The Aussie Battery Industry Just Fell Off A Cliff - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 12:08:33 pm
content: I've heard that the aussie battery storage industry has just dropped off a cliff. Sales have dropped to near zero.The government battery rebate doesn't start until July (if it does, election win & promise pending), so people are holding off.And the Chinese companies are dumping stock onto the aussie market at below cost because of the US tariffs, so the aussie battery companies are really hurting.Installers are getting laid off because there is no installation work.Peter (@42ohms on X) from AERL (the one I installed) is willing to do some insane deals right now if aussies are interested in supporting aussie battery companies.

author: sandalcandal
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 02:17:56 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 25, 2025, 12:08:33 pmThat's interesting, kind of like an Osborne effect but with people holding their cash for the battery subsidies to kick off.Normally companies with healthy balance books and not running on thin cash flows could weather this and take advantage of the boom once subsidies start but we also have stock dumping from China due to the US Tariffs.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 06:37:16 pm
content: These things come in cycles. It was to be expected. Those who truly want a battery will buy it as soon as prices and availability are OK enough. Once they have it, what then? Supply of those people dry out in a year or so. To make sustained business selling batteries, you should sell one to significant % of population, and for that to happen, these distributed household batteries should make financial sense first, which they really don't very much.The key to business survival is at very least not to expect sustained sales (even less expect sustainedgrowth); put money in pockets while it lasts, and avoid making megalomaniac investments. Bonus points if you can predict the next big thing (or at least react to it quickly, not among the last).We got extension to our battery craze by using them for frequency containment reserve markets. Except the companies who sold the FCR batteries have failed to deliver a working product and get authorization to run it. They have promised for a year now, and slowly paying back the moneys they got selling them as compensation, while expensive battery and inverter tech soon grows mold at people's homes.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 08:17:15 pm
content: Trump said a few days go that he and the Chinese are now talking and that he would consider reducing the tariffs on Chinese products so your glut of Chinese made products may not last very long so you might want to buy while the availability is high and the prices are cheap.In the mean time,allof the American importers of cheap Chinese goodies (Wallmart, Target, HD, HF and just about everyone else) are howling like a pack of mad dogs!

