Lithium News

Use it or lose it. Few products in the world have a shorter shelf life than electricity. That’s why pretty much everyone involved in the power sector — from utilities to buyers to startups to state regulators — is putting more energy than ever behind ways to extend it.

That’s fueling a boom in projects and investments centered on advanced battery chemistries and alternative energy storage approaches, such as hydrogen fuel cells and thermal options that use hot water or ice to conserve power. The holy grail over time is to create a network of resources that can be used in concert with solar and wind farms. The idea is to balance those intermittent renewable resources, help their production output become more predictable and make it easier to integrate distributed power plants into the grid.

But energy storage also promises tangible benefits in the short term, especially for demand-response applications that help utilities and businesses manage through “peak” periods when the strain on the electric grid could threaten reliable operations.

That powerful combination could inspire the deployment of 125 gigawatts in storage capacity worldwide between now and 2030, according to projections — a $103 billion investment. Notes Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Yayoi Sekine: “The industry has just begun. With so much investment going into battery technology, falling costs and with significant addition of wind and solar capacity in all markets, energy storage will play a crucial role in the energy transformation.”

You don’t have to be a clean power advocate to appreciate the return on investment. Even Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry is talking up the potential (PDF). And an astonishing mix of equipment providers are introducing systems, even big diesel and gas generator companies such as Caterpillar and military contractors such as Lockheed Martin.

By the end of 2017, at least 1,700 installations were in progress, an increase of more than 300 in just six months. Some are utility-scale endeavors, such as the 30-megawatt plant built by San Diego Gas & Electric that was billed as the world’s largest lithium-ion battery farm — until Elon Musk’s Tesla managed to steal its thunder in late 2017 with a 100-MW project meant to supplement wind power on the Australian grid. A more modest example is the Glacier Battery Storage project in Washington state, a 2 megawatt system backing up one of Puget Sound Energy’s substations.

Other projects have a commercial bent and are meant to support industrial facilities or offices. An example is the approach Hawaiian Electric Co. is using with fleet storage devices from Stem, a company that pairs artificial intelligence with energy storage, at Albertsons and Whole Foods grocery stores. The behind-the-meter technology — meant to serve specific buildings rather than the grid at large — helps manage power spikes.

In the United States, which will account for roughly a quarter of the industry’s growth over the next 13 years, state-level incentives became far more common in 2017 in the absence of limited and waning financial support at the federal level. A handful of states have passed installation targets, and more than 20 states have at least 20 megawatts of activity in their pipelines, with or without official regulations in place. California’s program is the oldest, adopted in 2010. It originally mandated the installation of 1.3 gigawatts by 2020, but regulators in 2016 tacked on a requirement for an additional 500 MWs in behind-the-meter storage capacity.

There’s also an appreciable amount of activity happening in the Northeast, where outages tied to extreme weather events are more frequent and where many legacy coal and nuclear power plants are reaching the end of their life or facing an uncertain recertification. Massachusetts has mandated enough storage to provide at least 200 megawatt-hours of energy. New York is still finalizing its targets hours to support its burgeoning wind power industry, but it’s also vying to become a manufacturing force with the state’s first lithium-ion “gigafactory” set to come online by late 2019.

Right now, many people tend to equate energy storage with advances in batteries. The battery supporting Tesla’s forthcoming semi-truck, as just one example, will deliver more range at a lower cost than anyone predicted. Millions of dollars are being thrown at startups — $480 million in the first half of 2016 went to companies researching lithium advances, zinc-air innovations and flow science using various electrochemical combinations. The systems they’re testing are meant for both electric vehicles and stationary systems that support buildings or community distribution systems. The Pena Station microgrid in Denver, for example, uses a 1-megawatt system to support the solar resources.

An analysis by Lux Research suggests that lithium-ion will be most cost-effective for applications requiring from 75 kilowatts to 100 megawatts of capacity, with backup ranges of 15 minutes to eight hours. The capital costs for the technology could fall as much as 36 percent over the next five years, more quickly than expected, according to research by investment firm Lazard. McKinsey has estimated that costs for stationary applications could reach $200 per kilowatt-hour in 2020 (half the price in 2015), and reach $160/kWh by 2025.

But other approaches are worth watching, some of which have been around for years. One of the biggest differentiators among these technologies is how quickly they can collect and release power.

