Something you didnt mention is that Aluminium is by far the most common metal in the earth's crust, lowering the cost and impact of extraction. Also adding batteries in parallel ALWAYS adds their current capability as well as capacity, what you showed was a series setup.
@@snapicvs that's right. I think these would be fine as long as you didn't spray the molten aluminium into a spontaneously combusting mist. Then again being sprayed with almost any liquid metal isn't great, whether it's on fire or not.
@@Isambardify Given that these things look like they're intended to be used in enclosed or at least fenced environments only accessible by trained personnel, I'm not least bit worried about accidents. So long as a leak doesn't cause an environmental disaster, the presumably small risk to trained personnel from their use is perfectly acceptable.
Joe, the "Capability" argument needs a little closer attention. Electricity doesn't work that way. If it's just a matter of wiring two Ambri-packs in parallel ... the available Amps would double. Looked at another way: if you had one Ambri on the west end of town, and one on the east end, the two could add twice the power to the grid that a single pack could provide. So, there must be an Ambri configuration which could increase Capability.
yeah, I love Joe, but this is bothering me. I wonder what he was actually trying to point out with this bit. Obviously there must me a configuration that would net more than 250 KW. I think he is just pointing out the available options for a single ambri pack vs a single tesla mega-pack? Like specifically Ambri doesn't manfacture/offer a single module that does more than 250 KW, if you need more than 250 KW, you need multiple Ambri packs. But this is more down to what the company is offering, and less about what's possible with a liquid metal battery. For a moment I thought there may be some quantum tunneling entanglement acting on all the Ambri packs in the universe only allowing a total of 250 KW at any one time from all of them together :D (i didn't really think this seriously, this is just what his analogy made me envision heh)
That must have sounded quite dubious to anyone who know anything about electricity. Adding another battery in parallel should be like adding another bottle with it's own straw. So now you can suck from two straws at once.
@@xy39 yeah, he is *kinda into tesla.. wonder what his portfolio looks like.. It does look like if you have an application that needs to draw a large peak load, but doesn't need much capacity it's best to go with a tesla mega-pack, as the currently offered Ambri system would be much larger with 5 Ambri packs in series to get 1250kW, vs one tesla mega pack configured for 1200kW. But if you need the capacity anyway, it's probably smart to go with Ambri due to the durability/safety.
8:23 im not sure that can be correct, connecting whatever type of batteries in parallel should always give you a extra drinking straw per coke bottle added to the chain.
No he's right, replace batteries with coke because thats a stupid analogy. If they're in series the voltage should increase but amperage stays the same, if they're in parallel the amperage increases but voltage stays the same. He said the bottles were in parallel so the capacity (Amperage) would increase but the capability (Voltage) stays the same.
I first learned about liquid metal batteries a few months ago. I, for one, see a huge potential for the technology. If nothing else, the combination of cost and safety are huge assets. As with all technology, the concept will evolve and become even better than we can imagine at this time.
@Bob I meant old school car batteries. I’ve wired them series and parallel for off grid living for various applications. I’m sure the modern electric car ones would pose a different challenge
Yea I was completely lost when he started saying that it can't be configured for capability.. The specific company may not be designing that packs that way... yet.. But there's no reason it can't be configured to increase output.
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@@trev6783 That left me scratching my head as well...
7:16 this doesn't make sense. kW/hr is not a unit of energy or power. You should use kWh. Also, the cost metric favours Ambri by a factor of 3x, this isn't "tomato/tomato".
Also, at 6:59, 1000 kWh is not "1000 kW of power per hour of operation." Instead, if you could draw 1000 kW of power (probably not possible, but just suppose), then the battery would be depleted in one hour. If instead you would draw 100 kW, the battery would last 10 hours.
@@jamesrempel8522 Yeah I've seen a couple of technology channels lately struggling with this kind of thing. This is high-school physics level, and it makes this content unintelligible and possibly wrong.
NTSC was always scornfully known as "Never Twice the Same Colour", but it was the technology that PAL and other systems were based on. It was THE pioneer.
@@Fifury161 Thanks for the heads up. I always thought it was the first compatible colour TV broadcasting system and the one that the rest were based on. I know CBS had a mechanical system (as did Baird), but that was abandoned after only 100 sets had been shipped. Which previous systems was NTSC based on?
As far as I can tell.. NTSC was the first regulated accepted standard in the world. PAL was like 30 years later..and came about because of weaknesses and issues with NTSC
@@GarlicMonoxide I don't know what Fifury161 was on about, as NTSC was definitely the first colour TV service and WAS the pioneer. The other systems like PAL were NTSC with refinements. Our first regular colour TV service was from BBC2 in 1967, which was fourteen years later than the one in the US.
Nuclear. That's the answer to a rainy day. Safe reliable and I bet we can make them cheap if we go navel ship size. And it's harder for the rampant misunderstanding out there to argue safety considering the safety record of the navy.
@@BaghaShams Nope, you would just draw 1/10th the power out of each battery. You are still drawing the same KW, just instead of 2500KW out of one, you are drawing 250KW each out of 10 meaning each battery would last 10x as long.
@@jeremyscherbert7336 this guy is correct, that’s the issue with the ambri packs and why it never took off. It has to do with being a “natural reaction” within the metals.
The Franken FM stations finally went offline this year. NTSC is *still* not dead though as there are still many cable systems that transmit it, just not over the air.
The end of Franken FM might bite us in the ass. Idk how but I get such feelings whenever old tech like communications get phased out. The newer stuff seem to be controlled by fewer people and not easily accessible for public utilization
@Tano Any decent electronics book can tell you all about how the NTSC system works. The digital system - who knows? It's all encrypted, and how you'd fix a TV set...?
@Tano okay but now a potential alternative, which people are more familiar with now than prior, is off the table and the control by the few has been further tightened once more. Progress is fine but always have a backup just in case.
Just wanted to point out that connecting power storage in parallel is *not* like connecting two coke bottles with a siphon... That's "series" connection... Which indeed only improves capacity and not throughput... However, parallel connections improve both throughput and capacity. If you didn't mis-speak, and Ambri packs can be connected in parallel (and I couldn't imagine why they wouldn't be able to) then they are every bit as scalable in terms of throughput. Need 500KW? Just hook up two in parallel.
Most Europe, and the rest of the world used PAL, for their analog standard. PAL = Pale And Lurid Then there's France. They had SECAM. Something Else, Contrary to American's Mode.
@@michaelmoorrees3585 indeed. NZ & AU used Pal too. I remember some VHS players & CRTs having a PAL/NTSC switch. They were not compatible!! Don't even know what the difference was! Frame rate?
