ou often hear about new and better battery technologies that are coming on to the market and we often get asked should people wait for these better technologies.
We advise against this for several reasons;
- we need to act now to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, not tomorrow or when a better technology becomes available,
- any new battery technology takes 5 to 10 years to becoming proven and commercially viable,
- many great battery technologies have failed when they have been used in real life applications,
- there is no guarantee that current technologies will get cheaper, in fact due to resource limitations and new government regulations regarding safety and recyclability, it is highly likely current technologies will increase in cost substantially,
- although early adopters tend to pay a premium price for their equipment the amounts, they save in energy costs often make up for more than any reduced costs in equipment.
There are new technologies coming out all the time and in the next few years some of them are likely to become available for commercial use. However, these are unlikely to be lithium-based batteries. More and more issues are becoming widely known about the difficulties being experienced with lithium-ion batteries, from fires, to lack of recyclability, to less available resources which is resulting in resources being more expensive, to issues with insuring battery installations.