Posted on 03/24/2025 7:54:14 PM PDT by Red Badger
As the push for renewable energy intensifies, the demand for effective electricity storage solutions becomes increasingly critical.
Current lithium-ion batteries, commonly used in electric vehicles and portable electronics, are hitting their limits.
According to Xiaolei Wang, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Alberta, these batteries are not well-suited for large-scale energy storage required for the electrical grid.
Survives 380,000 charging cycles Wang and his research team are focusing on an innovative approach to battery technology: grid-level aqueous batteries that utilize seawater as an electrolyte.
Collaborating with the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan, this approach could lead to safer, more affordable, and environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Aqueous batteries have been hampered in development mainly due to the absence of suitable materials for anodes, the battery components where electricity flows out.
However, Wang’s team has overcome this challenge by developing a new type of anode material.
VIDEO AT LINK.....................
This material combines polymer nanosheets with carbon nanotubes, making it capable of storing diverse ions, including those found in seawater.
One of the key advantages of this new anode design is its thickness, which allows for a significantly higher energy storage capacity.
These anodes are incredibly durable, sometimes enduring up to 380,000 charging cycles.
Wang points out that they are also capable of operating efficiently in extreme conditions, including rapid charging and discharging or at low temperatures.
New seawater battery tech The importance of the advanced synchrotron light facility at the Canadian Light Source cannot be overstated.
This facility was crucial in analyzing the microstructure of the anode material and understanding its electrochemical properties.
“Our success is largely thanks to the resources provided by the CLS,” Wang notes.
The potential impact of this new technology is significant. Aqueous batteries based on this innovative anode could enable broader energy storage solutions, expanding the potential for renewable energy usage.
Wang emphasizes that Canada is rich in renewable energy resources. If this new battery technology can effectively capture and store that energy, it could lead to reliable, safer, and more accessible energy storage options for everyone.
Developing new battery technologies is essential as the world shifts towards more sustainable energy sources.
Reliably storing energy generated from solar and wind power sources is crucial for ensuring a stable energy supply, especially when these sources are not producing electricity.
Wang’s research could represent a significant step forward in battery technology, moving away from the limitations of lithium-ion batteries.
These new aqueous batteries might be more suited to meet future energy storage needs by harnessing materials that can work with seawater.
The ongoing research into aqueous batteries could be a game changer for the energy landscape.
As teams like Wang’s work to refine and scale this technology, the promise of a cleaner, more efficient energy system becomes more attainable.
Innovative battery solutions will play a critical role in facilitating that transformation in a future where renewable energy is dominant.
I saw a massive deposit of seawater in Florida.
Do you have any examples of new tech batteries currently in the market?
What a wonderful way to keep the sea water from rising. Suck it all up and put it in batteries. The climate alarmists will be horrified by the ramifications.
I’ll ask, so Dr. Wang, just how BIG is your battery?
Is it powering a car, a house, a few homes, a small town, or just a SMALL TOY in your lab?
Until this is scaled up for a real world test run, it’s just a nice dream. Come back when you are TRL 7+ with a working SCALED model.
Good idea, 20 years away from market maybe???
Now they just have to keep water from freezing.
It can be just brine. I don’t know why they specify seawater. Had to relate salt water to seawater maybe?
But a full solution brine with some hydrogen peroxide to raise the oxygen level will produce the best voltage output. Of course if you add peroxide it will have to be replenished and will off gas flammable Hydrogen.
Here is something wild. If you live where the soil is higher alkali you can just jam a copper rod and a zinc rod in the ground about four inches apart and then wet the soil. Give it a few minutes and it will produce around 1.2 volts from the soil and water as an electrolyte.
Now for how long or if a dirt battery can be recharged and hold a charge I don’t know, haven’t had the time to test that far yet. But I do know that the dirt battery actually put out more initially than the salt batteries I was experimenting with. The Alkali salt is better than just a salt brine I’m sure.
