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Here is a .pdf from the Adam Smith Institute called "Solar Power In Britain: the Impossible Dream"
As you can tell by the title, they aren't too bullish on solar power. And they do a pretty good job of explaining why they feel this way. And they back it up with evidence.
They even go into the oft-cited claim that wind or solar on their own is too intermittent to be of much use for a large grid. But if they are put together, the wind will usually blow at night and the sun will usually shine when the wind dies down, or enough to smooth out the output of these types of renewable energy.
As it turns out, this claim is not true. Both wind and solar will be too intermittent for a grid even if they are put together.
But we all know that batteries can smooth out the problem.
Well, the paper gets into that too, but not much:
Battery storage on this scale is likely to be even more expensive and batteries would require frequent replacement.
And that's all they have to say about that.
Now, I agree with them using current technology. So does the future bode well for batteries saving the day?
The Adam Smith Inst. made a follow-up blog post called " Batteries will not save solar... yet" And they get into what the cost of battery would be if we replaced all power generation with wind/solar/hydro. They come to the conclusion, as I just said, that batteries will have to be a great deal cheaper and perform better for the numbers they ran to work. And that's fair.
But do we ultimately want to replace all coal/NG/nuclear? That might be the goal of some, but reasonable limits are a much better idea. And it all has to do with costs. As the cost of coal/NG/nuclear go up, and the costs of solar/wind/hydro go down, they will be replaced.
And I can hear a lot of commenters saying that we are already doing that and solar/wind/hydro are far too costly so "end of discussion."
But that's only if we have not taken all the costs into consideration. As nuclear plants age, we find out what the clean-up costs are. And the next time we build a plant like that we need to factor those costs in. And natural gas will diminish to the point where its price will go up, and we can predict that to some degree. Same with coal. And coal also has other cleanup costs that we are just now realizing the costs on. These have to be included.
And batteries will go down in cost due to scale. We certainly hope they will also go down in cost due to all these shiny advances we keep hearing about in labs. But just like coal and NG, it can only go so far and costs will start to rise for batteries, too.
Equilibrium. That's exactly where we will end up. As costs rise for coal/NG/nuclear and lower for solar/wind/hydro with batteries they will start to approach a point where costs will optimise for each type of power generation.
Motley fool is saying that the falling battery prices are just the start of changes that are coming from falling battery prices.
The auto industry is just the first, and most visible, domino in a number of industries that will be upended by falling battery prices. A report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and McKinsey & Co., cited by Bloomberg, found that the average battery-pack price fell 65% from $1,000 per kWh in 2010 to $350 per kWh last year. It even came out last year that General Motors is paying LG Chem just $145 per kWh for battery cells to make packs for the upcoming Chevy Bolt.
Wow, from $1000 to only $145 per kWh. And Elon Musk who is a principle at the Giga factory in Nevada says they expect the price to go down another big jump to $100 per kWh.
Can Li-Ion batteries really get that inexpensive? They can, and even a little below $100 per kWh, but not more than that. The material cost just won't allow it. And there have to be other costs in there somewhere like construction and transportation costs.
But the hope of getting far below $100 per kWh is not totally hopeless. Many hopeful batteries and super capacitors in the lab can be a great deal less if they work anywhere near as theorized that they might.
But when will we get the change in our lives and economies? It was thought that the $100 per kWh was it by a lot of people. But that changes things in an evolutionary way, not a revolutionary way, and economists figured that. For economists, the number is closer to $30 per kWh. Although there are other factors included in that figure that I'm not going to discuss in this post - energy density and safety - it is the price at which other competing technologies will be moved out of the way.
What will happen when we hit that mark? Home solar will be big, we surmise, which will cascade into other changes. But beyond that, we cannot really predict what innovations will happen when this technology gets into the hands of a very wide base of innovators.
Li-Ion has been king of the roost for a bit now. And it seems to have no end in sight with the new size factor being made at the Gigafactory. More than any other chemistry, in small electronics, to EV batteries, to grid connected batteries the most proposed chemistry has been Li-Ion.
Beyond that, research into battery technology has been the greatest in improving Li-Ion and not in new chemistries. So should we be worried that so much money is being put into one basket of eggs?
Despite the disparity in spending, marketing, and product development favoring Li-Ion, there is still a lot of interest in other chemistries. But Li-Ion works, and the smart money knows it will be the workhorse for a few years to come.