I remember a talk by Donald Sadoway in which he mentioned being able to have a battery in your home the size of a small freezer that stored energy enough to power the home for three months once charged. I find this much more compelling than the grid level storage so many look to as the future of this technology.
Awesome video, thank you. Two important thing that was not mentioned though, were the efficiency and the self discharge per day in % (especially because of the must stay hot thing?). Still good video, thank you.
Dude I really like how u tied in the intro to the end with Petro stations......" Those are still around?" Clever and more real than real ...... Real > Real
"Yeah, it sure is nice to not have to mess with rabbit ear antennas anymore," as I mess with my router's antennas so I can watch Answers With Joe on my porch.
I am more in the generation of messing with the cable tuning to clear up the scrambled HBO my parents wouldn't pay for to maybe see some B&W nudity if I can get the lack of vertical hold slow enough that it stays on the screen for more than half a second.
Look forward to your videos each week. Thanks for the thought provoking topics each video. You always seem to find the shit that I’m glad to learn about. Keep it up 👍🏼
This is a weird compliment but your transitions from content to ads at the end of videos are really excellent. That’s not an easy skill to develop. Good on you sir. (Your content is way better but I get you need to pay the bills.)
@@tombuxi8867 yes, that was my point. He wasn't understanding parallel battery physics. Parallel has to increase capability regardless of details of the battery tech. It's simple physics.
@@JonS And voltage is just potential relative to something else. The individual cells should not know whether they are connected in series, unless there is something weird with these that isn't being explained.
Minor correction. Joe. Parallel is like having one mouth slurping from two straws in two separate bottles. What you described is a series connection. Batteries can run parallel to ramp up current and series to ramp up voltage. Thanks, Joe! Love your stuff.
LMB's are much further down the development/production path, so let's get on with it. But I agree Iron-Air shows promise. I think, given the gravity of the situation we face, there's enough space for 2 technologies. Don't you?
@@Jay...777 I do wonder about the “gravity” of the situation we face… l mean people have been saying for decades that fossil fuels are going to be gone, but we keep finding more. And if we switch to batteries, electric cars, etc. Are we then going to run into a crisis of mining all the earth’s metals?
@@tberry79 the “gravity” is mostly about global warming, not resource depletion. The earth is much richer in metals than it is in fossil fuels, so no, we're definitely not going to run into a crisis of mining “all of Earth's metals” - even if we used them to make single-use batteries. What _could_ well happen is that we run out of certain key metals such as Cobalt. But especially aluminium and iron are extremely common, though they do need to be first extracted from ores, which takes up a lot of energy.
@@tberry79 Conventional oil discoveries peaked 50 years ago. Fracking can't last long. But switching over to "renewables" and continuing as before is a fantasy, not least because of that mining issue. Joe is far too optimistic.
You can already have that with a Tesla Powerwall or some other similar product. Add solar panels and you can go mostly or entirely off-grid. And it's not even that expensive. Depending on the cost of electricity and the amount of sunlight you get, it can easily be cheaper then the grid.
@@acorgiwithacrown467 got a point there. I'm just imagining it's got the minimum amount of thickness to make it somewhat manageable (like for placement) or other access for defects. It just depends on the design.
You might want to do a video on Ferrous Iron battery. Probably less than half the performance of Lithium Iron but operates at room temp, appears to be super cheap, as heavy as blocks of iron but a major upside is it doesn't need SURFACE OF VENUS temperatures to operate. For stationary grid scale it appears to be perfect since it exploits nothing more complicated than the phase change of rust.
I was hoping to hear something about the iron-air battery that uses the oxidation and de-oxidation of iron, commonly called rust, as an ion storage system with an energy density of 8X that of Lithium. Plus its non-toxicity, abundance and not being explosive.
To increase the capability, you just wire the cells in parallel (you might want to include some load balancing circuitry too). In your example you are wiring them in series. Not really a problem.
Engineer here. Like others have mentioned, all the specs related things need a redo. Kilowatt hours are kilowatts * hours (1 kWh = kilowatt for an hour), not kilowatts / hour. As you would expect from capacity. As such, you can't directly translate to "power x homes" without a timeframe. Like, at 1kW/home, you could power 34 homes for ~29 hours, or ~100 homes for 10 hours, or ~250 homes for 4 hours with a container with 1000 kWh. Also, adding containers will always increase both capacity and "capability," regardless of if they are in parallel or series. The parallel vs series distinction matters for getting more amps or voltage, but on a grid they are interchangeable via transformers (Watts = Volts * Amps). Like, having two coke bottle setups double the coke bottles as well as the straws. Anyways liked the video in general, so you get a like. Just, uh, hopefully make some corrections sometime.
It will be interesting how this liquid metal tech works out. It has been hyped for quite a while now. I think the flow battery from ESS in Oregon uses non toxic materials and then there is liquid air. Highview are building two liquid air, energy storage plants that will work out cheaper than Lithium, use old readily available technology and can store power for months, a bit like hydro. The race is on.
Eh...shouldn't this battery simply be named The T-1000 Battery? I mean, after all, melting is part of how it functions just like the T-1000 melting robot from The Terminator lol
Probably the best approach is to use both Li-Ion and liquid metal batteries together. One provides high peak power for short term loads and the other a sustained output for longer periods. Putting them together in the same system gives the best of both worlds.
Reflective shielding is still the way to go for that. Absorbing the heat requires having some way to insulate it from the rest of the spacecraft, otherwise it's not really shielding it.
Liquid metal batterys cant function in zero G or on moving vehicles. They use the specific gravity of the different metals to separate them. In zero G they would stay mixed. Movement would also mix the liquids so they are for static use only.
@@gramursowanfaborden5820 Well, that is creating artificial gravity and would only work traveling in a straight line at a steady speed. Maneuvering would disrupt the system. It would also work as a gyroscope and make the craft very difficult to maneuver.
@@tfcooks none of us are space ship designers but it seems to me like that's a simple problem to solve. gyroscopes also put a torque on the vehicle, if you had multiple batteries spinning in opposite directions, it would counter that torque, but either way, the whole battery system could be contained in a free moving substructure within the ship, then no matter what it could manoeuvrer as easily as it would be able to otherwise, power transfer could easily be achieved via a transformer coil around the outer periphery of the battery gyroscope casement thingy with a primary coil on the inside.
@Joe Scott, dude, Ive been loving your videos for 3 years. Had to binge all of it to catch up. Then I realized we supported the same cause... All I will say is OWEN - GFM. Dude, Mad respect now.