So the next test will be a mixture of sodium and alkali solution.
“ Wang points out..”
An amusing phrase. ;=)
EC
“Do you have any examples of new tech batteries currently in the market?”
You said none in years. Give me a year to start with.
As usual, the older the person the more wrong they are.
Solar is the cheapest energy source man has never come up with the IEA has reams of data confirming this. The basic math is easy to see why. Even at the retail level you can get panels for 18 cents per watt of capacity. Those panels will make electrons for a 25 year lifespan to 80% capacity and longer to 50% but 80 is the industry nor for end of life or EOL.
Placed in a sunny place like say Texas you can expect 220 days of sun per year or more. The Sahara has 360+ days of sun and the Mexican deserts are in the 330s with AZ and NM not far behind them.
220+ days of sun over 25 years gives a EORI of under 8 months for energy used to mine,refine and create those panels. Google scholar and 15 seconds of AI efforts will confirm this.
So you have 24+ years of net energy at production at a initial capital outlay of 18 cents per watt of capacity for the panels themselves. Wholesale is cheap by up to half depending on the negotiated contract for the amount of panels. I have paid 10 cents per watt for a pallet of panels before.
Even at 18c per watt over a 25 year period you are talking fractions of a cent per kWh in energy costs. West Texas, NM and AZ have KWP values in the 5.6 per day or 2045 KW per year per installed KW of capacity these are 30 year solar insolation averages. This means over a 25 year lofepan a single KW of installed capacity would make over 50,000 kWh of energy and cost $180 at 18 cents per watt of capacity. That works out to $.0035 per kWh or three and one half tenths of a cent. No other power source anywhere can come close to that not even nukes. The IEA has the data for commercial level its lower than that since its so easy to get i leave it up to the class to read it but it’s there in multiple peer reviewed and approved journals, white papers and IEA reports.
Solar is intermittent this is and always will be the issue. The raw cost of the electrons it produces cannot be beat cost wise. This key fact is why LCOS (levelized cost of storage) is so important.
LCOS is exactly what it sounds like the cost for the round trip storage of a single kWh of electrons in cents per kWh or really dollars per megawatt hour. $10 per MWh is equal to 1 cent per kWh.
Solar electrons can be had for $3.5 per megawatt hour at the retail level and in the $2 to $1 wholesale. This is also easy to find. Look at wholesale ERCOT data available in Csv format weekly around noon time on a sunny and windy Texas day where solar has first right of refusal and the grid wholesale price is $1 or in the case of last week negative $8 because there was so much solar and wind ERCOT was paying people credits to take it.
Any battery tech that can hit a LCOS of $30 or under is going to be cheaper than any gas turbine plant even if the natural gas was $0 MMBTU it never will be zero so it is not a viable economic point. At $2.50 - 4.5 MMBTU gas turbines are in $33-105 for GTCC and peaker turbines are $105-209 per megawatt hour. Again ERCOT actual sale prices to the wholesale market.
Aqueous batteries cannot burn , neither can lithium ions, what does burn is the flammable electrolyte liquids in lithium ion cells. By default using water as the electrolyte solvent removes the ability to combust.
Seawater battery means it’s a polyvalent cell using all the ions in seawater as opposed to lithium. Seawater is sodium,magnesium,calcium,potassium in that order all of then replace lithium at the anode. magnesium and calcium are 2+ electron ions twice what lithium is. Sodium and K are 1+ like lithium.
Gridscale seawater ion battery if they can hit 300,000 cycles the LCOS is a factor of capital outlays over cycle and calender life the longer of each or both reduces the LCOS in a direct ratio. Sodium ion cells are already doing 50,000 cycles to 100% DOD so it’s little surprise a sodium plus ion cell could do more. Unlike lithium sodium doesn’t swell its anode causing wear on it.
The numbers that matter is how much per kWh of electrons and how much to store then round trip. Total efficiency doesn’t if you can get electrons for 2/10s of a cent per kWh and store them for $20 megawatt hour or 2 cents per kWh. Even throwing 50% away in storage losses is only 4/10s of a cent per kWh in electrons.
