Before we dig into the battery weeds, here's a quick review of why lithium-ion batteries are so important. (If you don't want to read, you can listen!)
I'm hoping that you will use this series to delve a little more into the mechanism for price decline. If it was just scale that decreases costs, biofuels would be dirt cheap by now!
For batteries, solar, LEDs, wind and genomic sequencing it hasn't been just scale - for these technologies there is a learning rate and with each cumulative doubling of units produced there has been a decline in cost by a constant percentage based on the learning rate.
You have looked at Ramez Naam's stuff. He did a good piece on why his initial cost projections for solar were off and how the actual decline curve fit using Wright’s Law. https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/ “This happens by learning-by-doing, a mixture of innovation that improves the technology itself and innovation that reduces the amount of labor, time, energy, and raw materials needed to produce the technology.”
But everybody but everybody got the clean tech price declines wrong. Nobel economists, gov’t forecasters, everybody. When you do your podcast with Jessika Trancik, would be great to hear a deeper dive into the topic of price declines.
For policy, I think this is important. These past years, we would have been better served by paying more attention to learning rates than to MAC Curves. (I got that from BNEF Colin McKerracher)
And there are policies that are Wrightian in their impact like German feed-in tariffs that got the solar doubling going or Federal & state EV tax credits that lowered upfront EV costs to help get the doubling going faster for li-ion batteries .
Using this framework one can evaluate projected declines for technologies like hydrogen electrolyzers - is there a learning rate, do we have data of units produced?
And at the local level, which has greater impact, a Wrightian focus on supporting the faster cumulative doubling of li-ion batteries and so faster price decline by a purchase of a battery bus or a carbon footprinting approach and staying with ICE bus tech using renewable nat gas?
I hope you’ll consider writing about saltwater batteries such as those made by Blue Sky Energy. I had hoped to use them for our remodel but couldn’t find anyone to install them in SF.
I hope you touch on battery storage for home use such as power outages, and off-grid. Not just Tesla PowerWalls, but alternatives, mostly smaller and definitely cheaper.
Hi David, what is the state of the art on recyclabity footprint LIBs? Most EV batteries are "good" for say 8, 10, 12 yrs or so is the claim. Even at 20yrs, that's a huge quantity that needs to be handled responsibly. Thanks
I'm enjoying your articles on battery storage. I'd like to see more on compressed air storage and other approaches that lean on established technologies and supply chains. I've had an idea for a while re: compressed air storage. I know zero carbon is the goal, and that makes sense. Sometimes the fastest path is indirect. Suppose we coupled compressed air storage with a natural gas-fired gas turbine? The result would be much longer duration storage for any given volume of compressed air. The resulting electricity would be ultra-low carbon, but not zero carbon. However, due to the resulting decrease in the cost of excavation, it would make deployment much more attractive, thus speeding up deployment. A normal gas turbine uses about two-thirds of the power it creates to compress the air it needs for combustion. This approach would instead allow a given turbine to create if I'm thinking about it correctly, 200% more electricity for a given unit of natural gas used to run the turbine. Further, the natural gas portion could be employed only when ultra-long storage output is required, like during a general electrical outage such as the one that crippled the Texas grid for almost a week this winter.
The storage of electricity via chemical, inertial, or other means is a fascinating area of research, but so is the storage of heat and cold. It would be useful to broaden the focus to consider the full range of and opportunity for energy storage, not just the storage needs of electrical systems.
This is such exciting stuff! It's why I subscribe!
This is a wonderful series!
I'm hoping that you will use this series to delve a little more into the mechanism for price decline. If it was just scale that decreases costs, biofuels would be dirt cheap by now!
For batteries, solar, LEDs, wind and genomic sequencing it hasn't been just scale - for these technologies there is a learning rate and with each cumulative doubling of units produced there has been a decline in cost by a constant percentage based on the learning rate.
