The price of lead has continued to soar this year and recently hit almost US$3,500 a tonne – almost double that of one year ago. Faced with an impossible situation, every lead-acid battery manufacturer has had to come running to its customers with dramatic price increases. Increasing raw material price rises, taxation and movement from a surplus to deficit in supply left them with little option if they wanted their business to survive.

So what can a UPS company do ? Well very little given the long supply chains involved. Most will have to enforce a price increase over the forthcoming period and this may either be to specific ranges or en masse. Large UPS manufacturers like Riello UPS generally have batteries on bought forward contracts and these will help to buffer the impact of the price increases. Eventually though everyone will see batteries at higher prices in the market place.

However, if this was not bad enough, the price of lead has not stabilised and continues to fluctuate. Battery manufacturers are therefore only giving 30 days validity on price lists and quotes. This makes quoting for some UPS jobs, as an example, somewhat precarious, unless the same validity restrictions are quoted.

So what has driven these massive increases. Two factors really – exports from China have been falling rapidly since the impossing of a 10% export tax and their mines have been producing less output. The world economy has moved from one of surplus to deficit and if this continues into 2008 we can all expect to pay higher prices for any of our lead-acid battery-based power systems.

You also have to wonder if certain battery manufacturers have taken the opportunity to cover price rises in other raw materials and optimise pricing across their distribution channels…mmmmh.

I was at The Tenth Fuel Cell Symposium last week and during a follow-up meeting was asked what I thought of the event. This was a difficult one. On the one hand you had a Morgan car prototype showing how they may use a fuel-cell engine in the future. At the other you had boffins – a very English term – showing that they could get a propellor to spin when connected to a small beaker of methanol. When you take three generic forms of power generation – wind turbines, fuel cells and solar power – it is only really solar power that has offered products for installation within fairly easy reach of most individuals and organisations – should they be so inclined. Domestic wind power and fuel cells have yet to find their killer leverage I feel and are held back by natural early life cycle inhibitors such as cost, references, standards and perhaps, too many corporate giants trying to turn these mass markets to their particular solution.