So what do you think? The first 100 people to use code UNDECIDED at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: incogni.com/undecided If you liked this, check out: Is Aquaponics the Future of Agriculture?: th-cam.com/video/59kk4OjJCj4/w-d-xo.html
I wish you had shown a comparison in size between different types. How physically large does it have to be in order to equate to a tesla powerwall for example.
I would love to see a deployment cost for either a Peaker plant or a shuttered nuclear facility like San Onofre in California, with the grid infrastructure in place these would appear be a perfect cost comparison to see real value. Also, time to deploy if it takes 10 years then that would be a very negative factor.
The technology for the specific application. Is awesome.! But the thing is. Batteries that can't be recharged. Or reused. Like the double AA batteries I have in my TV remote. On an industrial scale. Could be useful in a few applications for sure. But the problem with that business model Is that it's to conducive to becoming the status quo. As you can see they did with low voltage batteries. AA, AAA etc. And that's not what anyone who uses energy wants for the energy industry. Except for the very few people at the top of energy industries. Who stand to make all the money.! So I canot in good conscience be complicit with an energy technology with so many potential drawbacks. Which might be hard to see when it gets so cheap And ubiquitous. But that's the insidious problem. That's how they get ya.! Especially for industrial applications.! WE SHOULD ONLY BE STRIVING FOR.! #1. Completely Rechargeable. #2. A 100-year cycle life minimum. #3. Minimal Maintenance. #4. Non-Toxic for service life. #5. Completely and easily Repairable.! These are requirements of a battery that is used a lot. And if the battery is being used a lot. That means there's a lot of energy being moved around. And that is where they stand to make money. Not from Batteries. But from the Transfer of Energy.! Like they don't get it. Batteries are their problem.! Not ours.! They should want to make them as efficient as possible. Because they're the ones who should want us to use them. Because they stand to gain the most. Sure the more inefficient battery the better for them. But that's not really looking at the big picture. You want your battery to become ubiquitous. So everyone uses it. And then Charge them for the service.! While your battery meets some of these requirements. And kind of meet some others. That's woefully short of meeting all the aforementioned correctly. Valve in the steam deck are a perfect example. They lose money on the steam deck. To get you into their ecosystem. Which they make far more money from. Then they ever could from the from the Steam Deck alone at any price.! So disposable only energy technology while having some application. Are mostly backward moving. Relics technology. Which really doesn't have any place in the future. And it's something to be evolving past.! It's not for the consumer or industrial market applications. I can only imagine it be used in like going to Mars or the moon. Subterranean or aquatic conditions. You know pretty niche applications. Now molten salt batteries and liquid metal batteries. Those are on the right track. Well they're a lot closer anyway. Maybe focus on those. If you are still- "Undecided.!"
When the battery reaches its end of life, can you just flush the fluids and replenish the same tanks and system without replacing all of the hardware? If so, that's a big step toward longevity. That would actually make it a worthy investment for homeowners, should it ever be scaled toward home power storage applications.
I researched ESS about the time South Australia installed Tesla's big battery. I asked them if they could have matched the cost and they not only confirmed they could but pointed out that they would have a lot longer life, no fire risk and no end of life disposal problems. I often wondered what had become of ESS. Great to see they are making progress.
This "low energy" density is perfect for home batteries. Based on 125Wh/L (7:08), a 10-gallon fish tank can hold 4kWh of energy. Scale that up to a small fridge-sized at 2ft x 2.5ft x 6ft (0.6m x 0.7m x 1.9m) and it can hold 798 liters or about 100kWh of storage. That is equivalent to 8 Powerwalls of energy, while Tesla rarely recommends more than 3 Powerwalls for non-mansions.
Yep, and all that will probably be necessary for maintenance is to top them up with distilled water every now and then, especially with that high cycle life that will only get better as the tech improves.
Please pin this! This math was super helpful for helping me understand the competitiveness of this battery! I would happily install an extra fridge sized unit in my house that can run everything my house needs, and then some!
For many homes, yes. But for multi family housing space is often at a premium, so possibly not always. Also it’s common to quote cell-level energy densities when talking about batteries which are significantly more optimistic than real world battery pack-level densities. That may be the case here for the 125 kWh/liter figure - it may not include all the required components for a real world installation.
Thank you for getting BACK to flow batteries. This is a REAL, VALID solution. ESS is a company that I also wish you had done a full video on because as an American company with a great idea, deploying their solution helps the US in many ways. And it's silly to talk about energy density in the same conversation as grid storage because 95% of the time it makes no difference. So IF you want to mention energy density you need to explain WHY it's not important. The biggest factors are cost and efficiency in conversion.
Energy storage to cost ratio would likely be effective, if the density is too low to be cost effective that would show, although that does simplify many factors into a single number which may be confusing or hide other pros/cons not covered by the ratio.
do you know what's the best and most safe energy storage medium with absolutely the lowest storage losses AND it's powered pure solar energy? It's DIESEL. product of 4 billion years of evolution and the best energy storage medium based on solar energy and it's fully recyclable without any waste or pollution - if you love life on earth support carbohydrates and CO2
Excited to hear how the solar / iron-flow storage system works out for SMUD. Non-toxic, inflammable, lowER cost all sounds like the right starting places for energy storage we would want to have ‘where ever needed’ and in abundance near an energy production site. Thank you Matt and Undecided crew for this quick review of the salt-based flow batteries currently in the lead!!
RedOx flow batteries seem like a great option for home batteries. You could bury your electrolyte tanks under the slab for a small battery shed (or under the patio next to the mechanical room, etc.), and you’ve got tons of backup power in a very small footprint.
If in the future technologies allow these to last longer imagine burying then under your home if they could last like 50 - 60 years. Maybe making it modular with an access port. That way when it's time to replace you can go in & disconnect the smaller units & drop in new ones rather than having a single monolithic unit. If all suburban homes had large back up batteries & solar panels, & there were open markets for selling power, you could realistically lower the costs drastically for everyone involved who couldn't afford to live in an freestanding home. Cheap energy storage will be the game breaker
@@WitchMedusa We'd have to get the utility companies to release their death grip on the state sponsored monopoly that they've enjoyed for the last few decades to see a future like you describe, but I'm all for it.
It will never be made available to domestic users. Too much money to be lost by power generation and distribution companies and their wealthy, powerful, influential owners.
@@gazzaeabc3805 Yep, came to say the same thing. This country’s policies aren’t made by what’s sensible or logical or ethical, they are set by what’s most profitable to the entities that truly run the show. Case in point: utility company make sure to impose a fee to solar owners for the privilege of not using their services.
I agree 100% on diversifying how we store and produce energy. Not one way is best for all applications. I'd like to thank you for creating these talks they are very informative and insightful.
A very promising concept that has been around for some time, and the real need to come up with a solution to energy storage is getting greater all the time. There are lots of brilliant minds working on it - I'm sure we will get there in the end! Thank you for sharing, Matt!
Saltwater batteries are an excellent solution for grid energy storage. They offer the advantage of not requiring much space, making them a viable alternative to lithium-ion batteries as a clean energy solution. It's important to consider the harmful effects of lithium-ion battery mining on the environment. Therefore, it is recommended to use lithium-ion batteries only for applications that demand high energy density, such as electric vehicles (EVs).
Agreed, these would also be great micro grid and home battery solutions for suburban and rural homes which have space to put up a "battery shed" like their pump house for water. Days worth of power could be stored in case of snow storms blocking solar panels or just to climate control a house when waiting for the grid to come back on line, a problem that happens more than is realized in rural USA. They could even be used to charge when grid power is cheap at night then run the house off the batteries during the day when power is expensive, especially with a 20k cycle life!
@@anydaynow01 That was my thought exactly. I’m rural af. Acres. I’m also in the process of going Solar. How great would it be if I could just plop a cheap conex sized battery out back and have that to run my house overnight or during outages? I’d be all over it.
no, there is no harm in lithium mining. this is doomster talk nonsense. based on some oil lobby financed documentary on boomer media. first compare it to fossil, good, we can stop right here. but lets see, most lithium comes from australia, there are no issues with mining there. it can be done without any harm,, without any water consumed. same goes for battery production 90% of energy needed today because of the long baking is not needed in modern processes like dry coating. this will all come naturally because it reduces cost immensely. nothing is consumed, mining can stop at some point and a never ending cycle can take place. there is not shortage of lithium on earth, it is basically everywhere, mining has to increase, thats all. the market will solve this naturally, prices go up, mining increases, simple. why would you recommend to use lithium ion only for cars, this makes no sense whatsoever. you always have to include absolutely everything to have a good guess of what is doable and what is not. there are an infinite number of properties batterries have, and lithium ion ticks all the boxes like nothing else. the last 20 years ever yweek someone comes with a new "revolutionary" battery that can do this and that. then they have that one issue which makes them useless, like oh i can charge to 80% in 3 minutes but the battery only last 10 cycles. but at the end of the day it isnt even about which battery technology to use, it is all about high scale manufacturing. even the worst technology battery is good enough. the hard part is the insane amounts of them needed. there is an infinite amount of demand waiting for the first to serve. fro mall the solutions praised, sand heat storage seems like the only viable that makes sense imo the rest is battery, and that means lithium ion.
