DOE Wants 5X Improvement In Batteries In 5 Years

dcblogs writes "The U.S. Dept. of Energy has set a goal to develop battery and energy storage technologies that are five times more powerful and five times cheaper within five years. DOE is creating a new center at Argonne National Laboratory, at a cost of $120 million over five years, that's intended to reproduce development environments that were successfully used by Bell Laboratories and World War II's Manhattan Project. 'When you had to deliver the goods very, very quickly, you needed to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines to get very focused,' said U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, on Friday. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research isn't designed to seek incremental improvements in existing technologies. This technology hub, according to DOE's solicitation (PDF), 'should foster new energy storage designs that begin with a "clean sheet of paper" — overcoming current manufacturing limitations through innovation to reduce complexity and cost.' Other research labs, universities and private companies are participating in the effort."

Comments

Chu!

[mrbluejello]

It's so refreshing having a Secretary of Energy that actually knows something about energy and physics, rather than somebody who just knows how to dig carbon out of the ground.

Re:Chu!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. 5 years to develop 5X cheaper and 5X more energy dense? How gullible are you?

The free market doesn't solve all problems, but any company that could deliver this would make hundreds of billions of dollars. Why aren't they doing it? Because nobody knows how!

This $120 million is good research, but it isn't going to deliver. Dr. Chu will certainly be glad that the deadline is past the time that he will be out of office.

Re:Chu!

[ShanghaiBill]

Chu is just as one dimensional ...

Nonsense. In addition to his many accomplishments in physics, he has contributed to several other fields, and even invented the Scroll Lock Key, which was a major advance for personal computers of the time.

Re:Chu!

[icebike]

Batteries are green, because they get rid of lots of tiny pollution sources (and demand shifting). The political motivation behind this is probably make work for a national laboratory. Since the end of the cold war, they've been desperately trying to find something to do beyond new ways to kill people.

Not all Batteries are green when you consider the total life cycle.

But given that a rechargeable battery allows energy portability, which is worth a great deal, they may be greener than schemes that
rely on continuous.

But what is missing with this 5 in 5 plan is practicality.

The best minds in the world have been laboring on this for years, and progress is pretty slow. Results are proprietary, patented, secret.
If Chou things he can pry these secrets out of the hands of the corporate overlords, or he things he can field any new tech that won't be
instantly assaulted by patent lawyers and trolls he is crazy.

Anything developed here will, to the extent it sees the light of day, not be marketed without huge patent encumbrances tacked on by
dodgy players who will take any research discoveries, and plaster them with patents, and sue any others that try the same thing.
(Rambus ring any bells?) Unless the Government is going into the battery business,

DARPA's success isn't likely to be replicated in the world of patent trolls.

Re:Chu!

[Rei]

What's so ridiculous about this? There's dozens of potential battery chemistries which could do this - sodium ion, lithium air, nickel lithium, lithium sulfur, and on and on. The payoff for all fields could be incredible. Why not have an organized program to work on it? High cost, high risk, high reward - the kind of basic research that's perfect for government programs (leaving the incremental tweaking, production optimization, marketing, etc to private industry).

To give an example let's pick one field - transportation. What does "5x energy density and 1/5th the price" mean for transportation?

Current energy densities generally provide EV ranges between 100 and 250 miles. 5x - 500 to 1250 miles driving per charge. Which means a single charge provides a full day of charging. Which means that it doesn't matter how fast you can charge, so long as you can get a full charge when you sleep.

Let's go with 800 miles range. Which would be extended if you plugged in during meals and/or breaks. A car with prius-level streamlining will use about 250 watt hours per mile on the highway. That's a 125kWh pack. With 80% net wall-to-wheel efficiency, you need to provide about 156kWh. Over 8 hours, that's 20kW, or about 80A. Most new homes have in the ballpark of 200A boxes and worst case, you upgrade.

In short, these kind of batteries would entirely eliminate the main two complaint about EVs: range and charge time.

What about price? Li-ions are roughly $200 per kWh nowadays, which would make that pack. That's $25k just for your pack's cells - pretty darned pricey! Now, contrary to popular myth, these packs are generally rated for a decade or so to get down to 80% capacity, and the bigger your pack, the less you stress your cells, so they're not a high-replacement item (there's even a potential aftermarket for used packs). But that's a ton of money. However, $5k for the cells would be a *dramatic* improvement, and quite realistic when you consider how much it simplifies the rest of your vehicle.

All of this would come with a whole range of other benefits. You'd never have to go to a gas station again. Your fuel would cost a small fraction as much as gasoline. Your maintenance would be way lower. Even your brakes would wear down slower (regen). If smart grid features take off, you could make money by simply leaving your vehicle plugged in. Increasing vehicle power is comparatively very cheap versus gasoline and actually *increases* your vehicle's efficiency slightly (fatter conductors to handle the higher peaks = lower losses at under normal driving conditions). On and on and on.

Re:Chu!

[icebike]

Not true. Ask the makers of viagra.
Patented for years. Only recently was it revealed they didn't disclose every detail in their patent. So virtually on the eve of the patent expiration, their patent was revoked.
But the don't have to give back the billions they made.

But I never said they were all those things in every case. It was a list of possibilities.

Re:Chu!