 But what else is out there? One alternative chemistry is sodium-sulfur. NGK in Japan has bet it's future on the chemistry. They are installing systems now, and they work. The systems use molten sodium and molten sulfur. Because the components keep reforming in their molten state, the battery has a great cycle life. If the numbers keep coming in better for sodium-sulfur, the switch will happen.
 Dyson has been a strong technology company. And when they put their money on a technology, one can expect that it should be pretty good.
Dyson bought Sakti3. A company that makes a solid state battery. Yes, it is lithium, but it has a very different set of properties because of its construction.
This acquisition was a while back, but not much news is not bad news when a company that is privately owned. And Dyson has inferred that the battery has been meeting its marks. I expect we'll hear more about it soon, within the next 2 years, since other more public promising battery technologies have been making gains.
The advantage of solid state is robustness. The battery is very safe and has great cycle life.
Flow batteries have been prototyped and installed in a number grid battery tests. The advantage has been capacity since the capacity is only limited by the size of the tanks. And making the fluid inexpensive is also a possibility since construction costs with a particular material aren't a big consideration.
 But there are a few things the fluid must do. One is its viscosity and the other is that it cannot be corrosive and break the machinery that the fluid flows in. Can a break-through fluid be made that will have such an advantage over other chemistries that its weakness, the machinery that runs it, won't be seen as such a liability? A lot of companies are spending their own money betting they can.
Aluminum air battery technology has been of interest for a long time because of the theoretical high energy density. However, because there hasn't been a rechargeable variant in the lab it can only get niche funding. But someone may have found a way to solve the problem.
The experts at Fuji Pigment are experimenting with replacing the current
electrolyte (water) with an ionic liquid, as well as placing a TiO2
(titanium dioxide) as an internal layer to separate the electrodes and
battle the accumulation of byproducts. They claim these two upgrades, if
successful, will make aluminum-air batteries rechargeable.
That's some pretty good news. But it's only a theory as of this point. It hasn't even been tested in a lab. And even if it is tested in a lab, that doesn't mean it can become a commercial product. But that's never a good reason not to note the possibility!
Increasing the energy density of lithium batteries is always a welcome advance. This one comes courtesy of a chemical process that allows both less expensive construction and a higher capacity battery.
It is also claimed to allow for more cycles of the battery during its working life. It's like a win-win-win. The idea is to create an electrode that can be built in ambient air. Right now, electrodes have to be built in controlled environments so they don't react while they are produced. This not only makes it more expensive to make batteries but it also starts a battery off with a deficit in capacity.
Hailiang Wang said this about the technology, although he is only an interested party and not a part of this particular research:
The initial Coulombic efficiency of electrodes is a big concern for the Li-ion battery industry, and this effective and easy-to-use technique of compensating irreversible Li ion loss will attract interest.
No one likes irreversible loss.. Having people who are outside the research making positive comments about it is always a plus. And another plus is this process seems to be good for other chemistries which may yield even more capacity.
Wireless charging has been another great idea that just doesn't seem to have the technology available to work the way it really needs to. Right now we can place a device that has a wireless charging plate built into it on a charging pad and it saves us the trouble of actually plugging it in where the charging pad is.
What we really need is to come into any room that has a wireless charging device in it, and without even taking our phone off our person it will charge without even having to think about it.
And that's just what some researchers are proposing. By utilizing a certain property of magnetic waves and metamaterials they have found a way to beam the magnetic field to where the device is. The device would have to be built with this kind of charging in mind to track the beam and convert the energy to the proper voltage.
But wouldn't this mean, in many places, that you'd never have to plug your cell phone or laptop in ever again?
The way we've dealt with batteries not advancing as much as electronics has been to make the electronics more and more efficient. So the electronics have gotten faster and more capable, and at the same time, they use less power. So the same poor battery looks better.
That's not to take away from the amazing work done by battery manufacturers. They've made things a lot better. But we haven't quite reached the same advances in battery technology that we've reached in electronics technology.
And so, with our erstwhile battery cell scientists working hard to create the holy grail battery, the electronics side continues to improve their side of the equation.
Engineers at the University of Cambridge have come up with a very low power transistor. A transistor, when it turns off, still has some residual energy flowing. And this principle was exploited by the scientists. They claim the amount of power the new design uses is so small as to be somewhat negligible compared to today's technology.
Currently, this is being targetted for sensors. And they are also considering using energy scavaging to power these sensors instead of dedicating a battery to them.
