A new report on the crash of a UPS jet carrying rechargeable lithium batteries outlines the hazards of transporting these devices. It’s the latest fuel for concern about the safety of lithium ion batteries, which store energy not only for gadgets but also plug-in vehicles. Read more »
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Staff Scientist Venkat Srinivasan delves into what he thinks are the three laws of batteries that govern how batteries operate, plus he throws in a bonus one at the end. Read more »
Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at MIT, aims to deliver a “lifesaver” for renewable energy in the form of a stable, low-cost, large-scale battery. Here are 15 questions with Sadoway on the future of liquid metal batteries. Read more »
A startup building the next-generation of compressed air energy storage, SustainX, has raised a new round of funding from investors including GE. The funds will help the company start construction on a 1 MW compressed air energy storage project with its first customer AES. Read more »
Utility scale energy storage doesn’t get the type of attention as, solar or electric cars — particularly a tech as dry as compressed air energy storage. But startups are innovating in this area, and two in particular are moving ever closer to commercialization: SustainX and General Compression. Read more »
Gravity Power is developing a new way to store massive amounts of energy for the power grid: gravity and a new invention using pistons, water-filled shafts in the ground and a motor. Read more »
The key to getting utilities to embrace renewable energy is investment in inexpensive, convenient, and highly efficient utility-scale storage for solar and wind power. The issue remains one of supply and demand: Supply the energy storage solutions without demanding too much of anyone. Read more »
LG Chem has won its first deal in the utility market — it will supply lithium-ion battery packs for a Southern California Edison energy storage project. Read more »
There’s been a lot of high-fiving among energy storage technology developers about a bill signed into law by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week. However, the bill doesn’t mandate energy storage, which means it’s far from determined which technologies and players will be the big winners. Read more »
Can the grid handle the growing flow of wind and solar that will come online in the next few years? According to California’s grid operator the answer is yes, but with a particular attention to energy storage policy. Read more »
Lithium ion battery Amprius tells us that it has demonstrated in the lab the basic recipe for a much higher energy density battery that can tolerate the hundreds of charge cycles needed for long-lasting electronic devices. Up next, batteries for electric vehicles. Read more »
Today the DOE has awarded $92 million for 43 new projects under the highly competitive ARPA-E program for high risk greentech research, marking the last of the ARPA-E grants to be funded under the Recovery Act. Read more »
If utilities are looking for a magic bullet for energy storage, which can help add clean power to the grid, prevent outages and manage peak load, they’re not going to find it. At least not among the current storage options, according to a report from Lux Research. Read more »
Electrovaya, the Canadian battery maker supplying lithium-ion batteries for Chrysler’s plug-in hybrid truck demo, brought in nearly $1.1 million in revenue during the first three months of this year, compared to just $675,000 in the same period a year earlier. Read more »
It’s not just technology advancements that could pave the way to smaller, lighter battery packs in electric vehicles — but also the collection of data as automakers learn more about how these cars perform on the road. Read more »
The ARPA-E summit this week was flush with startups looking for government grants and VC dollars — and some looking for both. Energy-storage startup Sun Catalytix, which just won $4 million from ARPA-E in January, now plans to seek a new round of venture capital, Sun […] Read more »
HP has refreshed its entire business notebook lines, with faster Intel processors now available. The EliteBook and ProBook models can now be configured with up to an Intel Core i7 processor. New colors have been introduced, caviar and bordeaux, depending on if you’re hungry or thirsty. Read more »
“Like gangbusters.” That’s how Joe Fisher, chief executive for Azusa, Calif.-based startup CFX Battery envisions the company growing in 2010. Of course the lithium-ion battery cell developer will need funds to do that, and Wednesday announced that it has raised $14.2 million in a second round […] Read more »
In the first year that Macworld Expo San Francisco did not see Apple attend, the speculation leading up to the show was centered on what Macworld Expo would be like without its best known exhibitor. David Pogue gave us a look at the world without Apple, […] Read more »
Amazon has followed through on its promise to bring the Kindle reader app to the BlackBerry. The app works much like the iPhone version, with support for online e-book purchasing. Whispersync technology keeps the BlackBerry content in sync across multiple Kindle devices. Read more »
