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Battery technologies for a fast charging and changing world

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Craton

Mostly passive, contrarian.
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Progress, is undeniable. It's part of our human nature to development towards an improved or more advanced condition. One such progress is battery technology and one could argue that the quartz watch had a lot to do with advancing battery tech.
Some may remember that those first quartz watches needed the battery replaced two or three times per year.

With the advent of modern electronics, EV and the global demand for alternative energy sources and storage helping to propel battery Li-ion development. However, most of us know that Lithium is a finite resource, that Li-ion batteries are prone to "crash and burn" so-to-speak and the materials to used to make these are expensive.

Li-ion dominants but:
Unfortunately, demand will likely soon far outstrip supply, and projections of earth’s total lithium stores indicate that the resource may soon be depleted – as early as 2040 by some estimates.
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...and...
[Li-ion batteries] ...are not without their downsides, however, requiring expensive cathode and anode materials in the form of cobalt, nickel, manganese and aluminium.
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So again researching out of my own interest and looking at expanding/adding to my investments, I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of new (and not so new) tech in the battery space.

A battery needs a method of charging so charging technology has also progressed with Telsa and StoreDot at the forefront:


Associated with charging time is the charging cycle and for the gold bugs among us:


Other battery tech that's piqued my interest:

Li-S - Lithium-Sulfer
Na-ion - Sodium ion
Alum-ion (60x faster charging than Li-ion)
C-ion (100x faster charging than Li-ion)
Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB).
Zn-ion - cheaper but heavier than Li-ion

Solid State batteries

Progress in battery tech sure looks positive. Feel free to add to this incomplete list.
 
Are we talking about EV batteries, grid storage batteries, or consumer electronics batteries ?

They all have their special requirements.

Some battery technologies are in this thread.

The future of energy generation and storage

No xhit Sherlock... The AMEO plan to massively upgrade power transmission lines is (far) easier said than done. But one way or another it has to be done.. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-01/how-aemo-plans-to-fix-broken-energy-system-australia/101196758
www.aussiestockforums.com

Zinc bromide seems a good thing, but the road to ruin is paved with good intentions.
 
Yes, I did see that thread however am focusing on nothing specific, just a blanket covering of all types of batteries across all industries and applications.

E.g.
Carbon-Ion (C-ion) from ZapGo Ltd, a UK company has the same scalability as Li-ion and is claiming sublime charge times with their technology. Imagine charging your cordless drill in 15 secs! That is freaking amazing but will it scale up?
That's certainly ZapGo's aim.

 
Craton said:
magine charging your cordless drill in 15 secs! That is freaking amazing but will it scale up?
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There are practical limits.

For a mobile phone sure it could work since a 15 second charge is still within the limits of power able to be supplied from a standard 10A socket. It's a power draw similar to that of a hairdryer.

However too charge the 85kWh battery in an EV in 15 seconds would require over 20,000 kW of power input, that is over 20MW. And that's without even considering losses.

The logistics of getting that sort of power to individual houses are prohibitive and even for commercial premises it requires some serious planning and the construction of dedicated assets. We're talking about the entire output of a small power station, or about 1% of the output of a major coal or nuclear station, going to a single point after all.

For context well the whole of Victoria, including Melbourne, including trains and trams, including heavy industry etc, is using about 7000 MW right now. So the idea of putting 20MW into individual devices to charge them gets out of hand real quick.

Physics and practical reality limits how far it scales. Phones sure, if a battery can be made that works well then there's nothing else really limiting it, but for things road vehicles no chance at least not unless we're going to run transmission lines pretty much everywhere.
 
So technically I can setup a lighting rod and charge all the evs in town under 1 second?
Sure there maybe some melting and burning, but BAM charged.
 
Perhaps power stations will be the future versions of petrol stations, whereby you drive in for a quick charge. Powered by green energy of course.
 
Also, who would ever need an EV battery that charges in 15 seconds? Unless you are planning on starting an EV F1 racing team it would be useless for anything more than bragging rights.

There aren’t just practical limits of the infrastructure, but practical limits of the human body, eg by the time you have used a full battery you need more than a 15 second break, so you could invest in 15second infrastructure, but your car is still going to be sitting around for ages doing nothing, and may as well been doing a more practical slower charge.
 
