Stanford Researchers Invent Everlasting Battery Material

judgecorp writes "Researchers at Stanford University have invented a battery material that could allow batteries to go through 400,000 charging cycles instead of the 400 or so which today's Li-ion batteries can manage. Among the uses could be storing energy to even out the availability of renewable sources such as sun and wind." Adds a story at ExtremeTech, "The only problem is, a high-voltage cathode (-) requires a very low-voltage anode (+) — and the Stanford researchers haven’t found the right one yet; and so they haven’t actually made a battery with this new discovery."

Comments

"Renewable sources"

[sugarmotor]

Nice to hear the phrase "renewable sources" being used.

Re:"Renewable sources"

[Anonymous Coward]

Renewable resources? Has anybody read this article from today's slashdot headlines...
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/dawn-stover/the-myth-of-renewable-energy

Re:"Renewable sources"

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Soylent Green is very renewable, so why use anything else?

Re:"Renewable sources"

[GameboyRMH]

That article was quite stupid, read my comment on it:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2542980&cid=38159130

Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[Fluffeh]

From TFA:

Stanford, however, has developed a new battery electrode that can survive 40,000 charge/discharge cycles — enough for 30 years of use on the grid.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[skids]

...and the original article plays it loose with the 400 charge/discharge cycles figure for Li-ion. They took the low-end of the range from Wikipedia's Li-ion article. Typical is more like 1000 for standard chemistries and higher for some of the more stable chemistries like li-FePO4.

Still, nice to see even more evidence that there's a menu of options for improving battery energy density, cycle life, and calendar life. Now if we could just make an educated guess and pick a suite of them to develop into large scale production instead of constantly dithering waiting for the next grad student to up the bar and never actually opening a factory.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Kettle, meet pot. An "order of magnitude" is typically a factor of ten. Your example is more closely described by "twice".

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[wooferhound]

And it would also help if there was an actual battery in the first place
From TFA . . .
>> "The only problem is, a high-voltage cathode (-) requires a very low-voltage anode (+) — and the
>> Stanford researchers haven’t found the right one yet; and so they haven’t actually made a battery
>> with this new discovery."

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[garyebickford]

Well, in all fairness, that's a binary order of magnitude. :)

  - I know, that's weak. But this is slashdot.

Other orders of magnitude may be calculated using bases other than 10. The ancient Greeks ranked the nighttime brightness of celestial bodies by 6 levels in which each level was the fifth root of one hundred (about 2.512) as bright as the nearest weaker level of brightness, so that the brightest level is 5 orders of magnitude brighter than the weakest, which can also be stated as a factor of 100 times brighter.

- Order of Magnitude

And see, now you know how star magnitude is computed! :D

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[bemymonkey]

Standard batteries in use today (say in laptops or smartphones) typically don't last longer than 300-500, and that's with greater capacity loss than 20%... then again, people really beat their batteries into submission - charging a smartphone during GPS navigation while the sun shines on the damn thing, constantly charging to 100% and keeping it charged all day while the phone's on the desk, running it down to 0% regularly (usually other people than the constantly charged ones - the memory effect still lives in the minds of those old enough to remember batteries before Lithium Ion)...

Hell, the laptop battery I'm currently using has only got 104 cycles and is already down to 22.08/28.80Wh - ~76%. Recalibration might pull that back up to 24Wh or so, but still... This is my beater-battery, so it's constantly being charged and discharged in tiny increments, but it's still pretty gruesome.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[TheRaven64]

An order of magnitude depends on your number base. In computer science, it's common for an order of magnitude to mean a factor of two. In most other scientific or engineering disciplines it usually means a factor of ten. In general usage, it means (as my PhD supervisor would say) 'big-huge'.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[Ginger Unicorn]

the only magnitude i'm interested in is that of firepower we can't repel.

yours,
- admiral ackbar

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[tehcyder]

In general usage, it means (as my PhD supervisor would say) 'big-huge'.

I assume your PhD was in something like Pre-School Child care?

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[TheRaven64]

No, in computer science, but my supervisor was Chinese and picked up a lot of Welsh idioms that he didn't always apply appropriately...

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[skids]

Batteries used in phones and laptops, and the charge controllers that babysit them, are not designed for battery longevity. Manufacturer firmware does keep some charge in the battery, but the amount it keeps in there is picked by the manufacturer, and so balanced in such a way as to minimize customer complaint about how long the device can go without a charge while making it unlikely that anyone will complain about having to replace the battery too often before they have gone on to start selling a new model.

For the purpose of giving a figure for Li-ion in general, and for the particular use of power storage in non-mobile applications, this would not be the usage scenario to baseline from.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[skids]

Except I made no claims as to "order of magnitude", that was you putting the GP's words in my mouth. I just said they played it loose with that figure, whereas the GP complained about the mismatch between the OP and the FA on the other figure.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[savuporo]

Standard batteries in use today (say in laptops or smartphones) typically don't last longer than 300-500, .. these would be lithium cobalt oxide batteries. As mentioned everywhere in this thread, other cathode materials last much longer, and are in use in other applications.

Re:Summary is out by an order of magnitude

[bemymonkey]

Good to know, I thought it was just an issue of abuse... deep cycling and such.

Wind and sun are renewable?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do we recycle them exactly?

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind is 'recycled' in the sense that the same air, that gets energy taken out of it by a wind turbine, then circulates around the globe, gains energy, and can pass through the same turbine again.

Solar is not strictly speaking renewable, but there is so much of it and it will last such a long time, that there is no practical difference. Indeed, every single other source of energy except nuclear is ultimately derived from the sun. The question is, what is the timescale for the energy source to recover so that it can be reused. For fossil fuels, the natural rate of generation is something like 8 barrels per day. That is approx a million times slower than we are using it up. For solar power, the answer is 'intantly'.

Interestingly, by this measure, the only energy source that is not renewable in any sense (since it is a finite resource and will not regenerate) is uranium. Although again in practice, it is often included in the "renewable" sector, simply because it isn't a fossil fuel.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[Surt]

We radiate the excess into space, then get a new batch the next day. The cycle continues!

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[garyebickford]

Hmm. I think that wind energy is in part derived as drag on the rotation of the Earth - the atmosphere is being dragged around the Earth along with the hard part of the planet, but since it is farther from the center or rotation it wants to move a bit slower (just as artificial satellites have slower rotation rates as their elevation increases). That explains why the net wind is from east to west. Of course a bunch of related effects related to sherical shape, coriolis force, thermal gradients in both elevation and latitude, etc. cause winds at different latitudes and elevations to go in different directions. So windmills are ever so slightly making the day longer.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[LordLimecat]

Wind is generated only in part by the earth's rotation. Some of it also comes from solar energy, which heats parts of the atmosphere, causing it to rise, which then causes a low pressure zone which causes inrushing air currents.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[TheRaven64]

Wind is renewed by the Sun pumping energy into it. The Sun is renewed by inserting a wormhole into its core and the pumping in hydrogen from a spare nebula somewhere.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[gd2shoe]

Hmm... Interesting. How then do you conserve angular momentum? (as in: law of conservation...)

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[garyebickford]

Think of the atmosphere as analogous to a very diffuse moon.

The real moon is also gradually slowing the rotation of the earth down, and the orbit of the earth is gradually shrinking. IANA astrophysicist but that's how I recall the whole orbital thing works. The Wikipedia article on the Moon does mention that the orbiting Moon is gradually lengthening the Earth's day - note the energy that is required to drive the tides has to come from somewhere, and loss of rotational speed is where it comes from. That's essentially the same type of drag that the atmosphere has on the Earth.

The windmills are ever so slightly increasing the amount that the atmosphere interacts with the body of the Earth, thereby increasing the absolute rotational speed of the air and reducing the relative speed compared to the surface of the Earth. Thus the rotational drag increases. So the lengthening day is where the conservation of energy comes together.

I suppose there is also a slight alteration in the thermal equation, since mechanical energy is being converted to electrical energy, so the waste heat is radiated at a different frequency spectrum than the air by itself - but this is way past my ability to determine effect. Does this radiated energy escape the Earth more, or less than from the undisturbed air? Is the air temperature raised or lowered? The mind starts to boggle. But this has to be tiny even in relation to the above in any case.