This is very exciting news. We are all for better batteries, and we are also for equipment that uses our batteries better. And even equipment that doesn't need much battery at all.
Will this result in more than just low power sensors? I'm sure it will some day. One of the other advantages to what these engineers have discovered is a way to make transistors smaller. With smaller transistors using less energy, we can do more processing with less heat.
This let's keep an eye on this tech and expect our new cell phones that will last a lot longer on the same battery. And we should expect them to be smaller, too.
Zbattery doesn't carry many power tool batteries. In fact, there are fewer places carrying power tool batteries than there used to be. The number of cordless power tools is increasing, but the number of off-brand power tool batteries is decreasing. So unless a retailer is a distributor for a name brand, they don't have many options for power tool batteries.
This is because the power tool market used to be mainly NiCd. NiCd is safe. So no one had to worry about the liability problems connected with a battery suddenly bursting into flames. Third party manufacturers were able to make a good replacement battery without worrying that they were covered for unforeseen injuries and damage - even if they were very careful. And since the power tool market was, and is, growing we needed the non-name brand market to fill the great demand for replacement batteries.
But nowadays almost every power tool is made to be used with a Li-Ion battery. And there is a good reason for this. Li-Ion batteries are lighter and have a higher voltage so they can deliver more power in a smaller lighter package. What's not to like?
 I'll tell you what's not to like. Li-Ion bursts into flames. The name brands can mitigate this problem because they can make a quality track record to show the court they did everything they could to reduce the risk. And they have insurance. This might make the batteries more expensive, but the value is still better with Li-Ion even at the higher price.
But third party makers are a little skittish because they don't have a reputation with the courts. And they would rather not add insurance to the cost of their product because they are competing on cost. So non-name brand power tool battery manufacturers just aren't getting into the game.
Even re-builders are not as prevalent in the Li-Ion market. These are companies that put new cells into the cases of power tool batteries that have worn out. The equation is simple and the liability doesn't pay.
So what are we to do? We live with it. The name brand manufacturers are competing with each other, so that helps. The next possibility is to use LiFePO4 chemistry because it is safe. But I guess until Milwaukee/DeWalt/Ryobi/Rigid/Makita/Bosch/AEG have a "Note 7" event, it doesn't look like that will happen.
I'm going to guess that an improved capacity less expensive cell will come out of the lab and the power tool manufacturers will start to use it. And if it is as safe as NiCd, the off-brand market will recover.
The Curta handheld calculator could add, subtract, multiply and divide. That's not too impressive in today's world where we look at our phones and laugh when we remember our teachers said, "you won't always have a calculator on you."
But what is so amazing about this handheld calculator is that it was mechanical. No batteries. No electric plug. And its history is stunning!
And one might think on a battery blog this would be the antithesis of a subject for a blog post.
But what it really highlights is the power of even just a little bit of energy.
This is an amazing machine. It's still useful today. Anyone that knows what these are would never throw one away. They sell for more than $1000. And some people still actually use them as a tool of their trade or in their hobby.
Could it be made any better? Could a mechanical calculator be any smaller and do more functions? Possibly, but the brain power and precision to do so wouldn't be just a little more, but a great deal more.
And that's the point. If we need a machine that does what the Curta does, and not only does it well and with the exquisite artistry this machine really is, then we've arrived. But we need more. We need to add, subtract, multiply and divide with greater precision for less money. We need more functions, we need it smaller, we need it faster, we need it to share its results. And we need that and more while being intuitive and easy to use by anyone.
What has made us do even better than the truly astounding Curta is the transistor powered by a simple battery. Even in a state that is useful, but we know is far below what is possible, batteries are an essential part of making our lives so much better.
Would I consider having a Curta a waste? By no means. We are in deep debt to Curt Herzstark not only for the device but for the way of life he displayed, not even counting surviving a Nazi death camp.
There is a battery that doesn't get much press. It's the battery that sits in standby in a very narrow niche. It's called a dry reserve battery and they work by being activated at use. They can be used 1 time and then they are replaced. Sure, that's the same as a primary battery, but by 1 use I mean they can't be turned off and they are used up in one session.
In general, their construction is simple in that the two main components, anode and cathode, are kept completely separate (dry) from each other and an electrolyte is added when the battery is needed.
