GigaOM » batteries

Would you like some storage in your storage?

Amanda Alvarez — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:46:07 +0000

A new type of memory device that will allow for much greater miniaturization and efficiency than current RAM has proved to have a surprising property. German researchers reported in a recent issue of Nature Communications that ReRAM (resistive memory cells) has a battery-type effect in which the devices actually store charge. This helps explain some anomalous behavior in memristors, the class of circuit elements that subsumes ReRAM.

Resistive memory cells (ReRAM or RRAM) have the potential to become a front-runner technology among nonvolatile memories. First developed by HP in 2008, ReRAM exhibits fast switching times and is suitable for low-power applications, because it requires less voltage. ReRAM differs from conventional computer memory by using ions (charged atoms) for storing data, rather than electrons, which owing to their tinier size are harder to control, impacting both data storage density and energy use.

The new research study reports that the ions in ReRAM behave like a battery. The data storage function in ReRAM is realized by the movement of ions between the memory cell’s two electrodes, silver or copper on the active end, and platinum, for example, on the inert end. A positive voltage leads to metal depositing at the counter electrode, which eventually forms a filament that short circuits the cell by connecting the two ends. This corresponds to the cell’s “on” state, while the “off” state can be restored by applying an oppositely polarized voltage.

A byproduct of this switching is the generation of an electric voltage, meaning the ReRAM cells act like tiny batteries. This finding has an impact not just for potentially improving data readout (an idea that the research team has patented), but also has theoretical implications. ReRAM, with active electrochemical components, violates the definition of memristors as passive circuit elements. The researchers argue that their finding means the memristor concept needs to be expanded, and that ReRAM cells are real memristors, something memristor pioneer Leon Chua has also argued.

Image via Jülich Aachen Research Alliance

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Bringing a little cheer to energy innovation

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:00:21 +0000

There’s glitter all over the carpet in the hallways at the Gaylord National Resort, a sprawling hotel that sits on the shores of the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C. It’s definitely not from the thousands of energy geeks that are arriving at the hotel on Sunday night to kick off several days of discussions and meetings about next-generation energy technology for the ARPA-E Summit. It’s the aftermath from thousands of preteen girls, decked out in hotpants, ponytails and ribbons, that just spent two days cheering and dancing their way through a large cheer competition.

The two events seem about as different as when the Consumer Electronics Show used to coincide with Adultcon in Vegas. But the clean energy and energy efficiency industries could use some of the cheerleader’s glitter and cheer spirit right about now.

Following the close of a year which saw the politicization of clean energy technologies, the struggles of dozens of solar manufacturers and electric car companies, and a “cleantech cliff” that saw investments in cleantech startups drop by a third, the 2013 ARPA-E Summit will likely be a pretty sober affair.

As MIT Tech Review wrote recently, government energy R&D spending in 2013 is facing a fiscal cliff, and venture capitalists won’t likely flock back to pumping money into energy companies this year. Both of which mean funding for entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers that have bright ideas for things like next-generation batteries, low cost biofuels, or futuristic solar materials will be difficult to get this year. Or at least it’ll be a lot harder to find money for these technologies than it was a few years ago.

The silver lining of money being tight is that only the most promising technologies will get funding, and there will be less “dumb money,” so to speak. As a seatmate of mine on the flight over this morning put it: the state of clean financing is awful but it inevitably had to correct itself at some point.

Altaeros Energies High Altitude Wind Turbine shown off at ARPA-E 2012

But in the face of these more difficult times, another way to look at the ARPA-E program — which gives small grants to early stage projects and was modeled on the Defense Department’s DARPA program — is perhaps it could be the energy industry’s bit of glitter and cheer. It’s one of the few funding programs from the Department of Energy that has bipartisan support, will likely be able to maintain its current annual budget and is widely celebrated by entrepreneurs, politicians and academics alike.

The ARPA-E Summit itself draws some of the bigger names in technology and politics as speakers — this year New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In previous years Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger have given rousing speeches.

ARPA-E 2013 will be one of the last places that we’ll be able to hear from soon-to-be-leaving DOE Secretary Steven Chu. Chu has been one of the biggest influences on the U.S. Department of Energy over the last several decades.

