Comment Re:Wouldnt NiFe be a better battery chemistry here (Score 1) 185
Tesla packs highly resistant to "failing internally". Each brick is made of dozens of cells wired in parallel. It's irrelevant if a handful of cells totally die.
The li-ion charge retention curve is usually an exponential decay. The lower the capacity of the cell gets, the slower further degradation goes. Now, in many electronic devices, it doesn't seem this way because the device is designed for a particular operational voltage range, and when the pack gets below that voltage it's totally useless. But a large-scale system engineered to use old packs and thus designed for greater voltage flexibility is not bound by this constraint.
From page 46 of this report Discussions egarding smart grid applications include using automotive battery packs connected to the grid for temporary energy storage, and as emergency power supplies when power is unavailable. There is also considerable discussion in the industry regarding repurposing used or refurbished automotive battery packs for stationary applications such as home level power storage once the packs are no longer suitable for use in vehicles.70 It remains to be seen whether refurbishment of packs will be practical or economical,71 as cells must generally be well matched to provide good performance in battery packs, and aged cells are particularly difficult to match effectively. In addition, for refurbished pack safety, the issue of determining when a cell should be retired will need to be resolved. tl;dr leading industry experts have the exact same concerns i do. You are just not well informed. I'm open to any sources you may be aware of because the facts are buried under political bs.