It's Just Technology
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are trying to build the perfect battery.
Lithium-ion batteries are the gold standard, but there is much progress to be made. For example, one improvement would be to create solid-state batteries in order to eliminate the need for the flammable electrolyte that is inside lithium-ion batteries.
Solid-state batteries also could have three times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, which might allow things like electric flight.
As part of a broader move to onshore U.S. battery production from countries like China, The Inflation Reduction Act is calling for at least 50% of an EV battery to be “Made in America” for EVs to qualify for a federal discount. That’s going to be a challenge, as right now no vehicle would qualify, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. So what ingredients go in to America’s batteries? And can those batteries ever be fully “Made in America”?
When it comes to heating and cooling our homes, or producing hot water, a heat pump is one of the most energy efficient ways to go. However, there’s a category of material that can store heat for a water heater, or in insulation to reduce your heating and cooling needs. Phase change materials (PCM) have high energy storage properties, can be easy to install, and don’t take up a lot of space. We’re essentially talking about a heat battery. Are phase change materials a good option for our homes? Let’s see if we can come to a decision on this.
We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Lithium is a key component to the batteries in electric vehicles. But the part of the world with the largest known lithium deposits is stifling production of the mineral at a time when demand for it is growing. WSJ South America reporter Ryan Dube joins host Zoe Thomas to discuss what is causing the bottlenecks and how they could affect the global EV market.
As the planet gets hotter, engineers are racing to find ways to store energy on a massive scale, clearing the way for a transition to renewable electricity.
Exploring why an accidental discovery may have unlocked the holy grail in battery research: an energy dense, long lasting, and safe battery.
Lithium sulfur batteries may be the holy grail of energy storage. Besides fueling electric vehicles (EVs) adoption, they could turbocharge the integration of renewable energy into our electric grid. However, a technical fault has been holding back their economic feasibility…until now. Could this lithium sulfur discovery from Drexel University make it the future of battery storage?
Batteries are a triumph of science—they allow smartphones and other technologies to exist without anchoring us to an infernal tangle of power cables. Yet even the best batteries will diminish daily, slowly losing capacity until they finally die. Why does this happen, and how do our batteries even store so much charge in the first place? Adam Jacobson gives the basics on batteries.
One of the guiding principles of the belief that electric vehicles will take over from internal combustion is the falling cost of batteries. From a pack price of around $1,200 per kWh in 2010, the prices had dropped to $137 per kWh by 2020 and £132 per kWh in 2021. There was an expectation of costs below $100 by 2023, by which point EVs would hit price parity with equivalent internal combustion vehicles and the game would be over for oil and gas. But the global surge in lithium prices have led some to question whether this dream would really become a reality.
Lithium carbonate prices had been dropping since a peak in 2018 of around $15,000 per ton to half that price by the end of 2020, according to Edison Group. But, in large part due to the demand for EVs, the price has been growing all through 2021, hitting over $25,000 per ton by the end of last year, and now reaching over $40,000 per ton. This looks like a dire situation, because EV demand is only going up and some are now saying that production can’t scale because lithium prices will hold it back, along with surging prices of other minerals. According to Trading Economics, cobalt has gone from $30,000 in 2020 to $80,000 per ton today and nickel has surged even more, relatively speaking, from $20,000 to $80,000 per ton.
Energy storage is becoming an increasingly crowded market which, at least at utility-scale, is still dominated by lithium-ion technology. But cheaper, greener and safer alternatives are being developed all the time. One of the latest candidates uses well-established zinc-bromide chemistry but with a completely new twist, all wrapped up in very inexpensive and easily recyclable packaging from existing battery production lines. Very clever!