I love how flow batteries are immensely scalable. You're right about the need a wide variety of ENERGY storage and not just electrical storage is needed for the new renewable infrastructure. Thermal batteries can greatly reduce certain costs for both municipalities and industry.
I remember Germany tried to get rid of nuclear and coal back in the early 2000s. It was expensive for the electricity consumers. We learned that diversification was really important for energy storage and generation. I share that sentiment with you.
Last nuclear power plant was switched of about a year ago. About half of energy at good days in last summer was created with renewable. Tendency increasing.
My favorite thing to postulate (read : daydream) about for energy solutions is using existing infrastructure in some way. Bridges and roads could be used to grind basalt to produce powdered basalt (to absorb atmospheric carbon and use as building material) or produce electricity from piezoelectric cells (prolly not that good of an idea.) Buildings could be used as the weight for gravity batteries. Structures built in the ocean could be made to produce electricity using the cathodic effect of rust. Tidal changes could be harnessed to remove oxidation.
This is great. I hate the idea of strapping a large, expensive & especially flammable lithium ion battery to my house. I don’t care too much about size. But cost and safety are paramount for home storage. Using lithium ion for grid scale energy is also bonkers due to the cost.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ideas and videos. Definitely a technology to keep an eye on. From the perspective of a former senior power system operator I’ve always been in the all of the above camp. Large batteries could certainly help with power transmission restrictions. I’ve seen more power dumped due to transmission restrictions or low loads than you could imagine. This technology could be used to get power into a different restricted region if you were to have one half of the battery on each side of an interface and pipe the electrolyte by pipeline to a matching station in the next region. None of the typical limits of adding parallel transmission pathways due to the stored energy and no dynamic stability problems other that the possible loss of generation within a load pocket. Keep up the great work.
The problem with a diffuse set of options is that we limit the advantage of economies of scale. All of these options are interesting and you do a great job showing how they can fit certain use cases, but while focusing on just a few technologies can stifle innovation, it also optimizes cost.
Always focus on as much variety as possible early on, and pick the best for a given situation after. Most of the battery designs that have come out in the past couple years will not be around in the next couple, because even if they're better than what we have now, they can't all be better than eachother. That being said, there's no point in just picking the first one better than what we have right now and mass-producing that when there's something much better right around the corner. Once the innovation slows down, it's about picking the best from there.
Economies of scale don't scale forever. In many cases it can be a u shape. Economics explained has a recent video on this. That said, it's hard to imagine salt and iron batteries not having an incredibly wide u
Why can't there be numerous cost effective solutions? And how do you know hyper centralization is necessarily cost effective? I think there's plenty of capital out there, but the rich are too obsessed with asset prices to actually invest in these sorts of technologies.
@@psalmy26 I don't trust batteries which plate iron on the anode side. That process is incredibly difficult/impossible to do reversibly without degradation. Rust is not an impermeable barrier to further degradation so the plated iron will rapidly rust away within a few cycles
These have great potential for use in very hot/variable environments like in the Australian bush. I wouldn't mind having a fridge sized device outside as a backup power supply to keep the freezer cold, lights and USB.
I have been interested in flow batteries for the last several years. One thing to keep in mind, in cold climates they would need to be heated. Zinc bromide chemistry batteries take up half the space and are also very safe.
Salt water does have a lower freezing point, if that's what you meant, and depending on the density of salt in the water, it might work well below freezing; just a thought.
I sure enjoy this channel. Matt seems like a good guy and I kinda like his sense of humor. The videos are done really well with quality editing. I’m not in the least surprised that he’s got 1.2 MILLION subscribers. Have a great week everyone!
I like the idea of saltwater batteries. For grid storage and for homes if they make them. The more we can use readily available resources and less toxic or unsafe ones, the better. It is great to stress that many solutions are needed for whatever we're going to do for energy production and storage. I'm still pulling for the SEV Aptera to be my next vehicle where I wouldn't need to plug it in to charge it. It's not the vehicle for everyone but it would work well for me, so when people poo poo ideas or new concepts, I ask, why? Because we're going to need many ideas that work to solve solutions.
Not only Salt Water is less toxic by itself, but it is also extremely easily available, accessible and harvested too, not to mention the promise of it to be able to also produce freaking Freshwater, which would make it far better if they deliver on that promise. Middle Eastern Nations would definitely fund this shit up with hundreds of billions of dollars if they make Battery Storage and Desalination capabilities be a proven real world application of the technology that can be scaled and developed.
Well they have failed in residential applications because they do not deliver enough power quickly enough for inductive loads. The voltage will collapse and the inverter will shut down on low input voltage. This is why the previous saltwater battery company has since gone out of business.
@@UlexiteTVStoneLexiteI don't think such solution exists but I have reached out to them and shared some ideas as well. I believe there has to be a way to make these things more portable and therefore for use in homes.
As a cargo pilot that regularly carries LithIon batts, I strongly hope this tech becomes mainstream. Lithium and cobalt mining are horrible for the environment, but selfishly they’re incredibly dangerous
So True I remember the loss of UPS6 being one caused by a faulty lithium battery Cargo temps reached over 1100C Crew didn't have much of a chance to save the aircraft 😭
This sounds extremely promising! Ive always thought lithium ion was a bad fit for utility scale storage and this really knocks it out of the park in every conceivable way. The possibilities for marine and military use are just icing on the cake. Great reporting on this!
Lithium Ion instead of being vilified should be praised for the temporary bridge it provided while the naysayers and energy terrorists were exposed. Nukes are bad. Oil, gas are bad. Li batteries are bad. windmills are bad, solar is bad....etc. This is almost like a group of humanity hating people are trying to starve us of energy and food. What the world NEEDS and must have is hundreds of sources of energy production AND storage to supply the needs of modern society. However there is an industry in government, media, academia, who's total focus is to destroy as many sources of production and storage as possible.
For stationary applications, this and similar technologies is an infinitely better choice than wasting lithium on batteries that just have to sit there and do their job. Lithium is light enough to go places - that's what we really need to use it for.
I absolutely love how Matt does his dad-jokes with a straight face. Still trying to master that with my kids. :P Great video and informative update. Thank you!!!
The final point cannot be repeated enough. I keep trying to get people to understand that we need a variety of solutions and stop being obsessed with wind or nuclear, and the fire problem of lithium batteries. This is all in early stages and we are going to see so much more.
Salt batteries are what we need. Minimal environmental impact for collecting. Using the brine salt from desalination plants would allow large scale desalination plants a viable alternative for clean water.
I am grateful for this channel. Matt always showcase newer technologies that can be massive gamechangers in the industry. I am hoping for similar kinds of breakthroughs for other things. Personally, I would like to see innovations with sewage treatment for instance.
Im also grateful because I know that any tech featured here means with 90% of certainty to be pseudoscience, a misunderstood trend, a scam or extremely overhyped tech. So is some short of ironic quack watch and I tell my friends to look it up here if they wanna know if its some short of scam or overhyped stuff.
@@Rzwolle77 And there's the real reason Matt & co are popular: mass delusion to avoid hard truths & sacrifice. It's folks like RZ here that cause all the problems thru ignorance & gullibility. This is how Iraq happened.
This is my favourite battery so far. Easy to get material, non-toxic, easy disposal, long-lasting, cheap. Disposal of batteries is really a headache. I was wondering why nobody made this kind of battery?
All about energy density and how much and how fast it can discharge. They would be great for home use but trying to run major appliances and stuff, you would need a lot more batteries hooked up to make it work.
All the government's of the world have been giving the fossil fuel companies $400 BILLION per year, while only pretty recently giving ALL renewables combined just $66 billion. Numbers from right before covid. I'm assuming that in the last 2-3 years, renewables have been given more money. But with literally many decades of giving fossil fuel companies hundreds of billions while barely giving renewables anything, it's easy to see why battery tech has been so slow to advance.