Just to throw another thought on the pile - when we build thousands of 'clean' Thorium or Fusion power plants to power our all-electric civilization, at what point will the waste heat being released (on the order of 1/2 or more of the total energy produced in a thermal power plant is waste heat, and all of the electrical energy being used is eventually released as heat) become itself a factor in climate change? In 500 years or less, I can assume that will be a major enviro-political topic - maybe sooner. There's no free lunch.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[garyebickford]

- sorry, "conservation of *momentum"

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[gd2shoe]

I agree that the energy must come from somewhere, but you still haven't addressed conservation of angular momentum.

In terms of the moon, I always thought that the tide energy was being generated by decreasing the moon's escape energy. That could just be my own supposition though. I do know that the common claim on wind power is that it is indirect solar energy. That doesn't mean that's correct.

I find you're theory interesting; it just has a hole in it that I'd like to know how to fill. ;)

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[garyebickford]

Oh, God you're going to make me do the arithmetic! :) I'm much better at hand-waving than equations. Perhaps someone more adept than I can explain this is more precise terms. In the meantime, if I can stipulate my statement that the atmosphere acts analogously to kind of diffuse moon, I think the following (from Wikipedia article on the Moon, can help explain how the angular momentum is exchanged to slow the Earth's rotation and the Moon's orbit. And thus, something similar happens with the atmosphere. (But I hasten to add that I can not say that this effect is greater than, or even in the same magnitude, as the thermal effects of the Sun. I did say 'part of' the effect... :) )

Gravitational coupling between the Moon and the bulge nearest the Moon acts as a torque on the Earth's rotation, draining angular momentum and rotational kinetic energy from the Earth's spin.[94][96] In turn, angular momentum is added to the Moon's orbit, accelerating it, which lifts the Moon into a higher orbit with a longer period. As a result, the distance between the Earth and Moon is increasing, and the Earth's spin slowing down.[96] Measurements from lunar ranging experiments with laser reflectors left during the Apollo missions have found that the Moon's distance to the Earth increases by 38 mm per year[97] (though this is only 0.10 ppb/year of the radius of the Moon's orbit). Atomic clocks also show that the Earth's day lengthens by about 15 microseconds every year,[98] slowly increasing the rate at which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds. Left to run its course, this tidal drag would continue until the spin of the Earth and the orbital period of the Moon matched. However, the Sun will become a red giant long before that, engulfing the Earth.

So, if the atmosphere can be analogized to the moon in the way I described, the same effect applies. IMHO one of the strong evidences is that there is an overall net directionality of the atmosphere - near the tropics the winds go east to west as the Earth goes west to east; the lesser volume of wind in the temperate latitudes goes west to east, and the even smaller winds near the arctic are again east to west. This fits with the idea that the air is being dragged along by the Earth. This same pattern is true on Jupiter as well. To my mind, the thermal effects are more strongly visible in the Hadley, Ferrell and Polar cells where the hot air at the equator rises, then cools and falls between the tropic and temperate zones, and a similar effect occurs between the temperate and polar regions. That's probably much stronger than the rotational drag but IANA atmospheric physicist.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[garyebickford]

Oh - one bit I did not address - in the case of the Moon, as noted, the moon's orbit gradually gets slower and the diameter gets larger. I'm not correctly addressing this in the case of the atmosphere, which means that I have not properly or completely addressed your question about the conservation of momentum. I'll speculate that this might be expressed in a slight difference in the elevation of the overall height of the atmosphere, and/or a slight increase in the loss of gases to space, or a slight net cooling (e.g. lower pressure at altitude). IOW, I have no clue. :)

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[gd2shoe]

While the temperature effect may be a greater driving force, there could easily be something that nudges it in it's initial direction, such as your orbital theory. I would think the countervailing temperate winds might balance the angular momentum issue, but that wouldn't slow the Earth.

With the moon slowing the Earth, the angular momentum stays within the Earth-Moon system. I didn't follow the torque argument (I think it's missing an important detail somewhere), but it makes sense that as the system grows, the angular speed would slow somewhere. But when it's just the winds of Earth, I don't see where that momentum goes.

Sorry for making you do extra work. It's the first time in a while I've seen an interesting physics thought experiment that doesn't go way over my head.

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[garyebickford]

I'll let others comment, but I think that if the Earth did not rotate, and the Moon were not there, and the Sun's energy were evenly distributed around the equator, that the atmospheric motion would be entirely North and South (as well as vertical - elevation). There would be no easterly or westerly trade winds, no jet streams.

I mention the distribution of the Sun's energy only because if the Earth always faced one side to the Sun, then the thermal gradient from the near side to the far side would drive some hellish winds.

But I had forgotten about the Coriolis Effect. So I may be completely full of it, or maybe what I've been saying is expressed in the Coriolis effect, or maybe it's in addition to it. I can't say offhand, and it's bed time. :)

Re:Wind and sun are renewable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to throw another thought on the pile - when we build thousands of 'clean' Thorium or Fusion power plants to power our all-electric civilization, at what point will the waste heat being released (on the order of 1/2 or more of the total energy produced in a thermal power plant is waste heat, and all of the electrical energy being used is eventually released as heat) become itself a factor in climate change? In 500 years or less, I can assume that will be a major enviro-political topic - maybe sooner. There's no free lunch.

The excess heat will be radiated into space. There presumably will have to be some increase in the Earth's temperature to increase the amount of radiated heat, but I imagine it would be quite small, and not present any problems short or long term. The problem we have at the moment is the CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas trapping more heat in the atmosphere.

Re:I object to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've got good news and bad news...

http://youtu.be/w3eTsNEgmL8

just starting....

[harvey the nerd]

and the Stanford researchers haven’t found the right one yet; and so they haven’t actually made a battery with this new discovery
They have hypothesized an ideal, microscopic unit device that might be mass produced. They are just starting the applied research phase and may need some additional basic research

Re:just starting....

[PopeRatzo]

They are just starting the applied research phase and may need some additional basic research

I don't think that's as big a deal as you seem to indicate. It took that Manhattan project about five years to go from theoretical to practical. Of course, they put in a lot of effort and resources. On the other hand, they didn't have anything like the computer modeling that we have today to help them.

It might take a few years to get to a battery that could make renewable sources practical, and it might take a lot of effort and resources. But it seems that spending the time and money to get there is definitely a better approach than just waiting for the oil fields to start refilling themselves, or figuring out what kind of massive geoengineering it will take to deal with increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

It's already starting to be a problem. Waiting for it to be a really bad problem before we look for solutions doesn't make sense.

Sure, Solyndra didn't work out as advertised, and maybe they got the money for reasons other than them having a really good idea. But I'd rather see an effort and a failure at something like solar rather than just spending the same 500 mil convincing people that tar sands and a really long pipe is going to be anything like the answer.

Re:just starting....

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you EVER seen a research report that didn't end with "and more research is needed"? Meaning "Pass the money, please."

Re:just starting....

[garyebickford]

When I worked in a research lab, another methodology used was to use this year's funding to pay for the research for which funding had not been requested yet, to assure that the results of THAT were likely to be confirmed. Then, once they were pretty confident that the research would pan out, they could apply for the grant to do the research. This way they always had successful research, and a continuous stream of grants. The continuously successful labs all worked this way to my knowledge. If they applied for a grant to do 'X', you could be 90% sure that they had already proved that 'X' would work, and probably had already been done. This might have been less true for 'pure' research as opposed to applied research.

Of course at the big Uni's the Uni took 50% to 60% off the top to cover operational expenses, so every grant application had to include a justification for double the amount of money actually needed (since the grants rarely paid for operational expenses), hidden in the cost structure.

And you thought corporations and government agencies were the only ones doing shenanigans. Ask anyone who is likely to know at Stanford, CMU, MIT, etc.

Re:just starting....

[f()rK()_Bomb]

I'd argue that US universities are actually effectively corporations looking at how they run anyway. I dont think anyone thought the uni's weren't as bad as the gov or corps. Just looking at the ridiculous fees make that obvious.

Re:just starting....

[greenpenguin]

Well yes actually, the British Medial Journal apparently banned the phrase "more research is needed" (source: http://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/ )

Re:just starting....

[garyebickford]

When I worked at CMU in the early 1990s their marketing department wanted to drop the word 'University' from their logo. That was vetoed. But 1/2 of the faculty did not teach and only did research, and most of the research was applied research. So yes, in many ways it was more analogous to a diversified corporate research lab company than a classical university (IMHO).

