the battery revolution that will let us all be power brokers - battery energy storage system

This article was viewed for free due to the sponsorship of BASFWE. We only notice them when they are about to run out.
The icon flashes red with a warning flashing.
Curse of modern mobility: our batteries are about to give up.
This is a trivial daily annoyance.
But the impact is far more than laptops and smartphones.
Human control of the environment depends on two things: information and energy.
The narrowing of transistors and the rise of microprocessor have given us great control over the first generation: our ability to store and operate data in the palm of our hands is incredible before a generation.
But with energy, we are stuck in the same state.
The development of electric vehicles has stalled due to the lack of cheap, efficient and long-distance power supply.
While we have made great progress in using wind, waves and the sun to generate cleaner electricity, the technology to store juices is also severely lagging behind.
Companies and governments are investing billions of dollars to improve existing battery technology and have achieved some success.
However, if we are to continue to calculate and communicate with more freedom, and at the same time to get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels, traditional thinking needs to be completely changed.
We need better batteries.
The current Frontier of energy storage technology may be in your pocket-there are 2 billion people in the world. The lithium-
The ion battery powered by most smartphones was born in the 1990 s, when it was a quirk in the dying cassette industry.
Jeff Chamberlain of Chicago's Argonne National Laboratory says the rise of CDS has made Japanese company Sony look around for something related to the old equipment that makes the tape.
Instead of coating the tape with magnetic films that can record the data, they start coating the tape with a goopy layer of electrodes that can store the charge.
The first Lithium
The ion battery contains the coils of these thin film electrodes, wrapped in a cylinder like the wire shaft of the cassette tape.
For compact energy storage, they instantly double the amount of anything else.
Existing Nickel
Cadmium and nickel
The metal hydrogen cell uses chemical changes on the surface of the two electrodes to divert charging
Carry hydroxide ions and protons in this and that way, thus charging and discharging.
This new technology achieves the same goal by exchanging lithium ions, but in a chemical process called plugging, inserting lithium ions into the nano-gap in the battery electrode material.
Because it's a light metal, lithium has a lot of charge.
Carry ions with its weight, made for smaller but more powerful batteries. Lithium-
Ion batteries have flourished from their accidental beginnings, first by the rise of personal electronic devices such as camcorders, and then by mobile phones and laptops.
Although in most ways they are still dwarfed by huge lead
Today, 2015, lithium batteries are found in almost all cars on the road.
Ion batteries will account for about third of the world's rechargeable battery spending (
See "open it ")
According to Avicenne, a French research firm, this figure is less than sixth in total energy.
At the same time, their performance has been greatly improved: since the technology was commercialized in 1991, design adjustments have tripled the energy stored in a given volume.
Success gave birth to success, lithium-
Ion batteries have new and larger applications in electric vehicles and other fields.
See "Lithium Power ").
For example, the Model S electric vehicle designed by Tesla Motors, owned by continuous entrepreneur Elon Musk, consists of thousands of small lithium-
Ion batteries arranged between the axle of the car.
It can range from zero to 95 kilometers per hour.
1 second, a single charge can travel about 430, although it may take several hours to charge.
Tesla has no plans to stay here. Lithium-
Ion batteries are so important to the company that it has started to build its own, building a "Gigabit plant" outside Reno, Nevada ".
To 2020, the company plans to produce as much lithium as possible-
In 2013, the world produced ion batteries every year-enough to accommodate 500,000 electric vehicles-with lower production costs per battery.
Despite the secrets behind Tesla's plans, achieving these goals may mean changing the way lithium batteries are made.
For all of their collective oomph, the thousands of batteries in Model S are basically the offspring of the first cylindrical thin film batteries.
"We 've been using a sub-optimal manufacturing process for nearly 25 years because it's there," Chamberlain said . ".
"Now, lithium
Big companies note that ion is a $15 billion business. ”“Now lithium-
Ion batteries are a $15 billion business that big companies are looking at ", not just big companies.
A small beginning.
Cambridge-based company 24 m has attracted more than $50 million in investment for alternative manufacturing methods.
Instead of using the oven to dry the slurry containing the positive and negative electrodes of the battery, the company found a way to keep the whole process wet, save time, simplify the design and increase the energy density.
The company also claims its approach will cut costs by half.
"If it works, everyone else will do it immediately," said George Crabtree, a material scientist at Argonne . ".
