Posted on 07/26/2021 12:42:14 PM PDT by Red Badger
Officials with battery maker Form Energy have announced the development of the Iron-Air 100-hour storage battery—a battery meant to store electricity created from renewable sources such as solar and wind. As part of their announcement, they note that their new battery is based on iron, not lithium, and thus is much less expensive to produce.
The team at Form Energy describe their new battery as a multi-day energy storage system—one that can feed electricity to the grid for approximately 100 hours at a cost that is significantly lower than lithium-ion batteries.
The basic idea behind the iron-air battery is that it takes in oxygen and then uses it to convert iron inside the battery to rust, later converting it back to iron again. Converting back and forth between iron and rust allows the energy that is stored in the battery to be stored longer than conventional batteries.
The batteries are much too big and heavy for use in small applications (or cars)—each battery is approximately the size of a washing machine. Instead, they are meant to be hooked together in massive grids capable of storing enormous amounts of electricity for days at a time. Cells are stacked inside of a water-based, non-flammable electrolyte, which the company claims is similar to that used in standard AA batteries—the cells are made of iron and air electrodes.
When grouped together, thousands of the batteries could be used to store huge amounts of power—they suggest that a grid covering approximately one acre using their low-density batteries could provide power for a one-megawatt system. The high-density version, would be triple that.
On the website, officials with Form Energy suggest that their batteries provide a solution to a growing problem—managing the variability of renewable energy sources. They suggest that other current battery technologies are not cost-effective, noting that they typically cost up to $80 per kw/hour of storage. Their new battery, they claim, costs under $6 per kw/hour in its most basic form, and approximately $20 per kw/hour when outfitted as part of a total system—a price point, they further claim, that many in the field describe as necessary for renewable systems to replace those based on fossil fuels. They also note that some big names have invested in their company, such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, and that they have already forged deals with some utilities, such as Great River Energy in Minnesota.
More information: formenergy.com/form-energy-unv … -battery-technology/
What I did was customize a solar/inverter/battery system to handle most of my needs. If I had tried to get one to let me be off grid it would have cost a fortune. But mine produces about 3/4ths of the power I need (large house, but only my wife and I living there). It'll pay for itself in about 11 or 12 years, assuming the kWh rate rises with a 2% or 3% annual inflation. But if the Dims institute policies to make our electricity costs rise a lot faster, the savings from my solar system will pay for itself a lot sooner. Plus, I'll cuss a lot less than I normally would because the Dims would impact my energy costs only 1/4th as much. It's part of my retirement planning and me trying to reduce the variability of some of my expenses.
What is the largest GSM battery tested?
I’m not much impressed with a system needing one acre building ? for only 1 kilowatt hour storage. Even a small modern wind turbine is now 2.5 megawatt. 2.5 acres for one wind turbine. 30 acres of batteries for a small field of ten turbines.
The statement that it can supply power for 100 hours is meaningless. Batteries’ capacity is measured in amp-hours. So, if you have a 12 volt battery with a 100 amp-hour rating, you don’t have all that much. If you could drain all of the energy from the battery, which is impossible, you’d have a battery that could deliver 1200 watts, for 1 hour. About enough to run 12 - 100 watt light bulbs. Or 1 - 100 watt bulb for 12 hours.
100%
Too late...
Cold fusion is just days away...
I think they make some great boat batteries.
“Just burn coal.”
Yep. Make that electric power in the precise quantity needed at any moment and you don’t need expensive storage.
Coal, natural gas, and uranium work just fine.
Exactly right. Where is the energy storage capability in amp-hours?
My phone can hold a charge for four days, but so what?
My Duracells in the package say they will hold their charge for 10 years! It’s a breakthrough!
Author Bob Yirka doesn’t sound very bright.
What is an air electrode???
I read this article yesterday and still don’t understand: how does rusting create energy storage?
Hey, I just want something that’ll supply steady power to my private island and my electric 4x4 vehicles to get around it. Oh, and I want enough money to buy the aforementioned. 😁
“100 hours without wattage context is useless.”
My watch battery does better - over 100,000 hours of storage and still going.
Ashes to ashes, rust to rust.......................
If I knew that I’d be a physicist................
What you plug your Air Guitar into........................
Look at the photo above and imagine the fire when a short happens!
No way to put it out.
This is a Iron fuel cell technically. Iron is trivalent so you can store three electrons per Iron atom , aluminum is also trivalent. Lithium is only bivalent so Iron or aluminum stores 1/3 more electricity per atom that is significant. These won’t pollute the air they take oxygen from the air and turn Fe metal into FeO3 commonly called rust which is nontoxic human routinely eat feric oxide in vitamin pills as a source of dietary Iron. Charging this battery would release life oxygen back to the surrounding air which is already 19% O2 zero pollution unless you consider medical grade pure oxygen as pollution.
They claim one megawatt of power in an acre and they have the time as 100 hours of.discharge so this would mean 100 megawatt hours of storage per acre and they claim three times as much for the high density version 300 mwh per acre is nothing to bawk at. That’s enough for 10,000 homes using an average of 30kWh over a 24 HR period European homes use 10kWh per day or less Americans avg 30 kWh.
The key metric for them is if they can get to $20 kWh for storage capacity they can buy low cost power at night and sell it during the day for ten times or more of the night prices. That alone would make the owners a fortune being a peaker dispatchable source.
I accept the principle. But an ICE combusts with only oxygen from the atmosphere, too, theoretically. There’s theory and actual performance. It’s hard to believe that the other components of Earth’s atmosphere, or impurities in the iron are not going to be involved.
Also, for all of the BS surrounding carbon compounds in emissions, I can’t help but think that the real problem is the consumption of oxygen. This doesn’t help that, at all.
This is an Nickel Iron battery with the nickel electrode replaced with an air cathode with an O2 permeable membrane. The Iron side of the battery does the same chemical reactions as in the century plus old Edison cell. In a nickel Iron cell nickel oxide is reduced to metallic nickel and the OH ions flow to the Iron anode oxidizing Fe to FeO2 or FeO3 depending on the electrolytes voltaic potential. This type of air cell removes the nickel oxide cathode and uses O2 directly from the air to supply the needed OH ions to oxidize the Fe to Iron oxide. Reversing the reaction yields pure O2 at the air cathode there is no combustion at all it’s purely electrochemical reduction / oxidation reactions which unlike combustion are a second law of thermodynamics process not a first meaning the round trip efficiencies can equal the theoretical limits for faraday.
The atmosphere has sufficient O2 for centuries if every green plant died today before O2 levels would drop enough to make humans struggle to breathe. Most of the planet’s O2 is not produced in trees or forests it’s Marine green and blue green algae that produces the bulk of the O2 in the air humanity is in no danger of running out of O2.
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