Robert Pruitt: So what is your point Robert? Fossil is a proven thing and all these experimental ventures are maybes. Get out of the regulating business for fossil, stop subsidizing them, and then see what they can do free market. You will be glad we have fossil capability if/when the SHTF. Walk softly and carry a BIG stick. And hope you don't have to use it. I can tell you first-hand, you do not want a Chinese or N.Korean, or Russian tank driving down your street. And by the way - There is no apostrophe in governments.@@lordgarion514
detailed research, great insight! I especially like your comment at the end that in the future, it is not 'one size fits all' but most likely it is a combination of production and storage approaches which will 'make our world go round net zero'! Thank you so much!
Batteries like these and the aluminum graphene batteries GMG is working on have got me really excited. I think it's a great idea for large batteries, that don't need to be portable and are intended for large scale, reliable, long term use; to prioritize lower-cost/safer materials over current lithium batteries.
sounds really great I'll put my money on it. as a bulk storage, making graphene. one of the go-to substances for future manufacturing, clean water is a byproduct.
Cost per smallest unit please? What is the point if only large corporations can buy it? Cost of electrolyte of $5 per KWh does not mean much if rest of equipment to run it cost it 100 times more. Would appreciate cost of the smallest unit and when will be available on the market?
I wonder if a DIY version of this would be possible, of course it'd be less than the claimed 125Wh/L (7:08), but having something the size of a fish tank, or sofa (if placed outside) could provide a somewhat safe energy storage solution. It'd be great for home use!
This is particularly useful in areas where baseload power is unreliable (be it for disaster areas, off grid homesteaders, or whatever else.) This power storage can be charged through any renewable, OR you can just add more electrolyte, almost like a diesel generator.
Matt I live this idea. I am growing more concerned about the push to electrify and it's current emphasis on lithium and vanadium. Lithium poses geopolitical problems on sourcing it's scant quantity and environmental problems in it's use and disposal. I hope that there RFB's for residential use. I also loved seeing the solar panels over the canals. As an Arizonan, I know that canals have brought life giving water to the desert. And now the same real estate may bring power also.
Looks really good. For many locations there’s plenty of space available so that the energy density isn’t as much of an issue. It’s great all this new battery tech coming out. I’m still excited about the LiFeP04 that I’ve been using for the past two years on our solar Edge AI systems that operate off grid. Always love new battery possibilities.
Especially with that 20k cycle life, they would be the last batteries anyone would ever need. Just setup a larger battery shed or even better if someone had room to set the modular shipping container up in their yard and just hook the leads up to the home charger network, then disguise it as a work shed or plant some fast growing bushes in front of it if the sight of a container is off putting in some communities.
He seems to ignore LiFePO4 for some reason. LiFePO4 is already good enough for my to power my life till I die for less than the cost of a medium priced car. It is not theory, it is an already proven win for solar viability.
The low toxicity angle of this one sounds really appealing, food producing regions under threat from salt water surges and other such disasters could develop infrastructure to restore/maintain production in record time, boosting resilience with low risk of contamination.
@@lazysmurf420 It is a good solution for individual households but we need to scale up big time and flow batteries are what power companies need to start acquiring. The price of LiFePO4 would start skyrocketing if power companies started buying up all the premade (likely Chinese) batteries plus you still would be using up lithium and other precious metals that EV companies will likely be competing for. These simply require storage tanks and can be stackable with shipping containers in population-dense areas.
Good video but I wish you went into the cost per kwh and compared that with other solutions. While size does play a role in some installations the vast majority aren't really size/volume impacted
Seems like for stationary applications, and maybe even large mobile ones, the density issue isn't much of an issue, especially give the run time, life time, and (lack of) fire advantages. Seems like for grid scale even if these were more money up front they could work out over time. I do wonder how they do when it's -20f or colder outside though. Seems like the salt water might freeze, or require active heating.
-20 shouldn't be a problem if the salt content is high enough. maybe a little active heating for the tanks, but mostly insulation. keep in mind that the VAST majority of north americans live in climates where it's too warm for the ocean to freeze.
I love Matt's work. Positive information about the future without sugarcoating. But, he glossed over Project Nexus. The work in the Turlock Irrigation District is just the pilot project based on work done at UC Merced and Santa Cruz. They are only covering 250 miles of canals. The goal is to scale it up to cover the State Water Project. That is 4,000 miles of canals. The SWP is also the largest power user in the state. It is projected to generate 13 gigawatts of electricity and save 63 billion gallons of water.
All these ideas sound so much better than using li-ion batteries for "large scale" metropolitan power storage where volume and mass aren't limitations. The sodium redox flow especially sounds interesting if it's really somehow able to also create graphene which would at once address multiple high cost, high demand conundrums although AFAIK there's a lot more to creating graphene sheets than simply a chemical reaction, creating single layer molecular sheets also involves technique which a difficult problem to solve. I still think that thermal storage likely makes more sense than chemical storage but am willing to listen to any idea people come up with that can be proven executable.
We’re a strange species. Our solutions have been staring at us since the beginning of time: sun, wind, oceans. Yet we continue to dig, dig, and dig for our energy. Imagine where we’d be if we focused on the obvious.
Advantages of flow batteries over LFP: 1) 4x cycle life 2) no thermal runaway 3) chemicals (Salt & Iron) are easy to recycle Disadvantages of flow batteries over LFP 1) More expensive than LFP to manufacture 2) Hard to scale because of complexity 3) More maintenance. More moving parts to break 4) Too bulky for home use (grid use only) 5) Membranes don't last long 6) Single point of failure. More downtime.
LFP already has an insane cycle life, vastly more than needed. every battery is dead easy to recycle, nothing is wasted, literally 97% can be reused. means, everything but the glue that keeps that thign together and some plastics. it wont get any better than this.
Matt, you are a salt battery for knowledge and wisdom! Thanks for this enlightening video. Sometimes it seems to me like we are "progressing" back to some very basic and planet friendly technologies. Not a bad thing. ❤
I am directly working on the Salgenx project. I actually feel incredibly similar. A lot of these designs of "simple" hybrid flow batteries couldn't exist economically in the past due to large design flaws leading to bad efficiency. And then while investigating more complicated designs we found solutions for these "simple" designs and those solutions now are being used on these old designs with moderate -> extreme increases in total efficiency.
An interesting and useful information package. I really like the low toxicity, cheap available materials and simplicity. I hope it develops into a major player.
I'd be interested in knowing what voltage each cell can produce singularly and in series, and if the series configuration would produce some type of imbalance between the cells. This would be important in converting it back into usable grid energy. Otherwise, Matt, you had a great presentation.
This is really interesting to see and definitely heading in the right direction for power storage. The ability to have energy storage that is not flammable, not harmful to the environment (at least as minimal as possible), and at a cheap price point, allows for a lot of possibilities for moving to more renewable energy solutions. Kennedy Energy Park up in Far North Queensland, Australia has a mix of wind and solar to harness the power creation at different times of the day/night, then uses Tesla Battery Systems to store and provide to the grid. Having a cheaper, more environmental way to store and provide that power to the grid would bring electricity costs down for us Australians
That's what I'm hoping for. We went with lead acid AGM batteries because they are fully recyclable and cheaper vs lithium which is not. Sodium will most likely be our upgrade option.
wtf are you talking about, every battery is completely recycleable. lead acid is not cheaper than lithium, you always have to consider absolutely everything, lithium ion is unbeatable, infinitly available, no issues to mine etc
Yea. but if it can make fresh water + use that brim for something - like storing power - no matter how you cut that up - its already on another level vs anything else use. Let alone, for grid storage, it doesnt matter how large they get - as it can be stack and weight has no real meaning there. Sign this tech up man. If it really works, there wouldnt really be that many down sides and could be expanded super quick from coast to coast. This would leave Li for everything else that needs higher performance and storage numbers. Something you didnt cover though and the reason I think they're still R/Ding the stuff is the slow startup time though? I remember reading something about that - that it takes a bit of time for them to be really producing power so they dont work in terms of quick switch, but even if that is true, so long as they're used as the main storage, adding a little Li battery percentage wouldnt be the the end of the world. Really, I would just add really large super caps:) as they dont have any of the issues and have a very fast startup and load out time to give time for the flow battery to get warm up. Also, keep in mind, we over produce power every day. Just having a way to store that over use power would be huge and would cut something like 10% of power plants just because wouldnt need all the extra overhead anymore. Adding solar homes alone would triple the closing and the real benefit there is that they can pay you for the use of your extra power and lower their operating cost.
I remember like just over 5 years ago Matt, there were about a half dozen TH-cam videos of people making home made salt water batteries in those large plastic barrels...now you can't find anything on them anywhere it seems.
I built one in about 1min using Sea Salt and a couple of knives. .4v (crossed my mind out of the blue) , So it seems obvious to me this will work well if you have access to rain and ocean water.
@UndecidedMF Hi. I work directly on the Salgenx project (this is a personal account). I'd be happy to answer questions here about the design. Loved the summary, hit the big points. Happy to see some good traction.