Capacitors or flywheels, for example, might make sense for applications that require access to electricity quickly in the absence of another fuel source. The former is commonly used to support hybrid buses (to help them start more quickly after braking or idling) and wind turbines (where they are used for blade adjustments). The latter transforms power into kinetic energy (a laregenerative braking), releasing it back to the grid when there are hiccups by changing the speed of the rotation.

For a grid-level boost, some utilities have relied on pumped storage using multi-level reservoirs of water and principles of hydroelectricity for literally decades. When demand for power is low, water is pumped up into a holding facility; when usage peaks, the water can be released through turbines to peak the production. One of the world’s largest installations is owned by Dominion Energy in Virginia: It can generate up to 3,000 megawatts as the water is released through six generators.

When it comes to commercial installations, keep your eyes on thermal storage technologies, which help reduce the energy required to heat or cool buildings. One leader in this space is CALMAC, which uses ice tanks to take pressure off the electricity needed to run heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment. The company, which has sold its systems to more than 4,000 companies including Goldman Sachs, Google, Walmart and McDonald’s, was acquired by HVAC giant Ingersoll Rand in late 2016.

And don’t forget the potential capacity of electric vehicle batteries. High-profile automakers including Tesla and Mercedes-Benz are working on vehicle-to-grid pilots, and many utilities believe that grid-connected EVs could become a powerful source of electricity during peak hours in cities. Some, such as Italy’s Enel, are experimenting with charging networks and energy management software to enable that application.

Little wonder that demand for lithium-ion batteries for EVs and stationary energy storage uses could outstrip sales for consumer electronics supplies by the end of this year. The next challenge could be building batteries fast enough to keep up with demand.

A newly discovered structure of a sodium-based material allows the materials to be used as an electrolyte in solid-state batteries, according to researchers from Penn State and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The team is fine-tuning the material using an iterative design approach that they hope will shave years off the time from research to everyday use.

Hybrids and electrics are generally known as “green” vehicles, because they either burn less fossil fuel compared to non-hybrids, or in the case of battery-powered vehicles, none at all.

Still, there’s an environmental cost associated with them. Their batteries contain numerous chemicals, while lithium, commonly used in them, is most abundantly found in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and China, as well as Australia – perhaps with the potential of creating lithium cartels in place of the oil variety. Increased vehicle electrification and the use of cobalt in batteries has also rekindled interest in the mining town of Cobalt in northern Ontario, bringing a double-edged sword of economic recovery versus environmental issues.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are primarily a niche market because of their range and recharging time, but that’s not necessarily because of the cars themselves. They’ve actually been around since the late 1800s, and were often a popular choice when their pushbutton operation was much easier than hand-cranking a gasoline car.

The flat battery pack spans the entire length of the Chevrolet Bolt’s floor and is integrated into the chassis.

Today’s sophisticated electronics systems have considerably improved electric cars, but it’s the battery technology that hasn’t kept pace. There’s still a limit to how much energy they can store, and in many cases, you need a bigger battery to get longer driving range. That adds cost and weight – and the more weight, the more power it takes to move it. Ironically, that larger battery actually cuts into the extra range it provides.

Early electric cars used lead-acid batteries because that’s all that was available, but they’re too heavy and inefficient for EVs compared with modern alternatives. They’re still found in conventional cars, where they’re used to start the engine. They contain a negative lead plate and positive lead-dioxide plate, both submerged in a bath of sulphuric acid and water. A chemical reaction produces the voltage. The battery only stores electricity, and when the car is running, it’s recharged by the alternator, which also powers the lights and other electrical systems.

The 2014 BMW i3 is powered by a 170-horsepower electric motor and a 22 kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery.

Instead, electrified vehicles generally use nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) or lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. NiMH batteries were used to power earlier electric cars, such as GM’s EV-1 in 1999, but today they’re primarily used in some hybrids to power an electric motor alongside a gasoline engine. They’re not as energy-dense as Li-ion, but they’re also less costly, and they aren’t affected as much by extreme temperatures. They contain negative and positive electrodes made of nickel alloy, and hydrogen stored as solid metal hydrate. In a hybrid, they’re charged through regenerative braking, using kinetic energy otherwise lost during deceleration, which is converted and stored as electricity.

