I love how Prof. Sadoway addresses scalability & affordability. Making something work in a laboratory environment is a very different problem than implementing it at a large scale.
It feels like he has been tooting his horn forever about his batteries but nothing has ever been shown in real life. I hope he can deliver what he says he has but if we hold our breath any longer we will all pass out.
@@instanoodles Yes. Sadoway "had the solution" years ago but he's never figured out how to make it work. Time to ignore him until he can produce a liquid metal battery that works.
I really liked how you covered the "challenges" of manufacturing, and how that is a barrier. Almost no battery video which talks about "breakthroughs" touches this aspect.
I think the main difference is that those other videos are mainly focusing on the science of technology. They may be revolutionary in theory but are they worth it? Engineering is a bit of a different beast and takes into account the economic powers that factor into creating usable technologies. You can't be a good engineer if you don't know how to factor in concepts like logistics, economics and scalability.
Well www.redflow.com has met that challenge and is in production now. You can go buy one and it will be as good, or better in some regards, than Ambri and especially lithium.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof. Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass. Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia There are requirements on where we can build pump hydro storage. You need a steep slope to pump the water up, a large catchment area on top, and access to water. This means hills or mountains with a flat area and a river or lake nearby. This also has ecological consequences, since the catchment area requires clearing a large area (though that's not what we're talking about). There are only so many places you can build pump hydro storage. In comparison, the batteries detailed in this video can be used anywhere. This means that the only barrier for scalability is material availability (which isn't going to be a problem anytime soon). Scalablility isn't about how much we have right now. It's how much we can have in the future. If we need more capacity, it's relatively easy to build another battery station. How easy is it to build more pump hydro storage facilities?
Reminds me of how Intel declained Apple's request to design and manufacture chips to power what was soon to be called...the iPhone. Almost 15 years later, and Apple is about to destroy their market with their incredibles desktop targeted and custom designed ARMs. Congrats Intel, you played yourself (for the moment).
"you know in university, you build 5 cells, one of them works and you get a publication and everyone is high fiving and so on - but in manifacturing, everything has to work" lmao
Sony invented a lot of first-time innovations for the consumers. First Li-ion batteries, first portable audio device in walkman and discman, first to make waterproof phones in the xperia series. First to make LED edge backlighting on their Bravia TVs. First to commit to the development of superior high-resolution audio codec such as DSD and LDAC for wireless. There are so many innovations that Sony made that we take for granted. The list are endless. But not many people know about it or even talk about it. Maybe it's because they have poor marketing department. Or perhaps, they're just too humble for it.
@Dylan Chester RE: "I wonder if the term 'lava battery' has any marketing merit." I don't think so; the word lava has too many negative connotations (forests, houses and towns burning), in my humble opinion. But then again, lava lamps were popular during the '70s.
Im from South Australia. The blackout was good fun. My local pub had a generator built in and as word spread, a quiet bar became the most packed its probably ever been.
This astounding amount of quality research and detailed facts paired with beautiful and comprehensive presentation is seriously above anything else on youtube. Please keep up the awesome work!
Exactly why it's based on facts not opinions like betza limits the limits eliminating most of superior infinite values of wind for change stuck in corporates pockets 103 years so far south. of course truth .Tides stiil X 1000 best energy storage opinions established .
Yes, it's well done. That said, I think renewable energy is 21st century pyramid building and GW is a laid of it. Just burn coal and clean up the smoke, or use nuclear.
I agree, the best video of him I've seen yet. Included great interviews with the real people behind the technology, that didn't just try to hype the tech up, but explained the pro's and cons in an ethical way.
"Best video" my ass. 1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof. Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass. Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia it requires a shit ton of water and a large elevated position able to contain a lake to store the uphill side of the facility. You can't just whack it down anywhere you want more storage. energynews.us/2011/11/22/midwest/pumped-hydro-not-a-magic-bullet-for-energy-storage/
Update yourself man. Most of the people who get these technologies off the ground are no smarter than you or I. They most of the time persisted and got a little lucky.
3:40 "It was a poorly planned grid." Erm, yes, it was a poorly planned grid because it was sold off to Hong Kong Infrastructure company many years before, and they had done sweet little since then, reaping the profits and doing virtually no upgrades. Onto this grid was added renewables like wind, hydro and solar because they were cheapest, but the infrastructure company did little to nothing to ensure grid harmonisation. This is what happens when you don't have vertical integration and sell everything off. Blaming wind-turbines for a storm that toppled power stanchions and cut power lines on an ageing grid decades overdue for an update is disingenuous, since it became evident after PM Malcolm Turnbull's comments that there was a political purpose of moating fossil fuels by using the storm event as a weapon to attack renewable energy uptake. PM Turnbull at the time, using the storm and subsequent blackout as an excuse, said that renewable uptake was 'irresponsible' and thus implying that this was responsible for the blackout - but it was the very neoliberal economic policies of selling everything off that was 'irresponsible', since no new renewable additions to the grid had been properly integrated.
Yes, and flogging it and others to foreign buyers like the chynese, who have no vested interest in maintaining, improving, and ensuring continuity of supply was straight out vandalism to our country and its corporate interestrs as well. Totally irresponsible and should have been disallowed.
@@linmal2242 (Retired IT field support for a major electric company with focus on energy delivery here) Absolutely right. Political considerations invariably degrade electric systems. Here in the Western US we have the geographically largest interconnection in North America, spanning the US roughly west of the Rockies and the provinces of BC and Alberta in Canada. California seems to think the laws of physics can be bent to the laws of politicians. Without the rest of the interconnection to stabilize them load shedding would be a normal part of every evening.
@@flagmichael Yeah... but that's just how renewables *have* to work. Either you have high levels of interconnection (so that an area that's clouded over and experiencing calm weather can still draw power from various still sunny or still windy partners), or you have high levels of storage. Both is better of course, but the path that California chose - overproducing because of their excellent geographical location, then selling it to less perfectly placed neighbors - isn't a bad way of doing things, even if California didn't implement it as well (yet) as could be desired. So it's disingenuous to say that it's merely "politicians being stupid politicians", since *having an interconnected grid is a large part of what makes renewables affordable*. You can do it with just local storage of course, but it's much more expensive to take the "just local storage only" path forward.
Thank you for actually talking about power frequency regulation, which is a measurement often forgotten or misunderstood by other TH-camrs talking about next generation grid storage. Storage capacity and output power are good measurements for medium and long term energy storage, but short term frequency smoothing for renewables like wind is something that is essential in a green power grid!
@@baltasarjimenez2091 Yes, "hot" accumulators were researched and tested decades ago. In the 1970s, electric buses, etc... The problem was to keep them hot. Also, they were not very environmentally friendly, due to toxic materials...
I loved this. Two things: 1) CNTs are actually plausibly commercializable in ten years. Arguably they're already commercialized as they're deployed in a lot of contexts, albeit haphazardly (lightweight tennis rackets being the constant example). The fact that they're being put into products, and have been for years now is actually a cause for alarm given that they're able to infiltrate the body and cross the blood/brain barrier. I worked as a policy research assistant to a nanotechnology lab and there was a lot of excitement about doping battery anodes with CNTs and whatnot at the time. So both CNTs and hyper-energy-dense battery technology are just about fully realized. 2) I did my PhD dissertation on technology policy, and used grid-scale energy storage as a case study. I think the title of your video is a little misleading: the economics and technology development aspects of grid-scale energy storage are solved at this point. Ambri's battery chemisty is SUPER exciting and will, no doubt, push the economics even further, but we can go ahead with renewables today. I would argue that the real missing link is the political and sociofinancial wherewithal. Just as you describe lock-in as a function of a LI+ manufacturer's sunk costs specializing in that chemistry, grid operators and utilities have a psychological lock-in to current grid technologies. They simply don't have the perspective to value storage, and so they keep telling policymakers and regulators that "it's too expensive" and "it doesn't work." Technologically, speaking, however, there is still a major innovation that we desperately need. We can go ahead and deploy 100% renewable grids right now, but they'll be more expensive than they really need to be because storage operation is a new concept to us, and every technology (Pumped Hydro/CCAS, flywheel, battery+inverter, thermal storage, etc) operates differently and is optimal for a different use case. Current grid planning tools, but in particular grid operating software, doesn't have the capacity to use these assets to their fullest potential. Massive upheval in grid tech is going to be needed, starting with the ability of the grid to self-monitor and then, as a consequence, cybersecurity for that capacity. I'd love to see you talk about the software side of all this. Great vid, though. Love your stuff.
Bringing in the world-leading expert, quantitative analysis and reviewing the literature. This video is incredible. Completely rich in state of the art content too, that's not even mentioning the animations! Well done Brian. It is so good to see the channel growing 🙌
I only understood 1/3 of this video but the 3D models in the Battery set are FIRE!! It took me a few seconds to realize they were CG! Great work to Mike Ridolfi, the animator (and I'm assuming 3d modeler)! The texturing and lighting was perfect!
@@AbdulGoodLooks it does. just not everyone clicks on it. TH-cam suggests videos it thinks you might like. if you click, you're more likely to be served similar videos or the same video. if you don't it won't reservice it. there are thousands of other points that the algorithm takes into account. But, there's nothing to stop you from sharing this video on other social media!
Love your dedication to high quality research for your videos! You make your sources transparent and even put in an interview with a leading expert - great work!
I should just mention this, I live in South Australia and we don’t get tornadoes here. Our blackouts are just caused by storms with heavy winds. The northern parts of Australia, mostly Queensland, do get the occasional cyclone.
iirc there was a small tornado that took down some HV towers in SA during that storm. Tornado's are possible all over australia, they are just very rare. There are waterspout tornado's off the coast of sydney reletivly often (maybe 1 every year or two).
the correct term would be 'tropical cyclone', 'cyclones' (also called 'typhoons in asia) spin in the other direction. the 'cyclones' that came off the gulf and killed the north-south link was a 'mini-tropical-cyclone'
On paper that's true. However, Li-ion's scale of production is making it cheap enough to work with anything. These batteries, and others like it, may make more sense on paper, but the costs are a huge factor right now. Li-ion has options already for lightweight applications and high cycle applications. Will be interesting to see if these take off, but I'm not sure they ever will.