[MrL0G1C]

Cars could be much more efficient if they didn't weigh 2 tons. Reduce the weight to something sensible and your problem is solved.

I know it's a radical idea but why not have separate roads for light and efficient vehicles - bicycles, low cc motorbikes and ultra-efficient, light cars, and then high taxes and the absurdly heavy cars can go on the roads with the trucks etc.

Most cars are only carrying one person most of the time anyway, 2000 kilos to carry 80 kilos strikes me as daft.

Re:Chu!

[UsuallyReasonable]

I agree. My first response to this article was "Oh, I see. Spend more money, and suddenly the laws of physics change by a factor of 25." Somehow I think not. It's not like private industry hasn't been doing research on batteries . . . the person/company who could achieve the kind of breakthrough that these idiots think throwing money at it will achieve would become very, very wealthy indeed. But the government will do it better at that level with a simple wave of its hand? I doubt it.

So...?

[GeneralEmergency]

. ...I want a pony. Betcha I get my wish first.

To think that there is not a HUGE amount of academic and commercial research in this area already is absurd. The previous 5 years has produced results that directly made a 10 hour iPad possible. If you want to spend tax dollars on this, make it an X-Prize like contest.

This plan, as laid out, smells like "Workfare for Scientists".

.

Pocket change

[ebonum]

Industry has been pouring billions into research. How is $120 million over five years going to do anything?

Anyone who invents a technology ( and production process to keep it cheap ) to get a 5x improvement will be a billionaire over night. If you are going to do this, do it right and spend some real money. How about 250 million a year over 5 years? btw. The if the US government pays for it, the US government should patent everything and get a 5x return for the taxpayers.

Re:Pocket change

[skids]

Industry only pours money into research they think they will help their own company exclusively and/or which they can turn around into a profit in under X business quarters.

These national labs do the basic research that industry fails to fund.

Re:Wrong direction

[Desler]

Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor?

No, it didn't. Intel did in 1971 with the 8008.

Technology deliberately stifled

[Beerdood]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

Sorry for a wiki link, too lazy to look up more sources. Basically we'd have better battery technology if Oil & Car companies didn't deliberately stifle technology

Enough $?

[markdavis]

$120 million really doesn't sound like enough money to me to solve a problem that has been the bane of thousands of electronics companies for many decades....

Still, this is a VERY worthy cause. Batteries have improved a lot over the years, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with what we need. Especially important as we move ever closer to electric cars (I would just LOVE to have one).

And it isn't just the capacity and price that is important- safety and component scarcity and disposal concerns should be addressed too.

Re:Just Dictate & it will Happen...

[GrahamCox]

Even worse, what about something with nearly 100x the energy density? I mean, imagine how dangerous an automobile would be with that amount of energy on board, in the hands of clueless idiots who can't drive?

Oh, wait...

Re:Just Dictate & it will Happen...

[roc97007]

Funny story... coming back from a photo assignment, I discovered while on the freeway why you do not put fully charged high current rechargeable batteries in the same pocket as a handfull of change. (sniff ... "What's that... OH MY GOD." And then try to pull off the road safely while your pants are literally on fire.)

Well, I can see the humor *now*. It wasn't funny at the time.

But seriously, a lot of current systems (your car's gas tank, for instance) have a significant amount of stored up energy. The companies that don't put adequate safeguards in place will pay out in the courts and perhaps go out of business. I don't see this as a valid concern. The pants on fire thing, that was me being an idiot. I got a good lesson out of the experience. And a small scar.

Molten Salt Batteries

[catchblue22]

The idea of molten salt batteries sounds quite intriguing to me, especially for bulk utility level energy storage. In this TED talk, MIT professor Donald Sadoway details his designs and describes the models he has already built. In short, the idea is to have two liquid metals, one less dense and one more dense. In the middle is a layer of molten salt. The less dense molten metal floats on the top. In the middle is the molten salt, and at the bottom is the more dense molten metal. The molten salt acts as the electrolyte in the cell, and the two different metals pass electrons around due to their different electron affinities.

When building these cells, they would use common cheap materials, so that the cost of this type of battery would be trivial compared with the amount of energy it can store. The fact that the cell is molten is actually an advantage. We spend huge effort in our current electrochemical cells trying to keep them cool. This type of cell would thrive on heat...indeed the energy used in charging and discharging it would help keep the metals and the salt molten.

Clearly this type of cell would not be used to power your laptop or cellphone directly, but it could be used to store energy from solar panels on your rooftop, or to store energy from large solar power plants for use in the night. As always, I am sure there are bugs to work out, but really, this sounds incredibly promising.

Re:Wrong direction

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor?,

Nope. Not even the 4-bit.

The Apollo guidance computer didn't use a microprocessor at all. It was built from thousands of individual RTL 3-imput NOR gates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

There's some batteries near completion

[dbIII]

It's taken decades from initial R&D to the current batteries. Some of the stuff that was only working in the lab when I was a student 20+ years ago is now becoming commercially available and there's a lot of very interesting stuff in development now. The time lag is mostly due to limited resources being spent on R&D so a very small number of people are working on one technology at any time. Many of the things available now were improved after a long series of tests only because there were not enough people working on them to do some things in parallel.
So to sum up, putting a bit of extra effort into some promising designs could produce results very quickly.