One of the great underappreciated issues of renewable energy isn't whether seagulls are banging into turbine blades. It's whether intermittent sources of power have any real value in a world without energy storage.
But that won't be as big an issue if a new battery technology finds its way to the market. The battery, developed by a startup called Liquid Metal Battery Corp. (LMBC), could serve as a form of storage for everything from electric utilities down to single-family homes and virtually everything in between. Moreover, it has significant investors behind it, including Bill Gates.
The grid storage battery uses a high-density electrode on the bottom (red), a molten salt electrolyte (yellow),
and a low-density liquid metal (green) at the top.
Source: Liquid Metal Battery Corp.
"People love renewables," the company's founder, Donald Sadoway, who is also the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told us in an interview. "They love solar. They love wind. But both of those technologies are intermittent. And we don't need intermittent boosting of the grid. We need reliable power."
Sadoway's idea is to build "a honkin' big battery" -- a unit as large as 1,000 cubic feet that uses hundreds of cells, each the size of a pizza box. The battery's advantages are that it is cheap, can be made big, and offers high energy density. Ultimately, the company believes such a battery could fill the storage role if it drops its cost to $100/kWh, but Sadoway and the company's executives are not saying what their battery costs today.
"Our batteries will be big, and we'll get economies of scale from that size," newly appointed CEO Phil Giudice told Design News. "And if we can provide cost-effective storage, we could have thousands of these being used by a single big utility."
Apparently, important people agree with that vision. Gates, who had reportedly seen some of Sadoway's online lectures at MIT, is one of two major investors in the company. The other investor is the French firm Total Group, which describes itself as a multinational energy conglomerate with 96,000 employees.
Gates has been open about his reasons for supporting the startup. Without inexpensive storage, "renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar cells will never approach the scale or affordability that is necessary," he wrote in a Web article titled "We Need a Battery Miracle."
The reason storage is so important is extraordinarily simple but often ignored. Wind turbines generate power only when the wind blows, and solar cells make power only when the sun is shining brightly. Like all other sources of power -- coal, hydro, nuclear -- the electrical current from wind and solar sources must be used instantly. With a few minor exceptions, such as pumped hydro and compressed air energy storage, utilities have few ways of storing electricity for later use.
While Bill Gates' financial backing is not a certainty of success, it can't hurt this startup and even better, it shines a spotlight on what you say is one the "great underappreciated issues of renewable energy," energy storage, for the broader public. It can only serve to foster more attention and hopefully, more investment in this very important technology issue.
As interesting and significant as this is -- as the story says "The company's battery can store about 1.2MWh -- or about 300kW with a four-hour drain time. Sadoway believes it could handle the extra capacity that the grid uses during peak load times" -- the real challenge isn't big batteries which can store more Wh. It's on small batteries, for EVs. As Chuck has written many times, the progress there hasn't met expectations, or, more correctly, promises and hopes. At best, we have specmanship which attempts to make things sound/seem better than they are.
This is a good opportunity for an investor like Bill Gates. He gets to invest in something that can potentially make lots of money while also helping the environment and the country. LiIon batteries may be a dead end unless someone can come up with a safer approach. While we concentrate on the Chevy Voit battery problems today, I wonder how many remember the fire issue with the Apple MacBook a wuile back. What we need are solutions that match the application. Batteries for distributed utility power do not need to be the same as batteries for mobile devices, or even cars.
An interesting 'teaser' article - you have my interest but the engineer in me wants more details! I reluctantly acknowledge the main thrust of the article/post is to hit the high lights (i.e. Bill Gates, Liquid Metal Battery Corp, (LMBC) wind, solar, etc) but how about more?
There is NO doubt that large capacity storage of electrical energy is one of the key components in implementation of renewable energy past some percentage of useage (the figure of 20% is sort of sticking in my mind - we are somewhere in the 5% range now (??)) and we absolutely must have some efficient and cost competitive way of getting there. The work being done by LMBC is promising.
OK, on reflection, I guess I should go out on the web when I have sometime and do a bit of wandering around in search of more details. The inquisitive mind.
Yet another battery that can't hold a charge longer than four hours--reminds me of the ones on my laptop that barely lasted that long last week during a power outage.
So I'm asking again (I asked this regarding another story), why is it so hard to make batteries that last long enough for the application, whether it's laptops, EVs or the grid? What's the big deal?
And another couple of questions: what are the maintenance costs and what are the hazards of a spent battery, given the metal salts being used?
Grid storage other than very short term like under 5 minutes peaking isn't a problem at all. Why is the grid has been doing that, adjusting the grid since it began around 1900.
Facts are grid demand is far more variable than RE and supply and demand are really just 2 sides of the same coin. So No, you don't need more than 2% of grid storage and that is just for smoothing out the second to second difference between supply and demand.
Though that will easily be solved by the smart grid along with home, apt and EV batteries, charging when cheap to absorb extra grid power at night and between daytime peaks while supplying power during peaks. The utility saves so much in peak power costs and added revenue at off peak EV's might get free fuel for their service.
Recent CCGT tech can be throttled up to 50% power using NG also will cut the need for grid storage.
Another Solar thermal panels are used to suppliment NG power plants meaning no storage needed. Biomass, Hydro also are on demand. Really the only problems are big distant wind farms that start/stop together and even their with cogen biomass to cover when the wind isn't blowing.
And last for now, far more RE spread out in small systems on many homes, buildings will average out very well again making storage far less.
This whole scam was made up by big energy/power because they know RE is already if well shopped in many places competitive with coal even before the 30k people/yr in the US that die, etc. from it's pollution. And they want the corporate welfare to continue paying congress to make sure it happens.
What's the big deal? Spoken like someone who doesn't have to do it.
Facts are we have improved batteries by a factor of 4 but no matter how good they are, everyone wants more for less in a smaller size. Then they bitch when given bleeding edge tech and the laptop bursts into flames!
Maybe consumers could stop wanting all those features they never use, maybe a slower cpu or a car that does take 4000lbs to move a 200lb person around?
And back on topic, we already have $100/kwhr batteries for grid UPS work. They are called lead batteries. Yet no grid battery banks of them. Why? Lead in grid UPS use costs under $10/kwhr/yr.
Could it be there is no market for batteries in that service?
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