Battery Metals

While most automakers are developing multiple hybrids and EVs, Mazda has mostly remained on the sidelines when it comes to battery-powered vehicles. The company’s executives have insisted that its small, efficient gasoline engines provide all the necessary fuel-economy—and that future research and development should be aimed at wringing additional efficiency from internal combustion technology. However, in recent weeks, Masahiro Moro, chief executive of Mazda North America, hinted that the Japanese automaker will produce a plug-in hybrid or EV by about 2020.

It’s important to recognize that internal combustion and electrification are not mutually exclusive—because plug-in hybrids sell in nearly equal numbers to pure EVs. Dave Coleman, manager of vehicle dynamics engineering for Mazda North America, recently explained, “In the future, when we electrify cars, all of these improvements [in internal combustion engines] go along forward. It’s an investment in that future.”

The end game for many EV advocates is reducing consumption of fossil fuels. Plug-in hybrids significantly contribute to those reductions—although it’s not yet clear if Mazda will introduce a conventional hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or pure electric car.

While Moro, as recently as last month, pointed to the use of Mazda’s famous rotary engine—also known as the Wankel—for its potential role in onboard generation of electricity, this is not a new concept for the company. In 2013, Mazda said it was conducting an engineering study for a prototype called the Mazda2 RE Range Extender. (In 2012, the company also ran a pilot EV program in Japan, leasing about 100 units of its Mazda Demio EV. That car reportedly provided about 120 miles of range.)

Use of the Wankel engine for a hybrid goes further back in history to the 1970s. Victor Wouk, an engineer and shade-tree mechanic, developed one of the first hybrid vehicle prototypes—using a Wankel rotary engine to assist propulsion for a Buick Skylark.

The Wankel engine substitutes the reciprocating pistons of a traditional internal combustion engine with triangular rotors that revolve in ellipses, converting combustion pressure into a rotating motion. Moro last month said that Mazda continues to improve fuel combustion and quality of the rotary, which it last offered in the discontinued RX-8 sports car.

Meanwhile, Mazda is continuing to improve the efficiency of its SkyActiv combustion platform—targeting a 20-percent gain. The company believes that internal combustion engine will play a prominent role in cars at least until 2050. But, with its plans to release a hybrid or EV in about two years, its resistance to electrification is apparently starting to fade.

Hyundai has announced that it will launch a new mobile battery electric vehicle charging service in the Montreal area this spring, the carmaker said in a news release.

Known as “Hyundai Charge Here,” the service will use three Ioniq EVs as donor cars to reach drivers and help them recharge their vehicle’s battery if it runs out of power. The Ioniq is estimated to offer a maximum of 7 kW of charge (approx. 40 km of range) in as little as 20 minutes.

“It’s still early days for the adoption of battery electric vehicles by customers in Canada. We often hear from customers hesitant to make the switch to an EV that they are concerned about range,” said Don Romano, President and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada. “Frankly, we can’t blame them as no one wants to be stranded on the side of the road. So, with Hyundai Charge Here, we’re giving EV owners peace-of-mind that Hyundai can help them get home or to a nearby charging station.”

The automaker says the service will be an extension of the company’s roadside assistance program.

Hyundai Charge Here will be initially launched in the greater Montreal area with plans to expand to other regions. The locations in Montreal have not yet been finalized.

“Montreal and the province of Quebec are aggressively supporting the transformation of personal transportation to zero emissions. So much so that in the car’s first year on the market, more than 40 per cent of sales of our Ioniq eco vehicle nameplate — and nearly 50 per cent of Ioniq EV sales — came from Quebec,” said Romano.

It is an exciting time to be involved in energy innovation. There have been developments on multiple fronts at the consumer level with the introduction of new models of electric and hybrid-electric vehicles, and perhaps more importantly, at the utility level with massive commercial investments in renewable energy generation and storage technologies.

Renewable energy, especially solar and wind power, is quickly becoming the dominant locus of new electricity generation investment. The Bloomberg 2017 New Energy Outlook predicts that $10.2 trillion will be spent on new power generation worldwide through 2040, and a massive 72 percent of this will be invested in new wind and solar plants. The broader availability of clean power is an encouraging development from both an environmental and an economic perspective. However, as energy markets accelerate along the transition from conventional to sustainable energy generation, there will be a growing problem that the industry must address.

