Startup Claims Breakthrough in Long-Duration Batteries (wsj.com) 103
A four-year-old startup says it has built an inexpensive battery that can discharge power for days using one of the most common elements on Earth: iron. From a report: Form Energy's batteries are far too heavy for electric cars. But it says they will be capable of solving one of the most elusive problems facing renewable energy: cheaply storing large amounts of electricity to power grids when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing. The work of the Somerville, Mass., company has long been shrouded in secrecy and nondisclosure agreements. It recently shared its progress with The Wall Street Journal, saying it wants to make regulators and utilities aware that if all continues to go according to plan, its iron-air batteries will be capable of affordable, long-duration power storage by 2025.
Its backers include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate investment fund whose investors include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Form recently initiated a $200 million funding round, led by a strategic investment from steelmaking giant ArcelorMittal one of the world's leading iron-ore producers. Form is preparing to soon be in production of the "kind of battery you need to fully retire thermal assets like coal and natural gas" power plants, said the company's chief executive, Mateo Jaramillo, who developed Tesla's Powerwall battery and worked on some of its earliest automotive powertrains. On a recent tour of Form's windowless laboratory, Mr. Jaramillo gestured to barrels filled with low-cost iron pellets as its key advantage in the rapidly evolving battery space. Its prototype battery, nicknamed Big Jim, is filled with 18,000 pebble-size gray pieces of iron, an abundant, nontoxic and nonflammable mineral.
For a lithium-ion battery cell, the workhorse of electric vehicles and today's grid-scale batteries, the nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese minerals used currently cost between $50 and $80 per kilowatt-hour of storage, according to analysts. Using iron, Form believes it will spend less than $6 per kilowatt-hour of storage on materials for each cell. Packaging the cells together into a full battery system will raise the price to less than $20 per kilowatt-hour, a level at which academics have said renewables plus storage could fully replace traditional fossil-fuel-burning power plants. A battery capable of cheaply discharging power for days has been a holy grail in the energy industry, due to the problem that it solves and the potential market it creates.
Its backers include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate investment fund whose investors include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Form recently initiated a $200 million funding round, led by a strategic investment from steelmaking giant ArcelorMittal one of the world's leading iron-ore producers. Form is preparing to soon be in production of the "kind of battery you need to fully retire thermal assets like coal and natural gas" power plants, said the company's chief executive, Mateo Jaramillo, who developed Tesla's Powerwall battery and worked on some of its earliest automotive powertrains. On a recent tour of Form's windowless laboratory, Mr. Jaramillo gestured to barrels filled with low-cost iron pellets as its key advantage in the rapidly evolving battery space. Its prototype battery, nicknamed Big Jim, is filled with 18,000 pebble-size gray pieces of iron, an abundant, nontoxic and nonflammable mineral.
For a lithium-ion battery cell, the workhorse of electric vehicles and today's grid-scale batteries, the nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese minerals used currently cost between $50 and $80 per kilowatt-hour of storage, according to analysts. Using iron, Form believes it will spend less than $6 per kilowatt-hour of storage on materials for each cell. Packaging the cells together into a full battery system will raise the price to less than $20 per kilowatt-hour, a level at which academics have said renewables plus storage could fully replace traditional fossil-fuel-burning power plants. A battery capable of cheaply discharging power for days has been a holy grail in the energy industry, due to the problem that it solves and the potential market it creates.
Iron batteries were known before (Score:5, Informative)
The press release is notably silent on automotive applications and talks about grid level storage. That indicates these batteries are extremely heavy and possibly they are large too. They emphasize the low cost of raw materials. Claims very optimistic production cost of just 16 $/kWh. But even if manufacturing cost is 32 $/kWh or even 64 $/kWh it is a great advantage over Lithium ion.
The next question is efficiency. Not sure how much of the energy can be recovered. Its also possible there are limitations on response time. Even with all that, it would be a great break through. Hope they are not glossing over some fundamental deficiency.
