Apparently, this company (EOS) has overcome the recharge limitation that exists in conventional zinc-air batteries, and supposedly has several patents on the technology. If true, this technology would be a big boost for all sorts of battery powered technology, not just grid storage. The big question: what is the conversion efficiency? – Anthony
Guest post by Mathias Aarre Mæhlum
In the next few years, an increasing amount of wind turbines and solar panels is expected to be built all around the world, reducing the stress that coal, fossil fuels and other polluting methods of harnessing energy does on our environment.
There are several challenges related to the electrical grid we face when solar, wind and other renewable energy sources reaches 10, 15 and 20% of the total useful energy generated. This article focuses solely on energy storage. Why is energy storage important?
Wind and solar energy (other renewable energy sources as well) are highly fluctuating. We are having a hard time predicting the flow of the energy resulting in two main problems:
How can we assure that we have enough energy to satisfy the rate of consumption? Imagine days where the amount of energy harnessed does not reach the demand. Or if we flip the coin, days where we generate too much electricity and want to store the surplus for times when energy is scarce.
A stable flow of energy is also important. If we are to exchange our current base load energy systems with renewable energy sources, we need some kind of device between the electricity generation and consumer, ensuring a stable and controllable flow.
Batteries have previously not been applicable for utility-scale energy storage. There are several reasons for this, but most important is the price tag. In the last ten years, technological advancements have been made in a battery that utilizes zinc and air as reactants. The key here is that the air comes from the outside rather than acting as a reactant within the battery.
This result in one very interesting thing: Since there is only one reactant in the battery itself, we can expect an increased energy density. In theory, this can be up to ten times the density of ion-lithium batteries. In addition to this, zinc-air batteries are expected to have a lifetime of 30 years. This things all help with lowering the costs, allowing us to use the technology on larger scale.
It looks like zinc-air batteries on utility-scale could be a valuable addition to our renewable energy systems and help us transition towards the smart grid. The first utility-scale zinc-air batteries are promised to be on the market within 2013:
I was witness-and a too close one btw, to a substation explosion-that was next to a grain
elevator full of ammonium nitrate. I do not have warm fuzzies about huge battery complexes…
Had the substation benn 100 yards closer most of the small town of Alicel, and it’s
grain and sawmill-plus moi- would’ve been loosely associated carbon molocules…
The statement that there is not a utility grade battery is not quite correct. In Fairbanks AK there is a utility grade UPS to keep the city grid up until local peaker plants can come on line. This facility is insurance that the city won’t loose power should the winter knock out a transmission line.
www05.abb.com/global/…/case_note_bess_gvea_fairbanks-web.pdf
“A stable flow of energy is also important.” I got news for you, without a stable flow of energy, the system is useless! While it’s commendable that people are working on reliable energy storage, civilization as we know it requires absolute reliability when it comes to electricity. That’s why solar and wind are useless for anything but single homes. And until the storage problem is solved, there should be no further waste of taxpayer money on solar and wind.
And there’s the salt water battery.
http://www.aquionenergy.com/
Well I posted a memo here last night and it seemed to get blown away, but kept telling me it was a dual post, when I tried to resend.
Anyhow, the short version. What is the size required for one of these Zinc-Air batteries; just a modest one to supply one megaWatt for say 10 days. I can see a winter storm period being as long as ten days, and for a small town Utility a MegaWatt seems adequate ??
“”””” Douglas DC says:
January 17, 2012 at 9:48 am
I was witness-and a too close one btw, to a substation explosion-that was next to a grain
elevator full of ammonium nitrate. I do not have warm fuzzies about huge battery complexes…
Had the substation benn 100 yards closer most of the small town of Alicel, and it’s
grain and sawmill-plus moi- would’ve been loosely associated carbon molocules…
“””””
Ask the people of Texas City , Texas, about Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer.
The Corporate Safety Engineer at Monsanto Central Research in St Louis, never tired of telling about that accident.
Methanol is the logical step for vehicles, and it even reduces emissions or ‘pollutants’, if you prefer. As for batteries, if you’ve had a mobile phone, assuming you don’t replace it year after year, have probably had problems with the charge-hold or overheating. As mentioned above, longevity and deteoration, it has a ‘memory’. I don’t know how well they are made this day, but when it fails, should be interesting for RARE-earth-metals.
