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 I've been sent this link about a diamond battery a few times now. It would be more like a primary battery. But it seems to drive electrons through radioactivity and not chemical reactions, but there's nothing wrong with that.
If one watches the video they can see the cool way this battery works
What they don't tell you is that this cannot be the holy grail of batteries. The "better battery" that changes the world.
Despite being relatively inexpensive, the cost is being compared to other diamond batteries. And they are, as you might expect, very expensive.
The feed material, despite being a hefty 95,000 tons, is nothing compared to what would be needed to change the world with battery power.
The ability to deliver current is actually very low compared to what is needed to drive a new world of batteries.
Is this a breakthrough worthy of note? It sure is. It can be the innovation that makes some formerly impossible projects possible. But if anyone that reads this blog actually sees one, that will be noteworthy in itself. Which brings up the challenge that if someone ever sees this battery, no matter how many years have gone by, please leave a comment letting me know.
Now there might be more to come in line with this technology. We might find a way to harness nuclear power directly to electricity in a practical way. Currently, we use nuclear power to make electricity by creating steam from the heat of a nuclear pile, or from thermocouples that get their heat from a similar nuclear construction.
But this isn't nearly as safe or simple or inexpensive as the diamond battery. So hopefully this diamond battery can be the next step in the right direction to getting electricity generation from a nuclear source that everyone can have at their house.
I was recently asked about a battery bank for renewable energy:
I've been doing some research into renewable energy... You might be able to explain to me what a "deep cycle" battery is. A lot of the schematics I'm finding say that "deep cycle" batteries (commonly found on boats?) are the best for storing wind or solar energy. Do you know what those are and how they work? Why would they be an advantage?
Yes. A deep cycle battery is one that can be discharged most of the way and still be able to charge back up again.
For instance, your car battery is not deep cycle. If you discharge your car battery down to 10 percent or 20 percent regularly, it will stop taking a charge after a few discharges. In fact, if you find you have a dead battery in your car more than once, it might be damaged.
That wouldn't be good for renewable energy so deep cycle batteries are required. Still, avoiding deep discharges will allow them to last longer.
And yes, they are used in marine applications a lot because a marine application will frequently deep discharge the battery. But more popularly, deep cycle batteries are used in golf carts. At least the 6V version is.
They are Lead Acid batteries. And currently, that is the best option for renewable energy.
However, a better chemistry would be LiFePO4 not considering cost. This is a safe battery that can deep discharge more efficiently and deep discharge a great deal more times than Lead Acid.
The problem is cost. LiFePO4 can be had for as little as about $1 per Ah at a nominal 3.2V; Whereas Lead Acid is also about $1 per Ah (at about a 50% discharge level) but at nominal 6V
There are a few different kinds of comparisons that can be made, but this one shows that initially you get almost double the energy per dollar currently with Lead Acid.
There are other factors, however.
If the discharge is at a high Amp rate, then the efficiency of the LiFe PO4 batteries compare better. If the discharge is usually far below 50% then the cycle life of the LiFEPO4 batteries will compare better there as well. If maintenance is considered, the LiFePO4 batteries compare better on that count, too.
If all these things are considered together, there are a lot of renewable installations where LiFePO4 is a better fit.
Oh, just to note since some lithium chemistries have been in the news lately for bursting into flames, LiFePO4 is very safe.
Cold weather is a consideration when deciding what are the best batteries for a renewable energy installation
Lead Acid batteries don't work as well in cold or freezing temperatures, but they do work without damaging themselves much - one risk is having to deeply discharge them just to get the energy you need because they won't deliver as much in cold temps and then having them sit in the freezing cold waiting to be charged. If they are deeply discharged and it is very cold (zero degrees F or more) then the batteries could freeze and the cases might crack leaking acid or internal damage can occur. A charged Sealed Lead battery has no problems with the cold
LiFePO4 also won't give out it's rated energy in the cold, but it doesn't degrade as bad as Lead Acid. And there is no danger of damage if it is left in a very cold environment in a discharged state. The problem with LiFePO4 in the cold is that when the temps get below freezing it cannot charge without damage. The charger first has to warm the batteries to above freezing before it can start charging them or they will get permanent capacity loss. Obviously, this would require some smarts on the part of the charger.
