The Lithium Battery is going to change the Energy Storage Solutions

The Lithium Battery is going to change the Energy Storage Solutions. The Latest Lithium battery Technology will change the paradigm of storage solutions in the long run as today, people are using different types of Lead Acid batteries for storage: SMF, Tubular or Gel based tubular or SMF technologies, with many challenges and limitations.

The first limitation is cycle life, as Lead Acid based batteries cannot match the Cycle life of a Lithium battery. In literal terms, various parameters define the Lead Acid battery life. One of them is refilling of battery water which is a big challenge for the user as they are not able to fill the water in time and what kind of water they are supposed to fill is another challenge as they fill with any RO water or normal water which destroys even the normal cycle life. The Gel battery has the challenge of higher temperatures, so the performance goes down if the temperature is higher than a certain defined value.https://www.siemens.com/in/en/products/buildingtechnologies/fire-safety/applications/li-ion-battery-storage-system.html#:~:text=Li%2Dion%20battery%20storage%20systems,significant%20financial%20impact%20on%20organizations.

Whereas Lithium battery is a very stable technology that has been proven for almost two decades now, specially LifePO4, which is a very well-accepted technology and the cycle life varies on the good BMS, which regulates proper charging and discharging so that battery is minimal heating inside than we can get anywhere between 1500 to 4000 cycles. In contrast, Lead Acid cannot perform more than 400-500 cycles. So clear edge in terms of cycle life.

Another important factor is capacity at different discharge levels. So Lead Acid batteries are generally designed at C20 design, which means you can discharge 5% of the battery, then only you will get the rated capacity. This is also unavailable as making Lead Acid is crude, and consistent power is challenging. If you discharge at the 50% rating of the battery, generally speaking, it gives you 50% of its rated capacity. Lithium is a C1 battery, so the capacity remains 100% at any load. This is a big difference when we use these batteries for storage purposes like inverters, UPS, and Solar solutions; the Lead Acid backup time can’t match the Lithium battery pack.

Another major challenge is the cell balancing option available in the Lithium battery pack in the BMS. One reason is that battery life can be achieved as a Lead Acid battery has six cells that cannot be balanced as there is no provision inside the battery. If we need to operate higher DC voltages, then we need the balancing between the batteries, and that’s also not done by the user. So if we need to put 120 V DC, then we need 10 Lead Acid batteries, which take up a big space and can’t be balanced with each other internal cells of each battery pack, which is also impossible. The connecting wires take a longer route which becomes another challenge as each battery takes its own space, and we need to keep them at a distance which creates wire losses.https://suvastika.com/products/lifepo4-based-lithium-battery/ 

Whereas Lithium is a single pack and one-fourth of the size of the Lead Acid battery bank size. So there are hardly any losses between the battery cells, which keeps minimum losses, and cell balancing for each cell is balanced through the BMS. So, in the end, it can be concluded that there is no comparison between Lead Acid batteries and Lithium batteries. There will be a revolution in the industry in the next five years, and Lead Acid will be out of business in the storage business.