Here’s another seemingly “game changing” battery technology from the same USC folks – organic flow batteries which, from the reading, sound like they’re going to take over the world by storm in short order. But, the article is now 7 years old…
I’m skeptical of these breathlessly hyped technologies that seem perhaps to be designed to lure investors and other money, and may therefore be quite rosy beyond reason.
We’ll see…. So far, I see lithium ion companies and lithium miners doing quite well. The “hydrogen economy” has similarly come and gone and come again as the fossil fuel interests hype their variants using nat gas as the hydrogen donor.
As pointed out in the video, Li+ batteries are wasting their advantage sitting on a slab. Perhaps a small front end to handle speedy responses in front of slower, cheaper battery, but nothing like the capacity of that original wind farm bank in Australia.
There are more than enough other applications (cars and other mobile toys) to suck up all the lithium the mines produce.
And you’re very right to be skeptical of hyped technology in race to address the grid storage problem. As with the previous technology races, we should expect great technological advances with dozens of failed attempts along the wayside. Lots of people will lose lots of money, but venture investors know to expect a certain percentage of failures and figure that into their total portfolio. (They have at least one market advantage in knowing how to evaluate the people running these startups.)
Unfortunately this video is about Liquid Metal Batteries (LMBs) not flow batteries
Here is an article about Flow batteries and the new, les toxic, redox chemistries
https://news.usc.edu/166306/flow-battery-renewable-energy-electricity-storage-usc-study/
Here’s another seemingly “game changing” battery technology from the same USC folks – organic flow batteries which, from the reading, sound like they’re going to take over the world by storm in short order. But, the article is now 7 years old…
https://news.usc.edu/64612/usc-scientists-plug-in-to-a-new-battery-thats-cheap-clean-rechargeable-and-organic/
I’m skeptical of these breathlessly hyped technologies that seem perhaps to be designed to lure investors and other money, and may therefore be quite rosy beyond reason.
We’ll see…. So far, I see lithium ion companies and lithium miners doing quite well. The “hydrogen economy” has similarly come and gone and come again as the fossil fuel interests hype their variants using nat gas as the hydrogen donor.
As pointed out in the video, Li+ batteries are wasting their advantage sitting on a slab. Perhaps a small front end to handle speedy responses in front of slower, cheaper battery, but nothing like the capacity of that original wind farm bank in Australia.
There are more than enough other applications (cars and other mobile toys) to suck up all the lithium the mines produce.
And you’re very right to be skeptical of hyped technology in race to address the grid storage problem. As with the previous technology races, we should expect great technological advances with dozens of failed attempts along the wayside. Lots of people will lose lots of money, but venture investors know to expect a certain percentage of failures and figure that into their total portfolio. (They have at least one market advantage in knowing how to evaluate the people running these startups.)