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Battery Advance Could Lead To a Cleaner Way To Store Energy
sciencehabit writes: With the continuing rise of solar and wind power, the hunt is on for cheap batteries that are able to store large amounts of energy and deliver it when it's dark and the wind is still. Last year researchers reported an advance on one potentially cheap, energy-packing battery. But it required toxic and caustic materials. Now, the same team has revised its chemistry, doing away with the noxious constituents—an advance that could make future such batteries far cheaper and simpler to build.
When is it ever dark and windless at the same time across the USA? It happens about as often as EVERY SINGLE NUCLEAR POWER GENERATOR is offline at the same time. Yet we don't bang on and on about how we need backup generation for nuclear (we do, about a third over capacity to get to 90%+ capacity factor), nor how we need a huge amount of fast generation to handle unexpected outages until some larger and slower (and cheaper) generator can get up to speed.
NOTE: coal power has this problem too, along with needing a continued resupply of resources to continue operating giving another option for failure.
We have blackouts because cheapskates running the power industry don't want to spend for proper backup and capacity planning with our nuclear/coal/oil/gas infrastructure. IT IS A GOOD THING that we're insisting on having that done for renewables. But I can't help feeling this is just a way to make sure that power utilities can keep their old infrastructure going (which has already sunk the cost of building, so is in high profit mode) and also hike prices for renewables roll out (making them hugely profitable, since it's getting cheaper by the day and already comparable or cheaper than current generation fossil fuel plants). Whether they'll ACTUALLY spend the money doing this proper backup I seriously doubt. I believe that this is entirely a "reason" to not roll out renewables and mothball the highly profitable sunk capital infrastructure. "Oh, we have to wait until we get this new battery!" Of course, NEW fossil fuel (and nuclear) builds will go ahead and even be shoehorned past state or local objection under the alarmist guise of "We NEED this generation because we closed the old plants!", whereas what they SHOULD do is build out any replacement of closed generation with renewables.
However, the meme of "When it's dark and windless" is a shibboleth and bogeyman to stop or at least slow take-up of renewables (or demonise those who do it privately). It pretends that we ONLY use solar PV, pretends that "not even half of expected average" is "windless" and we only use wind. And entirely ignores tidal, hydro, biomass, geothermal, wave and solar thermal. Or that we can build up to 200-400% capacity for the same price as nuclear replacement (when ignoring the need for 1/3rd more nuclear because of downtime). The higher figure would be putting it all where it does the most good, not the most convenient or profitable per-acre.
When we have 100% renewable infrastructure, THEN we can go carefully and without haste into the new generator types for nuclear and find the best and most secure way of using nuclear without the rush of replacing coal. When we know we have a solution we can retire the overcapacity on renewables and replace what we know we need with reliable and safe nuclear.
A nuclear power we could use in space travel or on extra-terrestrial bases, where renewables would be untenable for obvious reasons.
Which will come first: the widespread commercial availability of this battery technology, or the Year of Linux on the Desktop?
I want these as a backup when the grid goes down!
Could to something else and something else!!
Also serve some Dicevertisements and auto playing shampoo commercials while we're at it*
Batteries have always had energy densities that were orders of magnitude less than fossil fuels. I would fully agree that having high density energy storage is hugely important and especially so with renewable energy sources because they're so variable. But somehow people always look at the energy sources and not at the buffers.
The gap for batteries is so large though that I doubt claims that we'll be moving to a situation where most cars are electric.
The most interesting buffer I can think of is dams. Using solar power or wind power to pump up water. And at some point a hot bath: solar power heats a liquid that goes into a large reservoir, and then electricity is generated around the clock from the reservoir.
Electric cars are more an upper middle class thing.
Maybe I'm missing the point because I'm just a layman for this, but if NOT using the toxic components makes the batteries cheaper and simpler to produce ... why were they using the toxic components in the first place?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Flow battery stores the energy in electrolytes in external tanks. Thus at some point we could have gas stations dispensing "charged" electrolytes making way for very rapid recharging.
As usual for any battery technology it works in the lab and the product is X+10 years away, where X is the current year.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Flow batteries aren't news, yet the words "flow battery" appear nowhere in the summary. This is an article about a flow battery. If you were expecting something new, this article isn't about that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does anyone know do flow batteries hold their charge well?
It seems to me that is the key element required to make renewable energy sources viable.