Not to mention, Solar and Wind are inefficient within themselves, let alone uptime, transmission, and then storage. I don’t mind real-time-solar for maybe a small supplement to devices within home, business, or as the city has, on some intersections (though I’m unsure if they wholely supply the lights). Not for storage though, too many batteries for all the buildings.
And I scoffed when ‘Smart Grid’ was used. It’s more like ‘Control Grid”. It’s like calling Iran a democracy because they had elections.
They don´t know there is a rambling knight out there ( some whisper his name is Anthony) who his sole endeavor is to topple down those high wind mills of infamy….built up by the kings of the dark side.
But battery power will provide DC current. And the whole reason that we converted from DC to AC is that there is less attenuation when transmitting power over a distance. How do they intend to cope with that?
Dizzy Ringo says:
January 17, 2012 at 2:57 pm
“But battery power will provide DC current. And the whole reason that we converted from DC to AC is that there is less attenuation when transmitting power over a distance. How do they intend to cope with that?”
Today this is less of a problem; modern inverters use IGBTs which are highly efficient switching elements for high loads. Semiconductor technologies were not available back then.
DirkH, RockyRoad, David L., Steve from R,
I am familiar with the issues y’all have expressed. I grew up in the coal/oil/gas area of western Pennsylvania and friends and family members worked in all those activities. I learned to swim in a water filled strip mine. (Chemistry types, take note.) I’ve been through the smelter** and under ground in the Silver Valley of Northern Idaho.
[** http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/cleanup.nsf/box/Bunker+Hill+Box ;
click on the ‘Overview” link]
I meant to be brief in my first comment at 9:19, thereby NOT turning this posting into The Malthusian Swamp – I’ve never gone there. I just don’t think this battery is a game-changer in the sense of “utility scale.”
Take a look at the illustration (top of page) of the EOS Aurora. How many standard 40 ft. shipping containers are going to be built, placed, and maintained so as to replace a gas-fired utility?
Finally (or maybe not), insofar as the post stressed the usefulness of this technology when coupled with “solar, wind and other renewable energy sources”, is it, also, going to require massive subsidies or just ride the coat-tails of the others?
Besides that, I am still waiting for the 2500 USD freezer sized wonder battery that was ripe for market introduction three years ago and fit to drive all standard house appliances including the washing machine and the dish washer.
http://www.heraldextra.com/news/article_b0372fd8-3f3c-11de-ac77-001cc4c002e0.html
In my humble opinion the endless stream of new “green” break through developments in energy storage technology is nothing more but an attempt to channel serious questions about the future of what is called the “energy revolution”, in Germany “Energie Wende”.
It’s just one big pile of crap
And so it goes.
Based only on the information provided on their web site, a standard 40-foot container can store 6 Megawatt hours deliverable at a rate of 1 Megawatt. For 10 days storage for a 1 Megawatt power plant you would need 24X10/6 or 40 containers. The archetype “40 footer” is 8 feet high by 8 feet wide. Assuming a 16 foot separation for moving things around, which is probably WAY more than you need, the containers would occupy a 152 foot by 320 foot area (based on a 6 by 6 grid, with 4 left over in a seventh row), or 48,640 square feet which is just over an acre. Obviously this isn’t counting the interconnecting infrastructure. Looked at another way, this would support a 10 Megawatt plant for a day. Modern base-load plants tend to be in the 1,000 Megawatt range. To support such a plant for one day would require 100 acres of storage. Even going up to your original 10 days with a 1,000 Megawatt plant, you’re looking at a smidge over 1.5 square miles of storage.
If we revisit Nikola Tesla we will realize that solar cells lack a connection to ground:
http://www.giurfa.com/tesla_patent.pdf
Zinc-air batteries have been around for at least 80 years. Here’s a link to their history: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Zinc-air_battery Most have been primary, or non-rechargeable. I would guess that the new patents are in the methods to achieve rechargeability, as dendrite growth is a problem, and electrolyte level is sensitive to ambient humidity. The 5000 deep cycle lifetime claim of being 10X as long as Pb-acid batteries is misleading. Pb-acid batteries may have only 500 cycle life at 100% depth of discharge, but nobody uses industrial batteries that way. The Pb-acid battery in my car and yours does NOT need replacement every year (car driven twice/day for 250 days).