I think RFBs could be used to great effect as a neighborhood or community power storage option. Just have an open field somewhere with fabric canopies (for shade) draped above Salgenx batteries, directly beside/comingled with a solar panel farm consisting of a few strategically places arrays.
The flood of relevant puns while keeping it interesting and informative is absolutely astonishing. Looking forward to this seemingly ‘holy grail’ solution being the norm!
Ferric chloride is ANYTHING BUT non-toxic. It's a very strong oxidiser, used for example to etch copper in circuit boards. On the other hand, it has zero vapour pressure and can be easily dehydrated, so unless somebody drinks the stuff, it's fairly safe. That said, considering a chlorine gas dissolved in organic liquid as an industrial-scale battery material.. Brave. Very brave.
The first time I heard about the iron flow batteries I was really intrigued. Just using rusty water is probably one of the cheapest and safest things you can do. This new salt water battery also sounds amazing. For grid scale applications cycle life, price and storage time are the most important metrics so I see a grate future for these flow batteries.
That is very informative and thought-provoking. I know you can make a saltwater battery at home for a science project but this is on a much larger scale. How very cool🎉
Last Energy, a U.S.-based micro modular NUCLEAR technology firm and project developer, has secured power purchase agreements (PPAs) for 34 PWR-20 small modular reactor (SMR) units with four industrial partners in the UK and Poland. The deals, which represent a combined $18.9 BILLION in power sales, mark “the largest pipeline of new nuclear power plants under development in the world,” Last Energy said.
Interesting video. I totally agree with you when you mentioned that "no one energy" (to rule them all - paraphrase); Thorium-based nuclear though could/should be THE base load. I like solar and wind as supplemental to the base load where it is BEST SUITED.
I once saw a video here on TH-cam about a Belgian architect who already stored energy in huge salt water tanks in/under his house. I wish I could find that video again. We live near the Rotterdam harbour. Enough salt water around here.
Great episode! These salt water batteries have been something I've been looking at for some time and make a lot of sense for grid applications and boats, desalination is a new one for me and is pretty sweet! I think the cycle life information on batteries when you're comparing them near the end of the video is incorrect however. Just giving you a heads up. Perhaps you sought to simplify the information. There's premium cycles above 80% of max capacity and then there is the usable life cycle that is much longer. You should be able to get 7k to 10k cycles easily from some of those chemestries if you're charging and discharging them within spec params and sometimes decently longer than that if you create a buffer in the params. Loved the video and I appreciate all the work you put into these. Sending good vibes from Florida!
These paired with Sodium ion batteries have me charged up for stationary storage as sodium is plentiful and the batteries are so long lived. Something to add, ESS is also partnering with an Australian company to make their batteries there. Australia has vast reserves of iron.
youre really satisfied with all those near puns arent you!! 😂 super interesting work on this stuff. crazy to think that people actually pursued this stuff with real money. i recall going crazy about the importance of redox in non-organic processes as an undergrad.
A long lasting, nontoxic/nonflammable flow battery seems fantastic for gridscale, regardless of the lower energy density. Provided it's cheap enough. All those costs that would go into managing safety and fire suppression can instead go into more battery volume. That volume can be stored more dense/packed together too. For comparison, an Olympic sized swimming pool is 2.5M liters. So that would be a 312.5MWh battery.
RND a off shore supply vessel utilising the tanks built in to them. Under the rescue and assist vessels the electrical systems can run without the generators and using fuel sources to operate😊
I think researching all options can only ever be a good thing to do. Whether the end result is good or bad. I do think solid state batteries will still win the day ultimately for longevity, rapid recharge, safety and storage capacity.. although I also believe using solar in places where its always hot like deserts is a big win... as you can heat up large volumes of water during the day ASWELL then use the steam from that heated water at night to also create power which returns more power then the solar during the day. You only need a tiny area on the world map unused desert land in Africa out in Vegas to power the planet.. just the logistics of having decent power cables to hold the massive charge. If anything I think power transfer should now be the focus
Operating without a separator sounds great, but could result in the degeneration of one or both of the electrolytes due to contamination. even with this additional run cost, it could still be a huge reduction in cost. Could everyone build one in their backyard??
Great Segment, Great Topic. Cool Tech w/Red Flow and ESS, others. Red Flow is perfect for lower states, not hindered by heat. I read somewhere Red Flow is considering the home sized Vanadium batteries. There is also GreenRock in Germany,, (Na Batteries, previously Aquion IP).
I worked at a flow battery scale up. Did competitor analysis: Especially ESS inc is quite mature and their tech is really promising. ESS stocks are also a bargain! (Partly due to a fake claim made by short sellers)
Totally excited about "Salt Water Batteries" for fixed use. Typically, a self sufficient household needs at least 60kWh, and a system bypass with backup generator, which is currently uneconomic. Cheap flowcell technology, like "Salt Water Batteries", not reliant on scarce metals and minerals, and high intensity mining and mineral processing, should offer this solution, for large domestic and even large commercial, grid size storage. We're going to really need a solution, in the next few years, when our reliable baseload is gone.
Living in California, yeah.....were trying to limit the amount of utility stuff that can catch fire, which makes ESS's IFB a very good fit for us. Ive been in the HVAC trade for 17 years and no one ever factors in the cost to buy, operate and repair all of the A/C systems that Li-ion requires, people get fixated on "95% efficiency" as if that was the end all, be all of battery tech. Reality is IFB, will last way, way longer than any lithuim product and will have the same capacity 30 years from now as it did on day 1. The 25 year life expectancy, is a little misleading, theres nothing wrong with the electrolyte or stacks at that age, its just the life expectancy the manufacturer of the storage tanks give, so no reason you couldnt run it decades longer
Once again you put together a very informative video. This battery option has put a lot of checks in the + column but the potential to lower the cost of graphene production (although not yet proven) then that is almost a stand alone reason to further develop and deploy this option.
I wish these were at house scale, sadly, they are the scale of a house. *Ba-dum, tss!* But seriously, it is heartening to learn so many alternatives are popping up. Hopefully Nevada picks up these more affordable, nearly inflammable storage solutions for our massive solar farms.
So what do you think? The first 100 people to use code UNDECIDED at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: incogni.com/undecided
If you liked this, check out: Is Aquaponics the Future of Agriculture?: th-cam.com/video/59kk4OjJCj4/w-d-xo.html
I wish you had shown a comparison in size between different types. How physically large does it have to be in order to equate to a tesla powerwall for example.
I would love to see a deployment cost for either a Peaker plant or a shuttered nuclear facility like San Onofre in California, with the grid infrastructure in place these would appear be a perfect cost comparison to see real value. Also, time to deploy if it takes 10 years then that would be a very negative factor.
The technology for the specific application. Is awesome.!
But the thing is.
Batteries that can't be recharged. Or reused. Like the double AA batteries I have in my TV remote. On an industrial scale. Could be useful in a few applications for sure.
But the problem with that business model Is that it's to conducive to becoming the status quo. As you can see they did with low voltage batteries. AA, AAA etc.
And that's not what anyone who uses energy wants for the energy industry. Except for the very few people at the top of energy industries. Who stand to make all the money.!
So I canot in good conscience be complicit with an energy technology with so many potential drawbacks.
Which might be hard to see when it gets so cheap And ubiquitous. But that's the insidious problem. That's how they get ya.!
Especially for industrial applications.!
WE SHOULD ONLY BE STRIVING FOR.!
#1. Completely Rechargeable.
#2. A 100-year cycle life minimum.
#3. Minimal Maintenance.
#4. Non-Toxic for service life.
#5. Completely and easily Repairable.!
These are requirements of a battery that is used a lot. And if the battery is being used a lot. That means there's a lot of energy being moved around. And that is where they stand to make money.
Not from Batteries. But from the Transfer of Energy.!
Like they don't get it. Batteries are their problem.! Not ours.! They should want to make them as efficient as possible. Because they're the ones who should want us to use them. Because they stand to gain the most.
Sure the more inefficient battery the better for them. But that's not really looking at the big picture. You want your battery to become ubiquitous. So everyone uses it.
And then Charge them for the service.!
While your battery meets some of these requirements. And kind of meet some others. That's woefully short of meeting all the aforementioned correctly.
Valve in the steam deck are a perfect example. They lose money on the steam deck. To get you into their ecosystem. Which they make far more money from. Then they ever could from the from the Steam Deck alone at any price.!
So disposable only energy technology while having some application. Are mostly backward moving. Relics technology. Which really doesn't have any place in the future. And it's something to be evolving past.!
It's not for the consumer or industrial market applications.
