Grid-scale batteries: They’re not just lithium

When size and weight don't matter, lots of other battery chemistries can work.

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[David Woodward]

Just look at the Hornsdale Power Reserve. It's been incredibly profitable in its provision of grid stability services (ie: artificial inertia), being able to respond extremely quickly to frequency fluctuations while other generators spin up to take over the load.

There's definitely room for batteries to take on that role; lithium ion in particular is extremely good at providing that burst of power for long enough to allow other batteries (or other energy sources) to come onstream and take over.

There are also synchronous condensers for grid stabilisation. They are like an electric motor with no shaft. A few have been installed in South Australia recently. SA being a good test bed for renewable energy grids, with variable renewable energy “generation provided at least 70% of its total generation during half of the year in 2023”**, and renewables reaching 100% at times.

**
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-a...e-boundaries-of-renewable-energy-integration/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser
https://www.energymagazine.com.au/sa-synchronous-condensers-installed/

 

[David Woodward]

StorEn Technologies of Greenville, SC is developing a vanadium flow battery system that can address home residential as well as industrial and larger-scale projects. Vanadium flow batteries can be discharged 100% over and over without losing their capabilities, and they have an estimated lifespan of 25 years or more. Also the electrolyte can be recycled into new batteries and doesn't suffer from the costs required to recycle LiON batteries.

Sumitomo MW/MWh scale vanadium flow batteries have been installed for over 20 years. There are other suppliers as well, it is a mature tech. Given the other comments in the thread, and given that the tech has been around this long and hasn’t taken off; I’m not sure vanadium flow has a huge future.

 

[David Woodward]

Well, just about the entire Basin and Range Province has suitable geography for pumped storage. The White Pine Pumped Storage project I linked before is to be located there, near Ely, Nevada.

This area is under crustal extension, estimated to have been roughly 100% since the start of extension. This causes faults that drop valleys and raise ridges ("horst and graben" geography). Almost anywhere is suitable for locating pumped storage.

I agree Li-ion price drops are placing pumped hydro projects in jeopardy. It's not clear the White Pine project will go forward now, given market realities.

There is an Australian National University study which has identified “616,000 potentially feasible Greenfield PHES sites with storage potential of about 23 million Gigawatt-hours”. Most are closed loop, off river. Combined with HVDC transmission, a lot of the world has potential.

Pumped hydro has the benefit of long term storage, overnight or longer.
https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/

 

[David Woodward]

No mention of Form Energy's iron air batteries?

Their factory with a 500 megawatt production capacity is beginning production, and they just received a $150 million grant to scale up to 20 gigawatts of batteries per year by 2027.

https://formenergy.com/department-o...he-buildout-of-west-virginia-battery-factory/

I hope they do work out commercially; but, 35% round trip efficiency, and they need a water supply. Response time is (from memory) around 10 seconds; which is worse than pumped hydro, and means they can’t directly take part in some grid stability services, although their design includes Li-ion batteries as a buffer.

 

[David Woodward]

Pumped hydro energy storage is like 90% of the current global energy storage market. But its drawbacks are that it takes up a lot of space and needs mountains. California already has a few significant mountain reservoirs, but it needs those for municipalities and agriculture.

In Watt/hours, no doubt, but an argument has been made that BESS systems are catching up in Wattage.

“An often cited statement (I read this most recently in Prof. Mark Jacobson's book 'No Miracles Needed') is that PHES makes up 97% of installed grid storage. This was true just a few years ago in a MW sense but has been quickly outdated by exponential mathematics:

In 2020 17.6GW BESS vs 159.5GW PHES (90% PHES)
In 2021 27.3GW BESS vs 165.0GW PHES (86% PHES)
In 2022 44.9GW BESS vs 175.0GW PHES (80% PHES)
In 2023 89.2GW BESS vs 185.5GW PHES (68% PHES)
In 2024e 156.6GW BESS vs 196.6GW PHES (56% PHES)
In 2025e, the balance tips forever.”
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mlkubik_energystorage-batteries-activity-7195671484004974593-nijT/

 

[David Woodward]

2 other flow battery chemistries.
Allegro Energy microemulsion water based battery is in development, with substantial financial backing.
https://www.allegro.energy/productand Lockheed Martin has it’s GridStar flow battery scheduled for trial with the US Army.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/gridstar-flow-energy-storage.html

 

[David Woodward]

Any idea what the actual chemistry of these are? They don’t disclose much more than it being aqueous, and mildly alkaline in the case of GridStar.

Neither company is open about the chemical details, trade secrets I guess. The best details I can find are:
Allegro - a microemulsion of a hydrophobic oil, with a surfactant to assist the emulsification. There’s a paper
“Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitor using a Microemulsion Electrolyte”
Fraser R Hughson, Rohan Borah, Thomas Nann
which is also available as a preprint at arxiv. That’s for work on supercapacitor electrolyte rather than flow battery, and of course they might have moved on from those particular components.

Lockheed Martin bought Sun Catalytix, a MIT spinoff, for the GridStar IP and talent. “Earth abundant” and cheap, non toxic is about all they mention. Old articles about Sun Catalytix mention “synthetic metal-ligand compounds”. There’s a Sun Catalytix patent
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8753761B2/enwhich gives examples of possible components, but not the specifics.

 

[David Woodward]

My comment on thermal batteries were for 200 hr, 500 hr cycles. Er, they can hold the heat for 2 to 3 weeks, with only single digit percentages loss in heat. So, sand based, brick based thermal batteries at 300 to 800 °F. For residential usage, it would be like a big A/C condenser sized unit sitting outside your house. Scale it up for bigger buildings.

This should push the use of burning gas for electricity further down, if the primary use for electricity at night is heating that is. If not, Li-ion or other EV type battery has to reduce their leakage rates. Otherwise, hydrogen or related gas is probably it.

Part of this harkens back to my comment about using the right climate inputs. The need for heating during winter will decrease in the future. Someone probably has done the math for it (for every increased degree in average temp, there will x amount of decrease energy needed for heating), and if you model say a +5 °F warmer winter, and you have to wonder if the grid, people would even bother with long term storage. Like average lows in NYC winter won't be below freezing anymore, and average highs could be in the low 50s. Will Manhattan even cool down?

Your water base HVAC system heats and chills water through a heat pump to both heat and chill water? That water is then pumped through the house. Does it use radiators in each room? A heat exchanger with a central air handling system and ducting?

There are companies that sell systems using water as a thermal reservoir, like Harvest energy, but they mostly sell it a carbon reduction technology, where it uses CASIO solar to heat water during the day and use it to heat the house at night. California's heating needs are modest though. If you are in NYC, its fuel mix doesn't really support the sales pitch.

Increasing global climate temperature averages does not preclude local weather minimums. More global heat drives more variable weather, including disruptions to polar jet streams.
https://theconversation.com/global-...frequency-and-intensity-of-cold-spells-223153