@@anthonypelchat lithium batteries have scalability issues and recycling issues. Getting enough rare earth metals to switch all the cars and grid to lithium will be hard. It is so hard that we are already looking into deep sea mining with robots (which isn't good because we know very little about deep sea ecosystems and how large scale mining will affect them). Rare earth metal mining is not a green process in general, it's very destructive to the environment and produces a lot of toxic waste. So there are hidden costs to lithium batteries, manufacturing cost went significantly down but at some point we will hit a point where raw materials availability will drive the cost up.
@@Eternal_Fire Agreed , but some debates as if they should've been hired instead of those engineers that worked on it with years of experience and degrees in it.
The North American grid is 240 volts at 60 hertz and is tripolar, but standard outlets are 120 volts at bipolar with a separate ground. Generally the higher voltage is used for manufacturing and electric appliances that require more power such as electric stoves and run at higher amperage. Standard outlet at 120 volts are either 15 or 20 amps.
So crazy to be hearing about Ambri again. I did a college engineering project on this company almost 10 years ago and now they're getting a big break to show off their batteries in the real world.
@@ezravandermeer2728 it depends on investment, the covid vaccine was done in less than a year because many countries poured money into it, if some billionaires would pour money into Ambri they’d be making progress quicker
sucking out the heat from the servers and putting it straight into the battery room, thats genius. i wonder how much you can heat up a concrete room before it starts breaking down.
Haven't heard of any serious progress about this company's battery development, but as this video suggests costs just outweigh the advantages of this battery. Manufacturing is expensive and highly resource demanding, and will be frowned upon by investors. I doubt they'll be ramping up with production anytime soon.
@@adrianjason13 it requires something like the Japanese fund they’re investing in solid state batteries or a company like VW who are developing their own.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof. Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass. Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia No scalable based on every location. Do you know how few locations are suited for hydroelectric dams with large enough space that won’t destroy an ecosystem or require the entire basin to be dug out? They’re scalable, but not opportune or capable of enough output to transfer power across the insane distances that would be necessary to rely on hydropower. Additionally, raw power “storage” isn’t really a thing in the grid at the moment. That’s why the battery buffers and flywheels matter so much in conversations about renewables and why dams hold most storage. It’s basically the _only_ storage we have. I’m certain many areas can massively benefit from usage of dams as buffers and will be encouraged to. But for everyone else, batteries are where it’s at.
@@PMA65537 Wikipedia only takes American or British English into consideration. The pronunciation here is Irish English. It’s not wrong or right, it’s just different.
I personally would love more videos on the darkside of economy of scale, amorization and technological lock in, as these are common problems in so many markets of every kind.
My engineering thesis was on energy storage for the grid. The biggest obstacle is trying to get the government to uptake other forms of energy storage that isn't lithium batteries
As far as I know this redox Flow batteries Kennedy Energy man seine definitely and you need some big reaction Chambers to quickly Store BS energy amounts and we are talking of millions of cubic meters to store Terawatt hours... in my opinion the best chance we have is to synthesize Methanol or something similar to store the energy in and pipe it through fuel cells to get the energy back out. It would even be easier to transport and distributed energy in this form
Although there is an opportunity in molten salt that could be used to create steam to drive turbines and be easily heated with electricity and maintain heat for longer periods and you could even transform old power plants into this types of storage
Honestly, for grid energy storage, the best option for the foreseeable future is probably going to _remain_ pumped hydroelectric. The lack of good sites is a nuisance, but a nuisance that ultimately can be dealt with by digging deep reservoir tanks: an expensive nuisance, but one that will pay off. Batteries themselves are almost incomprehensible as an option, because you need to batteries to not simply have a large capacity, but more particularly to have both extremely low losses (less than lithium-ion) and to last a long time (much longer than lithium-ion). If Satoway really can pull off full reversability of the chemistry then hopefully that would achieve it, but I certainly won't believe it until I actually see it done.
The fact that a private company is bringing into the world such an urgently-needed and revolutionary product while governments are sipping oil money and banning plastic straws is ridiculous.
Here is where I agree completely with Neil Degrasse Tyson. He talks about research for research's sake and how much came out of NASA that we use every day and I completely agree.
That's typically how it goes. Don't get me wrong, governments are capable of inventing things, but typically, its better that its done in the private sector. You have to keep in mind that if the government makes a bad investment in a technology, and it fails and gets scrapped, its not their money they wasted, but our tax dollars.
This is the kind of things for which the state can intervene for the greater good. Either subsidizing them or becoming the initial buyer would give producers the leg up they need in order to kickstart their scale economies. Thats why engineers need to be able to clearly communicate the benefits to economists which in turn need to influence economic policy.
yeah but its always hard to justify unless you can absolutely show direct and positive outcomes that taxpayers can obviously benefit from. gives those measures bad rep fairly often, and just who benefits from what is always pretty unclear and up to interpretation.
@@LimitedWard when applying for a research grant to first explore a technology (the cheapest stage), you at least show that the thermodynamics are sound. As you progress along the research/development stages, and the grants get more expensive, the grant applications need to have more substance to them. Same as in industry, where I pitch project ideas to my management.
It would be interesting to make a back-of-the-envelope calculation to find out how extensive the battery capacity would have to be for the grid to run on renewables.
@@mayamayhemmusic yeah... I have a feeling it just wouldn't add up if you count that solar isn't reliable seasonally in many parts of the world. There, you'd be left with a wind + batteries mix, which sounds like you'd have to set up a massively oversized wind capacity for it to run on almost windless days.
These numbers have been run before, and the conclusion was that there is _no_ storage technology that allows solar & wind to support a 1st world economy, because the energy required to maintain the whole system pushes the total return below a required 7/1 return on invested energy (this was assuming solar-thermal with pumped-hydroelectric for storage, which capped out around 5/1 as the combination with the best return; the need for 7/1 was largely dictated by things like aluminum smelters, rather than houses or anything). Hydroelectric and nuclear are both capable of the needed returns, but there aren't enough usable hydroelectric sites, and the very people most concerned with the environment tend to be extremely anti-nuclear, so the options that are easiest to do turn out to not match at all with the options that will meet our actual needs.
@@absalomdraconis That is the problem, when your Environmentalists are radical Luddites who bases their agenda based on ideology and not real science. The status quo remains the same until this doesn't change, which means less and less nuclear more and more fossil and renewable and our GHG emission increases constantly. The same people who want to save the planet based on their words are the biggest obstacle in the way to reduce our GHG emissions.
@Daniel Meyers the current supply lithium and cobalt is one of the major limiting factors for lithium batteries. If you attempt to run every vehicle not to mention cargo ship with them the supply will not be able to keep up. You would need several times the cobalt supply in the Congo to just power cargo shipping, and you would need batteries that are about 8-10 times more power dense to even try. Or you could just put the proven technology of nuclear power plants on cargo shipping and shipping would be carbon free, faster, and need fewer ships.
I'm glad you finally did a video about this battery, i had seen the TED talk about this kind of battery was was wondering when more detail would come forward.
I saw it too. Dr. Sadoway gave a great talk, TED need to have him do a update on his work. Those are the kind of people that help move his work forward.
I hear ya. SLS has cost about 18.6 billion as of now for only development. SpaceX valuation is 46 billion. I bet SpaceX has spent less on their entire program including all development (inc. Starlink) and launches than SLS development + future launches. The US Federal Government wont spend money unless it's spread around to different states. If 80% of the money got funneled into one state even though they would be spending 80% less they couldn't pass it. Imagine the money wasted in defense spending. I'm sure they buy "million dollar toilets" and no one will ever know. I got the SLS development cost from their Wiki page on 1/3/2021. Also go the SpaceX valuation from the SpaceX wiki page on 1/3/2021.
Manufacturing a dozen ceramic seals for a rocket and a space station would be crazy expensive (at least ten thousand dollars, probably much more), yes. But manufacturing a billion of these parts for use in batteries could possibly cost less than a billion dollars.
I've been in renewable energy since the early 70's and the "Holy Grail" has always been cheap and reliable energy storage. If I had a nickle for every time I've heard "This new technology will finally provide a cheap and reliable battery solution!" I would be VERY rich!
@@ValMartinIreland True. I believe it's because it need some abstract thinking. You can't see electricity like you could see gears for example. I don't feel very competent at electrical stuff, I'm more of a thermodynamics guy, but whenever I try to explain someone something that requires 11th grade math, they're bored (or rather dismissive and give up trying to understand) by the second sentence.
Do see my comments.... yes you WILL FIND THE "HOLY GRAIL" OF S2S (Sunset-To-Sunrise) Energy Storage in UHES... It has always been there .. but the focus was on Electricity Production (5,000TWhrs/yr today) and as the Demand was much much higher for Hydro Sites to provide... so Fossil.. Nuclear followed and "promised the sky"... They did deliver.... but also left/created Deadly Pollution... that is TODAY causing 9Million PreMature Deaths Annually and 275Million DALY of Suffering at a Societal Cost of $36.5Trillion/yr ( $1Million/Victim; $100,000/DALY of Suffering). However... using just a very tiny portion of the Non-Polluting Solar Energy the issues related to Sustsinable Supply of Energy (120,000TWhrs/yr today and 180,000TWhrs/yr in 2050) has receeded and become irrelevent.. but requires 40,000TWhrs/yr or 120TWhrs/Day of S2S Energy Storage / Generation. UHES readily achieves this as the role of the 1TW Hydro Plants around the world of being a "Generator of Primary Electricity" is replaced by 10TW/120TWhrs Daily of S2S Energy Storage/Generation... using the EXISTING HYDRO SITES and providing larger Lower Reservours with just 120TWhrs of Storage (barely 2.5% of the EXISTING Main Reservours above providing 5,000TWhrs of Water Storage...)
Very cogent discussion, backed up by unassailable research. Well done! Sadoway is an international treasure, and your reporting and presentation are world-class. All good wishes for a brilliant 2021.
