Lithium News

Keystone Electronics recently announced that it has launched its latest, coil spring battery contacts that are designed to slide into molded cases.

The new battery contacts are engineered using a contact design that can be adjusted to different battery lengths to ensure low contact resistance and connectivity.

They also have the option of being drop in replacements for standard leaf spring contacts.

Keystone’s coiled, PC/case mount battery contacts are made from 0.024 in. thick, steel wire and are supplied with nickel plating. They come in either a positive contact style or negative contact style and a dual contact style. The springs are designed to accommodate cylindrical battery styles, including A, AA, AAA and CR2 cells.

A foreign-backed miner has sued Chile to block state-run Codelco from exploiting a lithium deposit where both have claims, according to a lawsuit filed in March that will be carefully watched by potential investors being courted by the country’s new government.

The little-known and remote Maricunga salt flat is far smaller than the expansive Salar de Atacama, where top lithium producers Albemarle and Chile’s SQM rule supreme.

But the legal conflict at Maricunga under the newly inaugurated conservative government of President Sebastian Pinera may prove a bellwether for foreign miners anxious to invest in Chile, which is home to half of the world’s lithium reserves.

The skirmish has pitted Salar Blanco, 50 percent owned by Australia’s Lithium Power International, with smaller stakes held by Canada’s Bearing Lithium and local capital, against state copper miner Codelco, in a country famously protective of its lithium.

Lithium is among the world’s hottest commodities and a key ingredient in the rechargeable batteries that power everything from cell phones and tablets to electric vehicles.

In its final days in March, the former center-left government granted Codelco a permit to operate in Maricunga – a critical first step in the top copper miner’s first foray into lithium.

At the same time, the country’s nuclear commission CChen granted Salar Blanco a permit to extract approximately 473,135 tonnes of lithium carbonate over 30 years. Chile considers lithium to be a strategic resource, citing its potential use in nuclear fusion.

But Salar Blanco says Codelco’s permit overlaps its property, alleging it was issued in error in a lawsuit filed with Santiago’s Appeals Court in mid-March, shortly after Pinera took office. The case has put a Codelco search for a partner at Maricunga on hold.

Codelco said in a statement filed with the court that Salar Blanco had sued only after it had decided not to take part in the Codelco tender.

Mining Minister Baldo Prokurica told Reuters in April that he hoped for a quick resolution.

“The worst that can happen is that this case drags on and that it slows the development of lithium,” Prokurica said.

Lithium Power International CEO Martin Holland said in an interview that he hoped the suit would be resolved in six months.

“With the new center-right government … looking to attract foreign investment into the country, I think this will be resolved sooner rather than later,” he said.

TURNING POINT?

Maricunga’s 90 square miles (145 sq km) make it less than 5 percent the size of the sprawling Salar de Atacama. But Salar Blanco calls it one of the “highest-grade lithium brine salars globally.”

The permit to extract lithium obtained by the firm, which says it has invested around $30 million at Maricunga, was hailed as a turning point by investors put off by what some perceive as a heavy hand in the lithium industry under the previous government.

“With this new extraction and export license, the Chilean government is signaling the end of those obstacles,” Steve Cochrane, CEO of Lithium Chile, said in a statement in March.

Salar Blanco had initially sought to partner with Codelco in Maricunga, but Holland said it retracted its bid after concluding Codelco’s holdings were not in a “favorable position” in the deposit.

Chile’s biggest lithium producer, SQM, will be watching the proceedings with interest.

A contract signed in January requires Codelco and SQM to consider partnering at Maricunga, bringing a long dispute between SQM and the government to an end.

But a high-level executive at Codelco told Reuters in April that any such association with SQM, which in 2017 agreed to pay more than $30 million in fines to U.S. regulators to resolve corruption cases, would be “very difficult.”

Holland told Reuters that Salar Blanco has also had discussions with SQM.