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 10:07:45 pm
content: Quote from: sandalcandal on April 25, 2025, 02:17:56 pmYes, norning you'd be able to survivie a few months, but the impact of the cheap dumped batteries puts the writing on the wall if you are a local manufacturer.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 10:13:17 pm
content: In one of the other threads on here and that is also talking about the tariffs someone said that the UK and other European countries are already adopting anti-dumping legislation to prevent to Chinese from dumping their previously US bound products in Europe in order to protect their local manufacturing.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 25, 2025, 10:16:28 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on April 25, 2025, 06:37:16 pmIn this case "financial sense" = government subsidy.Same thing happened with solar and why Australia has the largest uptake of home solar in th world. it's not because it actually made financial sense, it's because the massive sustained government subsidies on solar.The same thing is about to happen with batteries, it's a $3BN election promise at our federal election in a few weeks.QuoteUnfortnately at some point you have to take a risk on spending capital on ramping up volume to get decent pricing etc. And if you time it wong, or an unexpected market change happens, or bad luck or whatever, then your business can come-a-gutsa.Even my tiny business has to expend six figures to buy thousands of meters at a time. If sales suddenly dried up for some reason then I'm in trouble. At one point I didn't have the cash flow to keep paying myself wages as it all went into stock, it's a gamble.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2025, 06:50:28 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 25, 2025, 10:16:28 pmThis is the worst that can happen. We were lucky to not have subsidies for neither consumer PV nor batteries, and thus the market has been healthier.But finally, subsidies just go directly into the pockets of sales companies and do not lower the final consume price, so don't affect the feasibility for customer.Consumer energy tech investments are near 100% emotionally driven, those who want the stuff will want them no matter what, and they want to hear lies about earnings or savings from the salesmen because they are committed to buy anyway. Once we accept that and forget about the idea of huge savings, we can still choose to get this tech as a lot of it totally makes sense.Batteries specifically, though, have a big risk of sitting underutilized at people's homes, which is horrible waste of precious resources. I'm proud of us getting nearly 700 batteries (totaling to 5MWh or so) under control and participating into decreasing consumer's energy bills through day-ahead/spot market variations, but I'm sure there are still at least 1000 batteries sitting unused doing their own PV-timeshift which, at least in Finland, is total waste.PV has somewhat less risk of being seriously underutilized, that would happen when it's installed in shady locations (because consumerwantsPV no matter what, or salesmen lie about it producing even in shade), or when people prevent exporting completely due to poor politics.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 26, 2025, 09:41:12 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on April 26, 2025, 06:50:28 amYes, if the taxpayer is paying for it (or for some of it) then it should be mandatory to have the battery under the control of the grid operator.Don't want them dicking around with your battery, pay 100% for it yourself.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 12:04:30 pm
content: IMHO batteries are better utilised as large scale grid storage systems due to better economy of scale. Something else to keep in mind is that solid state batteries are around the corner and those should drive the costs down massively. Maybe the commercial parties are waiting for that to happen before going all out installing massive grid scale buffers. If you just bought a home storage battery with the current Lithium technology, there is no way it will pay for itself if payback needs to come from automated day trading betting prices go negative.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 04:59:35 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 25, 2025, 12:08:33 pmIt seems to me that thesmartthing to do would for the Aussie GOV to drop the rebates and also toletthe Chinese dump their excess batteries on the Aussie market. Aussies would get the benefit of cheaper battery prices and the GOV wouldn't have to pay for it. In fact they would make some money from the sale taxes. So it would all look like Win - Win - Win for Australia.But we all know that that's not how governments operate.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 05:46:47 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 27, 2025, 12:04:30 pmDo you know what "solid state" battery even means? Even if it realizes, it has not much potential to drive costs down. Cost of electrolyte is minuscule part of total cost of battery and even if you found a magical new solid electrolyte which grows in trees free of cost and injects itself into the batteries free of cost, it won't affect the cost of batteries much. The discussion of "solid state" batteries are in hopes of having some better characteristics (ESR/max current ratings, safety...) more than cost.The cost of the batteries come mainly from both anode and cathode materials, material processing and manufacturing. It's already pretty well cost-optimized, with chemistries like LFP all "expensive" stuff (like nickel) removed.But even such mundane things as copper (used in current collectors) and carbon (used in the anode) form significant part of material costs. Solid vs. wet electrolyte is totally irrelevant here.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 05:57:20 pm
content: From what I've read in several articles is that the capacity for solid state Lithium batteries is supposed to increase 5 times per unit of weight compared to current 'wet' Lithium based batteries. Since prices for mass produced items can be roughly expressed as energy consumption per weight, the cost per capacity should go down considerably.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:07:03 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 27, 2025, 12:04:30 pmYeah, at consumer homes cost of sales and install are just huge per kWh or kW.But we have recognized there could be potential at commercial / light industrial sites, in other words, in 100-200kWh / 50-100 kW size. I mean, if a 10kWh battery+inverter costs 10000€ for a consumer, a 100kWh battery+inverter won't cost 100000€, but something like 30-40000€ instead, approaching similar pricing to large scale grid sites per kWh: the economy of scales is there already in this mid-size class.Compared to dedicated grid storage units, light industrial sites have the advantage of having self-use of energy, and non-zero electricity transport/grid operator costs. Batteries can be used to optimize these costs, giving cost reductions to their bills. And taxes are part of these bills, so you are now paying less taxes! Compare this to a dedicated grid storage unit with the only purpose of storing energy. They don't have self-consumption. They can negotiate very low grid operator costs and maybe arrange low taxes, but can't all the way to zero, even less <0 cost / negative tax (unless getting subsidies, but that's a different story). Compare this to consumers, commercial and industrial customers for which battery can directly reduce their bills.Then again, dedicated energy storage units, as you say, and you are totally right, have the best possible economy of scales, and due to their sheer size, reliability and controllability will be offered to most diverse set of markets (there aredozens: think about day-ahead energy, intraday energy, local grid, energy reserves, frequency containment/restoration reserves ...) in complex multi-market optimizations, maximizing the utilization of investment.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:09:12 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 27, 2025, 05:57:20 pmYou have read bullshit. I'm sorry. Probably some charlatan / conman stuff. A lot of that is in the field of batteries. We would need totally different cathode/anode materials to achieve such breakthroughs. Not saying it would never happen, breakthroughs sometimes do happen, but there really isn't anything around the corner we know about, so chances that something pops up and is commercialized quickly are slim, it's likely a slower process.Li-ion in itself could be called a breakthrough over earlier battery technologies like, say, NiMH, but even that took 15-20 years to exceed the energy density of NiMH by more than 2x.(I'm pretty sure we'll never see these "several articles" cited.)

