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Huge Incentives for Energy Storage in Today's House Bill

Bill,

Thanks for the articles and the updates. I really appreciate your informative posts. In regards to lithium Ion batteries vs lead acid, a thought came to me as I read your privious article. In that article you claim that Li batteries can be recharged up to 10,000 cycles. You feel that this is far more cycles than anyone will ever realistically need. You also state that their is a very real environmental hazzard inherent to Li batteries because they can not yet be recycled. I am not disagreeing with either of those positions. However, the following thoughts in regards to their use in automobiles came to me. 1. Lead Acid batteries are probably good for, at best, 5 years of daily use. And, they are considerably heavier than Li bts. If a car has a useful life of 18 years, it would require three sets of Lead Acid bats, but only one set of Li bats. In addition, after 15 years, if the car is useless, but the batteries are still good, one could either sell the useful batteries or buy a new car with out batteries and install the used batteries for energy. 2. Li batteries weigh much less per kwh, than do lead acid batteries. So, if the LI batteries have, as you suggest, a life of 30 to 90 years, from an environmental perspective, the amount of energy which is conserved as the result of not hauling around an extra 200lb to 300Lbs every day would really be quite enormous. And, yes, that is "non polluting" electricity but in reality on a world wide basis, according to the DOE, most of that electricity will still be comming from coal powered utility plants in 2030. Overall, it seems to me that both the energy saving and economics over the lifetime of the batteries is really greatly in favor of LI batteries. Also, if your estimate that these batteries should by useful for a minimum of 30 years, vs lead acid batteries which might last for five years, I wonder if the lead acid batteries are really more environmentally friendly when 6 sets of lead acid batteries will have to be made for every one set of li batteries. Just consdider the amount of coal which must be burned to make six sets vs one. I honestly suspect that the li batteries would be easier on the environment than would the six sets of lead acid.

Just my thoughts. Thanks for alerting me to this opportunity. I own a small position in CBAK.