SunPower plans to sell lithium ion batteries — or other energy storage technology — bundled with solar panels. The move follows other solar companies into the energy storage space. Read more »
A Midwest startup wins a big business plan competition by showing the promise of its technology to create a longer-lasting lithium ion battery that also can charge at a faster rate than what batteries in smart phones can deliver today. Read more »
A startup called Seeo, backed by Vinod Khosla and Google.org, has created a safer lithium ion battery that’s being trialled with a solar panel system developed by SunEdison. Batteries can provide much needed energy storage systems for solar. Read more »
There’s still some venture capital money out there for next-generation lithium ion batteries. Startup Leyden Energy has raised $10 million to continue to commercialize its tech for tablets and start-stop vehicle technology. Read more »
If approved, the future of A123 System’s lithium ion battery tech will fittingly be owned by Chinese auto giant Wanxiang. China is increasingly becoming one of the most important markets for electric vehicles in the world. Read more »
The auction of U.S. battery maker A123, expected to kick off today, will determine if the tech will stay in the U.S. with Jonhson Controls or be snapped up by Chinese conglomerate Wanxiang. The controversy exposes fears over China and the politicization of electric vehicles. Read more »
The demand for lithium-ion batteries hasn’t grown as quickly as many battery developers have anticipated, and that leaves a rather bleak near-term outlook for startups who had counted on the rise of electric car, grid storage and even laptops as lucrative markets. Read more »
Battery maker A123 Systems, which was awarded a sizable federal grant, has finally filed for bankruptcy protection, after bleeding cash for months. Johnson Controls will buy up some of the assets. Read more »
A Japanese consortium of government groups and tech companies teams up with a New Mexico utility and a federal lab for a smart grid demonstration project to figure out how to integrate solar electricity and energy storage into an electric grid. Read more »
Energy storage companies, like battery makers, and solar firms have been talking about the possible marriage of the two technologies for some time. And the union will likely be a big theme at Intersolar, one of the biggest solar energy trade shows in the U.S. Read more »
There are only a little over 500 deployed energy storage projects in the world, according to Pike Research. So what’s the hold up? Here’s three hurdles facing energy storage grid projects. Read more »
IBM has made a lot of noise about its lithium air battery, which it says can hold as much energy in a given volume as gasoline can. But General Motors isn’t all that convinced that lithium air battery technology is worth the investment. Read more »
Can the startup accelerator model work for battery companies? The folks behind CalCharge, the brainchild of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) that hopes to attract some 30 battery companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, think so. Read more »
A123 Systems was supposed to be a success story about an innovative U.S. battery company, but it has struggled to live up to that expectation. The company on Tuesday posted lower revenues and greater losses for the first quarter of this year, about two months after it launched a program to replace defective batteries. Read more »
How many of us have gone through numerous batteries for our laptops, because aging batteries start to lose their ability to charge? Yep, me too. Stanford’s materials scientist Yi Cui is working on a lithium ion battery that could last six times longer. Read more »
Lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems announced that it will replace some of the battery modules and packs that it’s sold that could contain defective prismatic cells, and that includes batteries for Fisker’s electric car the Karma. Read more »
A startup called Envia Systems that’s been working on lithium ion battery technology says it’s developed a key breakthrough that could one day lead to an electric car that has a 300-mile range and could cost around $25,000 to $30,000. Read more »
Here’s what you need to know about flow batteries: how they work, what innovation is happening in the market, who buys these batteries, and what are the benefits? Read more »
Grid battery startup Aquion Energy announced on Tuesday that it plans to build a factory in Pennsylvania and begin production of its sodium batteries starting in 2013. Read more »
While some day in the future we could all have our own personal home battery systems combined with solar panels, Japanese home owners could get these goodies sooner, rather than later. Read more »
Some good news and bad news for the beleaguered battery maker Ener1. On Thursday, the company announced it’s filing for Chapter 11 in New York, but has done so under a pre-arranged restructuring plan that includes commitments for up to $81 million from investors. Read more »
One day it could be common to have a home battery to store energy from a solar panel, and some battery makers and startups showed off their home batteries at DistribuTECH this week. Read more »
Today wireless charging for cell phones is pretty kludgy. But the idea — and eventually the goal of Powermat — is that one day the cell phone companies will embed the company’s wireless charging tech right into the phone itself, making wireless charging a whole lot more simple. Read more »
If there is one thing to know about the pace of progress for battery innovation, it’s this: There is no Moore’s law for batteries. The rapid progress that has been made over the past decade in silicon and computing makes the pace of innovation in batteries, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Seeo raised $15 million earlier this year, and we know how it’s spending some of that money. The startup has moved into a new home and installed a pilot production line that produces 4 megawatt hours of cells per year. Read more »
Boston-Power, which once dreamed of building a lithium-ion cell battery factory in the United States, announced Tuesday it has lined up $125 million of investments to shift a big part of its business to China and thin its operation in the U.S. by about 35 percent. Read more »
If Apple launched one of its gadgets with embedded solar cells, it could revolutionize the market for solar. Read more »
China is poised to become a giant solar and wind energy producer, and that will open opportunities for energy storage technology developers. ZBB announced its foray into China on Tuesday and more American companies are sure to follow. Read more »
The team approach is becoming popular in the electric car development space. General Motors and LG Group announced Thursday a plan to co-develop electric vehicles in order to speed up their deployment. Read more »
Will electric vehicles provide a big market for lithium-ion batteries? A report by IHS on Monday says yes and predicts that carmakers will take over laptop manufacturers as the biggest customers of lithium-ion batteries by 2015. Read more »
Aquion Energy, which is developing a low-cost battery for the power grid made from sodium and water, has closed $20 million of a planned $30 million round and has brought on investor Foundation Capital in addition to existing investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Read more »
The death of a battery: We’ve all seen it happen. In phones, laptops, cameras and now electric cars, the process is painful and — if you’re lucky — slow. But why does this happen? Read more »
Selling energy storage technology to utilities can be a risky business, according to a group of venture capitalists at an energy storage conference in Silicon Valley Wednesday. Read more »
Boston Power took the wraps off some details about its electric vehicle battery tech, and it says it expects other partners (beyond Saab) to deploy the electric car battery tech later this year and in 2012. Read more »
The market for electric vehicles is moving more slowly than expected. That’s why companies like Johnson Controls are focusing more heavily on “start-stop” vehicle technology, which is a system that automatically cuts off the engine of a gas-powered vehicle while it’s idling. Read more »
The next-generation of lithium ion batteries aren’t just here to power the first wave of electric cars, they’ll be providing better energy storage for gadgets and computers, too. Leyden Energy is launching a lithium-ion battery for laptops that won’t degrade for at least three years. Read more »
Here’s 10 questions with former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham — who led the DOE 2001 to 2005 and was nominated by George W Bush — on his thoughts on the future of energy innovation, nuclear power in the U.S., the energy moves of the current administration: Read more »
The Electric Power Research Institute has released a report that lays out energy storage technology options, benefits, performance and costs and how the different technologies play a role in everything from managing the electric grid to managing home energy use. Read more »
Battery startup Xtreme Power just landed its biggest grid energy storage deal yet, a 36-megawatt battery for Duke Energy. Could its secretive, solid-state energy storage technology challenge sodium sulfur and lithium ion for reigning grid champion? Read more »
Japan’s massive earthquake, tsunami, and now nuclear disaster, is starting to shine a spotlight on just how important the country is in terms of clean energy technology, from solar to electric cars. Read more »
