TheEEStory.com

Liquid Metal Battery draws investors

I had hopes a really monster large vat (talking 1,000s of tons) of this stuff might have been cheaper.
Maybe, say, $10 / kWh.
In computer vernacular, longer term (archival) storage for some smaller EESUs with their very high power and energy flexibility (cache).

But, at $250 vs. $100 / kWh (***IF*** that is an apples to apples comparison), it's a no brainer.

EESU is, hands down, the better choice, on both power rate and energy capacity.

Even at a matching $250 / kWh, EESU is a better deal.
On power rate, alone.

EESU is, hands down, the better choice, on both power rate and energy capacity.

It falls way behind on existence however.

Nice to see a succinct piece on the problems that other batteries commonmly suffer from referred to. See http://www.batteryeducation.com/2006/04/battery...

These matters are vitally important but are rarely referred to here.

nekote wrote:

Liquid Metal Battery draws investors

I had hopes a really monster large vat (talking 1,000s of tons) of this stuff might have been cheaper.
Maybe, say, $10 / kWh.
In computer vernacular, longer term (archival) storage for some smaller EESUs with their very high power and energy flexibility (cache).

But, at $250 vs. $100 / kWh (***IF*** that is an apples to apples comparison), it's a no brainer.

EESU is, hands down, the better choice, on both power rate and energy capacity.

Even at a matching $250 / kWh, EESU is a better deal.
On power rate, alone.

Hi nekote,

Actually Donald Sadoway is aiming at 50$ per kWh!

He says "if you wish to make it dirt cheap, you need to practically make it from dirt".

His comments on cost are at about 6 min. into the following video, if you have the time watch the entire video, 20 min. plus.

This talk is about a year old and they have made progress since then.

The link is;

http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/5239-high-performa...

This is the first large scale battery technology I expect to come to market at an advantageous price point, 14 acres of these (the size of a small shopping mall) will store 13 giga watts of electricity, enough to run New York city for 24 hours.

This starts us down the road to energy independence, however it still leaves control in the hands of the utilities.

For total independence, we will need an EEStor or something of similar capability.

Ever hopeful,

antiguajohn

antiguajohn wrote:

For total independence, we will need an EEStor or something of similar capability.

I'm curious. Most of the talk on this forum vis-a-vis the EESU concerns transportation. Certainly energy storage is a component of our needed independence in that arena.

Similar comments surround discussions here regarding intermittent renewables (wind, solar) and the need for effective storage to make these sources seem less intermittent.

For our basic power production, though, are we (US) not already fairly independent? Granted, that independence comes at a price (ecologically) with using fossils (coal, gas). How much of our power generation, though, comes from outside of our borders? I know we import natural gas from Canada, but how much of this (I truly don't know) is used for power production?

PDXpyro wrote:

For our basic power production, though, are we (US) not already fairly independent? Granted, that independence comes at a price (ecologically) with using fossils (coal, gas). How much of our power generation, though, comes from outside of our borders? I know we import natural gas from Canada, but how much of this (I truly don't know) is used for power production?

Yes, the U.S. has plenty of coal "reserves" (i.e., resources in the ground). In fact, so much that it's starting to export it in quantity... which is driving the price up.

Re natural gas: I'm not sure how much we import from Canada, but recently developed methods of economically extracting natural gas in large quantities will probably soon make any imports unnecessary. In fact, there are already plans afoot to export that, too.

Here is the breakdown of energy sources for the USA's power grid:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

If we could convert a significant fraction of our fleet of cars and heavy trucks to using CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), we wouldn't have any energy shortage in this country. And it would eliminate about 25% of the USA's trade deficit.

It's too bad this country doesn't have any leaders who are getting such a large-scale conversion rolling.

Yes. I'm sorry that the "Pickens Plan" never really took off. Using CNG for transportation wouldn't solve the CO2 issues, but would definitely help with our trade deficit, as well as the geopolitical issues that continue to dominate our foreign policy because of our oil dependence.

But . . . that's perhaps a topic for another thread. (Didn't mean to hijack this one.)