Hey Joe, explain to everyone what the unit "Kilowatt per hour" means. Have you discovered a new principle of physics, or are you saying these batteries get more powerful over time, like Goku?
A great introduction to liquid metal batteries. I think that one thing worth considering in this context is the extent to which mining aluminium is likely less toxic (environmentally) than mining lithium (though it might be good to hear the Joe Scott perspective). Thanks for this.
Maybe I missed something, but: 1) How much energy is needed to 'liquify' or start up the battery? 2) How much energy is needed to maintain the 500 C temperature so the battery can continuously function? 3) Where does THAT energy come from (is it still green energy) ? 4) Is the energy used to maintain the battery's temperature really worth it in comparison to what it can store (as opposed to other available energy storages) ?
8:18 1 straw, 2 bottles connected with a syphon is a *serial* arrangement. 2 straws, 2 bottles, with 1 straw per bottle is a *parallel* arrangement. Why can't these Ambri packs get connected in parallel?
I'm wondering the same thing. Capacity is simply a measure of voltage * amps. Any source of voltage can be wired with another source of voltage to increase amperage. So what's the problem?
@@antikommunistischaktion Unless I'm reading their website incorrectly, it's 250KW per container. Which means you could wire 2 containers together to give you double the power.
Donald Sadoway is a major brainiac especially in the solid state chemistry mode. I can't get enough of his MIT Open Courseware videos. I hope ambri continues to get large funding to continue. The only reason aluminum smelters were mentioned was it was what gave Sadoway the idea but the process is in reverse. The liquid battery would absorb current in the same way the smelter does but also give off that current when required by the grid.
This is why I hope hydrogen will go big. It can incinerate human waste (no need for centralized sewer systems), pee can be used as a electrolyte. You can use stored hydrogen/oxygen as a battery trough reverse electrolysis, you can cook /heat on it. And trough phase change it can even cool. It can also be used as a fuel for cars.
Another beauty of LMB is that several lower temperature alloys and molten salt compounds exist that melt below the boiling point of water. So they don't necessarily have to be preheated to Venusian conditions.
I honestly thought that the intro about broadcast signals was disjointed and awkward...until the final minute. Well played sir, well played. Callback mastery.
Current Powerwalls and Megapacks use Panasonic NCA lithium ion batteries. But Tesla will be building their new Megapacks using LFP batteries, which are much cheaper, don't use cobalt, are capable of more charge cycles with reduced degradation, and are much more resistant to thermal runaway.
I think the section on specs need some work. I’m an electrical engineer and the whole thing about capability, which I’m assuming is its safe instantaneous power output will always increase if you just wire more batteries together. In series you increase voltage but will need some kind of BMS to keep each individual cell at safe charge and discharge levels. In parallel you increase current. Current X Voltage = Power, Power X Time = Energy. Maybe there’s not enough power output to energy ratio making these uneconomical to run at grid scale and that’s what you’re hinting at? But with renewables we frankly can’t get enough long term storage so that’s a little hard to believe. And to ammend not getting enough instantaneous power you can always have a small battery or super capacaitor bank in front of the liquid metal bank that keeps a small supply of energy storage to handle smaller peaks in demand
Since space was mentioned I'd like to point out that LMBs couldn't function in zero G. They use the specific gravity of the different metals to separate them. In zero G they would stay mixed. Movement would also mix the liquids so they are for static use only.
8:37 they generate their own heat? Surly that heat comes from the charging current? Else where does it come from? It "generates heat" untill the battery gets cold, or the heat energy comes from the charging current aka loss.
It is a cycle .. once there is current flow, the heat increases, and it keeps going up, once the heating process has started, there is no need to add external power
dude always like your stuff , , cut of your jib as it were , the way you present and your info and topics interesting and easily understandable , thank you from a long time subscriber :) , wow really long time :), you were so young :) lol
You know what was nice about this video…? Just thinking about a concept that looks towards a hopeful future…. Climate news is pretty grim this week so it’s nice to take a deep breath and hope we can science the sh!t out of this 👍🏼✊🏼
Having Ambri on the radar for long time. Best solution for extreme environments as you said: deserts ( Australia, Africa,...), space, industry, big data, heating, ... Long lasting, easy recycling. ...
Previously I was not able to find any parameters of AMBRI LMB, so thank you. Btw, if you connect two 250 kw power sources, I cannot see how you still have only 250 kw. Paralel or serial connection does not matter, we are talking power and we get 500 kw.
Saltwater batteries are an interesting topic you may want to cover. They don't blow up, and they can remain uncharged indefinitely. Also, fuel cells have failed in autos, BUT on vehicles the size of ships, things change a lot, for example the weight can be removed from ballast, and in reverse, it generates H, that can be stored in a large tank. Iron-air batteries are also breaking out. Energy tech, I think, is about to explode.
one of the traditional problems about liion batteries usage is they connecting them paralel without additional protection circuits. they needs specific protection mechanism for each batter but they do not do it in most cases because it becomes expensive and harder to handle.
When it comes to grid storage theres so many options but none of them seem to be better than ESS Inc's all-iron flow battery, which is out of the lab and into the marketplace. No toxicity, non-flammable, non-explosive, no rare metals, fully recyclable, can operate at 50°C (122°F) with no airconditioning. It's not to energy dense but for grids that irrelevant. Their Power Center can do up to 6MW and 74/MWH on a single acre, which would be on par with a newer natural gas peaker plant near my house. Please Joe, do a video on them as I cant seem to find any real fault with their product, which seems a little to good to be true. Keep up the informative and hilarious videos!
But Joe: 1) How much energy is needed to 'liquify' or start up the battery? 2) How much energy is needed to maintain the 500 C temperature so the battery can continuously function? 3) Where does THAT energy come from (is it still green energy) ? 4) Is the energy used to maintain the battery's temperature really worth it in comparison to what it can store (as opposed to other available energy storages) ?
Joe I think you should do a video on tidal power. It's heavily utilized by countries like Sweden but the U.S doesn't use it at all. I find this crazy especially when we consider our ideal coastlines.
Sweden is at the baltic sea which has almost no tides (it's basically a shallow sweet water lake with a small connection to the ocean and lakes don't have tides) Maybe you mean Norway. They have many, many fjords at their Atlantic coastline. The potential for tidal power is insane.
