Over 90% of newly installed energy storage worldwide are paired with Lithium batteries, even though the cost of the lithium batteries is much higher than the that of Lead Acid batteries. Why do developers, investors and utilities prefer Lithium over Lead Acid? The answer is simple, it delivers much more cycles and costs substantially less over its life span.
Our engineers have studies and tested Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP or LiFePO4), Lithium Ion (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt) and Lithium Polymer (LiPo), Flood Lead Acid, AGM and Nickel Iron batteries. We compared their round-trip efficiency, life cycles, total energy throughput and cost per kWh.
What’s Battery Energy throughout? It is the total amount of energy a battery can be expected to store and deliver over its lifetime. How to calculate this energy amount? The Energy Throughput is equal to Nominal Capacity x Round-trip Efficiency x Depth of Discharge x Battery Cycle Life. For example, A Fortress LFP-10 has a normal capacity of 10.2 kWh and an exceptional roundtrip efficiency of 98%. We guarantee 6000 cycles at 80% of Depth of Discharge (DoD). The total energy throughput you can obtain from the LFP-10 will be 47 MWH. As a contrast, a 10 kWh AGM battery can only deliver 3.5 MWH total energy, less than 1/10 of the LFP battery.
The Fortress LFP-10 is priced at $ 6,900 to a homeowner. As a result, the energy cost of the LFP-10 is around $ 0.14/kWh ($ 6900/47MWH = $ 0.14/kWh). While a 10 kWh AGM’s energy cost is $ 0.57/kWh, 3.5 times more!
Using the same method, the energy cost of Lithium Ion batteries (such as Tesla, LG Chem, Panasonic) is around $ 0.30/kWh.
If you have any questions or need any further information, please email us at [email protected] or Call us at (877) 497 6937.