You know when you learn something recently in school and it is mentioned in an educational video? I recently learned about electronegativity and now am squealing while typing this comment out.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof. Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass. Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia you know, kinda funny, how you say 95% of the world's grid energy storage is pumped hydro storage, when lithium-ion grid batteries have been around for less than 10 years, while pumped hydro is over 100 years old
It isn't that hard to store energy, but unfortunately, economics/politics often gets in the way. You can pump water up a hill and release it again. You can split water and burn the H2. You can heat something and use the heat to power a generator. You can compress air and power a turbine. Etc. The thing is there are already people against wind turbines and solar panels near them. Now imagine a giant reservoir of water, H2, hot substance, or compressed air and you have your answer why the economics don't pan out most of the time.
Just a little correction, a flywheel doesn't maintain the speed of an engine. It acts as an energy buffer and smoothens the torque ripple from the engine. I believe a governor should be the one you are referring to. Big fan of your work!
Balls to the wall was an old expression for the steam pressure regulator...cool to hear somebody with correct terminology and understanding of "frequency"...
Thanks for providing us such a quality content. Li -ion cells need cooling to maintain at about 20-45 °C ok, that seems easy compared to keeping entire energy storage at 500°C for ambri LM batteries. Just a suggestion; a follow up video about thermal cooling/heating requirements about Li-ion 21700,or new 4680 like in Tesla and ambri batteries would be awesome.
Technology lock-in: the process of societal stagnation and paralysis whereby dominant market actors suppress revolutionary products, no matter how beneficial they are to society, in order to maintain profits.
Why wouldn't they act within their own interests. The market rewards them for using such tactics and punishes them if they lose market share. It's not their fault that they are behaving like typical humans.
Time for the government to step in and save society from stagnation! There must be at least one of the *many* political parties that wants to do that, no?
@@jannikheidemann3805 There are many, genius, but when banksters and other billionaire scum pump billions into keeping far right, anti-science parties that let them steal elected, even best ideas can't start fixing the problem. Too bad there are way too many idiots brainwashed into believing capitalism is any good with the above stolen billions...
Interesting, always like theses videos since renewables tend to be so thoughtlessly integrated, it’s nice seeing some potential solutions. I don’t see any almost 100% renewables happening, you’ll always want some variery to the grid. But it’s always good seeing people stepping away from thinking they can just slap some solar and Lion batteries together and then you expect it to work.
It’s annoying because then people against renewables the use that as an excuse to say renewables are ineffective and that because of that fossil fuels are a ‘necessary evil’
@@48th_president_obama56 they are ineffective especially in Northern or southerly climes, less so in more equatorial ones where the weather is more consistent. If the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow for the few days the grid (like in the UK the other week) must have 100% fossil fuel capacity in reserve to power the grid. Local small scale nuclear power production is the greenest technology we have right now to support our society, renewables are not it. Even batteries like described in this video will not be able to handle the sheer amount of power that needs to be stored and discharged. The best use for renewables I feel are to create a portable power source like methane.
But also, it is good to have multiple types of energy (fuel) in use. because if everything we use goes on electricity, if it sounds nice, this makes a high demand of particular resource, where the price skyrocket. We could use 2-3 types, like Synthetic Fuels (eFuel) which doesn't produce gases, electricity and something else: that could balance off the price, especially if we define which resource is used for what. And production would not be stressed as much..
@@Codysdab yeah you’re right, what I meant is that people use it as an excuse as to not change the current situation I am completely in support for a wider use of nuclear energy, I’m excited that their have been plans for an expansion of nuclear power in my country. What I mean in my first comment is that because of the misimplementation of renewable energy in some countries, people use that as an excuse that we cannot improve things.
I think that's called education. Not just improving public education, but also promoting a culture of being both eternal students and eternal teachers.
@@WanderTheNomad This basically; you need a society to have a want to become smart, teach more effectively and have objective education. Teach people how to ask questions and how to reason vs how to think.
@@publicdomain1103 "Breakthrough: researchers on Titan announced today that they've successfully deployed and tested superconducting wire outdoors with no additional supporting infrastructure at standard atmospheric temperatures and pressures."
This was an incredibly insightful video, I've always thought lithium-ion wasn't the best option for stationary grid-size battery packs and I've got my answer right here. PS: I was hesitant of subscribing to CuriosityStream, now I did it for one year. Thanks!
You'll need a lot of batteries for the 176 earth-day day/night cycle, and some _really_ good insulation for night when it gets down to just 100 Kelvin.
Would love to see this storage technology be integrated in a way with energy production so that the heat generated from energy creation can warm start the batteries, further increasing efficiency!
@@paulhaynes8045 If you think you know enough about science, did you know that CO2 climate forcing is already almost maxed out at the current level of 400ppm?
That makes sense, current lithium tech has been pushing hard at energy density, pushing for the highest kWh/Kg it can. It makes sense if weight isn't a concern you can find something that works better for kWh/$
The number that deeply matters is kWh produced / kWh grid maintenance. If a major improvement of that metric can be demonstrated over pumped-hydroelectric then this battery technology may be enough to push solar-thermal beyond the 7/1 return on invested power that first-world economies require, but if not then this won't make solar or wind viable as primary power sources.
Isn't volumetricenergyty important in some places? I mean there's not really an infinite amount of land to house energy storage, and expanding it beyond population centers can harm the environment. idk though if there is enough space for energy storage that is inside human settlements.aybe someone should look into how much space is needed for energy storage, depending on how energy dense it is.
@@hi-gf5yl That's kind of the problem with pumped-hydroelectric, though that's just as much a problem with the land available. You need a large area and a large height difference between reservoirs.
As an addendum, I must clarify that the sodium batteries I believe have lower power densities than lithium ion right now! It doesn't matter, as I want to see huge sodium ion batteries put in static positions, to support hometowns and cities, as energy backup. Buildings in cities and towns, especially these box stores, should be covered with solar cells, especially since they're so ugly anyway, they would look better with a bank of solar cells with a pitch roof design on them.
And you can use the batteries to cool the solar cells somehow as well by heating up the batteries, allowing higher energy efficiency from the cells , and creating higher temps for the batteries saving energy on both ends
Just dig a shallow hole where you make the installation. Worst case scenario, you get a liquid metal lake. Best case scenario, the engineers know what they are doing and no such thing happens.
@@pe5erbarnes that's one part of the problem, another part is big spinny thing wants to spin one way, and the earth tries to spin it in the wrong direction
@@xureality ",,, the earth tries to spin it in the wrong direction" 1) The earth never tries to spin in the wrong direction. 2) That is only an issue when generators are installed backwards, which is easy to fix. They just spin the building 180 degrees.
This is a crazy idea but it would be a fun video to use Lake Erie as pumped hydro from lake Ontario. The drop is something like 320 feet and Lake Erie is ten thousand square miles. Only have to put 3 to 9 inches in it
@@Bob_Lob_Law , the losses come from heat in the pump motors and friction in the plumbing. The big size of the reservoirs just means more storable energy :)
@@massimookissed1023 What about seepage, evaporation etc? Who is to say all the water you pump up will come back down again, with a natural reservoir of such a large size? Also, if this is such a great idea, why hasn't it been implemented yet?
@@Bob_Lob_Law I think you are trolling. The present inflow to Lake Erie from the Detroit river is more than adequate for all the current seepage and evaporation. Adding a few inches would not make any difference to that
A modern super grid is just as important as battery storage. Building a High Voltage DC grid, not to replace the AC grid (at least not yet), but to complement it, solar panels are perfect for the new DC grid since they generate DC while wind turbines should stay on the AC grid since they produce AC. The new grid should be below ground for safety and reliability. The DC connectors in the wall used could be USB-C since most modern computers and phones is using them already, and would work worldwide without travel adapters.
I once went to a talk by a guy who runs a battery company. He said it took some 10 years from initial discovery to rolling out on the main production line
Why not put these batteries inside the solar thermal towers? you then have a constant heat source and heat back up (molten salt) and renewable source of energy, and then the battery backs up the entire system. Seems like this can be this niche market.
Maybe not in the towers, but somewhere in thermal contact with the heat cycle. But I don't see the point, you already have a cheap heat resorvoir "battery" in the molten salts, why add an electrical battery? Besides, Tonapah has been a disappointment compared to other technologies from my understanding, I doubt we'll see more of them being built.
@@alandoak5146 The heat res can't be scaled the same way the batteries can, but the heat can aid in this kind of battery's efficiency, I agree with you though. Perhaps a hybrid system of integrating the heat capacity in with the battery pack.
I hope they're working on much bigger cells. Stack a bunch of those together and all that insulation on the inside is just to keep the labels from burning.
Humanity’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
@@popopop984 the poisioning the ocean fukeshima may have already done it. it may aklready be to late. im all about the alt energies just not nuclear. there is plenty of wind solar and tidal and we have the engineering expertes we have to squash the oil and coal interests
I can see it working for magacities energy storage as a group of huge underground "siamese" swimming pools, to "share/stabilize" its heat, connected in series to reach the desirable voltage. The terrain layer around the ceramic pools can work as a thermal battery and other outer terrain layer can work as a insulator, just changing its composition (sand/clay) during the site construction phase. Keep in mind that volume grows "cubic" and area grows "square", it means the bigger the volume gets, less surface area in proportion to lose heat.
In Australia we often refer to the "tyranny of distance", which applies directly to Grids and Grid Storage, a magnificent Engineering problem solving exercise. If the future expectations of Solar Roof Micro generation, Home Battery Storage and P2P EV vehicles continues, then there's a bit of explaining to be done as to why Government does not promote the same on-site Power systems for the Industries, the same ones we were told to buy our own systems for so as to allow them cheaper access to the failing fossil fuel system.
It is interesting how a first world country with such immense lithium and solar resources is still using steampunk technology to power its grid. They would also be a prime candidate for SMRs for base load if they are purchased in bulk.