Then sell them at $35 per megawatt hour already beating gas turbines at the cheapest fuel cost to them, you laugh all the way to the bank with that $11 per megawatt hour profit.
Texas has 10,400 megawatts of energy storage in the grid right now this second those are all 4-8 hour megapacks. That’s TEN one gigawatt reactors worth today right now. As of 1025 CST this morning they took 3,999 megawatts from the grid that’s FOUR reactors worth of power put into the battery banks. What was happening at 1025 this morning...Solar ramped up to its daily plateau at 23,500 megawatts which was 47% of the total power grid at that point. Yeah almost 50% of 30 million Texans were getting solar power this morning AND 4 gigawatts were at the same time being pulled off the grid it would have been well over 50% if they were not charging huge power banks. Including wind at that time 62% of the grid was wind and solar.
Cost?? Wholesale was $5.09 that’s HALF a cent per kWh. No way no how will gas turbines ever be that cheap not even with zero MMBTU gas.
Flat out you are wrong , it is not cheaper the mine or drill it the numbers , data and real time real world published public power data confirms this is spades.
You should look at ERCOT numbers. With grid level storage people are buying half cent per kWh power and selling it later for 10 to 20 cents. Which is what a gas turbine peak plant needs to charge with $3.55 MMBTU gas prices. Those storage companies are not only stabilizing the grid with near instant power ramp times they also are making a handy profit which fills our state tax revenue pot with tax revenues. Texas has 10,000+ megawatts of energy storage on the grid that’s ten reactors worth. With large enough storage you can have huge swings of very cheap solar and wind filling those storage units then sell it back at rates that compete with gas turbines. Coal is a dinosaur in Texas it’s going extinct and with the costs of scrubbers being $100s of millions to not even get close to the clear air of natural gas they will never compete in the wholesale market for LCOE once those scrubbers are required even free coal at $0 MMBTU cannot get under $50 megawatt hour. Gas turbines the expensive combined cycle kind hit $33 at $2.50 MMBTU upwards of $105 with $4.5 MMBTU gas and once those huge LNG export plants get up and running what are the chances of $2.5 MMBTU gas being veer again when it costs $3-6 to ship it to Japan and they pay $15 MMBTU with a smile. Yeah gas prices shoot up once those LNG plants come on line it’s a boom for the investors in the industry while the locals pay the price for it via increased gas prices. Captive saturated market suddenly opened up to the world fungible market what do you think is going to happen then the world prices is in the $8-15 range yeah good luck buttercup.
Texas is the national leader in solar, wind and power storage no one touches us. This is exactly why we had half cent power this morning and last week it was negative $8 ,$10 and $5 multiple days as the fronts came with 50 knot plus winds for days at a time. So much wind and solar ERCOT was paying people to take power off the grid at one point 6000 megawatts was flowing into the power storage that’s 6 reactors worth no one touches that in the USA. Texas could power the whole UK with our grid and then some.
Solar is and will continue to be the cheapest source of electrons humans have come up with check with the IEA they keep the numbers handy. Fusion might get close if ...IF it ever works. We already have a giant thermonuclear reactor in the sky it comes out once per day and showers well over of million times what humans use on our little blue ball.
CANDU nukes the cheapest energy source for nuclear power due to using natural uranium for fuel can hit with state funded capital at 2.5% interest $2800 per KW capital outlays, $60 per KG uranium and Canadian levels of O&M at best $18 per megawatt hour at the plant gate. No one gives 2.5% and no single plant in the USA since the 1970s has been built for less than $5000 per KW and PWR fuel is twice what CANDU fuel costs due to enrichment costs. The two newest units in GA cost over $10000 per KW in capex they have to sell power at $60+ per megawatt hour to break even.
