baha wrote:I can give you grid stability for a reasonable fee... and a big pile of Lithium.
But instead of burning the lithium and polluting the world with CO2 and ash, I will just put it in a can and use it to store spare electrons. In ten years when the lithium is tired I can open the can, reprosses the lithium. and start again.
I could put the battery storage plant right where that nasty old coal plant used to be. The wires are already there.
There was an article yesterday about wind power potential in NC. It seems we could produce 5 times the power we use with offshore wind farms. Then we could use a superconducting DC transmission line to connect to the battery facility located where the coal plant used to be.
What the hell are we waiting for?
Lithium ion batteries are a great fit for portable electronics and EVs. Cars spend
95% of their time parked. And drivers rarely discharge their batteries to the maximum amount allowed, further prolonging their battery life. So the duty cycle for your typical EV battery is light. Contrast that with the duty cycle for a grid storage battery that may have to discharge-charge multiple times per day and have far greater depth of discharge. This greatly curtails the amount of life cycles you get out of the battery. Not to mention the safety issue of lithium batteries. There are other battery technologies out their that are better suited to the duty cycle of grid storage. However lithium ion has first mover advantage and those who try to compete with it often get crushed. So for now we are stuck with batteries that are not very good for grid storage.
Manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries for EVs and handheld electronics would naturally like to apply their technology that was designed with only one application in mind – high energy density – to large-scale energy storage. But just because it is right for your phone, laptop, or hoverboard, it doesn’t mean lithium is the right chemistry for far more demanding, higher energy uses. Lithium-ion’s high energy density is useful for personal electronics where (smaller) size matters, but for stationary storage applications that need to have the ability to handle high power and/or long duration applications multiple times a day, a far more versatile, robust energy storage system is required. Duration, cycle life, versatility, and overall battery life are areas where the chemistry and design of lithium-ion energy storage systems don’t stack up.
The giant elephant in the room is named safety
Large-scale lithium-ion battery makers know how important safety is. That’s why they design very complicated cooling and fire suppression systems for their units to keep the system from entering thermal runaway. As distributed energy storage systems become more and more commonplace, the likelihood will grow that they need to be deployed in highly populated areas next to schools, hospitals, office buildings, etc., so even if all costs were equal lithium-ion begins to be a difficult choice.
It's all about the revenue
Stationary energy storage systems must be able to withstand punishing duty cycles, sometimes requiring full charge and discharge cycles multiple times a day. While a redox flow battery can facilitate these requirements several times in a day if necessary, most lithium-ion based energy storage systems are capable of only one daily cycle and often have a mandated rest period. The fire suppression and cooling systems necessary for lithium-ion energy storage systems also add to the size and weight of the overall units and decrease efficiency, add complexity, and increase field reliability concerns. These limitations reduce the amount of revenue-grade energy the system can support every day, week, month and year. Furthermore, lithium-ion cells degrade continuously over time and they need to be replaced frequently.
Lithium-ion batteries certainly have their place in the electronics world as their energy density in a small form factor has facilitated the ever-decreasing size of all our mobile devices. But if people are waiting on the low-cost lithium magic bullet to make grid-scale stationary storage widely available, they should instead simply go with the flow [battery].
Why lithium-ion is NOT the new siliconli-ion batteries are well suited to transportation applications, but not necessarily ideal for the grid, and locking in on li-ion batteries is making it difficult for producers of alternative storage technologies to survive, much less continue to innovate and scale up. That could block the entry of more optimal alternative technologies that may be longer lasting and have a longer cycle life. There are signs both are already happening.
In addition, the immense amount of capital being poured into expanding lithium-ion production raises the pressure on other players to compete on price alone. The lithium-ion cost curve is an aggregate of technologies used for a variety of applications, but mostly for electric vehicles and electronics, and thus it does not accurately reflect the costs of li-ion batteries for utility applications. The costs of utility scale li-ion batteries have some unique qualities that are not fully reflected in many of the li-ion cost curve projections.
Lithium-ion batteries are also vulnerable to commodity risk because they use cobalt, which has doubled in price recently. Nickel is being used as a replacement, but the trade-off is a loss of cycle life. “That’s okay for electric vehicles, but it doesn’t work for grid applications.”
Lithium-ion domination could block promising storage technologies, MIT findsSo far this year, at least two battery manufacturers working on novel technologies have declared bankruptcy. In March, Aquion Energy filed for bankruptcy. Aquion was known for its aqueous hybrid ion battery technology, which the company touted as a safer and cheaper alternative to li-ion batteries. And late last week, Alevo USA and Alevo Manufacturing, both part of Alevo Group, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. At one point, Alevo was seen as a rival to Tesla. In the end, Alevo has “insufficient revenue to continue operations.” It is now seeking to liquidate its assets.
Alevo's bankruptcy illustrates the pitfalls newcomers face in energy storage markets