5 ms·

Please fill this out as it’s educational, I don’t mean it as snark: Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutiona

by isatty 3y ago

Please fill this out as it’s educational, I don’t mean it as snark: Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. [ ] it has too short of a lifetime. [ ] its charge rate is too slow. [ ] its materials are too toxic. [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care. [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then. [ ] by the time it ships li-ion advances will match it.

WhatsTheBigIdea 3y ago
The reason we don't see new grid storage tech succeed is because there is no market for it. Seems like there ought to be a market... every electrical system in the world would be much better off with gobs of storage. But there isn't... because... Electrical markets are very highly regulated. The barriers to market entry are astronomical and quite frankly uninvestable. When I was active in the space, no utility would even think of buying a piece of new hardware unless the design had a 7 year track record in actual on grid operation for a respected utility. Not quite a pure circular fallacy, but darn close. There are a lot of good technologies out there that really do work. But they can't attracted funding to scale because they simply can't reliably access the market. The grid scale energy storage problem is social, not a technical.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Batteries have been quite important in Texas for the past few weeks during unusually warm evenings with unusually little wind. They've had a number of days recently requiring emergency deployment, and a sizable chunk of that came from batteries, setting some records with peaks over 2.5GW. (There is also significant battery deployment in CAISO.)
  - WhatsTheBigIdea 3y ago
    Yes! Texas (ERCOT) is by far the easiest electrical market to enter. It is also one of the highest volatility markets which is also good for storage. But the barriers to entry are still way too high to call it anything like an open market. To be sure, traditionally there are somewhat good reasons to have high barriers to entry into electrical markets. But in the context of climate change, those reasons seem more like tradition than real reasons.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Sounds like someone needs to jack up fossil fuel prices to astronomical levels and the market will suddenly appear from seemingly nowhere.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  Historically yes, but I think the seal is broken now and there's going to be huge amounts installed in the next 5-10 years.
DennisP 3y ago
Yet it looks like sodium-ion is hitting production this year, for electric cars. They don't have better performance than li-ion but people care anyway because sodium is so abundant.
MostlyStable 3y ago
I think this is a good way of thinking about this, except that I'd argue the single most important battery need right now is grid scale storage for which energy density, and to a lesser extent charge rate, are much less important, and almost the only things that matter are price per kwh, and recharge cycles. So your full list is required to be a replacement for mobile devices and/or EVs, but a couple of them could be removed for the case of grid scale storage. Generally agree though that almost all "revolutionary replacement" batteries have critical flaws that make them inferior to Li-ion
- pydry 3y ago
  The best short to medium term grid storage battery is pumped storage. 90% efficiency. Price per MWh of about 1/3 of the cheapest lithium battery. Largest one is 350GWh. The geography to build these things is extremely common - there's very little shortage of up. The best long term grid storage is probably still electrolyzed hydrogen pumped into a cavern underground. ~50% round trip efficiency but very high energy density at relatively low cost.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 3y ago
  Discharge rate however is very important for grid storage. And temperature range might be.
  - usrusr 3y ago
    Why would discharge rate be important? I'm assuming discharge rate as in "ability to deliver high current" here. If you install capacities to serve more than a few minutes or hours, even the weakest batteries won't be challenged by grid peaks. If you mean self-discharge, and the importance of that being low, yeah, that might become a factor to keep an eye on once we reach capacities to solve seasonal cycles. But even then it's nothing more than another element in what makes up the total charge/discharge efficiency.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
I guess Lithium ion is just Goodenough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  I know you see that his last name is "Goodenough" and it's easy to make a joke by repeating his last name, but lithium ion needs cobalt, is expensive and has major durability issues.
  - philipkglass 3y ago
    Lithium iron phosphate batteries, which you mentioned in another comment, are a type of lithium ion battery that does not need cobalt. So are lithium titanate batteries. You may have been confused by stories misleadingly touting these kinds of batteries as "alternatives to" lithium ion batteries. They're all subtypes of lithium ion battery. There's a good overview article here covering various subtypes of lithium ion batteries: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-205-types-of-lithium-ion https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-205-types-of-lithiu...
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
      Lithium Ion typically refers to the original chemistries. You may have been confused but John B. Goodenough didn't work on lithium iron phosphate, they are a completely different chemistry. You may have been confused by the lithium in the name, but that doesn't mean they are the same.
tempodox 3y ago
My thoughts exactly. I'm getting tired of those theoretical battery tech announcements that are never heard from again and never make it to production.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Of course most new technologies fail. That's the way it works. It's the like the new publishing executive who reportedly ordered the peons to "just publish the best-sellers" from now on. If you know of some way to invent a superior new battery technology without doing a lot of research and development (with the inevitable dead-ends), you should probably be off doing that. See also: the people who post a snarky "in mice" comment on every new medical development.
MPSimmons 3y ago
I mean, sure, but by that argument, LiON would be: [x] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [x] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [x] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. at least, right?
- scythe 3y ago
  Lithium-ion batteries are the benchmark for all of these, except maybe the explosion thing. They offer thousands of cycles where many prototypes only last a few hundred. They basically function in the range -10–+40 C while some prototypes do not even cover this range — sodium–sulfur for example requires >200 C. And, well, humans tolerate small probabilities of disaster, probably because our bodies do that anyway (as an early-life cancer patient, I would know).
scythe 3y ago
The answer is, as for all X-air batteries: [x] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. "High power density" in the paper means 220 milliwatts per square centimeter. That's higher than other air-breathing cathodes, but it's still basically nothing compared to a solid cathode.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  For X-air batteries, there's also [x] clogs up with carbonates when the electrolyte is exposed to air
Turing_Machine 3y ago
Now do one for stone tools. Edit: Your proposed replacement for stone tools, "steel", is impractical because: [ ] it's not as sharp [ ] it rusts [ ] it's more expensive [ ] it requires a much more complex fabrication process
- Turskarama 3y ago
  LCD technology was first available in 1990, but LCD monitors didn't outsell CRTs until 2003. People have wild expectations of how quickly a new technology can come to market. Not hearing about it for a couple of years in no way implies that it's dead.
- arp242 3y ago
  People have tried this: they made a stone axe, and they made a bronze or steel axe. Then they cut down a tree. The metal ones work loads better. I'm not entirely sure if a stone axe is sharper or not, but a steel one will last much longer – a metal one may corrode, but a stone one will chip easily (whether it's sharp or not is unimportant as such; you don't make an axe to be sharp, you make an axe to cut down a tree – one reason steel axes work better is that they're smaller: for bigger trees you will have to cut less). There's a reason why people started using steel, and why archaeologists find discarded broken stone tools all over the place.
mrinterweb 3y ago
These viability considerations are important. Still, I like hearing about advances and exploration into new technologies in battery tech. Sometimes the challenges can be overcame or the technology can find its place in a subset of the market (not necessarily a replacement for Li-Ion).

