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How the US Gave Away a Breakthrough Battery Technology To China (npr.org) 80

Posted by BeauHD from the not-a-good-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via NPR: When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work. They were building a battery -- a vanadium redox flow battery -- based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid. "It was beyond promise," said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. "We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected." But that's not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The Chinese company didn't steal this technology. It was given to them -- by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances. Now, China has forged ahead, investing millions into the cutting-edge green technology that was supposed to help keep the U.S. and its economy out front. Department of Energy officials declined NPR's request for an interview to explain how the technology that cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars ended up in China. After NPR sent department officials written questions outlining the timeline of events, the federal agency terminated the license with the Chinese company, Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. "DOE takes America's manufacturing obligations within its contracts extremely seriously," the department said in a written statement. "If DOE determines that a contractor who owns a DOE-funded patent or downstream licensee is in violation of its U.S. manufacturing obligations, DOE will explore all legal remedies." The department is now conducting an internal review of the licensing of vanadium battery technology and whether this license -- and others -- have violated U.S. manufacturing requirements, the statement said.
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How the US Gave Away a Breakthrough Battery Technology To China

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  • What the summary doesn't state. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @05:11PM (#62760508)

    If you read the article it's because of lack of funding from the US, or from US investors who wanted immediate returns. The only people who wanted to invest were the Chinese, and because of the fact that Chinese have all the infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities already in place.

    • Then we cry and whine when they succeed.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by stabiesoft ( 733417 )
        And is there really anyone stopping a US company from producing this? I'm sure DOE would give a US company a license if the company wanted to produce. It really is unsurprising. I watched a shark tank once where the money people all railed on the inventor because they were producing in the US. Kind of says it all. US biz only wants big margins, see Apple. Made in china for peanuts, sold in US for big bucks. Tennis shoes, made in china for peanuts, sold in US for hundreds. Someday China is going to wake up a

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Dunkirk ( 238653 ) *

          It's literally the whole point of the last section of the article. There's a US company that wants to get involved with the technology again, but they can't get a license from the DOE.

        • The current mediatic war against China is precisely because of that. We were happy to use them, until they became an economic behemoth. Now we are afraid that they will dethrone us as the world's first economy (mostly caused by our own greed, and our focus on the short-term).

    • So it seems like nobody in the US wanted to spend money to develop this product long term and are now unhappy that China has people willing to risk the money to develop and wait years before they get a return.

      Sounds like US does not want anyone attempting to develop the tech if noone in the US wants to.

      Noone here wants to take a risk, so you can't over there as well?

      Keep on thinking about only the next quarter, very soon you will see there is nothing of value left.

  • I told you it was our own people screwing us over.

    I wonder who made money out of it...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      No one, because no one wanted to invest in it in the first place, at which point it was literally worthless.

  • Not a new technology (Score:5, Informative)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @05:37PM (#62760564)
    Apparently, vanadium redox batteries are not a new thing. A bunch of countries have been developing them & there have been operational batteries connected to grids for some time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] The story seems to be mainly about a lack of interest in the USA, in contrast to China.

    • Re:Not a new technology (Score:5, Informative)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @07:35PM (#62760832)

      An Australian university got a patent on a particular design in the 90s. "The next great American innovation" seems a little naive.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Turns out the Japanese were installing Vanadium batteries at wind farms 10 years before these guys supposedly got together in a parking lot to build one too.

    • The story seems to be mainly about a lack of interest in the USA, in contrast to China.

      America's interest in battery in the grid is well known, but the story here is that the US government sold technology to China. This is monumentally stupid. The actual smart thing would be to keep the technology and sell the resulting product and expertise to China.

      And this is one of the reasons why the USA will be left behind technically. With other countries actively investing in green technology (and not just relying on Elon to build a funky looking car) the expertise to build out such technologies will

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        They sold technology that has no real future for now. Technology that is being desperately greenwashed in spite of being toxic as hell and prone to leakage, massively overweight for energy it can deliver and exceptionally expensive.

        About the only use we can think for this technology is "if vanadium ever becomes super cheap, we could use it as sorta kinda remote grid battery by trucking charged cathode and anode in and discharged cathode and anode out". That's it.

        China likely bought it for the same reason Ch

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 )
        What makes you think the USA will eventually get its act together? At the moment, it looks like they're narrowly focused on establishing their theocratic utopian paradise, Gilead. Blessed be the fruit.

  • Very few of these technologies ever make it from the front page of Slashdot to our homes, it seems. So, color me sceptical. Perhaps the Chinese haven't learned this yet.

    If they're onto something, good for them.

    • Bro, do yourself a favor and do a search for "battery density graph over time." There have been massive improvements in the batteries in your home, unless you have the same batteries in your home that were working 20 or 40 years ago. In which case you should let us know what kind of alien technologies you have.