The challenge is that a growing reliance on wind and solar energy can cause electrical grids to become unstable. Everyone can understand that the output of solar and wind farms naturally fluctuates due to cloud cover and wind speeds. As these intermittent sources of power grow in importance, so does the potential for damaging jolts to local and regional grids. Risks range from localized voltage drops that wreak havoc on modern electronic devices to blackouts of the kind that, in 2016, plunged almost all of South Australia into darkness for nearly 48 hours in some areas, an event that was followed by months of widespread power instability.

The traditional solution to this problem has been the maintenance of “spinning reserves” — a back-up network of fossil-fuel generators primarily designed to meet demand peaks. Ultimately, the more efficient solution lies in energy storage, particularly advanced battery technology. Batteries are the optimal means of balancing renewables-dominant grids because they can inject power into grids rapidly and in the precise amounts needed to interdict and smooth out fluctuations.

The main obstacles to the broad deployment of energy storage, of course, have been the high cost of the batteries themselves and the difficulties in obtaining enough of them to handle the needs within a utility grid. That is changing rapidly. Investments in technologies, supply chains and production facilities for Lithium Ion (Li-ion) batteries in particular have brought them to the point where a scalable solution exists.

As an example, when Puerto Rico began to rebuild its infrastructure after the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria last year, telecom operators struggled to sustain energy supplies to power their cell towers. After grid power was lost, backup diesel generators ran around the clock, quickly depleting on-site fuel supplies, and due to storm-related damage to roads and infrastructure, re-supply proved almost impossible.

Cell phone coverage was lost within days after the storm and not restored again for weeks. A portable, on-site hybrid energy system, combining a solar array, Li-ion batteries, a much smaller diesel engine and an intelligent control system to toggle between these three energy sources, could have powered Puerto Rico’s cell towers for as long as 100 days. That level of resilience and efficiency would have alleviated a significant burden during the continuing rebuilding process. One can imagine many other applications where portable hybrid energy technology would have paid enormous dividends: gas stations, clinics, schools, community centers and stores.

Battery storage is also becoming a go-to solution at grid scale. After an overambitious ramp-up of wind and solar power precipitated a grid collapse, the South Australia’s government sought a balanced solution comprised of both additional spinning reserves and utility-scale batteries. Tesla has installed the world’s largest Li-ion battery farm there. Other companies and utilities have also begun to deploy Li-ion batteries to stabilize grids in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

My own investment firm, CJJ Hybrid Investments, recently acquired HYbrid Energy Solutions (HES), which designs and manufacturers both modular energy stations for single-location use and battery storage solutions for utility and commercial use. I served as an advisor to HES for several years and have seen first-hand the tremendous advancements that the industry and this particular company have made in battery technology innovation.

For all the progress of the last few years, our industry has barely scratched the surface of the potential for utility-scale battery solutions. The future is bright, and it’ll undoubtedly be powered by renewable energy.

Another big grid-scale storage battery will be installed in South Australia’s mid-north in the same region as the Tesla and Neoen big battery at Jamestown.

Tilt Renewables will connect a solar and battery system to its existing wind farm near Snowtown.

It also plans to put a pumped-hydro storage project in a disused quarry at Highbury in Adelaide’s north-east.

What are the plans?

The pumped hydro venture — 300 MW/1350 MWh — would be able to store enough power to exceed the output of the South Australian Government’s temporary diesel-fired Adelaide power plant for up to 4.5 hours.

At Snowtown, a 44 MW solar farm and 21 MW/26 MWh battery would be financially supported by South Australian taxpayers, through a $7.1 million grant from the state renewable technology fund.

How will it compare to the Tesla battery?

The proposed battery will be about one-fifth as powerful and will have one-fifth of the storage of the Tesla and Neoen one, which is already feeding into the electricity grid.

There is also a 30 MW battery due to start operating within months aimed at improving security of power supply on Yorke Peninsula.

In the state’s Riverland, the Lyon Group is involved in another solar farm and battery storage venture.

Will it reduce electricity bills?

Development approvals are still needed for the Tilt ventures, but South Australian Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said they would help drive down power prices.

“More renewable energy means cheaper power for South Australians,” he said.

“This planned new solar and battery farm in the mid-north and pumped hydro power plant in Highbury will add a huge amount of additional competition to our system.”

Tilt Renewables chief executive Deion Campbell said the additional infrastructure at Snowtown would create the biggest co-located wind, solar and battery facility in Australia.