Re:just starting....

[Rutulian]

Of course at the big Uni's the Uni took 50% to 60% off the top to cover operational expenses, so every grant application had to include a justification for double the amount of money actually needed (since the grants rarely paid for operational expenses), hidden in the cost structure.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the major granting agencies know that the institution is going to take 50% and just assume your actual research budget is half of what you are asking for. The NIH grants make it explicit, so no guessing needed. Also, I wouldn't really call it shenanigans. The funding climate is extremely conservative right now. You have to have a track record to get funding, and that means lots of preliminary data. And, since that requires actual experiments to be done, that means using a portion of existing funding to kickstart the next project. This is the principle behind startup packages at universities. A new faculty member has no chance of getting a grant until they publish a few papers, so they have to run their labs entirely on the startup funds they are given for the first several years.

Re:just starting....

[gd2shoe]

Sure, Solyndra didn't work out as advertised, and maybe they got the money for reasons other than them having a really good idea. But I'd rather see an effort and a failure at something like solar rather than just spending the same 500 mil convincing people that tar sands and a really long pipe is going to be anything like the answer.

Solyndra was one part bad PR move, and one part fraud. By the time the Federal government invested, it was no longer viable (and the White House was informed as much).

The problem with the Federal Government investing in science and tech isn't the investment, it's the criteria they use to decide where and how. They're not interested in picking something that might work years from now, they're interested in things that make good photo ops today. (And yes, I can see room for federal investment in science... cautiously.)

Re:just starting....

[Anonymous Coward]

SPOT ON Gary! Grant Application 'science'/art is more than a cottage industry re. funding$, byzanthium paperwork/decision making/timing...etc.
chan

Re:just starting....

[PopeRatzo]

The problem with the Federal Government investing in science and tech isn't the investment, it's the criteria they use to decide where and how.

That was the point I was trying to make when I said,

they got the money for reasons other than them having a really good idea.

Re:just starting....

[gd2shoe]

Yeah, I got that. You're missing the point.

But I'd rather see an effort and a failure at something like solar...

You'd rather, but I wouldn't. Solyndra was dead. It had failed. There were ZERO prospects there before that investment was made.

Would I like to find viable solar? Sure. I don't even mind the Federal government (within reason) helping to find it. But if you'd rather spend money on Solyndra than on an oil pipeline, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap.

Re:just starting....

[PopeRatzo]

You'd rather, but I wouldn't.

Are you saying you'd rather just wait for the oil fields to refill themselves?

But if you'd rather spend money on Solyndra than on an oil pipeline

The pipeline is going to do a lot of damage (not the least of which is making people believe that now our energy problems are solved), and will further destabilize the economy.

The jobs it will create will increase the number of broken families and displacement. The only purpose of the pipeline is to act as a cash infusion for maybe three corporations. It will do nothing to bring oil prices down or lessen our dependance on foreign oil.

The pipeline is a boondoggle that will dwarf the money spent on Solyndra. And who knows? Someone at Solyndra may just go on to start a healthy solar business.

Also, you do know that Solyndra was just one out of more than a hundred energy startups partially or wholly funded by the DOE, and except for maybe on other one, the rest are doing just fine and paying back the loans on schedule. So you would rather have a destructive pipeline boondoggle than a very successful renewable energy loan program?

I don't believe you.

Re:just starting....

[gd2shoe]

Nice bait and switch. Well done.

You offered a false dichotomy, waited for me to bite, and then redefined one of the sides*. I assume it wasn't intentional, but it was still rude.

(*The original scenario called for Solyndra specifically, not the whole loan program - something I carefully did not side against.)

Re:just starting....

[PopeRatzo]

The original scenario called for Solyndra specifically, not the whole loan program

So, you'd rather cherry pick the one foul-up of a successful program and you accuse me of bad-faith discussion?

Think about 150 startups applying for government loans. The applications go all over the bureaucracy. People along the way either table it or send it along based upon a whole host of criteria. The CEO of Solyndra sees Obama getting elected as his best bet for getting the application that was working its way through the Bush Administration finally approved, so he works to raise funds for the Obama campaign. Again, it's one loan out of over a hundred. Solyndra goes bad and its used as exhibit A against federal support of renewable energy.

And you accuse me of "false dichotomy".

And yes, if was intentional. Of course. Because tlhis kind of crap has gotten old. "We shouldn't use taxpayer money on renewable energy because...Solyndra!"

Maybe that was not the point you were trying to make. Maybe you just bought into a phony anti-renewable energy, anti-Obama talking point.

So live and learn.

Re:just starting....

[gd2shoe]

So, you'd rather cherry pick the one foul-up of a successful program and you accuse me of bad-faith discussion?

I didn't cherry pick it, you did. Not me, not the GP you were replying to, you did.

Maybe that was not the point you were trying to make. Maybe you just bought into a phony anti-renewable energy, anti-Obama talking point.

You still haven't read what I wrote. You're still imagining what you want me to have said. You're having a one sided argument, and you haven't realized it yet.

(You're in a pro-Obama funk, but I don't think you know it. You've been scared by so many bogey men, you're starting to see them where they don't exist.)

That which allows current to pass easily...

[American Patent Guy]

In electricity, that which allows current to flow easily (as the material does from the article) has a name ... it's called a "conductor." Maybe these batteries can be charged lots of times, but I'll bet they leak like sieves. I'll bet the won't hold a charge for very long.

Re:That which allows current to pass easily...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if Li-ion is similar to nickle base batteries, but a lot of the issues are with the paper separators.

Re:That which allows current to pass easily...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder, do they have to hold it very long?

Lets say the batteries can hold their charge for about 24 hours, it would in many cases be pretty ideal, especially for solar energy. charges during the day, loses discharged during the night.
Even from sources that are less susceptible to day/night rotations, like water, the energy can be stored at night, when it is used less, and discharge during the day.

Even with some leaking, its better then having the energy go to waste.

Re:That which allows current to pass easily...

[marcosdumay]

Yeah, and when you are at a level of detail that you starts to count your charge carriers, the process you are used to call "conduction" starts to be called "diffusion". And saying that "diffusion is easy" is equivalent to say that "it is a good conductor". Anyway, that is a pretty rare property on things that absorb ions.

How long it holds charge, tough, is more associated to a property called "selectivity". And the article didn't mention it. It probably even couldn't because the ions/molecules being selected aren't known yet.

Re:Impossible!

[sadness203]

Obvious troll, but still. Not every country rely on coal/gas to generate its electricity.
And better battery technology might help to store energies produced by other means, like solar or wind.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Company explains they have come up with an unlimited source of free clean energy with no negative drawbacks.... though the company admits it still needs to find the element that will allow it to be made.

Nothing special

[BlueParrot]

This is nothing new. Many battery technologies can last for decades. It's only the Cobalt based lithium ones that have the abysmal 2-3 year shelf-life.

Ni-Iron batteries have demonstrated more than 50 year life, with no noticeable degradation following deep discharge.
LiFePO has demonstrated less than 20% capacity loss over 15 years and many thousands of cycles.
Ni-Hydrogen has been in service without maintenance on satellites for many many years. The batteries on the Hubble went 19 years without servicing.
Lead-Acid requires a bit of servicing and maintenance, but they can also last more than a decade when properly cared for.

Now when it comes to energy storage to deal with renewables the problem is the shear amount of energy storage needed as well as energy lost to inefficiency. The technology exists, but the cost would be prohibitive.

Re:Nothing special

[Jartan]

Now when it comes to energy storage to deal with renewables the problem is the shear amount of energy storage needed as well as energy lost to inefficiency. The technology exists, but the cost would be prohibitive.

RTFA and all that. The interesting thing about this is the electrolyte is supposedly cheap as hell. Thus the idea is making some long lasting batteries the size of a house on the cheap.

Re:Nothing special

[marcosdumay]

Thanks. Somebody mod parent up.

Utilities also won't want that new battery because it will be way more expensive than any molten salt design, and they can deal quite well with all limitations of molten salt batteries (like size, weight, and temperature).