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Hope they are not glossing over some fundamental deficiency.
Don't worry, they are. Grid scale batteries have a few requirements: common material, cheap, more than 80% efficient (90% is much better and can trade a bit of cheap for). The reason most investors in batteries get fleeced is because they forget about one of these requirements and they all must be met. The efficient determines the range of price variations that makes operating a grid battery economical. The other requirements are about making sure the battery isn't worse than the alternative and making
Re:Iron batteries were known before (Score:4, Interesting)
Hope they are not glossing over some fundamental deficiency.
Don't worry, they are. Grid scale batteries have a few requirements: common material, cheap, more than 80% efficient (90% is much better and can trade a bit of cheap for).
Explain how say, a Nickel–iron battery cannot work for grid energy storage. What is the failure mechanism that will render it incapable of storing and providing power, and that the only possible way to provide grid storage is 80 percent efficiency or better.
Efficiency not that important (Score:5, Interesting)
The real killer for most grid storage is maintenance and durability. Can you pay your battery off before it needs to be refurbished? Secondary questions are: While there still be the huge swing in electric prices if you deploy a grid storage system that can handle 10% of the daily grid demand? What if environmentalists grow brains and support nuclear and more variable electric pricing...oh wait, zero chance of that last one.
Re:Efficiency not that important (Score:5, Informative)
What if environmentalists grow brains and support nuclear and more variable electric pricing...oh wait, zero chance of that last one.
Which environmentalists oppose variable electricity pricing?
I live in California, have a smart meter, and already pay variable prices for power. I haven't heard anyone opposing it.
Not Variable enough pricing (Score:4, Insightful)
I wrote the code that goes in about half the meters in California and also contributed to the wireless standard to allow your meter to tell device in your house what the pricing schedule is and how much you are consuming. The wholesale cost of Electricity in California "most" of the time varies from around zero to about $4. When the cost is close to zero the power is coming from wind and nuclear. When the price is approaching $4 most of it is natural gas or coal. At times of low demand when the wind is blowing the utilities are saving money to pay for the fossil fuel generated electricity later.
I've done pilots in Oklahoma where the price of electricity off peak was free and peak was close to $0.80/kwh. The largest pilot had 100,000 people and people got two bills, one with the traditional variable pricing and one with the more extreme variability. Most wealthier households took advantage of the variable pricing and had a median difference in the bills of $50. Oklahoma Gas and Electric was poised to save even more than what their consumers saved because they were not subsidizing fossil fuels and they wouldn't need as much infrastructure because the energy use would be less variable. And then the politicians got involved and it all went to hell. Texas also had plans to do something similar but that got derailed by advocates for the poor. They were upset that saving the environment was also saving rich people and rich utilities money so we had to offer something to poorer household. Which is hard because poor people don't spend anywhere close to what their rich neighbours spend on electricity. Then after we sort of got something that looked like a compromise that would offer something to the lowest 20th percentile the whole project was scraped because someone sued us to prevent us from getting the list of lower income households we had to subsidize.
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When nuclear power appeared to be make abundant electricity too cheap to meter, they did exactly the same thing. Whipped up enough FUD to add such
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What if environmentalists grow brains and support nuclear and more variable electric pricing...oh wait, zero chance of that last one.
Which environmentalists oppose variable electricity pricing?
I live in California, have a smart meter, and already pay variable prices for power. I haven't heard anyone opposing it.
Lets see how your electrical consumption prices stay low with global warming and Calif doughts and neighboring Nevada storms. Electrical grids are inter-state connected, for safety and backups.
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What if environmentalists grow brains and support nuclear
I think you overstate the abilities of environmentalists to change things. It's the free market, which has spoken clearly and firmly: "the costs are too high and the risks too long-term for us to build nuclear plants." That's why it's been government-only, and why environmentalists have been able to vote it out. But governments can't achieve energy production anywhere near the scale that the free market can.
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Re: Efficiency not that important (Score:2)
I like it! "Unreversavle Mass Destruction" is my new band name. Do not diss the band name.
