Green Energy

A research team at the Center for Energy Storage Research of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) led by Dr. Hun-Gi Jung has developed a new battery made of silicon anode materials that offers a great improvement on traditional batteries. These materials can increase battery capacity four-fold in comparison to graphite anode materials and also improve power charging to more than 80% capacity achieved in only five minutes.

Doubling driving range

In the case of electric vehicles, the new batteries are expected to at least double their driving range. In order to achieve this breakthrough, Jung had to enhance the stability of silicon.

Silicon carries an energy storage capacity 10-times greater than graphite. However, when used in batteries, its volume expands rapidly, making its storage capacity decrease significantly during charge and discharge cycles. This has greatly limited its commercialization.

So far, several solutions have been suggested for enhancing the stability of silicon as an anode material. However, these methods have all been found to be too costly and complex.

Water oil and starch

That is why Jung and his team focused on water, oil, and starch. These are easily accessible and cheap materials that the team used to create carbon-silicon composites.

Then, using a simple thermal process for frying food, Jung and his team managed to firmly fix the carbon and silicon, stopping the silicon anode materials from expanding during charge and discharge cycles.

“We were able to develop carbon-silicon composite materials using common, everyday materials and simple mixing and thermal processes with no reactors,” said in a statement Dr. Jung, the lead researcher of the KIST team. He continued, “The simple processes we adopted and the composites with excellent properties that we developed are highly likely to be commercialized and mass-produced. The composites could be applied to lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems (ESSs).”

Workhorse spinoff Lordstown Motors teased its new fully electric truck, dubbed the Endurance, in a new video showcasing its 6.2 million square foot factory in Lordstown, Ohio. The truck takes the lucrative design of the Workhorse W15 truck and shapes it for commercial customers. The company expects the new Endurance to be the first fully electric truck built in the US specifically for commercial customers.

Lordstown Motors is a strange creation that’s worth talking about. It was created as an affiliate of Workhorse specifically for the purchase of the shuttered General Motors Lordstown plant. It has an IP agreement with Workhorse that allows for the use of much of the foundational work on Workhorse’s W15 electric pickup truck and even pulled in Workhorse’s former CEO Steve Burns to run the show. It is an exciting step forward for the company that brings the fully electric truck one giant step closer to becoming a production vehicle.

As of now, the company isn’t sharing the final look of the Endurance, but we expect it to look and feel a lot like the Workhorse W15. The new teaser video below shows the company’s factory in Lordstown, Ohio and gives us some insights into the condition of the factory the company acquired from GM for an undisclosed sum.

The Endurance will be powered by four hub motors, giving the vehicle not just all wheel drive, but full control over the power and braking at each wheel. That is an unprecedented level of control that should give the Endurance an impressive amount of acceleration and traction in any conditions. The four motors put out a combined 600 horsepower, which sounds like a ton of fun in any vehicle, especially a work truck with a great center of gravity and plenty of battery pack pinning the wheels to the ground.

The base configuration of the Endurance boasts a range of 250+ miles (400+ kilometers) of range per charge which is sufficient for the vast majority of situations, but leaves many workers wanting more range for heavier loads, commuting workers, off roading, overlanding, and the like.

Having said that, the Endurance is designed for commercial applications as an employer-owned vehicle. In these situations, fleet managers can deploy the vehicle where they will get the most bang for their buck. Expect optional longer range battery packs to be added in the future to accommodate even more fleet applications.

The base configuration of the Endurance will set buyers back $52,500 which is a great entry price point for an electric truck aimed at commercial buyers. The up front cost is likely higher than a comparable Ford or Chevy truck, but savings on fuel and maintenance over time will help shore up the pricing disparity over the life of the vehicle. The company posted a comparison of a similarly priced Ford

Screen capture from Lordstown Motors’ website.

• Base Price: $52,500
• Safety Rating (Front, Side, Rollover): 5 / 5 / 4
• ADAS-LDW, AEB, Rear Cross Traffic Alert: Yes
• Software – OTA (Over the Air Updates): Yes
• Fault monitoring – OTA realtime: Yes
• EV Range (EPA cycle): 250+ miles
• Charging time (95% SOC, Level 2-7kW AC/Level 3 DC): 10 hrs / 0.5 to 1.5 hrs
• Off-board power for tools and accessory (stationary) 120V, 30 amp: Yes
• Seating Capacity: 5
• Towing Capacity: 7,500 lbs
• Drivetrain layout: 4 Hub Electric Motors
• Brakes Front/Rear: Custom in hub motor brakes
• Wheels: 20 in
• Horsepower Peak: 600 hp
• Power Steering Assist: Electrical
• Top Speed (Software Governed): 80 mph (128 kph)
• Gradeability at GVW: 30%
• Warranty: 3-years bumper-to-bumper; 8-year battery warranty

The company is now accepting preorders for the Endurance for a $100 refundable deposit.