Re:Nothing special

[Tomato42]

Battery charge and discharge has efficiency in the order of 60%. That's pathetic in electricity land. Pumped storage (making use of huge lakes) has efficiency in the area of 90%. Wasting the space for warehouses to store batteries is, err, let me say, "not smart".

Re:Nothing special

[skids]

There are three ways to rate battery life: "calendar life" (actual age deterioration), "shelf life" (how long it retains a charge), and "cycle life" (number of cycles of some depth that may be processed). While there are some chemistries with very high cycle life, this is higher than anything in production, save of course for ultra-capacitors. So yes, it is new.

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology exists, but the cost would be prohibitive.

You know, I've heard this about solar as long as I can remember, but what the hell are the current numbers? And how do they stack up against the giant subsidies the fossil fuel industry gets? Solar doesn't need to produce the giant profits of oil to be viable, it just needs to get close to breaking even then rely on the welfare teet for the difference.

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

Think solar cells that collect 2x what they need and you can use the battery bank at night... That sort of thing.

Or wind is variable...

That is where batteries and super caps come in to even out the load.

Problem is the tech exists (somewhat) but costs WAY more than burning oil or natural gas...

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

Pumped storage (making use of huge lakes) has efficiency in the area of 90%. Wasting the space for warehouses to store batteries is, err, let me say, "not smart".

Then why am I not hearing proposals to build giant cylinders of water on the coast/out on the water? During the day, you pump sea water into the giant column then let it out at night through the turbine. Is there a cost analysis that says anything like this is a good idea? It seems unintuitive.

I suppose you could build giant pipelines to natural inland lakes/rivers and stick a not-so Dam wall at the bottom just before the delta, during the day you pump water through the pipeline a long way upriver then shut off the pumps at night (solar) or low wind. Still sounds expensive, and less convenient since you can't put them where you actually need them (like batteries).

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

Pumped storage (making use of huge lakes) has efficiency in the area of 90%

Bull Fucking Shit. The full load efficiency of a large electric motor isn't often over 92-95% on its own--a lot of that is lost in frictional losses to windage and bearings, you see, not forgetting losses through conductors and eddy currents. In other words: you're already dangerously close to your 90% threshold right in the motor. Then you have the frictional losses of a turbine to pump the water up, and friction head losses due to the plumbing itself.

Then once you get the water up to a lake: if it's an open body of water, you're going to have evaporation. That reduces the net efficiency all the same. Ok. Now that it's in the lake, we gotta do the reverse. More losses to friction in the plumbing and generator turbine, and to the generator itself, and then to any power conversion necessary down the line.

Even if you went to heroic efforts in turbine mechanics and used hydrogen cooled motors and generators to reduce loss to air friction, I'd bet net efficiency over 70% would be very, very difficult to achieve, even in the best and most optimistic scenario involving an open body of water.

Not to say that's a bad thing, but whether or not that would be useful is entirely dependent on the needs of the grid and the type of power supply on that grid. If you've got a nuclear station that needs to run at 90%+ 100% of the time (or whatever the case may be), hydro storage might make a lot of sense; use the surplus to store energy during the low demand times.

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

except for the density issues http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/

Re:Nothing special

[garyebickford]

It's been done. I forget where, but here in the US there are at least two such systems used by power companies. They use excess power to pump the water to higher elevation lakes (such as the middle of the night), and use that water to generate electricity during peak periods (3PM on a hot day). It does require everything to be in the right places.

Re:Nothing special

[garyebickford]

I just commented on the parent, but just so you know, there are at least two such systems in operation in the US. I forget where ... They use excess power (night time?) to pump water up to a lake, then use that water to generate power during peak demand.

Re:Nothing special

[canajin56]

You have that backwards. Batteries (at least high end lithium ion batteries) have an efficiency of about 90%, and pumped storage is about 70%. Good job.

Re:Nothing special

[garyebickford]

I just heard that solar has recently passed below the magic $1 per peak watt that has long been considered the point where it was really cost effective on a large scale.

Re:Nothing special

[witherstaff]

One of them is in Michigan. It's a big civil engineering project. A very simple concept and it must be very cost effective because they're dumping another 800 mil into it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

Also Edison cells, common in fork lifts in the 50's-60's had a near infinite life span. Very low current density though.

Re:Nothing special

[Jukeman]

Also Edison cells, common in fork lifts in the 50's-60's had a near infinite life span. Very low current density though.

I guess it was included didn't know Edison Cell was also nickel-iron cell.

Re:Nothing special

[FireFury03]

Then why am I not hearing proposals to build giant cylinders of water on the coast/out on the water? During the day, you pump sea water into the giant column then let it out at night through the turbine. Is there a cost analysis that says anything like this is a good idea? It seems unintuitive.

I suppose you could build giant pipelines to natural inland lakes/rivers and stick a not-so Dam wall at the bottom just before the delta, during the day you pump water through the pipeline a long way upriver then shut off the pumps at night (solar) or low wind. Still sounds expensive, and less convenient since you can't put them where you actually need them (like batteries).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_mountain
Pumps water from Llyn Peris to Marchlyn Mawr during off-peak periods and then lets it flow back through turbines as required. Lots of advantages over traditional power stations - for example, so long as know a high demand period is coming up (and demand periods are quite rigorously planned), they pre-synchronise the generators and can go from 0 to 1800MW generating capacity in only 6 seconds. If the high demand isn't expected, they can synchronise and hit full capacity in 75 seconds.

Re:Nothing special

[FireFury03]

Then once you get the water up to a lake: if it's an open body of water, you're going to have evaporation. That reduces the net efficiency all the same.

A tiny amount of evaporation.. so tiny it isn't really worth caring about. Also, if you're going to start calculating such minor things, rain will improve your efficiency a tiny amount.

Even if you went to heroic efforts in turbine mechanics and used hydrogen cooled motors and generators to reduce loss to air friction, I'd bet net efficiency over 70% would be very, very difficult to achieve, even in the best and most optimistic scenario involving an open body of water.

Dinorwig Power Station averages 74-75% efficiency with open bodies of water. (No where near the 90% that the grand parent suggested, but still better than what you claim would be optimistic).

Not to say that's a bad thing, but whether or not that would be useful is entirely dependent on the needs of the grid and the type of power supply on that grid. If you've got a nuclear station that needs to run at 90%+ 100% of the time (or whatever the case may be), hydro storage might make a lot of sense; use the surplus to store energy during the low demand times.

It makes sense just to cope with demand peaks. The aforementioned Dinorwig power station can hit peak capacity in 6 seconds if they have presynchronised the generators (75 seconds if not). There aren't many "traditional" power stations that can do that (I suspect even gas turbines would struggle to hit the 6 second mark).

Re:Nothing special

[Tomato42]

When you store the energy for how long? Self discharge for Li-Ion is over 5% per month. If you would want to store energy for 6 months you'd end up with 74% of original charge, add 90% efficiency of charge/discharge and you are at 66% efficiency for long term storage. 70% for pumped is the lowest estimate.

Both systems are pathetic.

Re:Nothing special

[gl4ss]

there's no proposals to build artificial lakes to store energy because all the good spots have been taken and there's hell to pay for environmentalists for even suggesting them.. that doesn't mean that they wouldn't exist, calculating some calculations related to them is basic highschool physics(at least in finland.. ).

it's storing potential energy. it works. provided you have the energy source to begin with. like nuclear during off-peak or whatever.

Re:Nothing special

[Anonymous Coward]

"ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI"

Sorry to go offtopic, but I just had to say, your sig is all kinds of awesomely clever. It struck me funny bone dead on. ;-)

Re:Nothing special

[badkarmadayaccount]

OK, a huge concrete block on a steel cable - operate it like an elevator. Oh, and, with optimization electrics can and will pull 98% efficiency.

Re:Nothing special

[badkarmadayaccount]

Dude, this is slashdot. You are perfectly correct, but most here interpret anything over 10 ms as a slow process.

make it energizer bunny size

[Joe_Dragon]

where has he been any ways?

Re:make it energizer bunny size

[grcumb]

where has he been any ways?

Going and going... and gone.

Re:I object to this

[haruchai]

God can't die - because he never existed in the first place.

renewable == wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

It's free (as in gratis) and abundant.

Renewable only helps those idiots who deal with oil or uranium.

I say "idiots" because I'm not sure they are all evil.

Re:renewable == wrong

[Yev000]

That's right! Every evil idiot knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch. ... And in this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics.