I find it mildly ironic that you fixed one error and missed two more. Eh. They're just typos. We all make typos, especially in informal writing like this. I wouldn't even have said anything if you hadn't tried to fix it.
Besides, I wanted to claim the band name!
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Environmentalists can't help nuclear. It's too expensive, nobody wants to pay for it or invest in it.
Look at the situation in the UK. Even with massive subsidies and guaranteed more than double the rate wind gets for electricity generated they still couldn't get anyone to build it. The risk was too great and the cost so high nobody could raise the capital... In the end the French government had to loan EDF the money to do it.
Nuclear cost is cause by environmentalists (Score:2)
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I randomly clicked one of those price reports: http://reports.ieso.ca/public/... [reports.ieso.ca]
What exactly is this saying... that a kilowatt-hour in Ontario cost 16.42 cents during hour 5, and was given away for free during hours 13-16?
If so, the fluctuation factor is more than 10; it's infinite. And people ought to be charging their Teslas as much as possible during hours 13-16.
Re: Efficiency not that important (Score:2)
Re:Iron batteries were known before (Score:5, Insightful)
more than 80% efficient (90% is much better and can trade a bit of cheap for).
For grid storage, it is best to have a mixture of cheap/less-efficient and efficient/not-so-cheap.
So if Li-Ion is 90% efficient but pricey and these iron batteries are 80% efficient and cheap, then you could use Li-Ion for normal daily peaking and use the cheap iron batteries as a deep reserve for extended periods of higher demand or supply shortage.
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That sounds like Donald Sadoway.
https://www.ted.com/talks/dona... [ted.com]
If his venture out from the sheltered life and into the free market fails him then I'm sure he'll be fine. He can find some teaching job in another shelter from reality, though perhaps at not as well paid as MIT.
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Iron air (and Zinc Air) batteries tend to have large differences between charge and discharge voltages ... even 80% is probably optimistic.
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Let's not forget durability. A battery for grid storage has to survive thousands of charge-discharge cycles at a minimum. More is better, especially if it is made with materials that are difficult to recycle. That's one strength of lead-acid; the worn lead electrodes are easy to reprocess into new batteries.
I think you meant to say "sordid investment history of hucksterism".
Re: Iron batteries were known before (Score:2)
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Well liquid metal batteries [youtu.be] are likewise heavy and large so that's not a downside. Iron batteries may even run cooler.
Still a downside (Score:1)
My ex is heavy and large too. It's still a downside.
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Early electric cars used Iron batteries and they last a very long time. Jay Leno's Garage featured some cars 100 years old still running on old iron batteries
These were likely iron-nickel batteries. The batteries in the article are iron-air.
They should have an order of magnitude more capacity than iron-nickel, but they'll still be way below li-ion. And since it's iron-air, they likely have very limited charging and discharging speed. Not really a problem for grid energy storage, but a deal-breaker for cars.
More interesting question: what is the round-trip efficiency? It's likely to be way lower than li-ion because of the entropy change of air-to-solid during
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So... it's rust*?
* actual rust, not that fucking programming language that zealots seem to be forcefully shoving everywhere.
Re: Iron batteries were known before (Score:2)
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Early electric cars used Iron batteries and they last a very long time. Jay Leno's Garage featured some cars 100 years old still running on old iron batteries
These were likely iron-nickel batteries. The batteries in the article are iron-air.
That is correct. Nickel–iron batteries were used a long time ago for cars and communication systems, and even today for some subway trains.
More interesting question: what is the round-trip efficiency? It's likely to be way lower than li-ion because of the entropy change of air-to-solid during charge/discharge cycle.
Yes, Li-ion is definitely a choice, especially if small size and high discharge rate is desired.
