3 ms·
Depends. 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 ra
by DennisP 3y ago
Depends. 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.