[chii]

The question is whether such battery's charge/discharge cycle degrade faster than the return on investment.

For home use, break-even is an acceptable outcome, but not for commercial use like above. Is the price of battery low enough atm to make a return for such an investment?

[audunw]

At this point I think you have to take into account battery recycling.

If you build a big battery storage system now, by the time it's fully degraded, battery recycling will be a massive and streamlined operation. Given the number of energy storage systems built today you'll have massive quantities of similar and easy-to-recycle cells going to these recycling operations.

So if you're a big grid operator you'll probably be looking at making a streamlined and efficient loop out of getting your old cells recycled and making new cells out of that material. The cost for the replacement storage system will be much lower, and given improvements in cell chemistries, the storage capacity will likely be higher.

Then again, it's possible that grid energy operators will transition to low energy density but cheap and durable chemistries, like Ambri's molten metal batteries.. which essentially last forever.

[epistasis]

These are all grid investments. About half of the storage is being installed in Texas, which is the closest thing the US has to an open market for investors.

The storage being installed in Texas is all being done purely for profit. Meaning that the investors have run the numbers and find batteries to be the highest return they think they can get for their money.

Storage in other places (specifically California) is being driven both by the profit motive, but also in some cases by legislation that mandates storage (not specifically batteries) be added as part of the grid mix. California has enough solar now that nearly all new installations include storage, in order to profit during the peak evening hours when electricity prices are highest.

[Retric]

It’s currently possible for batteries to be a great investment, but diminishing returns hit hard. The most cost efficient setup is a solar farm where the panels produce DC which directly charges the batteries and the losses from DC>AC conversion only happens once before you send power to the grid. With the added benefit of only paying for a single set of DC>AC equipment.

However, the more such systems come online the less peaking power is worth and batteries aren’t competitive with current ultra low nighttime rates.