But people tend to get stuck on that. Lithium batteries of any type are pretty delicate. The Iron nickel batteries are known for surviving some pretty brutal treatment. But they have some issues such as low energy density, and relatively high self discharge. And hea
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Early electric cars used Iron batteries and they last a very long time. Jay Leno's Garage featured some cars 100 years old still running on old iron batteries
The press release is notably silent on automotive applications and talks about grid level storage. That indicates these batteries are extremely heavy and possibly they are large too. They emphasize the low cost of raw materials. Claims very optimistic production cost of just 16 $/kWh. But even if manufacturing cost is 32 $/kWh or even 64 $/kWh it is a great advantage over Lithium ion.
Yup - very heavy. I've long advocated Nickel–iron batteries for renewable energy storage pour a concrete pad, put up a building, and fill it with batteries. As a rechargeable battery, the Nickel–iron battery isn't the greates on spec, other than it is super tough. But self discharge and energy density isn't a big problem when the batteries can just be duplicated. And nothing particularly toxic.
This new battery is interesting, although there are many more steps involved. There are apparently fu
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They're talking about megawatts, not kilo.... And the image on their site is basically of a parking lot with shipping-container size units on it - presumably if you need a lot more density, you could build a multi-story structure. Hence the "greater than" in front of the 3MW figure.
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The story here says that they're not intended for cars or portable devices; they're too heavy. They're for fixed location use.
The story talks about grid-level storage so I don't know if they're suitable for home or office installations like a Powerwall. They could have limitations that make them unsuitable for small scale installations, such as low charge and discharge rates that would mean they couldn't meet demand peaks or accept all the power from a home solar installation at peak sunlight.
For all that,
Re: Iron batteries were known before (Score:2)
Company website. WallSt link is paywalled. (Score:5, Informative)
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Sounds like a great technology for demand following at a nuclear power plant.
Plenty has been said about how renewable energy needs energy storage. What amazes me is how people will advocate for batteries and renewable energy sources while remaining blind to the benefits batteries bring to nuclear power. Often in the same breath these people that advocate for solar + storage will point out how poorly nuclear power plants react to changes in demand. Really? You just got done talking about how solar power
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Like clockwork here comes Blindseer to shill for nuclear.
The need for batteries was massively overstated. It was based on flawed a assumptions like renewables not being dispatchable, wind stopping for days on end and no ability to shape demand.
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Right, we "shape demand". There's another name for that, "energy scarcity". Another name, "rolling blackouts". One more, "lowered standard of living".
I'm seeing plenty of shills for solar power on Slashdot. When challenged on making the case for solar power over nuclear power I tend to get insults rather than data. When I give data I often get a reply on how my source is wrong but no source to counter it. That's funny, isn't it? To be wrong means that there is an answer that is correct. If there is
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Shaping demand doesn't mean any reduction in quality of life or scarcity.
For example, a lot of people run their AC at night to cool their house down by a few degrees. Then they don't need to run it during the day. They save money or can afford to use the AC more.
Similarly what if the power company could turn your thermostat down for 30 minutes before they knew a big load was coming? Most people wouldn't mind it getting a little cooler for a short time, only by 1C.
I don't care when my car gets charged, as lo
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Often in the same breath these people that advocate for solar + storage will point out how poorly nuclear power plants react to changes in demand. Really? You just got done talking about how solar power has difficulty in matching demand, point to batteries to solve this, and you can't add 2 and 2 to get 4.
Heh, I have never encountered this scenario in my entire life. Nuclear power's ability to change output levels is like bottom of the list of cares for people who don't think nuclear is an energy source we should be using. Sure, it's there on the list but I'd wager the vast majority of anti-nuclear folks havent made it that far down the list.
Re: Company website. WallSt link is paywalled. (Score:2)
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Heh. By the time any meaningful number of nuclear plants are built renewables with batteries will be all we need.
At least at the rate renewables and batteries are advancing now.
Electric trains. (Score:2)
Interesting idea. About nine times more expensive (Score:2)
That's an interesting idea.
Let's optimistically assume they can match the specific energy of lead-acid batteries. The highest I can find for a iron-air secondary battery is 1/4th that, but let's assume these folks increase the energy by 400%.