Re:I object to this

[Beardo the Bearded]

Everlasting should mean forever, not 400,000

I'm going to have to agree with the Pastor on this one. 400k isn't really "everlasting", it's got a finite limit to the lasting.

Revised article

[IceFoot]

Researchers at Stanford University have invented ONE HALF OF A BATTERY....

Re:I object to this

[Tanktalus]

The intended meaning is the same as "infinite" - which is not "beyond comprehension" but "beyond practicality". If I only have to buy two sets of batteries for my devices (one for use, the other sit on the charger for swapping) for life, that's infinite for all practical purposes. Maybe these batteries won't become heirlooms. But if their price is merely 10-20 times the cost of regular batteries, it's close enough.

Everlasting but..

[ickleberry]

It is to be commercially released in an infinite number of years from now, for an infinite price per unit.

Meanwhile manufacturers of consumer electronics can continue using 90's Li-Ion technology that has the huge advantage of dieing after a couple of years keeping the upgrade cycle going

Re:Impossible!

[jamesh]

All that electricity they want to "store" comes from COAL so this sucks! Idiots! This is why all government funding to idiot-factories like MIT needs to be CUT IMMEDIATELY.

Precisely. Even if you rolled out enough solar and wind power generation capacity to run the whole world, it would still only work while the sun was shining and/or the wind was blowing... you'd still need coal or nuclear or some other fuel burning source to generate power during the times when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

Unless you had some sort of everlasting battery to store the energy during the sunny or windy days to use during the dark still nights...

What?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The only problem is, a high-voltage cathode (-) requires a very low-voltage anode (+)

I know technology has been moving fast, but have they repeated Kirchhoff's laws now?

Re:What?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

"Repealed", not "repeated". Sorry.

Re:What?

[The Master Control P]

The electrochemical redox reaction between the two is what completes the circuit. Don't worry, the loop integral of voltage is still zero.

Re:I object to this

[LoudNoiseElitist]

Not sure if troll.

Re:Impossible! Really ? can you name 1 ?

[Crashmarik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#List_of_countries_with_Source_of_Electricity_2008

Because this chart in the wiki doesn't have any that aren't getting power from coal, gas, or nuclear.

Re:Impossible!

[Tomato42]

You would have much bigger problems to store energy from summer to last you through winter...

Re:I object to this

[Tomato42]

So they are not "infinite" and its just marketdroid speak. The only thing infinite is human stupidity.

Re:Impossible!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's dark outside RIGHT NOW, where's your "renewable energy" now, you fucking hippy freaks?

Nice to see science fiction become reality

[Bonteaux-le-Kun]

Anyone remember the Shipstones from Heinlein's "Friday"?

Re:Impossible!

[jamesh]

I'm sure there are lots of places where you can't get enough sun or wind during winter to meet your energy requirements, but there are plenty of places where you can, and even if only 50% of the worlds energy needs could be met with zero emission electricity, we could stop worrying so much about CO2 emissions and peak oil for a little bit longer.

Re:I object to this

[Surt]

But everything is eventually going to fail in 10^13 years when proton decay catches up with us. How about we define a reasonable target for everlasting for our technology, like maybe a human lifetime.

Re:I object to this

[wooferhound]

It's not the Heat
It's the Stupidity . . .

Re:I object to this

[The Master Control P]

There is no evidence at present that the proton is unstable, only the Standard Model's implication that it is. Current attempts to observe a decay have pushed the lower limit on the proton lifetime out to ~1e34 years.

It does not matter what the research is

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, a long-lasting battery will not make it to retail due to planned obsolescence.

Nothing personal, it is just business as usual.

It happened with nylon, light bulbs and inkjet printers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5DCwN28y8o

Re:I object to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we assume you also have a problem with the movie The NeverEnding Story?

Re:Impossible!

[Tomato42]

Somehow I don't see Europeans depending on Libya or Egypt for most of their energy needs... Nuclear is much more sensible choice: it's proven, you are independent in your energy needs (no problem to buy and store fuel for few years, let alone to last through winter, build a breeder reactor and you're set for a hundred years with the same amount), there are no problems with clouds blocking sun or winds blowing too little or too much, doesn't require large amounts of rare-earth metals to work (in case of PV) or is much cheaper (in case of thermal solar).

Re:I object to this

[Surt]

Well, even so, heat death will render all our technologies inoperable before then anyway.
Bottom line, there's little hope of human civilization lasting more than 10^20th years.

Re:I object to this

[eugene2k]

That's not what they say on TV. And everybody knows: you can trust what they say on TV!

Re:I object to this

[couchslug]

Imaginary friends aren't necessarily "everlasting".

400,000 cycles is NOT "everlasting."

[EmagGeek]

Can we please try to use language accurately?

Re:400,000 cycles is NOT "everlasting."

[JustOK]

No. Do or do not. There is no try.

Re:400,000 cycles is NOT "everlasting."

[Twinbee]

Perhaps they didn't mean it literally.

Re:400,000 cycles is NOT "everlasting."

[Anonymous Coward]

Hyperbole, while a valid mechanic in the written arts, is definitely a poor fit for a technical report.

(Btw I'm agreeing with Twinbee AND EmagGeek, just so there's no confusion.)

Re:400,000 cycles is NOT "everlasting."

[LongearedBat]

If you charge/discharge once per day, then it'll last for ~1000 years. From a practical standpoint, that's everlasting. It'll probably age to bits before the cycles run out, and it will probably be superceeded before it ages to bits.

Yeah, strictly speaking "everlasting" means "lasts forever". But nothing lasts forever, so it's an acceptable approximation.

Re:400,000 cycles is NOT "everlasting."

[Confuse Ed]

The battery gives unlimited cycles*

--
*fair use policy applies.

Wonka Battery

[vaene]

Hopefully they can get started on the Gobstopper next.

Re:Impossible! Really ? can you name 1 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bhutan - 99.9% hydro power (2001), I heard the current figure is 99.6%. And they also export to India. The remainder of Bhutan's generation is currently diesel - not coal, gas, or nuclear - but they are considering adding some wind generation which could reduce that.

But what you should be looking for is a pathway to less dependence on fossil fuels. Renewables with efficient storage have to be part of that pathway. Less ill-informed defeatism is also necessary.

Re:Impossible!

[garyebickford]

About 10 years ago I did an analysis of the economics and related topics on a hypothetical large-scale solar project in the northern Sahara. It wasn't specific to Libya but today Libya is a good potential platform. If you build a 100- or 200-square mile solar farm, putting the solar panels about 20 feet or more above the ground (higher is better due to better breeze), two of the beneficial side effects are cooling the space underneath, and (closely related) shade. If you think about it, in that area shade is a significant resource!

This solar installation then provides a large area where greenhouses can be built, shaded (between 70% and 95%) by the solar panels, and partly roofed so it's relatively cheaper to complete the enclosure. this not only provides power but also creates a huge plant-growing area. The result - Libya could become the produce capital of the Mediterranean. Some of the power could be used to provide desalinization, and the greenhouses would minimize water loss so the impact on the Mediterranean could be minimized. So Libya can export power AND food, and hire thousands of farm workers to work in long term, skilled jobs, without any need for migration so they will have a stake in improving where they live. This is a very synergistic approach so the total cost of the system does not have to be amortized purely with power sales. And it could be expanded across hundreds or thousands of square miles of rock and sand.

The analysis also showed that such a large installation would have a significant effect on the weather patterns, increasing local rainfall similarly to how a forest tends to increase rainfall, thereby to some extent ameliorating the present tendency of the Sahara to expand itself. It's a very complicated system, and I did not do the detailed computer analysis necessary to really prove this hypothesis out, but it's certainly one worth exploring.

Re:Impossible!

[garyebickford]

I neglected to mention that the greenhouse roofs could also be constructed as solar stills, also synergistically generating one resource (irrigation water) while reducing the total heat influx on the greenhouse interiors.

Re:I object to this

[haruchai]

Only God can be a piece of shit and an asshole at the same time; any lesser being would have to be one or the other.

Sooner than that...

[Roger W Moore]

Bottom line, there's little hope of human civilization lasting more than 10^20th years.

