3 ms·
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
by 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 agoThe 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 agoDischarge rate however is very important for grid storage. And temperature range might be.
- usrusr 3y agoWhy 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.
- hinkley 3y agoBecause you're trying to replace peaker plants, which produce on demand but not as efficiently. You can't peak shave and trough fill with low discharge rates.
- DennisP 3y agoDepends. If you're trying to run a grid entirely on wind/solar, which presumably is the ultimate goal, then you need several days of storage. A low discharge rate is fine in that case. This is the selling point of iron-air batteries, which discharge over the course of a hundred hours, but are a tenth the cost of lithium-ion. The first iron-air factory is supposed to be operational in 2025.
- tuatoru 3y agoForm Energy is claiming 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_Energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_Energy
- DennisP 3y agoOh cool, that's who I was thinking of, must have misremembered. Verified 2024 on their website.
- pfdietz 3y agoForm's solution is selling a downside as an upside, if I understand correctly. The battery technology inherently has low charge/discharge rates, so it has to discharge over hundreds of hours. There are storage use cases where you want this, but it's a limitation.
- DennisP 3y agoThe upside is extreme low cost. Their marketing team may be spinning the downside a bit but what they really did was find an important niche where the downside doesn't matter.
- weinzierl 3y agoSpeaking of energy density: If I remember it correctly the energy density of a capacitor was easy to calculate and basically limited by the permittivity of available materials. Do you know if there is a similar upper bound for chemical storage batteries?
- marcosdumay 3y agoI don't think this battery is aimed at grid storage. It uses complex electrodes to achieve what should be a quite high energy density (even though the density of the complete battery is not informed). That means high costs and the need of careful packaging.