I can only imagine it be used in like going to Mars or the moon. Subterranean or aquatic conditions. You know pretty niche applications.
Now molten salt batteries and liquid metal batteries. Those are on the right track. Well they're a lot closer anyway.
Maybe focus on those. If you are still-
"Undecided.!"
When the battery reaches its end of life, can you just flush the fluids and replenish the same tanks and system without replacing all of the hardware? If so, that's a big step toward longevity. That would actually make it a worthy investment for homeowners, should it ever be scaled toward home power storage applications.
So what happens for long term power storage?
@11:04
I researched ESS about the time South Australia installed Tesla's big battery. I asked them if they could have matched the cost and they not only confirmed they could but pointed out that they would have a lot longer life, no fire risk and no end of life disposal problems. I often wondered what had become of ESS. Great to see they are making progress.
They are currently building instalations in the country (queens land)
@@luisfernandosantosmora1000 Queensland.
Wat disposal prob? It's called.recyclye
@@jayrabideau7019 it doesn't have anything that needs recycling.
No u said end of life disposal issue wat issues? Redwood materials 96% recycle rate something close to that
This "low energy" density is perfect for home batteries. Based on 125Wh/L (7:08), a 10-gallon fish tank can hold 4kWh of energy. Scale that up to a small fridge-sized at 2ft x 2.5ft x 6ft (0.6m x 0.7m x 1.9m) and it can hold 798 liters or about 100kWh of storage. That is equivalent to 8 Powerwalls of energy, while Tesla rarely recommends more than 3 Powerwalls for non-mansions.
i want
Thank you for the calculations! 💕
Yep, and all that will probably be necessary for maintenance is to top them up with distilled water every now and then, especially with that high cycle life that will only get better as the tech improves.
Please pin this! This math was super helpful for helping me understand the competitiveness of this battery! I would happily install an extra fridge sized unit in my house that can run everything my house needs, and then some!
For many homes, yes. But for multi family housing space is often at a premium, so possibly not always. Also it’s common to quote cell-level energy densities when talking about batteries which are significantly more optimistic than real world battery pack-level densities. That may be the case here for the 125 kWh/liter figure - it may not include all the required components for a real world installation.
Thank you for getting BACK to flow batteries. This is a REAL, VALID solution.
ESS is a company that I also wish you had done a full video on because as an American company with a great idea, deploying their solution helps the US in many ways.
And it's silly to talk about energy density in the same conversation as grid storage because 95% of the time it makes no difference. So IF you want to mention energy density you need to explain WHY it's not important. The biggest factors are cost and efficiency in conversion.
Great coverage indeed. ESS is very promising. I'd buy one.
US centric view points to global problems. There's a new perspective.
Energy storage to cost ratio would likely be effective, if the density is too low to be cost effective that would show, although that does simplify many factors into a single number which may be confusing or hide other pros/cons not covered by the ratio.
do you know what's the best and most safe energy storage medium with absolutely the lowest storage losses AND it's powered pure solar energy? It's DIESEL. product of 4 billion years of evolution and the best energy storage medium based on solar energy and it's fully recyclable without any waste or pollution - if you love life on earth support carbohydrates and CO2
I feel like he brings up the energy density concern with every battery video just to say "no, this won't be replacing your phone and/or car battery"
Excited to hear how the solar / iron-flow storage system works out for SMUD. Non-toxic, inflammable, lowER cost all sounds like the right starting places for energy storage we would want to have ‘where ever needed’ and in abundance near an energy production site. Thank you Matt and Undecided crew for this quick review of the salt-based flow batteries currently in the lead!!
RedOx flow batteries seem like a great option for home batteries. You could bury your electrolyte tanks under the slab for a small battery shed (or under the patio next to the mechanical room, etc.), and you’ve got tons of backup power in a very small footprint.
If in the future technologies allow these to last longer imagine burying then under your home if they could last like 50 - 60 years. Maybe making it modular with an access port.
That way when it's time to replace you can go in & disconnect the smaller units & drop in new ones rather than having a single monolithic unit.
If all suburban homes had large back up batteries & solar panels, & there were open markets for selling power, you could realistically lower the costs drastically for everyone involved who couldn't afford to live in an freestanding home.
Cheap energy storage will be the game breaker
@@WitchMedusa We'd have to get the utility companies to release their death grip on the state sponsored monopoly that they've enjoyed for the last few decades to see a future like you describe, but I'm all for it.
It will never be made available to domestic users. Too much money to be lost by power generation and distribution companies and their wealthy, powerful, influential owners.
@@WitchMedusa A good plurality of suburban homes are useless for solar, because we like our trees.
@@gazzaeabc3805 Yep, came to say the same thing. This country’s policies aren’t made by what’s sensible or logical or ethical, they are set by what’s most profitable to the entities that truly run the show. Case in point: utility company make sure to impose a fee to solar owners for the privilege of not using their services.
I agree 100% on diversifying how we store and produce energy. Not one way is best for all applications. I'd like to thank you for creating these talks they are very informative and insightful.
A very promising concept that has been around for some time, and the real need to come up with a solution to energy storage is getting greater all the time. There are lots of brilliant minds working on it - I'm sure we will get there in the end! Thank you for sharing, Matt!
Saltwater batteries are an excellent solution for grid energy storage. They offer the advantage of not requiring much space, making them a viable alternative to lithium-ion batteries as a clean energy solution. It's important to consider the harmful effects of lithium-ion battery mining on the environment. Therefore, it is recommended to use lithium-ion batteries only for applications that demand high energy density, such as electric vehicles (EVs).
Agreed, these would also be great micro grid and home battery solutions for suburban and rural homes which have space to put up a "battery shed" like their pump house for water. Days worth of power could be stored in case of snow storms blocking solar panels or just to climate control a house when waiting for the grid to come back on line, a problem that happens more than is realized in rural USA. They could even be used to charge when grid power is cheap at night then run the house off the batteries during the day when power is expensive, especially with a 20k cycle life!
@@anydaynow01 That was my thought exactly. I’m rural af. Acres.
I’m also in the process of going Solar.
How great would it be if I could just plop a cheap conex sized battery out back and have that to run my house overnight or during outages?
I’d be all over it.
Least obvious chatgpt comment
The nerd in me chuckled every time I read "solution."
no, there is no harm in lithium mining. this is doomster talk nonsense. based on some oil lobby financed documentary on boomer media.
first compare it to fossil, good, we can stop right here.
but lets see, most lithium comes from australia, there are no issues with mining there.
it can be done without any harm,, without any water consumed.
same goes for battery production 90% of energy needed today because of the long baking is not needed in modern processes like dry coating.
this will all come naturally because it reduces cost immensely.
nothing is consumed, mining can stop at some point and a never ending cycle can take place.
there is not shortage of lithium on earth, it is basically everywhere, mining has to increase, thats all.
the market will solve this naturally, prices go up, mining increases, simple.
why would you recommend to use lithium ion only for cars, this makes no sense whatsoever.
you always have to include absolutely everything to have a good guess of what is doable and what is not.
there are an infinite number of properties batterries have, and lithium ion ticks all the boxes like nothing else.
the last 20 years ever yweek someone comes with a new "revolutionary" battery that can do this and that.
then they have that one issue which makes them useless, like oh i can charge to 80% in 3 minutes but the battery only last 10 cycles.
but at the end of the day it isnt even about which battery technology to use, it is all about high scale manufacturing. even the worst technology battery is good enough. the hard part is the insane amounts of them needed.
there is an infinite amount of demand waiting for the first to serve.
fro mall the solutions praised, sand heat storage seems like the only viable that makes sense imo the rest is battery, and that means lithium ion.
Love this!! A huge negative byproduct of desalination plants is the brine. Would be cool to see them work together to create fresh water and power!
I love how flow batteries are immensely scalable. You're right about the need a wide variety of ENERGY storage and not just electrical storage is needed for the new renewable infrastructure. Thermal batteries can greatly reduce certain costs for both municipalities and industry.
I remember Germany tried to get rid of nuclear and coal back in the early 2000s. It was expensive for the electricity consumers. We learned that diversification was really important for energy storage and generation. I share that sentiment with you.
Did they try to get rid of natural gas power generation too?
Last nuclear power plant was switched of about a year ago. About half of energy at good days in last summer was created with renewable. Tendency increasing.
My favorite thing to postulate (read : daydream) about for energy solutions is using existing infrastructure in some way. Bridges and roads could be used to grind basalt to produce powdered basalt (to absorb atmospheric carbon and use as building material) or produce electricity from piezoelectric cells (prolly not that good of an idea.) Buildings could be used as the weight for gravity batteries.
Structures built in the ocean could be made to produce electricity using the cathodic effect of rust. Tidal changes could be harnessed to remove oxidation.