As far as you application goes: how much energy do you need? Or, asked another way, what do you want to run when running off battery power only and for how long? Once we know the answer to this question we can size the battery and give prices for both options.
Driverless cars. Computer driven cars. Cars with Autopilot. Whatever you want to call them; Autopiloted cars have been around for a little while - before battery powered cars were considered mainstream. So the first autopilot cars with a lot of press were ICE powered. But generally autopilot only become street-worthy roughly the same time as BEV's have become more popular. But they aren't intrinsically connected.
Still, autopilot is a natural fit for BEV because Tesla jumped into the autopilot game with both feet. And they are a media favorite so whatever happens, good or bad, we will hear about it connected with the Model S.
And as far as autopilot cars go, the Tesla version is considered quite good. There have been a few crashes but people seem to want autopilot so they give as much charity to the problems as possible. It's similar to the batteries themselves - we risk li-ion fires just to get the best energy density and power density when safer chemistries are only a handful of percentage points lower in performance.
As soon as magnetic drive gets the battery it really needs to be a better economic choice over ICE vehicles, it will be the future. And autopilot will probably be the future, too. Why is that? Because they are already considered to be "nice drivers." And in our PC world, that translates to a mandate. There will come a time when people behind the wheel will be considered less safe than autopiloted cars and so autopilot will be required to drive.
All our current software and processing power isn't enough to handle all driving conditions. So total autopilot won't happen for a long time. That's why controlled inner-city areas will be the first to transform into areas that have few or no human-driven cars. And probably the few human drive cars will only be allowed with a permit. This will expand farther out of cities until controlled areas that only allow autopilot are connected.
Will there still be crashes? Certainly. But there will be less than before. And in many inner city areas traffic will speed up because all the cars will coordinate with each other. It sounds like a lot of upside for little downside. But there are a few downsides. One is that central control, a requirement for any network, will limit freedom to travel. And costs may be somewhat high for a rather long time until controlled spaces are connected and less expensive options are allowed.
As cold weather approaches (for people in cold weather areas), it's good to do a little maintenance and make sure your battery makes it through the winter.
Colder temps make it harder for car batteries to work. Their usable capacity goes down quite a bit as temperatures fall. So if there is something else going on, like a battery that is starting to wear out, or a parasitic load, take note to do something about it so you don't find yourself stranded.
What is a parasitic load? A parasitic load is something taking energy from the battery when the car and everything in it is turned off. Pretty much every car has a little bit of drain on the battery because the computers need to keep time and memory when it's turned off. Sometimes it is more drain than when the car was new, and sometimes the battery is worn enough that it can't keep the designed drain from wearing it down.
Sometimes a daily use car starts fine, but if that same car is left for a time, perhaps a couple weeks, it always starts hard afterward. There could be something that has changed that is drawing more power from the battery, or the battery might not be up to snuff.
If a car has a parasitic load sometimes it is a very difficult electrical puzzle to solve. A battery maintainer might be the most inexpensive and simplest way to solve the problem. If one knows the car will be left for a while, just hooking up a maintainer will ensure the car always starts. Or if one knows the temperature will get extremely low, hooking up the battery maintainer then might be a good idea, too.
Cleaning the battery will be a good idea, too. When temperatures swing from relatively warm and cool or cold, condensation will always be occurring. And dirt on the battery can hold water and connect the 2 poles of the battery leading to a parasitic load.
If one is storing a battery, the best advice is to keep it clean and keep it charged. One needs to keep it clean for the reasons just mentioned. But keeping it charged is because a partially run down battery, one that is below 80% charged, will have deterioration on the plates due to sulfation.
Charge a stored battery every 2 or 3 months. Every battery self-discharges even without any load, and lead acid more than most other chemistries. So that is what prompts the top-off charge. And if the battery will be stored inside the car, it's not a bad idea to remove the negative battery cable to be sure no load can be on it.
