This is all great and geekified news, however, with all these great advancements comes one question that has come up every December since the advent of the transistor radio... how many batteries, that are not included, and why do they (aa, aaa, 9v), sstill go up on price if they are old technology??
John Goodenough just made a new discovery that revolutionizes batteries for real.
He’s the 97 year old guy who invented the lithium ion battery as well as RAM (Random Access Memory).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough
Molten silicon? What could go wrong.
Info on Vanadium Redox Batteries. Grid scale batteries. I am sure there are problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUqOnfceUAA
“Flow batteries are getting my attention. We recently covered residential flow batteries making a big move across Australia. The company, Redflow, saw their first piece of hardware built in their new Thai factory in the past two weeks.
Right now, it seems tech savvy people always bring up flow batteries when talking about large-scale grid applications. No degradation over 20 years is a pretty impressive feat from the perspective of an electricity utility or a financial analyst. 15,000 cycles – one per day – would be 41 years of usage. And from what I’ve read, you can repair the pieces that break.
I’ve also read that vanadium flow batteries already cost well below $500/kWh – and that some hope to see $150/kWh by 2020. That’s a competitive product. And if utilities like it better because it scales easier and has a longer lifetime, renewables will benefit.”