This is great. I hate the idea of strapping a large, expensive & especially flammable lithium ion battery to my house. I don’t care too much about size. But cost and safety are paramount for home storage. Using lithium ion for grid scale energy is also bonkers due to the cost.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ideas and videos. Definitely a technology to keep an eye on. From the perspective of a former senior power system operator I’ve always been in the all of the above camp. Large batteries could certainly help with power transmission restrictions. I’ve seen more power dumped due to transmission restrictions or low loads than you could imagine. This technology could be used to get power into a different restricted region if you were to have one half of the battery on each side of an interface and pipe the electrolyte by pipeline to a matching station in the next region. None of the typical limits of adding parallel transmission pathways due to the stored energy and no dynamic stability problems other that the possible loss of generation within a load pocket. Keep up the great work.
The problem with a diffuse set of options is that we limit the advantage of economies of scale. All of these options are interesting and you do a great job showing how they can fit certain use cases, but while focusing on just a few technologies can stifle innovation, it also optimizes cost.
Always focus on as much variety as possible early on, and pick the best for a given situation after. Most of the battery designs that have come out in the past couple years will not be around in the next couple, because even if they're better than what we have now, they can't all be better than eachother.
That being said, there's no point in just picking the first one better than what we have right now and mass-producing that when there's something much better right around the corner. Once the innovation slows down, it's about picking the best from there.
Economies of scale don't scale forever. In many cases it can be a u shape. Economics explained has a recent video on this.
That said, it's hard to imagine salt and iron batteries not having an incredibly wide u
@@psalmy26 I was going to mention that. Thanks for the post
Why can't there be numerous cost effective solutions? And how do you know hyper centralization is necessarily cost effective? I think there's plenty of capital out there, but the rich are too obsessed with asset prices to actually invest in these sorts of technologies.
@@psalmy26 I don't trust batteries which plate iron on the anode side. That process is incredibly difficult/impossible to do reversibly without degradation. Rust is not an impermeable barrier to further degradation so the plated iron will rapidly rust away within a few cycles
These have great potential for use in very hot/variable environments like in the Australian bush. I wouldn't mind having a fridge sized device outside as a backup power supply to keep the freezer cold, lights and USB.
I have been interested in flow batteries for the last several years. One thing to keep in mind, in cold climates they would need to be heated. Zinc bromide chemistry batteries take up half the space and are also very safe.
That's why it should be used by power plants to optimize their output and reduce heat waste
Salt water does have a lower freezing point, if that's what you meant, and depending on the density of salt in the water, it might work well below freezing; just a thought.
I sure enjoy this channel. Matt seems like a good guy and I kinda like his sense of humor.
The videos are done really well with quality editing. I’m not in the least surprised that he’s got 1.2 MILLION subscribers.
Have a great week everyone!
Appreciate that. Glad you're enjoying the videos.
Informative . ❤️💯👊
I like the idea of saltwater batteries. For grid storage and for homes if they make them. The more we can use readily available resources and less toxic or unsafe ones, the better. It is great to stress that many solutions are needed for whatever we're going to do for energy production and storage. I'm still pulling for the SEV Aptera to be my next vehicle where I wouldn't need to plug it in to charge it. It's not the vehicle for everyone but it would work well for me, so when people poo poo ideas or new concepts, I ask, why? Because we're going to need many ideas that work to solve solutions.
Not only Salt Water is less toxic by itself, but it is also extremely easily available, accessible and harvested too, not to mention the promise of it to be able to also produce freaking Freshwater, which would make it far better if they deliver on that promise.
Middle Eastern Nations would definitely fund this shit up with hundreds of billions of dollars if they make Battery Storage and Desalination capabilities be a proven real world application of the technology that can be scaled and developed.
I would love to have one for my home but I can't find any.
Well they have failed in residential applications because they do not deliver enough power quickly enough for inductive loads. The voltage will collapse and the inverter will shut down on low input voltage. This is why the previous saltwater battery company has since gone out of business.
@@UlexiteTVStoneLexiteI don't think such solution exists but I have reached out to them and shared some ideas as well. I believe there has to be a way to make these things more portable and therefore for use in homes.
@@ekeretteekpo3004 saltwater batteries are not portable
As a cargo pilot that regularly carries LithIon batts, I strongly hope this tech becomes mainstream. Lithium and cobalt mining are horrible for the environment, but selfishly they’re incredibly dangerous
So True
I remember the loss of UPS6 being one caused by a faulty lithium battery
Cargo temps reached over 1100C
Crew didn't have much of a chance to save the aircraft 😭
The first battery design in modern times the Volta stack is basically perfect as it is
This sounds extremely promising! Ive always thought lithium ion was a bad fit for utility scale storage and this really knocks it out of the park in every conceivable way. The possibilities for marine and military use are just icing on the cake. Great reporting on this!
Lithium Ion instead of being vilified should be praised for the temporary bridge it provided while the naysayers and energy terrorists were exposed. Nukes are bad. Oil, gas are bad. Li batteries are bad. windmills are bad, solar is bad....etc. This is almost like a group of humanity hating people are trying to starve us of energy and food. What the world NEEDS and must have is hundreds of sources of energy production AND storage to supply the needs of modern society. However there is an industry in government, media, academia, who's total focus is to destroy as many sources of production and storage as possible.
For stationary applications, this and similar technologies is an infinitely better choice than wasting lithium on batteries that just have to sit there and do their job. Lithium is light enough to go places - that's what we really need to use it for.
I absolutely love how Matt does his dad-jokes with a straight face. Still trying to master that with my kids. :P
Great video and informative update. Thank you!!!
You can deliver them with just as much of a straight face after doing the line 3-4 times. Which I'm sure Matt will deny. 😆
He poured them on with this video.
I truly appreciate the amount of dad-joke restraint. Matt rarely goes overboard.
I'm a bit rusty myself
@@BenjaminCronce 😆
The final point cannot be repeated enough. I keep trying to get people to understand that we need a variety of solutions and stop being obsessed with wind or nuclear, and the fire problem of lithium batteries. This is all in early stages and we are going to see so much more.
Salt batteries are what we need. Minimal environmental impact for collecting. Using the brine salt from desalination plants would allow large scale desalination plants a viable alternative for clean water.
I am grateful for this channel. Matt always showcase newer technologies that can be massive gamechangers in the industry. I am hoping for similar kinds of breakthroughs for other things. Personally, I would like to see innovations with sewage treatment for instance.
Im also grateful because I know that any tech featured here means with 90% of certainty to be pseudoscience, a misunderstood trend, a scam or extremely overhyped tech. So is some short of ironic quack watch and I tell my friends to look it up here if they wanna know if its some short of scam or overhyped stuff.
It relieves stress for me, the future will not necessarily be all that bad!
LOL. Matt exaggerates everything. The idiocy & immorality of blind technology hope in the face of real problems.
@@Rzwolle77 And there's the real reason Matt & co are popular: mass delusion to avoid hard truths & sacrifice. It's folks like RZ here that cause all the problems thru ignorance & gullibility. This is how Iraq happened.
and yet, none of this has ever been a game changer or had really worked as advertised
This is my favourite battery so far. Easy to get material, non-toxic, easy disposal, long-lasting, cheap. Disposal of batteries is really a headache. I was wondering why nobody made this kind of battery?
All about energy density and how much and how fast it can discharge. They would be great for home use but trying to run major appliances and stuff, you would need a lot more batteries hooked up to make it work.
All the government's of the world have been giving the fossil fuel companies $400 BILLION per year, while only pretty recently giving ALL renewables combined just $66 billion.
Numbers from right before covid.
I'm assuming that in the last 2-3 years, renewables have been given more money.
But with literally many decades of giving fossil fuel companies hundreds of billions while barely giving renewables anything, it's easy to see why battery tech has been so slow to advance.
for the exact reasons you just said its a final solution not a marketable product
because they could sell you disposable ones repeatedly.
Robert Pruitt: So what is your point Robert? Fossil is a proven thing and all these experimental ventures are maybes. Get out of the regulating business for fossil, stop subsidizing them, and then see what they can do free market. You will be glad we have fossil capability if/when the SHTF. Walk softly and carry a BIG stick. And hope you don't have to use it. I can tell you first-hand, you do not want a Chinese or N.Korean, or Russian tank driving down your street. And by the way - There is no apostrophe in governments.@@lordgarion514
How is the house going? Would love a video about what you decided on plumbing and insulation.
An insulation video would be great, the best thing anyone can do for their home to be eco friendly!
detailed research, great insight! I especially like your comment at the end that in the future, it is not 'one size fits all' but most likely it is a combination of production and storage approaches which will 'make our world go round net zero'! Thank you so much!
