LOS ANGELES – Jay Whitacre wants to change the world with batteries – and the recipe for change, he believes, is in everyday materials like salt and water.
Although he can geek out on complicated lectures on battery technology, last week at The Compass Summit in Los Angeles, Whitacre told me in much more simple terms about how his battery technology works. Using sodium ions instead of lithium, Whitacre’s batteries have been designed to store energy for the grid.
After spending two years figuring out the ideal chemistry for non-toxic batteries, Carnegie Mellon engineering professor Whitacre spun his technology into a startup company called Aquion Energy in January 2010. Pre-production of the sodium-ion batteries is expected this fall, and the production plant is on track to begin in 2013.
In September, Aquion announced a round of $30 million in funding from Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Triple Point Capital, to build its first factory. The batteries are designed for stationary applications in residential and buildings. The plan is to start with smaller installations and move into major ones.
Aquion Energy’s technology has received some recognition: Last week, the company won a United Nations award for energy at The World Technology Summit. Even though lithium is a common technology used in iPhones or computers, it’s expensive, it needs organic solvents, and has high purity requirements. The other alternative is lead acid batteries, which are known to release toxic lead.
With that in mind, Pittsburgh-based Aquion Energy is making batteries out of non-toxic materials. The anode is made of carbon, while the cathode is made from manganese oxide. The battery is made of individual units that are put together into 8 batteries of 15V modules.
“Electrical power is the only commodity sold in the world right now without any kind of warehousing. When you plug something into the wall, you immediately pull energy from a generation asset. It’s not stored anywhere. We store data, water, and gas. We do not store electricity. Historically, it’s just been too expensive,” Whitacre said.
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Nice!
Here’s another article:
http://www.greenerenergybuys.com/?cat=1&paged=816
Key quote: “Its target price is under $300 per kilowatt-hour, which is well below the price of today’s lithium ion batteries.”
My answer is that that is not “well below” the price of lithium ion batteries. It is very similar to the price of lithium ion batteries.
For instance, a quick look on eBay found seller “multi-function1002” who will ship a 6-cell, 4400 mA-hr, 11v lithium-ion Dell laptop battery to your door for $22.79. To buy enough of them to store a kilowatt-hour of energy (worth about $.10) would cost:
(1 / ((11.1 * 4.4) / 1000)) * 22.79 = $467 / kw-hr
18650 li-ion camera batteries are even cheaper. You can buy 100 of them, each rated 2400mA at 3.7V, from eBay seller “americanstorexx” (in Hong Kong), delivered to your door for $164.67. To buy enough of them to store a kilowatt-hour of energy would cost:
(1 / ((3.7 * 2.4) / 1000)) * 1.6437 = $185 / kw-hr
($1927 for the equivalent of a Chevy Volt 10.4 kw-hr battery pack)
NiMh batteries are priced similarly. You can buy 100 AA NiMh batteries, each rated 3000mA at 1.2V, from eBay seller “GreenForceStore” (in Hong Kong), delivered to your door for $65.98. To buy enough of them to store a kilowatt-hour of energy would cost:
(1 / ((1.2 * 3.0) / 1000)) * 0.6598 = $183 / kw-hr
($1906 for the equivalent of a Chevy Volt battery pack)
So unless these new batteries have lower losses or can be cycled more times than current batteries, they’d better be able to make them cheaper than $300 per kw-hr.
Correction: The Chevy Volt’s battery pack is 16 kw-hr, not 10.4 kw-hr. They only use 10.4 kw-hr in order to extend the batteries’ life, but the proper figure for cost-comparison is 16 kw-hr. So the raw cost of the equivalent in 18650 li-ion batteries is $2965.
At 9:15-9:30 he acknowledges that their battery’s price is similar to other batteries, but says it “lasts much much longer.”
That makes me happy. This thing might actually make sense.
It is a shame that we cannot all be like Iceland and use geothermal power to extract hydrogen from water to power our cars – net result zero carbon electtricity and transport…
Sadly, we’re becoming more like Iceland every day.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Yes Dave.
Just make sure, however, that you correctly identify the culprit(s).
http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/
hmmm, there was a time when the US had a balanced budget…when was that?
Oh, yeah….when Al Gore was in the administration….