Recycling has been a success in the Lead Acid battery industry.
Lead batteries are the environmental success story of our time. More than 99% of all battery lead is recycled. Compared to 55% of aluminum soft drink and beer cans, 45% of newspapers, 26% of glass bottles and 26% of tires, lead-acid batteries top the list of the most highly recycled consumer product.
Wow, more than 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled. And they can, to the tune of 60-80%, be turned back into a new battery.
This can't quite be true for lithium batteries because we can't just melt down the component parts and put them back into a battery very easy. But this is somewhat due to the tiny volume of li-ion in a particular place. To get a high enough volume for recycling li-ion to make sense, the use of li-ion will actually need to be quite a bit higher.
 But if current trends continue, we should see that kind of volume in the future. Even then, recycling of li-ion will not be on the same scale as lead acid because the recycling process is more expensive. The effect of recycling li-ion will probably be relegated to evening out the price of some of the component parts.
 But I know one might point out the rising price of lead. And it's true the price of lead has gone up lately. Despite that, the 5-year price of lead has been a little over and a little under a $1 per pound.
But looking at lithium carbonate, the material needed for lithium batteries, We see a much wider swing. Note, too, that the graph for lithium is for a longer time period.
And there are also other components like cobalt, copper, and aluminum, but they are also difficult to extract from a spent cell.
It's not all bad. We will probably see a different chemistry in the next few years just based on creating a safer battery. And whether this new chemistry can be recycled well or not will still only affect the price, and not the availability, of what we will come to know as a necessary part of modern civilization.
There have been a number of new utility sized grid batteries that have come online in the world in the last few years. But the largest grid battery was built 13 years ago.
It's still going strong. Obviously, it doesn't use lithium technology since that technology wasn't around for grid batteries back then. It uses NiCd chemistry.
NiCd batteries may very well be the most robust battery type available, even today. LiFePO4 might take that crown in time, but looking at the performance of this very large battery it might not. NiCd might not have the energy density of Lithium chemistries, but that doesn't matter much for a battery that weighs in at 1500 tons.
 What does matter a lot is cost. And lithium chemistries are benefiting from economies of scale. Already we are seeing sub-$200 prices per kWh. NiCd cells are more than $300 per kWh.
So the next ' world's biggest battery' will be made with a lithium chemistry. It's going to be built in Los Angeles.
I'm going to bet that it will be a much shorter time than 13 years before the LA battery is out-done.
There is a large network in the world that runs the gas pumps that power our vehicles. It is a system that goes from an oil pump to the refinery to the distribution centers to the corner station. It's worldwide in size and the capital equipment within this system is almost too big to comprehend.
So when the world switches to magnetic drive, how are we going to replace this network? Do we merely need to switch all the gas pumps hoses with wires?
Kinda, but "merely" is as big an understatement as the size of the petrol system. It'll be like eating an elephant.
How does one eat an elephant?... One bite at a time.
And Beijing is taking a bite. The taxi system is switching to EV's. It is encouraged because of the smog problem in the city. But the number charging stations or battery-swap stations just won't handle the kind of increase in EV taxis the government is hoping for. So they are building stations to fix the problem.
This seems like a good idea on the surface - getting rid of the exhaust from a large number of the cars driving in the city. But the power requirements of the stations will have to come from somewhere. And we already know where it will come from.
 The coal plants not far from Beijing. And those coal fired plants are one of the main reasons the city has a smog problem. Sure, the coal plants might be a little more efficient than the cars, but the smog problem will not be reduced as much as they want it to be.
And the reason they really want to get a handle on this now is because in a few short years Beijing will be on display at the Olympics.
Elon Musk has announced gigafactory 2. Gigafactory 1 hasn't even been finished yet.
But it makes sense. Europe has a strong car market and Tesla would like to have their cars built there instead of having them shipped there with tariffs added. There will have to be another factory anyway if desired production numbers are to be met.