Grid scale solar routinely hits $1-2 with $5 being the norm for ERCOT its no wonder the two ABWR licenced and approved at the South Texas Nuclear Project got canned they could never compete with sub $10 per MWh sales.
I am a huge nuclear power fan, the Koreans and Japanese build plants in 39 months for around $2800 KW with gov subsidized capital at very low rates you can get into the $20 per MWh range cheap enough for baseload but peak with solar during the day will kill that in costs. Storage is already cost competitive with $100 MWh peak gas plants and when not if sodium or seawater cells get to LCOS under $30 there will be no competition with gas even GTCC plants, coal being uncompetitive with scrubbers at any price gas can hit let alone nukes. No more free stack pollution you must be at least as clean as gas or you don’t get to burn coal anymore. Sorry coal bros it’s dead Jim.
I’m not the guy who said “”in years”.
I'm anti the left telling us we have to have "clean" energy and always changing their minds on what it is to be "clean". Instead of trying to make it work with solar and wind and battery, we should tell the left they no longer set the rules. Mark my words, if solar and wind and battery becomes very useful for the grid, the left will figure out why it should be banned. Just like they now ban natural gas even though they were pushing it as "clean burning" in the Obama years. Just like the left can't make up their minds if nuclear is good or bad.
“Do you have any examples of new tech batteries currently in the market?” How new do you want?
Give me a reference year to start with.
Use common sense. It takes time for new tech to hit the market.
So wrong, Texas has ten thousand megawatts of storage this mmonth contracted and firmed up today.
That’s ten reactors worth. I looked it up they are 8 hour ratings so 83,200 megawatt hours worth. Texas has storage it public data from ERCOT our government licenced power wholesaler.
Green agenda is a coping mechanism, power is power, the electrons don’t care where they came from and the wholesale cost for those electrons is what matters. Solar and wind in Texas have proven to be cheaper today is a perfect example we had half cent power this morning for four hours and its still under 2 cents it dropped under two cents as soon as the sun came up why we got 20,000 megawatts worth of power pouring in over a 45 min time space.
Texas had one major grid fault during a historical winter storm that we in the power industry warned them to winterized the oil/gas well heads, the pipelines, the pumps and the thermal power plants. They did none of those things. 40,000 megawatts of thermal and 2500 megawatts of nuclear frozen out this is what caused the blackout. The report to the Texas legislature.available from ERCOT clearly shows this it is true that 10000 megawatts of wind also dropped off it would have been irrelevant of the 40000+ megawatts of gas thermal plants had not frozen out. Solar and wind where the two main sources during the black out the report shows they produced 12,000 megawatts plus which helped not hurt the grid at the time.
I won’t argue emotions, I put up numbers and quantifiable data. Keep your opinions to yourself if you have factual data to share by all means do so.
We have the wonderful sum knowledge of the human species available at the voice activated asking of the AI limit its response to peer reviewed scientific research,journals and white papers and learn some things.
Texas has 83,000 megawatt hours of energy storage to store solar and wind with this month, look at the numbers for yourself. That’s equal to 83 one gig reactors for an hour or the output of our four reactors gr8 just under 17 hours straight. You are just wrong Texas cannot store solar and wind very VERY wrong. Buying at $5 and selling later for $100 is just good economics more will be coming for sure Texas is by far the biggest single power storage market in the world. 105,000 megawatts of summer peak capacity vs 10,300 IS installed is lots of vertical growth room. Peak gas turbines run for a few hours per day, they now must compete with PS packs that run for 8 hours of discharge. It’s all about LCOS vs peak ccycle gas turbine fuel and O&M costs. Peakers at $3.5MMBTU need $100 megawatt hour to make a tiny profit. Obviously PS packs taking power at sub $10 MWh and selling into the gas turbine market of $100 have meet their LCOS targets and making a handy profit too.
As for expensive you should sell that knowledge to our wholesale power board they sure would love to hear about how solar and wind are expensive toys when they powered 62% of the grid this morning for four hours at $5-$6 at MWh get right out and call them direct they surely are eating to hear how expensive toys are powering our grid.