Batteries like these and the aluminum graphene batteries GMG is working on have got me really excited. I think it's a great idea for large batteries, that don't need to be portable and are intended for large scale, reliable, long term use; to prioritize lower-cost/safer materials over current lithium batteries.
sounds really great I'll put my money on it. as a bulk storage,
making graphene. one of the go-to substances for future manufacturing, clean water is a byproduct.
Cost per smallest unit please? What is the point if only large corporations can buy it?
Cost of electrolyte of $5 per KWh does not mean much if rest of equipment to run it cost it 100 times more.
Would appreciate cost of the smallest unit and when will be available on the market?
I like your contention. Its about finding the best battery made out of products that are limitlessly found in nature.
I wonder if a DIY version of this would be possible, of course it'd be less than the claimed 125Wh/L (7:08), but having something the size of a fish tank, or sofa (if placed outside) could provide a somewhat safe energy storage solution. It'd be great for home use!
Agreed... TWO 55 Gal stainless steel tanks should provide ~50 kWh @ 5kW rate... This would power most small homes!
This is particularly useful in areas where baseload power is unreliable (be it for disaster areas, off grid homesteaders, or whatever else.) This power storage can be charged through any renewable, OR you can just add more electrolyte, almost like a diesel generator.
I would love to try get hold of these to see if they would work for homes instead of the normal expensive lithium batteries
Matt I live this idea. I am growing more concerned about the push to electrify and it's current emphasis on lithium and vanadium. Lithium poses geopolitical problems on sourcing it's scant quantity and environmental problems in it's use and disposal. I hope that there RFB's for residential use.
I also loved seeing the solar panels over the canals. As an Arizonan, I know that canals have brought life giving water to the desert. And now the same real estate may bring power also.
Looks really good. For many locations there’s plenty of space available so that the energy density isn’t as much of an issue. It’s great all this new battery tech coming out.
I’m still excited about the LiFeP04 that I’ve been using for the past two years on our solar Edge AI systems that operate off grid.
Always love new battery possibilities.
Especially with that 20k cycle life, they would be the last batteries anyone would ever need. Just setup a larger battery shed or even better if someone had room to set the modular shipping container up in their yard and just hook the leads up to the home charger network, then disguise it as a work shed or plant some fast growing bushes in front of it if the sight of a container is off putting in some communities.
He seems to ignore LiFePO4 for some reason. LiFePO4 is already good enough for my to power my life till I die for less than the cost of a medium priced car. It is not theory, it is an already proven win for solar viability.
I'm a fan of LiFeP04 too. It's a great workhorse.
The low toxicity angle of this one sounds really appealing, food producing regions under threat from salt water surges and other such disasters could develop infrastructure to restore/maintain production in record time, boosting resilience with low risk of contamination.
@@lazysmurf420 It is a good solution for individual households but we need to scale up big time and flow batteries are what power companies need to start acquiring. The price of LiFePO4 would start skyrocketing if power companies started buying up all the premade (likely Chinese) batteries plus you still would be using up lithium and other precious metals that EV companies will likely be competing for. These simply require storage tanks and can be stackable with shipping containers in population-dense areas.
Good video but I wish you went into the cost per kwh and compared that with other solutions. While size does play a role in some installations the vast majority aren't really size/volume impacted
Seems like for stationary applications, and maybe even large mobile ones, the density issue isn't much of an issue, especially give the run time, life time, and (lack of) fire advantages. Seems like for grid scale even if these were more money up front they could work out over time. I do wonder how they do when it's -20f or colder outside though. Seems like the salt water might freeze, or require active heating.
-20 shouldn't be a problem if the salt content is high enough. maybe a little active heating for the tanks, but mostly insulation. keep in mind that the VAST majority of north americans live in climates where it's too warm for the ocean to freeze.
These things seem to come in trailer loads per set. 🤔
I love Matt's work. Positive information about the future without sugarcoating. But, he glossed over Project Nexus. The work in the Turlock Irrigation District is just the pilot project based on work done at UC Merced and Santa Cruz. They are only covering 250 miles of canals. The goal is to scale it up to cover the State Water Project. That is 4,000 miles of canals. The SWP is also the largest power user in the state. It is projected to generate 13 gigawatts of electricity and save 63 billion gallons of water.
Thank you and good morning!
Good morning!
I love the puns and the ease by which the puns kept rolling, very informative too thanks!
I'm half convinced the time it takes for these videos to come out is prolonged by 25% just for the purpose of coming up my smooth pun delivery.
You have no idea.
All these ideas sound so much better than using li-ion batteries for "large scale" metropolitan power storage where volume and mass aren't limitations.
The sodium redox flow especially sounds interesting if it's really somehow able to also create graphene which would at once address multiple high cost, high demand conundrums although AFAIK there's a lot more to creating graphene sheets than simply a chemical reaction, creating single layer molecular sheets also involves technique which a difficult problem to solve.
I still think that thermal storage likely makes more sense than chemical storage but am willing to listen to any idea people come up with that can be proven executable.
Where there is a will, there is a way. 😉 Thanks Matt for keeping us informed!
Wow. Sounds like there's actually good news. It's a relief to hear something hopeful. Thanks Matt
We’re a strange species. Our solutions have been staring at us since the beginning of time: sun, wind, oceans. Yet we continue to dig, dig, and dig for our energy. Imagine where we’d be if we focused on the obvious.
Advantages of flow batteries over LFP:
1) 4x cycle life
2) no thermal runaway
3) chemicals (Salt & Iron) are easy to recycle
Disadvantages of flow batteries over LFP
1) More expensive than LFP to manufacture
2) Hard to scale because of complexity
3) More maintenance. More moving parts to break
4) Too bulky for home use (grid use only)
5) Membranes don't last long
6) Single point of failure. More downtime.
LFP already has an insane cycle life, vastly more than needed. every battery is dead easy to recycle, nothing is wasted, literally 97% can be reused.
means, everything but the glue that keeps that thign together and some plastics. it wont get any better than this.
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl True. LFP is just Lithium, Iron and Phosphate - all none toxic.
Matt, you are a salt battery for knowledge and wisdom! Thanks for this enlightening video.
Sometimes it seems to me like we are "progressing" back to some very basic and planet friendly technologies. Not a bad thing. ❤
I am directly working on the Salgenx project. I actually feel incredibly similar. A lot of these designs of "simple" hybrid flow batteries couldn't exist economically in the past due to large design flaws leading to bad efficiency. And then while investigating more complicated designs we found solutions for these "simple" designs and those solutions now are being used on these old designs with moderate -> extreme increases in total efficiency.
@@MrRollingPebble Are there concrete plans for home storage using this battery tech? Do you worry about foreign companies swooping in
An interesting and useful information package. I really like the low toxicity, cheap available materials and simplicity. I hope it develops into a major player.
I'd be interested in knowing what voltage each cell can produce singularly and in series, and if the series configuration would produce some type of imbalance between the cells. This would be important in converting it back into usable grid energy. Otherwise, Matt, you had a great presentation.
What's the charge and discharge rates also?
One of THE BEST science and technology channel on TH-cam. GREAT JOB!!! 😀
It's 5am. Sun's up, it's bed time.
I don't need to know why Salt Water is the future, but I'm gonna.
Right with you
This is really interesting to see and definitely heading in the right direction for power storage. The ability to have energy storage that is not flammable, not harmful to the environment (at least as minimal as possible), and at a cheap price point, allows for a lot of possibilities for moving to more renewable energy solutions.
Kennedy Energy Park up in Far North Queensland, Australia has a mix of wind and solar to harness the power creation at different times of the day/night, then uses Tesla Battery Systems to store and provide to the grid. Having a cheaper, more environmental way to store and provide that power to the grid would bring electricity costs down for us Australians
That's what I'm hoping for. We went with lead acid AGM batteries because they are fully recyclable and cheaper vs lithium which is not. Sodium will most likely be our upgrade option.
wtf are you talking about, every battery is completely recycleable. lead acid is not cheaper than lithium, you always have to consider absolutely everything, lithium ion is unbeatable, infinitly available, no issues to mine etc
A point many seem to miss is we we need high density for transport and lower cost for stationary storage for the grid/ neighbourhood storage.
