Search

Lithium vs. Lead Acid Batteries: Is the Higher Cost Worth It?

We are an online community created around a smart and easy to access information hub which is focused on providing proven global and local insights about sustainability

26 Aug, 2024

This post was originally published on Power Sonic

When choosing between battery options, a common question arises: “Are lithium batteries worth the higher cost?” At first glance, lithium batteries may appear more expensive than lead acid batteries, especially when comparing batteries with similar capacity ratings. However, when you consider the total cost of ownership and performance advantages, lithium batteries can prove to be a more cost-effective option in the long run. In this blog, we’ll explore why lithium batteries, despite their higher upfront cost, offer superior value and efficiency. 

UNDERSTANDING THE COST DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LITHIUM AND LEAD ACID BATTERIES 

The initial price difference between lead acid and lithium batteries can be misleading when evaluating the true value and long-term benefits of each battery type.  

Key Factors Influencing the True Cost of Ownership 

Lithium batteries offer several benefits that can lead to significant savings over their lifespan: 

  1. Extended Lifespan: Lithium batteries typically last 10 years or more, compared to lead acid batteries’ 3-5 year lifespan. This longer lifespan reduces the frequency of replacements and maintenance, resulting in substantial cost savings over time. 
  1. Extended cycle life: Lithium batteries typically cycle 4000 times or more, compared to lead acid batteries’ 200-400 cycle life – a 10x improvement! When cycling the battery once every day, that is almost 11 years of service vs. just more than one year of useful cycle life. 
  1. Greater Depth of Discharge (DoD): Lithium batteries can be discharged to a much lower level without harming their lifespan. In contrast, lead acid batteries should not be discharged below 50% full to avoid damage. 30% DoD is an ideal cycle for ensuring a lead acid’s long life whereas lithium can be discharged 100%. This allows lithium batteries to provide more usable energy, potentially reducing the need for a larger battery bank. 
  1. Higher Efficiency: Lithium batteries are highly efficient in charging and discharging, with minimal energy wasted as heat. Internal resistance, the natural opposition to electrical current within a battery, causes energy loss as heat. Lithium batteries have lower internal resistance than other types, like lead acid batteries, reducing this energy loss. This also allows for faster charging, resulting in better performance, lower energy costs, and less downtime spent charging. 
  1. Reduced Maintenance: Lithium batteries require minimal maintenance compared to lead acid batteries. They do not require regular electrolyte checks and are less prone to issues like sulfation, which can degrade lead acid batteries. 
  1. Space and Weight Savings: Lithium batteries are lighter and more compact than lead acid batteries, making them ideal for space-constrained applications such as RVs, boats, and electric vehicles. 
Lithium Batteries for Marine and RV

Lower Capacity Lithium Batteries: Real Cost Benefits 

This is where the real cost benefits become evident. Because lithium batteries can be discharged more deeply and operate more efficiently, you don’t need as large of a battery to achieve the same usable capacity as a lead acid battery. This means you can often opt for a lower capacity lithium battery, resulting in a lower initial investment while still benefiting from superior performance and a longer lifespan.  

For example, if you would like a 100Ah system you must buy three 100Ah SLA batteries to ensure you only discharge them about 30% to guarantee a long life. A 100Ah lithium system would require only one 100Ah lithium battery because you can use 100% of the available capacity.

The Financial Impact of Frequent Replacements 

Another crucial factor in the cost comparison is the frequency of replacements. Lead acid batteries typically need to be replaced every 3-5 years. Over a 10-year period, this could mean purchasing and installing two to three sets of lead acid batteries, incurring additional costs for the batteries, labor, and disposal fees. 

In contrast, a lithium battery with a 10-year (or longer) lifespan requires only one purchase within the same period. This reduces replacement frequency and associated costs, making the overall cost of ownership for lithium batteries lower despite their higher initial price. 

Practical Example: Cost Comparison 

Consider an RV owner needing a 200Ah battery bank. A lead acid battery bank of this size might cost $800 and require replacement every 3-4 years. Over a 10-year period, the total cost for lead acid batteries could reach $2,400 due to the need for frequent replacements. 

On the other hand, a single 100Ah lithium battery, priced at well less than $1,000, provides the same usable capacity due to its deeper discharge and efficiency and lasts the full 10 years. The longer lifespan and lower maintenance requirements of lithium batteries offset the higher upfront cost, making them a more economical choice. 

Lithium Battery Bank

Is Investing in Lithium Batteries Worth It? 

While lithium batteries may have a higher initial cost compared to lead acid batteries, their extended lifespan, greater efficiency, and reduced maintenance can lead to significant savings over time. The ability to use a lower capacity lithium battery to achieve the same performance further enhances their cost-effectiveness. 

Ultimately, the choice between lithium and lead acid batteries should be based on your specific needs and usage patterns. However, with their numerous benefits and potential for lower overall costs, lithium batteries often prove to be a worthwhile investment. 

For more insights, visit our blog “The Complete Guide to Lithium vs. Lead Acid Batteries.” 

