This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Wow, it’s hard to know just how impactful this will be, but it sounds like they’ve got something here.
its batteries which it said avoid using metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and copper, providing a cost reduction of up to 40% compared to lithium-ion batteries.
Altech said its batteries are completely fire and explosion proof, have a life span of more than 15 years and operate in all but the most extreme conditions.
That’s huge, especially the fire and explosion proof part.
its why their main benefit is cost and safety. for power storage in a standing field or wall density isnt as important compared to for mobile usages (EVs) so sodium based batteries make more sense.
There's still room in car design for bigger batteries too. Could be used in cheaper electric cars with a less optimal power to weight ratio than LiFePO batteries would yield.
not saying they wont be used of course, just less optimal because the size and characteristics of the battery may be less ideal. for example, while salt ion batteries wear level decreases at a slower rate than Lithium ion based batteries, when salt ion batteries go bad, they suddenly stop working (e.g goes from a wear level of say like 60% to almost immediately zero) which is not the ideal situation to be in
I see a future where an EV will have two batteries each with different chemistries. An example would be to have LFP for the "main" battery which can take a beating but is less dense, and an additional NMC battery which gets used far less frequently, but is available for the less frequent long distance needs. This could also mean that when the LFP is dead from use, it can be replaced independent of the NMC which will have had a fraction of the charge/discharge cycles.
If you meant for a single car, that might be a bit lofty, but for options available it makes sense (ie different trim packages for single model sort of thing).
I see it breaking down as follows: Grocery-getter for an old couple won't need much capacity. Just enough to get around town over the course of a day of needed and can plug in and fully charge overnight from a wall outlet. The other would be a battery capable of larger distances but needs a little bigger outlet to charge between stops of a long trip.
If you meant for a single car, that might be a bit lofty,
What difficulty do you see with this concept in a single car? This technically exists already as there are multiple charge controllers and BMS systems in EVs shipping today, they are just managing different modules of identical chemistries in the single car.
Not so much difficulty but practicality. I would see it being similar to having 2 gas tanks in a car where one is for a high octane fuel and the other for a low performance fuel like ethanol.
I would see it being similar to having 2 gas tanks in a car where one is for a high octane fuel and the other for a low performance fuel like ethanol.
And these exist completely separate to EVs. They're called bi-fuel vehichles.
"How Do Bi-fuel Propane Vehicles Work? Bi-fuel propane vehicles typically use a spark-ignited internal combustion engine. A bi-fuel propane vehicle can use either gasoline or propane in the same internal combustion engine. Both fuels are stored on board and the driver can switch between the fuels. The vehicle is equipped with fuel tanks, fuel injection systems, and fuel lines for both fuels" source
They aren't common in the USA because of they way emissions laws were written which made it uneconomical in many cases for auto makers.
There isn't the same challenge in EVs, especially where we're talking the "fuel" is just electricity which is common to both chemistry batteries. I see no challenge for EVs.
I was entirely unaware of this type of vehicle so my initial comment was made without considering them. If there is a market case for such a vehicle, then they would likely fall into that same category.
They aren't common in the USA because of they way emissions laws were written which made it uneconomical in many cases for auto makers.
This has me insanely curious as to where these are common and what are their emissions laws. Time for a trip down a rabbit hole.
This has me insanely curious as to where these are common and what are their emissions laws. Time for a trip down a rabbit hole.
I looked into getting one of these or converting my own car to be gasoline and methane about 15 or 20 years ago. Here's what I learned during that time. I don't know if any of this legal information is out-of-date now. During the really early days of bi-fuel cars, homebrew cars were very bad polluters because they'd skip the emmisions systems altogether. This changed when the law was put in place requiring catalytic converters on all cars that burned gasoline.
The challenge then with a bi-fuel car was you needed to build an emissions system that is compatible with two entire different fuels, with different combustion products. That is not a small challenge. This is fine for the gasoline side, however, there isn't really a catalytic converter for methane because the exhaust gasses were actually cleaner than exhaust from a gasoline engine even after passing through the catalytic converter. So there was no market to create a cheap methane catalytic converter because it would have been nearly useless. The law didn't care though and there was no exception for bi-fuel cars.
There WAS an exception in the law for methane only cars, which is why you could actually buy methane (CNG) cars from major manufacturers like the Honda Civic GX:
If you wanted to buy a used one of these, you can still find them and fill your CNG tank from your home's natural gas line.
Actually exciting battery tech that isn't just fluff. They actually built the thing and tested it, rather than it being a theoretical, not-easily-produced thing and it worked.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
I would argue that grid-scale energy storage is even more important than EV needs today.
Grid scale batteries allow for better security by distributing storage across the network and lets us store renewable energy from peak hours.
