I would say that NMC is older than LFP because it was invented far beforehand. It's what enabled the transition off of NiMH and NiCAD - invented sometime around the 1980s. I've got many examples from the late 90s and early 2000s, one of my favorite being the iPaq 3850 sitting on my desk (and of course, tons and tons of cellular phones). But that's obviously not stationary.... LiFePo4 is far newer - late 90s/early 2000s - and not commercially viable until later. LFP makes more sense in a lot of applications because of voltages - it can be a "drop in" replacement for 12V systems due to the 3.2V nominal - and lifespan/cycle count. But NMC was commercialized far earlier in fixed storage, mostly apparent to me in the availability of house-scale lithium battery systems/solar, lithium UPS market at all scales, from 1U / switch rack units to full scall datacenter deployments. And Including according to some cursory research, grid-scale power systems as well - as LiFePo4 tech is still relatively new and developing. EV usage was more a selection because of density, but not a driver of that density development. Even EVs are moving in the LFP direction for safety reasons as that technology evolves. EVs using non-NMC existed before as well, due to technology limitations and evolution. Schneider's forecast in 2017 or 2018 for 40% of the datacenter market to be lithium based by around 2025. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> Sent: Wednesday, April 9, 2025 2:21 PM To: Gary Sparkes <gary@kisaracorporation.com>; Vasilenko Eduard <vasilenko.eduard@huawei.com>; North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Subject: Re: [NANOG] Re: Small Capacity UPS On 4/9/25 14:12, Gary Sparkes wrote:
Datacenter scale NMC UPSes have been a thing for a rather long time. As well as rack sized, and many others. Long before LFP units were even thought about being commercialized.
NMC is older than LFP because EV's required NMC chemistries during a time when stationery storage was not a thing. And yes, NMC makes sense for data centre applications because of the high energy density in such an environment. But AFAIK, most data centres still rely on more on LA than Li-Ion. Mark.