Republicans have been in full control of the Texas House, Senate and governorship for 20+ years it’s not lefties running things in Texas we have been one party rule for decades here. In that time frame Texas has become the number one solar,wind and power storage in North America not just the USA. Why? Because we have the resources here. We have world class wind fields in the panhandle,Great Plains, and Gulf of America coastline. We also have world class sun insolation in all of West Texas 5+ kWh per square meter with 300+ days of sun and more that are party cloudy. We have a profit driven grid too, fully deregulated with transmission completely separate from.production. This allows for the most profitable to lead. Well as can be seen from the numbers solar is.kick butt and taking names with sub $10 on the regular for wholesale power sales wind is also sub $10 and negative more and more as nights. This is market driven has ERCOT buys and sells the wholesale electrons, with a board run by Republican approved members they have to get legislature approvals and it’s an all Republican controlled state.
Texas is in a good spot we have peaks and valleys but over all our grid is in good shape as long as we don’t have freezing cold with thermal and well producers choosing profit over winterizing costs. They got slammed in the final legislative review, they were warned but did little as the legislature didn’t put a cost mandate only a suggestion mandate.
These are the ones a in commercial production that will be shaking up the PS market.
https://natron.energy/our-technology
Do the LCOS calcs for 50,000 cycles vs 3000 at $87 kWh cell costs....Yeah disruption level.
BYD uses CATL cells the largest manufacturer in the world by a huge margin.
https://www.energy-storage.news/byd-launches-sodium-ion-grid-scale-bess-product/
Pretty solid econ analysis.
Then let’s not forget grid scale water and thermal tech is hot pun intended on the heels of power cells.
Httptps://highviewpower.com/news_announcement/highview-power-unveils-cryobattery-worlds-first-giga-scale-cryogenic-battery/
I have done SWD work with SAGE and this project. It easily scales to gigawatt hours there are over 100,000 wells in the Permian Basin any one of them could be retrofitted with SAGE tech.
https://newatlas.com/energy/sage-geosystems-huff-puff/
MIT is.going the other way using liquid metals to store heat at high round trip eff which is irrelevant if you get electrons cheap enough throw half away if need be. It’s LCOS AND electron cost.
https://news.mit.edu/2018/liquid-silicon-store-renewable-energy-1206
Gravel and Argon thermal should be super cheap as well.
Grid storage is here, the luddites will cry and moan. It really comes down to what can you buy electrons for and what can you sell them for later. Nothing more nothing less.
Solar and wind can produce sub $10 per MWh electrons this is fact today no literally today on a 80,000 megawatt sized market the sale price was $5 per megawatt hour from solar and wind this morning in real.time. Gas turbines cannot get to those levels of prices even with near zero as in $2 MMBTU fuel costs. So the age of power storage is here. Lots of money to be made in the field its what tech shakes out to have the lowest LCOS.
“So the age of power storage is here. “
In another post I pointed that out but not with the detail you presented.
This is one of my pet methods given my love for nuclear and being a PhD level Hydro Geo.
You can store thousands of gigawatts worth of energy in hydraulic fracture engineered storage systems aka EGS engineered geothermal systems. The heat doesn’t have to come from nukes any heat source that meets the delta T can be used, nukes just happen to be some of the cheapest source of heat humans have come up with. Joule heating either down bore or at the surface with electrons would work as well. Down bore joule heating would actually work better as there is no heat loss on the way down to the EGS. You don’t have to use water which tends to solution mine the surrounding rock strata CO2 is super critical at these temps and pressures its dense like a liquid but flows like a gas. So either nuke heat or surplus $10 or under per MWh electrons heats a enormous volume of rock that then spins turbines on demand for $$$$ more than the cost of the heat you put in. Chaaaching for the group doing the project.
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/75125
The simple fact is once you have electrons under a cent per kWh lots of things start to make economic sense.
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