Researchers at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN) have found a way to make quantum dots out of iron pyrite - otherwise known as fool's gold - to produce batteries that charge quickly and work for dozens of cycles.
Smart2.0 - Quantum dots made from fool's gold promise better batteries
Toyota Motor Corp's (7203.T) hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are gaining traction in California, where 22 of the company's Mirai cars have been delivered in its first month of availability, company officials said on Tuesday. Toyota has ambitious plans to sell 30,000 fuel-cell vehicles globally by 2020, ramping up from an expected 2,000 next year. Fuel-cell vehicles are a key component of the company's plans to curb polluting emissions to nearly zero by 2050.
Toyota says its fuel-cell vehicle gaining traction in California | Reuters
With the price of gasoline hovering below $2 a gallon, it might seem that Tesla CEO Elon Musk will struggle to reach the masses. But there are signs the mainstream buyer could soon become more open to plugging in, even if oil prices remain depressed. The forecasters are certainly bullish. A recent report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance said the falling cost of lithium-ion batteries will push the market share for electric vehicles to 35 percent by 2040 (see “The 2020s Could Be the Decade When Electric Cars Take Over”). Navigant Research projects that in California, where EV sales are concentrated, the growth would be from about 3 percent of overall sales today to between 15 and 22 percent by 2024.
Here’s Why You Might Be an Electric Car Owner a Decade from Now
Can Tesla really deliver on its promise to offer a long-range electric vehicle that is cheap enough to attract mainstream buyers by 2017? We can’t know for sure without access to the company’s proprietary information. But one thing is clear: if Tesla is successful it will be because of significant advances to the design and manufacturing of its battery pack, which many estimates suggest represents a quarter to half of the full cost of the car.
The Tesla Model 3 May Depend on This Battery Breakthrough
Levine cites a battery market investment analyst who says that the Model 3’s anodes could contain up to 10 percent silicon, which battery experts say would be a “serious breakthrough.” Serious enough, in fact, that it might allow Tesla to bring the cost of its batteries down from an estimated $300 per kilowatt-hour in 2014 to $200 by 2017. That would get us much closer to $150, the point at which some experts have predicted there could be a “paradigm shift” away from internal combustion cars.
The Tesla Model 3 May Depend on This Battery Breakthrough
A technology currently under development by startup company Hydrogenious could have the potential to fundamentally change the conditions for fuel cell deployment in transport applications: It will enable hydrogen storage in standard car tanks. With it, electric vehicles thus could achieve competitive driving ranges without costly batteries.
New hydrogen technology revives fuel cells - Electronics Eetimes
A group of eight Korean industry heavyweights, including carmaker Hyundai, technology conglomerate Samsung and LG Electronics have aired plans to massively invest into the development of electric vehicles, batteries and related information technology.
Korea starts „big leap“ towards electromobility - Electronics Eetimes
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, IL) believe they may have overcome one of the major drawbacks associated with lithium-air batteries. Lithium-air batteries promise greater energy density than lithium-ion batteries, but research on lithium-air batteries has so far demonstrated drawbacks that have stalled their introduction. One such drawback is the formation of lithium peroxide ((LiO2), a solid precipitate that clogs the pores of the lithium-air battery electrode.
Smart2.0 - Lithium-air breakthrough promises new class of batteries
A team of researchers based at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, WA) have discovered a rechargeable zinc-manganese battery that is as inexpensive as conventional car batteries but provides a much higher energy density.
Rechargeable battery discovery promises cheaper renewable energy storage | Electronics EETimes
Today, most smartphone and device batteries are made from lithium and slowly lose capacity over thousands of recharges. Researchers at UC Irvine built a battery that substituted gold nanowire in electrolyte gel for the lithium and lost barely 5% battery capacity over 200,000 charge cycles — but they aren't totally sure how it worked.
Accidental discovery could help batteries last years longer
Researchers at Sweden's Uppsala University have discovered the key role that oxygen atoms play in influencing the storage capacity performance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. The discovery will help to improve the development of new materials for future batteries to provide higher storage capacity than up to now.
