An opinion blog by MEC as our contribution to the 2017 Engage Global Social Media Competition: Technology for a Sustainable Future.
We often hear climate deniers and those opposed to renewable energy state “the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine at night” as a kind of dismissive mantra on clean energy technology. The statement is of course true! So, what to do. We can go the way of gas peaker plants to pick up the slack quickly when renewables are not delivering sufficient energy to cope with demand. There is no doubt that in many places this solution would reduce fossil fuel use enormously in a mostly renewable based system. We are beginning to see an even cleaner way to maintain supply by the use of battery storage.
For some perspective and background it’s worth noting that many of today’s common battery technologies are over 100 years old such as, lead acid, zinc carbon, nickel cadmium, nickel iron. The most energy dense and light weight commercial batteries in use today are lithium batteries (in a variety of flavours). We see these in smart devices, in electric vehicles (EV) and more recently in home and commercial storage formats. Early work on Lithium based batteries was first experimented with around 1912 (by G.N. Lewis).
The big breakthrough in lithium batteries was a result of American chemist John Goodenough’s research in the 1980’s. This revolutionised the battery industry and enabled the applications for this technology which are so prevalent today.
Despite the leap in energy density afforded by lithium batteries they are still relatively heavy and expensive with a lifespan of around 8-12 years. Improvements with tweaks to the electrolyte and electrodes are incremental and may plateau over the next few years. Although the cost of these batteries has decreased rapidly over the last decade, a trend that will continue, they are still a major cost component of EVs and battery storage systems. Pricing will be an issue for battery storage for some years yet.
Breakthroughs in energy storage will result in a dramatic reduction in fossil fuel use over the next decade. There are promising signs this will happen.
Despite its drawbacks certain lithium technologies greatly increase energy density. Lithium air batteries have much greater energy density than current lithium ion batteries. We could image a car such as the new GM Bolt having a multifold increase in its current range of 238 miles per charge for the same size battery pack. With a thousand miles of range the current perceived drawbacks of range anxiety and price could be addressed simultaneously by lithium air tech. There are some serious technological barriers to overcome with this technology but a milestone breakthrough in 2016 by researchers at MIT may see prototypes within a year! Lithium sulphur batteries have also demonstrated a potential of at least doubling of energy density for less cost and research continues in this field. Other promising battery research indicates that solid state lithium batteries will be commercialised over the next 5 years (or sooner) which will double energy density and reduce production costs by as much as a factor of 5.
On the horizon are even more enticing technologies that will revolutionise and hasten the adoption of EVs and home/grid energy storage systems. Global research in supercapacitor & ultracapacitor technologies will enhance battery storage and could ultimately replace current battery technology. Graphene is a relatively new “wonder material” with quite unusual attributes that will continue to improve battery technology. In combination with ultracapacitors it offers much promise.
With current advances in material science and our abilities to monitor battery behaviour at the atomic level there will be significant progress within the decade. There may be a single technological breakthrough or a series of incremental breakthroughs that reduce costs significantly. The transition to cheap storage will be driven more by economics than environmental concerns in the same fashion that wind and solar are now replacing fossil fuel generation purely on cost. The commercialisation of cheap and improved energy storage technology will hasten the demise of the fossil fuel industry in a way no other technological breakthrough has the potential for.
Regarding the dismissive mantra of the coal huggers “the sun don’t always shine and the wind don’t always blow”, Sounds like a flat earth theory really – think about it! Yawn!
Anyway this mantra wrongly implies that emissions free renewables can’t deliver continuous 24/7base load power. Like never mentioning climate change the coal huggers never ant to talk either about the 24/7 base load delivered by concentrated solar thermal plants, as in Spain and the U.S!!! . Fewer seem to even be aware of Solar Powered Pumped Hydro already under construction at Kidston in northern Queensland. Genex Energy (check the shares) are installing a 297Megawatt hybrid plant using solar PV linked to pumped hydro for 24/7 base load and peak demand responsiveness. Situated adjacent to an abandoned open cut gold mine, a dam is constructed above the mine pit enabling storage during times of low demand and good solar radiation and instant responsiveness when demand is high or when the sun don’t shine so strongly IN THAT SPOT – it is always shining. Solar power can feed either directly to the grid or when demand is low, be used to pump reserve from the pit up to the dam. First stage is 50Megawatts of conventional PV but when complete the plant will be capable of 297megawatts. Fossil Fuels are not needed for back up.
Also had the pleasure of driving the Tesla model x and the BMW i3, agree wholeheartedly with the author, incredible vehicles. Would like to build my own EV conversion. Do you have any advice on this?
Interesting! Energy storage seems to me to be the big thing we have to work upon. I wish these retarded oil tycoons would bugger off and leave science to plow ahead without restriction.
all the materials needed to make these electric vehicles have to be mined or found somewhere in great quantities and latter a dump found to take the discarded batteries and rare earth minerals. Many people will be without a job when current vehicles are banned from the roads. The price of progress it will be said. The trouble is these new jobs will be in oversees countries and the jobs lost here. Our government is too slow to back local changes so we have lost the car industry here. But it thinks it is all right to sell off our minerals without being processed here as finished produces.. No forsight !!
I totally agree with the sentiment Ray as all of these materials are found in Australia – lithium (Australia is currently the world’s largest exporter), cobalt, nickel, graphite etc. However there are plans for battery factories in Queensland and the Northern Territory (better late than never). There is also a lithium processing plant under construction in Kwinana in Western Australia to turn the local spodumene into lithium hydroxide, a much more valuable form of the material. We are late off the mark. Our political leaders are clueless with regards to this whole industry and have failed to recognise the massive disruption that is happening globally. There will be no dump to be found for the batteries at the end of their lives – they will be used for either energy storage and when completely depleted, recycled much in the same way as current lead acid car batteries are recycled. The materials are valuable and won’t simply be dumped.