When I was in college in 1972, sodium-sulfur batteries were the wave of the future. Of course, commercial hot fusion plants were coming too. Maybe somebody can do a research study linking the continuous 20 year forecast before we run out of oil and the continuous 20 year forecast until hot fusion becomes commercially viable. 🙂
I really hope this works out. I like Zinc because it is plentiful, and doesn’t have any side effects. The only other utility scale batteries are vanadium redox flow batteries that I know of.
The advantages I see besides helping out at peak load is if there are enough of these, there need never be another brown or blackout, which is a genuine technological advance.
Also, over time they would balance out the price paid for electricity. Here in Ireland, wholesale electricity prices range between €40 – 260 per MWH. Having the ability to store electricity would bring it closer to €80 – 100 per MWH, from which everyone would benefit. Add to that reduced maintenance and spin cycling, and it could come very close to paying for itself.
No one technology is going to win out over another. The robustness of a system comes from having as much choice as possible, particularly when it comes to energy, because having choices is the only way to keep things honest. I’d far rather see money being spent on this sort of thing, than on the bullplop that’s being described as science at the moment.
“The big question: what is the conversion efficiency? – Anthony”
Sorry I forgot to address this question in my previous post. The web site: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Zinc-air_battery
mentions 50% efficiency for a complete charge-discharge cycle, which is at the low end of typical batteries. This means lots of forced cooling air for that shipping container. Pumped water storage is about 70% efficient.
There are some practical uses for utility scale batteries, but large scale load leveling isn’t one of them. The energy density of zinc air batteries is still an order of magnitude lower than nat gas. Remember, a battery is not a source of energy, it is a storage vessel. While it is true that utility scale storage would be very useful, this is no more viable than any of the previous snake oil recipes.
The problem is not just providing the energy its also the consumption so if we are able to make our devices and our homes more efficient possibly These alternative sources would become more efficient as well.
If batteries were a viable large scale supplier/storer of electrical energy then they would be useful for all forms of electricity production- they could be designed to run at one rate at great efficiency and store the excess to handle higher demand.
Call me paranoid, but me thinks this smells a bit like a scam. I searched for patents and patent applications on the USPTO web site — looking for the word “battery” in the title and “EOS” or “Mercury” (company which recently acquired EOS) in the Assignee Name field. Nothing. They claim to have IP but I don’t see it. If these patents are held in private names, NOT assigned to the company then that is also not real. I could be wrong but this should be looked at very carefully for validity…
this seems like a very useful and innovative development. If the battery performs as describes, it would have many applications. The technology builds on a known technology. Sure, there are lots of issues in bringing a novel technology to market, but I don’t understand why so many commenters are so sour.
As someone with experience in the mining business, I would urge people not to fret about the metal supply. Zinc is a major metal (much more substantial than lithium) and the resource matters will work out..
Yup,
Lots of applications. Load leveling at utility scale except in specific circumstances isn’t one of them. This is not a major breakthrough, just as all battery advancements have been more incremental than revolutionary so is this one.
When this problem is solved we can discuss economics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg
By the by, there are already utility scale batteries deployed of a few megawatts The ones I am aware of are NaS (aep.com).
Ten times the energy density of lithium ion requires ten times as much reactive material packed into the same volume. Also temperature rise from charging and discharge would be ten times as great. Ten times more cooling required and much greater fire and explosion risk. How this results in a 30 life expectancy or lower cost is beyond me. It is a bit like using #14 wire to carry 200 amperes. How about using liquid nitrogen for cooling?
Anything could be possible but it smells like BS. Prove it.
Batteries don’t like cold.
My Apple Iphone died after two minutes exposed to 30 below taking pictures in the snow skiing a metre of fresh light stuff today. Showed a full charge and worked fine once I took it inside. Even one of my MP3 players konked out in the cold but was at “full charge” when warmed up.
Batteries don’t like the cold. My diesel truck doesn’t like it either. I have to start it several times a day if I can’t plug it in or it won’t start at 30 below and the battery loses cranking power.
Snowed in in Fernie, BC, Canada with all the big rigs stuck idling in parking lots due to road closures due to the snow and cold.
But the skiing was awesome with the light fluffing flowing up and over the shoulders. Looks like another great day tomorrow. Face mask and lots of layers.