Oxygen may be key to Li-ion battery storage capacity | Smart2.0
Cartridge-based hydrogen and methanol fuel cells have been around for a long time, yet while promising quick recharges and very long device autonomies, the technology has never really taken off in the consumer world. But this is about to change, according to fuel cell company Intelligent Energy (Loughborough, UK).
Smart2.0 - Consumer fuel cells about to gain traction?
Duke Energy, the nation’s largest utility, is trying a novel strategy to tackle this challenge. At its Rankin substation, in North Carolina, it has installed a system of hybrid energy storage that combines a battery from Aquion Energy and ultracapacitors from Maxwell Technologies. The two technologies are complementary. The ultracapacitors, which are good for large, short-duration power surges, help supply power when the solar power on the grid fluctuates because of cloud cover. The Aquion batteries, which are better for storing energy over longer periods, can supply power later in the day, when the sun goes down and electricity demand rises. Combining the two using smart electronics enables the system to efficiently handle power demand over periods ranging from seconds to several hours.
New Grid Storage Technology Helps Integrate Renewables
Last week, the U.S. government pledged to push the electric-vehicle industry toward charging a car in less than 10 minutes. Now, that sounds like a long time. In Switzerland, a new line of buses can be topped off in a few seconds and fully charged in minutes. ABB received a commercial order from transit bus operator Tosa for its 15-second, 600-kilowatt flash charge technology, which will be installed along the bus route 23, between suburban Geneva and the airport. The project has been in pilots for the past few years.
ABB Sells First Order for 15-Second Bus Charging | Greentech Media
Demand for lithium—the hottest commodity on the planet and the only commodity to show positive price movement in 2015—is poised to continue on its upward trajectory, becoming the world’s new gasoline and earning the moniker of ‘’White Petroleum’’. And the battle for market share in and around this commodity has everyone from major tech players to trend-setting investor gurus vying for a foothold. Driven by the rise of battery gigafactories and game-changing Powerwall and energy storage businesses, the world now finds itself at the beginning of a lithium super cycle that is all about securing new supply, much of which is poised to come from lithium superstar Argentina.
Tesla And Other Tech Giants Scramble For Lithium As Prices Double | OilPrice.com
It's a new technology for storing energy, an important part of enabling more wind and solar power on the grid. It's from a company called ARES. Here's how it works: The train carries big rocks uphill, consuming electricity. Then the train carries big rocks downhill, generating electricity. That's it. The energy stored by going uphill is released by going downhill. Pretty neat. The details are fun too — it's a clever, low-tech solution to some important high-tech problems... The company claims the process, end to end, is 86 percent efficient, i.e., 86 percent of the energy that's put into storage can be gotten back out. It hopes to improve that number as it dials in the technology.
The train goes up, the train goes down: a simple new way to store energy - Vox
The world's next energy revolution is probably no more than five or ten years away. Cutting-edge research into cheap and clean forms of electricity storage is moving so fast that we may never again need to build 20th Century power plants in this country, let alone a nuclear white elephant such as Hinkley Point. The US Energy Department is funding 75 projects developing electricity storage, mobilizing teams of scientists at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the elite Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge labs in a bid for what it calls the 'Holy Grail' of energy policy.
Holy Grail of energy policy in sight as battery technology smashes the old order
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, lead researcher Professor Michael Aziz said that the flow battery his team is working on has the potential to bring power storage costs down to $100 per kWh (currently costs are about twice this amount), which, he says, “will change the world.”
Is This Finally A Real Energy Storage Breakthrough? | OilPrice.com
Spun-out from the MIT in 2012, startup SolidEnergy Systems has developed advanced electrolyte materials which it combines to produce lithium metal batteries with twice the energy density of today's lithium ion batteries, while being safe and long-lasting. Because the new battery design only uses an ultra-thin lithium metal anode (shrinking the battery drastically by not having to rely on bulky Li-ion intercalation compounds such as graphite), the company describes these Gen 3 Li-Metal batteries as ‘anode-free’.
