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graphene aluminium ion batteries – the big breakthrough?

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GMG's coin battery unveiled

GMG’s coin battery unveiled

So I’ve heard more exciting info recently from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU), this time returning me to Australia – Queensland more specifically. And some are describing this as the big battery technology breakthrough many of us have been waiting and hoping for.

So, lithium-ion batteries go back to the late sixties, though we can go back further to the twenties when it was noted that lithium’s electrochemical properties, such as low density, high specific capacity and low redox potential, would make it a likely battery anode material. I’m tempted to go into a thorough self-education investigation of how li-ion batteries were developed and how they work, but I’ll resist it and go straight to the new tech.

Graphene is an allotrope, or form, of carbon, as is diamond and various fullerenes. It consists of a single layer of atoms in a hexagonal lattice. Graphite, a very stable carbon allotrope, consists of stacked layers of graphene. The clean technology company Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG), based in Queensland, manufactures graphene via a ‘proprietary production process’ which utilises natural gas (methane) rather than graphite. Its current principal focus, according to its website, is ‘developing applications for energy saving and energy storage solutions’. In its corporate overview, here’s what the company has to say on the battery front:

In the energy storage segment GMG and the University of Queensland are working collaboratively with financial support from the Australian Government to progress research and development, and ultimately explore the commercialization of GMG graphene aluminium-ion batteries. Aluminium-ion batteries have the potential to have better energy density than lithium-ion batteries. Graphene Aluminium-ion batteries may eliminate many disadvantages of LI Batteries, including the risk of overheating/fire and performance degradation. Management believes that successful commercialization of the Graphene Aluminium-ion batteries would result in a superior substitute to LI Batteries in targeted applications.

At this point they are promising longer battery life – up to 3 times – and very much faster charging – up to 60 times, something like a supercapacitor. There are no problems with overheating – lithium requires a cooling system, using more space and energy. They also describe the battery as ‘planet-friendly’, in that it doesn’t require scarce resources, such as lithium, which has become much more expensive recently. In fact, Australia is the world’s largest producer of bauxite ore, from which aluminium and gallium are extracted, so these batteries could put Australia in the box seat for production and manufacture. A ‘secure and simplified supply chain’ is one of the benefits touted by the company. Other benefits include safety (no catching fire), stability (no spontaneous discharge, i.e. energy leakage), and improved energy and power density. The batteries will have a longer lifespan, with many charge-discharge cycles. And at the end of the day they should be more recyclable. GMG also promises that these new batteries can be fitted within existing battery housing – no modifications required.

So how does the battery work? Here’s where I have to learn stuff. These are a class of rechargeable battery in which aluminium ions flow from the anode (the positive electrode) to the cathode and back. As to the cathode, I think that’s where graphene comes in. Based on breakthrough technology developed at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the battery cells ‘use nanotechnology to insert aluminium atoms inside tiny perforations in graphene planes’. Aluminium ions are trivalent, meaning they have three valent, or ‘free’, electrons to play with, compared to lithium’s one. This has had both benefits and disadvantages in the past. The three units of charge per ion means more energy density or storage capacity, but, according to Wikipedia, ‘the electrostatic intercalation of the host materials with a trivalent cation is too strong for well-defined electrochemical behaviour’. I don’t know what this means, but presumably this is the problem that the use of graphene solves.

Whether these new batteries will effectively replace li-ion batteries is a question. Established industries don’t move aside easily, and it’s likely that the new technology will be better for some applications than for others. Li-ion is not only well established, the technology is constantly improving. And nickel metal hydride, the previous form of rechargeable battery, still has its place, I believe.

Things are apparently moving fast. GMG CEO and Managing Director Craig Nicol said, “We are currently looking to bring coin cell commercial prototypes for customer testing in 6 months and a pouch pack commercial prototype – used in mobile phones, laptops etc. – for customer testing in 18 months. We are really excited about bringing this to market. We aim to have a viable graphene and coin cell battery production facility project after customer validation that we would likely build here in Australia”. According to the SGU the company expects to have EV batteries ready by 2024.

So that’s about it. But here’s some other random but relevant info:

Since 2005, lithium costs have increased nine-fold, while aluminium costs have increased by 20%.

Currently 90% of lithium is accessed from China, 10% from Chile – but I heard on Fully Charged that Australia is a major source of lithium, so I’m confused.

Basic ingredients of the new battery: ‘aluminum foil, aluminum chloride (the precursor to aluminium and it can be recycled), ionic liquid and urea’ (Craig Nicol)

From graphene-info.com: Now, GMG has shared the initial performance data when tested in coin cells for the patent-pending surface perforation of graphene in aluminium-ion batteries developed by the Company and the University of Queensland (“UQ”). Currently, GMG Graphene is producing coin cell prototypes for customer testing in Q4 2021.’

From Dr. Ashok Nanjundan, GMG’s Chief Scientific Officer: “This is a real game-changing technology which can offer a real alternative with an interchangeable battery technology for the existing lithium-ion batteries in almost every application with GMG’s Graphene and UQ’s patent-pending aluminium ion battery technology. The current nominal voltage of our batteries is 1.7 volts, and work is being carried out to increase the voltage to directly replace existing batteries and which lead to higher energy densities….. The real differentiator about these batteries is their very high power density of up to 7000 watts/kg, which endows them with a very high charge rate. Furthermore, graphene aluminium-ion batteries provide major benefits in terms of longer battery life (over 2000 charge / discharge cycles testing so far with no deterioration in performance), battery safety (very low fire potential) and lower environmental impact (more recyclable)”.

So, I’ll be following developments over the next few months and years…

References and links

Episode #830

https://www.graphene-info.com

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-range-breakthrough-as-new-aluminum-ion-battery-charges-60-times-faster-than-lithium-ion/?sh=3be2b61a6d28

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-ion_battery

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the tides – a massive potential resource?

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A floating tidal turbine, Orkney islands, as seen on Fully Charged

A recent episode of Fully Charged, the Brit video series on the sources and harnessing of clean energy, took us again to the very windy Orkney Isles at the top of Scotland to have a look at some experimental work being done on generating energy from tidal forces. When you think of it, it seems a no-brainer to harness the energy of the tides. They’re regular, predictable, unceasing, and in some places surely very powerful. Yet I’ve never heard of them being used on an industrial scale.

Of course, I’m still new to this business, so the learning curve continues steep. Tide mills have been used historically here and there, possibly even since Roman times, and tidal barrages have been operating since the sixties, the first and for a long time the largest being the La Rance plant, off the coast of Brittany, generating 240 MW. A slightly bigger one has recently been built in Korea (254 MW).

But tidal barrages – not what they’re testing in the Orkneys – come with serious environmental impact issues. They’re about building a barrage across a bay or estuary with a decent tidal flow. The barrage acts as a kind of adjustable dam, with sluice gates that open and close, and additional pumping when necessary. Turbines generate energy from pressure and height differentials, as in a hydro-electric dam. Research on the environmental impact of these constructions, which can often be major civil engineering projects, has revealed mixed results. Short-term impacts are often devastating, but over time one type of diversity has been replaced by another.

Anyway, what’s happening in the Orkneys is something entirely different. The islanders, the Scottish government and the EU are collaborating through an organisation called EMEC, the European Marine Energy Centre, to test tidal power in the region. They appear to be inviting innovators and technicians to test their projects there. A company called ScotRenewables, for example, has developed low-maintenance floating tidal turbines with retractable legs, one of which is currently being tested in the offshore waters. They’re designed to turn with the ebb and flood tides to maximise their power generation. It’s a 2 MW system, which of course could be duplicated many times over in the fashion of wind turbines, to generate hundreds if not thousands of megawatts. The beauty of the system is its reliability – as the tidal flow can be reliably predicted at least eighteen years into the future, according to the ScotRenewables CEO. This should provide a sense of stability and confidence to downstream suppliers. Also, floating turbines could easily be removed if they’re causing damage, or if they require maintenance. Clearly, the effect on the tidal system would be minimal compared to an estuarine barrage, though there are obvious dangers to marine life getting too close to turbines. The testing of these turbines is coming to an end and they’ve been highly successful so far, though they already have an improved turbine design in the wings, which can be maintained either in situ or in dock. The design can also be scaled down, or up, to suit various sites and conditions.

rotors are on retractable legs, to protect from storms, etc

Other quite different turbine types are being tested in the region, with a lot of government and public support, but I got the slight impression that commercial support for this kind of technology is somewhat lacking. In the Fully Charged video on this subject (to which I owe most of this info), Robert Llewelyn asked the EMEC marketing manager whether she thought tidal or wave energy had the greatest future potential (she opted for wave). My ears pricked up, as wave energy is another newie for me. Duh. Another post, I suppose.

As mentioned though in this video, a lot of the developments in this tidal technology have come from shipbuilding technology, from offshore oil and gas technology, and from maritime technology more generally, as well as modern wind turbine technology, further impressing on me that skills are transferable and that the cheap clean energy revolution won’t be the economic/employment disaster that the fossil fuel dinosaurs predict. It’s a great time for innovation, insight and foresight, and I can only hope that more government and business people in Australia, where I seem to be stuck, can get on board.

fixed underwater tidal turbine being tested off the Orkney Islands

on the explosion of battery research – part two, a bitsy presentation

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(this is reblogged from the new ussr illustrated, first published August 1 2017)

This EV battery managed to run for 1200 kilometres on a single charge at an average of around 51 mph

Ok, in order to make myself fractionally knowledgable about this sort of stuff I find myself watching videos made by motor-mouthed super-geeks who regularly do blokes-and-sheds experiments with wires and circuits and volt-makers and resistors and things that go spark in the night, and I feel I’m taking a peek at an alternative universe that I’m not sure whether to wish I was born into, but I’ll try anyway to report on it all without sounding too swamped or stupefied by the detail.

However, before I go on, I must say that, since my interest in this stuff stems ultimately from my interest in developing cleaner as well as more efficient energy, and replacing fossil fuel as a principal energy source, I want to voice my suspicions about the Australian federal government’s attitude towards clean and renewable energy. This morning I heard Scott Morrison, our nation’s Treasurer, repeating the same deliberately misleading comments made recently by Josh Frydenberg (the nation’s energy minister, for Christ’s sake) about the Tesla battery, which is designed to provide back-up power as part of a six-point SA government plan which the feds are well aware of but are unwilling to say anything positive about – or anything at all. Morrison, Frydenberg and that other trail-blazing intellectual, Barnaby Joyce, our Deputy Prime Minister, have all been totally derisory of the planned battery, and their pointlessly negative comments have thrown the spotlight on something I’ve not sufficiently noticed before. This government, since the election of just over a year ago, has not had anything positive to say about clean energy. In fact it has never said anything at all on the subject, by deliberate policy I suspect. We know that our PM isn’t as stupid on clean energy as his ministers, but he’s obviously constrained by his conservative colleagues. It’s as if, like those mythical ostriches, they’re hoping the whole world of renewables will go away if they pay no attention to it.

Anyway, rather than be demoralised by these unfortunates, let’s explore the world of solutions.

As a tribute to those can-do, DIY geeky types I need to share a great video which proves you can run an electric vehicle on a single charge for well over 1000ks – theirs made it to 1200ks – 748 miles in that dear old US currency – averaging around 51 mph. It’s well worth a watch, though with all the interest there are no doubt other claimants to the record distance for a single charge. Anyway, you can’t help but admire these guys. Tesla, as the video shows, are still trying to make it to 1000ks, but that’s on a regular, commercial basis of course.

In this video, basically an interview with battery researcher and materials scientist Professor Peter Bruce at Oxford University, the subject was batteries as storage systems. These are the batteries you find in your smart phones and other devices, and in electric vehicles (EVs). They’ll also be important in the renewable energy future, for grid storage. You can pump electricity into these batteries and, through a chemical process that I’m still trying to get my head around, you can store it for later use. As Prof Bruce points out, the lithium-ion battery revolutionised the field by more or less doubling the energy density of batteries and making much recent portable electronics technology possible. This energy density feature is key – the Li-ion batteries can store more energy per unit mass and volume. Of course energy density isn’t the only variable they’re working on. Speed of charge, length of time (and/or amount of activity) between charging, number of discharge-recharge cycles per battery, safety and cost are all vitally important, but when we look at EVs and grid storage you’re looking at much larger scale batteries that can’t be simply upgraded or replaced every few months. So Bruce sees this as an advantage, in that recycling and re-using will be more of a feature of the new electrified age. Also, as very much a  scientist, Bruce is interested in how the rather sudden focus on battery storage reveals gaps in our knowledge which we didn’t really know we had – and this is how knowledge often progresses, when we find we have an urgent problem to solve and we need to look at the basics, the underlying mechanisms. For example, the key to Li-ion batteries is the lithium compound used, and whether you can get more lithium ions out of particular compounds, and/or get them to move more quickly between the electrodes to discharge and recharge the battery. This requires analysis and understanding at the fundamental, atomistic level. Also, current Li-ion batteries for portable devices generally use cobalt in the compound, which is too expensive for large-scale batteries. Iron, manganese and silicates are being looked at as cheaper alternatives. This is all new research – and he makes no mention of the work done by Goodenough, Braga et al.

In any case it’s fascinating how new problems lead to new solutions. The two most touted and developed forms of renewable energy – solar and wind – both have this major problem of intermittence. In the meantime, battery storage, for portable devices and EVs, has become a big thing, and now new developments are heating up the materials science field in an electrifying way, which will in turn hot up the EV and clean energy markets.

The video ended by neatly connecting with the geeky DIY video in showing how dumped, abandoned laptop batteries and other batteries had plenty of capacity left in them – more than 60% in many cases, which is more than useful for energy storage, so they were being harvested by PhD students for use in small-scale energy storage systems for developing countries. Great for LED lighting, which requires little power. The students were using an algorithm to get each battery in the system to discharge at different rates (since they all had different capacities or charge left in them) so they could get maximum capacity out of the system as a whole. I think I actually understood that!

Okay – something very exciting! The video mentioned above is the first I’ve seen of a British series called ‘Fully Charged’, all about batteries, EVs and renewable energy. I plan to watch the series for my education and for the thrill of it all. But imagine my surprise when I started watching this one, still part of the series, made here in Adelaide! I won’t go into the content of that video, which was about flow batteries which can store solar energy rather than transferring it to the grid. I need to bone up more on that technology before commenting, and it’s probably a bit pricey for the likes of me anyway. What was immediately interesting to me was how quickly he (Robert Llewellyn, the narrator/interviewer) cottoned on to our federal government’s extreme negativity regarding renewables. Glad to have that back-up! I note too, by the way, that Australia has no direct incentives to buy EVs, of which there are few in the country – again all due to our troglodyte government. It’s frankly embarrassing.

So, there’s so much happening with battery technology and its applications that I might need to take some time off to absorb all the videos and docos and blogs and podcasts and development plans and government directives and projects and whatnot that are coming out all the time from the usual and some quite unusual places, not to mention our own local South Australian activities and the naysayers buzzing around them. Then again I may be moved to charge forward and report on some half-digested new development or announcement tomorrow, who knows….

References

They’re all in the links above, and I highly recommend the British ‘Fully Charged’ videos produced by Robert Llewellyn and Johnny Smith, and the USA ‘jehugarcia’ videos, which, like the Brit ones but in a different way, are a lot of fun as well as educational.

 

on the explosion of battery research – part one, some basic electrical concepts, and something about solid state batteries…

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(this is reblogged from the new ussr illustrated, first published July 29 2017)

just another type of battery technology not mentioned in this post

Okay I was going to write about gas prices in my next post but I’ve been side-tracked by the subject of batteries. Truth to tell, I’ve become mildly addicted to battery videos. So much seems to be happening in this field that it’s definitely affecting my neurotransmission.

Last post, I gave a brief overview of how lithium ion batteries work in general, and I made mention of the variety of materials used. What I’ve been learning over the past few days is that there’s an explosion of research into these materials as teams around the world compete to develop the next generation of batteries, sometimes called super-batteries just for added exhilaration. The key factors in the hunt for improvements are energy density (more energy for less volume), safety and cost.

To take an example, in this video describing one company’s production of lithium-ion batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, four elements are mentioned – lithium, for the anode, a metallic oxide for the cathode, a dry solid polymer electrolyte and a metallic current collector. This is confusing. In other videos the current collectors are made from two different metals but there’s no mention of this here. Also in other videos, such as this one, the anode is made from layered graphite and the cathode is made from a lithium-based metallic oxide. More importantly, I was shocked to hear of the electrolyte material as I thought that solid electrolytes were still at the experimental stage. I’m on a steep and jagged learning curve. Fact is, I’ve had a mental block about electricity since high school science classes, and when I watch geeky home-made videos talking of volts, amps and watts I have no trouble thinking of Alessandro Volta, James Watt and André-Marie Ampère, but I have no idea of what these units actually measure. So I’m going to begin by explaining some basic concepts for my own sake.

Amps

Metals are different from other materials in that electrons, those negatively-charged sub-atomic particles that buzz around the nucleus, are able to move between atoms. The best metals in this regard, such as copper, are described as conductors. However, like-charged electrons repel each other so if you apply a force which pushes electrons in a particular direction, they will displace other electrons, creating a near-lightspeed flow which we call an electrical current. An amp is simply a measure of electron flow in a current, 1 ampere being 6.24 x 10¹8 (that’s the power of eighteen) per second. Two amps is twice that, and so on. This useful videoprovides info on a spectrum of currents, from the tiny ones in our mobile phone antennae to the very powerful ones in bolts of lightning. We use batteries to create this above-mentioned force. Connecting a battery to, say, a copper wire attached to a light bulb causes the current to flow to the bulb – a transfer of energy. Inserting a switch cuts off and reconnects the circuit. Fuses work in a similar way. Fuses are rated at a particular ampage, and if the current is too high, the fuse will melt, breaking the circuit. The battery’s negative electrode, or anode, drives the current, repelling electrons and creating a cascade effect through the wire, though I’m still not sure how that happens (perhaps I’ll find out when I look at voltage or something).

Volts

So, yes, volts are what push electrons around in an electric current. So a voltage source, such as a battery or an adjustable power supply, as in this video, produces a measurable force which applied to a conductor creates a current measurable in amps. The video also points out that voltage can be used as a signal, representing data – a whole other realm of technology. So to understand how voltage does what it does, we need to know what it is. It’s the product of a chemical reaction inside the battery, and it’s defined technically as a difference in electrical potential energy, per unit of charge, between two points. Potential energy is defined as ‘the potential to do work’, and that’s what a battery has. Energy – the ability to do work – is a scientific concept, which we measure in joules. A battery has electrical potential energy, as result of the chemical reactions going on inside it (or the potential chemical reactions? I’m not sure). A unit of charge is called a coulomb. One amp of current is equal to one coulomb of charge flowing per second. This is where it starts to get like electrickery for me, so I’ll quote directly from the video:

When we talk about electrical potential energy per unit of charge, we mean that a certain number of joules of energy are being transferred for every unit of charge that flows.

So apparently, with a 1.5 volt battery (and I note that’s your standard AA and AAA batteries), for every coulomb of charge that flows, 1.5 joules of energy are transferred. That is, 1.5 joules of chemical energy are being converted to electrical potential energy (I’m writing this but I don’t really get it). This is called ‘voltage’. So for every coulomb’s worth of electrons flowing, 1.5 joules of energy are produced and carried to the light bulb (or whatever), in that case producing light and heat. So the key is, one volt equals one joule per coulomb, four volts equals 4 joules per coulomb… Now, it’s a multiplication thing. In the adjustable power supply shown in the video, one volt (or joule per coulomb) produced 1.8 amps of current (1.8 coulombs per second). For every coulomb, a joule of energy is transferred, so in this case 1 x 1.8 joules of energy are being transferred every second. If the voltage is pushed up to two (2 joules per coulomb), it produces around 2 amps of current, so that’s 2 x 2 joules per second. Get it? So a 1.5 volt battery indicates that there’s a difference in electrical potential energy of 1.5 volts between the negative and positive terminals of the battery.

Watts

A watt is a unit of power, and it’s measured in joules per second. One watt equals one joule per second. So in the previous example, if 2 volts of pressure creates 2 amps of current, the result is that four watts of power are produced (voltage x current = power). So to produce a certain quantity of power, you can vary the voltage and the current, as long as the multiplied result is the same. For example, highly efficient LED lighting can draw more power from less voltage, and produces more light per watt (incandescent bulbs waste more energy in heat).

Ohms and Ohm’s law

The flow of electrons, the current, through a wire, may sometimes be too much to power a device safely, so we need a way to control the flow. We use resistors for this. In fact everything, including highly conductive copper, has resistance. The atoms in the copper vibrate slightly, hindering the flow and producing heat. Metals just happen to have less resistance than other materials. Resistance is measured in ohms (Ω). Less than one Ω would be a very low resistance. A mega-ohm (1 million Ω) would mean a very poor conductor. Using resistors with particular resistance values allows you to control the current flow. The mathematical relations between resistance, voltage and current are expressed in Ohm’s law, V = I x R, or R = V/I, or I = V/R (I being the current in amps). Thus, if you have a voltage (V) of 10, and you want to limit the current (I) to 10 milli-amps (10mA, or .01A), you would require a value for R of 1,000Ω. You can, of course, buy resistors of various values if you want to experiment with electrical circuitry, or for other reasons.

That’s enough about electricity in general for now, though I intend to continue to educate myself little by little on this vital subject. Let’s return now to the lithium-ion battery, which has so revolutionised modern technology. Its co-inventor, John Goodenough, in his nineties, has led a team which has apparently produced a new battery that is a great improvement on ole dendrite-ridden lithium-ion shite. These dendrites appear when the Li-ion batteries are charged too quickly. They’re strandy things that make their way through the liquid electrolyte and can cause a short-circuit. Goodenough has been working with Helena Braga, who has developed a solid glass electrolyte which has eliminated the dendrite problem. Further, they’ve replaced or at least modified the lithium metal oxide and the porous carbon electrodes with readily available sodium, and apparently they’re using much the same material for the cathode as the anode, which doesn’t make sense to many experts. Yet apparently it works, due to the use of glass, and only needs to be scaled up by industry, according to Braga. It promises to be cheaper, safer, faster-charging, more temperature-resistant and more energy dense than anything that has gone before. We’ll have to wait a while, though, to see what peer reviewers think, and how industry responds.

Now, I’ve just heard something about super-capacitors, which I suppose I’ll have to follow up on. And I’m betting there’re more surprises lurking in labs around the world…

 

How will the super-duper Tesla battery work? And more on the price of electricity

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(this is reblogged from the new ussr illustrated, first published July 19 2017)

Image: Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

I received an email the other day from the Australia Insitute. I don’t know how that happened, I’ve never heard of the organisation. Apparently it’s Australia’s most influential progressive think-tank (self-described) and apparently I subscribed to it recently while in a barely conscious state. All good.

Anyway the topic was timely: ‘Rising Energy Bills: Blame Gas’.

In a very recent post I quoted from a few apparently reliable sources on the reason for South Australia’s very high electricity prices. Unfortunately there wasn’t too much agreement among them, though at least none of them blamed renewable energy. But neither did any of them blame gas, though one did point a finger at wholesale pricing. The Australia Institute’s email put it thus:

Yesterday, we released the latest Electricity Update of the National Energy Emissions Audit for July 2017. The report revealed a stunning correlation between domestic electricity prices and gas prices — particularly in South Australia — despite gas making up only 10 percent of electricity generation.

So this is a subject I need to return to – in my next post. This post will focus on batteries and storage.

Neoen, a French renewable energy company, is building a 315MW, 99 turbine wind farm near Jamestown in South Australia. Connected to this project will be an array of Tesla’s lithium ion Powerpack batteries. According to this ABC News article:

The array will be capable of an output of 100 megawatts (MW) of power at a time and the huge battery will be able to store 129 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy so, if used at full capacity, it would be able to provide its maximum output for more than an hour.

It will be a modular network, with each Powerpack about the size of a large fridge at 2.1 metres tall, 1.3m long and 0.8m wide. They weigh in at 1,200 kilograms each.

It will have just slightly more storage than the next biggest lithium battery, built by AES this year in southern California.

But Tesla’s 100 MW output would be more than three times larger than the AES battery and five times larger than anything Tesla has built previously.

I’m no electrochemist, but a nice scrutiny of these sentences identifies a clear distinction between output and storage. And the output of this planned battery is the pioneering aspect.

So here’s a very basic summary of how a rechargeable lithium ion battery works. Each battery (and they vary hugely in size) is made up of a number of cells, each a battery in itself. On opposite sides of the cell are conductive surfaces, aka current collectors, one of aluminium and the other of copper. Inside and joined to these surfaces are electrodes, the positive cathode and the negative anode. The cathode is made from a lithium metal oxide such as lithium cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate, which needs to have the purest, most uniform composition for maximum performance and longevity. The negative anode is made from graphite, a layered form of carbon. The layered structure allows the lithium ions (Li+) created by the current to be easily stored at and removed from the carbon surface. Between these electrodes, filling the cell, is an electrolyte fluid through which lithium ions flow from one electrode to the other, which charges and discharges the cell. Again the purity of this fluid is a vital factor (research is being done to come up with a form of solid electrolyte). Between the two electrodes is an insulating plastic separator, essential to keep the electrodes separate and prevent short-circuiting. This plastic membrane allows the lithium ions to pass through it. The battery is charged when the lithium ions have passed through the separator and become attached to and stored in the layered graphite of the anode. The battery is discharged by reversing the flow.

Lithium ion batteries are found not only in Tesla Powerpacks but generally in electric car batteries and many other devices such as my own iPhone and iPad. They’re lighter and have much less energy density than lead-acid batteries. The technology of lithium ion batteries is described in a number of useful online videos, of which the most comprehensive, I think, is a webinar from the American Chemistry Society (ACS), essentially an interview with Dee Strand, a lithium ion battery specialist and expert. Her talk also provides interesting ideas on how these types of batteries can be improved.

So a fully-charged cell has stored energy, and a discharging cell is producing output. There are variations in lithium ion battery technology, for example variations in the electrode materials, the electrolyte composition and the like, so we don’t know precisely what Tesla will be using for the South Australian battery system, but we have a fair idea.

In any case, there seems no obvious reason why this proven technology can’t be scaled up to meet the sort of need that was identified after last September’s state blackout. Now we just have to wait and see whether Musk will lose his bet regarding completion time come December.

Refs and info

http://www.tai.org.au/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/what-is-tesla-big-sa-battery-and-how-will-it-work/8688992

https://www.thermofisher.com/content/dam/tfs/ATG/CMD/cmd-documents/sci-res/pub/comm/env/AR-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Degradation-RandD-Mag-042214.pdf

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/sa-to-get-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery/8687268

Just type in ‘lithium ion battery’ in youtube

the SA government’s six-point plan for energy security, in the face of a carping Federal government

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(this is reblogged from the new ussr illustrated, first published July 16 2017)

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, right, with SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis

The South Australian government has a plan for energy, which you can take a look at here. And if you’re too lazy to click through, I’ll summarise:

  1. Battery storage and renewable technology fund: Now touted as the world’s largest battery, this will be a storage facility for wind and solar energy, and if it works, it will surely be a major breakthrough, global in its implications. The financing of the battery (if we have to pay for it!) will come from a new renewable energy fund.
  2. New state-owned gas power plant: This will be a 250 MW capacity gas powered facility designed initially for emergency use, and treated as a future strategic asset when (and if) greater energy stability is achieved at the national level. In the interim the state government will (try to?) work with transmission and distribution companies to provide 200 MW of extra generation in times of peak demand.
  3. Local powers over the national market: The government will legislate for strong new state powers for its Energy Minister as a last-resort measure to enable action in South Australia’s best interests when in conflict with the national market. In addition, all new electricity-generation projects above 5 MW will be assessed as to their input into the state electricity system and its security.
  4. New generation for more competition: The SA Government will use its own electricity contract (for powering schools, hospitals and government services) to tender for more new power generators, increasing competition in the market and putting downward pressure on prices.
  5. South Australian gas incentives: Government incentives will be given for locally-sourced gas development (we have vast untapped resources in the Cooper Basin apparently) so that we can replace all that dirty brown coal from Victoria.
  6. Energy Security Target: This new target, modelled by Frontier Economics, will be designed to encourage new investments in cleaner energy, to increase competition and put downward pressure on prices. The SA government will continue to advocate for an Emissions Intensity Scheme (EIS), contra the Federal government. It’s expected that the Energy Security Target will morph into an EIS over time – depending largely on supportive national policy. Such a scheme is widely supported by industry and climate science.

It’s an ambitious plan perhaps but it’s definitely a plan, and definitely actionable. The battery storage part is of course generating a lot of energy already, both positive and negative, as pioneering projects tend to do. I’m very much looking forward to December’s unveiling. Interestingly, in this article from April this year, SA Premier Jay Weatherill claimed 90 expressions of interest had been received for building the battery. Looks like they never stood a chance against the mighty Musk. In the same article, Weatherill announced that the expression of interest process had closed for the building of SA’s gas power plant, point two of the six-point plan. Thirty-one companies from around the world have vied for the project, apparently. And as to point three, the new powers legislation was expected to pass through parliament on April 26. Weatherill issued a press release on the legislation in late March. Thanks to parliamentary tracking, I’ve found that the bill – called the Bill to Amend the Emergency Management (Electricity Supply Emergencies) Act – was passed into law by the SA Governor on May 9.

Meanwhile, two regional projects, one in the Riverland and another in the north of SA, are well underway. A private company called Lyon Group is building a $1 billion battery and solar farm at Morgan, and another smaller facility, named Kingfisher, in the north. In this March 30 article by Chris Harmsen, a spokesperson for Lyon Group said the Riverland project, Australia’s largest solar farm, was 100% equity financed (I don’t know what that means – I’ll read this later) and would be under construction within months. It will provide 300MW of storage capacity. The 120 MW Kingfisher project will begin construction in September next year. Then there’s AGL’s 210MW gas-fired power station on Torrens Island, mentioned previously. It’s worth noting that AGL’s Managing Director Andy Vesey spoke of the positive investment climate created by the SA government’s energy plans.

So I think it’s fair to say that in SA we’re putting a lot of energy into energy. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, never speaks positively about SA’s plans. Presumably this is because SA’s government is on the other side of the political divide. You can’t say anything positive about your political enemies because they might stop being your enemies, and then what would you do? The identity crisis would be intolerable.

I’ve written about macho adversarial systems in politics, law and industrial relations before. Frydenberg, as the Federal Minister, must be well aware of SA’s six-point plan (found with a couple of mouse-clicks), and of the plans and schemes of all the other state governments, otherwise he’d be massively derelict in his duty. Yet he’s pretty well entirely dismissive of the Tesla-Neoen deal, and describes the other SA initiatives, pathetically, as ‘an admission of failure’. It seems almost a rule with the current Feds that you don’t mention renewable, clean energy positively and you don’t mention the SA government’s initiatives in the energy field except negatively. Take for example Frydenberg’s reaction to recent news that the Feds are consulting with the car industry on reducing fuel emissions. He brought up the ‘carbon tax’ debacle (a reference to the former Gillard government’s 2012 carbon pricing scheme, repealed by the Abbott government in 2014), declaring that there would never be another one, as if the attempt to reduce vehicle emissions – carbon emissions – had nothing to do with carbon and its reduction, which was what the carbon pricing scheme was all about. This is the artificiality of adversarial systems – where two parties pretend to be further apart than they really are, so that they can engage in the apparently congenial activity of trading insults and holier-than-thou tirades. It’s so depressing. Frydenberg was at pains to point out that the government’s interest in reducing fuel emissions was purely to benefit family economies. It would’ve taken nothing but a bit of honesty and integrity to also say that reduced emissions would be environmentally beneficial. But this apparently would be a step too far.

In my next post I hope to get my head around battery storage technology, and lithium-ion batteries.

References/links

https://ussromantics.com/2017/07/14/whats-weatherills-plan-for-south-australia-and-why-do-we-have-the-highest-power-prices-in-the-world-oh-and-i-should-mention-elon-musk-here-might-get-me-more-hits/

https://ussromantics.com/2011/06/25/adversarial-approaches-do-we-need-them-or-do-we-need-to-get-over-them/

http://ourenergyplan.sa.gov.au/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/sa-gas-fire-power-station-gains-international-interest/8442578

https://www.premier.sa.gov.au/index.php/jay-weatherill-news-releases/7263-new-legislation-puts-power-back-in-south-australians-hands

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-13/sa-gas-fire-power-station-gains-international-interest/8442578

https://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/Legislation/BillsMotions/SALT/Pages/default.aspx?SaltPageTypeId=2&SaltRecordTypeId=0&SaltRecordId=4096&SaltBillSection=0

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-30/new-solar-project-announced-for-sa-riverland/8400952

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/equityfinancing.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia

 

is wind power prohibitively expensive? apparently not

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(this is reblogged from the new ussr illustrated, first published July 3 2017)

that’s a bloody big blade

Recently I heard retiring WA liberal senator Chris Back being interviewed, mainly on funding for Catholic schools, on ABC’s breakfast program. He was threatening to cross the floor on the Gonski package, but while he was at it he took a swipe at wind power, claiming it was heavily subsidised and not cost effective. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to find the whole interview online, to get his exact words, but as someone interested in renewables, and living in a state where wind power is prominent, I want to look more carefully at this issue.

On googling the question I’ve immediately been hit by link after link arguing that wind power is just too expensive. Is this a right-wing conspiracy? What are the facts? As I went deeper into the links – the second and third pages – I did become suspicious, as attacks on wind power spread to solar power and renewable energy in general. It seems there’s either a genuine backlash or there’s some manipulating going on. In any case it seems very difficult to get reliable, unbiased data one way or another on the cost-effectiveness of this energy source.

Of course, as with solar, I’m always hearing that wind power is getting cheaper. Thoughts off the top of my head: a standard wind farm of I don’t know how many units would be up-front quite expensive, though standardised, ready-tested designs will have brought per unit price down over the years. Maintenance costs, though, would be relatively cheap. And maybe with improved future design they could generate power at higher wind speeds than they do now. They seem to be good for servicing small towns and country regions. How they work with electricity grids is largely a mystery to me. There’s a problem with connecting them to other energy sources, and they’re not reliable enough (because the wind’s not reliable enough) to provide base-load power. I don’t know if there’s any chance of somehow storing excess energy generated. All of these issues would affect cost.

I also wonder, considering all the naysayers, why hard-headed governments, such as the Chinese, are so committed to this form of energy. Also, why has the government of Denmark, a pioneering nation in wind power, backed away from this resource recently, or has it? It’s so hard to find reliable sources on the true economics of wind power. Clearly, subsidies muddy the water, but this is true for all energy sources. It’s probably quixotic to talk about the ‘real cost’ of any of them.

Whatever the cost, businesses around the world are investing big-time in wind and other forms of renewable energy. In the US, after the bumbling boy-king’s highly telegraphed withdrawal from the Paris agreement, some 900 businesses and investors, including many of the country’s largest firms, signed a pledge to the UN that there were still ‘in’. The biggest multinational companies are not only jumping on the bandwagon, they’re fighting to drive it, creating in the process an unstoppable global renewable energy network.

The Economist, an American mag, had this to say in an article only recently:

In America the cost of procuring wind energy directly is almost as cheap as contracting to build a combined-cycle gas power plant, especially when subsidies are included…. In developing countries, such as India and parts of Latin America and the Middle East, unsubsidised prices at solar and wind auctions have fallen to record lows.

Australia’s current government, virtually under siege from its conservative faction, is having a hard time coming to terms with these developments, as Chris Back’s dismissive comments reveal, but the direction in which things are going vis-à-vis energy supply is clear enough. Now it’s very much a matter of gearing our electricity market to face these changes, as soon as possible. Without government support this is unlikely to happen, but our current government is more weakened by factionalism than ever.

Australia is 17th in the world for wind power, with a number of new wind farms becoming operational in the last year or so. South Australia’s push towards wind power in regional areas is well known, and the ACT is also developing wind power in its push towards 100% renewable energy by 2020. Australia’s Clean Energy Councilprovides this gloss on the wind energy sector which I hope is true:

Technological advances in the sector mean that wind turbines are now larger, more efficient and make use of intelligent technology. Rotor diameters and hub heights have increased to capture more energy per turbine. The maturing technology means that fewer turbines will be needed to produce the same energy, and wind farms will have increasingly sophisticated adaptive capability.

The US Department of Energy website has a factsheet – ‘top 10 things you didn’t know about wind power’, and its second fact is bluntly stated:

2. Wind energy is affordable. Wind prices for power contracts signed in 2015 and levelized wind prices (the price the utility pays to buy power from a wind farm) are as low as 2 cents per kilowatt-hour in some areas of the country. These rock-bottom prices are recorded by the Energy Department’s annual Wind Technologies Market Report.

As The Economist points out, in the article linked to above, Trump’s ignorant attitude to renewables and climate science will barely affect the US business world’s embrace of clean energy technology. I’m not sure how it works, but it seems that the US electricity system is less centralised than ours, so its states are less hampered by the dumbfuckery of its national leaders. If only….

Animal-friendly meat

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some uncooked ‘Impossible’ patties, from plant-based ingredients, with various side dishes. Photographed by Maggie Curson Jurow

I’m not a vegetarian, and my feelings on the issue of meat-eating range from extreme guilt to resentment to irritation, but perhaps my views are of little account:

Some 41% of all arable land…. is used to grow grain for livestock, while one-third of our fresh water consumption goes to meat production. Add in the use of chemicals and fuel, and the meat we consume represents one of the largest contributors to carbon, pesticides and pollutants on the planet.

So writes ethical philosopher Laurie Zoloth in the most recent issue of Cosmos. And of course we must add to that the massive issue of animal exploitation and suffering. But happily, Zoloth’s article is all about promoting a possible solution, which isn’t about convincing 98% of the world’s population, the meat-eaters, to change their ways.

Synthetic meat. It’s been talked about, and produced in small quantities, for a few years now, and I’ve been highly skeptical from the get-go, especially as the first samples were phenomenally expensive and disappointing taste-wise, according to pundits. But Zoloth has introduced to me a new hero in the field, the high-flying biochemist and activist Pat Brown, formerly of Stanford University. Brown is well aware that there are, unfortunately, too many people like me who just can’t wean themselves from meat in spite of the disastrous (but still psychologically remote) consequences of our behaviour. So he and a team of some 80 scientists are committing themselves to creating  palatable meat from entirely plant-based sources, thus transforming our agricultural world.

Food is, of course, chemistry and nothing but. Top-class chefs may disagree, but really they, like expert cocktail mixers, are just top-class chemical manipulators. Even so, most producers of synthetic meat (aka cultured meat, clean meat, in vitro meat) have started with cells from the animals whose meat they’re trying to synthesise. A company called Memphis Meats has already produced clean chicken and duck  from cultured cells of these birds, which have apparently passed taste tests. However, Pat Brown’s new company, Impossible Foods, is going further with a plant-based burger based essentially on the not-so-secret molecular ingredient, haem. Haem is a molecule found in blood, a constituent of the protein haemoglobin, but it’s also found in soybeans, and that’s where Brown’s team gets it from, at least at the genetic level. With a lot of nifty chemical engineering, they’ve created a burger that sizzles, browns and oozes fat, and they’ve got some billionaire investors such as Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla onside. The so-called Impossible Burger follows up the Beyond Burger, from another company called Beyond Meat, also backed by Gates, but it looks like the Impossible Burger has more potential.

Haem (or heme in American) is what makes our blood red. It contains iron and helps in oxygenating the blood. Abundant in muscle tissue, it’s what gives raw meat its pink colour. It also contributes much to the taste of cooked meat. The ‘Impossible’ team transferred the soybean gene encoding the haem protein into yeast, thus ensuring an abundant supply. The associated massive cost reduction is key to Brown’s biosphere-saving ambitions.

Of course, it’s not just cost that will capture the market. Taste, mouthfeel, aroma, je ne sais quoi, so much goes into the meat-munching experience, and the team has apparently worked hard to get it all in there, and will no doubt be willing to tweak well into the future, considering what’s at steak (sorry). If they succeed, it will be something of a slap in the face, perhaps, to those romantics among us who want to believe that food is more than merely chemical.

Yet I fear that the biggest challenge, as with renewable energy, will be to win over, or overcome, those invested in and running the current ‘technology’. That’s the world of people and systems that raise cows, pigs, chooks, and all the rest, for slaughter. It’s an open and shut case from an environmental and ethical perspective, but that doesn’t mean people won’t fight tooth and nail to preserve their bloody businesses and lifestyles. It’s not as if they’re going to be rehired by biotech companies. And as to the religious among us, with their halal and kosher conceptions, that’ll be another headache, but not for me. It will certainly be another scientific stab at the heart of this pre-scientific way of looking at the world and will add to the ever-widening divide between pre-scientific and scientific cultures, with not very foreseeable consequences, but probably not happy ones.

But all that’s still well in the future. It’s unlikely that these new products will hit the market for a few years yet, and it’s likely the inroads will be small at first, in spite of the admirable ambitions of people like Pat Brown and his supporters. In any case I’ll be watching developments with great interest, and hoping to get a not-too costly taste myself some time. Such fun it is to be alive in these days, but to be young, that would be like heaven…

 

solar technology keeps moving toward the centre

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thin-film solar modules - a more flexible solution

thin-film solar modules – a more flexible solution

I’ve been hearing that the costs of solar installations are coming down, making the take-up easier and faster, but I haven’t spent the time to research exactly why this is happening, presumably world-wide. So now’s the time to do so. I thought I’d start with something I heard recently on a podcast about revolutionary thin solar cells…

Thin-film solar cells have been around for a while now, and they’re described well here. They’re only one micron thick, compared to traditional 350 microns-thick silicon-wafer cells, and they utilise superconductor materials, usually silicon-based, which are highly efficient absorbers of solar energy. However, according to Wikipedia, this new technology isn’t doing so well in the market-place, with only about 7% of market share, and not rising, though with crystalline silicon being replaced more and more by other materials (such as cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium selenide and amorphous silicon) there’s still hope for its future.

This technology was first utilised on a small scale in pocket calculators quite some time ago but it has been difficult to scale it up to the level of large-scale solar panels. There are problems with both stability and toxicity – cadmium for example is a poison that can accumulate in the food chain like mercury. It doesn’t look like it’s this or any other technological development that’s reducing costs or increasing efficiency, though of course they may do in the future, with graphene looking like a promising material.

So let’s return to the question of why solar has suddenly become much cheaper and is apparently set to get cheaper still. Large manufacturing investment and economies of scale seem to be a large part of the story. This means that the costs of solar modules now make up less than half of the total cost of what Ramez Naam calls ‘complete solar deployments at the utility scale’, and these other costs are also coming down as the industry ‘scales’. His article in Renew Economy from August last year makes projections based on the idea that ‘doubling of cumulative capacity tends to reduce prices by a predictable rate’, though he’s also prepared to heavily qualify such projections based on a multitude of possibly limiting factors. If all goes well, solar electricity costs will become less than half the cost of new coal or natural gas in a generation – without factoring in the climate costs of continuing fossil fuel usage. The extraordinary rise in solar energy usage in China, set to continue well into the future, bolsters the prediction, and India is also keen to incease usage, despite problems with domestic manufacturing and trade rules. Most panels are being imported from China and the USA, while domestic production struggles.

It’s interesting that solar and other renewable technologies are now being spruiked as mainstream by mainstream and even conservative sources, such as Fortune and oilprice.com. Fortune’s article also usefully points out how the cost of different power sources to the consumer is heavily dependent on government policies relating to fossil fuels and their alternatives, as well as to the natural assets of particular regions. Even so, it’s clear that the cost of fossil-fuel based electricity is rising everywhere while wind and solar electricity costs are falling, creating an increasingly clear-cut scenario for governments worldwide to deal with. Some governments are obviously facing it more squarely than others.

US residential solar costs. Beyond 2013, these are estimates, but already out of date it seems

US residential solar costs. Beyond 2013, these are estimates, but already out of date it seems

 

buildings that reduce energy consumption

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average energy use in an Australian home, 2011

average energy use in an Australian home, 2011

The energy solutions world has obviously been given a big boost by the decisions in Paris recently, so all the more reason to analyse the success of changes to building designs, and how they can lead to lower emissions worldwide in the future. As I wrote last year, Australia has been consuming less electricity of late, a turnaround which is a historical first, and the main cause has been energy-efficient new buildings and appliances, regulated by government here, no doubt in conformity with other western regulatory systems. So what exactly have these changes been, and how far can we go in creating energy-efficient buildings?

In Australia, all new buildings must comply with the Building Code of Australia, which prescribes national energy efficiency requirements and here in South Australia the government has a comprehensive website outlining those requirements as well as, presumably, state additions. New buildings must achieve a six star rating, though concessions can be made in some circumstances. In South Australia, energy efficiency standards are tied to three distinct climate zones, but the essential particulars are that there should be measures to reduce heating and cooling loads, good all-round thermal insulation, good glazing, sealing and draught-proofing, good ventilation, effective insulation of piping and ductwork, energy efficient lighting and water heating, and usage of renewable energy such as solar.

SA has developed a strategic plan to improve the energy efficiency of dwellings by 15% by 2020, targeting such items as air-conditioners and water heaters, and in particular the energy efficiency of new buildings, as retro-fitting is often problematic. However, the state government reports success with the energy efficiency of its owned and leased buildings, which had improved by 23.8% in 2014, compared to 2001. They are on target for a 30% improvement by 2030.

But energy efficiency for new housing doesn’t end with the buildings themselves. The Bowden housing development, which is currently being constructed in my neighbourhood, aims to reduce energy consumption and emissions through integrated community living and facilities, green spaces, effective public transport and bikeways, convenient shopping, dining and entertainment, and parks and gardens for relaxation and exercise. It all sounds a bit like paradise, and I must admit that, as I grow older, the final picture is still a long from taking full shape, but as we move away from oil, upon which we still rely for transport, this kind of integrated community living could prove a major factor in reducing oil consumption. The national broadband system will of course play a role here, with more effective internet communication making it easier to conference nationally and internationally without consuming so much jet fuel. It’s probably fair to say that this is an area of great waste today, with large amounts of greenhouse gases being emitted for largely unnecessary international junkets.

Recently it was announced that the Tesla Powerwall, the new energy storage technology from Elon Musk’s company, will begin local installation in Australia, with the first installations happening this month (February 2016). There are other battery storage systems on offer too, so this is another burgeoning area in which residential and other buildings can be energy-efficient.

So we’re finally becoming smarter about these things, and it’s making measurable inroads into our overall energy consumption. Other strategies for lightening our environmental footprints include embodied energy and cogeneration. These are described on the Urban Ecology Australia website. Embodied energy is:

The energy expended to create and later remove a building can be minimised by constructing it from locally available, natural materials that are both durable and recyclable, and by designing it to be easy to dismantle, with components easy to recover and reuse.

And cogeneration is defined thus:

Cogeneration involves reusing the waste heat from electricity generation, thus consuming less fuel than would be needed to produce the electricity and heat separately.
Small, natural gas powered electricity generators in industrial or residential areas can supply heat for use by factories, office buildings, and household clusters.
The heat can be used for space heating, hot water, and to run absorption chillers for refrigeration and air-conditioning. It can be used in industry for chemical and biological processes.

Clearly there’s no over-arching technological fix for energy reduction, at least not in the offing, but there are a host of smarter solutions with a combinatorial effect. And governments everywhere can, and should, play a useful, example-setting role.

Australia ranks 10th of these 16 countries for energy efficiency. However, we're 16th for energy-efficient transport, so presumably we're further up the ladder for housing

Australia ranks 10th of these 16 countries for energy efficiency. However, we’re 16th for energy-efficient transport, so presumably we’re further up the ladder for housing