Unless we find a way to escape the solar system 5*10^9 years is our rough life expectancy and if we develop a good enough understanding of science to do that then who knows? Heat death is just the result of probability and statistics and we've already seen systems which can spontaneously decrease in entropy for short periods of time.

Re:Sooner than that...

[Surt]

We already have the technology to escape our solar system if we put our minds and money to it (granted at this point it would be ridiculously expensive). But, barring something like civilization collapse, it will only get cheaper and easier. I cannot imagine that it will take us more than 200 years to escape the solar system at this point (even 100 years would surprise me).

I'd be interested in a cite for systems spontaneously decreasing in entropy. I've never heard of that, and it would clearly change the rules of the game.

Re:Sooner than that...

[Roger W Moore]

I'd be interested in a cite for systems spontaneously decreasing in entropy.

I can't find the paper at the moment but the network link from my current location is appalling bad so I've only been able to do a few simple searches. I believe the paper from from an Australian university. The claim was that, for certain, small QM systems, there could be a small decrease in entropy for a brief period of time but that, averaged over a longer time period, entropy was always increasing. I don't think this is a particularly surprising result. All it really says is that you can get spontaneous organization in a system during any given time period just so long as, over arbitrarily long periods, the entropy increases i.e. the amount of randomness is subject to random fluctuations as well.

Re:Sooner than that...

[Roger W Moore]

We already have the technology to escape our solar system if we put our minds and money to it

Sorry - forgot to comment on this! We have the technology to get to another planet in the solar system but not to another solar system. This would require a trip of many thousands of years. We have NO way to make complex, continuously operating machines that last that long (to support human life) let alone any clue how to create a self-sustaining colony in space (solar flares at start/end) and zero-g (bone loss) plus the psychological and sociological issues. Just remember we are talking about a travelling colony which would have to last for at least as long as all recorded human history - we have NEVER made a society last that long, even on Earth!

We could probably send a probe to another solar system with our current tech but I see no way to send humans there nor do I see any future technologies which would even come close. To get a ship to the speed where it would take less than the functional part of a human lifetime to get there will require a sizeable fraction of the mass of the ship to be converted into kinetic energy assuming a 100% efficient mass-to-energy conversion process....and that is just to get it up to that speed - you have to decelerate again too! Even then you have to consider shielding from solar flares at the start and end of the trip, bone loss, packing enough supplies or going self sustaining without any solar power in the interstellar void.

One day I certainly hope we get there but this relies of making several major breakthroughs in different fields and so I see no way to be able to predict when those might, or might not, happen. If could be 100+ years, 10,000+ years or never.

Re:Sooner than that...

[Surt]

Bone loss isn't a problem for a rotating spacecraft. Take along several complete spares, and don't worry about anything failing. We can make buildings that we believe will last at least a few hundred years already, so take 10x or 100x what you need (and design to ensure that there's no single part that can fail and kill a significant percentage of your crew). Radiation is handled via magnetic shielding, well understood as well, just expensive.

The social and psychological aspect of it is legitimately unknown. But the mechanical part would merely be ridiculously expensive, and the price of the mechanical part should fall steadily as we make advances in materials technology. At the rate we're advancing right now, I really do find it unlikely that we couldn't do this affordably in 100 years time. I think the big technical question is whether we'll be able to affordably lift 100 Billion pounds into orbit (mass of about 100 ships, each 5x as large as a modern aircraft carrier). At current costs that would run us ~1 Quadrillion dollars, which would eat up some 70 years worth of the US GDP. Still, if the world were devoted to the task to the exclusion of most else, it still seems just barely accomplishable just with the technology we have now.

Re:Impossible! Really ? can you name 1 ?

[LordLimecat]

Bhutan also has 1/20th the energy consumption PER CAPITA and 1/500th the population. It is also has a land area 1/200th of the US.

In other words, thats great for Bhutan, good luck scaling it to 10,000 times the energy consumption over a 200x larger land mass.

Incidentally, this (warning, PDF) indicates that you are incorrect-- it seems to say that a very large portion of the energy produced comes from firewood / biomass. This seems to indicate that their annual energy consumption is around 23,000 MW, and their hydro generation capacity is around 1,000 MW. So that really doesnt paint a good picture for hoping to scale hydro up to the US.

Re:Impossible! Really ? can you name 1 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bhutan does not use firewood/biomass for electricity generation. Check your own facts.

The rest of your post is just... pointless. Of course Bhutan isn't a model for the US. Why even suggest it?
Of course hydro power doesn't arbitrarily scale. It is dependent on the availability of the resource, and there aren't a whole lot of good hydro resources available on the planet that haven't already been exploited.

But it is true, as your post suggests, that Western society is hideously wasteful and we need to start doing things differently.
You don't put solar panels on a V8. You start by redesigning the car first. And then you can do 3000km averaging over 90km/h.

Off Peak metering

[witherstaff]

It's the same cost analysis that makes off peak metering beneficial. Everyone should look into that if it's available to you. From my understanding, the energy companies pay their electric rates from the plants based on their peak load of the day. If they can even out the load so there is less of a spike it benefits their bottom line so they offer off peak metering. Around here that means any electricity used from 7pm to 7am, holidays, and weekends electricity is drastically reduced in cost. Peak usage is the same normal rate. It just takes a smart meter upgrade which is free. I've seen monthly costs drop by over 50%. The electric company doesn't advertise this so if it is offered it may take a few repeat calls to get it. Saying you're thinking about installing some electric hog like an electric oven, or electric baseboard heat seems to get them moving faster. I know even a local electric company VP hadn't heard of their own program . The family plumbing shop used to have a contract with the local electric company to install monster 120 gallon electric water heaters. They were designed to heat at night - off peak - and they were insulated so well they would retain their heat all day. The local power company stopped that after a number of years and went to more smart metered conventional heaters.

Re:I object to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh? What is the answer to:

lim t->inf : friend * sqrt(-1) * t

Re:Nothing special - maybe it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The most intriguing application here is distributed storage with individual houses or groups of houses having local renewable generation with local storage using this battery technology to balance supply and demand. This removes the losses associated with power transmission / voltage conversion when transferring electricity from large centralised generation facilities (average about 7% in the U.S.). Maybe not as efficient as pump-storage, but if you can replace fossil-fuel generation with renewable generation then do efficiencies really matter that much ?

Re:Impossible!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. I have been dreaming the same dream, and I think it will come true.

Re:I object to this

[narcc]

there's little hope of human civilization lasting more than 10^20th years.

Thank goodness -- I was terrified that it would only be 10^15 years!

Re:Impossible! Really ? can you name 1 ?

[LordLimecat]

It might also help that Bhutan has 38 passenger cars per 1000 people.

You are right about lowering consumption, no arguments. My beef is with any attempt to compare first world countries with developing countries when it comes to energy consumption and generation.

Re:Impossible! Really ? can you name 1 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I agree on that too, and I didn't ever attempt to compare developing countries with first world countries. I only named Bhutan because of the parent post's challenge.

For developed countries - at the moment New Zealand is pretty hard to beat. I think they are around 75% renewables / 25% fossil fuels / no nukes.
If you're ok with nuclear, Switzerland looks pretty good - 53% hydro, 42% nuclear, 1.4% fossil fuels.

Note that all the stats I've mentioned are for electricity generation - so transport is not counted. Again, this is because I was responding to the parent post which linked to wiki article on electricity only.

Re:I object to this

[StripedCow]

400k isn't really "everlasting"

400k ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:Impossible!

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a great idea, of course, but there are probably some issues to be solved. For example: Isn't one problem with the height approach that maintenance becomes much more expensive/difficult? Also, growing crop requires more than shade- water, so you'll need some way to get that. And you need some way to protect the panels against sandstorms.

Re:I object to this

[Anonymous Coward]

That does sound pretty miraculous.

Re:Impossible!

[CODiNE]

I saw a study once that showed all you have to do is keep the goats out of an area in Israel and in a year it's completely green.

Sounds like a good business plan.

1) Buy a huge piece of worthless land.
2) Build a fence around it.
3) Wait...
4) Sell it as farm land.

Re:I object to this

[h5inz]

Everlasting is a lame use of words anyway, being overused nowadays by .. everyone(!). But if someone could say "This battery could last for a thousand years.", is cool. Now imagine Winston Churchill saying that.

Re:Impossible!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get on yer bike!