by isatty 3y ago

WhatsTheBigIdea 3y ago

The reason we don't see new grid storage tech succeed is because there is no market for it. Seems like there ought to be a market... every electrical system in the world would be much better off with gobs of storage. But there isn't... because... Electrical markets are very highly regulated. The barriers to market entry are astronomical and quite frankly uninvestable. When I was active in the space, no utility would even think of buying a piece of new hardware unless the design had a 7 year track record in actual on grid operation for a respected utility. Not quite a pure circular fallacy, but darn close. There are a lot of good technologies out there that really do work. But they can't attracted funding to scale because they simply can't reliably access the market. The grid scale energy storage problem is social, not a technical.

sanderjd 3y ago
Batteries have been quite important in Texas for the past few weeks during unusually warm evenings with unusually little wind. They've had a number of days recently requiring emergency deployment, and a sizable chunk of that came from batteries, setting some records with peaks over 2.5GW. (There is also significant battery deployment in CAISO.)
- WhatsTheBigIdea 3y ago
  Yes! Texas (ERCOT) is by far the easiest electrical market to enter. It is also one of the highest volatility markets which is also good for storage. But the barriers to entry are still way too high to call it anything like an open market. To be sure, traditionally there are somewhat good reasons to have high barriers to entry into electrical markets. But in the context of climate change, those reasons seem more like tradition than real reasons.
moffkalast 3y ago
Sounds like someone needs to jack up fossil fuel prices to astronomical levels and the market will suddenly appear from seemingly nowhere.
Turskarama 3y ago
Historically yes, but I think the seal is broken now and there's going to be huge amounts installed in the next 5-10 years.

DennisP 3y ago

Yet it looks like sodium-ion is hitting production this year, for electric cars. They don't have better performance than li-ion but people care anyway because sodium is so abundant.