Liquid Metal Batteries are great for medium term storage which is few minutes to few hours. They love to always be in operation either charging or discharging to always be liquid. However, their main disadvantage is when they freeze. It takes a lot of energy to heat them fast or too long time to heat them slowly. They are made to coexist with other technologies. Best Case for liquid metal is to exist in a system that uses wind and solar with a backup of gas turbines. They can bridge the gaps when Solar and/or Wind are down. In case both are down for long periods, they give you enough time to power up gas turbines in a more efficient way which also means you can use existing turbines.
2:15 take a gander at pumped-storage hydroelectricity. It’s a technology already being used around the world to store energy to meet peak demand throughout the day.
There are projects around gravity batteries too. You basically use excess energy to lift a gigantic weight, then you get part of it back when you drop it.
Maybe I misunderstand something, but usually if you connect batteries in parallel you both increase capacity and capability as maximum current increases. Basically serial connection gives you more voltage but the same max current and parallel gives you same voltage, but more current.
Start-up energy to heat Liquid metal is potentially easy to come up with for large stations. Solar furnaces. You'd need a backup source for cloudy weather but you could heat the metal use it to generate steam, then use it to store the current generated by the turbines. During bright and sunny weather you generate power through the solar furnace, at night, or in bad weather you draw power from storage. if your downtime on Generation/storage exceeds the limits of the unit, you tap into the other sources of power in the network. such as gas turbines, hydro, or nuclear.
I think the main drwaback and the reason that these batteries will not catch on is that for each KW going in there is less coming back out of a flow battery then a Lion battery. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a metal as a liquid. It is the same reason that water electrolysis will only be a niche energy storage medium, it is a less efficient way to store energy.
1,000 kWh doesn’t mean 1,000 kW per hour of operation. It means power output TIMES time is 1,000. At 250kW output the battery would last 4 hours. Also, I think someone else may have already pointed out that batteries in parallel increase current if power transfer was limited on the source side. Batteries in series increase voltage - which increases current if current was previously limited by the load side rather than the power source.
Best battery system is hydro power battery systems, in which water is pumped into a pond and used during night time to compensate for lack of solar energy. We should have solar farms out in our deserts, miles and miles of solar farms, and hydro power all over the US inside every lake.
Once you're operating a systematic approach Native Package Capability doesn't matter, the system will parrallelize or serialize to maximize the characteristics necessary for your applications.
Most people wouldn't remember this but back in 1978 or so, the Shah of Iran was asked why he wanted to build nuclear reactors in a country with so much oil. He said that oil should be used for making plastics and for transportation not for energy production.
The race for long term grid storage is on. This liq metal battery is ahead, if it wins hope it is the right choice. Few flaws, EXCEPT figuring out an efficient electrical conductor which can operate at very high temperatures inside the battery packs. Don't forget, the scale for this application needs to be huge, and heat loss inefficiency is proportional to outer area versus volume. Maybe molten copper inside a hollow stainless steel tube to protect against oxygen? Graphite with a surface barrier? Then a vacuum thermal barrier outer wall around an entire warehouse full of cells? (All lost heat likely is wasted electricity ... )
Something you didnt mention is that Aluminium is by far the most common metal in the earth's crust, lowering the cost and impact of extraction. Also adding batteries in parallel ALWAYS adds their current capability as well as capacity, what you showed was a series setup.
Aluminum is kind of dangerous without oxide. Don't forget they use this on solid rocket boosters.
The ambri battery is calcium, though, not aluminum; it's just inspired by aluminum tech. The materials are still cheap.
@@se_mat My understanding is that aluminum has to be powdered super-fine in order to be that flammable, no?
@@snapicvs that's right. I think these would be fine as long as you didn't spray the molten aluminium into a spontaneously combusting mist. Then again being sprayed with almost any liquid metal isn't great, whether it's on fire or not.
@@Isambardify Given that these things look like they're intended to be used in enclosed or at least fenced environments only accessible by trained personnel, I'm not least bit worried about accidents. So long as a leak doesn't cause an environmental disaster, the presumably small risk to trained personnel from their use is perfectly acceptable.
But Joe, there's always potential when you're working with batteries!
This one has a strong ground.
@@shurmurray Its shocking, isnt it?
Looks like you guys are current on all of the puns.
Come on, you guys should be amply charged for electrifying a pun.
No
Joe, the "Capability" argument needs a little closer attention. Electricity doesn't work that way. If it's just a matter of wiring two Ambri-packs in parallel ... the available Amps would double. Looked at another way: if you had one Ambri on the west end of town, and one on the east end, the two could add twice the power to the grid that a single pack could provide. So, there must be an Ambri configuration which could increase Capability.
yeah, I love Joe, but this is bothering me. I wonder what he was actually trying to point out with this bit. Obviously there must me a configuration that would net more than 250 KW.
I think he is just pointing out the available options for a single ambri pack vs a single tesla mega-pack? Like specifically Ambri doesn't manfacture/offer a single module that does more than 250 KW, if you need more than 250 KW, you need multiple Ambri packs. But this is more down to what the company is offering, and less about what's possible with a liquid metal battery.
For a moment I thought there may be some quantum tunneling entanglement acting on all the Ambri packs in the universe only allowing a total of 250 KW at any one time from all of them together :D (i didn't really think this seriously, this is just what his analogy made me envision heh)
That must have sounded quite dubious to anyone who know anything about electricity. Adding another battery in parallel should be like adding another bottle with it's own straw. So now you can suck from two straws at once.
@@akunog3665 he's cooking the argument to make Tesla look better.
Yeah, but now you need x2 as many batteries
@@xy39 yeah, he is *kinda into tesla.. wonder what his portfolio looks like..
It does look like if you have an application that needs to draw a large peak load, but doesn't need much capacity it's best to go with a tesla mega-pack, as the currently offered Ambri system would be much larger with 5 Ambri packs in series to get 1250kW, vs one tesla mega pack configured for 1200kW. But if you need the capacity anyway, it's probably smart to go with Ambri due to the durability/safety.
You can tell Joe's community adore him by all the respectful comments on "hey parallel wiring should increase capability, plz double check that"
Absolutely
"This is known as freezing."
So *that's* what it's called! Finally I can stop telling someone to go pick up a bag of phase-shifted water.
But...
Phase shifted water could also be steam.
how about solidified?
Freezing - the process of stopping for arrest.
I've been calling it unmelting this whole time like a sucker!
Water? You mean ice juice?
Unless I missed something, it seems like you could run the LMBs output in parallel instead of series and scale the capability that way.
8:23 im not sure that can be correct, connecting whatever type of batteries in parallel should always give you a extra drinking straw per coke bottle added to the chain.
...and the KWH (as labelled) will always double with 2 batteries, no matter how they are connected.
Yes , i think he is speaking wrong , i don't want to believe he doesn't know what the f is he saying .