In most electric vehicles, and some hybrids, lithium-ion batteries have pushed NiHM to the curb. Li-ion battery cells contain electrodes made of metal alloy and carbon-based material such as graphite, and their electrolyte contains lithium ions. Like other vehicle batteries, they store energy rather than make it – they have to be recharged, of course – and the lithium ions flow from the negative electrode to positive when the vehicle needs energy to operate, and from positive to negative when the battery is being charged.

Its higher energy density means a Li-ion battery weighs less than a NiMH battery of the same capacity – in the 2018 Toyota Prius, which offers both types, the Li-ion pack weighs some 16 kilograms less than the NiMH. While batteries slowly discharge on their own if they aren’t used for a while, Li-ion holds its charge almost twice as long as NiMH. They require no maintenance, but on the down side, Li-ion batteries don’t like extreme temperatures, and require thermal management systems so they don’t get too hot or too cold. They also need protective circuits to prevent them being overcharged or excessively drained, and while their costs have come down, they’re still relatively pricey.

A COMPLETE overhaul of the design of the lithium-air battery has led to the development of a prototype that can function for hundreds of charging cycles using air, as opposed to pure oxygen.

Lithium-air batteries are capable of storing five times more energy than the lithium-ion batteries currently used to power items such as laptops and electric vehicles. So far, their development has proven challenging, with prototypes only able to work with tanks of pure oxygen which is unpractical for a battery and also hazardous due to the flammability of oxygen.

When a lithium-air battery is being discharged, lithium from the anode travels across a conductive electrolyte to react with oxygen in the air, producing lithium peroxide at the cathode. The reaction is reversed when the battery is charging, when the lithium peroxide is broken down into lithium and oxygen. However, lithium is highly reactive and also reacts with water and carbon dioxide in the air which creates deposits of lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate on the cathode. These deposits coat the cathode, rendering it ineffective.

A team of researchers from the US’ University of Illinois at Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a lithium-air battery that can overcome these problems though a unique combination of anode, cathode, and electrolyte. They coated the lithium anode with a layer of lithium carbonate, which allows lithium ions from the anode to enter the electrolyte while blocking unwanted compounds from reaching the anode. They coated the lattice structure of the cathode with a molybdenum disulfate catalyst, and created a new hybrid electrolyte made of an ionic liquid and dimethyl sulfoxide. The cathode coating and the electrolyte work together to prevent the formation of unwanted by-products on the cathode, therefore improving the efficiency of the battery.

“The complete architectural overhaul we performed on this battery by redesigning every part of it helped us enable the reactions we wanted to occur and prevent or block those that would ultimately cause the battery to go dead,” said Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The researchers demonstrated that the lithium-air battery still functions after at least 700 charge/discharge cycles. In comparison, the battery failed after 11 cycles when there was no coating on the anode.

“Our lithium-air battery design represents a revolution in the battery community,” said Salehi-Khojin. “This first demonstration of a true lithium-air battery is an important step toward what we call ‘beyond lithium-ion’ batteries, but we have more work to do in order to commercialise it.”

Tesla bulls and bears are focused, rightfully, on Model 3 production rate. VIN trackers are popping up everywhere, as if how many units Tesla produced in the first few months of an exponential ramp has any bearing on how many Tesla will sell in 2019, 2020 and beyond, which is really what will matter to the company’s intrinsic value. Always keep in mind that the stock price is about the future – not yesterday, not today, but the future. Yesterday matters only to the extent that it helps us predict the future. This is true, not just for Tesla, but for all companies.

So let us look at the future.

Tesla Energy

Stationary storage is a subject I struggled to understand for some time, so if you are feeling the same, you are not alone. Cars, I see every day. Lithium-ion batteries with a nickel, manganese, cobalt oxide cathode for use in increasing grid flexibility among several other purposes, not so much.

Institutional investors, however, know that stationary storage is an important opportunity for Tesla.

We think what Tesla has achieved so far is pretty remarkable, but there’s more they can do in not just automotive, but the energy markets.

The words above belong to Tom Slater, a partner and fund manager at Baillie Gifford, one of the world’s most active technology investors, which owns about 7.6 percent of Tesla’s shares.

There are three main components of Tesla Energy, Solar Roof, Powerpack, and Powerwall. And today, we will focus on Powerwall.