New Yorkers may have to pay more for electricity from renewable sources after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissions issued a series of four orders that call for providers of wind, solar, and energy storage—all subsidized—to meet the price floor in the state’s capacity market, the regulator said in a news release.

According to FERC, the orders will protect competition in the New York Independent System Operator’s capacity market “by improving the buyer-side market power mitigation rules to send accurate price signals to markets and to ensure adequate supplies for consumers.”

Reuters reports, however, that the move could make it harder for the environmentally ambitious state to hit its targets for renewable energy. The state has plans to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewables sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040.

According to environmentalists, the FERC orders will effectively support fossil fuels in their competition with wind and solar, by forcing the latter to pay more in the capacity market.

According to power plant operators, on the other hands, the generous subsidies for wind and solar affect them negatively by reducing, Reuters writes, what they receive in capacity and energy markets.

“Competitive electricity markets, which were originally designed to provide reliable service at the least cost, are now at an inflection point,” said the president of the New York Independent System Operator, Rich Dewey. “The wholesale markets must now accommodate state policies; not conflict with them.”

These ambitious goals have put the state’s government at odds with the utility sector. Bans on new gas pipelines led to National Grid announcing that it will stop connecting new customers for lack of capacity to bring in the gas needed for the power plants last year.

In response, Governor Andrew Cuomo accused the company of either over-relying on a single gas pipeline to supply the necessary additional fuel for its power plants to respond to growing energy demand, or it “deliberately defrauded the people of the state by not developing or pursuing existing supply options to force approval and reliance on a private pipeline to further their business interests at the cost of the consumer.”

The Seneca Grade School Board recently heard an update regarding a solar energy project that will be constructed on a proposed 40-acre site on property behind the South Campus.

Superintendent Eric Misener said Sunvest Solar, a company based out of Pewaukee, WI has received the complete geo-technical analysis on the site. Sunvest will follow up with the complete electrical plans and then submit for permits. He also said if all goes well, they plan for the array to be functional by June.

Misener said that the solar project is being completed at no cost to the district. The land belongs to the district and that they will be leasing it to an investor who will sell solar power to the district at a reduced rate. After ten years, the project will be paid for and the solar energy system becomes the property of the district.

He also said it wasn’t feasible for the district to build the project because as an educational district, they would not be able to re-coop any tax advantage.

Helen Holifield, a yoga instructor and substitute teacher who lives in Shelby County, is alarmed by the warming climate.

“Everything is dying on the planet; we’ve got to do something quickly,” she said.

After getting an electric car, Holifield last summer looked into putting solar panels on her house in Shelbyville to generate her own renewable electricity. But the tree shade and the orientation of her roof made that impractical, she said.

Then one day, while driving on Interstate 64, Holifield noticed the massive array of solar panels being installed by Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities, the local power monopoly, alongside the highway in Simpsonville.

She would soon become one of the roughly 1,300 residential customers and businesses who have signed up to help pay for the build-out of the solar farm, a program LG&E-KU calls Solar Share.

“I was like, well sure, I would like to support that,” Holifield said.

Holifield isn’t directly receiving solar-powered electricity at her home. Instead, she pays for a “share” of solar power produced at the solar farm and fed into LG&E-KU’s broader grid. Holifield gets both a extra monthly charge for the cost of the solar plant and a credit against her energy bill for her share of the power it produces.

Because the cost is more than the credit, the net result is that her bills are few dollars more than they would be otherwise.

Holifield, who bought in to Solar Share at the lowest available level, calls the few extra dollars she pays per month “a little token gesture” to support renewable energy, though acknowledged she would have to buy dozens more shares to fully offset her household’s electricity usage through the solar farm, which would be too expensive.

Thanks to customers like Holifield, LG&E’s “community” solar farm beside I-64 is growing.

