Specific Roundtrip Storage Cost
Exigent & partner FLS follow an “economic goal”, which is define as: – pursuing the lowest energy cost by accepting small tradeoffs in efficiency & operational envelope in exchange for capex savings which lead to achieve a much lower overall energy cost.
The Levelized “specific storage price” refers to the pass-through cost of storing and retrieving energy over a specific period.
Given this if a system capex is $16/kWh and it has a life of 10,000 cycles, then the pass-through cost is $0.0016/kWh, which does not include the base energy cost. This is the thermal energy storage specific cost.*
*ignoring efficiency & opex & for simplicity
This is Axiomatic
It is always possible to trade efficiency for cost, in a direct relationship, that is an increase in design efficiency increases cost and vice versa. The essential point of the cost vs. efficiency principle is that either cost can be minimized or efficiency can be maximized. But never the two shall meet, they can’t have the same min/max inflection point. Consider this nonlinear relationship; spending $1 more results in a minimal increase in efficiency, while each subsequent $1 cost will result in a disproportionately smaller increase in efficiency. Exigent has followed the path of lowest possible cost.
What the true
goal should be?
Unfortunately, the competitiors’ are driven by the illusive hunt for the highest efficiency instead of the real goal – to achieve the lowest possible energy cost.
The point being, if efficiency is the primary goal, then there is NO LIMIT to cost and no system designed to maximize efficiency can ever have an optimum cost. Similar to the Pareto Principle, 80% of the cost can easily come in the final 20% of the “efficiency hunt”
This is a “technological goal”. Whereas, Exigent pursues the “economic goal”, what we consider the “True Goal”.