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:20:59 pm
content: For starters:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_batteryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_batteryBut I'll take your word for it if it is BS. Still, the people maintaining the Wikipedia pages are not easely convinced and require information to be carefully checked and therefore both articles have a long list of references backing the information presented.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:34:59 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 27, 2025, 06:20:59 pmSorry, can't find any reference of the 5x energy density claimLithium metal batteries have been demostrated with something like 2-3x the energy density of current li-ion in lab experiments, but I would not hold my breath waiting for them.In any case, I don't see the relevance of energy density, as your original claim was about price per kWh, which is way more interesting for grid storage than energy density.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:40:30 pm
content: It says right there with the specific energy (Wh/kg). If you ever tried to change something on Wikipedia you'd know how utterly difficult that is without solid references. Those people are far worse in that respect than the people on this forum! So yes, I value / trust the information presented on Wikipedia as there is a decent fact checking process in place. Lower price per kWh stems from needing less materials and thus less energy to process those materials. This is a universal rule of thumb for mass production.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:44:04 pm
content: You mean the 900Wh/kg number? It's indeed 3x (not 5x) the current li-ion, but funnily, it lacks the reference! I would be very interested to see it.But this sometimes happens with Wikipedia. Others then add "Citation needed" remarks, and non-referenced stuff eventually gets deleted, but that might take years. I suggest you actually check the references instead of trusting that because on the Wikipedia "someone surely checked".You are probably overestimating the quality of Wikipedia. A few years ago I spent half a day cleaning up thehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_batteryarticle which had huge amount of blatantly false information completely non-referenced. It's much better today.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:48:37 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on April 27, 2025, 06:44:04 pmTrue, but compared to LFP which seems to be the sweet spot for Li-ion batteries nowadays due to cost and material availability, solid state is touted to be much better (300-900 versus 90-160). Ofcourse these are very rough numbers and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. IMHO it is fair to compare to LFP as this seems to be the mainstream chemistry instead of looking at nickel / cobalt based Li-ion chemistries with their resource issues.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 06:55:29 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 27, 2025, 06:48:37 pmThat 900Wh/kg is just some handwaving. I added "citation needed" to it, thanks for bringing this into attention. The only cited numbers of actual existing prototypes of lithium metal rechargeable batteries (that are far enough for field testing) are around 400Wh/kg.Sorry I was thrown off by your use of "Solid state battery" to mean lithium metal battery. As I said above, new anode and cathode materials have theoretically large potentials to energy density and cost breakthrough. But there is long way from throwing around numbers to having an actual working product. Those who said that significantly cheaper battery which has 5x the energy density is just around the corner are conmen.

author: UnijunctionTransistor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 07:22:52 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on April 26, 2025, 06:50:28 amOr are installed in the wrong location. My neighbor has a roof facing east and that is where they installed the panels. Misses all the afternoon sun.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 27, 2025, 07:30:50 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on April 27, 2025, 06:07:03 pmCurrently doing my homework for a new home battery. Prices are much,muchlower if you look around a bit...

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2025, 07:03:41 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 27, 2025, 12:04:30 pmBatteries are easier to install than distribution and in some countries, ie. Netherlands, distribution is a huge bottleneck not quickly fixed.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2025, 10:52:33 am
content: Quote from: Marco on April 28, 2025, 07:03:41 pmDon't think so. The bottlenecks are mainly due to (worst case) peak loads and the requirement the grid should stay operational at all times. Some companies can obtain connections IF they only use electricity during off-peak hours. Batteries can help to smear those peak loads over time and thus improve the situation. But they'll need to be installed in a place where the batteries help the most.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2025, 06:02:52 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 29, 2025, 10:52:33 amWith batteries you can design it to be near 100% certain the peak load upstream will not get worse. The power companies wouldn't even need to do much except offer a new contract and install a remote switch at the MV transformer. An "absolutely no power during winter peak hours" contract, then let the builder figure it out. Half a year or more delay can pay for a lot of batteries.

author: manicdoc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 09, 2025, 01:37:44 am
content: Ah. This explains why I cannot find anyone interested in doing an install with Victron MultiPlus-II GX charger/inverter with LV Flex 5 batteries (or akin). I'm looking to do the charge/discharge control based on local demand and cost/benefit projections - do not trust some remote 3rd party to get this right given I have the control to shed/time shift several loads if advantageous.If anyone is able to do this in Sydney and willing to work with a techie owner - give me their details please.