After putting the solar array into service last year, the utility is about to start construction of the second of what could eventually be eight sections of panels. And it has signed up about half of the customers – called “subscribers” – needed to start building the third section.

About 80% of LG&E-KU’s electricity comes from burning coal, the fossil fuel energy source responsible for more plant-warming carbon dioxide emissions than any other. As concerns about climate change grow and more people and businesses become interested in renewable electricity, LG&E casts Solar Share as an easy alternative to residential solar panels.

A solar panel system requires upfront investment on the order of buying a newer car ($20,000 or more) and isn’t an option for homeowners with irregular roofs or too much shade or people who don’t own their homes or live in multi-family buildings.

“It comes back to the convenience factor,” said John Bevington, director of business and economic development for LG&E-KU. “… It’s a completely worry-free situation for our customers, and I think there is something to be said for that.”

But LG&E-KU’s solar subscribers pay a lot for that convenience. So much, in fact, that some say there are more effective ways to support clean energy.

“It’s not a very good deal,” said Sarah Lynn Cunningham, executive director of the Louisville Climate Action Network, a group focused on local efforts to combat climate change.

Cunningham said there is “value” in giving customers an option to pay for renewable energy, but “as far as the overall cost per (unit of energy), their system is a rip-off.”

How it works

Unlike its natural gas or coal-burning plants – which all customers pay for through their electricity bills – LG&E wants to ensure that the cost of installing and maintaining the Shelby County solar farm is entirely borne by the small group of customers, like Holifield, who are willing to support it.

The utility accomplishes this by selling “shares” of the solar farm to customers who become “subscribers.”

Each subscriber then receives credit, in the form of a discount on their monthly bill, for the actual solar energy created when the panel absorbs sunlight on a clear day.

But, unlike a typical home with a rooftop solar system, the bill credits for the Solar Share program will never be enough to offset what the utility charges to subscribers, according to a WDRB News analysis.

In other words, customers will always pay more to participate in Solar Share.

LG&E did not dispute that conclusion, with spokeswoman Natasha Collins acknowledging Solar Share subscribers “will not be able to offset the cost of their participation through associated energy credits.”

LG&E offers two ways for customers to pay for the program. Each “share” costs either a flat, $5.55 monthly fee or a one-time $799 fee for 25 years.

That share then produces solar energy that earns the customer a bill credit worth $0.50 to $3.52 per month, the utility estimates. The credits vary depending on the month (May is sunniest) and whether the customer uses the solar energy at the same time it’s produced, which is more lucrative for the subscriber than feeding the power back to the broader grid.

A customer who pays monthly will never get enough bill credits to offset the $5.55 charge. For the typical residential customer, it would take about 38 shares – a net cost of about $78 to $193 per month (or more than $30,000 if paid upfront) – to offset a household’s entire electricity usage through Solar Share.

Even those who pay the upfront fee have little hope of recouping it over the 25-year lifespan the LG&E solar farm. WDRB calculated that, at current electricity rates, it would take at least 25 years and possibly more than 80 years for the Solar Share bill credits to equal the upfront charge.

On the other hand, a typical residential solar project with a $22,000 price tag could pay for itself in 9 to 15 years when factoring a hefty federal tax credit ($5,720) available to solar owners, said Matt Partymiller, owner of Lexington-based Solar Energy Solutions, which sells solar systems for homes and businesses.

A key difference is that – for now – Kentucky solar panel owners get significantly higher compensation for the excess electricity that they feed back into the power grid than do Solar Share subscribers.

LG&E and other state utilities successfully lobbied the state legislature in 2019 to roll back a policy called “net metering,” in which solar panel owners are entitled to retail-rate compensation for whatever electricity their systems produce beyond their own household usage.

The Kentucky Public Service Commission is expected to reduce the compensation that solar owners get for excess power, but the new rates haven’t been set and current owners are grandfathered for 25 years.

Solar Share subscribers, on the other hand, get credited at only about one-third of the retail rate for any excess power their “shares” feed back into the grid.

To get the most out of the program, a customer would have to plan to use more electricity during the day when the sun is shining, but that wouldn’t be ideal for people who aren’t normally home during the day.

Despite those limitations, LG&E stresses that the value of the program is in not having to come up with thousands of dollars to buy a private solar array and never occurring additional costs to maintain such a system.

