Trump Steel Tariffs May Increase Battery-Installation Costs

The new steel tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump could cause lithium-ion battery-installation prices to rise by as much as three percent, as the metal structures used to protect the batteries would become more expensive.

Prices for lithium-ion battery packs decreased significantly last year due to lower production costs. Those production costs will likely continue to decrease, so the more expensive metal will likely have little to no lasting impact on the industry as a whole.

Bloomberg Politics has more information:

Prices for lithium-ion battery packs dropped 24 percent last year as it became cheaper to make them, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But steel tariffs threaten to increase battery-installation costs by as much as 3 percent. (The batteries typically are protected with structures made of metal.)

“The tariffs could slow down some of the aggressive cost declines,” Ray Hohenstein, market applications director at energy storage firm Fluence Energy LLC, said in an interview Wednesday at Infocast’s Solar Power Finance & Investment Summit in San Diego, California.

To be sure, that shouldn’t have much lasting impact on the industry as other manufacturing costs decrease, Kelly Speakes-Backman, chief executive officer of the Energy Storage Association, said in a phone interview Wednesday. And there may be a workaround: Concrete, which features in the shipping-container-like structures that protect batteries in larger projects, could be used for smaller battery packs.

Read the full story here.