Why would anyone use such a battery? Because they are very reliable. One might even say they are the utmost in reliability for a mass produced battery. When 99% reliability isn't good enough, a reserve battery is what you need. They can have a high energy density because they can sacrifice the property of bad self discharge to gain capacity. And they can be very cheap, even cheaper than primary batteries, but have a better performance in a one time use situation.
For example, a missile needs power only when it is fired. And it will only ever be used 1 time. The energy requirement must work the first time 100% of the time and be light, too.
Or take some electrical equipment that is only used in case of a fire. It might sit for years before there is a fire and it will never be maintained. With a standby life of an undetermined very long time measured in decades, perhaps centuries, a reserve battery might very well last longer than the device it will power.
In mines carrying any extra weight is a negative. But running out of power in some situations can be deadly. A very light high density battery that can be activated just to get out, and absolutely will work even if carried/stored for years, can save lives. This idea isn't used in modern mining much anymore, but there is a market for reserve batteries in survival packs when civilization is very far off.
And when the very inexpensive reserve battery types are marketed they are bought to be used in the same place as primary batteries in remote areas.
There are 3 main types of reserve batteries: mechanically activated, heat activated, and water activated. The mechanically activated need something to be broken, perhaps by a person or an automatic trigger, to release the electrolyte into the battery and begin supplying power. The heat activated reserve batteries use a melting barrier that breaks down in the event of excessive heat. And a water activated reserve battery doesn't need the electrolyte carried with it as any brackish, dirty water is the preferred way to start getting power.
So reserve batteries have their place. And their continued use will come even after the "holy grail" of secondary batteries pushes a number of other types of batteries exclusively into history.
Mr. Fisker starting a new car company - especially one he is going to name "Fisker" - is a pretty bold move. One would have thought he could stay in the car business but have a different front man and company name. But he's decided to head the company and named it the same as the failed company that never paid back the taxpayers the paltry sum of $139 million dollars.
Yeah, we in the US gave Mr. Fisker 139 MILLION DOLLARS and he just took it. I'll bet he keeps all his profit from his new company... if it doesn't go bust.
Best not dwell on such minutiae.
He's got a great new idea. He has the design for a beautiful new all electric car which he says will compete with Tesla. Isn't that special?
How can he compete with Tesla? Easy. With whiz-bang new battery technology that will give this fancy new car over 400 miles of range on a full charge. Fisker says they have a way to make a super capacitor, perhaps something close to the holy grail of battery technology. The secret they say is a machine that can make graphene at $.10 a kilogram.
They say with inexpensive graphene that a supercapacitor will be easily made. And that super capacitor, which they are saying has more battery properties than capacitor properties, has a greater energy density than the current best Li-Ion technology out there. And it can handle more charging current and discharge very rapidly - like a capacitor. All this with the ability to cycle a great deal more than Li-Ion, which is again, similar to a capacitor. So they brand it a "super battery" instead of a "super capacitor." If it works as advertised they can call it "late for dinner."
But with Fisker's track record, I'm not so keen. I don't think the battery will work as well as they plan. And I don't think it will be nearly as inexpensive as they plan.
Perhaps I seem cynical. Perhaps Fisker isn't even planning to get public money this time around (Hopefully it isn't offered... to anyone). Perhaps Mr. Fisker really is planning to make billions and pay back the 139 MILLION DOLLARS he got from the US taxpayer. Not because he has to, but just because he really is a good man.
Perhaps.
Unless you have the more common or popular devices, getting a lithium battery for things like a cell phone or a laptop computer is getting harder. These days every device has a battery designed especially for it. So there are literally 1000's of battery designs out there that are incompatible with each other. And as more devices and their unique batteries are made, the problem increases.
Add to this the ever increasing problem of shipping lithium batteries and the situation gets even worse. Since shipping lithium has become such a hassle, consolidating shipping of lithium products has become more prevalent to alleviate the time and cost.
What this means is that your local battery store is carrying fewer battery models and lower stock levels of the models that are kept in stock. This is because the fewer times a lithium battery gets shipped the better. So there are a few warehouses around the country that carry even the obscure models. And those warehouses supply the many retailers that blanket the country. But the retailers will only get the models they are sure they are going to sell. The rest stay at the warehouse to be delivered directly to the customer or have a special-order-only status with the retailer.
So let's say you have a Dell laptop computer. Unless it is one of the popular models, the chances of getting it today are pretty slim. In fact, the chances of getting it tomorrow are pretty slim, too. But I hear you saying "I have Amazon Prime and I can get anything shipped next day for free"... sorry, but nope. No matter how much you pay Amazon, you can't change the law that says that lithium cannot deliver via overnight air services.