Argonne colleague Chamberlain of Crabtree is a member of a consortium of companies and researchers who plan to improve lithium-ion batteries.
As with Tesla, these details are still confidential, but our idea is to adopt a coating that is usually used to improve the life of the artificial joint and apply it to the manufacture of batteries with dry electrodes.
Some processes are being tested in order to find out which way to provide the most return for investors, Chamberlain said. Lithium-
Ion technology has a huge momentum of development, which means it is likely to become the backbone of our emerging energy.
Control infrastructure for a period of time.
But there is no problem.
Lithium can burn heavily, so if the battery is overcharged, there may be a fire hazard with the battery containing lithium.
In 2006, Sony recalled 6 million self-burning laptop batteries.
On January 2013, the battery of a Boeing Next-generation Dreamliner caught fire when the plane was empty at Boston Logan Airport.
Since then, Boeing has updated its software and modern systems often control problems-but a technology that requires strict supervision to avoid fire is not ideal.
Other problems are not easy to solve. Lithium-
Ion batteries are close to the basic electro-chemical limit in the density of stored energy, and their cost is close to the lowest level-which is particularly problematic for larger batteries --
Scale applications.
"You might lower it by 30 cents, but you won't get more," Crabtree said . ".
"If you really want electric cars to compete with gasoline, you need the next generation of batteries.
"This means finding a new chemical foundation for them," said ASIID Yazami of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
The engineers have made incredible progress in lithium.
Ion batteries, but not enough to meet the growing demand, he said.
"People want to charge electric cars very fast and they want to run 500 miles," he said . ".
Lithium is an obvious option to store a lot of energy at low quality, and many alternative battery designs also start with the element.
One is lithium.
Sulfur cells, which store and release energy by forming and breaking chemical bonds, instead of inserting ions into the structural gap.
These batteries are not too easy to catch fire, and although they are not available yet, they have three times the energy density of the best lithiumion batteries.
Salt flats in Bolivia are the world's largest source of lithium (
Picture: Robin Hammond/Panos Picture)
However, reliance on lithium may not be the best option.
First, international markets are not always easy to access despite the rich elements.
The largest resources identified are Chile and Bolivia, which account for more than the total number of known resources in the world (
See "lithium location ").
Here, lithium, along with other metal salts, is present in the chlorine salt water under Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt beach.
Processing lithium from the British may be cheaper than mining lithium from rocks, and the damage to the environment may be smaller.
However, although Bolivia is very interested in this, it has not been opened to any foreign mining company so far, on the contrary, it insists that, any lithium extracted from there can be used to produce export products-batteries and electric vehicles-within its territory.
Yazami is a researcher who studies alternative elements for making batteries.
He is vague about his project, just saying that his lab is working on a system that uses materials that are more common than lithium.
"If I tell you that I can develop a battery that lasts 15 seconds and a week of charging, you will be happy," he said . ".
"That's what we do.
"In general, there is a complete periodic table of elements for acquisition, trial and error, which is the only way to find a better battery.
"Traditional battery research is empirical," Chamberlain said.
"You investigate the material with knowledge and then test the material.
However, "better batteries will democratize electricity" is changing and we are starting to use the loot of the information revolution to trigger a similar energy revolution.
Supercomputer is such a tool that can combine many elements in different proportions and optimize performance such as energy density and charging time.
"We are using this data to get a needle in a possible material," Chamberlain said . ".
One of these systems is the electrolyte genome, a project designed by Argonne's researchers in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, which looks for thousands of potential battery chemistry
On that basis, Argonne researchers recently built a prototype battery that uses magnesium ions instead of lithium to carry and store charges.
Compared with lithium, magnesium ions have two positive charges, and the ability to store energy has doubled.
However, most of them only appear in a huge combination with other elements-simulations propose new solutions.
Another goal of the calculation method is the mobile battery, in which the stored materials are dissolved in the solution, allowing for a particularly broad mixture of elements.
Compared to other cuts, the energy density of the mobile battery is lower
But it's much cheaper.
"We are looking for smart active elements or molecules to store and release energy that are very rich, cheap and versatile," Crabtree said . ".
So far, the calculation test of 16,000 has been carried out.
Jeff Dane of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, said reducing the cost of a fairly good battery could actually be more important than increasing their energy density.
For example, he said that the Model S is a very good car in many ways, "The only problem is that it costs too much ".