He said the evening peak in wind force and daytime peak for solar would combine to help meet electricity demand and both Tilt proposals would lead to less power price volatility.

“Storage has always been a key component of an electricity system and pumped hydro allows renewable electricity to be stored and used when required, without introducing carbon into the equation,” he said.

Fallout from the Tesla virtual power plant idea continues

Meanwhile, an Australian energy company has hit out at the South Australian government over its plan to launch the world’s largest virtual power plant that will see at least 50,000 homes in South Australian given solar panels and batteries.

ShineHub — a Sydney based company — claims it was the first to come up with a similar idea and that it launched an almost identical concept last year in South Australia.

“I think it’s great that South Australia is moving in this direction, it’s definitely what the market needs,” co-founder of ShineHub Jin Kim told the ABC.

“However it was a little bit disappointing to see that the South Australian government did not make this roll-out available — or as an open tendering process for many of the Australian companies, not just ourselves — that could also deliver the exact same service or program.

“We really do hope that the South Australia government will consider a lot more Australian companies for the future plans because there are so many fantastic companies out there.”

Elon Musk is ‘Iron Man’

Mr Kim acknowledged the mastermind behind Tesla, Elon Musk, was leading the way in renewable energy.

But he hoped other smaller, local companies would get the opportunity to work on large-scale project in the years ahead.

“Elon Musk, when we talk about superheros, he is Iron Man, you know he has done such great things for the market itself,” he said.

“They are a fantastic but they are also an international company, for me I am not the Iron Man of renewable energy in Australia… but we really had a focus of how do we get an Australian company to achieve greater heights and help the Australian communities at the same time.”

Government defends approach to project

The Energy Minister, Tom Koutsantonis, argues that all businesses had an opportunity to pitch projects to the government.

“We launched a $150m Renewable Technology Fund and invited all renewables companies to pitch projects into that would benefit SA customers, grow our renewables industry and speed up tech development,” he said.

“That was a competitive, independent process and this project was one of the successful applicants, along with many others, including SA companies.”

Mr Koutsantonis said Tesla was not manufacturing the solar panels, but supplying the batteries for the project.

“In fact, the contract with Tesla includes a requirement that where possible the solar panels to be manufactured locally. This project alone will create 500 direct and indirect jobs in SA,” he said.

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, have created a customizable, fabric-like power source that can be cut, folded or stretched without losing its function. Their findings are reported in Advanced Materials.

Wearable electronics need to be flexible and capable of retaining their function even under high deformation stress. Ideally, they should also have flexible batteries that can store charge for prolonged periods of time and are repeatedly rechargeable.

In this study, a research group led by Professor Chen Xiaodong, Associate Chair (Faculty) at the School of Materials Science & Engineering at NTU, has developed a customizable supercapacitor that fulfils all the above requirements.

Their invention is made of strengthened manganese dioxide nanowire composite material. While manganese dioxide is a common material for supercapacitors, the ultralong nanowire structure, strengthened with a network of carbon nanotubes and nanocellulose fibers, allows the electrodes to withstand the associated strains during the customization process.

When fabricated as a honeycomb-like structure, the supercapacitor had the ability to store an electrical charge four times higher than most existing stretchable supercapacitors. In addition, when stretched to four times its original length, it maintained nearly 98 percent of the initial ability to store electrical energy, even after 10,000 stretch-and-release cycles.

The researchers also showed that when the customizable supercapacitor was paired with a sensor and placed on the human elbow, it performed better than existing stretchable supercapacitors. Their supercapacitor was able to provide a stable stream of signals even when the arm was swinging. These signals were then transmitted wirelessly to external devices, such as one that captures a patient’s heart rate.

The authors believe that the editable supercapacitor could be easily mass-produced as it would rely on existing manufacturing technologies. Production cost will thus be low, estimated at about SGD$0.13 (USD$0.10) to produce 1 cm2 of the material.

“A reliable and editable supercapacitor is important for the development of the wearable electronics industry. It also opens up all sorts of possibilities in the realm of the ‘Internet-of-Things’ when wearable electronics can reliably power themselves and connect and communicate with appliances in the home and other environments,” said Chen.

“My own dream is to one day combine our flexible supercapacitors with wearable sensors for health and sports performance diagnostics. With the ability for wearable electronics to power themselves, you could imagine the day when we create a device that could be used to monitor a marathon runner during a race with great sensitivity, detecting signals from both under and over-exertion,” he added.