Battery Storage - Lifespan and Replacement

[marmott2334]

HI All,

I have PV panels which were installed in 2014.

I am considering installing battery storage, but I have a number of questions......

 

What is the life span of the batteries? I have been quoted LPF batteries.

Are these batteries recyclable? 

What would the cost of having these batteries replaced be? I know it is a difficult question to answer as it would be at least 10-15 years from now, but I am just wondering if the replacement cost of the batteries would be similar to the initial cost? 

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, marmott2334 said:

...

What is the life span of the batteries? I have been quoted LPF batteries.
..

 

Welcome.

Life-span? What have the manufacturers / installer claimed the life-span to be ? 

[Bancroft]

1 hour ago, marmott2334 said:

What is the life span of the batteries?

Car EV batteries are generally said to decay by 1% per year so I would have thought that would be a good figure to start with.

 

Recycling?  I asked this question to a friend who is in the EV car world and he said yes.  There is a cascade of ways they get re-used (eg they go from car to static storage, then to less important storage facilities etc until finally broken apart for parts) and I imagine that the options for re-use and re-cycling is only going to grow.

 

Costs generally seem to be coming down - at the same time as efficiency is going up.  So the chances are in the future you'll probably pay the same cost but have something 2-3 times more efficient.

[Nickfromwales]

Solarwatt are offering a guaranteed 80% minimum capacity at year 12. About as good as it gets. 
Also, afaik, they’re the same cells that they’re using in the cars (Solarwatt is owned by the folk who own BMW) so should be very robust.

Any manufacturer should have a statement for recycling / end of life practices etc so just ask whoever you decide to go with for their info / policies. 

[SteamyTea]

34 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Solarwatt are offering a guaranteed 80% minimum capacity at year 12. About as good as it gets. 

Is there any mention of charge/discharge percentage and the total number of cycles?

[Nickfromwales]

53 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Is there any mention of charge/discharge percentage and the total number of cycles?

Unlimited throughput, rest of info I will try and link in a bit  I've got the bumf just need to find it in the mountain of emails I have!

[JohnMo]

3 hours ago, marmott2334 said:

What is the life span of the batteries? 

Really depends on how many times you cycle the battery, if charge and discharge 3 times a day, the batteries likely to last 1/3 as long compared to a battery charged discharged once a day.

 

Laptop and phone start off great, the longer you keep them, the worse they get for battery life. No

 

You really need to assess your life style, energy and usage patterns. A battery makes great use of excess PV and it's great for any time of use tariff.

 

We are on just E7 and our average cost per kWh in March and April was 5p. So based on our usage we save £150 by having battery and PV in one month. This year so far is just over £500 saved. 

 

10 years time, would hope battery technology has moved well past current tech, so who knows the price. My first flat screen TV was £6k, similar now £200.

[Nickfromwales]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

My first flat screen TV was £6k,

We all needed our heads examining....lol....as my 1st 42" plasma was £4-figures too. (I'm too embarrassed to say what I paid for it ), died pretty quickly and was buried at sea   

[JohnMo]

10 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

We all needed our heads examining....lol....as my 1st 42" plasma was £4-figures too. (I'm too embarrassed to say what I paid for it ), died pretty quickly and was buried at sea   

Still have ours - not been switched on for a few years. But being plasma I could possibly heat the house with it.

[SteamyTea]

Instead don't have a TV, 31 years without one now.

 

[Nickfromwales]

20 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Instead don't have a TV, 31 years without one now.

 

Are you a mad cat lady?

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

you a mad cat lady

No, just realised that you could download porn via the internet, on demand.

Oh how I miss dialing up a Nigerian number on my old 9600 baud modem.

[Nickfromwales]

Another unpredictable digression. We’re a diverse forum., if nothing else 🙃

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Nickfromwales said:

We’re a diverse forum

As long as we don't get Reform involved, we can be as diverse as we like.

[Nickfromwales]

11 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

As long as we don't get Reform involved, we can be as diverse as we like.

Or just lock you in the cooler with pocster.....

[SteamyTea]

18 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Or just lock you in the cooler with pocster.....

@Pocster shrivels to a walnut when he is not in the West Undies blazing sunshine.

[marmott2334]

On 07/05/2025 at 11:23, ToughButterCup said:

 

Welcome.

Life-span? What have the manufacturers / installer claimed the life-span to be ? 

They give a 15 year guarantee. That is the biggest one that I have seen. 

Others are about 10 years. 

I'm guessing that the batteries should last at least 15 years, perhaps 15-20 years??

[joth]

1 hour ago, marmott2334 said:

They give a 15 year guarantee. That is the biggest one that I have seen. 

Others are about 10 years. 

I'm guessing that the batteries should last at least 15 years, perhaps 15-20 years??

Lifespan will be much more than this 10-15 years, it's just the capacity reduces. (Same as PV the peak power degrades over time).

So a 10 year guarantee normally guarantees something like 90% capacity remaining. I expect the 15 year guarantee wording says 85% capacity remaining.

If you have space and dno approval it makes more sense to plan to add additional battery in a decade or whenever, rather than replace.

 

[scottishjohn]

giv energy batteries have a 15years warranty 

worth a look

 

made in uk

Edited Tuesday at 08:04 by scottishjohn

[Bancroft]

On 07/05/2025 at 14:03, JohnMo said:

My first flat screen TV was £6k

Back in the mid-eighties, I saw an advert for a 1Tb hard drive for a computer.

 

I remeber thinking two thoughts:

 

Who on earth would need that amount of data on a hard drive, and

Who would pay £6000 for a hard drive?

[JohnMo]

51 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

giv energy batteries have a 15years warranty 

worth a look

 

made in uk

Mine was installed 2 days before they changed from 10 years to 15 years

[Tetrarch]

 

I'll see your 1TB in the 80's.......

In 1956, IBM’s Data Processing Division in southern San Jose, Ca transported the first hard-drive that only held a whopping 5 megabytes of storage

 

 

 

Regards

 

Tet

[joth]

1 hour ago, Bancroft said:

Back in the mid-eighties, I saw an advert for a 1Tb hard drive for a computer.

 

I remeber thinking two thoughts:

 

Who on earth would need that amount of data on a hard drive, and

Who would pay £6000 for a hard drive?

 

I doubt this very much.  1GB would have cost about $1M in 1985, so 1TB would be more like 1 billion dollars. (Or $100M for 1Tb if you mean bits not bytes - not conventional*).

https://humanprogress.org/dataset/average-cost-of-hard-drive-storage-per-gigabyte 

 

• £6000 would have maybe get you 10 MB mid 80s.
• In the early 90s I paid £200 for 20MB hard drive - £6000 would have bought about 600 MB.
• By the end of the 90s  I paid about £150 for 4Gb - so £6000 would have got 160GB. 
• It's almost the mid-noughties before £6000 would purchase 1TB - around the time I started working for Google which is where I first started hearing TB referred to in casual conversation. 

 

 

So off topic.... 

 

* - of course we should be using MiB GiB and TiB for storage, not MB GB TB but honestly that never caught on did it.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 09:58 by joth

[Bancroft]

4 hours ago, joth said:

I doubt this very much

I'm certain I saw the ad as it appeared in the magazine month after month.

 

But, I will acknowledge that my TB and GB might have got mixed up over time (memory not what it used to be - if you'll pardon the pun).

[joth]

An advert for 1GB in early to mid -90s is very plausible. My first PC in 1995 had a 1GB HDD... that was my second hard drive, just a few years after purchasing that 20 MB drive for my Amiga. A period of insane growth, bit like AI expansion is now.