Why the future of storage belongs to lithium-ion polymer batteries

 Now a days Battery breakthrough for electric cars.

Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the electric vehicle market, but today’s lithium-ion batteries fall short of what’s needed — they’re too heavy, too expensive and take too long to charge.

For decades, researchers have tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, which hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.

 

Electricity storage is both complicated and expensive. Electricity has to be converted into another form of energy then converted back into electrical energy before it can be reused. Scientists have been trying to crack the electricity storage code for over 150 years now. Despite their efforts, the two main storage technologies employed today: lead-acid batteries (invented in 1859) and pumped hydro storage (first pumped storage station was opened in Switzerland in 1909) have been around for over a century! The good news is that we have another storage technology in lithium-ion batteries which can outdo both of these technologies, and it is only 25 years old!

Lithium ion batteries were first intoduced to the market by Sony in 1991. Excellent technical progress has since been made with the latest lithium-ion batteries typically now containing 3x the energy of those first batteries. Moreover, costs have collapsed particularly over the last five years during which pack prices have fallen from $1,300 per kWh in 2011 to below $250/kWh today, noting that General Motors is buying batteries from LG Chem for the all electric Chevy Bolt at an amazingly low price of $147/kWh!

Further technology improvements our coming our way as well as a clear cost roadmap towards $100/KWh by 2020. At these levels, lithium-ion will play a massively important role in our lives. Not only will it be used to power the mass of digital devices that make up our modern digital lives but increasingly lithium-ion will become the gold standard for rechargeable batteries. The pocket rechargeable batteries which we currently use, nickel-cadmium (NiCd) and nickel-metal-hydride (NiMh) batteries, will become a think of the past. In fact, nickel-cadmium has already had its day, mainly due to environmental concerns around the use of cadmium. And nickel-cadmium will increasingly be replaced by a similarly priced but more powerful lithium-ion.