No he's right, replace batteries with coke because thats a stupid analogy. If they're in series the voltage should increase but amperage stays the same, if they're in parallel the amperage increases but voltage stays the same.
He said the bottles were in parallel so the capacity (Amperage) would increase but the capability (Voltage) stays the same.
Yes, he probably wanted to say serial connection not parallel.
@@Zedas74 Probably.
I first learned about liquid metal batteries a few months ago. I, for one, see a huge potential for the technology. If nothing else, the combination of cost and safety are huge assets. As with all technology, the concept will evolve and become even better than we can imagine at this time.
one battery to rule them all. Potato battery! literally as cheap as chips.
Plus, they're good enough to run AIs. I saw it in Portal 2.
Pun game is strong with this one
Cheaper than chips
chips are more expensive :v
Okay!
This really needs a re-do on everything to do with specs.
Agreed. You can wire anything in series or parallel. Car batteries, frigging double As…
@Bob I meant old school car batteries. I’ve wired them series and parallel for off grid living for various applications. I’m sure the modern electric car ones would pose a different challenge
LOL I agree.
Yea I was completely lost when he started saying that it can't be configured for capability.. The specific company may not be designing that packs that way... yet.. But there's no reason it can't be configured to increase output.
@@trev6783 That left me scratching my head as well...
7:16 this doesn't make sense. kW/hr is not a unit of energy or power. You should use kWh. Also, the cost metric favours Ambri by a factor of 3x, this isn't "tomato/tomato".
Also, at 6:59, 1000 kWh is not "1000 kW of power per hour of operation." Instead, if you could draw 1000 kW of power (probably not possible, but just suppose), then the battery would be depleted in one hour. If instead you would draw 100 kW, the battery would last 10 hours.
Yes, but that's just one projection. Based on what Tesla was talking about lately, the Megapack could very well be competitive in price too.
@@andrasbiro3007 You may be right about the tech itself, I'm just arguing that how the information is being presented is incorrect and confusing.
@@jamesrempel8522 Yeah I've seen a couple of technology channels lately struggling with this kind of thing. This is high-school physics level, and it makes this content unintelligible and possibly wrong.
TMW Reading tomato/tomato but saying them both the same
NTSC was always scornfully known as "Never Twice the Same Colour", but it was the technology that PAL and other systems were based on. It was THE pioneer.
It wasn't THE pioneer, it was based on previous systems...
@@Fifury161 Thanks for the heads up. I always thought it was the first compatible colour TV broadcasting system and the one that the rest were based on. I know CBS had a mechanical system (as did Baird), but that was abandoned after only 100 sets had been shipped. Which previous systems was NTSC based on?
As far as I can tell.. NTSC was the first regulated accepted standard in the world. PAL was like 30 years later..and came about because of weaknesses and issues with NTSC
@@GarlicMonoxide I don't know what Fifury161 was on about, as NTSC was definitely the first colour TV service and WAS the pioneer. The other systems like PAL were NTSC with refinements. Our first regular colour TV service was from BBC2 in 1967, which was fourteen years later than the one in the US.
Nuclear. That's the answer to a rainy day. Safe reliable and I bet we can make them cheap if we go navel ship size. And it's harder for the rampant misunderstanding out there to argue safety considering the safety record of the navy.
8:38 nah mate, you can make a "module" of like 10 ambri packs in parallel to get 2500 kW and then connect the "modules" in series to get more kWh
sounds logic, I was thinking in my head why not two straws.
I came to say the same. As long as your inverters can sync, your max KW output would stack.
@@BaghaShams Nope, you would just draw 1/10th the power out of each battery. You are still drawing the same KW, just instead of 2500KW out of one, you are drawing 250KW each out of 10 meaning each battery would last 10x as long.
@@jeremyscherbert7336 this guy is correct, that’s the issue with the ambri packs and why it never took off. It has to do with being a “natural reaction” within the metals.
@@intuitive_soul who is correct? And what is the natural reaction causing?
I appreciate the name change of this video. Less clickbait, more your style. Keep up the great work.
The Franken FM stations finally went offline this year. NTSC is *still* not dead though as there are still many cable systems that transmit it, just not over the air.
The end of Franken FM might bite us in the ass. Idk how but I get such feelings whenever old tech like communications get phased out. The newer stuff seem to be controlled by fewer people and not easily accessible for public utilization
@Tano Any decent electronics book can tell you all about how the NTSC system works. The digital system - who knows? It's all encrypted, and how you'd fix a TV set...?
@Tano okay but now a potential alternative, which people are more familiar with now than prior, is off the table and the control by the few has been further tightened once more.
Progress is fine but always have a backup just in case.
Joe, the capacity/capability between your ears is awe-inspiring. You generate hope with every answer!
I love when I have days off where you post a video. Starts my day off right.
I loved how you brought it back and closed the loop. ("Those are still around?") Well done.
Liquid Metal was the name of my Anthrax cover band in high school.
🤣
🤘🤘AMONG AMONG AMONG AMONG!!!
Lmfaooo
Did you guys cover their cover of smooth criminal? Also do they have other songs?
Did you MELT faces!?
Just wanted to point out that connecting power storage in parallel is *not* like connecting two coke bottles with a siphon... That's "series" connection... Which indeed only improves capacity and not throughput... However, parallel connections improve both throughput and capacity. If you didn't mis-speak, and Ambri packs can be connected in parallel (and I couldn't imagine why they wouldn't be able to) then they are every bit as scalable in terms of throughput. Need 500KW? Just hook up two in parallel.
NTSC, lovingly known as "Not The Same Color" or "Never Twice the Same Color" to broadcast professionals
"No Time, Service Call."
Due to the, "My TV is fuzzy, I think it's broke!"
Also known as "No To Scans Congruent".
I'd herd the joke term "never the same color" before. lol
Most Europe, and the rest of the world used PAL, for their analog standard. PAL = Pale And Lurid
Then there's France. They had SECAM. Something Else, Contrary to American's Mode.
@@michaelmoorrees3585 indeed. NZ & AU used Pal too. I remember some VHS players & CRTs having a PAL/NTSC switch. They were not compatible!! Don't even know what the difference was! Frame rate?
I remember a talk by Donald Sadoway in which he mentioned being able to have a battery in your home the size of a small freezer that stored energy enough to power the home for three months once charged. I find this much more compelling than the grid level storage so many look to as the future of this technology.
Awesome video, thank you. Two important thing that was not mentioned though, were the efficiency and the self discharge per day in % (especially because of the must stay hot thing?).
