Battery Reality
Thoughts on "The battery report 2024" Volta Foundation, 25 January 2025 accessed 29Jan2025
I am now a battery expert. That is to say, I feel a whole lot more aware of battery technology than I was before I read, skipped and skimmed through the 500+ slides of The Battery Report 2024 from the Volta Foundation published 25 January 2025.
Slide 6 of the Volta deck is the Industry Summary. It indicates that electric vehicles (EVs) are rapidly gaining in China - although is it an EV “market” in the CCP? Volta tells us that battery energy storage systems (BESS) doubled between 2020 and 2024, and that current BESS capacity world-wide is 150 GW / 363 GWh.
Why are more BESS being installed? After all, they are expensive systems which don’t actually produce electrical energy. I explored that and more, for example, in my Eastern Australia Reality post. There I asked what capacity of BESS could smooth the enormous daily surge of Solar-generated electricity across the National Energy Market (NEM) region, instead of curtailing ever more ‘surplus’ Wind + Solar power.
Since that post there has been a new combined NEM peak Solar day on 21st January 2025. I’ve used that data to illustrate quite how much energy storage might be needed just for Aussie Solar PV, see Figure 1.
Figure 1: Peak Combined Solar (to date) in the NEM States:
I was castigated after my Eastern Australia Reality post for using the Torrens Island BESS as my reference. I was pointed towards the Waratah Super Battery Project in NSW. Having found documentary evidence on this, I’m now happy to use it as my reference real major BESS project:
“The NSW Government, through Energy Corporation of NSW (EnergyCo), proposes to develop the Waratah Super Battery, an 850 megawatt (MW) / 1,680 MW hour (MWh) standby network battery within the landholding of the decommissioned Munmorah Power Station in the Central Coast local government area.”
1,000 million AUS$ (~623 million USD).
And some ‘green jobs’… *up to* 150 during construction, and
*up to* 15 operational jobs [site security, and re-setting circuit-breakers, perhaps?]
AUS$ 66 million per long-term ‘green’ job? Absolute bargain!
Figures 2: the Waratah Super Battery, NSW:
It looks like the Waratah Super Battery isn’t yet operational: I guess it’s currently undergoing commissioning. But Open Electricity’s operating battery assets list already includes it.
I’ve used the Waratah Project capacity and cost numbers in Figure 1 while assuming it will need to restrict its state of charge between 10% minimum and 90% maximum for good battery life. Thus to smooth out the NEM’s maximum combined one-day Solar PV generation to date would require around 120,000 MWh of BESS. That’s about 71 Waratah Super Batteries / ~71 billion AUS $. Not cheap.
Is there that much battery manufacturing capacity world-wide?
Yes, go to Volta Slide 25 and you see as of 2024 there is *capacity* for 2,100 GWh (2,100,000 MWh) of cells… but end-use Demand for 850 GWh (850,000 MWh). Overcapacity is a problem for the industry even within China, which Volta comments has driven cell prices to unsustainably low levels. Slide 58 shows how price per kWh has fallen, Slides 59 and 60 tell how this has been driven by overcapacity.
Slide 69 has the banner headline that “Battery Manufacture Grows Further into the Terawatt-hour per year Era”… but with a sub-heading that 4/5 were EV batteries. So for BESS applications there is approximately 20% of 1,460 GWh ≈ 300,000 MWh. The NEM’s requirement just to smooth Solar of 120,000 MWh is thus about 40% of global annual BESS battery production.
Volta Slides 85-90 show various manufacturing configurations and give indications of the high speeds involved. These have given me a better appreciation of the difficulty / impossibility of eliminating all manufacturing defects, although other slides indicate the increasing rigour of quality controls and standards.
Slide 149 indicates the types of warrantees increasingly being offered.
Slide 150 indicates that 20-foot containers / enclosures are increasingly the standard with 5 to 6.25 MWh storage capacities per container.
Slide 151 indicates the current 6-8 hour duration limit of lithium ion energy storage. Slides 152 and 153 show some alternative technologies for longer duration energy storage, none of which are past ‘early commercial’ market readiness stage.
Slide 154 shows “Major Declines in rate of BESS Safety Incidents” - I would caution against declaring the problem solved based just on the last few years’ experience, but it’s looking hopeful. Slides 155 and 156 shed more light on the improvements.
Slide 167 touches on vehicle to grid (V2G) and its difficulties. Will V2G solve the bulk energy storage problem and put a stop to curtailment? Not any time soon, if this is any indication.
Slide 186 is the beginning of the Safety section.
Slide 192 has root causes of EV ‘thermal events’: 42% are unknown.
Slide 193 indicates 90 EV fires occurred during or shortly after charging.
Slide 193 also states the numbers of EV fires in categories of locations: 117 underground/enclosed (probable higher consequence for wider society); 173 outside & parked; 155 outside and driving (probable higher consequence for occupants); 67 unknown.
The numbers of ‘unknowns’ may indicate the need for better investigations / data capture.
After flicking through 40% of the Volta deck my attention was fading. However, there is a huge amount of useful data in this slide deck, on research areas, chemistries, digitalisation, the use of AI, standardisation, and so on. It can be reached fairly quickly and easily using the indexation provided. For example, some later slides go into the geopolitics of battery production.
Lastly for me, Slide 505 is a useful summary of energy storage density improvements achieved 2021 to 2024:
Energy Storage battery modules: 100 Wh/kg in 2021; 110 Wh/kg in 2024;
EV LFP battery modules: 115 Wh/kg in 2021; 120 Wh/kg in 2024;
EV Ternary1 battery modules: 150 Wh/kg in 2021; 165 Wh/kg in 2024;
etc.
This Volta publication is a treasure-trove for anyone interested in battery reality.
Copyright © 2025 Chris S Bond
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own.
This material is not peer-reviewed.
I am against #GroupThink.
Your feedback via polite factual comments / reasoned arguments welcome.
Post-email edit: corrected “Varta” to “Volta”
Ternary lithium batteries are widely used in various Tesla models and other EV brands as well. They use nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), and manganese (Mn) as cathode materials, hence the name "ternary" lithium battery. Specifically, the cathode material in ternary lithium batteries is a compound known as lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (Li(NiCoMn)O₂).
Thats one hell of comprehensive slide deck!!
Pretty unusual to find so much free information that is so up to date. The picture looks rosy but i still see solid sate batteries are still just round the corner though!