Some good points there. Nuclear fusion is still many years away sadly, so the only viable answer currently seems to be renewables such as wind, hydro and solar, but more efficient storage management must be the future,that is to say massive CO2-cooled battery installations. Great video thanks.
Sounds terrific for the electric grid period, not just for renewable energy. If you can store energy; then you can reduce the generating capacity of the power plants needed to meet grid peak demand. This means smaller in number and size of coal, natural gas, or oil electric generating power stations. That alone will reduce pollution whether you add in renewable energy or don't add in renewable energy to your grid. It's a win-win.
you mean the one with cranes from the swiss company? Would also love to know more about it especially how scalable and cost effiction it is compared to hydro pump and battery technology like this on or Li-Ion!
"According to the BGS Risk List 2015, antimony is ranked second highest (after rare earth elements) on the relative supply risk index." This quote was from the wiki page on antimony, along with more info on world reserves and production capacity. I'm no expert on mining, and haven't made sense of this seeming contradiction. So, is antimony really "dirt cheap", and scalable to energy grids? Tangentially, are antimony politics, extraction, production and reprocessing potentially cleaner than the alternatives? The wiki page seems to suggest that it's on the dirtier end.
Yea, rare earth are really common but the main issue it's that most of them are "diluted" so it's not cost effective trying to mine them unless they are grouped together by some kind of geological process, usually meteoric deposition, so in that sense they are very rare
antimony is rare but common. it's common since it's everywhere, but it's rare because there aren't many large deposits of it. (cost of extraction greater than it's worth) on top of this, most countries aren't mining it so because of that, it's an issue in terms of scalable supply.
The sheer number of batteries of the mechanical variety is truly astounding. True you lose % with mechanical batteries, but near endless possibilities.... A train on a hill is a mechanical battery. Near Limitless possibilities.
I mean it's cool and all, but this video felt like an ad for that type of grid storage, rather than an exploration of the different types of grid storage that could compete with Li-ion, which is what the title and the intro implied
Pump hydro storage doesn't need to compete with Li-ion because it already bested li-ion at it own game. Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage.
@@luongmaihunggia Dude why are you everywhere? Are you a lobbyist for pumped hydro storage?😂This battery isn't supposed to compete with pumped hydro storage. They meant not scalable as in you can't build pumped hydro anywhere you want. You need to have a huge water source nearby. 95% of grid storage is pumped hydro because there are no other reliable storage sources and this battery is trying to be that reliable option along with pumped hydro.
@@deepaksanaka yeah. So what? So what if pump storage can't be build anywhere? So what? Just build it in places that are possible and then connect it to the grid with cables. Problem solved.
Here's a link to the podcast. watchnebula.com/modulus/battery-breakthroughs
Is nebula and curiosity in India?
so you're bacically saying that we dont have enough elements
@@vasubawa yes
Is this the missing link mentioned in the video?
@@RealEngineering What do you think about the new Boston Dynamics video?
I love how Prof. Sadoway addresses scalability & affordability. Making something work in a laboratory environment is a very different problem than implementing it at a large scale.
It feels like he has been tooting his horn forever about his batteries but nothing has ever been shown in real life. I hope he can deliver what he says he has but if we hold our breath any longer we will all pass out.
@@instanoodles Yes. Sadoway "had the solution" years ago but he's never figured out how to make it work. Time to ignore him until he can produce a liquid metal battery that works.
@@bobwallace9753 Being as it's now being deplyed I think we can now say it works.
@@scottn7cy I'm unaware of any of Sadoway's batteries on the grid. Got a reference?
@@bobwallace9753 did you watch the video? The first deployment of Sadoway's batteries will be used for a data center near Reno NV.
I really liked how you covered the "challenges" of manufacturing, and how that is a barrier. Almost no battery video which talks about "breakthroughs" touches this aspect.
I think the main difference is that those other videos are mainly focusing on the science of technology. They may be revolutionary in theory but are they worth it? Engineering is a bit of a different beast and takes into account the economic powers that factor into creating usable technologies. You can't be a good engineer if you don't know how to factor in concepts like logistics, economics and scalability.
Well www.redflow.com has met that challenge and is in production now. You can go buy one and it will be as good, or better in some regards, than Ambri and especially lithium.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof.
Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass.
Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia There are requirements on where we can build pump hydro storage. You need a steep slope to pump the water up, a large catchment area on top, and access to water. This means hills or mountains with a flat area and a river or lake nearby. This also has ecological consequences, since the catchment area requires clearing a large area (though that's not what we're talking about). There are only so many places you can build pump hydro storage.
In comparison, the batteries detailed in this video can be used anywhere. This means that the only barrier for scalability is material availability (which isn't going to be a problem anytime soon). Scalablility isn't about how much we have right now. It's how much we can have in the future. If we need more capacity, it's relatively easy to build another battery station. How easy is it to build more pump hydro storage facilities?
@@luongmaihunggia it’s not scalable because of the land needed
Sony: "Fine, I'll just do it myself."
they did the same with the PlayStation as Nintendo ditched the optical drive for the SNES and N64
That has always been (still is?) large part of their corporate culture.
Reminds me of how Intel declained Apple's request to design and manufacture chips to power what was soon to be called...the iPhone.
Almost 15 years later, and Apple is about to destroy their market with their incredibles desktop targeted and custom designed ARMs. Congrats Intel, you played yourself (for the moment).
Energy storage is impossible batteries don't work.
So Thanos was inspired by Sony
"you know in university, you build 5 cells, one of them works and you get a publication and everyone is high fiving and so on - but in manifacturing, everything has to work" lmao
That part came exactly at the second i was reading your comment
@@rohankishibe8259 same tf
Exactly, Prototypes are easy, manufacturing is hard, by 10x to 100x hard.
I love how he perfectly describe his achievement
one of them works...kinda... sorta...
Didn’t know that Sony was the first ones to introduce lithium-ion batteries to the masses.
They, if not invented, started something big.
guess you could say they were powerful
@@morganwilliams2863 just trying to energize everyone with some humour yea
Watts wrong with that? 😆
Sony invented a lot of first-time innovations for the consumers. First Li-ion batteries, first portable audio device in walkman and discman, first to make waterproof phones in the xperia series. First to make LED edge backlighting on their Bravia TVs. First to commit to the development of superior high-resolution audio codec such as DSD and LDAC for wireless.
There are so many innovations that Sony made that we take for granted. The list are endless. But not many people know about it or even talk about it. Maybe it's because they have poor marketing department. Or perhaps, they're just too humble for it.
@@LamZL1 Ohm my goodness. Good puns.
Sony Li-ion batteries were outsourced to Panasonic, which was a well stablished battery manufacturer, so this professor is stretching the truth a bit.
I wonder if the term "lava battery" has any marketing merit.
Molten silicon thermal energy storage technology already exists
Hmm If mincraft has showed me anything its that lava is extremely usefull.
@Dylan Chester
RE: "I wonder if the term 'lava battery' has any marketing merit."
I don't think so; the word lava has too many negative connotations (forests, houses and towns burning), in my humble opinion. But then again, lava lamps were popular during the '70s.
@@spaceman081447 we can't forget the smash hit movie volcano that used lava extensively throughout the movie
A "Lava Cell" might sell better. ;D
Im from South Australia. The blackout was good fun. My local pub had a generator built in and as word spread, a quiet bar became the most packed its probably ever been.
And on that day, the genny paid for itself twice over and the publican was pleased. :)
Which pub?
Was it actually a tornado, or was it a large cyclone?
@@ParoXyzmm it was a series of very heavy storms that were the tail-end of a tropical cyclone. "Tornadoes" are an American thing. Cheers ;)
@@sixstringedthing Thanks for the clarification
This astounding amount of quality research and detailed facts paired with beautiful and comprehensive presentation is seriously above anything else on youtube. Please keep up the awesome work!
Exactly why it's based on facts not opinions like betza limits the limits eliminating most of superior infinite values of wind for change stuck in corporates pockets 103 years so far south. of course truth .Tides stiil X 1000 best energy storage opinions established .
Yes, it's well done.
That said, I think renewable energy is 21st century pyramid building and GW is a laid of it.
Just burn coal and clean up the smoke, or use nuclear.
This might be the best video you ever made. The interview sections were also a great addition!
This ain't the mountain peak man, we are just at its feet.
I agree, the best video of him I've seen yet. Included great interviews with the real people behind the technology, that didn't just try to hype the tech up, but explained the pro's and cons in an ethical way.
Loved it, this format was excellent!
"Best video" my ass.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof.
Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass.
Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia it requires a shit ton of water and a large elevated position able to contain a lake to store the uphill side of the facility. You can't just whack it down anywhere you want more storage.
energynews.us/2011/11/22/midwest/pumped-hydro-not-a-magic-bullet-for-energy-storage/
Please do keep us updated on those batteries : )
Update yourself man. Most of the people who get these technologies off the ground are no smarter than you or I. They most of the time persisted and got a little lucky.
The very idea of batteries flies in the face of the Theory of Thermodynamics. Too bad.
@@robertmacdonnell258 Please explain
@@durnsidh6483 You can't win, you can't break even, and you have to play the game. Don't you know the three laws?
@@robertmacdonnell258 But you have yet to explain how batteries violate the three laws.
3:40 "It was a poorly planned grid." Erm, yes, it was a poorly planned grid because it was sold off to Hong Kong Infrastructure company many years before, and they had done sweet little since then, reaping the profits and doing virtually no upgrades. Onto this grid was added renewables like wind, hydro and solar because they were cheapest, but the infrastructure company did little to nothing to ensure grid harmonisation.
This is what happens when you don't have vertical integration and sell everything off. Blaming wind-turbines for a storm that toppled power stanchions and cut power lines on an ageing grid decades overdue for an update is disingenuous, since it became evident after PM Malcolm Turnbull's comments that there was a political purpose of moating fossil fuels by using the storm event as a weapon to attack renewable energy uptake.
PM Turnbull at the time, using the storm and subsequent blackout as an excuse, said that renewable uptake was 'irresponsible' and thus implying that this was responsible for the blackout - but it was the very neoliberal economic policies of selling everything off that was 'irresponsible', since no new renewable additions to the grid had been properly integrated.