Still good video, thank you.
Dude I really like how u tied in the intro to the end with Petro stations......" Those are still around?" Clever and more real than real ...... Real > Real
Buy us all an electric car and upgrade our homes to be able to charge it, maybe then petrol will go bye bye
"Yeah, it sure is nice to not have to mess with rabbit ear antennas anymore," as I mess with my router's antennas so I can watch Answers With Joe on my porch.
Touche
External antennas so I can enjoy the placebo effect of thinking it works better at a 45-degree angle than 30.
Mesh Wifi is far better than trying to boost a single base station
First word problems
I am more in the generation of messing with the cable tuning to clear up the scrambled HBO my parents wouldn't pay for to maybe see some B&W nudity if I can get the lack of vertical hold slow enough that it stays on the screen for more than half a second.
Hey Joe, thanks for doing what you do. I hope you’re having a great summer
Look forward to your videos each week. Thanks for the thought provoking topics each video. You always seem to find the shit that I’m glad to learn about. Keep it up 👍🏼
This is a weird compliment but your transitions from content to ads at the end of videos are really excellent. That’s not an easy skill to develop. Good on you sir. (Your content is way better but I get you need to pay the bills.)
"Capability" also doubles when in parallel
His analogy was serial. Parallel has to increase capability.
@@JonS yes....
but there is no reason why you can't operate them in a parallel arrangement. Should be simple electrical engineering?!
@@tombuxi8867 yes, that was my point. He wasn't understanding parallel battery physics. Parallel has to increase capability regardless of details of the battery tech. It's simple physics.
@@JonS And voltage is just potential relative to something else. The individual cells should not know whether they are connected in series, unless there is something weird with these that isn't being explained.
@@JonS Even in a serial arangement you double the power. amps stay the same but voltage doubles 2*V*I = 2*P
Minor correction. Joe. Parallel is like having one mouth slurping from two straws in two separate bottles. What you described is a series connection. Batteries can run parallel to ramp up current and series to ramp up voltage. Thanks, Joe! Love your stuff.
Yes, great technology, but an even less expensive battery is the iron-air battery. You should do a program on it as well.
Or aluminum-air batteries, albeit they're less developed.
LMB's are much further down the development/production path, so let's get on with it. But I agree Iron-Air shows promise. I think, given the gravity of the situation we face, there's enough space for 2 technologies. Don't you?
@@Jay...777 I do wonder about the “gravity” of the situation we face… l mean people have been saying for decades that fossil fuels are going to be gone, but we keep finding more. And if we switch to batteries, electric cars, etc. Are we then going to run into a crisis of mining all the earth’s metals?
@@tberry79 the “gravity” is mostly about global warming, not resource depletion.
The earth is much richer in metals than it is in fossil fuels, so no, we're definitely not going to run into a crisis of mining “all of Earth's metals” - even if we used them to make single-use batteries. What _could_ well happen is that we run out of certain key metals such as Cobalt. But especially aluminium and iron are extremely common, though they do need to be first extracted from ores, which takes up a lot of energy.
@@tberry79 Conventional oil discoveries peaked 50 years ago. Fracking can't last long. But switching over to "renewables" and continuing as before is a fantasy, not least because of that mining issue. Joe is far too optimistic.
Thanks Joe! Appreciate the skillshare freetrial!
Imagine having one of these batteries in every home, like having a boiler, even if the power grid goes out you still have power.
You can already have that with a Tesla Powerwall or some other similar product. Add solar panels and you can go mostly or entirely off-grid. And it's not even that expensive. Depending on the cost of electricity and the amount of sunlight you get, it can easily be cheaper then the grid.
@@andrasbiro3007 But with this you can advertise "It won't explode" and "Your not storing a ton of flammable/explosive material in your house".
@@acorgiwithacrown467 I guess a spill of liquid metal would be enough to set your stuff alight
@@SirThanksalot_1 How would it spill? its a solid block, unless you drilled into it like an idiot I can't see anyway of these batteries spilling?
@@acorgiwithacrown467 got a point there. I'm just imagining it's got the minimum amount of thickness to make it somewhat manageable (like for placement) or other access for defects. It just depends on the design.
You might want to do a video on Ferrous Iron battery. Probably less than half the performance of Lithium Iron but operates at room temp, appears to be super cheap, as heavy as blocks of iron but a major upside is it doesn't need SURFACE OF VENUS temperatures to operate. For stationary grid scale it appears to be perfect since it exploits nothing more complicated than the phase change of rust.
I was hoping to hear something about the iron-air battery that uses the oxidation and de-oxidation of iron, commonly called rust, as an ion storage system with an energy density of 8X that of Lithium. Plus its non-toxicity, abundance and not being explosive.
To increase the capability, you just wire the cells in parallel (you might want to include some load balancing circuitry too). In your example you are wiring them in series. Not really a problem.
I'm pretty sure when you said "parallel", you actually meant "series".
Yeah he showed a diagram that showed series he doesn't seen to understand how electricity works
Engineer here. Like others have mentioned, all the specs related things need a redo. Kilowatt hours are kilowatts * hours (1 kWh = kilowatt for an hour), not kilowatts / hour. As you would expect from capacity. As such, you can't directly translate to "power x homes" without a timeframe. Like, at 1kW/home, you could power 34 homes for ~29 hours, or ~100 homes for 10 hours, or ~250 homes for 4 hours with a container with 1000 kWh. Also, adding containers will always increase both capacity and "capability," regardless of if they are in parallel or series. The parallel vs series distinction matters for getting more amps or voltage, but on a grid they are interchangeable via transformers (Watts = Volts * Amps). Like, having two coke bottle setups double the coke bottles as well as the straws.
Anyways liked the video in general, so you get a like. Just, uh, hopefully make some corrections sometime.
They are great as long as the load matches the capabilities, which is probably dead easy to match up.
It will be interesting how this liquid metal tech works out. It has been hyped for quite a while now. I think the flow battery from ESS in Oregon uses non toxic materials and then there is liquid air. Highview are building two liquid air, energy storage plants that will work out cheaper than Lithium, use old readily available technology and can store power for months, a bit like hydro. The race is on.
Eh...shouldn't this battery simply be named The T-1000 Battery? I mean, after all, melting is part of how it functions just like the T-1000 melting robot from The Terminator lol
I feel like if Elon was in charge it would be named T-1000 for sure.
Don't give the AI ideas!!
I like that you don't have an annoying music track running in the background like so many TH-camrs feel is necessary...