Re:I object to this

[TheRaven64]

At one charge cycle per day, that's 1,000 years. Not everlasting, but certainly lasting longer than anyone is likely to care - if we're still trying to use the same battery technology in 1,000 years then civilisation has probably collapsed completely at least once in the interim. Even if it's backed by a wind turbine and is doing ten discharge cycles a day it's 100 years.

The 400 cycles quoted for LiIon seems a bit low though. Newer ones are rated for 3,000.

Re:I object to this

[TheRaven64]

But if someone could say "This battery could last for a thousand years.", is cool

At one discharge cycle per day, it will.

Would

[h5inz]

As the article says, there is no such battery yet, because it still needs an appropriate anode. So, the suitable words right now are still - would and could. If that was what you meant.

Re:I object to this

[JasterBobaMereel]

Everlasting battery - apparently this means not everlasting (400,000 cycles) and not a battery (since they don't know how to actually build one yet)

I have a perpetual motion machine, except it's not a machine and isn't perpetually in motion ....

Re:I object to this

[Mindcontrolled]

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die"

IA! IA! CTHULHU FTAGHN!

Re:Impossible!

[Tomato42]

It's a very complicated system, and I did not do the detailed computer analysis necessary to really prove this hypothesis out, but it's certainly one worth exploring.

And we're back in square one. Humans don't always choose the best solution to a problem (see Betamax or Windows, just for two). Don't get me wrong, I think it's a really good idea and few enthusiastic people could probably pull it off. Problem is, it haven't been done before, not to mention the scale, so the chance for unforeseen problems is huge. Depending on its success would be very poor planning. Fossil fuels are running out now, not in 200 years.

Re:I object to this

[Mindcontrolled]

No, the only thing infinite is nerd pedantry and disregard for context.

Nah! Europeans would NEVER do that...

[denzacar]

...in the long run.
Only about 15-20% of all of it's (100% renewable) power demand by 2050.

Construction of the first solar farm in that system is to start in Morocco next year.
It's amazing how those plans from about a decade ago coincided with recent regime changes in the region, isn't it?
Just one of those lucky coincidences I guess.

Re:Nah! Europeans would NEVER do that...

[Tomato42]

The PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggest:

Of course, in addition to renewables, there are other routes to addressing those concerns -- most significantly, the expansion of nuclear power and the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) from the burning of fossil fuels. Our exclusion of these routes from this report is not intended as any comment on their merit. Our goal is to examine what it would take to shift even further to a 100% renewable electricity supply.

So they just ignore the nuclear completely. And they also note:

Achieving security, with flows of power from North Africa into Europe, in turn required the integration of Europe and North Africa into a single, well-functioning market,

At the time where the stability of whole EU is in question and there are problems adding Turkey to EU they are proposing to add Egypt, Libya, Marocco, Algeria and Tunisia to EU... It's a nice thought, but somehow I don't see it happening quickly enough to meet the 2050 goal.

Even they say that the electricity produced in North Africa will be from 3 to 6 times as expensive as nuclear! Calling it cheap is ridiculous! The interesting thing to note is in whole report the word "winter" isn't even used once and "night" is used a single time. Ignoring the problems of technology won't make them go away...

Even if it was technically possible, doesn't mean it will be economically viable and politically sane.

From the guardian article:

The 12 square kilometre Moroccan solar farm will, said Paul van Son, Dii's chief executive, be a "reference project" to prove to investors and policy makers in both Europe and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region that the Desertec vision is not a dream-like mirage, but one that can be a major source of renewable electricity in the decades ahead.

So it's still under question whatever it's feasible at all... (remember: night, winter, it's not like North Africa is in different time zone or hemisphere)

Re:I object to this

[tehcyder]

How about we define a reasonable target for everlasting for our technology, like maybe a human lifetime.

I see what you mean, anything that lasts until after I die is everlasting from my point of view. I asssume that is how climate change deniers justify their inaction.

Re:I object to this

[tehcyder]

I have a perpetual motion machine, except it's not a machine and isn't perpetually in motion ....

Patent it anyway, you never know.

Re:I object to this

[tehcyder]

Not sure if troll.

There is little practical difference between someone saying something really fucking stupid that they believe in, and someone saying something really fucking stupid to provoke a response, other than in terms of the stupidity or otherwise of the person saying it, and on the internet, who cares?

Re:I object to this

[tehcyder]

Can we assume you also have a problem with the movie The NeverEnding Story?

As I can't imagine anyone's ever consciously sat through that film until the end, maybe it is genuinely never-ending.

If a leaf falls to the ground in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Re:whatever

[tehcyder]

the only everlasting thing that I am interested in is erection and orgasm.

An everlasting erection would get annoying the first time you needed a piss and had to do a handstand.

Re:whatever

[GameboyRMH]

Erections lasting over 4 hours are not healthy.

40,000 cycles not 400,000

[Just Brew It!]

Still impressive, but not nearly as impressive as it would've been if it had actually been 400,000.

Yes, it is just a simple typo... but it would be nice if people could at least get key details like this right when submitting stories...

High vs low voltage?

[Just Brew It!]

WTF does "a high-voltage cathode requires a very low-voltage anode" even mean? I think ExtremeTech tried to paraphrase something technical, and something got lost in translation.

Re:I object to this

[Forty Two Tenfold]

How the fuck is this flamebait? Is everything true a flamebait?

Evil Lord Xenu should fear this

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like the scientology organization will be able to permanently imprison Xenu in a mountain for real once a low voltage anode is developed.
Hang onto your body thetans!

Re:I object to this

[kewlblue]

Your comment just made my day!

it is good

[Anarchduke]

to see that battery technology is starting to reap the sort of advances that permeate other areas.

Re:Impossible!

[garyebickford]

I tend to be a long-term optimist. Humans don't always (or even often) make the right decision right off. But IMHO societies are bottom-up decision systems, just like ecosystems, evolutionary systems, and neural networks - living systems in general (AKA 'complex adaptive systems'). The secret of all such systems is basically 'muddling through', always slowly converging toward the optimal energy /minimum error given the environment of the system. One of the characteristics of such systems is that no individual component is likely to make the 'right' decision at any given moment. In fact no individual component (at any scale) is even likely to be able to see more than a very limited subset of the system. For example, how much does a mosquito know about the swamp? But the mosquito transports nitrogen from big animals down to the micro level, and helps to fertilize the swamp that grows the fish that the bear lives on.

So, humans will continue to screw up, and destroy, and build, and die, and live. And something that none of us will recognize will come out of this and eventually reach the stars. Humans may transform this planet into something that no grizzly bear would appreciate, but in the process will take life to other planets, where grizzly bears may yet live again in freedom that lasts beyond the life of this planet.

The map.

[denzacar]

Click on it.

You should notice that a great deal of that map is covered with "wind" icons. Lots of them in Europe.
Nobody's ignoring winter. More like counting on it.

As for the night... note how very few of those icons are for photovoltaic solar plants? Again, nobody's ignoring the night.

And I believe that you've misunderstood the bit about the "well-functioning market" as "North Africa will be a part of EU".
Are USA and China a part of some kind of a political union just because they are trading with each other?

Also, notice how the political issues are being "addressed" at the moment (not 40 years down the road), with built-in safety measures in case of future political issues?
Those red lines on the map represent the power conduits - note the abundance of them connecting North Africa and Europe.
And then there is the fact that you can't really store excess electricity - so you must spend it all the time. Locally.
Which you do by creating industry which will spend that electricity. Creating jobs.
Which in turn create stability in the society.

As for economic issues...
Once you cover the expenses of building the system and its maintenance - it's the electricity that's essentially free for the supplier. But not for the customer.
Also, note that the investment by 2050 comes to about 400 billion Euros, with ~2 trillion Euros worth of electricity to be created by 2050.

And saying that "they just ignore the nuclear completely" when it's written in your quote that the goal of that report is to "examine what it would take to shift even further to a 100% renewable electricity supply" is not really an insightful discovery.
Or even of any kind of value.

As for "3 to 6 times as expensive as nuclear" - you are looking at the wrong page.
Tables in Appendix 3 use current costs of electricity to project future numbers - but without the increase in the number of solar and wind power plants.
Take a look at the Chapter 5.2 - Costs.
Wind generated electricity alone would cost as much as fossil fuel does today - should it reach the production numbers of nuclear.
Concentrated Solar Power becomes cheaper than nuclear once its production reaches about 32GW.
And that's with it being produced ~12 times less than nuclear power.