The way to mitigate the problem is to have an accurate cross-reference and bullet-proof compatable electronics in replacement batteries. This way the battery will work the first time every time - or mostly every time - avoiding return shipping, and allowing as many replacement battery makers into the market as possible.
In the longer run, we need batteries that don't burn. It would also help to have some standardization but I doubt that will happen. And obviously, if batteries became so robust that they outlast the device then that would mitigate the problem, too.
Is there anything a user can do to help themselves? Yes. A battery usually doesn't die all at once. It get's worse and worse capacity until it just isn't useful anymore. So take note when the battery starts dying and look into a new one before you need it. Find out if it just happens to be popular enough for your local battery store to stock. Chances are they won't if your phone isn't on the best sellers list. So expect the battery will have to be ordered and that it will take a week to get.
Or, find out from your local battery store if they can special order it and send it straight to your door. If they can then you could pay shipping costs and probably get it faster because they won't have to ship it with a number of consolidated orders collected over a few days. And if there is a problem, you can deal with the local store instead of a remote seller.
TDK, the parent company of Amperex, has taken a hit to its stock after the Samsung Note 7 debacle. Amperex was the go-to supplier after Samsung determined their burning problem came from Samsung SDI. Amperex was already supplying a hefty percentage of the batteries for the Note 7.
But the problems with burning continued even after the Note 7 was replaced using the Amperex batteries. And now the Note 7 has been killed off. So TDK is also getting a great deal of fallout from the problem because their brand is tarnished and they are going to be sitting on a lot of stock that will have to be scrapped.
Aluminum as cell material has been very attractive to researchers because of its theoretical high energy density. But Al has so far been a poor performer in a cell because it seems to fall apart after a few cycles. But Prof. Tang of Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology and his colleagues may have found a construction that stays together.
The idea was to allow the material to have some give to it by introducing holes in the metal and also coating it with carbon. The holes relieve mechanical stress and the carbon layer buffers the Al expansion and shields against undesirable reactions.
If this can get out of the lab and into production we can hope to see 2 times the capacity of our current best li-ion in production. Prof. Tang's lab tests held the test cell to a 2C rate, which is good but not as good as what we already have available. But in any case, we'll have to wait for some kind of production numbers before we can be sure what the capacity and current rate can be.
Insolight is a company that claims to have found an inexpensive way to utilize concentrated solar cells. The idea is to make the concentrator, and the machinery to direct the concentrator, simple and cheap.
They're using an injection molded lens right up near the ~40 percent efficient solar cells. This allows for a couple things. The concentrators can be at a heavy angle to the sun and still get the focal point onto the solar cell. And the second good point is that because of this extreme light bending the concentrator only has to move a few mm to get the full arc of the sun's rays.
But there are a few unanswered questions. We grant that this does not save space for the amount of energy generated. That's fine if the cost per watt generated is less. The real question comes up in maintenance and endurance costs.
Concentrated solar uses expensive solar cells that happen to also be a little more fragile than your standard ~12-15 percent efficient non-concentrated solar cells. And concentrating sunlight on them does their longevity no favors. But then having moving parts, even if they are simple low powered moving parts, are still a big maintenance cost if one has to go up and fix them. So it isn't just the up-front cost, but the ongoing maintenance and the replacement costs that need to have answers if this technology is to become a reality.
There has been a great deal of creativity and R&D money that has gone into creating the next battery. The next battery is hopefully the "holy grail" that can deliver a lot of amps, can hold a lot of energy, will last for many cycles, and above all... is inexpensive.
And by "a lot" we mean every performance aspect - current, capacity, cycles - needs to be a great deal more than what we are using today. Except for cost, which needs to be a great deal less than what we have today.
 So when news comes out about an advance in ZnMn batteries, one has to be interested because Zinc and Manganese are inexpensive. They are the two metals used in alkaline cells and in both carbon-zinc and zinc-chloride cells. These components are so inexpensive we find value in using them just one time and throwing them away.
This chemistry has been around for a long time. And over that time there has been a fair amount of interest in getting these metals in a rechargeable battery because of the low cost. Although in its rechargeable form energy density isn't the greatest compared to what we have today. But this new construction has shown great potential for number of cycles - 5000 cycles showed little degradation in the lab.