I’m personally looking forward to moderating a discussion between IDEO’s David Blakely and Otherlab’s Saul Griffith about the importance of storytelling and narrative for early stage energy technologies (we’ll be live streaming it here for free on Monday at 4:30 PM EST). Particularly in difficult times, creating compelling narratives for next-gen clean energy technologies that could be decades from commercialization will be crucial.

As the energy geeks wake up on Monday morning ready to talk about kilowatts and sunshots with their peers, the cheerleaders will have mostly gone home. But perhaps, in a strange way, they don’t have so little in common after all.

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On my want list: Mophie Juice Pack Helium

Om Malik — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:30:13 +0000

Thanks to our need to constantly connect to the Internet, we all want more juice — aka: battery power — for our smartphones. And while the whiz kids work on new battery technologies to change our world, we are all relegated to using battery packs. As an iPhone user, I often carry two or three of these battery packs in my bag, just in case I run out of power – which I usually do.

Most of these battery packs are quite unattractive, to put it mildly. However, I like this new one from Mophie – the Juice Pack Helium – which is specially designed for the iPhone 5 and is quite thin and svelte. Well, it is 13 percent thinner than the previous Juice Packs, but as someone who struggles to lose weight, I know even a few millimeters are important.

At $80, it is not cheap, but if it gets me six extra hours of LTE time, I will take it. I am heading to the Apple store today. Who would have thought that we would lust for a battery pack?

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The most important chart in energy

Salim Khan, Guest Contributor — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:00:06 +0000

There’s a chart you’ve never heard of that perfectly represents how inefficient the power grid is and how much we need more distributed energy solutions. Agencies responsible for the reliability of the grid, including the California System Independent System Operator (CAISO), use what are called Load Duration Curves, or LDCs, to plan investments and monitor efficiency. The area under the LDC (see image below) represents the energy demanded by the system and the curve illustrates the relationship between energy use and generating capacity needs.

In order to meet California’s peak load in 2011, CAISO had to secure the equivalent energy of 20 nuclear power plants. This level of energy represents what is needed to serve peak capacity rather than average capacity. On most days, California’s electricity demand ranges between about 23,000 MW and 36,000 MW. In 2011, California demand exceeded 40,000 MW for only 0.8 percent of the year, or about 70 hours total (for reference, California hit an all-time for peak energy usage, reaching a total load of 50,270 MW in July, 2006).

Without transforming the power system to include energy storage and other distributed energy technologies, we have to build and maintain enough power plants to meet peak demand in real-time. Utilities will have to build additional generation assets, leading to increased generation investment while using this capacity for very few hours of the year.

We clearly have a huge opportunity to improve our current electrical power infrastructure since most of our generation capacity is only required a brief percentage of the year. As the LDC illustrates, satisfying our peak load creates a massive discrepancy between our old generation capacity and asset utilization. According to the Energy Information Administration, our national capacity factor, or the amount we actually generate vs. the amount we are capable of generating, is at or less than 40 percent. Most hours of the year, a massive fleet of generators sits cold and idle, not providing power to customers or earning revenue for their owners. Even idle, these plants require upgrades and maintenance to stay current.

With the problem of low asset utilization, the more optimal solution may lie on a micro- and not a macro- scale. Many influential organizations, as varied as the Rocky Mountain Institute and the United States Military, are realizing the promise of smaller scale distributed energy generation and electricity storage as a way to combat the exact discrepancies that the LDC highlights.

This move towards supplementing our power with decentralized capacity has the added benefit of circumventing many of the negative economic and environmental impacts associated with our aging grid. Relying on centralized power systems alone to meet peak load is costly. Power generated from peaking-units (which currently make up around 14 percent of America’s 2,600 total power plants), can cost upwards of $100 more than the typical megawatt-hour.

Additionally, the cost of transmitting energy across an aging grid is increasing and inefficient as well (according to the Department of Energy, around 75 percent of transmission lines and transformers are older than 25 years or older and roughly 60 percent of circuits have been operating for over 30 years, and transmission losses can range from 7-10 percent). William Pentland of ClearEdge Power points out that “the typical electric utility customer in New York City is charged more for the delivery of an electron than the generation of electron”.

Recent advancements in distributed energy storage technology — including the adoption of lithium-ion batteries similar to those used in electric vehicles as onsite storage — are allowing business owners to dispatch power from the grid at those times that it is most cost-effective to do so. (Many large automakers, including GM, Chevy and Nissan, are catching on to this potential by developing grid storage units with their used EV batteries.) At Stem we use energy storage systems to provide on-site electricity to customers at times when energy from the grid is more expensive, such as during hot summer days.

It is important to note that even if the cost of energy drops, the LDC problem persists. While many in the energy community are excited by the shale gas revolution, without storage, generators will still need to be sized to meet peak demand and therefore will continue to operate at 40 percent or less capacity factor. Electric utilities and their rate base will still have to pay to build assets that sit idle for most of the year regardless of the mix of energy sources in the future.

Due to their ability to mitigate peak energy usage where it occurs, distributed energy storage systems have the potential to change the way we draw power at peak times. This could, in effect, transform the LDC into a much more efficient rectangle, flattening the load and avoiding generation overbuild. Distributed energy storage that is implemented as the smart solution will prove that grid stability and grid efficiency no longer have to be treated as mutually exclusive.

Salim Khan is the CEO of Stem, an energy technology company that enables businesses to control their electricity expenses and helps the electrical grid to be more efficient in managing peak usage.

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Cleantech and investment in 2013

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:05:16 +0000

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This week in cleantech: next-gen batteries and the importance of design

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:21:13 +0000

We’ve got a lot of great stuff for cleantech-watchers on GigaOM Pro (our subscription research service) this week. First up:

Over the next decade the advanced-battery industry will witness broad approaches to technology and project development. To date significant resources have been allocated by various stakeholders including the United States government, which currently has 39 different battery- and energy-storage-related research programs. Learn about this market in our in-depth report on next-gen batteries (subscription required).
When it comes to consumer products and cleantech, the two companies that have distinguished themselves over the past few years are smart thermostat maker Nest and electric vehicle pioneer Tesla. So as we ready for GigaOM’s Roadmap Conference, which is devoted to connected design this year and will feature Nest founder Tony Fadell and Tesla’s retail experience head George Blankenship (both are ex-Apple), it’s worth stopping to consider why Nest and Tesla are having signs of early success. . . . read the rest of GigaOM Pro cleantech analyst Adam Lesser’s column on The intersection of cleantech and great design (free to non-subscribers).
The third quarter in cleantech brought into focus the successes and challenges of more-mature companies like Tesla, Airbnb, and Zipcar. It also highlighted energy challenges in India and China. Check out the Cleantech third quarter 2012 analysis and outlook (subscription required).

As well as Adam’s blog posts (free to non-subscribers):

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The next generation of battery technology

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:55:25 +0000

Over the next decade the advanced-battery industry will witness broad approaches to technology and project development. The market for grid-scale advanced batteries is forecasted to reflect nearly $30 billion in investment through 2020. Tapping into this potential depends on the technical and market-focused innovations of a small industry ecosystem, one that faces considerable challenges in R&D and funding.

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Cleantech third-quarter 2012

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 06:55:12 +0000

The third quarter in cleantech brought into focus the successes and challenges of more-mature companies like Tesla, Airbnb, and Zipcar. It also highlighted energy challenges in India and China. This quarter Tesla’s production schedule came under fire, and share economy leaders Airbnb raised cash while Zipcar struggled with its membership model. Meanwhile the Indian power outage in July prompted questions about how the developing economy will power itself. This quarterly wrap-up discusses these milestones and provides a near-term outlook for trends, technologies, and companies to watch in the next 18 to 24 months.

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How collaboration can keep cleantech going

Beth Comstock, CMO of GE — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:35:05 +0000

Opening a new, $170 million battery manufacturing plant in Schenectady, New York, this July, GE CEO Jeff Immelt said, “this is the way GE does start-ups.” What he meant is that for successful innovation, particularly in clean tech, it takes an entrepreneurial ecosystem to nurture a good idea from inception to big, new market.

Those ideas don’t need to languish, or die, because they’re too hard to scale. Larger companies can collaborate with smaller ones and future customers to build an ecosystem that gets needed innovations to market, helping tackle pressing sustainability issues and creating new revenue streams.

Consider the evolution of the Durathon battery, which is manufactured at the new factory, and is the flagship product of one of GE’s newest business units, GE Energy Storage. Since its launch, we’ve announced a number of orders from telecom and grid customers in the U.S. and Africa. The new battery lasts for nine hours, contains more than 30 patents, can recharge 3,500 times (ten times more than regular batteries), lasts for two decades, and most exciting, is based upon innovative sodium chemistry that makes it non-toxic. By design, the Durathon is also recyclable. And it takes up half the space of lead-acid batteries.

Durathon started years ago as a wisp of an idea about how to build the ideal power source for a hybrid locomotive. GE Global Research engineers working on that problem determined that sodium nickel chloride batteries were the most promising. Crucially, as work on these batteries progressed beyond their original business purpose, the company continued to support it—through the acquisition of a British company with deep expertise in the field and as several promising applications crystallized in recent years. In effect, developing the Durathon required building a start-up within a huge company. We call them “Imagination Breakthroughs,” and we’ve been incubating them for over a decade. The resulting business is an entrepreneurial ecosystem, in which an established company with manufacturing know-how works with an early-stage venture to build on internal, exploratory R&D. In this ecosystem, the future customer is also an entrepreneur helping drive the development of the product.

Before the Durathon’s new plant even started operating, for example, South African engineering company Megatron Federal placed an initial order for batteries to keep its telecom installations in Nigeria running during all too common power disruptions. They will also help Megatron decrease its dependence on diesel generators as back-ups, lowering fuel usage and emissions. Once the Schenectady factory opened, Megatron committed to purchasing further batteries. This new market of businesses that support African telecom will continue to grow on a continent where the number of cell phone users climbed to over 600 million at the end of last year and is expected to grow to 735 million by the end of this year. Another big need is helping data center operators coping with enormous energy needs reduce their electricity consumption.

We can see the same sort of entrepreneurial ecosystems being built in other cleantech applications, responding to different needs. Dow, for example, used to make chemicals for plastics at a sprawling plant in Midland, Michigan. Now, with lithium-ion battery start-ups sprouting around GM’s new electric vehicle factories near Detroit, Dow has partnered with TK Advanced Battery and the French conglomerate Dassault Group to manufacture an innovative EV battery, repurposing the existing plant. Dow has the scale and manufacturing expertise to execute a great new idea in cleantech. It takes an ecosystem to carry those ideas from infancy to market. Other big companies, like GE and Dow, need to take on these kinds of challenges and carve out a protected space to incubate start-ups.

Beth Comstock is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, GE. Beth leads GE’s growth and market-innovation initiatives, as well as the sales, marketing and communications functions. She is responsible for GE-wide business platforms ecomagination, dedicated to environmental innovation and healthymagination, focused on developing better health outcomes.

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Battery startups join forces: Contour acquires ActaCell

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:07:41 +0000

Innovation in battery manufacturing tends to take a really long time and can be pretty difficult. For startups, is there safety in numbers? Contour Energy Systems, which makes fluorine-based battery technology has acquired ActaCell, a lithium ion battery technology developer in Austin, Texas.

The companies actually called the move “a merger” in the press release, but the first thing you learn as a business reporter is that there are no mergers. Contour Energy Systems has raised a lot more money than ActaCell, and ActaCell is becoming a subsidiary of Contour, so I think it’s safe to call it an acquisition. The companies didn’t release terms of the deal.

I haven’t heard much about ActaCell in a couple years. The company was founded in 2007 and managed to raise a $5.8 million Series A round from well known investors including DFJ Mercury, Google.org’s RechargeIT program, Applied Ventures (the VC arm of Applied Materials), and Good Energies. That was back when Google was just starting to experiment with investing in some cleantech startups, and nowadays it has largely moved away from this strategy.

ActaCell also raised a $3 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Technology Innovation Program. According to SEC filings, ActaCell hasn’t raised any more funding since then.

ActaCell has been working on commercializing low-cost, high-power lithium-ion battery materials based on tech from professor Arumugam Manthiram at the University of Texas at Austin. The company holds exclusive patents for making a cathode from manganese spinel, and an anode from a “high energy nanocomposite alloy.”

Contour Energy Systems, on the other hand, closed a $20 million series C round back in October 2011 and had raised $30 million before that. Contour makes battery technology using the element fluorine, which is volatile but which could deliver longer lasting, higher power batteries for devices spanning from smart meters to pacemakers, and one day electric vehicles and laptops.

Contour says Actacell’s battery tech will allow it to enter new markets and provide new products. ActaCell says in the release that it will be able to speed up its technology to a commercial phase more quickly in partnership with Contour.

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