Flow Batteries Are Here and They Will Change Everything(medium.com)
medium.com
Flow Batteries Are Here and They Will Change Everything
https://medium.com/predict/flow-batteries-are-here-and-they-will-change-everything-66fa1eb3bbc7
8 comments
The efficiency downside doesn't even appear to be a downside. We already have solar excess power when we don't need it. If you can store that power and store it cheap, 80 percent efficiency is better than zero.
I hope these pan out. We need something to happen ASAP.
I hope these pan out. We need something to happen ASAP.
Right, efficiency will not end up mattering much. For the first 4 hours, 80% is fine. Beyond that, 50% round-trip is fine. Other numbers matter more.
But we don't need any particular storage tech, or even all the eventual winners in aggregate, to pan out quickly. There is no need for storage that there is not enough renewable generating capacity to charge up.
After enough renewable capacity has been built out, the winners will be known, and storage prices will be much, much lower.
What we do need is a hell of a lot more money put into renewable generating capacity. It is being built out at an impressively high rate, but not high enough to forestall climate catastrophe.
After enough generation and storage is built out, we will need to start outlawing carbon exhaust and building out carbon capture. But those cannot happen yet. Carbon capture, in particular, is an overwhelmingly worse use of money than installing renewable generating capacity to displace carbon exhaust. And we can't force most current polluters to stop without a replacement already in hand for them to switch to.
But factories to make storage and capture equipment of all kinds need to be built now, because that takes a long time, and cannot be rushed, and we will need a very great deal of both. If that means some of the factories will be for eventual losers, so be it.
But we don't need any particular storage tech, or even all the eventual winners in aggregate, to pan out quickly. There is no need for storage that there is not enough renewable generating capacity to charge up.
After enough renewable capacity has been built out, the winners will be known, and storage prices will be much, much lower.
What we do need is a hell of a lot more money put into renewable generating capacity. It is being built out at an impressively high rate, but not high enough to forestall climate catastrophe.
After enough generation and storage is built out, we will need to start outlawing carbon exhaust and building out carbon capture. But those cannot happen yet. Carbon capture, in particular, is an overwhelmingly worse use of money than installing renewable generating capacity to displace carbon exhaust. And we can't force most current polluters to stop without a replacement already in hand for them to switch to.
But factories to make storage and capture equipment of all kinds need to be built now, because that takes a long time, and cannot be rushed, and we will need a very great deal of both. If that means some of the factories will be for eventual losers, so be it.
Really smart distillation, thank you.
This is incredibly exciting news, but I'd like to kick the tires real quick.
Main worry: The magic ingredient this time appears to be vanadium instead of lithium, but there's still a magic ingredient (at least, according to my cursory understanding of the tech, entirely due to the OP's link)
- How abundant is vanadium? Wikipedia says it's 'rarely found in nature' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium
- What are the geopolitics of vanadium? Under what conditions is it typically mined? Within which nation-states' territories is it typically found?
- What other industrial uses does vanadium have?
- What quantity is needed?
- Can we ramp up exploitation of deposits, or are there hard reasons (scarcity, remoteness, etc) that prevent this?
- EDIT: most importantly, are there other candidate elements that can, in the case of shortage or war, also provide service?
Main worry: The magic ingredient this time appears to be vanadium instead of lithium, but there's still a magic ingredient (at least, according to my cursory understanding of the tech, entirely due to the OP's link)
- How abundant is vanadium? Wikipedia says it's 'rarely found in nature' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium
- What are the geopolitics of vanadium? Under what conditions is it typically mined? Within which nation-states' territories is it typically found?
- What other industrial uses does vanadium have?
- What quantity is needed?
- Can we ramp up exploitation of deposits, or are there hard reasons (scarcity, remoteness, etc) that prevent this?
- EDIT: most importantly, are there other candidate elements that can, in the case of shortage or war, also provide service?
There are also organic ones, which seem kind of like stripped down biological respiration. Pretty cool. Redox stuff with hydrocarbons.
I'll grant that I'm not an expert in this kind of thing, but according to the article:
> Furthermore, vanadium is a readily accessible element in many different easy-to-find minerals. The rest of the battery is made up of equally accessible materials, making it easy to assemble and recycle, in comparison to lithium-ion batteries, which need metals like cobalt and manganese to function.