Cheap grid storage will be a game changer
And it mitigates the current red herring of the anti-solar groups complaining that solar "generates too much electricity during the day, and not enough at night".
With an effective and balanced grid storage system across the country, we can recharge the batteries during the day and then use the power at night.
I can only hope that the anti solar groups are arguing in bad faith when they complain about how the sun works.
Either that or: they actually think that pro solar doesn't understand this fact or one of the two groups doesn't know how to pair solar with batteries.
I think it's the second one, because every time I've heard the objection about the Sun not working at night it has always been in the form of a gotcha and not in the form of a question like, how do we deal with this issue?
Yeah, it's pretty obvious. They really think they're the first ones to realize this.
I wouldn't write off EV usage too quickly. The lithium batteries in EVs right now are around 160Wh/kg. The sodium batteries coming out of production lines now are about the same, but are also substantially cheaper, safer, and built out of more abundant materials.
Yes, if you compare them to top of the line lithium batteries coming out of assembly lines now, they don't look as good, but those batteries aren't in actual cars yet. It's very likely that we'll see cheap EVs running sodium batteries, and they'll often be good enough. We need more charge stations more than we need better batteries (as far as EVs go).
I'm all for Sodium batts in cars, but my understanding is this battery tech is a different chemical composition than other Sodium Ion batteries. Most of those are not solid state AFAIK.
Will be interesting if they need the same thermal management that lithium packs do. That adds a fair amount of weight to the system
We tend to use between 3kWh (vacation/idle power consumption) and around 8kWh per day. If we switched to electric stove, water heater, and heat pump, and add a hot tub, that'd increase substantially. But if we added solar (on our long Todo list...), the battery in the article (60kWh) would probably be able to handle all our storage needs, and it'd fit in he garage (bonus of it can be placed outside/under a deck!). I live in a major city, but I would absolutely love to effectively be off grid.
Exciting stuff
it seems these are touted as being extremely robust/safe, which is of course important for me if it's going to be in/near our house. Storage density not a huge concern, but price is somewhat important
let's hope this sort of thing ticks all the boxes.
Most off the grid people live in rural areas but wouldnt an in city off-grid house be a pretty nice thing? Just seems like a cool concept.
Off power grid maybe, imagine the nightmare of urban well-digging or apartment septic tanks.
The flip side to that is great though. Imagine a few houses per street supplying batteries for more draining activities in a connected neighborhood.
Im dont know that much about off-grid stuff(certified city boy moment) but i guess you can do power and septic town in city, idk about water. Maybe rsin collection? But thats not enough water.
Or. Or. And hear me out on this: participate in society.
Lol yes, but isnt off grid a hobby for a lot of people?
Expectation: it doesn't work well at all
Result: It kinda works?
It sounds like it works really well. The physical size does sound quite large, but I'm not sure how that compares against other types of batteries.
It probably doesn't matter. This type of battery is not all that interesting for things like electric cars, rather more so for things like grid energy storage on a massive scale. Think 1000s of these in a large building, getting charged during the day with excess solar energy, releasing it into the grid at night. Stuff like this is what has been missing to make even better use of renewables.
How about one of those in your basement or shack to charge your car overnight?
I think that's one use case when having solar panels on your roof, this way you can also help make the grid even more distributed and resilient by having your own storage. Sometimes you might not even need the solar you can just take very cheap electricity from the grid during the day and sell it back in the evening or use it in the evening yourself
One of those cases where selfishness actually benefits others, just don't disconnect from the grid, that's a dick move if you have neighbors
If you have solar panels on your house, and your car isn't at home when that sun is shining, then that would be a good use of one of these for a residential application.
well its usually not in your basement, but should be outside in a home sized battery cage (similar to those used in parking lots to charge EVs). in a more ideal time period, itll just be another external installment like outdoor AC units. to get there, home energy storage has to get cheap enough so that people installing solar at home also opt for energy storage.
one of the big problems EV have is most charge at home at night when peak usage is at instead of the most opportune time, which is when the sun is up during working hours. Its why theres a movement to install charging stations at workplace buildings as a benefit to workers (no longer pay for "gas"). If the average home user had a battery wall, then you can just circumvent that problem alltogether.
Yeah that’s one thing I think doesn’t get much attention. We actually have a lot of solar in some major countries. In many areas, there’s too much and it’s wasted right now. The efficiency of the grid’s solar intake and distribution is often times worse than the solar panel efficiency themselves. If we can store and distribute that excess with the same efficiency of the panels, it would be a huge stress relief on many systems.
Said, let me guess, Altech.
No it was altech_eft
Well how do you know they didn't double check it themselves to make sure? Checkmate cynics
Indeed awesome. Sadly no words about recycling such a battery, though it sounds like it should be fairly recyclable.