The announcement was made and Elon Musk said:
“This is something that we plan on exploring quite seriously with different locations for very large scale Tesla vehicles, and battery and powertrain production — essentially an integrated ‘Gigafactory 2,’”
Sounds like gigafactory 3 is already in mind. China maybe? How about South America? Australia?
And let's not forget that the PowerWall and PowerPack are huge battery projects in their own right. And capacity will have to include them as well. That's a lot of GWs.
And just how many cars is Telsa planning to produce? From the proceeds of gigafactory 1 it appears that the bar is set at about 1 million cars by 2020. And with gigafacory 2 perhaps they will be able to double that number in Europe.
I realize that gas-driven car production in the world dwarfs those numbers. But if expected production and sales of Tesla EVs come to fruition, then the tide of the future will be known. Magnetic drive will move into the car space like everyone knew the white LED would move into the flashlight space.
 Other big players are ramping up in a similar way. Chinese battery factories feel the need to keep up with Tesla and they have the capital and business sense to always be an effective rival. And let's remember that VW isn't the largest car company in the world because they can't get customers the kind of cars they want.
UPDATE: Jaguar, owned by Tata Motors, has announced their BEV luxury sedan. The electric Jaguar is expected to have similar stats and as the Tesla model S.
And let's not forget Fisker... just joking, you can forget about Fisker.
The problem I see is that batteries aren't quite ready. The transition from oil powered transportation to magnetic drive might not sound like a big deal, but it will be profound. And Elon is betting the battery that is really needed will be available in the future and his factories will be ready to produce them like no one else.
The junk battery story has legs. I guess people are pretty excited about it. I had access to the source paper and it's a good read. Certainly techy enough to give you a great number of details on exactly what it takes to make the battery.
You can read in a number of stories from a number of outlets (https://www.google.com/#tbm=nws&q=scrap+battery) that give a good overview of what the researchers did. But no one that wrote a story about the battery actually tried to make one. I won't be able to either. So can it really be made by a DIY?
Let's take a look at a couple statements that have me tending to believe that perhaps this could be a small business venture, but probably above the ability of most handymen.
First, it isn't just scrapped metal that is involved. From the paper:
To individually assess the electrochemical performance of each electrode, we performed electrochemical measurements in a three-electrode configuration with the anodized scrap steel and brass as the working electrodes against a platinum or gold counter with a SCE reference (see the methods, Supporting Information).
Gold and platinum aren't easy to come by. However, I imagine that any non-ferrous metal could be used? Typically batteries use carbon as a counter. So if I understand correctly, platinum or gold are used to maximize performance when a lesser metal would work.
Then again, I could be wrong about this.
And here is a curious statement from an anodizing FAQ:
CAN PARTS WITH BRASS OR STEEL HARDWARE BE ANODIZED?
No. The part being anodized must only be aluminum. Anything else will be destroyed in the process.
I'm sure this is only true under certain conditions. But anodizing brass and steel doesn't seem to be a common practice. And I'd be willing to bet that if anyone had tried this chemistry before they would have used anodizing to increase the surface area of the plates and to get an oxidized surface.
So perhaps this battery really is worth pursuing. Perhaps some enterprising DIY can put up a Youtube video and show us how it is done. If I get the time and money I'll try it myself.
It would seem with this much press the idea could get some traction.
With Donald Trump winning the election, what can we expect in the energy storage sector? Call this the post-election predictions!
 2 things should happen. Businesses are expecting the government to set their rules under Trump. This reduction of uncertainty should promote R&D. And since there is plenty of R&D that needs to go into the battery industry, we might expect battery startups to increase.
The second thing that should happen is tariffs. It's the only tool in the box for a government to protect its native workers. And that promise seems like one that Trump wants to keep. This does not bode well for the battery industry since it needs as many markets and worldwide innovation to grow as quickly as possible. Tariffs will slow that growth.