  • YABB - I should patent it or copyright it or something. Big yawn, so it was discovered by America and then they gave it to the Chinese for cheap pollution free (for the USA) manufacture. The amount of times EVERYONE here on /. has heard about the next better battery is... a lot. Clearly it's not that great, otherwise it would be everywhere. Another minor incremental battery change, or one that's really nice, but too expensive to be actually useful. You are right, the US taxpayers were robbed.

  • Not unusual for the USA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @06:12PM (#62760646) Journal

    Even though this is another example of Trump saying he is going to take care of China, and then giving a ton of business to them, it isn't unusual American behaviour. To be fair, the USA (and Canada) has done stupid shit like this over and over. Much of it due to the investor global economy that has existed since the late 1990s; and accelerated when Clinton gave China 'most favoured nation' trading status, after he said he wouldn't during his election campaign. The original flat screen technology was developed in California, and when no one in America wanted to invest to develop it, Korean companies stepped in. Why do we allow ourselves to be shot in the foot over and over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gordonb ( 720772 )
      Not to be pedantic, but China was designated as MFN in 1980 during the Carter administration. This designation was not permanent but had to be renewed every year by Congress, which it was. In 2000, Clinton proposed “permanent” MFN for China and this was dutifully passed by Congress. /pedant

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If it's any comfort you are not alone. The UK has sold off almost everything of value. Not just the IP, the companies too.

      What is the ramification of cancelling the licence? I'm guessing they won't stop producing batteries, but maybe they won't be able to export them to the US.

  • Which was sold 10 yrs. ago and has not started a revolution yet, so did not "break through" anything and in consequence cannot be categorized as a break through technology, rather than a technology formerly thought to have break through potential.

    If it would be a break through we would have been flooded by chinese Redox-Reflow Batteries by now.

    Just setting aside that the Vanadium Redox-Reflow Battery are used in experiments and even on the demonstrator level.

    But the only advantage this technology has is tha

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      There are some other benefits. It seems to be a very robust battery, will basically go forever. At scale it sounds like it should be cheaper than alternatives.

      There are some big ones in China, Japan, Germany and a couple in the US.

    • But the only advantage this technology has is that in theory its capacity can be easily scaled (just a bigger tank)...

      AFAICT from a quick Google search, the response time of vanadium redox batteries to a 100% increase in load is something like three orders of magnitude lower than that of lithium ion batteries. That's important in grid storage applications.

      Apparently, there are also many more important advantages of vanadium batteries [renewableenergyworld.com] - not the least of which are that they're much safer and they basically last forever.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Which is why you don't go for information to green propaganda pundits (hint: it's in the website's name), but to people actually working on the technology.

        Vanadium batteries have exactly one advantage. The fact that both cathode and anode are liquid. You can pump them, you can tanker them, you can even pipe them.

        Problems range from "safe" vanadium being toxic and being in liquid form, having a tendency to leak if deployed at scale, to hilariously low energy per weight, to vanadium being a very expensive met

    • Which was sold 10 yrs. ago and has not started a revolution yet

      There are many technologies which did f-all for the first 10 years of their development and none the less completely changed the world. No I'm not suggesting that this will but your arbitrary time limit is not part of any definition of "breakthrough".

      For the record Lithium batteries were invented in 1912. It would be another 70 years before some of the kinks were ironed out leading to the development of the lithium battery as we know it, and another 30 years after that before they become common place.
      Even t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        The main "kink" in question being controller. I.e. transistors needed to develop to be able to manage the battery while not consuming so much power in process of said management as to make battery useless as a source of energy.

        "Kinks" in vanadium batteries are nothing like that. This isn't a "battery chemistry that offers a theoretical breakthrough if only we could control the charging and discharging values accurately enough in real time". This is a "fundamentally unsuitable battery chemistry due to things

  • Patented 1986 in Australia.

    • And if that were the end of it we'd see them everywhere. Back in reality just because you invent an underlying technology doesn't mean it can be used without further development, innovation, and possibly even additional patents. Kind of like how the Lithium battery was invented in 1912 but practically useless until further invention made them practical in the 80s, and even then completely useless for smartphones until Sony invented a process to make them the electrolyte solid 20 years after that.

      No one give

  • If that tech is so green and great, then it needs to get out as soon as possible.

    And the way I understand it, China overtook the US, and for me, it simply means that China is better qualified to implement it. Even if it was given to them, the US still had a head start, they should have stayed ahead, but didn't. That's the real problem, the question shouldn't be "how come the US gave that tech to China" (with ways to prevent it), but "how comes the US couldn't do it as well as China" (with ways of improving

  • This is criminal behavior. The government seldom punishes malfeasance like this, but it's about time they started. It would be interesting to learn if money changed hands between China and the person or persons responsible for this.

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