With multimodal transport costs at about $100/ton, so that's 33 cents per kilowatt hour just to *move* the batteries. That doesn't include the cost to make them, or the cost of the energy to charge them. That's just the cost to move them from one place to another.
Wholes
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I'm not sure if they're all from you, but this kind of post throwing some unrelated numbers around and reaching some kind of apparently super-obvious conclusion seems to be getting depressingly common here.
You've done some hand-wavy math to show that the value of the electricity one of these batteries can hold is less than the cost to transport it. So? You know they're rechargeable, right?
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This has been going on for ages in one form or another. A few years ago it was links. People would post links to make it look like their claims were backed up by citations, but often the links didn't back them up, or went to some blog, or were just 404.
Basically they realised that people just looked for links but didn't bother checking them.
Kinda like some low quality products have a CE mark and a UL logo because the manufacturer figured people want them. Kinda like brand logos.
Anyway now it's maths in comm
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It's not that the numbers are made up, it's that the calculation doesn't even make sense.
I think you're giving the posters in question too much credit. They're not intending to deceive.
Re: Interesting idea. About nine times more expens (Score:2)
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That's it.
I'm getting rid of my car now because you've conclusively proven that I'm losing all kinds of money moving around its starting battery.
Re: Interesting idea. About nine times more expens (Score:2)
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Lol you're imagining that charging the batteries is free, eh?
Anyway, trains get about 500 ton miles per gallon. Fuel cost isn't the issue. That's the whole reason trains exist, the reason they have steel tracks and wheels rather than using semi trucks. Because steel on steel means they have hardly any friction, so they use hardly any fuel.
In fact, if "half the weight of the train was fuel" (batteries), it would cost MORE, not less. Carrying twice as much stuff costs more.
> Then again your imagination mu
Re: Interesting idea. About nine times more expen (Score:2)
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Btw, it's cool that you don't happen to know anything about trains. You don't look bad for thinking that trains use a lot of fuel. You don't look bad for not knowing how much they cost. Nobody knows everything, and that's cool. You don't look bad for being unaware of why trains exist. You look bad for acting like a dick when someone explains the costs to you, and lets you know why trains are thing, in a world that has trucks.
Re: Interesting idea. About nine times more expen (Score:2)
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> the only difference I see between moving a train car of gasoline vs a train car thats actually a rechargeable battery that can be moved via rail from an area producing cheap energy to an area without energy or expensive energy
We're going to finish that sentence? I'm curious what you were going to say and forgot to type.
Here are a couple endings you could use: ...
The only difference is
The energy density of gasoline has the prefix "mega", while the energy density of iron-air - doesn't.
Ie it's about 20,0
Re: Interesting idea. About nine times more expen (Score:2)
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> my sentance was complete
You missed second grade, didn't you?
Complete sentence:
The difference between a dog and a cat is aloofness
Sentence fragment:
The difference between a dog and a cat is
Edison Battery? (Score:2)
Some variant of Edison Battery that uses less nickel, maybe?
Re:Edison Battery? (Score:4, Informative)
Some variant of Edison Battery that uses less nickel, maybe?
No - this is a whole different technology that uses Iron Oxide to generate Hydrogen, and fuel cells that utilize it. Storage and energy delivery are determined by which "direction" the fuel cell is run.
Paywalled. (Score:2)
The linked article is useless, since it's a paywalled link.
Editors - you should be rejecting articles that have paywalls.
Ryan Fenton
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And slashdot could use the virtues of the internet to go to the companies web site [formenergy.com] instead of complaining about everything not being handed to them on a silver platter.
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This was in the news a lots in the last couple of weeks.
The news stories have been rewriting the same content with much change to the content.
The company bought some patents from an Arizona company, then got some funding and did some trials.
https://arpa-e.energy.gov/tech... [energy.gov]
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/20... [pv-magazine-usa.com]
Solar and wind power have variability in their productive hours, as multi-day weather events can impact output. Therefore, multi-day storage that is cost effective is important in grid reliability.