This paragraph links to the following website: https://www.australianvanadium.com.au/what-is-vanadium/
Obviously this doesn't answer all questions, but at the very least it's a place to start.
> Furthermore, vanadium is a readily accessible element in many different easy-to-find minerals. The rest of the battery is made up of equally accessible materials, making it easy to assemble and recycle, in comparison to lithium-ion batteries, which need metals like cobalt and manganese to function.
This paragraph links to the following website: https://www.australianvanadium.com.au/what-is-vanadium/
Obviously this doesn't answer all questions, but at the very least it's a place to start.
Flow batteries represent an intermediate point between regular batteries and synthetic fuels.
A regular battery costs in capital expenditure per kWh it can store when fully charged. Once full, the only way to store more is to buy more. But efficiency is usually high, and rate of energy in and, particularly, out are high.
Synthetic fuels suffer conversion losses, but more storage is as cheap as tankage. The expensive parts are the synthesis equipment -- electrolyser, catalyzer, compressor, cooler -- and stuff to get the stored energy back out, such as a fuel cell or turbine. Those cost per kW, not per kWh.
Flow battery storage capacity can be extended by adding tankage and electrolyte. The expensive part is the bit the electrolyte flows through. So, kW in and kW out cost, per, but round trip efficiency is higher. And you can't generally sell somebody charged-up electrolyte, or buy it.
A regular battery costs in capital expenditure per kWh it can store when fully charged. Once full, the only way to store more is to buy more. But efficiency is usually high, and rate of energy in and, particularly, out are high.
Synthetic fuels suffer conversion losses, but more storage is as cheap as tankage. The expensive parts are the synthesis equipment -- electrolyser, catalyzer, compressor, cooler -- and stuff to get the stored energy back out, such as a fuel cell or turbine. Those cost per kW, not per kWh.
Flow battery storage capacity can be extended by adding tankage and electrolyte. The expensive part is the bit the electrolyte flows through. So, kW in and kW out cost, per, but round trip efficiency is higher. And you can't generally sell somebody charged-up electrolyte, or buy it.
Instead of $132 per kWh like Lithium batteries these cost $25 per kWh and with almost endless number of cycle times. Covers pros and cons.
The problem with those LCOS numbers is, from what I've seen, that it's a projected cost once production is scaled to a certain (high) level. Lithium ships in high volume today and benefits from scale, flow batteries don't. Manufacturers with public info like ESS are careful to qualify the price disclosures like that by saying it assumes future scaling - it's not their cost today.
For example, from the ESS ($GWH) 10-K:
> [W]e have not yet produced any iron flow batteries, Energy Warehouses or Energy Centers at volume and our expected cost advantage for the production of these products at scale, compared to conventional lithium-ion cells, will require us to achieve rates of throughput, use of electricity and consumables, yield, and rate of automation demonstrated for mature battery, battery material, and ceramic manufacturing processes, that we have not yet achieved.
If there's info to the contrary, I'd love to see it, but I'm skeptical of any current cost advantage. At the moment they seem to mostly be attractive for longer duration battery installations, like that Fort Carson 10-hour battery mentioned in the article.
For example, from the ESS ($GWH) 10-K:
> [W]e have not yet produced any iron flow batteries, Energy Warehouses or Energy Centers at volume and our expected cost advantage for the production of these products at scale, compared to conventional lithium-ion cells, will require us to achieve rates of throughput, use of electricity and consumables, yield, and rate of automation demonstrated for mature battery, battery material, and ceramic manufacturing processes, that we have not yet achieved.
If there's info to the contrary, I'd love to see it, but I'm skeptical of any current cost advantage. At the moment they seem to mostly be attractive for longer duration battery installations, like that Fort Carson 10-hour battery mentioned in the article.
Obviously, before they have scaled, they still need to scale. And, to scale at a useful rate, one needs a lot of money invested. And, any particular one might not win, and so not end up scaling at all.
So the question is whether to believe their numbers. If some other chemistry turns out better, this one won't scale and that one will, instead. Further, a projected efficiency might not pan out immediately, for an unanticipated reason, and another might win before it is solved. So such investment is risky: its value depends not just on this chemistry, but on all the others too, and which one succeeds in scaling fastest.