Value Collector said:
Also, who would ever need an EV battery that charges in 15 seconds? Unless you are planning on starting an EV F1 racing team it would be useless for anything more than bragging rights.
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Totally agree in theory.

In practice however, humans often do strange things.....
 
As a "energy" man, certainly value your input on the electrical power requirements but, charging an EV in 15 secs is not the claim.

From that article:
"Since we have the technology to charge a cordless drill in 15 seconds, we expect to be able similarly improve EV charging rates, thereby solving one of the main obstacles to making EVs the new standard.”
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Their talking in minutes for an EV.

Link: Carbon-Ion Energy

 
Liquid metal batteries, another possibility.


@Smurf1976 may have some issues with some of the material presented here.
 
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SirRumpole said:
@Smurf1976 may have some issues with some of the material presented here
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I could certainly pick apart a lot of technical details about what happened in SA but the one I'll focus on is the claim that pumped hydro is not scalable and that lithium ion batteries are presently the best option.

Given that individual hydro operators have more capacity than the entire worldwide capacity of lithium ion batteries, it's a nonsense claim. It's the equivalent of talking about fast food and dismissing the existence of McDonald's, it's bending the truth rather drastically.

There's certainly a role for batteries in energy storage in mobile devices of any sort and there's a role for them in the grid for fast response. Beyond that though, for bulk energy storage, pumped hydro at circa 10 USD per kWh of capacity is far cheaper than any present battery but, and here's the problem, still rather expensive as such.

That's not arguing against batteries or the technology, just saying that the video isn't telling the full story on the economics and market side.
 
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@Country Lad's post: REDOX: IFRB aka ISB
 
I have been thinking for a while about a possible option that I don’t know is possible or not.

But grid companies have mentioned that during certain parts of the day parts of local networks can be over whelmed by the amount of solar power generated.

When you look at local distribution power lines, every few hundred metres there is a big transformer sitting up on the power pole.

Do you think that to help solve excess solar power during the day and to also help with peak demand that a distributed network of battery boxes could be installed on the power poles every few hundred metres in neighbourhoods that produce a lot of excess solar just like the transformers?
 
Country Lad said:
@qldfrog, I hope you had the chance to go to the markets and to the Story Bank which is now a Mary Poppins museum and where PJ Travers was born.
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Did have breakfast at the market, the Story bank and along the river.Most pleasant town with a strong heritage.would deserve more wealth to preserve its building.
A rich history, or a sad witness to the relative demise of Australia,
like Bendigo, etc, etc..so many.places
100y ago, Australia had a small population and great wealth per habitant,based on gold mining, agriculture and some industry expressed in majestic stone buildings and infrastructure: rail, warf, civil engineering.
Fast forward 100y, our real wealth per habitant has shrunk,and is expressed in NDIS, pensions, submarine moneypit, no more industry and vast agricultural best land areas covered by suburbs of matchstick homes which will collapse in 30y.
Our politicians and voters should cry in shame.
 
Technically it could certainly be done.

Location wouldn't be critical so long as it's on the correct side of the constraint. That is, wouldn't have to be right next to the transformer (though it could be) just so long as it's on the right side of it electrically.

There's a "kill two birds with the one stone" aspect to that since in addition to alleviating a local constraint, it's also making a contribution to the overall system's peak supply capacity. A small contribution perhaps, but still it's adding something so there's a benefit there.

There have been some trials along these lines in WA:
The WA trial involves suburban areas on the main grid so is straightforward as a concept.

And also on Bruny Island (Tasmania) where centralised operation of batteries installed at customer sites (mostly households) has been used to alleviate constraints on peak power capacity to the island.

As background Bruny Island is connected to the main Tasmanian grid via two undersea cables which, due to load growth (the island has become a popular tourist destination in recent times), have become inadequate at times of peak demand in the event that either cable fails, thus leading to an insecure operating state. The conventional solution to that has been a diesel generator on the island ready to operate when required but batteries with centrally co-ordinated operation are a partial alternative (or a full one if there's enough of them).
 
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