Yea. but if it can make fresh water + use that brim for something - like storing power - no matter how you cut that up - its already on another level vs anything else use. Let alone, for grid storage, it doesnt matter how large they get - as it can be stack and weight has no real meaning there. Sign this tech up man. If it really works, there wouldnt really be that many down sides and could be expanded super quick from coast to coast. This would leave Li for everything else that needs higher performance and storage numbers. Something you didnt cover though and the reason I think they're still R/Ding the stuff is the slow startup time though? I remember reading something about that - that it takes a bit of time for them to be really producing power so they dont work in terms of quick switch, but even if that is true, so long as they're used as the main storage, adding a little Li battery percentage wouldnt be the the end of the world. Really, I would just add really large super caps:) as they dont have any of the issues and have a very fast startup and load out time to give time for the flow battery to get warm up. Also, keep in mind, we over produce power every day. Just having a way to store that over use power would be huge and would cut something like 10% of power plants just because wouldnt need all the extra overhead anymore. Adding solar homes alone would triple the closing and the real benefit there is that they can pay you for the use of your extra power and lower their operating cost.
I remember like just over 5 years ago Matt, there were about a half dozen TH-cam videos of people making home made salt water batteries in those large plastic barrels...now you can't find anything on them anywhere it seems.
I've been saying this for years. Imagine water desalination biggest problems solved by solving all out other problems. Also sodium solid states
Man this is awesome to see. Lets hope this get more light and funding so that this battery can spread to all over the world.
I built one in about 1min using Sea Salt and a couple of knives. .4v (crossed my mind out of the blue) , So it seems obvious to me this will work well if you have access to rain and ocean water.
Of all the videos I've seen, I think I enjoyed the cleverness of the writing and puns in this one the most!
@UndecidedMF
Hi. I work directly on the Salgenx project (this is a personal account). I'd be happy to answer questions here about the design. Loved the summary, hit the big points. Happy to see some good traction.
I've mentioned ESS in the comments a few times. I'm glad to see them finally make an appearance.
I think RFBs could be used to great effect as a neighborhood or community power storage option. Just have an open field somewhere with fabric canopies (for shade) draped above Salgenx batteries, directly beside/comingled with a solar panel farm consisting of a few strategically places arrays.
With all the wonderful brains working on the project, batteries will only get better in every way.
The flood of relevant puns while keeping it interesting and informative is absolutely astonishing. Looking forward to this seemingly ‘holy grail’ solution being the norm!
Ferric chloride is ANYTHING BUT non-toxic. It's a very strong oxidiser, used for example to etch copper in circuit boards. On the other hand, it has zero vapour pressure and can be easily dehydrated, so unless somebody drinks the stuff, it's fairly safe.
That said, considering a chlorine gas dissolved in organic liquid as an industrial-scale battery material.. Brave. Very brave.
The first time I heard about the iron flow batteries I was really intrigued. Just using rusty water is probably one of the cheapest and safest things you can do. This new salt water battery also sounds amazing. For grid scale applications cycle life, price and storage time are the most important metrics so I see a grate future for these flow batteries.
That is very informative and thought-provoking.
I know you can make a saltwater battery at home for a science project but this is on a much larger scale.
How very cool🎉
Last Energy, a U.S.-based micro modular NUCLEAR technology firm and project developer, has secured power purchase agreements (PPAs) for 34 PWR-20 small modular reactor (SMR) units with four industrial partners in the UK and Poland. The deals, which represent a combined $18.9 BILLION in power sales, mark “the largest pipeline of new nuclear power plants under development in the world,” Last Energy said.
Agreed, need a variety of things to get this going properly
Thank you for acknowledging NREL.
Interesting video. I totally agree with you when you mentioned that "no one energy" (to rule them all - paraphrase); Thorium-based nuclear though could/should be THE base load. I like solar and wind as supplemental to the base load where it is BEST SUITED.
Great video as usual!
This is one of the better batteries I have seen, because it last longer as you said..
I once saw a video here on TH-cam about a Belgian architect who already stored energy in huge salt water tanks in/under his house. I wish I could find that video again. We live near the Rotterdam harbour. Enough salt water around here.
Matt, kudos for the best science oriented channel, hands down.
Yes, the amalgam of innovation is more than interesting.
Great episode! These salt water batteries have been something I've been looking at for some time and make a lot of sense for grid applications and boats, desalination is a new one for me and is pretty sweet! I think the cycle life information on batteries when you're comparing them near the end of the video is incorrect however. Just giving you a heads up. Perhaps you sought to simplify the information. There's premium cycles above 80% of max capacity and then there is the usable life cycle that is much longer. You should be able to get 7k to 10k cycles easily from some of those chemestries if you're charging and discharging them within spec params and sometimes decently longer than that if you create a buffer in the params. Loved the video and I appreciate all the work you put into these. Sending good vibes from Florida!
These paired with Sodium ion batteries have me charged up for stationary storage as sodium is plentiful and the batteries are so long lived.
Something to add, ESS is also partnering with an Australian company to make their batteries there.
Australia has vast reserves of iron.
This is fantastic for so many different situations
youre really satisfied with all those near puns arent you!! 😂
super interesting work on this stuff. crazy to think that people actually pursued this stuff with real money. i recall going crazy about the importance of redox in non-organic processes as an undergrad.
Vanadium Pentoxides also carcinogenic
Also used as a catalyst for making Sulfonic Acid for laundry powders
A long lasting, nontoxic/nonflammable flow battery seems fantastic for gridscale, regardless of the lower energy density. Provided it's cheap enough.
All those costs that would go into managing safety and fire suppression can instead go into more battery volume. That volume can be stored more dense/packed together too.
For comparison, an Olympic sized swimming pool is 2.5M liters. So that would be a 312.5MWh battery.
You can stack these units without worrying about fire and AC.
RND a off shore supply vessel utilising the tanks built in to them.
Under the rescue and assist vessels the electrical systems can run without the generators and using fuel sources to operate😊
Thank you Matt As a Solar installer of Household FzSonick 200TL batteries in South Australia I'd love to see how you would rate them. cheers
I think researching all options can only ever be a good thing to do. Whether the end result is good or bad. I do think solid state batteries will still win the day ultimately for longevity, rapid recharge, safety and storage capacity.. although I also believe using solar in places where its always hot like deserts is a big win... as you can heat up large volumes of water during the day ASWELL then use the steam from that heated water at night to also create power which returns more power then the solar during the day. You only need a tiny area on the world map unused desert land in Africa out in Vegas to power the planet.. just the logistics of having decent power cables to hold the massive charge. If anything I think power transfer should now be the focus
Operating without a separator sounds great, but could result in the degeneration of one or both of the electrolytes due to contamination. even with this additional run cost, it could still be a huge reduction in cost. Could everyone build one in their backyard??
Great Segment, Great Topic. Cool Tech w/Red Flow and ESS, others. Red Flow is perfect for lower states, not hindered by heat. I read somewhere Red Flow is considering the home sized Vanadium batteries. There is also GreenRock in Germany,, (Na Batteries, previously Aquion IP).
These would work great to power cargo ships and ferries. A ferry could battery swap in minutes and have a bank of spares charging in the ports.
I worked at a flow battery scale up. Did competitor analysis: Especially ESS inc is quite mature and their tech is really promising. ESS stocks are also a bargain! (Partly due to a fake claim made by short sellers)
People have been talking about salt batteries since the 1900s, what's different now?
Thank you for your continued research and keeping the rest of us informed! Very appreciated!!!
Totally excited about "Salt Water Batteries" for fixed use. Typically, a self sufficient household needs at least 60kWh, and a system bypass with backup generator, which is currently uneconomic. Cheap flowcell technology, like "Salt Water Batteries", not reliant on scarce metals and minerals, and high intensity mining and mineral processing, should offer this solution, for large domestic and even large commercial, grid size storage.
We're going to really need a solution, in the next few years, when our reliable baseload is gone.
Living in California, yeah.....were trying to limit the amount of utility stuff that can catch fire, which makes ESS's IFB a very good fit for us. Ive been in the HVAC trade for 17 years and no one ever factors in the cost to buy, operate and repair all of the A/C systems that Li-ion requires, people get fixated on "95% efficiency" as if that was the end all, be all of battery tech. Reality is IFB, will last way, way longer than any lithuim product and will have the same capacity 30 years from now as it did on day 1. The 25 year life expectancy, is a little misleading, theres nothing wrong with the electrolyte or stacks at that age, its just the life expectancy the manufacturer of the storage tanks give, so no reason you couldnt run it decades longer
Once again you put together a very informative video. This battery option has put a lot of checks in the + column but the potential to lower the cost of graphene production (although not yet proven) then that is almost a stand alone reason to further develop and deploy this option.
Again a sensible and balanced view with valuable information for what is coming the reason why I depend on your presentations to keep me informed.
like you say every form of sustainable energy generation & storage is required to help transition to a livable future
I wish these were at house scale, sadly, they are the scale of a house. *Ba-dum, tss!* But seriously, it is heartening to learn so many alternatives are popping up. Hopefully Nevada picks up these more affordable, nearly inflammable storage solutions for our massive solar farms.