“We’ve had many discussions with them over the years, and I’ll just leave it at that for the time being,” he said.

It is unique due to its large size, which is 6.54 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). The Indicated resource is 597 million tons with a grade of about 0.09% lithium, or 2.857 million tons LCE. The inferred resource is 779 million tons at 0.089% lithium, or 3.683 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent. It is one of the largest lithium deposits in North America.

Dr. Bill Willoughby, who joined Cypress as a consultant to commercialize and optimize the new lithium discovery and then became CEO, stated, “This is a major milestone for Cypress. To have advanced from drilling the first hole on Dean just over a year ago to the resources we have now is truly remarkable. It’s exciting not only to see validation to the size of deposit, which is something we’ve anticipated, but also all the other factors line up that affect how a project can become a mine. I’m looking forward now to the PEA next, which I anticipate based on the results today, we will work to complete as quickly as possible.”

The metallurgy at the discovery site appears to be favorable to extraction, whereas some other claystone deposits have not been. “Preliminary test work conducted at SGS Canada Inc (Lakefield) and Continental Metallurgical Services, LLC has shown the material exhibits high lithium extractions with short leach times. Lithium extractions greater than 80% can be achieved in 4 to 8 hours using conventional dilute sulfuric acid leaching. Currently, Hazen Research Inc is conducting additional leach tests and preliminary results confirm high lithium extractions for new mineral zones,” the company noted.

“The presence of acid leachable lithium presents a significant cost savings by avoiding calcine and regrind of material during processing. Preliminary results also show the consumption of sulfuric acid and other reagents are relatively low,” Cypress Development stated.

The deposit might have a theoretical 200 to 300-year old mine life, according to company representatives. At the moment, the company has not found the bottom of the deposit.

The asset is located in Nevada and is not far from the Tesla Gigafactory. Much of the world’s lithium production is located outside the U.S., so having such a large discovery occur in Nevada is especially noteworthy.

The deposit itself is a milestone but the company is also looking forward to more drilling success in the next 6-12 months. The completion of a preliminary economic assessment is expected by September.

Industry observers hailed Cypress’ maiden resource element. Peter Epstein of Epstein research wrote on May 2, Cypress Development “killed it with its maiden NI 43-101 compliant lithium resource estimate yesterday! The whisper number was 4 to 6 million Inferred tonnes of Lithium Carbonate Equiv. (LCE), (which would have been a tremendous result), but Global Resource Engineering Ltd. determined there’s an estimated 6.54 million metric tonnes LCE.”

“Management has delivered a blockbuster maiden resource, >6 million tonnes of LCE (combined Indicated & Inferred). Therefore, Cypress need never worry again about resource size; it already has huge scale,” Epstein concluded.

The Critical Investor noted on May 9 the speed at which Cypress Development is working: “Cypress Development is proceeding at breathtaking pace, going from its first drill hole at the Dean claystone lithium project in Nevada, U.S., to the very recent announcement of a maiden resource estimate on both Dean and Glory projects in just over a year.”

“As the resource of Dean/Glory is quite large, the potential for a project with very impressive economics could be realistic,” The Critical Investor stated.

The company has approximately 60 million shares outstanding, of which 20% are closely held.

In December 2017, the U.S. government designated lithium as a “critical mineral” of strategic importance. One driver of lithium consumption is its use in batteries for electric vehicles. Many countries around the world are interested in acquiring EVs or making their own because they don’t produce toxic tailpipe emissions and run on electricity, not directly on fossil fuels. Batteries of all kinds utilize about half of all the world’s mined lithium.

High-tech grid resources that have become commonplace in some utility territories aren’t even considered in others.

California utilities are already deploying energy storage in place of new gas plants. Regulated utilities in places like Arizona, Florida and North Carolina have begun factoring substantial amounts of storage into their grid planning, to tackle peak demand and make the grid more flexible.

Meanwhile, Dominion Energy’s new long-term plan for Virginia and North Carolina barely mentions storage and instead calls for intensive deployment of new gas peakers.

