Before we get into competing battery chemistries, a quick refresher on how batteries work and what makes lithium-ion batteries so special. (If you don't want to read, you can listen!)
Do those green plots mark out champion cell performance relative to theoretical or production performance relative to theoretical?
In PV, the huge drop in price over the last 12 years came without a bunch of huge breakthroughs in the fundamental technology. Some of it was developing manufacturing that could adopt newer cell designs, a lot of it was better material supply and quality and then scale, scale, scale. It sounds like LIB isn't quite at that point yet, perhaps because the performance requirements are more diverse and present more directions and challenges for optimization. So I guess I'm wondering if it's people in the lab working on pushing out those green loops to the max or if the lab cells are great and it's a question of which will be more successful in manufacturing. Any insight?
It's both, Emily. The advantage conventional LIBs have right now is only partially based on chemistry -- it's mostly about scale & learning. So people are definitely in labs trying to push those green circles out, but hovering behind the entire field is the knowledge that any "winner" in the lab still has an incredibly steep path ahead of it to catch up. This is part of what's so interesting about this space right now -- that balance between one tech scaling up at rocket speed even as other techs scramble to reach that first rung of the ladder.
One thing I'd love Dave to tell us about is what over the horizon battery technologies may be out there that have at least the theoretical potential to blow away LIB, perhaps like some people think quantum computing will do. I don't care about feasibility, cost or manufacturability, but just whether there's any possibility of a breakthrough battery technology.
There three or four candidates, Marc, but part of the question is: blow LIBs away at what? At which performance metric? The key is to find some way of outperforming LIBs that translates into market power, which is way harder than just finding a good lab result.
Market power would be far down the line from good lab results, but the one I'd be most excited about is dense power storage that allows for far longer coverage periods, to help compensate for shortfalls in solar (multiple cloudy days, less sun in winter) and wind (um, no wind for a matter of days) power.
Though it seems to be somewhat controversial, Ambri has developed a liquid metal battery that uses cheap, readily-available materials and IIRC has several times the capacity of LIB. The big drawback is that you have to keep it really hot to work, making it useless for mobile applications but not a problem in utility-scale "battery farms". Another claimed benefit: virtually no capacity loss after thousands of charge/discharge cycles.
Maybe I'm denser than most people, but I never before understood why there was such a diversity of battery types, I.e. A, AA, AAA, C, D, etc. Now I do. Thanks.
Do those green plots mark out champion cell performance relative to theoretical or production performance relative to theoretical?
In PV, the huge drop in price over the last 12 years came without a bunch of huge breakthroughs in the fundamental technology. Some of it was developing manufacturing that could adopt newer cell designs, a lot of it was better material supply and quality and then scale, scale, scale. It sounds like LIB isn't quite at that point yet, perhaps because the performance requirements are more diverse and present more directions and challenges for optimization. So I guess I'm wondering if it's people in the lab working on pushing out those green loops to the max or if the lab cells are great and it's a question of which will be more successful in manufacturing. Any insight?
It's both, Emily. The advantage conventional LIBs have right now is only partially based on chemistry -- it's mostly about scale & learning. So people are definitely in labs trying to push those green circles out, but hovering behind the entire field is the knowledge that any "winner" in the lab still has an incredibly steep path ahead of it to catch up. This is part of what's so interesting about this space right now -- that balance between one tech scaling up at rocket speed even as other techs scramble to reach that first rung of the ladder.
Great post (as usual).
One thing I'd love Dave to tell us about is what over the horizon battery technologies may be out there that have at least the theoretical potential to blow away LIB, perhaps like some people think quantum computing will do. I don't care about feasibility, cost or manufacturability, but just whether there's any possibility of a breakthrough battery technology.
There three or four candidates, Marc, but part of the question is: blow LIBs away at what? At which performance metric? The key is to find some way of outperforming LIBs that translates into market power, which is way harder than just finding a good lab result.
Market power would be far down the line from good lab results, but the one I'd be most excited about is dense power storage that allows for far longer coverage periods, to help compensate for shortfalls in solar (multiple cloudy days, less sun in winter) and wind (um, no wind for a matter of days) power.
Though it seems to be somewhat controversial, Ambri has developed a liquid metal battery that uses cheap, readily-available materials and IIRC has several times the capacity of LIB. The big drawback is that you have to keep it really hot to work, making it useless for mobile applications but not a problem in utility-scale "battery farms". Another claimed benefit: virtually no capacity loss after thousands of charge/discharge cycles.
Maybe I'm denser than most people, but I never before understood why there was such a diversity of battery types, I.e. A, AA, AAA, C, D, etc. Now I do. Thanks.