Well thought-out answer, but I think you meant disingenuous and not ingenuous.
Yes, and flogging it and others to foreign buyers like the chynese, who have no vested interest in maintaining, improving, and ensuring continuity of supply was straight out vandalism to our country and its corporate interestrs as well. Totally irresponsible and should have been disallowed.
@@WayneKitching thanks Ed! fixed.
@@linmal2242 (Retired IT field support for a major electric company with focus on energy delivery here) Absolutely right. Political considerations invariably degrade electric systems. Here in the Western US we have the geographically largest interconnection in North America, spanning the US roughly west of the Rockies and the provinces of BC and Alberta in Canada. California seems to think the laws of physics can be bent to the laws of politicians. Without the rest of the interconnection to stabilize them load shedding would be a normal part of every evening.
@@flagmichael Yeah... but that's just how renewables *have* to work. Either you have high levels of interconnection (so that an area that's clouded over and experiencing calm weather can still draw power from various still sunny or still windy partners), or you have high levels of storage. Both is better of course, but the path that California chose - overproducing because of their excellent geographical location, then selling it to less perfectly placed neighbors - isn't a bad way of doing things, even if California didn't implement it as well (yet) as could be desired.
So it's disingenuous to say that it's merely "politicians being stupid politicians", since *having an interconnected grid is a large part of what makes renewables affordable*. You can do it with just local storage of course, but it's much more expensive to take the "just local storage only" path forward.
Thank you for actually talking about power frequency regulation, which is a measurement often forgotten or misunderstood by other TH-camrs talking about next generation grid storage. Storage capacity and output power are good measurements for medium and long term energy storage, but short term frequency smoothing for renewables like wind is something that is essential in a green power grid!
"If you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt."
Haha, I love it!
Pun intended lol
Everything is made of dirt. Lithium is dirt. Diamonds are dirt.
And only after some time you’ll realize how expensive dirt really is.
Thorium that is all.
Dirt is cheap. The cost is in the “making”.
No Sci-Fy nosense
Start to explain a metal lava battery
Cool as always
We've had similar concept batteries since WW2. Not that crazy, just not in widespread usage.
@@baltasarjimenez2091 Yes, "hot" accumulators were researched and tested decades ago. In the 1970s, electric buses, etc... The problem was to keep them hot. Also, they were not very environmentally friendly, due to toxic materials...
well if they already have working cells it's not really sci-fi
Molten sodium batteries come to mind, very niche product, they used to provide power for air to air missiles.
🥔 potato batteries. Series or parallel, just like solar, can work great in groups 😁
"Deep cycling" is the thing that makes this sound so much better and more possible
I loved this. Two things:
1) CNTs are actually plausibly commercializable in ten years. Arguably they're already commercialized as they're deployed in a lot of contexts, albeit haphazardly (lightweight tennis rackets being the constant example). The fact that they're being put into products, and have been for years now is actually a cause for alarm given that they're able to infiltrate the body and cross the blood/brain barrier. I worked as a policy research assistant to a nanotechnology lab and there was a lot of excitement about doping battery anodes with CNTs and whatnot at the time. So both CNTs and hyper-energy-dense battery technology are just about fully realized.
2) I did my PhD dissertation on technology policy, and used grid-scale energy storage as a case study. I think the title of your video is a little misleading: the economics and technology development aspects of grid-scale energy storage are solved at this point. Ambri's battery chemisty is SUPER exciting and will, no doubt, push the economics even further, but we can go ahead with renewables today. I would argue that the real missing link is the political and sociofinancial wherewithal. Just as you describe lock-in as a function of a LI+ manufacturer's sunk costs specializing in that chemistry, grid operators and utilities have a psychological lock-in to current grid technologies. They simply don't have the perspective to value storage, and so they keep telling policymakers and regulators that "it's too expensive" and "it doesn't work."
Technologically, speaking, however, there is still a major innovation that we desperately need. We can go ahead and deploy 100% renewable grids right now, but they'll be more expensive than they really need to be because storage operation is a new concept to us, and every technology (Pumped Hydro/CCAS, flywheel, battery+inverter, thermal storage, etc) operates differently and is optimal for a different use case. Current grid planning tools, but in particular grid operating software, doesn't have the capacity to use these assets to their fullest potential. Massive upheval in grid tech is going to be needed, starting with the ability of the grid to self-monitor and then, as a consequence, cybersecurity for that capacity. I'd love to see you talk about the software side of all this.
Great vid, though. Love your stuff.
Bringing in the world-leading expert, quantitative analysis and reviewing the literature. This video is incredible. Completely rich in state of the art content too, that's not even mentioning the animations!
Well done Brian. It is so good to see the channel growing 🙌
4:04 that gauge looks happy.
It's the happiness gauge
So I'm not the only one who noticed that :D
Nice
:D
:D
LOL! As a chemistry teacher I used to ask my students to write down hypothetical batteries using redox tables, that was one of the solutions :-)
the hard part is actually building prototypes of these hypothetical batteries to see which ones work
@@samsawesomeminecraft not really, the hard part is producing them in enough numbers that is affordable, economies of scale and everything
so there's two hard parts!
@@samsawesomeminecraft at least the anode and cathode are not hard (solid) here 😂
I really like how you include references and indicate them in your videos.
"Well fine! I'll start my own battery manufacturing facility! With lithium! And ions!" -Sony
And blackjack, and hookers 🙂
@@fartingfury In fact forget the manufacturing facility!
@@jorkobsuffixmeat7842 ... and the lithium...
What about the subject of solid state batteries, e.g. QuantumScape's solid state battery?
14:55 "you know at the university you make 5 cells and one of them works and you get a publication out of it and everyones highfiving and so on..." XD
I only understood 1/3 of this video but the 3D models in the Battery set are FIRE!! It took me a few seconds to realize they were CG!
Great work to Mike Ridolfi, the animator (and I'm assuming 3d modeler)! The texturing and lighting was perfect!
A shame TH-cam doesn't show these videos to much wider audiences
@@AbdulGoodLooks it does. just not everyone clicks on it. TH-cam suggests videos it thinks you might like. if you click, you're more likely to be served similar videos or the same video. if you don't it won't reservice it. there are thousands of other points that the algorithm takes into account.
But, there's nothing to stop you from sharing this video on other social media!
Thanks ☺️
Love your dedication to high quality research for your videos! You make your sources transparent and even put in an interview with a leading expert - great work!
I should just mention this, I live in South Australia and we don’t get tornadoes here. Our blackouts are just caused by storms with heavy winds. The northern parts of Australia, mostly Queensland, do get the occasional cyclone.
iirc there was a small tornado that took down some HV towers in SA during that storm. Tornado's are possible all over australia, they are just very rare. There are waterspout tornado's off the coast of sydney reletivly often (maybe 1 every year or two).
South Australia government - mismanagement + blackouts.
New South Wales - zero blackouts.
We had a tornado in Hobart, Tasmania in recent time. They’re rare, but far from non-existent.
the correct term would be 'tropical cyclone', 'cyclones' (also called 'typhoons in asia) spin in the other direction. the 'cyclones' that came off the gulf and killed the north-south link was a 'mini-tropical-cyclone'
"Not scalable to our current needs" - unintended pun there ;)
It just does not have the potential :/
@@binguscat2514 yes, I need me my currants, they're delicious.
Facepalm
They’re the best ones.
the 0.1% of puns
The animations are looking incredible! You have inspired me to pursue a career in a STEM field. Continue the fantastic work :)
That’s amazing good luck 👍 what are you studying?
Welcome, brother! Get out while you still can 😊
@@Penguinmanereikel the man hasn’t explained himself yet let me take his take first
what field?
@@linecraftman3907 Mechatronics probably but I’d like to explore options to get into the Aerospace industry.
@4:21 I can't unsee that smiling gauge :D
17:32 Heartless people ! Give that Cell Assembly a hug come on !
Hahahahaha
Using Li-ion cells for everything is a bit like using titanium for things of metal. Possible, but not practical.
^^ This.
You use the metal that makes the most sense for your application.
On paper that's true. However, Li-ion's scale of production is making it cheap enough to work with anything. These batteries, and others like it, may make more sense on paper, but the costs are a huge factor right now. Li-ion has options already for lightweight applications and high cycle applications. Will be interesting to see if these take off, but I'm not sure they ever will.
People used to say the same thing about Steel and Aluminium at various points in history.
More like Aluminium, applicable to more situations than titanium, but people will continue to make ships and skyscrapers out of Steel.
@@anthonypelchat lithium batteries have scalability issues and recycling issues. Getting enough rare earth metals to switch all the cars and grid to lithium will be hard. It is so hard that we are already looking into deep sea mining with robots (which isn't good because we know very little about deep sea ecosystems and how large scale mining will affect them). Rare earth metal mining is not a green process in general, it's very destructive to the environment and produces a lot of toxic waste.
So there are hidden costs to lithium batteries, manufacturing cost went significantly down but at some point we will hit a point where raw materials availability will drive the cost up.
Why listen to Real Engineering when his comments sections are packed with experts?
XD That was a good one ,basically every "explanation" video where you get the experts who graduated from comment academy.
@@alchemist2048 😂😂
Lolololol, IKR!
@@alchemist2048 but by going through them you can improve your understanding also
@@Eternal_Fire Agreed , but some debates as if they should've been hired instead of those engineers that worked on it with years of experience and degrees in it.
The North American grid is 240 volts at 60 hertz and is tripolar, but standard outlets are 120 volts at bipolar with a separate ground. Generally the higher voltage is used for manufacturing and electric appliances that require more power such as electric stoves and run at higher amperage. Standard outlet at 120 volts are either 15 or 20 amps.
So crazy to be hearing about Ambri again. I did a college engineering project on this company almost 10 years ago and now they're getting a big break to show off their batteries in the real world.
@@deepak_nigwal science is slow
@@ezravandermeer2728 Science isn't that slow, getting the funds and bureaucracy is slow.