Will we see a change in how airlines treat lithium batteries? Probably not. Will we see a difference in environmental laws that impact the solar industry, and also the battery industry to some extent? Again, probably not. Will we see the government give out loans to certain companies like it did Fisker (Fisker did not pay back 139 million dollars of what they got from the taxpayers, by the way)? Probably not immediately.
But all this is a little speculative. We really are not sure exactly how a Trump government will shake out.
Perhaps you have some ideas, predictions, or admonishments you'd like to share with us. Comment below!
Lithium fires are particularly nasty. Depending on the kind of Lithium battery, water may or may not help.
Lithium batteries one will find in most handheld items; cell phones, laptops, tablets, and the like - do not have enough lithium in them to react with water so dunking them in water (or soda or whatever water-based liquid is handy) will help. This simply cools the battery so the reaction causing the fire will slow or stop. Using a regular fire extinguisher is not a bad idea, either.
There are other lithium batteries, perhaps bigger batteries that one might find in EV's or grid batteries, that have enough lithium in them that spraying water on them, or dunking them in water, will not have the desired effect because the lithium will react with the water. These are generally called Lithium Metal batteries. Reacting with water won't make things better and might make things worse, but to put fires out around a Lithium Metal battery is what water can be used for, so if water is all that is available, use it.
So in the case of a burning lithium metal battery, one should use a class D fire extinguisher. A class D fire extinguisher is for reactive metal fires and should not be used on other types of fires.
That being said, there are a couple new products out there just to help with this new first world problem.
A company called Spectrum FX is making a fire extinguisher that they say uses "Firebane" technology that they describe thusly:
Firebane® is biodegradable and human friendly. The agent has been accepted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a replacement for Halon and listed on the Significant New Alternative Policy List (SNAP). As an Aqueous-based agent it is now included in the FAA AC 120-80A as a firefighting tool that can be used on commercial aircraft. Firebane is the only known Aqueous- based agent that also has Class D fire ratings.
Specifically formulated for the use in aircraft at very low temperatures, Firebane has a Pour Point at > 63 Celceus and is Soluble in Water.
 Spectrum sells this and other aircraft ready fire suppression kits. They also have a "fire sock" which is like a pouch to put a burning item into to contain it. Obviously, it comes with fire resistant gloves to get the object into the pouch.
There is another company, Viking Packing Specialist, that makes a fire pouch called AvSax.
And undoubtedly there will be companies that can offer the kind of solutions we'll need to deal with the problem of burning lithium batteries. Even if the problem might, for the most part, go away with safer chemistries.
There have been some advances in batteries that have not made it into mass production because manufacturing a 1-off in the lab is quite a different thing than having machines make millions a day in a factory.
But what if a battery was simple enough to be made by hand? Sure a person would have to put in some sweat equity, but if you really wanted an inexpensive battery there are a lot of people that would be willing to trade time and effort for a battery that worked nearly as well as what they could buy. Especially considering the best prices on a Lead Acid battery bank for a good sized solar install can easily run into the thousands of dollars.
And what if you could even, with a little more effort, make this battery from scrap materials? For example, instead of a scraper (a person who collects and recycles scrap for money) delivering their steel and brass to a scrap collector, one could have the scraper deliver it to them by offering a little better price.
And having mentioned steel and brass, those are the two metals that the researchers at Vanderbilt University have proposed for their scrap battery. Cary Pint is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
Pint said:
“We’re forging new ground with this project, where a positive outcome is not commercialization, but instead a clear set of instructions that can be addressed to the general public. It’s a completely new way of thinking about battery research, and it could bypass the barriers holding back innovation in grid scale energy storage,”
 This sounds interesting, but what about performance? They claim a steel-brass battery can store about 20 Wh/kg and deliver 20,000 W/kg. That's not too bad for a homemade battery. Lead acid will give you more like 35-40 Wh/kg and deliver a whopping 20 W/kg...
Wait a second.
Lead acid batteries can deliver a lot of current. But supposedly this steel-brass battery can deliver a great deal more. Barring a typo, I'm impressed. Even at not quite 1/2 the capacity a steel-brass battery just might pay off. Especially at scrap prices.