The disparity in adoption of tools like battery storage means that ratepayers in some places get a fuller consideration of alternatives for utility investment. That analytical process impacts the kind of investments utilities end up making and the rates their customers have to pay.

From Dominion’s perspective, the price point of battery storage wasn’t ready for full consideration. For the storage industry, the time has already come.

“There’s really no excuse for any utility today to ignore storage as an investment option,” said Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association.

Flexibility, traditionally

Dominion Energy’s integrated resource plan studies the regulated utility’s expected needs through the next five, 15 and 25 years. The document embraces new solar energy and even maps out scenarios for possible carbon regulation, while affirming the need for a more modern, flexible electricity system.

“A modernized grid will create a more dynamic system that is better able to respond to the growth of utility-scale solar facilities and the proliferation of smaller, widely-dispersed distributed energy resources,” the document states.

That vision of an increasingly flexible, renewably powered grid sounds like a natural fit with energy storage, but Dominion’s document sidelines that resource from any meaningful role in the planning process.

The phrase “Energy storage” appears nine times in the 200-plus page Dominion IRP document. The key mention admits that Dominion doesn’t consider storage the way it evaluates traditional resources like gas plants.

“In addition to pumped storage hydroelectric power, the Company continues to monitor advancements in other energy storage technologies, such as batteries and flywheels,” the IRP states.

Meanwhile, the utility’s analysis calls for at least eight new combustion turbine plants totaling 3,664 megawatts by 2033, no matter which carbon regulation scenario comes into effect. Most of the scenarios include even more combustion turbines.

The IRP provides a snapshot of the current outlook for meeting customer needs, Dominion Energy spokesperson Rayhan Daudani told GTM in a written statement.

“At this point in time, natural gas provides the most cost-effective way for us to back up intermittent renewable energy sources,” Daudani said. “However, as costs shift we could see batteries take on a greater role, just as renewables have in recent years.”

He added that storage will likely play more of a role in the next IRP filing, slated for 2020.

In particular, the legislature authorized a 30 megawatt pilot in the recently passed Grid Transformation & Security Act of 2018, which came together too late for full consideration in this IRP. Storage will become increasingly valuable as Virginia adds gigawatts of solar generation in the coming years.

Dominion understands the value of grid storage, Daudani noted, because the utility has been operating the 3,000 megawatt Bath County Hydro Pumped Storage Facility since 1985.

That single project wields 5.5 times the capacity of all U.S. storage deployments expected this year, according to GTM Research. But pumped hydro and advanced batteries operate very differently.

Pumped hydro looks like a massive infrastructure project: it needs both a very specific topology and permission to flood it. New construction in the U.S. has all but ended, although Dominion is scoping out a new one in Virginia’s coal country.

Lithium-ion batteries, on the other hand, can slip into sites large and small with minimal effect on their surroundings. They can deliver capacity in the middle of dense load pockets, because they don’t emit any point source emissions like a gas or coal plant does. And their rapid response capabilities work particularly well with the fluctuations of solar generation on the grid.

Full range of options

Dominion’s theory, that storage is worth monitoring but not yet ready for full consideration, conflicts with the outlooks at other utilities that have already put storage to good use.

With a statewide procurement mandate and supportive regulators, California utilities have begun considering storage instead of new gas plants, and even buying new storage in place of existing gas plants.

In Arizona, utilities have found business cases in the absence of state policy drivers. Arizona Public Service turned to storage to maintain reliability in the remote town of Punkin Center, at half the cost of a traditional wires upgrade. It also awarded a peak capacity contract to a storage project that beat out gas plants in open competition.

Outside of the desert Southwest, the governors of Massachusetts and New York have prioritized storage as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuel peak power plants.

And Dominion’s neighbor, Duke Energy, has pursued multi-megawatt energy storage projects to meet specific grid reliability needs. In its updated 2017 IRP, Duke said it wants to own up to 75 megawatts of storage across the Carolinas.