MostlyStable 3y ago

I think this is a good way of thinking about this, except that I'd argue the single most important battery need right now is grid scale storage for which energy density, and to a lesser extent charge rate, are much less important, and almost the only things that matter are price per kwh, and recharge cycles. So your full list is required to be a replacement for mobile devices and/or EVs, but a couple of them could be removed for the case of grid scale storage. Generally agree though that almost all "revolutionary replacement" batteries have critical flaws that make them inferior to Li-ion

pydry 3y ago
The best short to medium term grid storage battery is pumped storage. 90% efficiency. Price per MWh of about 1/3 of the cheapest lithium battery. Largest one is 350GWh. The geography to build these things is extremely common - there's very little shortage of up. The best long term grid storage is probably still electrolyzed hydrogen pumped into a cavern underground. ~50% round trip efficiency but very high energy density at relatively low cost.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hinkley 3y ago
Discharge rate however is very important for grid storage. And temperature range might be.
- usrusr 3y ago
  Why would discharge rate be important? I'm assuming discharge rate as in "ability to deliver high current" here. If you install capacities to serve more than a few minutes or hours, even the weakest batteries won't be challenged by grid peaks. If you mean self-discharge, and the importance of that being low, yeah, that might become a factor to keep an eye on once we reach capacities to solve seasonal cycles. But even then it's nothing more than another element in what makes up the total charge/discharge efficiency.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

I guess Lithium ion is just Goodenough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough

CyberDildonics 3y ago
I know you see that his last name is "Goodenough" and it's easy to make a joke by repeating his last name, but lithium ion needs cobalt, is expensive and has major durability issues.
- philipkglass 3y ago
  Lithium iron phosphate batteries, which you mentioned in another comment, are a type of lithium ion battery that does not need cobalt. So are lithium titanate batteries. You may have been confused by stories misleadingly touting these kinds of batteries as "alternatives to" lithium ion batteries. They're all subtypes of lithium ion battery. There's a good overview article here covering various subtypes of lithium ion batteries: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-205-types-of-lithium-ion https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-205-types-of-lithiu...
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    Lithium Ion typically refers to the original chemistries. You may have been confused but John B. Goodenough didn't work on lithium iron phosphate, they are a completely different chemistry. You may have been confused by the lithium in the name, but that doesn't mean they are the same.

tempodox 3y ago

My thoughts exactly. I'm getting tired of those theoretical battery tech announcements that are never heard from again and never make it to production.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
Of course most new technologies fail. That's the way it works. It's the like the new publishing executive who reportedly ordered the peons to "just publish the best-sellers" from now on. If you know of some way to invent a superior new battery technology without doing a lot of research and development (with the inevitable dead-ends), you should probably be off doing that. See also: the people who post a snarky "in mice" comment on every new medical development.

MPSimmons 3y ago

I mean, sure, but by that argument, LiON would be: [x] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [x] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [x] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. at least, right?

scythe 3y ago
Lithium-ion batteries are the benchmark for all of these, except maybe the explosion thing. They offer thousands of cycles where many prototypes only last a few hundred. They basically function in the range -10–+40 C while some prototypes do not even cover this range — sodium–sulfur for example requires >200 C. And, well, humans tolerate small probabilities of disaster, probably because our bodies do that anyway (as an early-life cancer patient, I would know).

scythe 3y ago

The answer is, as for all X-air batteries: [x] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. "High power density" in the paper means 220 milliwatts per square centimeter. That's higher than other air-breathing cathodes, but it's still basically nothing compared to a solid cathode.

pfdietz 3y ago
For X-air batteries, there's also [x] clogs up with carbonates when the electrolyte is exposed to air

Turing_Machine 3y ago

Now do one for stone tools. Edit: Your proposed replacement for stone tools, "steel", is impractical because: [ ] it's not as sharp [ ] it rusts [ ] it's more expensive [ ] it requires a much more complex fabrication process

Turskarama 3y ago
LCD technology was first available in 1990, but LCD monitors didn't outsell CRTs until 2003. People have wild expectations of how quickly a new technology can come to market. Not hearing about it for a couple of years in no way implies that it's dead.
arp242 3y ago
People have tried this: they made a stone axe, and they made a bronze or steel axe. Then they cut down a tree. The metal ones work loads better. I'm not entirely sure if a stone axe is sharper or not, but a steel one will last much longer – a metal one may corrode, but a stone one will chip easily (whether it's sharp or not is unimportant as such; you don't make an axe to be sharp, you make an axe to cut down a tree – one reason steel axes work better is that they're smaller: for bigger trees you will have to cut less). There's a reason why people started using steel, and why archaeologists find discarded broken stone tools all over the place.

mrinterweb 3y ago

These viability considerations are important. Still, I like hearing about advances and exploration into new technologies in battery tech. Sometimes the challenges can be overcame or the technology can find its place in a subset of the market (not necessarily a replacement for Li-Ion).