Elon Musk Sees Tesla’s Batteries Providing Energy Storage for all SolarCity Installations within 10 Years

Once heralded as Europe’s best shot at competing in the global battery industry, Northvolt has filed for bankruptcy in Sweden. This follows its bankruptcy filing in the US last November.

Northvolt’s hopes at securing further investment to support its operations fell through on Wednesday, following the company’s struggles to ramp up production at its gigafactory in Skellefteå, Sweden, beyond one gigawatt-hour despite a planned capacity of 16 GWh. This led BMW to cancel a $2 billion supply contract in June last year.

Plans to integrate cathode and precursor production were also shuttered last year as the company focused its efforts on cell production.

This is a major blow for Europe’s gigafactory ambitions as Northvolt was the largest tier 1 cell producer owned by a European company by announced capacity.

“One potential contribution to Northvolt’s struggles were the broad ambitions across multiple steps of the supply chain, which were difficult to manage for a startup, and remaining homegrown producers in Europe seem to be wary of following that model,” said Evan Hartley, research manager at Benchmark.

What does this mean for Europe?

The Skellefteå gigafactory, known as Northvolt Ett, was Europe’s third largest gigafactory by capacity in 2024, according to Benchmark’s Gigafactory Assessment.

In Europe, Northvolt is also developing Northvolt Drei in Germany with a planned capacity of 60 GWh.

Though Northvolt’s German developments are technically beyond the scope of the bankruptcy filing in Sweden, it is likely confidence in the project will fall and risk of it failing has increased.

Together, Northvolt Ett and Drei contributed 76 GWh to Europe’s pipeline, representing 13% of the region’s tier 1 capacity pipeline for 2030.

Although Europe’s battery pipeline is set to more than double between 2025 and 2030, even without Northvolt’s gigafactories, much of this comes from Asian cell producers.

Without Northvolt’s gigafactories, European cell producers account for 30% of Europe’s 2030 gigafactory pipeline compared to 35% from Chinese producers, according to Benchmark’s Gigafactory Assessment.

The largest tier 1 producers in Europe’s 2030 pipeline are South Korea’s LG Energy Solution and China’s CATL.

“Europe has a maturing battery industry, and has seen impressive investment in LFP battery capacity in the past year, indicating that the region is following trends in advanced markets in Asia,” Hartley said. “However, the majority of that capacity is owned or has involvement from Chinese or South Korean manufacturers, with Northvolt having represented the largest homegrown ambitions.”

A 2.4GW coal plant can store 60d of fuel for about $85m. The electric power than can be produced from this stockpile if supplied in a battery at today’s prices would not cost 10x more, not 100x more, not 1000x more, not 10,000x more but it would cost over $1 trillion or 12,700x more. So batteries will be half price. Oh great, only 6350x more

interesting but could you explain better, simpler, for the oldman i am

Quote from Daniel_G

A 2.4GW coal plant can store 60d of fuel for about $85m. The electric power than can be produced from this stockpile if supplied in a battery at today’s prices would not cost 10x more, not 100x more, not 1000x more, not 10,000x more but it would cost over $1 trillion or 12,700x more. So batteries will be half price. Oh great, only 6350x more

Quote from Daniel_G

A 2.4GW coal plant can store 60d of fuel for about $85m. The electric power than can be produced from this stockpile if supplied in a battery at today’s prices would not cost 10x more, not 100x more, not 1000x more, not 10,000x more but it would cost over $1 trillion or 12,700x more.

I do not see your point. No one uses a battery to store that much energy. That is not the purpose of a battery. All you need is a battery that lasts for as long as the daily excess or deficit lasts. A deficit might come from solar panels at night or in bad weather, or from a nuclear plant that is not quite capable of meeting peak demand, or something like that. It make no sense to talk about a battery that lasts for 60 days. How would it be charged in the first place? What source of charge only works every 60 days?

Daniel_G said that batteries are far more expensive per kilowatt-hour of stored energy than the stored latent energy in coal. That is true, but irrelevant to the economics of energy generation. Batteries are far more expensive measured in energy density compared to gasoline, yet electric cars are cheaper to operate than gasoline models.

