The most interesting thing is the low levelized cost of storage offered by this new unit:
At the heart of HaoHan is BYD’s self-developed 2,710 Ah Blade Battery cell, which the company claims is the largest energy storage cell in the world. This next-generation cell delivers three times the capacity of conventional storage batteries, boasts a cycle life of over 10,000 cycles, and reduces the total lifecycle cost per kilowatt-hour to below CNY 0.1 ($0.014) – a milestone that could reshape the economics of large-scale storage.
At 1.4 cents per kilowatt hour to store, that actually puts storage cost below generation cost for solar power. In sunny regions solar without storage has been cheaper than fossil generation for a few years now, but with batteries like these it's going to be cheaper than fossils for overnight usage too.
The other exciting thing is that while this is a Chinese product, we can expect similar cost drops outside of China over time. Today's non-Chinese solar cells are about where Chinese solar cell prices were 5-9 years ago. China gets the low prices first, but global manufacturing costs keep dropping too because the lower costs are driven more by technological improvements than by China-specific factors like inexpensive labor or lax environmental standards.
Ah, but you see, battery storage is ackshully impossible, we must have nukular, clean, beautiful coal instead of golf course destroying wind mills and solar.
>but with batteries like these it's going to be cheaper than fossils for overnight usage too.
1200eur bought me a reasonable LiPo solar 'buffer battery' for evenings, and ROI is maybe 3 years vs buying fosil fuel electrons at peak tarif. Plus savings from being able to drop the fixed ~70% of my bill grid connection charge.
Anyway, exciting to see that I might soon be able to afford enough storage for cloudy days too. Thanks for the extra details, sounds too good to be true.
Using the 3.7V nominal voltage for a lithium cell, that puts the Blade Battery at 10kWh - I think the price provided is for over the entire life of the battery which works out to 10000x10kWh*$0.014/10kWh, which is $140 per kWh. Not expensive, but not particularly remarkable considering modern pack prices.
That calculation doesn't make any sense. I mean you both multiply and divide by 10kWh, so those cancel out and you end up with just $ (not "per" anything).
What's that supposed to be the price of?
I guess if you have 10,000 cycles and one kWh costs $0.014, then that's just the cost of 10,000 kWh.
Since these are so small, we could augment the last neighborhood level transformers with these and upgrade the local grid. Home solar could charge into these, we really could do peak shaving at the local level.
The other use would be for data centers to buy when power is cheap and shave their peaks as well.
>Beyond raw performance, the GC Flux PCS features advanced grid-forming capabilities, making it ideal for modern grid applications. It supports active inertia response up to 25 seconds, wide-band damping across 1–1500 Hz, and ultra-fast voltage and frequency regulation in under 100 milliseconds
I wonder what active inertia response is and why it is limited to 25 seconds.
The normal rotating machines have inertia, stored rotational kinetic energy, so when electrical load is added and mechanical power in does not immediately change they new load is fed by the generator very slightly
Slowing down and measured by a decreasing frequency.
How would active inertia be different from the inverter simply putting out more power when frequency drops?
Outputting more power when frequency drops is exactly what their active inertia system does, its a feature of the inverter/ battery EMS system. I think there was a communication issue between engineering and the marketing/PR team, as there often is in large companies.
The most interesting thing is the low levelized cost of storage offered by this new unit:
At the heart of HaoHan is BYD’s self-developed 2,710 Ah Blade Battery cell, which the company claims is the largest energy storage cell in the world. This next-generation cell delivers three times the capacity of conventional storage batteries, boasts a cycle life of over 10,000 cycles, and reduces the total lifecycle cost per kilowatt-hour to below CNY 0.1 ($0.014) – a milestone that could reshape the economics of large-scale storage.
At 1.4 cents per kilowatt hour to store, that actually puts storage cost below generation cost for solar power. In sunny regions solar without storage has been cheaper than fossil generation for a few years now, but with batteries like these it's going to be cheaper than fossils for overnight usage too.
The other exciting thing is that while this is a Chinese product, we can expect similar cost drops outside of China over time. Today's non-Chinese solar cells are about where Chinese solar cell prices were 5-9 years ago. China gets the low prices first, but global manufacturing costs keep dropping too because the lower costs are driven more by technological improvements than by China-specific factors like inexpensive labor or lax environmental standards.
These prices keep falling faster than the graphs can get updated, which is quite humorous imho.
https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-pric...
https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-...
https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy25osti/93281.pdf
https://about.bnef.com/insights/commodities/lithium-ion-batt...
Ah, but you see, battery storage is ackshully impossible, we must have nukular, clean, beautiful coal instead of golf course destroying wind mills and solar.
I see you've visited an energy discussion thread on HN before.
Thought I'd save three commenters the trouble. Although now we are kind of spoiling that.
>but with batteries like these it's going to be cheaper than fossils for overnight usage too.
1200eur bought me a reasonable LiPo solar 'buffer battery' for evenings, and ROI is maybe 3 years vs buying fosil fuel electrons at peak tarif. Plus savings from being able to drop the fixed ~70% of my bill grid connection charge.
Anyway, exciting to see that I might soon be able to afford enough storage for cloudy days too. Thanks for the extra details, sounds too good to be true.
Using the 3.7V nominal voltage for a lithium cell, that puts the Blade Battery at 10kWh - I think the price provided is for over the entire life of the battery which works out to 10000x10kWh*$0.014/10kWh, which is $140 per kWh. Not expensive, but not particularly remarkable considering modern pack prices.
That calculation doesn't make any sense. I mean you both multiply and divide by 10kWh, so those cancel out and you end up with just $ (not "per" anything).
What's that supposed to be the price of?
I guess if you have 10,000 cycles and one kWh costs $0.014, then that's just the cost of 10,000 kWh.
I calculated the cost of the pack from the data at $140 for 1kWh. I guess I shouldn't have included the kWh in the divisor but
(10000x3.7V2710Ah$0.014) <- total cost of the pack
/
10 <- normalize to 1kWh
=
$140
This makes more sense than battery costs dropping 99%. I was confused by op, and wish it were true. It’s more like 10x solar than 1/10th solar.
Awesome article!
Since these are so small, we could augment the last neighborhood level transformers with these and upgrade the local grid. Home solar could charge into these, we really could do peak shaving at the local level.
The other use would be for data centers to buy when power is cheap and shave their peaks as well.
I am very bullish on utility scale batteries.
>Beyond raw performance, the GC Flux PCS features advanced grid-forming capabilities, making it ideal for modern grid applications. It supports active inertia response up to 25 seconds, wide-band damping across 1–1500 Hz, and ultra-fast voltage and frequency regulation in under 100 milliseconds
I wonder what active inertia response is and why it is limited to 25 seconds.
The normal rotating machines have inertia, stored rotational kinetic energy, so when electrical load is added and mechanical power in does not immediately change they new load is fed by the generator very slightly Slowing down and measured by a decreasing frequency.
How would active inertia be different from the inverter simply putting out more power when frequency drops?
Outputting more power when frequency drops is exactly what their active inertia system does, its a feature of the inverter/ battery EMS system. I think there was a communication issue between engineering and the marketing/PR team, as there often is in large companies.