You have looked at Ramez Naam's stuff. He did a good piece on why his initial cost projections for solar were off and how the actual decline curve fit using Wright’s Law. https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/ “This happens by learning-by-doing, a mixture of innovation that improves the technology itself and innovation that reduces the amount of labor, time, energy, and raw materials needed to produce the technology.”
But everybody but everybody got the clean tech price declines wrong. Nobel economists, gov’t forecasters, everybody. When you do your podcast with Jessika Trancik, would be great to hear a deeper dive into the topic of price declines.
For policy, I think this is important. These past years, we would have been better served by paying more attention to learning rates than to MAC Curves. (I got that from BNEF Colin McKerracher)
And there are policies that are Wrightian in their impact like German feed-in tariffs that got the solar doubling going or Federal & state EV tax credits that lowered upfront EV costs to help get the doubling going faster for li-ion batteries .
Using this framework one can evaluate projected declines for technologies like hydrogen electrolyzers - is there a learning rate, do we have data of units produced?
And at the local level, which has greater impact, a Wrightian focus on supporting the faster cumulative doubling of li-ion batteries and so faster price decline by a purchase of a battery bus or a carbon footprinting approach and staying with ICE bus tech using renewable nat gas?
I hope you’ll consider writing about saltwater batteries such as those made by Blue Sky Energy. I had hoped to use them for our remodel but couldn’t find anyone to install them in SF.
I hope you touch on battery storage for home use such as power outages, and off-grid. Not just Tesla PowerWalls, but alternatives, mostly smaller and definitely cheaper.
Hi David, what is the state of the art on recyclabity footprint LIBs? Most EV batteries are "good" for say 8, 10, 12 yrs or so is the claim. Even at 20yrs, that's a huge quantity that needs to be handled responsibly. Thanks
I'm enjoying your articles on battery storage. I'd like to see more on compressed air storage and other approaches that lean on established technologies and supply chains. I've had an idea for a while re: compressed air storage. I know zero carbon is the goal, and that makes sense. Sometimes the fastest path is indirect. Suppose we coupled compressed air storage with a natural gas-fired gas turbine? The result would be much longer duration storage for any given volume of compressed air. The resulting electricity would be ultra-low carbon, but not zero carbon. However, due to the resulting decrease in the cost of excavation, it would make deployment much more attractive, thus speeding up deployment. A normal gas turbine uses about two-thirds of the power it creates to compress the air it needs for combustion. This approach would instead allow a given turbine to create if I'm thinking about it correctly, 200% more electricity for a given unit of natural gas used to run the turbine. Further, the natural gas portion could be employed only when ultra-long storage output is required, like during a general electrical outage such as the one that crippled the Texas grid for almost a week this winter.
In addition to a post on long-term storage, I'd recommend one on thermal batteries whose output is heat or cold rather than electricity.
Thermal storage can be as low-tech as a large tank of water (i.e. like in a domestic water heater) or as high tech as the phase-change material (PCM) systems developed by SunAmp in the UK (https://sunamp.com/). Also, geothermal heat pump systems rely on the ground or groundwater for storage of solar energy absorbed either directly from the sun or extracted from buildings. In some cases, it is "cold," not "heat" that is stored. For instance, Calmac's IceBank systems shift electric loads and improve efficiency by storing ice at night and melting it during the day. (http://www.calmac.com/icebank-energy-storage-benefits) There are also PCM-based building materials, such as "Phase-Change Drywall," that cool by absorbing heat when temperatures rise and heat by releasing heat when temperatures fall. (https://www.treehugger.com/why-is-phase-changing-drywall-in-the-news-instead-of-in-the-home-depot-4855865) PCMs are also used to store "cold" to keep COVID vaccines cold. (https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/phase-change-materials-pcm-technologies-will-be-critical-to-the-cold-transport-and-storage-of-new-covid-19-vaccines)
The storage of electricity via chemical, inertial, or other means is a fascinating area of research, but so is the storage of heat and cold. It would be useful to broaden the focus to consider the full range of and opportunity for energy storage, not just the storage needs of electrical systems.