@@robinsuj true but the process is still pretty slow
@@ezravandermeer2728 it depends on investment, the covid vaccine was done in less than a year because many countries poured money into it, if some billionaires would pour money into Ambri they’d be making progress quicker
Half way through the video*
"So this is where things get complicated"
Me: ఠ_ఠ yeaa..
When that pesky reality shows up. "Renewed" with crude oil just like everything else 🤣
John Mulaney Voice: We're well past that.
These animations. 😍 This Knowledge 😍 Great Video!
Jup, der Kanal ist wirklich konstant gut.
Ja ich mag wie detailliert er auf die Themen eingeht.
I agree with this but don't use the God dam emojis
Imagine using the heat generated by that data center combined with a heat pump in order to keep the batteries at optimal temperatures.
sucking out the heat from the servers and putting it straight into the battery room, thats genius.
i wonder how much you can heat up a concrete room before it starts breaking down.
@@koloblicinrefactory concrete
Please can we get an update when Ambry start their battery production.
Haven't heard of any serious progress about this company's battery development, but as this video suggests costs just outweigh the advantages of this battery. Manufacturing is expensive and highly resource demanding, and will be frowned upon by investors. I doubt they'll be ramping up with production anytime soon.
@@adrianjason13 the same issue could hinder the progress of solid state batteries for use in electric vehicles
@@adrianjason13 it requires something like the Japanese fund they’re investing in solid state batteries or a company like VW who are developing their own.
There is a problem with it he doesn't tell us.
This was a very pragmatic introduction to this promising storage solution. I wish all sustainable energy related videos were like this.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof.
Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass.
Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia No scalable based on every location. Do you know how few locations are suited for hydroelectric dams with large enough space that won’t destroy an ecosystem or require the entire basin to be dug out? They’re scalable, but not opportune or capable of enough output to transfer power across the insane distances that would be necessary to rely on hydropower. Additionally, raw power “storage” isn’t really a thing in the grid at the moment. That’s why the battery buffers and flywheels matter so much in conversations about renewables and why dams hold most storage. It’s basically the _only_ storage we have. I’m certain many areas can massively benefit from usage of dams as buffers and will be encouraged to. But for everyone else, batteries are where it’s at.
@@GuiSmith no. Not hydro electric dam. *Pump* hydro electric dam.
@@luongmaihunggia It is the same, you'll need a large valley to pump all those water, and it will destroy the ecosystem.
I can't say I've ever heard the word cation pronounced that way before
I checked wikipedia and it seems this video is wrong.
9:32 😆
English spelling is a nightmare. I need a va-cation
When your cat-ions are off chasing mouse-ions, you have to switch to the more expensive cash-ions.
Cat ion
@@PMA65537 Wikipedia only takes American or British English into consideration. The pronunciation here is Irish English.
It’s not wrong or right, it’s just different.
When it said they need a niche customer. My first thought was data centers.
i work at one, great idea
"if you want to make something dirt cheap make it out of dirt"
I think you're on to something here bud.
Dirt=carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, plus assorted minerals. These are the building blocks of everything we know.
*angry elon musk noises*
@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 we can use chemical reactions to suck them out of the dirt lololololololol
Even cheaper if you make it out of air.
I personally would love more videos on the darkside of economy of scale, amorization and technological lock in, as these are common problems in so many markets of every kind.
this video need more views such innovations cant remain unheard
I like your way of covering difficult science-economic relationship. Keep it going!
I LOVE recommending science-youtubers
to people in c-sections under science-youtubers!!
May I? Or is this too random?
science-economic is called engineering. Making science on constrained budget.
My engineering thesis was on energy storage for the grid. The biggest obstacle is trying to get the government to uptake other forms of energy storage that isn't lithium batteries
Why is that such a big obstacle?
Bureaucrats and mid-level managers are violently opposed to everything new, because they think it could fail and damage their careers.
TBH, Redox Flow Batteries seem like the more promising technology for this kind of application. Super cheap and massively scalable.
Yeah I would like a video about them too from Real Engineering. Specially organic ones.
As far as I know this redox Flow batteries Kennedy Energy man seine definitely and you need some big reaction Chambers to quickly Store BS energy amounts and we are talking of millions of cubic meters to store Terawatt hours... in my opinion the best chance we have is to synthesize Methanol or something similar to store the energy in and pipe it through fuel cells to get the energy back out. It would even be easier to transport and distributed energy in this form
Although there is an opportunity in molten salt that could be used to create steam to drive turbines and be easily heated with electricity and maintain heat for longer periods and you could even transform old power plants into this types of storage
Yep soon as I heard that it needs to be stored hot i thought why not redox flow
Honestly, for grid energy storage, the best option for the foreseeable future is probably going to _remain_ pumped hydroelectric. The lack of good sites is a nuisance, but a nuisance that ultimately can be dealt with by digging deep reservoir tanks: an expensive nuisance, but one that will pay off. Batteries themselves are almost incomprehensible as an option, because you need to batteries to not simply have a large capacity, but more particularly to have both extremely low losses (less than lithium-ion) and to last a long time (much longer than lithium-ion). If Satoway really can pull off full reversability of the chemistry then hopefully that would achieve it, but I certainly won't believe it until I actually see it done.
The fact that a private company is bringing into the world such an urgently-needed and revolutionary product while governments are sipping oil money and banning plastic straws is ridiculous.
Here is where I agree completely with Neil Degrasse Tyson. He talks about research for research's sake and how much came out of NASA that we use every day and I completely agree.
That's typically how it goes. Don't get me wrong, governments are capable of inventing things, but typically, its better that its done in the private sector. You have to keep in mind that if the government makes a bad investment in a technology, and it fails and gets scrapped, its not their money they wasted, but our tax dollars.
The most interesting thing I learned from this video is that Japan has two different power grids =p
Glad I’m not the only one that noticed that! What a nightmare.
Fukoshima was the unfortunate result of that.
Gun,
what!
Fukoshma was due to a tsunami.
@@gun10ck How was fukushima a result of different power grids???
USA has 3
This is the kind of things for which the state can intervene for the greater good. Either subsidizing them or becoming the initial buyer would give producers the leg up they need in order to kickstart their scale economies. Thats why engineers need to be able to clearly communicate the benefits to economists which in turn need to influence economic policy.
Absolutely, but the technology first needs to prove itself before governments can responsibly invest in them.
yeah but its always hard to justify unless you can absolutely show direct and positive outcomes that taxpayers can obviously benefit from. gives those measures bad rep fairly often, and just who benefits from what is always pretty unclear and up to interpretation.
@@LimitedWard when applying for a research grant to first explore a technology (the cheapest stage), you at least show that the thermodynamics are sound. As you progress along the research/development stages, and the grants get more expensive, the grant applications need to have more substance to them. Same as in industry, where I pitch project ideas to my management.
@@alandoak5146 bill gates invested big...take it for what that is worth.
It would be interesting to make a back-of-the-envelope calculation to find out how extensive the battery capacity would have to be for the grid to run on renewables.
not just interesting, necessary!
@@mayamayhemmusic yeah... I have a feeling it just wouldn't add up if you count that solar isn't reliable seasonally in many parts of the world. There, you'd be left with a wind + batteries mix, which sounds like you'd have to set up a massively oversized wind capacity for it to run on almost windless days.
These numbers have been run before, and the conclusion was that there is _no_ storage technology that allows solar & wind to support a 1st world economy, because the energy required to maintain the whole system pushes the total return below a required 7/1 return on invested energy (this was assuming solar-thermal with pumped-hydroelectric for storage, which capped out around 5/1 as the combination with the best return; the need for 7/1 was largely dictated by things like aluminum smelters, rather than houses or anything). Hydroelectric and nuclear are both capable of the needed returns, but there aren't enough usable hydroelectric sites, and the very people most concerned with the environment tend to be extremely anti-nuclear, so the options that are easiest to do turn out to not match at all with the options that will meet our actual needs.
@@absalomdraconis That is the problem, when your Environmentalists are radical Luddites who bases their agenda based on ideology and not real science. The status quo remains the same until this doesn't change, which means less and less nuclear more and more fossil and renewable and our GHG emission increases constantly. The same people who want to save the planet based on their words are the biggest obstacle in the way to reduce our GHG emissions.
@Daniel Meyers the current supply lithium and cobalt is one of the major limiting factors for lithium batteries. If you attempt to run every vehicle not to mention cargo ship with them the supply will not be able to keep up. You would need several times the cobalt supply in the Congo to just power cargo shipping, and you would need batteries that are about 8-10 times more power dense to even try. Or you could just put the proven technology of nuclear power plants on cargo shipping and shipping would be carbon free, faster, and need fewer ships.
4:30 Says lithium ion batteries, and shows standing electrolyte lead-acid batteries.
Caught my eye
I'm glad you finally did a video about this battery, i had seen the TED talk about this kind of battery was was wondering when more detail would come forward.
I saw it too. Dr. Sadoway gave a great talk, TED need to have him do a update on his work.
Those are the kind of people that help move his work forward.
"This is NASA price point"
Elon Musk: hmm..? Interesting..
Also elon: battery goes brrrrr
I hear ya. SLS has cost about 18.6 billion as of now for only development. SpaceX valuation is 46 billion. I bet SpaceX has spent less on their entire program including all development (inc. Starlink) and launches than SLS development + future launches. The US Federal Government wont spend money unless it's spread around to different states. If 80% of the money got funneled into one state even though they would be spending 80% less they couldn't pass it. Imagine the money wasted in defense spending. I'm sure they buy "million dollar toilets" and no one will ever know. I got the SLS development cost from their Wiki page on 1/3/2021. Also go the SpaceX valuation from the SpaceX wiki page on 1/3/2021.
I'm not familiar with Elon commenting on that statement. What was Elon referring to as 'intersting'?
@@shhmule sorry dude, its a joke about Musk buying NASA
Manufacturing a dozen ceramic seals for a rocket and a space station would be crazy expensive (at least ten thousand dollars, probably much more), yes. But manufacturing a billion of these parts for use in batteries could possibly cost less than a billion dollars.