This battery advance is significant if it pans out to actually allow cheap, non-toxic batteries. The fact that it takes up more space doesn't seem that important when you consider solar farms in the dessert where there is plenty of space available.
Does anyone know do flow batteries hold their charge well?
Depends on what the materials are. But unless the materials are inherently unstrable their separation into different storage tanks results in extremely low self-discharge. Very handy if you want to store utility-peaking levels of energy for months.
A more telling point is whether any leakage through the membrane to the other side degrades or poisons the reaction.
The latter is one reason Vanadium Redox flow batteries are so great. The simple compounds on each side of the membrane are the same (except for the oxidation state of the vanadium, and thus the number of its partners, such as oxygen atoms, it's associated with). As a result, any electrolyte that leaks into the wrong half-cell is quickly converted to that half-cell's electrolyte type. A little energy is lost "charging" it to the right oxidation state, but the battery is not poisoned. Unlike the one in the article.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
3D printer advance could lead to Star Trek replicator.
Billionaires could lead to private space station.
The geek religion of constant progress leads to some bizarre fixed ideas.
Interconnect the world grids so that the sunny, windy side of Earth can provide power to the dark, still side of Earth?
Up next: faster vehicles could lead to faster travel, and being healthy could lead to longer life. News at 11!
(OK maybe there's actual content in the article that isn't blindingly obvious, but the summary isn't sufficiently enticing to make me read it).
3D printer advance could lead to Star Trek replicator.
Billionaires could lead to private space station.
The geek religion of constant progress leads to some bizarre fixed ideas.
You forgot one:
A totally Free Market will solve all our problems.
You forgot one. A totally regulated, top-down society is nirvana.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
> make future such batteries far cheaper and simpler to build.
Future batteries need not be cheap or simple. They need to be environmentally friendly. The mining and refining of raw materials currently needed to manufacture rechargeable and single-use batteries is an extremely polluting process that hurts plants, animals and manfolk alike.
There is a reason why many are looking into fuel cell tech, where half an ounce of platinum and palladium, while quite precious in dollars, can produce so much electricity, equivalent or superior to the output of a big Li-Ion battery bank (which is heavier than all the pax combined in the vehicle that is being propelled)!
Oh come on, I can't be the only one.
the main purpose of a utility was to provide reliable energy. Then it was decided that cheap was better. Utilities were told to sell their generation facilities. Now, utilities buy their energy from generation facilities that have to compete with each other on price. Of course the laws of thermodynamics and the global price for fuel sets the based price for power. So the only way to compete is to keep the cost of maintenance to the minimum which means higher probability of failure.
Would this be effective for large UPS batteries in data centers? The current lead calcium acid batteries we use are expensive, heavy, and need to be replaced every few years. It would be interesting if we could replace the membrane and pump in some new fluid.
Well see, that's the problem with the future, it never gets here.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The problem is determining the optimum sweet spot somewhere between the two. We have a feedback system in place to try and regulate it, but the response rate isn't fast enough. So our legislators are trying to fix it by campaigning continuously.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
distinguish between:
1. investing money and losing money
2. heavily amortized costs (R & D, building a factory) vs. per-unit costs
How the world works will always be a mystery to people like you. You are doomed to witness many companies in your life go [seemingly overnight] from "losing $8400 per unit" to "raking in billions of dollars in profit". Let me try to put it into terms your tiny little brain can understand:
For essentially every single product in history there has been some point in its early production when it was "losing $8400 per unit". The Ford Model T, the Sony Walkman, the iPod, the VCR, all of them. And some idiot pointed it out each time. And then everyone with a brain yawned and ignored them.
Yawn.
I never see flywheels discussed in this context. I don't understand why not, though.
No need for exotic compounds, sky-high efficiency. They don't have to be replaced every three years.
There must be a reason people keep dismissing them out of hand...does here anyone know what the reason is?
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
A "troll" is something you just made up to make people angry. But I truly believe that the anonymous coward who left that stupid comment has poor reading comprehension skills. If you think I'm trolling here, you're a pathetic idiot.
The Slashdot moderation system is broken by design if it lets mental midgets like you have modpoints.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://incompliancemag.com/the-lost-almost-technology-of-the-edison-cell/
http://ironedison.com/nickel-iron-ni-fe-battery
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/june/ultrafast-edison-battery-062612.html