But lab results and production are worlds apart. What can be done in the lab is sometimes economically unfeasible to accomplish on an assembly line. We would have the holy grail of batteries by now if lab results could always scale up to mass production results.
So this might not be the holy grail, but it does help in one niche, that being grid storage. And Possibly starting batteries. So this might be one part of a two-part solution, one for portable power and another for stationary energy storage. It would still be an advance over what we have today.
Basically, the reason that ZnMn batteries haven't been able to recharge is that a fundamental understanding of the reaction wasn't understood. That understanding was how the Mn was dissolving into solution and becoming unavailable for a reaction.
The obvious solution was to begin the reaction with the electrolyte already saturated, in a particular balance, with Mn. And it worked. So the new understanding tells us the ZnMn cell works more like a Pb-Acid cell and less like Li-Ion.
But this brings up a great point. One of the greatest pushes in battery R&D is trying to understand what is going on in the cell to create and sustain performance. There is simply a lot we don't know about the batteries we are actually using now. They work, but if we understood them we could make them work much better.
The devil is in the details, but so is salvation - Hyman G. Rickover
Samsung has discontinued production on the Note 7. The replacement units
had a high number of reports that they were also bursting into flame.
It might be a little early to do a post-mortem on the whole saga, but
there are a few things we know.
 It
isn't totally clear if the problem is entirely a battery construction
issue. There may be a software issue that contributes or is the real
cause of the problem. Or, it could be a construction issue that is
creating a physical short somehow.
One of the common themes in complaints was that the battery is not user
replaceable. And as long as Samsung, and any other supplier, treats the
volatile battery and the electronics as a single package they will
probably get the same complaint. Everyone could see this whole problem
being a non-issue just with a little design change.
Samsung's brand is tarnished, and that means more sales for other
makers. The iPhone 7 has had a handful of hot phones, but since they
were outselling the Note 7 by a great deal, it doesn't look like their
problem is going to be outside the norm. The Google Pixel was released
at about the right time so it may see a boost in sales, as well as LG.
We may even see HTCand Huawei increase marketing to take advantage of
the shift.
Samsung is also trying to make sure there are no Note 7s still out there
by the time they are done. So if your local store does not replace the
phone for you, make sure to keep calling Samsung until you find someone
that understands the policy. To Samsung, they want everyone to wake up
and realize it was all just a dream. There is even a rumor that the Note
8 won't have that number because it will remind everyone they are
counting from 7. Look for the new Note to have a different badge.
It is said that it's easy to make fish stew but it's hard to make a
fish. Samsung has a long road ahead to climb back into the driver's seat
of the Android world.
We had a customer today ask for a larger format battery that could
deliver 20 amps for 1 to 1.5 hours. That's a battery you'd rather try
and carry in your pocket for sure.
And the answer to the question has changed quite a bit in the last few
years. The obvious answer was Lead Acid (SLA) because that chemistry
does very well delivering current and the materials are relatively
inexpensive. So one can just keep getting a bigger battery until they
get enough. In this case that would mean a 55Ah size.
That's about 40 lbs. worth of battery, About 400 cubic inches. That's a lot 'o lead.
 And
if one had a special application that just couldn't afford this kind of
weight and size, then a few years ago the alternative would have been
NiMH or even NiCd because the cost of Lithium chemistries was
prohibitive. I'm not sure, but the Prius might still be using NiMH
cells. But the cost of lithium chemistries has gone down so much that
Lithium variants are the new SLA alternative.
Obviously, they've completely displaced lead acid in EV applications.
A curious note; there is an alternative that is still out there.
Aviation NiCd could make a robust and smaller lighter battery than SLA.
Not much smaller and lighter, but still better. But these large format
NiCd cells are hard to come by. And they are prohibitively expensive.
And if you try and recycle them, you'll have trouble finding a recycling
center that will take them... Odd that.
And so looking at Lithium chemistries, the 2 large format types are
Li-Ion and LiFePO4. Li-Ion has the advantage in energy density, but
LiFePO4 has the advantage in safety and longevity. And it's energy
density isn't all that bad, either. It's a lot better than SLA.
As far as cost is concerned, the two lithium chemistries are somewhat
the same depending on size, current ability, and how far the cost is
spread over the lifetime of the cell. In other words, if a LiFePO4
battery lasts longer, a higher up-front cost may pay off since the
battery doesn't need to be replaced as quickly.