Solid State Batteries and Now Liquid Metal Batteries... this honestly seems fascinating and exciting
I've been in renewable energy since the early 70's and the "Holy Grail" has always been cheap and reliable energy storage. If I had a nickle for every time I've heard "This new technology will finally provide a cheap and reliable battery solution!" I would be VERY rich!
@@DarthObscurity Any examples? I'm genuinely curious.
Very well said. Would you agree that young men in particular are fools when it comes to electricity. They
think it can be put in a paper bag.
@@ValMartinIreland True. I believe it's because it need some abstract thinking. You can't see electricity like you could see gears for example. I don't feel very competent at electrical stuff, I'm more of a thermodynamics guy, but whenever I try to explain someone something that requires 11th grade math, they're bored (or rather dismissive and give up trying to understand) by the second sentence.
@@buzzerpisang3640 Yes, what about it?
Do see my comments.... yes you WILL FIND THE "HOLY GRAIL" OF S2S (Sunset-To-Sunrise) Energy Storage in UHES... It has always been there .. but the focus was on Electricity Production (5,000TWhrs/yr today) and as the Demand was much much higher for Hydro Sites to provide... so Fossil.. Nuclear followed and "promised the sky"... They did deliver.... but also left/created Deadly Pollution... that is TODAY causing 9Million PreMature Deaths Annually and 275Million DALY of Suffering at a Societal Cost of $36.5Trillion/yr ( $1Million/Victim; $100,000/DALY of Suffering).
However... using just a very tiny portion of the Non-Polluting Solar Energy the issues related to Sustsinable Supply of Energy (120,000TWhrs/yr today and 180,000TWhrs/yr in 2050) has receeded and become irrelevent.. but requires 40,000TWhrs/yr or 120TWhrs/Day of S2S Energy Storage / Generation.
UHES readily achieves this as the role of the 1TW Hydro Plants around the world of being a "Generator of Primary Electricity" is replaced by 10TW/120TWhrs Daily of S2S Energy Storage/Generation... using the EXISTING HYDRO SITES and providing larger Lower Reservours with just 120TWhrs of Storage (barely 2.5% of the EXISTING Main Reservours above providing 5,000TWhrs of Water Storage...)
Very cogent discussion, backed up by unassailable research. Well done! Sadoway is an international treasure, and your reporting and presentation are world-class. All good wishes for a brilliant 2021.
I heard about this a long time ago, I'm glad to see they're still working on it
You know when you learn something recently in school and it is mentioned in an educational video?
I recently learned about electronegativity and now am squealing while typing this comment out.
1:36 How is pumped hydro storage "not scalable"? You can't just make claims without proof.
Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh. "Not scalable" my ass.
Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage. "Not scalable" my ass.
@@luongmaihunggia you know, kinda funny, how you say 95% of the world's grid energy storage is pumped hydro storage, when lithium-ion grid batteries have been around for less than 10 years, while pumped hydro is over 100 years old
would really like to see an update for this, it seems the most important technology at the moment.
It isn't that hard to store energy, but unfortunately, economics/politics often gets in the way. You can pump water up a hill and release it again. You can split water and burn the H2. You can heat something and use the heat to power a generator. You can compress air and power a turbine. Etc. The thing is there are already people against wind turbines and solar panels near them. Now imagine a giant reservoir of water, H2, hot substance, or compressed air and you have your answer why the economics don't pan out most of the time.
@@Ninjaeule97 or god forbid!
a nuclear power plant near anyone.
Just a little correction, a flywheel doesn't maintain the speed of an engine. It acts as an energy buffer and smoothens the torque ripple from the engine. I believe a governor should be the one you are referring to. Big fan of your work!
Well it acts as inertia for the engine so both you and the video are correct
Balls to the wall was an old expression for the steam pressure regulator...cool to hear somebody with correct terminology and understanding of "frequency"...
Thanks for providing us such a quality content.
Li -ion cells need cooling to maintain at about 20-45 °C ok, that seems easy compared to keeping entire energy storage at 500°C for ambri LM batteries.
Just a suggestion; a follow up video about thermal cooling/heating requirements about Li-ion 21700,or new 4680 like in Tesla and ambri batteries would be awesome.
Yes, exactly
Technology lock-in: the process of societal stagnation and paralysis whereby dominant market actors suppress revolutionary products, no matter how beneficial they are to society, in order to maintain profits.
Why wouldn't they act within their own interests. The market rewards them for using such tactics and punishes them if they lose market share. It's not their fault that they are behaving like typical humans.
One of the flaws of Capitalism.
Time for the government to step in and save society from stagnation! There must be at least one of the *many* political parties that wants to do that, no?
@@jannikheidemann3805 There are many, genius, but when banksters and other billionaire scum pump billions into keeping far right, anti-science parties that let them steal elected, even best ideas can't start fixing the problem. Too bad there are way too many idiots brainwashed into believing capitalism is any good with the above stolen billions...
@@KuK137 kuk means cock in swedish
I'll see myself out
"I say, if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt."
~ Prof. Sadoway 7:19
Interesting, always like theses videos since renewables tend to be so thoughtlessly integrated, it’s nice seeing some potential solutions. I don’t see any almost 100% renewables happening, you’ll always want some variery to the grid. But it’s always good seeing people stepping away from thinking they can just slap some solar and Lion batteries together and then you expect it to work.
It’s annoying because then people against renewables the use that as an excuse to say renewables are ineffective and that because of that fossil fuels are a ‘necessary evil’
@@48th_president_obama56 they are ineffective especially in Northern or southerly climes, less so in more equatorial ones where the weather is more consistent.
If the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow for the few days the grid (like in the UK the other week) must have 100% fossil fuel capacity in reserve to power the grid.
Local small scale nuclear power production is the greenest technology we have right now to support our society, renewables are not it.
Even batteries like described in this video will not be able to handle the sheer amount of power that needs to be stored and discharged. The best use for renewables I feel are to create a portable power source like methane.
@@48th_president_obama56 No, nuclear is necessary and the majority of people that push for 100% renewables are against nuclear.
But also, it is good to have multiple types of energy (fuel) in use. because if everything we use goes on electricity, if it sounds nice, this makes a high demand of particular resource, where the price skyrocket. We could use 2-3 types, like Synthetic Fuels (eFuel) which doesn't produce gases, electricity and something else: that could balance off the price, especially if we define which resource is used for what. And production would not be stressed as much..
@@Codysdab yeah you’re right, what I meant is that people use it as an excuse as to not change the current situation
I am completely in support for a wider use of nuclear energy, I’m excited that their have been plans for an expansion of nuclear power in my country.
What I mean in my first comment is that because of the misimplementation of renewable energy in some countries, people use that as an excuse that we cannot improve things.
"If I were to ask you, today, what technology breakthrough the world needed most.."
Me: "A cure for human idiocy"
That's simple: Stop letting stupid people breed.
@@dryroasted5599 People don’t exactly like eugenics, a certain war always comes to mind
cringe
I think that's called education. Not just improving public education, but also promoting a culture of being both eternal students and eternal teachers.
@@WanderTheNomad
This basically; you need a society to have a want to become smart, teach more effectively and have objective education. Teach people how to ask questions and how to reason vs how to think.
When looking for a niche market with that hot climate, Venus comes into my mind... ;)
forget about room temprature superconductors.
@@publicdomain1103 "Breakthrough: researchers on Titan announced today that they've successfully deployed and tested superconducting wire outdoors with no additional supporting infrastructure at standard atmospheric temperatures and pressures."
@@jasonwalker9471 Thats what Im talking about. not rocket science.
The problem in my opinion will be to discharge the batteries.
The sun.
17:35 "Technological lock-in" that term I will use endlessly lol
This was an incredibly insightful video, I've always thought lithium-ion wasn't the best option for stationary grid-size battery packs and I've got my answer right here.
PS: I was hesitant of subscribing to CuriosityStream, now I did it for one year. Thanks!
“Cash”-ion
Thank you!
Yeah, I'm sure I was taught 'cat-eye-on' for 'cation'.
Ikr, CAT-ion :(
I don't know much about this channel but this makes me wonder if the narrator is not the engineer making the content.
It's just the Irish accent. He also says 'bussh" instead of "but". But it's not really our language, so whatever... 🙂
Ambri: Powering homes on Mercury for generations.
Isnt that how UFOs are powered? 😋
You'll need a lot of batteries for the 176 earth-day day/night cycle, and some _really_ good insulation for night when it gets down to just 100 Kelvin.
The perfect battery for Venus!😁🤣😂
Would love to see this storage technology be integrated in a way with energy production so that the heat generated from energy creation can warm start the batteries, further increasing efficiency!
I was wondering if radioisotopes could be used to keep the battery warm.
We need our leaders to envoke that moon landing energy. Let's do something that sounds crazy just because we can
@@paulhaynes8045 Whenever someone argues for "energy conservation", they really mean energy poverty.
If only we had the money to do it! Sadly, we spent it all on tax breaks for the rich
@@paulhaynes8045 So you think people in Africa are happy not having access to electricity? What is this, the "noble savage" myth again? Ridiculous.
@@paulhaynes8045 If you think you know enough about science, did you know that CO2 climate forcing is already almost maxed out at the current level of 400ppm?
Liquid metal looks like a great option. I wonder what the environmental costs are.
That makes sense, current lithium tech has been pushing hard at energy density, pushing for the highest kWh/Kg it can. It makes sense if weight isn't a concern you can find something that works better for kWh/$
The number that deeply matters is kWh produced / kWh grid maintenance. If a major improvement of that metric can be demonstrated over pumped-hydroelectric then this battery technology may be enough to push solar-thermal beyond the 7/1 return on invested power that first-world economies require, but if not then this won't make solar or wind viable as primary power sources.
Isn't volumetricenergyty important in some places? I mean there's not really an infinite amount of land to house energy storage, and expanding it beyond population centers can harm the environment. idk though if there is enough space for energy storage that is inside human settlements.aybe someone should look into how much space is needed for energy storage, depending on how energy dense it is.