The economics of conventional energy generation are complicated. They sometimes seem to be contradictory, or counterintuitive. For example, Diesel generators are more expensive to operate per watt than combined cycle gas turbines, yet they are cheaper for occasional use as peak generators. Because the equipment itself is cheap. For full-time generation they would be far more expensive, because they are inefficient and the fuel is expensive. Coal generation is now far more expensive than it used to be. Not because the fuel has increased in price; it hasn't. The main reasons are:

1. Coal plants have not been built in a long time, because natural gas is now much cheaper. Old plants are more expensive to maintain.
2. Because natural gas is cheaper, and solar is cheaper, coal plants are only run during peak hours when there is not enough gas and solar capacity. They are not worth maintaining at low capacity factors. See: https://ieefa.org/resources/no…-coal-capacity-generation

In other words, the fact that coal become uncompetitive with gas and solar made the price of coal generation go up, even though the generators and fuel themselves did not increase in price.

Quote from Daniel_G

A 2.4GW coal plant can store 60d of fuel for about $85m. The electric power than can be produced from this stockpile if supplied in a battery at today’s prices would not cost 10x more, not 100x more, not 1000x more, not 10,000x more but it would cost over $1 trillion or 12,700x more. So batteries will be half price. Oh great, only 6350x more

Let's look at this another way. Assume this calculation is correct and the latent energy in the coal is 6,350 times cheaper than energy in a battery. So, if you charge and discharge the battery 6,350 times, it costs about the same as coal. Charge and discharge once a day and this takes 17 years. Power company batteries last about 15 years, so they may be marginally more expensive than coal over a lifetime. However, batteries are more flexible and they can be used with many different energy sources. You cannot use solar, wind or excess nuclear power to recharge burned coal. That is, you cannot convert CO2 and ash back into coal using electric power. (You can with trees using photosynthesis.)

This is also one of the reasons electric cars are far cheaper than gasoline models. You use the same batteries over and over, so even though they cost more than gasoline per kilowatt-hour of stored energy, they end up being cheaper. The other reason EV are cheaper is because they are far more energy efficient than gasoline models. You can look at an EV and confirm that. The front of the car has no grill. It does not need a radiator, because there is less waste heat from the motor.

The purpose of a battery is not so much to store energy as to time-shift generation from off-peak to peak hours. You can also do that with pumped storage. Rather than time-shift generation, you can generate peak demand electricity with a "peaking" gas turbine or Diesel generator. In that case you compare the cost of batteries to the gas turbine plus natural gas fuel it uses. Because the turbine is only used at peak hours, the capacity factor is low, and electricity ends up costing $115 to $221 per megawatt hour, compared to $46 to $102 for solar + utility scale battery storage. See:

Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison—Unsubsidized Analysis, p. 2

2023 Levelized Cost Of Energy+

Lazard's latest LCOE shows the continued cost-competitiveness of certain renewable energy technologies, and the marginal cost of coal, nuclear, and…

www.lazard.com

Gas combined cycle is cheapest conventional source of electricity. It still costs more than solar alone (without batteries) or wind. This analysis was from 2023 and the cost of solar has fallen since then. Of course, gas combined cycle has advantages, such as the fact that it works at night and in cloudy weather.

The new nuclear plant in Georgia is far more expensive than shown in this table.

Quote

All you need is a battery that lasts for as long as the daily excess or deficit lasts. A deficit might come from solar panels at night or in bad weather, or from a nuclear plant that is not quite capable of meeting peak demand, or something like that.

The diurnal changes make no problem for wind/photovoltaics: the actual problem are fluctuations of wind/solar energy flux over winter period. I cant imagine how batteries (or whatever else energy storage technology) could address it in feasible, not to say economical way.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

the actual problem are fluctuations of wind/solar energy flux over winter period. I cant imagine how batteries (or whatever else energy storage technology) could address it in feasible, not to say economical way.

Okay, you cannot imagine this, but the cost statistics published by the power companies that are summarized in Lazard shows that they are doing it. Solar and wind are cheaper. They are more economical despite seasonal variations. The unsubsidized costs are lower. That is what the power companies say. You say they are wrong. You say you know better than the experts in charge of spending billions of dollars on generating equipment. I doubt you know more than they do. If you do know this, please cite an authoritative source of industry information such as Lazard, rather than right-wing blowhards.