I don't feel any nostalgia for old techs
Call me calluses
It just doesn't pull my heart strings
Probably the best approach is to use both Li-Ion and liquid metal batteries together. One provides high peak power for short term loads and the other a sustained output for longer periods. Putting them together in the same system gives the best of both worlds.
I can see this as a melted sun shield that stores energy when trying to explore the sun up close
Reflective shielding is still the way to go for that. Absorbing the heat requires having some way to insulate it from the rest of the spacecraft, otherwise it's not really shielding it.
Liquid metal batterys cant function in zero G or on moving vehicles. They use the specific gravity of the different metals to separate them. In zero G they would stay mixed. Movement would also mix the liquids so they are for static use only.
@@tfcooks nope. a centrifugal system would work fine. the liquids with more mass will displace the other liquids to be on the outer edge.
@@gramursowanfaborden5820 Well, that is creating artificial gravity and would only work traveling in a straight line at a steady speed. Maneuvering would disrupt the system. It would also work as a gyroscope and make the craft very difficult to maneuver.
@@tfcooks none of us are space ship designers but it seems to me like that's a simple problem to solve. gyroscopes also put a torque on the vehicle, if you had multiple batteries spinning in opposite directions, it would counter that torque, but either way, the whole battery system could be contained in a free moving substructure within the ship, then no matter what it could manoeuvrer as easily as it would be able to otherwise, power transfer could easily be achieved via a transformer coil around the outer periphery of the battery gyroscope casement thingy with a primary coil on the inside.
@Joe Scott, dude, Ive been loving your videos for 3 years. Had to binge all of it to catch up. Then I realized we supported the same cause... All I will say is OWEN - GFM. Dude, Mad respect now.
sounds like the Al batteries can be great for base loads while the Li can kick in during peak hours
I love how Joe always seems sorta high all the time, he seems like a really chill guy :)
this had a feel-good ending, are you feeling okay, Joe?
I managed a NTSC analog broadcast small Local TV Station. July 13th was the end of an era for sure. On to youtube!
Hey Joe, explain to everyone what the unit "Kilowatt per hour" means. Have you discovered a new principle of physics, or are you saying these batteries get more powerful over time, like Goku?
A great introduction to liquid metal batteries. I think that one thing worth considering in this context is the extent to which mining aluminium is likely less toxic (environmentally) than mining lithium (though it might be good to hear the Joe Scott perspective). Thanks for this.
wrong
Maybe I missed something, but:
1) How much energy is needed to 'liquify' or start up the battery?
2) How much energy is needed to maintain the 500 C temperature so the battery can continuously function?
3) Where does THAT energy come from (is it still green energy) ?
4) Is the energy used to maintain the battery's temperature really worth it in comparison to what it can store (as opposed to other available energy storages) ?
I still picture you as script Joe... just sitting there until someone hands you a script, lol.
Keep ‘em coming Joe!
8:18
1 straw, 2 bottles connected with a syphon is a *serial* arrangement.
2 straws, 2 bottles, with 1 straw per bottle is a *parallel* arrangement. Why can't these Ambri packs get connected in parallel?
I'm wondering the same thing. Capacity is simply a measure of voltage * amps. Any source of voltage can be wired with another source of voltage to increase amperage. So what's the problem?
saved me typing that up
And frankly, even if you do connect them in serial you still get double the power out of them... I don't know where he got the idea it didn't scale.
You'd have to ask Ambri as the 250kW cap is a figure taken straight from their website.
@@antikommunistischaktion Unless I'm reading their website incorrectly, it's 250KW per container. Which means you could wire 2 containers together to give you double the power.
Donald Sadoway is a major brainiac especially in the solid state chemistry mode. I can't get enough of his MIT Open Courseware videos. I hope ambri continues to get large funding to continue. The only reason aluminum smelters were mentioned was it was what gave Sadoway the idea but the process is in reverse. The liquid battery would absorb current in the same way the smelter does but also give off that current when required by the grid.
The real question: Is this Good-enough?
Wow Joe, the storytelling on this video was fantastic!
I have always felt that the true revolution for the grid (mobile power is another matter) is decentralization.
Privately owned solar panels is certainly a decentralizing factor.
This is why I hope hydrogen will go big. It can incinerate human waste (no need for centralized sewer systems), pee can be used as a electrolyte. You can use stored hydrogen/oxygen as a battery trough reverse electrolysis, you can cook /heat on it. And trough phase change it can even cool. It can also be used as a fuel for cars.
Another beauty of LMB is that several lower temperature alloys and molten salt compounds exist that melt below the boiling point of water. So they don't necessarily have to be preheated to Venusian conditions.
Interesting liquid batteries seem like a good starting point, was working on Methanol fuel cells as a student, but that seems to be a dead idea.
Methanol fuel cells are still being used but as a niche product. I encoutered them in portable military application recently through my work.
@@inotoff hmm interesting, at least that year was not a complete waste of time lol
I honestly thought that the intro about broadcast signals was disjointed and awkward...until the final minute.
Well played sir, well played. Callback mastery.
Thought teslas power wall batteries were lithium iron phosphate
Current Powerwalls and Megapacks use Panasonic NCA lithium ion batteries. But Tesla will be building their new Megapacks using LFP batteries, which are much cheaper, don't use cobalt, are capable of more charge cycles with reduced degradation, and are much more resistant to thermal runaway.
I love your videos. Been subscribed for a few years now
Spelling of Aluminium, so it’s not aluminum.
Aluminium - British spelling.
I think the section on specs need some work. I’m an electrical engineer and the whole thing about capability, which I’m assuming is its safe instantaneous power output will always increase if you just wire more batteries together. In series you increase voltage but will need some kind of BMS to keep each individual cell at safe charge and discharge levels. In parallel you increase current. Current X Voltage = Power, Power X Time = Energy. Maybe there’s not enough power output to energy ratio making these uneconomical to run at grid scale and that’s what you’re hinting at? But with renewables we frankly can’t get enough long term storage so that’s a little hard to believe. And to ammend not getting enough instantaneous power you can always have a small battery or super capacaitor bank in front of the liquid metal bank that keeps a small supply of energy storage to handle smaller peaks in demand
What about a good gaming chair as energy?:
*I N F I N I T E*
Since space was mentioned I'd like to point out that LMBs couldn't function in zero G. They use the specific gravity of the different metals to separate them. In zero G they would stay mixed. Movement would also mix the liquids so they are for static use only.
8:37 they generate their own heat? Surly that heat comes from the charging current? Else where does it come from? It "generates heat" untill the battery gets cold, or the heat energy comes from the charging current aka loss.