Re:The map.

[Tomato42]

I saw the map before. From the Wikipedia article:

On July 4, 2011, a company in Spain celebrated an historic moment for the solar industry: Torresol’s 19.9 MW concentrating solar power plant became the first ever to generate uninterrupted electricity for 24 hours straight

So they just now achieved something any other power station could do after only 30 or 40 years of development. Future is bright indeed. Something the PWC report claims "a small loss in efficiency and no net increase in cost". Not only it doesn't have any citation backing, it's plain crazy talk! Any network using wind and solar for base load will require gigantic energy storage. If that doesn't triple the cost of whole project I'll be astounded. Even they suggest that thermal will only be similar in cost to coal somewhere between 2030 and 2045. When will it reach parity with nuclear? In 2070, assuming nuclear isn't developed during that time? I can go on with flaws in this report, I would probably see many problems with their number too if I had the time to actually check them.

As I said, it's a wonderful vision, but the actual outcome depends on many things: political stability in Northern Africa, working energy storage, no problems in large scale deployments of solar, Norwegians allowing using large swathes of their land for pumped storage, dramatic improvements to both wind and solar energy, that there won't be problems with managing power grid on the scale of Europe as a single system, etc. etc. If even one of those things will fail, we won't have enough energy. Considering that we don't have enough oil to last to 2050, I'd say that's playing with the devil, especially that the theoretical models barely make it for current demands.
All of this, just because people have irrational fear of nuclear energy. Energy that doesn't depend on stability of other countries, let alone whole Europe, doesn't need gigantic R&D spending to make it work at all, let alone reliably, doesn't require gigantic network of HVDC transmission (another new, unproven technology), doesn't require energy storage in TWh region, etc. etc. That's where this whole report is junk, because it doesn't address the elephant in the room.

I suggest you read something from other side of the debate, like "The Solar Fraud" by Howard C. Hayden

Re:I object to this

[haruchai]

Far too often, I'm afraid. I've gotten used to it.

Re:I object to this

[Rutulian]

Do you really think so? At 10-20 times the cost of a regular battery, your phone battery would be $400-$800, and you want to buy two of them? And how long do you keep a phone for anyway? Certainly not for life....

The technology is good for some things, for sure. I'm thinking hybrids/EVs and power plant stations.

Re:I object to this

[Tanktalus]

I was thinking AAA/AA/C/D batteries. With the sheer quantity of these that are embedded in items around the house, with three kids under 6, I can't be plugging everything over night. Cell phones, no, I wouldn't need two. But at a cost of $400 for a battery, I think there'd be some impetus in the industry to go with standard sizes to allow the batteries to be separate from the phones, so you could continue to re-use the same battery for life. So, yes, I think that'd be fine.

Is the polarity wrong?

[fuzzybear3965]

Is it just me or is the polarity wrong in the article? Cathode should be positive, right? Anode should be negative?

Re:Impossible!

[Tomato42]

Thankfully, unlike bears, some of humans have foresight and can estimate that oil will run out in 40 years. Just look at current economy to see what a single digit percent "crisis" does. If we don't act now, 2050's will make 1930's look like a stroll in a park.

Re:Impossible!

[garyebickford]

I'm thinking more like 500 or 1000, or 10,000 years. :) Who knows? In 1000 years we may have bred our sentient canine and dolphin successors - not necessarily my preference, but who am I to dictate the future? I don't even know what I'm having for lunch.

Hmm... Sounds to me you have a problem...

[denzacar]

...with renewable sources of energy. What happened? Solar collector killed your dog or something?

Tossing those "after only 30 or 40 years of development" statements doesn't make you sound insightful but spiteful.
Yes! Technology takes time to develop and improve! Whodathunkit!?

Again. Look at the map. Read the map. Notice all the hydro, geothermal, and biomass - those are backups.
And I can't keep repeating myself over and over trying to explain how all those problems you list are already solved or are in the process of being solved - like the political situation.

And there is oil enough to last centuries. Problem is it will become more and more expensive to produce.
There is no danger of "energy crisis" or people starving to death for the lack of power to run the food making machines.
There is a prospect of everyone not independently rich having to change their lifestyle though.
You don't really need to own two or more cars, or take a car driving to the shop two blocks down, or eat prepackaged, precooked food, or use all those single-use-then-throw-away plastic materials.

As for "new, unproven technology" - so was nuclear. Still is, up to a point. Also, commercial HVDC predates nuclear reactors.
And nuclear does NOT limit country's dependence on foreign nations' stability - political, economic or as was the case with Japan recently - geological.
EU gets only about 3% of its uranium from its own sources.

NOT getting off of the foreing oil, uranium and gas tit is "playing with the devil" for EU.

As for Howard C. Hayden...
With all due respect, a man who equates South Pole with Antarctica is either deliberately trying to make a strawman, ignorant to the point that someone should take a look into how he got those diplomas and titles he holds, OR far too passionate about the topic he is arguing to be reasonable to any degree.
Either case, there is too much noise in his signal to be of any practical use to anyone but the people who want to debunk either him or science in general.

Re:Hmm... Sounds to me you have a problem...

[Tomato42]

My "problem" with renewable is that they don't work. Using energy source that works for only 10-30% of time is crazy, it requires huge investments in power grids, energy storage etc. The only reason why wind "works" in EU and US is because there are massive amounts of gas turbines build to back them up when wind suddenly changes. This won't be an option when gas runs out.

And there is oil enough to last centuries.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Not centuries, but 150 years at current extraction rates and 40 years if current growth rate continues (as it did in past 60 years). Even if we did suddenly discover another source of oil so large as to double the current estimate for total oil that ever was and will be extracted, it will last 50, not 40 years, only 10 years longer. This is the way exponential growth works. Also, if a barrel starts costing $1000 oil is as good as gone, it will be cheaper to make it from CO2 in air. There isn't enough thermal flux to support human civilisation now so it will only keep on getting less important as energy source, both solar and wind are too variable to be usable without energy storage (ever bigger energy storage). Biomass is pennies compared to the amount of energy we need. Those backups are not enough. It's not uncommon for wind to not blow at all for a week. What are we supposed to do in such situation? Stop businesses and stay in (cold) homes? Or start again fossil fuel power plants like they suggest in the report (oops, our 100% renewable has just been thrown out of the window and we have huge additional maintenance costs of power plants that have only a fraction of usage they could get)? Hydro kills more people than nuclear, destroys local environments and wastes arable land for low efficiency energy production, there are also highly limited number of sites where hydro is actually viable.

Nuclear was unproven 40 years ago, not now. Tell me why you claim otherwise, cause for me, technology that has regularly over 80% load capacity (including maintenance) and lowest accidents rates in any industry (that includes office workers), let alone power sector, is proven technology. Renewables are unproven now and they may prove itself in 40 years (which I highly doubt looking at their current rate of development, but I wouldn't go as far as to stop research). You can actually buy and store enough uranium to last 10 years. It's completely impossible to buy, let alone store, similar amount of coal, oil or gas. We buy uranium because outside sources are cheaper, not because we don't have sources in EU (or can't breed more in breeder reactors). If suddenly Kazakhstan stopped uranium extraction there would be mines opening all around the world (and even that not quickly as we have few month's worth of supplies in regular operation, unlike with fossil fuels where the stockpiles don't usually equate to 2 months worth of usage). So yes, we are independent of uranium suppliers. HVDC may predate nuclear, but the idea to use it for transport of huge amounts of power over large distances is new. Even if it won't cause new problems you still have to fix a dozen other problems before renewables are actually usable.

As for Howard Hayden, just because he made a simple mistake doesn't make all his work invalid, stop going after the messenger, and start disproving his claims (I'm sure if he's so stupid as you claim he is it will be trivial to do so).

Re:I object to this

[JasterBobaMereel]

Patent office will not allow anyone to patent Perpetual Motion machines anymore ...Damn!

Re:I object to this

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be able to get a decent replacement (non-OEM) phone battery for $5-10 dollars, or less if you want a crappy one. You have to be careful you don't get ripped off and sold a dodgy one, but if you do your research you should be able to find a reliable vendor to buy from.