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We are probably using the wrong kind of battery for grid storage.

There are some promising techs out there, like Liquid Metal Battery:

https://ambri.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiRrvxjrJ1U

I think this guy is onto something...

Liquid metal batteries will be better than gravity storage IMHO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiRrvxjrJ1U

First commercial scale system is going live in 2021 so we shall see how it works out.

⬐ xutopia

I don't understand how that would be feasible... wouldn't the battery need to be kept at a really hot temperature somehow to function?

⬐ lebuffon

Using it causes the heat. It is in an insulated container so the heat stays around for about 4 hrs I think he said.

So applying first charge must heat it to melting temperature but then it's working.

Then when you discharge it, electron flow cause heating again. So if it is constant use it just works.

> None of which scale well.

There is a startup that has developed a battery that was designed from the start to scale as much as possible for grid level storage.

http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiRrvxjrJ1U

So far I've seen no reason to think that we won't be able to solve the energy storage challenges over the next 10-20 years.

To be clear, I'm talking about smoothing out the power over hours and maybe days. If it's suddenly windless for a couple of weeks for some reason, there's no battery that will cover that. But we could just keep gas power plants around. They're great for that, and running them a few times a year is not gonna make a big dent in emissions. If they're used that rarely, we might even be able to use renewable gas.

The other challenge is seasonal variations. But Northern Europe has ways to deal with that. Norway has massive amounts of hydro power, and is building new power lines to help nearby countries. Sweden has built a lot of trash burning facilities that also supply heat to nearby areas. I think I read these run mostly in winter. Not sure what the solution for northern North America is.

Grid level battery storage is very likely moving to other chemistries. The only reason to use lithium is that it's the chemistry that's the most developed right now, but lithium-ion batteries do not fundamentally speaking have the best properties for grid storage. Lithium-ion is great for energy density, but that's not a critical requirement for the grid.

For grid storage I think molten metal makes the most sense. It's a technology that was developed to be ideal for grid storage from the start. Flow cell batteries might also make sense. And then there's other storage technologies like compressed air, pumped hydro, storing kinetic energy, storing thermal energy, etc.

http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiRrvxjrJ1U

This talk by Dr Sadoway is pretty amazing regarding his team's design for utility-scale liquid metal batteries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiRrvxjrJ1U It's an hour long, but it's well worth the time investment.

This is not merely a theoretical technology. A company has been created around this technology: http://www.ambri.com

(I am not connected to any of this, but I am quite excited by it.)