It is a cycle .. once there is current flow, the heat increases, and it keeps going up, once the heating process has started, there is no need to add external power
dude always like your stuff , , cut of your jib as it were , the way you present and your info and topics interesting and easily understandable , thank you from a long time subscriber :) , wow really long time :), you were so young :) lol
You know what was nice about this video…? Just thinking about a concept that looks towards a hopeful future…. Climate news is pretty grim this week so it’s nice to take a deep breath and hope we can science the sh!t out of this 👍🏼✊🏼
Having Ambri on the radar for long time. Best solution for extreme environments as you said: deserts ( Australia, Africa,...), space, industry, big data, heating, ... Long lasting, easy recycling. ...
Ending was great with the fossil fuel power joke, great vid!
Previously I was not able to find any parameters of AMBRI LMB, so thank you.
Btw, if you connect two 250 kw power sources, I cannot see how you still have only 250 kw. Paralel or serial connection does not matter, we are talking power and we get 500 kw.
Saltwater batteries are an interesting topic you may want to cover. They don't blow up, and they can remain uncharged indefinitely. Also, fuel cells have failed in autos, BUT on vehicles the size of ships, things change a lot, for example the weight can be removed from ballast, and in reverse, it generates H, that can be stored in a large tank. Iron-air batteries are also breaking out.
Energy tech, I think, is about to explode.
one of the traditional problems about liion batteries usage is they connecting them paralel without additional protection circuits. they needs specific protection mechanism for each batter but they do not do it in most cases because it becomes expensive and harder to handle.
Never seen that ANSWERS WITH JOE board lit up in the background. I need one of those.
When it comes to grid storage theres so many options but none of them seem to be better than ESS Inc's all-iron flow battery, which is out of the lab and into the marketplace. No toxicity, non-flammable, non-explosive, no rare metals, fully recyclable, can operate at 50°C (122°F) with no airconditioning. It's not to energy dense but for grids that irrelevant. Their Power Center can do up to 6MW and 74/MWH on a single acre, which would be on par with a newer natural gas peaker plant near my house. Please Joe, do a video on them as I cant seem to find any real fault with their product, which seems a little to good to be true. Keep up the informative and hilarious videos!
Great job, man. As always.
I saw an idea of using compressed air as a "battery" very high pressures and tech requirements but looked very good
But Joe:
1) How much energy is needed to 'liquify' or start up the battery?
2) How much energy is needed to maintain the 500 C temperature so the battery can continuously function?
3) Where does THAT energy come from (is it still green energy) ?
4) Is the energy used to maintain the battery's temperature really worth it in comparison to what it can store (as opposed to other available energy storages) ?
Joe I think you should do a video on tidal power. It's heavily utilized by countries like Sweden but the U.S doesn't use it at all. I find this crazy especially when we consider our ideal coastlines.
Sweden is at the baltic sea which has almost no tides (it's basically a shallow sweet water lake with a small connection to the ocean and lakes don't have tides)
Maybe you mean Norway. They have many, many fjords at their Atlantic coastline. The potential for tidal power is insane.
@@thulyblu5486 my bad I totally meant Norway
Liquid Metal Batteries are great for medium term storage which is few minutes to few hours. They love to always be in operation either charging or discharging to always be liquid. However, their main disadvantage is when they freeze. It takes a lot of energy to heat them fast or too long time to heat them slowly. They are made to coexist with other technologies.
Best Case for liquid metal is to exist in a system that uses wind and solar with a backup of gas turbines. They can bridge the gaps when Solar and/or Wind are down. In case both are down for long periods, they give you enough time to power up gas turbines in a more efficient way which also means you can use existing turbines.
2:15 take a gander at pumped-storage hydroelectricity. It’s a technology already being used around the world to store energy to meet peak demand throughout the day.
Glad to see this tech getting attention
Great analogy, straw and a coke. Although straws should not be used unless you’re physically incapacitated to hold a glass, cup or bottle
There are projects around gravity batteries too. You basically use excess energy to lift a gigantic weight, then you get part of it back when you drop it.
Thanks for the update on this Theme
Maybe I misunderstand something, but usually if you connect batteries in parallel you both increase capacity and capability as maximum current increases. Basically serial connection gives you more voltage but the same max current and parallel gives you same voltage, but more current.
Start-up energy to heat Liquid metal is potentially easy to come up with for large stations. Solar furnaces. You'd need a backup source for cloudy weather but you could heat the metal use it to generate steam, then use it to store the current generated by the turbines. During bright and sunny weather you generate power through the solar furnace, at night, or in bad weather you draw power from storage. if your downtime on Generation/storage exceeds the limits of the unit, you tap into the other sources of power in the network. such as gas turbines, hydro, or nuclear.
I think the main drwaback and the reason that these batteries will not catch on is that for each KW going in there is less coming back out of a flow battery then a Lion battery. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a metal as a liquid. It is the same reason that water electrolysis will only be a niche energy storage medium, it is a less efficient way to store energy.
1,000 kWh doesn’t mean 1,000 kW per hour of operation. It means power output TIMES time is 1,000. At 250kW output the battery would last 4 hours. Also, I think someone else may have already pointed out that batteries in parallel increase current if power transfer was limited on the source side. Batteries in series increase voltage - which increases current if current was previously limited by the load side rather than the power source.
Best battery system is hydro power battery systems, in which water is pumped into a pond and used during night time to compensate for lack of solar energy. We should have solar farms out in our deserts, miles and miles of solar farms, and hydro power all over the US inside every lake.
I love you and your content Joe Scott
I like the idea of multiple methods of power storage and generation
Once you're operating a systematic approach Native Package Capability doesn't matter, the system will parrallelize or serialize to maximize the characteristics necessary for your applications.
Most people wouldn't remember this but back in 1978 or so, the Shah of Iran was asked why he wanted to build nuclear reactors in a country with so much oil. He said that oil should be used for making plastics and for transportation not for energy production.
The race for long term grid storage is on. This liq metal battery is ahead, if it wins hope it is the right choice. Few flaws, EXCEPT figuring out an efficient electrical conductor which can operate at very high temperatures inside the battery packs. Don't forget, the scale for this application needs to be huge, and heat loss inefficiency is proportional to outer area versus volume. Maybe molten copper inside a hollow stainless steel tube to protect against oxygen? Graphite with a surface barrier?
Then a vacuum thermal barrier outer wall around an entire warehouse full of cells? (All lost heat likely is wasted electricity ... )
“He was also studying aluminum processing at the time and thought there might be some POTENTIAL there.” ;)
That was so deadpan.
Joe you’re the best on TH-cam