Wow, it’s hard to know just how impactful this will be, but it sounds like they’ve got something here.
its batteries which it said avoid using metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and copper, providing a cost reduction of up to 40% compared to lithium-ion batteries.
Altech said its batteries are completely fire and explosion proof, have a life span of more than 15 years and operate in all but the most extreme conditions.
That’s huge, especially the fire and explosion proof part.
its why their main benefit is cost and safety. for power storage in a standing field or wall density isnt as important compared to for mobile usages (EVs) so sodium based batteries make more sense.
There’s still room in car design for bigger batteries too. Could be used in cheaper electric cars with a less optimal power to weight ratio than LiFePO batteries would yield.
Actually exciting battery tech that isn’t just fluff. They actually built the thing and tested it, rather than it being a theoretical, not-easily-produced thing and it worked.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
I would argue that grid-scale energy storage is even more important than EV needs today.
Grid scale batteries allow for better security by distributing storage across the network and lets us store renewable energy from peak hours.
Cheap grid storage will be a game changer
And it mitigates the current red herring of the anti-solar groups complaining that solar “generates too much electricity during the day, and not enough at night”.
With an effective and balanced grid storage system across the country, we can recharge the batteries during the day and then use the power at night.
I can only hope that the anti solar groups are arguing in bad faith when they complain about how the sun works.
Either that or: they actually think that pro solar doesn’t understand this fact or one of the two groups doesn’t know how to pair solar with batteries.
I think it’s the second one, because every time I’ve heard the objection about the Sun not working at night it has always been in the form of a gotcha and not in the form of a question like, how do we deal with this issue?
Expectation: it doesn’t work well at all
Result: It kinda works?
It sounds like it works really well. The physical size does sound quite large, but I’m not sure how that compares against other types of batteries.
It probably doesn’t matter. This type of battery is not all that interesting for things like electric cars, rather more so for things like grid energy storage on a massive scale. Think 1000s of these in a large building, getting charged during the day with excess solar energy, releasing it into the grid at night. Stuff like this is what has been missing to make even better use of renewables.
How about one of those in your basement or shack to charge your car overnight?
Yeah that’s one thing I think doesn’t get much attention. We actually have a lot of solar in some major countries. In many areas, there’s too much and it’s wasted right now. The efficiency of the grid’s solar intake and distribution is often times worse than the solar panel efficiency themselves. If we can store and distribute that excess with the same efficiency of the panels, it would be a huge stress relief on many systems.
We tend to use between 3kWh (vacation/idle power consumption) and around 8kWh per day. If we switched to electric stove, water heater, and heat pump, and add a hot tub, that’d increase substantially. But if we added solar (on our long Todo list…), the battery in the article (60kWh) would probably be able to handle all our storage needs, and it’d fit in he garage (bonus of it can be placed outside/under a deck!). I live in a major city, but I would absolutely love to effectively be off grid.
Exciting stuff — it seems these are touted as being extremely robust/safe, which is of course important for me if it’s going to be in/near our house. Storage density not a huge concern, but price is somewhat important — let’s hope this sort of thing ticks all the boxes.
Most off the grid people live in rural areas but wouldnt an in city off-grid house be a pretty nice thing? Just seems like a cool concept.
Off power grid maybe, imagine the nightmare of urban well-digging or apartment septic tanks.
Im dont know that much about off-grid stuff(certified city boy moment) but i guess you can do power and septic town in city, idk about water. Maybe rsin collection? But thats not enough water.
Or. Or. And hear me out on this: participate in society.
Indeed awesome. Sadly no words about recycling such a battery, though it sounds like it should be fairly recyclable.