So here's what might be wrong with this idea. Since the energy density is rather low, it's going to take almost 2 times as much battery to make a battery bank. The logistics of that seem a little daunting. Also, they said they could get 5000 cycles out of this chemistry, but they didn't tell us how deeply these can discharge without damage.
So we need a little more information, but it still sounds like something worth looking at.
Daylight savings time has become the convenient interval to change one's smoke alarm batteries. Although it doesn't happen every 6 months. And 6 months is really far below the runtime of an alkaline battery in a smoke detector.
 I guess daylight savings time used to be about a 6-month interval. And if one uses general-purpose or heavy-duty battery I certainly wouldn't want to have them go beyond 6 months. But an alkaline battery is so close in price to the lesser types that it makes sense to be sure you have one in your smoke alarm.
So pick either the start of daylight savings in the spring, or the end of daylight savings in the fall, and change them yearly.
Or, one might consider buying a lithium battery. Then it might be a good idea to wait for the smoke alarm to let you know when the battery is low. A lithium 9V battery will cost almost $10 and may very well last for 5-10 years depending on the smoke alarm. However, please at least test your smoke alarm every year even if you don't need to change the battery.
 Tesla has a new size cell which they, and Panasonic who will actually manufacture it, say is the best size for energy density and manufacturing cost.
Previously Tesla was using the ever-so-popular size 18650 cell. This cell was 18mm in diameter and 65mm length as denoted by the name. Their new cell, the 21-70, will be 21mm in diameter and 70mm length, following a similar naming convention.
Elon Musk says the battery will have the highest energy density and also be cheap relative to today's alternate offerings.
Everything is going very well at the battery Gigafactory and we believe quite strongly that SolarCity’s technology on the Silevo front added to Panasonic ‘s cell technology will make it the most efficient and ultimately the cheapest solar cell in the world – just as it is with the battery cell. We have the best cell in the world that is also the cheapest cell.
What will the energy density be? And the final cost? It's hard to say at this point. Stay tuned and as soon as we find out you'll know.
Just an update on the latest goings on of Henrik Fisker.
Yeah, I know this horse is supposed to be dead... but I just don't trust it. So here we are again.
What we all really want to know about is the battery. Or supercapacitor really. And we get this gem of a quote from Jack Kavanaugh who's company is making this revolutionary technology:
“The challenge with using graphene in a supercapacitor in the past has been that you don’t have the same density and ability to store as much energy,” Kavanaugh said. “Well we have solved that issue with technology we are working on.”
Now, I don't mean to split hairs here too much, but this quote does not pass the smell test. Maybe Kavanaugh is just not a smooth talker. Or maybe he was asked a question off guard, or maybe he was thinking of something else when he said this. But "density" and "ability to store as much energy" is the same thing. And then he used the past tense when saying he solved the problem, but the present tense when he was working on it.
I think when he was speaking he was putting on his politician hat and trying to sound bigger and better than the technology actually is. He needed to sound savvy but vague. He's just not very good at it. And then he strung out a clause in the second sentence too by hedging the absolute statement that the problem was solved in the past by also adding that they were working on it in the present.
They should have had Bill Clinton make the statement. He is a great deal more talented than Jack Kavanaugh.
If they actually are successful in making a graphene supercapacitor that has a higher energy density than today's best Li-Ion cells, then I'll fully apologize and you can call me bad names out loud. You can even grumble bad things about me under your breath.
But I'm not too worried.
 And just one more thing that has me calm about my view of the new Fisker Inc.; Did you see a picture of the doors on that car? It's like the tailpipe in your face all over again. Not that the doors will blow smoke in your face, but I'm predicting the rear door will be a head-shaker in the same way the tailpipe was.
I don't suppose someone has some Photoshop skills and can glean more information from this picture?
And don't worry. The next reveal by Fisker will be covered here even if it happens tomorrow.
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I've been sent this link about a diamond battery a few times now. It would be more like a primary battery. But it seems to drive electrons through radioactivity and not chemical reactions, but there's nothing wrong with that.