Boston s
Re: Paywalled. (Score:2)
Similar to the Aluminum/AlO battery? (Score:2)
A few years ago, a startup was offering aluminum batteries that were not rechargable, but turned into aluminum oxide which could be recycled. Looks like a similar principle, except with rechargability.
These batteries will be a good replacement for LiFe batteries, just because those always needed watering to keep functional.
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Watering is a fairly well-solved problem using float valves. They are pretty expensive compared to typical batteries, but once you get up into the larger sizes the percentage cost is minimal.
Having to turn alumina back into aluminum is a big down side, because it takes a lot of energy to do that.
primary or storage? (Score:1)
I'm not clear on whether their technology is a primary battery, or a storage battery. If it's a storage battery then they will have to charge it with something -- which means thermal power plants won't be going away anytime soon.
Re: primary or storage? (Score:4, Informative)
Snake oil (Score:2)
Iron Pellets in the trunk! (Score:2)
Imagine the great traction benefits!
20$ per kWh for seasonale storage? (Score:2)
20$ per kWh for seasonale storage? That's a bit pricey.
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It's hamster wheel power. That's basically the cost of feeding the hamsters.
"Startup Claims" (Score:2)
"Startup Claims" - That's all I needed to hear. Already don't trust it.
I hope it works. (Score:2)
I don't have any faith in them but I sure hope it turns out they made an impressive breakthrough because this world really needs a breakthrough in cheap battery technology.
Duration? (Score:2)
Potatoes (Score:2)
Re: Potatoes (Score:2)
Roswell Tech released (Score:2)
The work of the Somerville, Mass., company has long been shrouded in secrecy and nondisclosure agreements.
Translation: we have now decided to leak yet another discovery from the crash site at Roswell in time to fabricate plausible natural discovery of said technology </endHumor>
Try reading the article before posting (Score:2)
These proposed batteries are too big and heavy for an electric vehicle, but their capacity plus their charge and discharge characteristics make them perfect for utility scale power storage. Not only that, but the raw materials are cheap and non-toxic. So this is definitely good news, assuming they actually make it to market, and assuming that utility companies are forward-looking enough to invest in and install them.
$20/kWh happens to be the recently-calculated goal (Score:2)
That's a convenient number $20/kWh. The great article to read is by David Ross at Vox:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and... [vox.com] ...reporting on a then-new MIT study (summer 2019) that concluded $20/kWh as the capital cost of a storage system that can store so cheaply that you just have to overbuild your wind/solar enough, and it'll get you right through their longest outage.
It kind of adds to the already-high suspicion that surrounds any new battery announcement.
Announcing $30/kWh would have been very nearly as d
Can it power my flying car? (Score:1)
That I was promised 30 years ago???
Who pays for electric energy storage? (Score:2)
One of the economic problems facing grid-level storage is who pays for it. A big battery does not produce electricity, which we pay for, but just stores it to be used later. I think there are precedents in power stations that act to balance and stabilize the grid. If you know your electric theory, a load current can have real and imaginary parts. The real part does the work, and all the imaginary part does is heat the wires. So there are power stations supplying imaginary current to cancel out certain load
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Look up power factor. Imaginary current is real (ha ha)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Yet another miracle battery (Score:1)
I will believe it when it's on the market. Sorry, but stories of new miracle batteries come out about every two weeks. These miracle batteries never seem to materialize.
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dutch brewery already using iron as a battery (Score:2)
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Re:Will they use the super-battery in my flying ca (Score:4, Informative)
That's often driven by university press releases that get picked up. I think this is interesting because it's not a *car* or mobile device battery, which is usually what the batter breakthrough of the week is about. In this case they've thrown out volumetric and weight energy density which are the constraints most people are working on and instead focused on economics.
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I'm already using nuclear fusion to power my house and provide hot water, so I guess you can do that too. Just chuck a bunch of fusion power absorbers [ibtimes.com] on your roof and you're good to go.