MIT spin-out shrinks lithium batteries | Electronics EETimes
Scientists have known for decades that lithium-metal batteries offer a powerful combination of energy density and compactness. Unfortunately these batteries also present challenges: they are difficult to recharge and they have an unfortunate tendency to burst into flame. Boston-based startup SolidEnergy Systems, spun out of the MIT lab of Donald Sadoway in 2012, claims to have solved these problems with a novel anode structure and hybrid electrolyte. Qichao Hu, SolidEnergy’s founder, first showed a prototype last fall that is half the size of an iPhone 6 battery and offers more battery life per charge. The company says it will sell batteries for smartphones by early next year, and for electric vehicles in 2018. First, though, it’s going after a more specialized market: drones.
Better Lithium Batteries to Get a Test Flight
Among the 100 new products the company founder wants to invent by 2020, the greatest investment in people and money is to improve rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, as reported by Forbes. And Dyson is not planning incremental improvements. His opinion is that current Li-ion batteries don’t last long enough and aren’t safe enough — the latter as evidenced by their propensity to spontaneously catch on fire, which is rare but does happen. Dyson believes the answer lies in using ceramics to create solid-state lithium-ion batteries. Dyson says he intended to spend $1.4 billion in research and development and in building a battery factory over the next five years. Last year Dyson bought Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Sakti3, which focuses on creating advanced solid-state batteries, for $90 million. The global lithium-ion battery market accounts for $40 billion in annual sales, according to research firm Lux as cited by Forbes.
Dyson Vacuum Company Wants To Make Better Batteries | Digital Trends
The electric car revolution is already underway, and if the long-term projections are even remotely close to accurate, the effects will ripple through every corner of the global economy. A large chunk of conventional fossil fuel powered electricity generation is already uneconomic because of the surge of wind and solar installations. Nearly every major U.S. coal mining company has either filed for bankruptcy or is in financial distress, a glaring sign that the industry that powered the U.S. electrical grid for a century is dying off. Even the relatively small penetrations of solar and wind are upending electricity markets, but we are merely at the beginning of this revolution. As Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance wrote on August 22, the long-term ramifications of this unfolding phenomenon are hard to overstate.
BNEF projects that EVs will capture 35 percent of the global vehicle market by 2040. But because technology is changing fast, the surprise is probably on the upside. Under a more aggressive scenario, BNEF can see a scenario in which 47 percent of all new vehicles sold in 2040 will be electric. The rapidly falling cost of batteries will be a key reason for the explosive growth of EVs. Battery costs have already declined by 65 percent over the past five years, and could fall by half again by 2025.
But while some doubters of EVs might dismiss such figures, BNEF says EVs will beat the internal-combustion engine on many more fronts than just emissions. As Liebreich writes, EVs “drive more smoothly yet accelerate better, they can be charged at home or at the office, they require much less maintenance, they help solve air quality problems, they improve the energy autonomy of oil-importing countries.” EVs also are “vastly superior” to fossil fuel-powered vehicles when it comes to autonomous driving, infotainment, and other features. “[I]t simply makes no sense to have an inherently analogue power unit – vibrating, volatile-liquid-consuming, hot-polluting-exhaust-producing – at the heart of a fully digital, sensor-pervaded, solid-state-electronics-controlled system,” Liebreich argues.
EV Revolution Set To Cripple More Than Just The Oil Industry | OilPrice.com
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But while some doubters of EVs might dismiss such figures, BNEF says EVs will beat the internal-combustion engine on many more fronts than just emissions. As Liebreich writes, EVs “drive more smoothly yet accelerate better, they can be charged at home or at the office, they require much less maintenance, they help solve air quality problems, they improve the energy autonomy of oil-importing countries.” EVs also are “vastly superior” to fossil fuel-powered vehicles when it comes to autonomous driving, infotainment, and other features. “[I]t simply makes no sense to have an inherently analogue power unit – vibrating, volatile-liquid-consuming, hot-polluting-exhaust-producing – at the heart of a fully digital, sensor-pervaded, solid-state-electronics-controlled system,” Liebreich argues.
EV Revolution Set To Cripple More Than Just The Oil Industry | OilPrice.com
With 16 months of ownership under my belt I can see electric cars causing yet more unemployment. I've had one trip to the dealer for service...a battery check that took less than 5 minutes. The car wash took longer. Not even an oil change (no oil). My communications/entertainment system will see an upgrade soon. That might give some mechanic a little to do.