So getting back to our customer, he could either go with the ~$150 SLA
option, or the ~$500 LiFePO4 option. And that ~$500 cost includes a
charger because SLA chargers are common, and the customer very well
might have one, but the LiFePO4 will probably require a charger since
there aren't very many out there.
So what do you think of larger format alternatives to SLA? Comment below.
Energy storage can take more than one form. Batteries are the obvious
place but there are others. One of the places has been air stored in
caves under pressure. Another has been water at elevated levels.
Energy storage by lifting water
so it can fall back down to run a generator is not new. It is not only
an old idea, but it's been a huge economic success. The problem with the
idea is that to pay off, large amounts of water and land have to be
used for the reservoir. That means to pay off, there has to be a natural
formation where water can reside up high and also down low so the water
can be shuttled back and forth between them. To build such a large
formation would be economically unfeasible.
 Being
so large, these formations are usually not hard to spot. So when they
were all the rage in the 50's and 60's, all the obvious ones were taken.
But there are still a few promising places. One of them is in Oregon
where the idea is not to use solar or wind whenever it is available to
pump water up from a lower reservoir. But to use electric pumps when the
rates are low and sell the generated electricity back when the rates
are high.
Sure, that idea won't last forever, but it might pay off.
The problem in this case is the water pumped into the upper reservoir
will be ground water. And after it falls through the generator it will
be lost eventually to the ocean. But ground water cannot be re-charged
once the space has been lost. And ground water can be used for other
things because it is clean. This is why the two reservoir solution is
more popular.
There may be a few good places left for energy storage by lifting water.
But there won't be many. And even with the addition of all the
remaining water storage areas it won't make much difference to the
energy needs of the nation. So it would be better to take a long term
view and leave the ground water and rate shifting tactics in lieu of
more efficient and sustainable solutions.
China controls a great deal of the market
for batteries because they control materials for Li-Ion batteries. 100%
of the graphite anodes, which all Li-Ion batteries use, come from
China. And they control the vast majority of deposits of rare earths and
process most of the cobalt from around the world.
 This
has a number of manufacturers worried if the technology our futures run
on will be Li-Ion batteries. So the search is on for alternatives and
more sources. This isn't because China is scary. It's because of supply
and demand. Costs will go down when there are more sources and more
competition.
But until there are more sources found or different chemistries used,
the market for battery materials has been very stable. In fact, the
production of these materials has gone up considerably even if the
demand has grown faster than that supply.
So is the China bottleneck really something to be worried about? In my
opinion, it isn't a problem. Barring war with China, it is in the
interest of the companies and the government to keep the battery
material market strong.
But what if there is war with China? Even then, the materials will still have a market, but it will be more expensive.
Murata bought Sony's rechargeable battery business and they plan to use it in the automotive market.
Sony did not have a strong position in that sector and was not keen on
trying to wrestle it from Panasonic and the South Koreans.
But Murata is watching the Chinese, who are also breaking hard into
automotive and feel the time is right to jump in. They even use fighting
language in calling the Sony battery arm a "weapon."
| "I believe batteries will be a powerful weapon," said Murata, one of the sons of the founder of the Kyoto-based firm. |
The University of Michigan opened their battery lab
a little bit ago. I covered the plans for the lab in a previous blog
and at the time felt it was a way for some of the big players, like
Ford, to catch up in the battery sector. And that's the way it seems to
be playing out. Look for good things to come out of the Ann Arbor lab.
Fisker, the electric car company that was supposed to compete with Tesla
but went bankrupt instead, is now named "Fisker Inc." Yeah, I know,
that was its name before too. Odd they would do that.
The assets of the bankrupt car company, including the name, were bought
by a Chinese company and they changed it right away to Karma. Now, Karma
was the badge of the car Fisker produced - but I think shifting the way
they did the company renewed from bankruptcy will be able to keep the
look of the Fisker Karma. And Karma will put the nameplate, Revero, on
their version of the hybrid.
 But
back to the new Fisker car company. To make things clearer let's take a
look at what happened to Fisker when it drowned the first time. The US
government set up Fisker to receive hundreds of millions of dollars
through a "Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing"
program. Fisker should have been able to make the car he did with the
kind of money he had to play with, but he played with it instead.
The car got bad reviews
because it was bad. The electronic and software problems were
inexcusable. And a poor choice in where the exhaust came out - right
behind the driver's side front tire - made customers furrow their brow.