Anyway, batteries are far from the only storage that will end up used, and costs for those are falling. Probably most storage will not be batteries, in the end. But a lot will be, reliably, and almost all of home storage will be. So, one or other will end up scaling.
So the correct way to think of this is to treat the whole family of battery chemistries as the opportunity, and invest in a bunch of them. Most of those investments might flop, but one or more will certainly pay off big.
There will probably not be just one winner. Lithium has already won the volume race, but its cost is still high partly because demand is high, driven by vehicle uses. Cost of various lithium chemistries is still falling, but not as fast as others still could. And safety is still a worry.
Each battery chemistry still under consideration has some places where it shines: cheap raw material, longevity, volume or mass energy density, safety, charge rate, discharge rate, operating temperature range, compatibility with existing manufacturing processes, and lots more. So in different exact use cases, one will be favored over others, traded off against instantaneous cost, which will be falling for a long time, at a rate that varies with popularity.
So the question is whether to believe their numbers. If some other chemistry turns out better, this one won't scale and that one will, instead. Further, a projected efficiency might not pan out immediately, for an unanticipated reason, and another might win before it is solved. So such investment is risky: its value depends not just on this chemistry, but on all the others too, and which one succeeds in scaling fastest.
Anyway, batteries are far from the only storage that will end up used, and costs for those are falling. Probably most storage will not be batteries, in the end. But a lot will be, reliably, and almost all of home storage will be. So, one or other will end up scaling.
So the correct way to think of this is to treat the whole family of battery chemistries as the opportunity, and invest in a bunch of them. Most of those investments might flop, but one or more will certainly pay off big.
There will probably not be just one winner. Lithium has already won the volume race, but its cost is still high partly because demand is high, driven by vehicle uses. Cost of various lithium chemistries is still falling, but not as fast as others still could. And safety is still a worry.
Each battery chemistry still under consideration has some places where it shines: cheap raw material, longevity, volume or mass energy density, safety, charge rate, discharge rate, operating temperature range, compatibility with existing manufacturing processes, and lots more. So in different exact use cases, one will be favored over others, traded off against instantaneous cost, which will be falling for a long time, at a rate that varies with popularity.
I think lithium batteries currently range $50-$100, $132 seems pretty high.
Might be comparing different metrics. If it's lifetime costs you have to cover replacement timelines for lithium degradation, facilities, and so on.
Lots of electronics involved when you have banks of thousands of batteries
Lots of electronics involved when you have banks of thousands of batteries
It's kind of weird to talk about the prices of flow batteries when they're not really commercially available.
Flow batteries have been in the news every year but I've yet to see a deployment other than this one. If they're so simple what is holding large scale implementation back?
They only make sense when you have large amounts of low carbon power that you want to store for long periods of time.
Usually, just turning down some fossil fuel plant is a better option.
Using the electricity via demand response comes after that.
A long wire to somewhere else that can use it and send you back some of their excess is next.
If you really can't use that power for anything lithium batteries are cost efficient as long as you regularly cycle them (e.g. daily solar peaks).
So you need to get into storing power for long periods of time before they have a niche. Which is on its way, but isn't here yet. So building more renewables makes more sense. (Do enough of that and eventually you'll want some more storage options).
Usually, just turning down some fossil fuel plant is a better option.
Using the electricity via demand response comes after that.
A long wire to somewhere else that can use it and send you back some of their excess is next.
If you really can't use that power for anything lithium batteries are cost efficient as long as you regularly cycle them (e.g. daily solar peaks).
So you need to get into storing power for long periods of time before they have a niche. Which is on its way, but isn't here yet. So building more renewables makes more sense. (Do enough of that and eventually you'll want some more storage options).
Yes, demand for all kinds of storage will grow exponentially as renewable generating capacity approaches saturation: meaning you generate, in aggregate, as many joules in an average day as will be consumed in that day.
That happens over and over for each house that gets solar installed and the grid is not trusted, or is badly overpriced (as in many places with nukes).
That happens over and over for each house that gets solar installed and the grid is not trusted, or is badly overpriced (as in many places with nukes).
The article has a link in it to:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/flow-batter...
