Transportation Better Batteries — SixLinks Wiki Archive

Summary: Below are the important statistics on the four main types of battery discussed in the main section of this article.

Should distinguish between Energy and Power here as well as a basic battery intro. Also, this needs to be constantly updated, this more or less is our metric. Also might be cool to apply some of these metrics to large scale storage.

Metric	Importance	Lead Acid	NiCd	NiMH	Litium Ion
Charge/Discharge Efficiency	% of energy entered vs. energy returned	70-92%	70-90%	66%	99.9%
Energy to Weight	Amount of energy stored per weight	30-40 Wh/kg	40-60 Wh/kg	30-80 Wh/kg	160 Wh/gk
Energy to Volume	Amount of energy stored per volume	60-75 Wh/L	50-150 Wh/L	140-300 Wh/L	270 Wh/L
Power to Weight	Amount of work stored per weight	180 W/kg	150 W/kg	250-1000 W/kg	1800 W/kg
Self-Discharge Rate	% energy lost over time	3-20%/month	10%/month	30%/month temp. dependent	None in \"dumb\" batteries, 5-10%/month in \"smart\"
Nominal Cell Voltage	Voltage of each cell	2.105V	1.2V	1.2 V	3.6/3.7 V
Lifespan	Number of hours or cycles the battery will last	500-800 cycles	2000 cycles	500-1000 cycles	1200 cycles or 24-36 months
Energy to Cost	Amount of energy stored per dollar	7-18 Wh/$	Unknown	2.75 Wh/$	2.8-5 Wh/$

Different technologies and where they are (efficiency, power density, cost, toxicity, lifespan) (Table at http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-3.htm (28))