For example, having to remove solar panels to replace a roof can mean a few thousand dollars in added costs down the road.

With Solar Share, “We’re taking on the responsibility of managing the project, engineering the project (and) maintaining the project over time,” Bevington said.

Solar companies say they could offer better deal

Partymiller, who is also president of the Kentucky Solar Industry Association, said there are some aspects of the LG&E farm – such as its visibility along I-64 – that are laudable.

“The more people that know that solar is happening and that utilities believe investment in solar makes sense, the better off our industry is,” Partymiller said.

At the same time, the growth of the program highlights the challenges that private solar installers in Kentucky face in competing with regulated monopolies, he said.

Partymiller questioned the overhead costs that LG&E charges its Solar Share subscribers, for example. But state law ensures that businesses like his couldn’t open a competing solar farm in a utility’s territory, he said.

“If I could build a single large-scale array in the middle of Simpsonville and offer that to customers from the far ends of the state – from eastern Kentucky to western Kentucky – at a fixed rate … I think I could do so far more cost-effectively than what LG&E is offering right now,” Partymiller said.

Another limitation, Partymiller said, is that Kentucky is not one of the states that allows solar installers to lease panels to customers instead of selling them. That’s essentially what LG&E is doing when Solar Share subscribers opt for the $5.55 per month cost, he said.

Leasing is a way around the hefty upfront costs of residential system, he said.

Partymiller acknowledged one benefit of the Solar Share design: It allows customers to buy solar energy in small increments, which would not be possible with a typical residential system.

Cunningham, of the Louisville Climate Action Network, said it might be more effective for customers who want to spend a few dollars a month to buy “Renewable Energy Certificates” through LG&E instead of signing up for Solar Share.

But Ben Haydon, a nonprofit executive who lives in Lexington and serves on a volunteer advisory board for LG&E-KU, said he gets a little bit of satisfaction each time he drives by the solar farm on Interstate 64. Haydon bought one share in solar farm’s second section that is about to get underway.

“I really like the idea of just being able to pay a little bit of money and saying, ‘Hey, I have a stake in that solar panel right there on the side of interstate,'” he said.”… That’s really not going to be hurting me financially, and it’ll be doing a little bit of good in the world.”

Dr. Hun-Gi Jung and his research team at the Center for Energy Storage Research of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Lee Byung Gwon) have announced the development of silicon anode materials that can increase battery capacity four-fold in comparison to graphite anode materials and enable rapid charging to more than 80% capacity in only five minutes. When applied to batteries for electric vehicles, the new materials are expected to more than double their driving range.

The batteries currently installed in mass-produced electric vehicles use graphite anode materials, but their low capacity contributes to electric vehicles’ having a shorter driving range than vehicles with internal combustion engines. Consequently, silicon, with an energy storage capacity 10-times greater than graphite, has drawn attention as a next-generation anode material for the development of long-range electric vehicles. However, silicon materials have not yet been commercialized because their volume expands rapidly and storage capacity decreases significantly during charge and discharge cycles, which limits commercialization. A number of methods have been suggested for enhancing the stability of silicon as an anode material, but the cost and complexity of these methods have prevented silicon from replacing graphite.

To enhance the stability of silicon, Dr. Jung and his team focused on using materials that are common in our everyday lives, such as water, oil, and starch. They dissolved starch and silicon in water and oil, respectively, and then mixed and heated them in order to produce carbon-silicon composites. A simple thermal process used for frying food was employed to firmly fix the carbon and silicon, preventing the silicon anode materials from expanding during charge and discharge cycles.

The composite materials developed by the research team demonstrated a capacity four-times greater than that of graphite anode materials (360mAh/g – 1,530mAh/g) and stable capacity retention over 500 cycles. It was also found that the materials enable batteries to charge to more than 80% capacity in only five minutes. Carbon spheres prevent the usual volume expansion of silicon, thereby enhancing the stability of silicon materials. Also, the use of highly conductive carbon and the rearrangement of the silicon structure resulted in a high output.

“We were able to develop carbon-silicon composite materials using common, everyday materials and simple mixing and thermal processes with no reactors,” said Dr. Jung, the lead researcher of the KIST team. He continued, “The simple processes we adopted and the composites with excellent properties that we developed are highly likely to be commercialized and mass-produced. The composites could be applied to lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems (ESSs).”

The research results were published in the most recent issue of Nano Letters.