If you scroll down there's a table 32.7 about Projects in China. A number of which, according to that table, are completed.
If you scroll down there's a table 32.7 about Projects in China. A number of which, according to that table, are completed.
Flow batter, Glass batteries, seems like everyday there is a new battery.
The real question: Can these batteries operate at Grid Scale. What happens with Tokyo has a disaster event or any other mega city for that matter (where 70% of the population will live decades from now).
Today 96% of storage is water being pumped up a hill...
The real question: Can these batteries operate at Grid Scale. What happens with Tokyo has a disaster event or any other mega city for that matter (where 70% of the population will live decades from now).
Today 96% of storage is water being pumped up a hill...
Any chemistry still being considered can operate at your "grid scale". If you need more storage, you buy more battery. Pumped hydro dominates mainly because the dams and turbines were already there.
So "can it operate at grid scale?" is a bullshit question. All storage alternatives can operate at grid scale by adding more units. What matters is cost, and costs are changing.
Even Energy Vault's fraudulent hi-rise condo for concrete blocks could scale up, in principle. It would just be stupidly expensive, and its cost cannot come down noticeably, so they won't sell any condos. People holding NRGV shares will lose badly, and people with call options on it, much worse. You might make a lot of money betting it will collapse, but they could in the meantime swap equity for something that works, and then not ruin that. Unlikely, though: who would be smart enough to have something that works, but dumb enough to swap?
Some technologies and battery chemistries will win big, reliably. We just don't know which ones.
So "can it operate at grid scale?" is a bullshit question. All storage alternatives can operate at grid scale by adding more units. What matters is cost, and costs are changing.
Even Energy Vault's fraudulent hi-rise condo for concrete blocks could scale up, in principle. It would just be stupidly expensive, and its cost cannot come down noticeably, so they won't sell any condos. People holding NRGV shares will lose badly, and people with call options on it, much worse. You might make a lot of money betting it will collapse, but they could in the meantime swap equity for something that works, and then not ruin that. Unlikely, though: who would be smart enough to have something that works, but dumb enough to swap?
Some technologies and battery chemistries will win big, reliably. We just don't know which ones.
Vanadium redox flow batteries aren't that new - the first successful ones were made in the 80s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
I hope they get the economics to work.
Also the longest duration flow battery in the Wikipedia article runs 10 hours. We really need something that can charge for months in the summer and discarge for months in the winter. Maybe rust https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27944600 or aluminium https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26463249 ?
I hope they get the economics to work.
Also the longest duration flow battery in the Wikipedia article runs 10 hours. We really need something that can charge for months in the summer and discarge for months in the winter. Maybe rust https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27944600 or aluminium https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26463249 ?
Long-term storage does not have a future.
Most localities will store no more than two weeks' production. If local banked energy looks likely to get used up, and incoming transmission line power cannot be secured, they order a shipment of synthetic fuel (ammonia) from a solar farm in the tropics, or from a wind farm somewhere else. (Until those come online and undercut NG, they will burn NG.)
Expect most places that do buy batteries to buy no more than 4 hours' worth. Other media will be cheaper, beyond that.
If they need to keep the old combined-cycle turbines ready to spin up anyway, they are likely to favor banking a couple of weeks' fuel for those. They might install fuel synthesizers, but probably most will sell excess to the grid, which will absorb any amount, at the right price.
Most localities will store no more than two weeks' production. If local banked energy looks likely to get used up, and incoming transmission line power cannot be secured, they order a shipment of synthetic fuel (ammonia) from a solar farm in the tropics, or from a wind farm somewhere else. (Until those come online and undercut NG, they will burn NG.)
Expect most places that do buy batteries to buy no more than 4 hours' worth. Other media will be cheaper, beyond that.
If they need to keep the old combined-cycle turbines ready to spin up anyway, they are likely to favor banking a couple of weeks' fuel for those. They might install fuel synthesizers, but probably most will sell excess to the grid, which will absorb any amount, at the right price.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery
https://sumitomoelectric.com/sites/default/files/2020-12/dow...
https://www.powermag.com/flow-batteries-energy-storage-optio...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/flow-batter...
https://www.science.org/content/article/new-type-flow-batter...
http://www.cei.washington.edu/education/science-of-solar/flo...