he said. The metric that matters most: internal resistance"

And I don't like this:

no, it really isnt

As it is EV's with lithium batteries weigh about about a half ton more than ICE vehicles. Would be interesting to see what they would weigh with a lead battery.

One problem with price is demand. Currently lead is a commodity and most of it is available as recycle from depleted batteries. Even if price were equivalent there is probably more cost in manufacture of lithium batteries needing additional materials and more complexity of manufacture.

when things are out of stock they stick up the price to keep the advert open

I have seen analysis of ores coming out of Peruvian lead mine. There is nothing green there and it is a nightmare compared to lithium salts with all the other heavy, toxic metals along with the lead.

lithium batteries are just a passing phase of technology.

The future will be either graphene, aluminum or silicone anode.

Yes, there are a lot of technologies being looked into. Something like sodium would be much cheaper and not have the flammability concerns even though only slightly heavier.