This is Africa.
This is a vast and magical land, where there are all kinds of wild animals and plants, as well as rich underground minerals. When it comes to Africa, people always think of wildness, vastness, and freedom. But you may not know that in addition to the chronic water shortage, electricity is also extremely scarce in Africa, with only 20% of people having access to electricity. Therefore, power outage in South Africa is a looming question for its people.
Due to the extreme imbalance of power development, there are power supply problems even in countries and regions such as Egypt, South Africa, and other developed countries.
Countries such as Ethiopia, Angola, and Madagascar, although they have basic power systems, have poor power supply capacity and often face power outages. The coverage of electricity users, near the Malagasy capital, can reach 40%, but the overall coverage is miserably about 20%, making power outages a common occurrence.
- Africa is actually a blessed land.
In fact, from the perspective of energy supply, the development potential of Africa’s solar energy industry is undoubtedly second to none in the world. Africa owns vast land, with only high mountains on the northwest and southeast edges, 75 percent of the area is plateaus and plains, and the average sunshine is nearly 12 hours a day, 3000 hours a year. In recent years, Africa has gradually become the world’s largest potential market for solar power generation.
- Solar energy and Lithium iron phosphate
A wealth of solar energy to choose from as the primary premise, the real guarantee of solar energy to play its role is the increasingly perfected energy storage system, as the acquisition of solar energy will be affected by a variety of uncontrollable factors. In the field of energy storage battery, lithium battery has developed rapidly in recent years and has a huge potential market, in which a kind of material called lithium iron phosphate plays an important role to facilitate the development of lithium battery.
What is lithium iron phosphate? It is a lithium-ion battery electrode material, the chemical formula LiFePO4, is mainly used in various lithium-ion batteries. Lithium iron phosphate is mainly applied in those fields, including:
- Energy storage equipment
Energy storage equipment of solar energy and wind power system, UPS, and use with solar cells as energy storage equipment (BYD is already producing such batteries).
- Electric tool class
High-power electric tools (wireless), electric drill, weeding machine, etc…
- Light electric vehicle
The electric motor car, Electric bike, Leisure car, Golf cart, Electric lift machine, Cleaning car, Hybrid vehicles (HEV), recent 2-3 years target.
- Bantam
Medical equipment: (electric wheelchair, electric mobility scooter), toys (remote control electric aircraft, car, boat).
- Other small electrical appliances
Mineral lamps, implantable medical devices (lithium iron phosphate is non-toxic, the lithium-ion battery only lithium-iron can meet the requirements), replacing the application of lead-acid, nickel-hydrogen, nickel-cadmium, lithium-cobalt, and lithium-manganese batteries in small electrical appliances.
The features of lithium iron phosphate underlie its wide applications:
- Durability: lithium iron phosphate battery has strong durability, slow consumption, charging and release more than 1,000 times, and no memory, the general life is 5-8 years.
- Discharge ratio: the lithium iron phosphate battery can have a large current discharge, suitable for solar street lamps, electric vehicles, electric bicycles, etc.
- Volume and quality: the lithium battery volume is relatively small.
- Battery capacity: the capacity of lithium batteries in the same volume is larger than the lead-acid batteries. Lead-acid battery capacity is about 20 A; lithium battery capacity is 8-10 A.
- No memory effect: no matter what the state of the lithium iron phosphate battery is in, it can be used with charging, without having to put it first before charging.
- Nominal voltage: nominal voltage of lithium iron phosphate monomer: 3.6V.
- Environmental protection: lithium materials are free of any toxic and harmful substances, and are considered green by the world. The battery is not pollution-free in production and use and has become a hot topic of wide research attention.
- Safety: Lithium iron phosphate has been under a strict safety test. Even in the worst traffic accidents, it will not produce an explosion, showing a higher safety performance.
The answer to what is lithium iron phosphate offers a glimpse into the functions and advantages of this kind of battery.
When choosing batteries, people often face the dilemma of choosing a lead-acid battery or lithium battery. Thus, it is necessary to compare those two.
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By definition, lead-acid battery (VRLA) is a kind of battery whose electrode is mainly made of lead and its oxide and the electrolyte is a sulfuric acid solution. In the discharge state of the lead-acid batteries, the main component of the positive electrode is lead dioxide, the main component of the negative electrode is lead, and the main component of the positive and negative electrode is lead sulfate. Lithium iron phosphate battery has many advantages over lead-acid battery:
- Large capacity. The monomer can be made into 5Ah~1000Ah (1Ah=1000mAh), while the 2V monomer of lead-acid battery is usually 100Ah~150Ah with a small variation range.
- Light weight. The volume of lithium iron phosphate battery with the same capacity is 2 × 3 of the volume of lead-acid battery, and the weight of lithium iron phosphate battery is 1 × 3 of that of lead-acid battery.
- Strong fast charging ability. The starting current of lithium iron phosphate battery can reach 2C to achieve high-rate charging, while the current of lead-acid battery is generally required to be between 0.1C~0.2C and can not achieve fast charging performance.
- Environmentally friendly. A lead-acid battery contains a large amount of heavy metal-lead, which produces waste liquid, while a lithium iron phosphate battery does not contain any heavy metals and has no pollution in production and use.
- Cost-effective. Although the purchase cost of a lead-acid battery is lower than that of a lithium iron phosphate battery because of its cheap material, it is less economical than a lithium iron phosphate battery in terms of service life and daily maintenance. The practical application results show that the performance-to-price ratio of lithium iron phosphate batteries is more than 4 times that of lead-acid batteries.
- Conclusion
After explaining what is lithium-ion and lead acid battery and making a comparison, I am sure that, when asked whether to buy a lead acid battery or lithium battery, you will know which one to choose.