I've heard good things about NorthStar batteries, and I've used the Trojan "carbon infused" batteries but I wasn't that impressed. Sure, they worked a lot better, but they still don't hold a candle to Lithium chemistry. And carbon infused lead batteries are a lot more expensive so that cancels out any cost advantage they might offer.
The problem with lead chemistry is not it's capacity to store energy, it actually provides a pretty good value for that. The problem is you lose your ass putting the energy in and taking it out, especially if you want to do it in a hurry. If you have a system where you can charge slowly and only do low current draws with low depth of discharge, you could have argued that lead was a better value than lithium until recently. But now that you can buy a ready to use kWhr of lithium storage capacity for $250, lead has just about lost any price advantage it had and once it hit's $150/kWhr it will pretty much be game over for the lead battery industry. I don't think lead will ever completely be dead but it will soon be relegated to only very specialized applications imo.
I'm on a cruise right now running my new lithium batteries hard for the first time and I can state UNEQUIVELENTLY they are definitely in another league than ANY lead batteries I've ever used or heard of and I've cruised the Arc over 5000 miles using various lead batteries over the last 12 years. As a long time holdout for using lead acid chemistry, I have to agree with Elon Musk now when he said, "lead sucks".
You can still debate the cost benefit ratio of lead for some specialty applications but comparing the performance of lead to lithium is like comparing little league baseball to the major league. Lithium is that much better, imo.
Capt. Carter
www.shipofimagination.com
On Saturday, December 10, 2022 at 06:57:55 AM EST, F. Neil <fneilss@gmail.com> wrote:
At >60 pounds per kWh, and limited 50% depth of discharge (for maximum lifespan), these Northstar carbon lead batteries are not really in the same class as Lifepo4 batteries for applications where energy density is an issue...
No comments:
Post a Comment