Pass over the stars to rate this post. Your opinion is always welcome.
[Total: 0 Average: 0]

You may also like…

‘Poisoning the Well’ Authors Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin on PFAS Contamination and Why It ‘Has Not Received the Attention It Deserves’

‘Poisoning the Well’ Authors Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin on PFAS Contamination and Why It ‘Has Not Received the Attention It Deserves’

In the introduction to Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin’s new book, Poisoning The Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, the authors cite an alarming statistic from 2015 that PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are present in the bodies of an estimated 97% of Americans. How did we ever get to this point? Their book is […]
The post ‘Poisoning the Well’ Authors Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin on PFAS Contamination and Why It ‘Has Not Received the Attention It Deserves’ appeared first on EcoWatch.

Turning down the heat: how innovative cooling techniques are tackling the rising costs of AI's energy demands

Turning down the heat: how innovative cooling techniques are tackling the rising costs of AI's energy demands

As enterprises accelerate their AI investments, the energy demand of AI’s power-hungry systems is worrying both the organisations footing the power bills as well as those tasked with supplying reliable electricity. From large language models to digital twins crunching massive datasets to run accurate simulations on complex city systems, AI workloads require a tremendous amount of processing power.

Of course, at the heart of this demand are data centres, which are evolving at breakneck speed to support AI’s growing potential. The International Energy Agency’s AI and Energy Special Report recently predicted that data centre electricity consumption will double by 2030, identifying AI as the most significant driver of this increase.1

The IT leaders examining these staggering predictions are rightly zeroing in on improving the efficiency of these powerful systems. However, the lack of expertise in navigating these intricate systems, combined with the rapidity of innovative developments, is causing heads to spin. Although savvy organisations are baking efficiency considerations into IT projects at the outset, and are looking across the entire AI life cycle for opportunities to minimise impact, many don’t know where to start or are leaving efficiency gains on the table. Most are underutilising the multiple IT efficiency levers that could be pulled to reduce the environmental footprint of their IT, such as using energy-efficient software languages and optimising data use to ensure maximum data efficiency of AI workloads. Among the infrastructure innovations, one of the most exciting advancements we are seeing in data centres is direct liquid cooling (DLC). Because the systems that are running AI workloads are producing more heat, traditional air cooling simply is not enough to keep up with the demands of the superchips in the latest systems.

DLC technology pumps liquid coolants through tubes in direct contact with the processors to dissipate heat and has been proven to keep high-powered AI systems running safely. Switching to DLC has had measurable and transformative impact across multiple environments, showing reductions in cooling power consumption by nearly 90% compared to air cooling in supercomputing systems2.

Thankfully, the benefits of DLC are now also extending beyond supercomputers to reach a broader range of higher-performance servers that support both supercomputing and AI workloads. Shifting DLC from a niche offering to a more mainstream option available across more compute systems is enabling more organisations to tap into the efficiency gains made possible by DLC, which in some cases has been shown to deliver up to 65% in annual power savings3. Combining this kind of cooling innovation with new and improved power-use monitoring tools, able report highly accurate and timely insights, is becoming critical for IT teams wanting to optimise their energy use. All this is a welcome evolution for organisations grappling with rising energy costs and that are carefully considering total cost of ownership (TCO) of their IT systems, and is an area of innovation to watch in the coming years.

In Australia, this kind of technical innovation is especially timely. In March 2024, the Australian Senate established the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence to examine the opportunities and impacts of AI technologies4. Among its findings and expert submissions was a clear concern about the energy intensity of AI infrastructure. The committee concluded that the Australian Government legislate for increased regulatory clarity, greater energy efficiency standards, and increased investment in renewable energy solutions. For AI sustainability to succeed, it must be driven by policy to set actionable standards, which then fuel innovative solutions.

Infrastructure solutions like DLC will play a critical role in making this possible — not just in reducing emissions and addressing the energy consumption challenge, but also in supporting the long-term viability of AI development across sectors. We’re already seeing this approach succeed in the real world. For example, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia has adopted DLC technology to support its demanding research workloads and, in doing so, has significantly reduced energy consumption while maintaining the high performance required for AI and scientific computing. It’s a powerful example of how AI data centres can scale sustainably — and telegraphs an actionable blueprint for others to follow.

Furthermore, industry leaders are shifting how they handle the heat generated by these large computing systems in order to drive further efficiency in AI. Successfully using heat from data centres for other uses will be a vital component to mitigating both overall energy security risks and the efficiency challenges that AI introduces. Data centres are being redesigned to capture by-product heat and use it as a valuable resource, rather than dispose of it as waste heat. Several industries are already benefiting from capturing data centre heat, such as in agriculture for greenhouses, or heating buildings in healthcare and residential facilities. This has been successfully implemented in the UK with the Isambard-AI supercomputer and in Finland with the LUMI supercomputer — setting the bar for AI sustainability best practice globally.

The message is clear: as AI becomes a bigger part of digital transformation projects, so too must the consideration for resource-efficient solutions grow. AI sustainability considerations must be factored into each stage of the AI life cycle, with solutions like DLC playing a part in in a multifaceted IT sustainability blueprint.

By working together with governments to set effective and actionable environmental frameworks and benchmarks, we can encourage the growth and evolution of the AI industry, spurring dynamic innovation in solutions and data centre design for the benefit of all.

1. AI is set to drive surging electricity demand from data centres while offering the potential to transform how the energy sector works – News – IEA
2. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/blog-post/2024/08/liquid-cooling-a-cool-approach-for-ai.html
3. HPE introduces next-generation ProLiant servers engineered for advanced security, AI automation and greater performance
4. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Adopting_Artificial_Intelligence_AI

Image credit: iStock.com/Dragon Claws

0 Comments