“These deployments will allow Duke Energy and its customers to evaluate the costs and impacts of batteries deployed at a significant scale, explore the nature of new offerings desired by customers, and fill knowledge gaps,” that document notes.

Can storage be ready for construction in one part of North Carolina, but not another?

“I don’t think it’s the right course for them to be ignoring storage,” said Will Cleveland, staff attorney focused on Virginia energy policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Dominion is a little bit behind the curve in how they evaluate new and upcoming technologies and the cost curves that they have.”

A tension also exists between the long lead-time planning that utilities conduct and the rapid pace of change in storage technology. Prices and capabilities keep moving faster than utilities are used to from traditional grid technologies.

Even as APS moved forward with the aforementioned projects, it prepared an IRP that downplayed utility-scale solar and storage and banked on massive gas plant construction to meet peak demand.

That stance provoked an unexpected response from the all-Republican Arizona Corporation Commission: it rebuked the utility plan and froze new gas plant development for 2018, as it considers a grid modernization overhaul to leverage storage for peak power.

Left to its own devices, storage will likely continue to spread unevenly, giving some populations more alternatives to large and costly gas plant investments.

In cases where regulators or political leaders pushed utilities to pay more attention to energy storage, though, they consistently have found attractive projects to put it to use.

Anesco says it will build out around 300MW of new battery storage projects by 2020, taking its portfolio to 380MW.

The Reading-based firm currently has 87MW of battery storage in operation across 27 sites and has several projects under construction, including a 50MW project in Hampshire.

Many firms and financiers are struggling to make battery storage economics stack-up, given high costs and uncertainties over bankable revenue streams. However, Anesco executive chairman Steve Shine said the data from its operational facilities, stretching back to 2014, was a “crucial differentiator”.

This has enabled us to … predict whole life cost, IRR and long term revenue streams – the numbers that really count,” said Shine. “Our batteries are performing above specification and are delivering a strong economic return for our customers,” he claimed.

Last year Anesco developed the UK’s first subsidy-free solar scheme (Clayhill, pictured) by combining it with batteries at a site with a good existing export connection.

KARLSTEIN am MAIN, Germany – Europe’s biggest e-bike battery maker – BMZ – has been able to secure delivery of hundreds of millions of Lithium-Ion cells. Such cells are the core of e-bike batteries as well as those for electric cars like Tesla and many ‘mobile’ products. With that demand for batteries is “exploding and delivery of cost-effective battery cells is crucial,” said BMZ CEO Sven Bauer.

Last month BMZ GmbH entered into a long-term agreement with LG Chem Ltd., one of the world’s largest cell manufacturers based in Korea. The agreement between the two companies is for the long term supply of hundreds of millions Lithium-Ion cells up to the end of 2022.

Long-term supply security

“This provides our customers with long-term supply security for their products based on Lithium-Ion technology,” explained Bauer. “Establishing this long-term agreement between BMZ and LG Chem has entailed long-lasting cooperation upon mutual trust and partnership and will be pivotal point for both companies to further expand domain within Europe”, said Youngsun Kim, Vice President of LG Chem Ltd., Korea.

European lithium-cell Gigafactory

After the contracts between LG Chem and BMZ end in 2022, Li-Ion cell production will be up and running in Europe. This production is to start on a small scale in Germany next year but is to be gradually upscaled to grow to a level that will be sufficient to compete with the currently all in Asia based Li-Ion cell suppliers.

This European lithium-cell Gigafactory is founded by TerraE in which BMZ is one of the investors. In 2019 and in 2020 production will be scaled up to an output of some 4.0 Giga Watt hours. In the years after, up to 2028, the planning is to grow the TerraE production to 38 GigaWh. By that time Sven Bauer reckons that about 5 billion euro has been invested in the production facilities which are to be located in Germany.