New Records for Batteries & Electrolyzers

Tags

batteries, lithium, PEM electrolyzer, Proton, Tesla

There were two recent announcements relating to the installation of battery and electrolyzer technologies that broke world records:

1. Proton Onsite / Nel ASA just announced a contract to supply a PEM-electrolyzer based H2 generation and fueling station that will supply up to 900 kg per day of H2 that will be used for fuel in H2 fuel cell buses in the Palm Springs area of California.  The size of this combined electrolyzer / fueling station makes it the largest such station in the world.  For perspective, 1 kg of H2 is roughly equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline, and an average convenience store gas station in the U.S. sells about 4,000 gallons of gasoline per day.  So, it will be desirable to make these systems even bigger in the future. You can read more about the Nel ASA fueling station here.

2.  Tesla is half way finished building a Li-ion battery system that will be installed in Southern Australia. Once installed, this system will be rated at 100 MW with 129 MWh of capacity, making it the largest grid-tied battery system in the world.  For perspective, a typical coal-fired power plant produces around 1000 MW of electricity.   You can read more about the Tesla installation in Australia here.

Both California and Australia have been aggressive installing renewable wind and solar, which has resulted in large price fluctuations in both locations, leading at times in negative electricity prices.  Using these free or low-cost electrons to to produce fuels or charge up a battery until electricity prices return to normal represent a huge opportunity for these energy storage technologies to grow.

 

 

Advertisement

Key elements in a sustainable energy future

Tags

abundance of elements, batteries, hydrogen, lithium, materials

This is an interesting article in the Economist from earlier this year discussing the world’s supply and price of Lithium-carbonate salts, the key ingredient for Li-ion batteries such as those going into the new electric vehicles:

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688386-amid-surge-demand-rechargeable-batteries-companies-are-scrambling-supplies

As discussed in the article, global supplies of Li are limited and Li production is concentrated in a small handful of countries. Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla motors, which is aiming to scale up its production of the Tesla Model 3 to 500,000 cars/year by 2020, has noted that “in order to produce a half million cars per year…we would basically need to absorb the entire world’s lithium-ion production.”  (source)

Li-ion batteries are not the only clean energy technology that rely on increasingly scarce elements.  Fuel cells and electrolyzers – key technologies for a potential Hydrogen economy- currently rely heavily on expensive precious metal catalysts such as Platinum and Iridium.  For this reason, the development of new earth-abundant catalytic and electrode materials for these technologies is of critical importance for renewable energy to reach the terawatt energy scales.

For a more comprehensive discussion on the global supplies and production rates of key elements for renewable energy technologies, this is a nice review article from a few years ago:

Addressing the terawatt challenge: scalability in the supply of chemical elements for renewable energy

RSC Adv., 2012,2, 7933-7947

 

 

Dr. Yiying Wu’s Reddit AMA

Tags

batteries, outreach, reddit, solar, solar fuels

Dr. Yiying Wu from Ohio State posted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) yesterday on Reddit’s science forum, where he answers questions about his work on solar batteries. This is a great way to increase public awareness of solar battery research, and is worth checking out if you have the time.

Tesla’s Household Battery System

Tags

batteries, Elon Musk, energy storage, grid scale energy storage, lithium ion batteries, solar, Tesla

Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors company officially announced the upcoming release of a product, a 7 or 10 kWhr household battery that it calls the Powerwall:

http://techgenmag.com/2015/05/02/will-teslas-powerwall-shake-up-the-solar-energy-industry/

The rechargeable Lithium ion based battery leverages Tesla’s current expertise and manufacturing resources in this area for it’s electric cars, and targets owners of residential solar panels.

In states like Arizona and Wisconsin where there will be significant fees on solar owners to hook up to the grid, owning your own source of energy storage to deal with solar intermittency will look more and more attractive to solar-owners going forward.

You can see a presentation announcing Tesla’s new battery system and providing more details here: