Various Forcasts for Battery Improvements

[Bret Cahill]

Anyone knowledgeable on energy storage technology who gives advice on
investing in, say, copper, might be wondering about future advances in
battery technology.

No one can predict names, dates or improvements but time-profiles of
the most plausible developments may be useful.

Fix cost/watt-hr and plot energy density vs time.

or

Fix efficiency and plot cost-watt-hr vs. time.

or

and so on.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bret Cahill]

There are advances in solid state & thin film batteries. Check out the
technologies of

www.excellatron.com

Getting the grid entirely on solar and wind seems somewhat less
daunting now.

If it actually cycles 40K times then it can cost an order of magnitude
more/charge and still be competitive for some applications, stationary
energy storage, semi-trolly buses and tractors.

Even sharing a commuter vehicle with with a quarter ton battery that
needs to be recharged every 200 miles would be preferable to many
solutions.


Bret Cahill

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:03:35 -0400, "Kitty" <cowgirla@bellsouth.net>
wrote:>There are advances in solid state & thin film batteries. Check
out the

technologies of

www.excellatron.com


Kitty

6 years of research. 10,000 prototypes. Production capacity of 100,000
batteries per month.

You'd think they might have a product one of these years.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:58:23 -0700 (PDT), Bret Cahill
<BretCahill@aol.com> wrote:

Anyone knowledgeable on energy storage technology who gives advice on
investing in, say, copper, might be wondering about future advances in
battery technology.

No one can predict names, dates or improvements but time-profiles of
the most plausible developments may be useful.

Fix cost/watt-hr and plot energy density vs time.

or

Fix efficiency and plot cost-watt-hr vs. time.

or

and so on.


Bret Cahill

Batteries must haul around both chemical reactants, and the resulting
waste products. Both electrodes must be electrically conductive, which
is chemically tricky... metals don't react well with other metals.

So far, all batteries eventually destroy themselves.

What's even worse, batteries must be recharged electrically; bummer.


John

 

www.excellatron.com

Kitty

6 years of research. 10,000 prototypes.

Sounds like Edison's light bulb effort.

Of course, if the technology is twice as challenging as getting a
filament white hot then they are only half way there.


Bret Cahill

 

Anyone knowledgeable on energy storage technology who gives advice on
investing in, say, copper, might be wondering about future advances in
battery technology.

No one can predict names, dates or improvements but time-profiles of
the most plausible developments may be useful.

Fix cost/watt-hr and plot energy density vs time.

or

Fix efficiency and plot cost-watt-hr vs. time.

or

and so on.

Bret Cahill

Batteries must haul around both chemical reactants, and the resulting
waste products. Both electrodes must be electrically conductive, which
is chemically tricky... metals don't react well with other metals.

So far, all batteries eventually destroy themselves.

The thin film people claim they can cycle 40K losing only 5% of
initial capacity.

What's even worse, batteries must be recharged electrically; bummer.

What's worse is they destroy themselves. The electricity is less than
half the cost of the battery over it's lifetime.

Even a low efficiency energy storage system that can cycle an order or
magnitude or more than conventional batteries could be more cost
effective.

Anyway all this dodges the issue:

What are some plausible battery breakthrough scenarios?

Or is the field dead?


Bret Cahill

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:13:24 -0700 (PDT), BretCahill@peoplepc.com
wrote:

Anyone knowledgeable on energy storage technology who gives advice on
investing in, say, copper, might be wondering about future advances in
battery technology.

No one can predict names, dates or improvements but time-profiles of
the most plausible developments may be useful.

Fix cost/watt-hr and plot energy density vs time.

or

Fix efficiency and plot cost-watt-hr vs. time.

or

and so on.

Bret Cahill

Batteries must haul around both chemical reactants, and the resulting
waste products. Both electrodes must be electrically conductive, which
is chemically tricky... metals don't react well with other metals.

So far, all batteries eventually destroy themselves.

The thin film people claim they can cycle 40K losing only 5% of
initial capacity.

Claims are cheap [1]. Let me know when they're in the Mouser catalog.

John

[1] Unless you're a 3F investor; then they can get very expensive.

 

Anyone knowledgeable on energy storage technology who gives advice on
investing in, say, copper, might be wondering about future advances in
battery technology.

No one can predict names, dates or improvements but time-profiles of
the most plausible developments may be useful.

Fix cost/watt-hr and plot energy density vs time.

or

Fix efficiency and plot cost-watt-hr vs. time.

or

and so on.

Bret Cahill

Batteries must haul around both chemical reactants, and the resulting
waste products. Both electrodes must be electrically conductive, which
is chemically tricky... metals don't react well with other metals.

So far, all batteries eventually destroy themselves.

The thin film people claim they can cycle 40K losing only 5% of
initial capacity.

Claims are cheap [1]. Let me know when they're in the Mouser catalog.

That was what I was asking the group.

When do you think what will be where?


Bret Cahill

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:45:47 -0700, "Rob Dekker" <rob@verific.com>
wrote:

"Bret Cahill" <BretCahill@aol.com> wrote in message news:539db221-8124-4397-8b8e-c89067ada782@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com...
Anyone knowledgeable on energy storage technology who gives advice on
investing in, say, copper, might be wondering about future advances in
battery technology.

No one can predict names, dates or improvements but time-profiles of
the most plausible developments may be useful.

Fix cost/watt-hr and plot energy density vs time.

or

Fix efficiency and plot cost-watt-hr vs. time.

or

and so on.


Bret Cahill


There seem to be moderate improvements with some breakthroughs in all important aspects of rechargeable batteries : energy density,
power density, (deep) cycle life, cycle efficiency, cost, safety etc. But it's nothing like what Moore's law does in
microelectronics.

When thinking about future battery developments, one interesting fact stands out like a sore :

The actual energy density obtained for packaged batteries today is FAR lower than the theoretical specific energy density !

I've long scratched my head why that is. This site talks about that difference briefly :
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10595&page=24

I can understand that container, electrode support, connectors, diluted electrolyte, unreacted materials etc would reduce the
capacity to 75% or so of theoretical.
But it's much worse than that. Most types get only 15-25% of their theoretical capacity !

For example, molten salt Na-NiCl2 cells (ZEBRAs) used to be spec'ed at 90 Wh/kg, recently enhanced by MESA to 120 Wh/kg.

I don't think I want to drive a car that's lugging around a hundred
kilograms of liquid sodium at 300C or so. Or wait two days or so for
it to warm up. Or wait a couple of hours to recharge it.

It's admittedly a little more appealing than a sodium-sulphur battery.

Gasoline-powered cars work great, and don't need to be fixed. As the
price of gas goes up, people will be discouraged from driving hideous
beasts like Expeditions and Escalades and Ram trucks; fine by me.

John

 

Gasoline-powered cars work great,

Actually they dump 2X more oil from their crankcases onto oyster beds
than all the media hyped oil spills combined.

and don't need to be fixed.

They need to be fixed all the time. If they aren't maintained then
they spew more crap into the air than WMD.

As the
price of gas goes up, people will be discouraged from driving hideous
beasts like Expeditions and Escalades and Ram trucks; fine by me.

Fuel prices are going up 30% a year.

A smaller vehicle ain't gonna wipe out that 30% for more than 18
months.


Bret Cahill

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:08:34 -0700 (PDT), BretCahill@peoplepc.com
wrote:

Gasoline-powered cars work great,

Actually they dump 2X more oil from their crankcases onto oyster beds
than all the media hyped oil spills combined.

Then don't dump oil into a sewer, or drive into the water.

Motorboats are terrible: often 2-cycle, no emission controls at all.

and don't need to be fixed.

They need to be fixed all the time. If they aren't maintained then
they spew more crap into the air than WMD.

My 14-year old Golf was running single-digit PPMs of CO and
hydrocarbons and NOx when the tranny blew up. After zero maintanance
on the emission controls.

As the
price of gas goes up, people will be discouraged from driving hideous
beasts like Expeditions and Escalades and Ram trucks; fine by me.

Fuel prices are going up 30% a year.

Except this year. Crude is down to $112.

A smaller vehicle ain't gonna wipe out that 30% for more than 18
months.

In the US, adjusted for inflation and income, gasoline is about the
same cost as it's historically been.

John

 

[DB]

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:08:34 -0700 (PDT), BretCahill@peoplepc.com
wrote:

Fuel prices are going up 30% a year.

Except this year. Crude is down to $112.

Huh?
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui

A smaller vehicle ain't gonna wipe out that 30% for more than 18
months.

In the US, adjusted for inflation and income, gasoline is about the
same cost as it's historically been.

I don't think you are getting this. Where is your embargo?

At that, debt/gdb was quit different and that embargo ended with a lot
of damage.

http://lakeweb.com/money/creditmarketdebt_GDP_06.pdf