"Good batteries are like a haystack of all possible materials," and when we go beyond electric cars and see a more pressing energy issue: how to store power on the grid, it will certainly
The demand for electricity varies between day and night and different seasons.
At present, the energy needed to meet peak demand is stored in the form of natural gas and coal.
These fossil shops are sitting in the back.
Increased power plants when demand is high.
Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and waves have exacerbated this predictability: changes in local clouds, irregular peaks and valleys such as wind speeds, these peaks and valleys do not necessarily correspond to peak demand.
"Turning to solar and wind power, we can't move the power up and down.
We can't control it.
"When the wind blows or the sun shines, we can't call the shots," Chamberlain said . ".
"So we have to store the sun in some way. ”Our century-
Behind the problem is the old distribution mode, we need to use electricity once we generate electricity.
For example, on March 20, a solar eclipse caused two
Germany's solar power generation capacity is about thirty times that of an hour.
Aware of the impending shortage of power grid operators separate alternative power generation from coal, gas and hydropower systems to meet this demand.
However, if there is enough battery storage, eclipse will be a non-
Event from the beginning.
But batteries used for power grid storage must be very cheap to compete with fossil fuels
Energy demand.
"It's a very cheap way to meet the energy needs of our drilling on Earth," Chamberlain said . ".
"After years of engineering design, we have come to a very profitable place, an effective way to get the energy we need.
In all the methods of storing energy, lithium-
Ion batteries are one of the most expensive.
However, with some spoofing, grid storage using this technology is already happening.
California signed a bill in 2014 requiring its energy company to be 1.
Storage of 3 gigawatts to the grid by 2022-roughly the same output as large natural gas power stations, sufficient to cover at any time about 1/40 days of the state's average electricity demand.
It aims to capture renewable energy off-site
Peak time, then feed it back into the grid when the demand is high.
At the end of last year, the utility company Southern California Edison commissioned Virginia-based start-
Build a huge lithium-AES Energy Storageion array.
With plans to become the largest battery ever, it will be able to provide 100 megawatts of electricity in four hours, enough to power an average of 80,000 households in the United States.
"When you analyze these numbers, procurement costs half a billion dollars online, thanks to a country's policies," Chamberlain said . ".
Other companies like Samsung and Siemens have already offered products that support the grid, but they are still expensive compared to fossil energy.
Fuel storage, lid only provided for a short period of time.
Doing the same thing across the grid is a daunting task.
"Scale is unthinkable," said Dahn . " His lab signed a five.
Tesla signed an annual research contract in June.
He calculated that storing only the production of his local utility, Nova Scotia, would take up the energy storage capacity of every battery made worldwide this year in 24 hours, and then increase it by half.
In the end, the solution may be smaller: give everyone the power to store their own power.
Tesla is one of several companies in the game: it recently announced a device called Powerwall, designed for families and businesses.
It uses the same batteries as electric vehicles to store energy, whether it's renewable or cheap nights --
Time electricity, ready to use during the day.
If such a system becomes commonplace, we may be more aware of where our energy comes from and how our own actions affect its use and production, said Philip Greenwald, an energy researcher at Oxford University.
"The battery will make you feel like you have something to trade with and it's a very helpful thing," he said . ".
He foresaw a system in which the electricity supplier puts a small battery at the customer's home for free, offering them a cheaper price, in exchange for being able to manage that part of the energy storage for the benefit of the entire grid.
However, this needs to be purchased-
From companies and consumers.
If the battery revolution broke out, Chamberlain said, it would be difficult to predict what the world would change-just as the consequences of the information revolution were hard to predict about a decade ago.
But he expects that this capacity will also be enhanced as individuals gain the ability to produce, store and use electricity at will.
"Batteries are the key to democratizing electricity," he said . "
With the increasing population of the world, the demand for energy is getting bigger and bigger, and the next generation of batteries can't come out soon (
See "global lithium demand ").
"We are now on the verge of a new energy revolution," Yazami said . ".
"We know that fossil fuels are not a good solution.
But if there is no energy, the story is over.
In this way, batteries become a technology of global importance, not just to help avoid dangerous climate change. “[The US]
It costs more than a billion dollars a day to import some form of oil energy, "said David Howell of the Department of Energy's vehicle technology office.
"We ship billions of dollars overseas every day.
This brings us to all kinds of weaknesses.
Greenwald agreed.
"If we don't want electricity based on fossil fuels in 2050, storage will be absolutely critical," he said . ".
"Starting today.