And with just a few on the road, the ones that burst into flames were
too many. Please note, it was the engine side that burst into flames,
not the battery. After spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer monies
as part of over a billion dollars invested to make the thing. AND each
buyer had to pay $100k dollars for each car; One would hope that fit and
finish would seem like the builders cared about their work. Apparently,
they didn't.
And yet, here we are. Fisker, by naming themselves "Fisker" is
unashamedly coming back with a new electric car. Will they ever pay back
the $139 million dollars that the taxpayers lost the first time? The
answer to that one is "assuredly NO." Will they get more taxpayer money
to make another sub-standard car? The answer to that one, I'm betting,
is "yes."
Starting in the 1950's, NiCd batteries were the only game in town for a
reasonable rechargeable battery that could replace non-rechargeable AA,
AAA, C, D, and 9V size batteries. And they were made in other sizes
too if that's what was needed for an embedded application. In fact, more
NiCd cells were made for embedded applications than as AA, AAA, C, D,
and 9V battery replacements.
What's an embedded application?
 Embedded
applications are when a cell or battery is housed inside the device
that is being powered. This would include battery packs that come inside
a plastic housing. Frequently a battery pack will include the cells and
electronics for battery management. Replacing these cells is a great
deal more difficult than just buying a new set at the local store,
opening an access plate and popping it in.
NIMH is the new kid in town
So NiCd ruled the roost for about 30 years until NiMH came along in the
1980's, The extra capacity per charge in the same size NiMH, about
double that of NiCd, allowed that chemistry to take over. This was
especially easy since the charging protocol of NiMH was so similar to
that of NiCd so one didn't always have to get a new charger for the new
chemistry and charger designs just needed a little tweaking. And NiMH
did not contain as much heavy metal content so it was deemed less
hazardous.
But embedded applications did not really fall in line and use NiMH
because it's overall life, about 1/2 as long as NiCd, was especially
difficult if one had to break a case open or unsolder the cells to
replace them. NiCd is simply more robust so the embedded market stuck
with it. In fact, power tools have gone straight from NiCd to Li-Ion as
their power source skipping a generation of NiMH power tool batteries
entirely, for the most part.
What does the future hold?
But that brings up the next threat to NiCd. Almost all power tools have
switched over to Li-Ion. The only consistent place one can find NiCd
these days is embedded applications where the battery pack is not
removable.
NiCd is still relatively cheap. It's still the most robust of the common
rechargeable chemistries. But as supply drops, prices may rise. And
when prices rise enough, we may see the end of NiCd.
There are 3 main kinds of Lead Acid batteries.
- AGM stands for 'absorbed glass mat' where the electrolyte is soaked in a glass mat around the lead plates
- Gel batteries thicken the electrolyte into a gel which stays relatively immobile around the plates
- Flooded batteries use liquid electrolyte flooded around the lead plates without obstruction
The way the electrolyte is held inside the battery creates small
differences between the types. Flooded batteries tend to have the
highest voltage, the highest current capability, are the least expensive
to make, and carry the highest capacity. But because the electrolyte
sloshes around inside the case, it has to stay upright, and the
electrolyte level often needs to be checked and refilled. And if the
case is cracked, sulfuric acid will gush out.
This last problem is so bad that gel batteries were invented to solve
it. And gel batteries are almost as good in performance as flooded types
in voltage, current capability, and capacity. So they would be ideal
for a lead acid application... except for cost. Creating and
constructing a gel type lead acid battery is expensive and for that
reason, there are not many made.
AGM batteries were created to solve the problem of cost, and indeed they
fit the niche well. And their performance is so close to that of a gel
battery that people will frequently use "gel" and "AGM" interchangeably.
Although almost anytime you hear someone call a battery a "gel cell" it
is really AGM.
So one would think AGM would displace gel batteries and flooded types as
well. Since they are "almost as good" in performance and they don't
carry a hazardous liquid risk. Except, again, for the cost. And even a
little performance difference matters. So even though AGM will only be a
little more expensive and give a little less performance... people
would rather pay a little less and have better performance. And the risk
in many situations is not great when using flooded batteries.
So we'll see flooded batteries in situations where the case is protected
and the battery is not bounced around. And we'll see AGM types where
the battery can be picked up or turned over or bounced around. AGM
batteries are also better for situations where ventilation can be a
problem. We'll also see AGM where checking water would raise maintenance
costs above the cost of AGM.
And even gel batteries are still made in small numbers for special applications, frequently in higher temperature situations.
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