Will New Battery Technologies Smash The Old Order? (telegraph.co.uk)

"The world's next energy revolution is probably no more than five or ten years away," reports The Telegraph. "Cutting-edge research into cheap and clean forms of electricity storage is moving so fast that we may never again need to build 20th Century power plants in this country..." Slashdot reader mdsolar quotes their article: The US Energy Department is funding 75 projects developing electricity storage, mobilizing teams of scientists at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the elite Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge labs in a bid for what it calls the "Holy Grail" of energy policy. You can track what they are doing at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). There are plans for hydrogen bromide, or zinc-air batteries, or storage in molten glass, or next-generation flywheels, many claiming "drastic improvements" that can slash storage costs by 80pc to 90pc and reach the magical figure of $100 per kilowatt hour in relatively short order.

"Storage is a huge deal," says Ernest Moniz, the U,S. Energy Secretary and himself a nuclear physicist. He is now confident that the U.S. grid and power system will be completely "decarbonized" by the middle of the century.
One energy consultant predicts the energy storage market will be worth $90 billion in 2025 -- 100 times larger than it is today.

Comments

Haves / Have nots?

[rsilvergun]

That's the only thing that worries me. The current system requires lots and lots of public infrastructure. That keeps prices down for the poor (economies of scale and whatnot). That's not gonna last If even the upper middle class doesn't want/need that infrastructure. The folks most able to pay for it aren't going to want to. They won't be using it. But it'll mean going back to the dark ages for the lower class...

Re:Its a continuation

[dinfinity]

I admit to having little knowledge about them, but I think flow batteries have great potential.

The numbers are probably exaggerated, but these guys claim a range of 1000km in a car with a total of 350 liters of fluid storage. That would mean an energy density of roughly 1/7th of gasoline. That isn't stellar, but it's also far from 'useless crap'-territory. It would be fine for at least industrial energy storage (from renewable sources), it seems.

Let me reiterate this, though: I'm far from an expert on these things.

Re:Its a continuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Powerful, efficient, fast charging, long lasting batteries. ...the NEW Fusion!

Re:Unfair to bash nuclear

[Sique]

Hinkley Point C secured about 10 billion pound in subsidies, nevertheless EdF tries to get out of the building contract as they doubt they will make any profit. The original estimation for the price of an EPR at this size was 3 billion pound, now we are talking about 24,5 billion pound for the construction. The whole cost of Hinkley Point during its operation is estimated at 37 billion pound. At current energy prices, the warranties given for the price of energy coming from Hinkley Point C are estimated to cost close to 30 billion pound.

There are enough reasons to be in doubt about Hinkley Point C.

Re:Its a continuation

[SuricouRaven]

For transport, they are impractical. They may have a role in grid scale energy, storing up excess from renewables to be used on demand.

If it sticks it to the utiities I am in.

[EmperorOfCanada]

I live in a medium density urban area, I want to go off grid. Not out of some prepper issue, nor are my present rates particularly abusive. I just hate utilities. I hate the people who run them. I hate the regulators who regulate them. I hate that they look at my house and see a guaranteed revenue stream. I want to cut them off and I will pay extra to do so.

I will even inconvenience myself to do so. I would happily rewire my house so that the LED lighting isn't converting from 110 but from something the batteries were happier providing. I would coat the roof in solar cells, and I would buy a little generator to fill in any gaps. The same with things like my fridge or other power grabbers, they could be 24v or even 12v if needed.

Here is my dream day. The utility goes to the government and demands that regardless of my being hooked up or not that I still have to pay them for the lines that run past my house, and the regulator says, "NOPE".

To me it boils down to the utilities should be a public good like roads, and schools. Not for profit should be the rule. Yet I see board members at these utilities making huge multiples of the average person's salary, let alone the heads of the companies, or the investors.