*volumetric energy density
@@hi-gf5yl actually world is very big. Fact is if you have renewable energy generation then you automatically have enough space.
@@hi-gf5yl That's kind of the problem with pumped-hydroelectric, though that's just as much a problem with the land available. You need a large area and a large height difference between reservoirs.
As an addendum, I must clarify that the sodium batteries I believe have lower power densities than lithium ion right now! It doesn't matter, as I want to see huge sodium ion batteries put in static positions, to support hometowns and cities, as energy backup. Buildings in cities and towns, especially these box stores, should be covered with solar cells, especially since they're so ugly anyway, they would look better with a bank of solar cells with a pitch roof design on them.
And you can use the batteries to cool the solar cells somehow as well by heating up the batteries, allowing higher energy efficiency from the cells , and creating higher temps for the batteries saving energy on both ends
Projected headlines be like: "Molten metal lava leaking from a failed battery array"
Just dig a shallow hole where you make the installation. Worst case scenario, you get a liquid metal lake. Best case scenario, the engineers know what they are doing and no such thing happens.
@@michaelpapadopoulos6054 cant be! Engineers never know what theyre doing. They do very well tho.
@@michaelpapadopoulos6054 I mean that's the first rule of engineering: everything leaks
Aren’t these battery storehouses going to be in the middle of nowhere, likely near a power plant of some kind, anyway?
@@midnite1112 true, even electronics, one of the reasons for moore's law breaking down
If I had to guess this would be about storing electricity.
You're correct.
Why not just spin up big things to keep the grid stable? (Basically what we have rn)
@@JANICKGMO_ the bigger the spinny thing is, the longer it takes to spin it up and down. Batteries are a much more reactive form of energy storage.
@@pe5erbarnes that's one part of the problem, another part is big spinny thing wants to spin one way, and the earth tries to spin it in the wrong direction
@@xureality ",,, the earth tries to spin it in the wrong direction"
1) The earth never tries to spin in the wrong direction.
2) That is only an issue when generators are installed backwards, which is easy to fix. They just spin the building 180 degrees.
This is a crazy idea but it would be a fun video to use Lake Erie as pumped hydro from lake Ontario. The drop is something like 320 feet and Lake Erie is ten thousand square miles. Only have to put 3 to 9 inches in it
I don't know much about pumped hydro, but might they lose a large amount of energy with losses from a lake that large?
@@Bob_Lob_Law , the losses come from heat in the pump motors and friction in the plumbing.
The big size of the reservoirs just means more storable energy :)
@@massimookissed1023 What about seepage, evaporation etc? Who is to say all the water you pump up will come back down again, with a natural reservoir of such a large size?
Also, if this is such a great idea, why hasn't it been implemented yet?
Very interesting idea, and quite near the original home of Alternating Current power!
@@Bob_Lob_Law I think you are trolling. The present inflow to Lake Erie from the Detroit river is more than adequate for all the current seepage and evaporation. Adding a few inches would not make any difference to that
A modern super grid is just as important as battery storage. Building a High Voltage DC grid, not to replace the AC grid (at least not yet), but to complement it, solar panels are perfect for the new DC grid since they generate DC while wind turbines should stay on the AC grid since they produce AC.
The new grid should be below ground for safety and reliability. The DC connectors in the wall used could be USB-C since most modern computers and phones is using them already, and would work worldwide without travel adapters.
Prof. Donald Sadoway reminds me of Bill Nye in a straight tie!
Sadoway is also a pretty great teacher.
"And non of that sci-fi nonsense" - Haha love it
me too. 90% of all discussion about such things today is utopian science fiction
Absolutely loved how he reminded us of the fact that big manufacturer's can and will stop progress.
This is so well made. Thank you for making this content!
I once went to a talk by a guy who runs a battery company. He said it took some 10 years from initial discovery to rolling out on the main production line
If not more, as Elon Musk says the production line is 90% of the work.
Why not put these batteries inside the solar thermal towers? you then have a constant heat source and heat back up (molten salt) and renewable source of energy, and then the battery backs up the entire system.
Seems like this can be this niche market.
Maybe not in the towers, but somewhere in thermal contact with the heat cycle. But I don't see the point, you already have a cheap heat resorvoir "battery" in the molten salts, why add an electrical battery? Besides, Tonapah has been a disappointment compared to other technologies from my understanding, I doubt we'll see more of them being built.
@@alandoak5146 The heat res can't be scaled the same way the batteries can, but the heat can aid in this kind of battery's efficiency, I agree with you though.
Perhaps a hybrid system of integrating the heat capacity in with the battery pack.
I hope they're working on much bigger cells. Stack a bunch of those together and all that insulation on the inside is just to keep the labels from burning.
they want them to stay hot,
so stacking them very close together is actually a good idea
@@koloblicin Calcium melts at 1115K. Paper chars around 400K to 500K.
@@Pence128 yah well,
maybe the labels on the batteries are just for show you know.
im sure there is a reason why they dont make the batteries bigger.
@@koloblicin It looks like they're connecting them in series into 1 MWh modules.
Humanity’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
cheynoblie fukeshima three mile island hanaford washington
@@andrewfischer8564 And guess what it’s still the safest form of energy beating out even renewables.
@@andrewfischer8564 Climate Change is a bigger issue
@@popopop984 the poisioning the ocean fukeshima may have already done it. it may aklready be to late. im all about the alt energies just not nuclear. there is plenty of wind solar and tidal and we have the engineering expertes we have to squash the oil and coal interests
@@andrewfischer8564 yet nuclear still has the lowest deaths per kwh generated of ANY electricity source
Hope that this project send Ambri to higher levels.
I can see it working for magacities energy storage as a group of huge underground "siamese" swimming pools, to "share/stabilize" its heat, connected in series to reach the desirable voltage. The terrain layer around the ceramic pools can work as a thermal battery and other outer terrain layer can work as a insulator, just changing its composition (sand/clay) during the site construction phase. Keep in mind that volume grows "cubic" and area grows "square", it means the bigger the volume gets, less surface area in proportion to lose heat.
In Australia we often refer to the "tyranny of distance", which applies directly to Grids and Grid Storage, a magnificent Engineering problem solving exercise. If the future expectations of Solar Roof Micro generation, Home Battery Storage and P2P EV vehicles continues, then there's a bit of explaining to be done as to why Government does not promote the same on-site Power systems for the Industries, the same ones we were told to buy our own systems for so as to allow them cheaper access to the failing fossil fuel system.
It is interesting how a first world country with such immense lithium and solar resources is still using steampunk technology to power its grid. They would also be a prime candidate for SMRs for base load if they are purchased in bulk.
@@anydaynow01 because our country is often run by dolts
Some good points there. Nuclear fusion is still many years away sadly, so the only viable answer currently seems to be renewables such as wind, hydro and solar, but more efficient storage management must be the future,that is to say massive CO2-cooled battery installations. Great video thanks.
loved the sa blackouts. imagine week long frames of no power
Sounds terrific for the electric grid period, not just for renewable energy. If you can store energy; then you can reduce the generating capacity of the power plants needed to meet grid peak demand. This means smaller in number and size of coal, natural gas, or oil electric generating power stations. That alone will reduce pollution whether you add in renewable energy or don't add in renewable energy to your grid. It's a win-win.
Batteries are so interesting. Can you talk about cement block batteries sometime? Great video
you mean the one with cranes from the swiss company? Would also love to know more about it especially how scalable and cost effiction it is compared to hydro pump and battery technology like this on or Li-Ion!
@@Kamikater2 Yes! I have only read a few things about them, but it seems like there could definitely be a niche for it in the power storage solution
@@Kamikater2 sorry to tell you but the mind experiments have been debunked... this battery is not even close to claimed capacity or power
th-cam.com/video/NIhCuzxNvv0/w-d-xo.html
@@canadianemu The "concrete blocks" battery is indeed a scam...
This channel just keeps getting better and better with every video! Awesome work!! Also, I'm definitely going to listen in on the new podcast. :D
"According to the BGS Risk List 2015, antimony is ranked second highest (after rare earth elements) on the relative supply risk index."
This quote was from the wiki page on antimony, along with more info on world reserves and production capacity. I'm no expert on mining, and haven't made sense of this seeming contradiction.
So, is antimony really "dirt cheap", and scalable to energy grids?
Tangentially, are antimony politics, extraction, production and reprocessing potentially cleaner than the alternatives? The wiki page seems to suggest that it's on the dirtier end.
Yea, rare earth are really common but the main issue it's that most of them are "diluted" so it's not cost effective trying to mine them unless they are grouped together by some kind of geological process, usually meteoric deposition, so in that sense they are very rare
antimony is rare but common. it's common since it's everywhere, but it's rare because there aren't many large deposits of it. (cost of extraction greater than it's worth) on top of this, most countries aren't mining it so because of that, it's an issue in terms of scalable supply.
The sheer number of batteries of the mechanical variety is truly astounding. True you lose % with mechanical batteries, but near endless possibilities....
A train on a hill is a mechanical battery.
Near Limitless possibilities.
I mean it's cool and all, but this video felt like an ad for that type of grid storage, rather than an exploration of the different types of grid storage that could compete with Li-ion, which is what the title and the intro implied
Pump hydro storage doesn't need to compete with Li-ion because it already bested li-ion at it own game.
Fact: the world's largest pump hydro storage facility is 24000MWh which is larger than the world's largest grid battery 300MWh.
Fact: pump hydro storage make up for 95% of grid energy storage.
@@luongmaihunggia Dude why are you everywhere? Are you a lobbyist for pumped hydro storage?😂This battery isn't supposed to compete with pumped hydro storage. They meant not scalable as in you can't build pumped hydro anywhere you want. You need to have a huge water source nearby. 95% of grid storage is pumped hydro because there are no other reliable storage sources and this battery is trying to be that reliable option along with pumped hydro.
@@deepaksanaka yeah. So what? So what if pump storage can't be build anywhere? So what? Just build it in places that are possible and then connect it to the grid with cables. Problem solved.