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Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

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Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#11

Post by Meandering »

This is interesting... I hope they can make it feasible in the long run. There is another interesting application for this oxidation phenomenon.[1] They burn iron dust to create a C02-free furnace. Imagine replacing coal with iron in concrete plants...

[1] https://newatlas.com/energy/bavarian-brewery-carbon-free-ren...

Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#14

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

2sk21 wrote: post #9

“We’ve completed the science, what’s left to do is scale up from lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants." I can't even count the number of lab-stage announcements that I have seen in HN. This will be of interest only when they can get it to scale

Graphene can do everything! Except get out of the lab.

Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#16

Post by Retric »

2sk21 wrote: post #9

“We’ve completed the science, what’s left to do is scale up from lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants." I can't even count the number of lab-stage announcements that I have seen in HN. This will be of interest only when they can get it to scale

This seems to be aiming to start a pilot project in 2 years which suggests it’s well past the lab stage. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume it’s going to fail, but that’s normal for startups.

Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#17

Post by cogman10 »

2sk21 wrote: post #9

“We’ve completed the science, what’s left to do is scale up from lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants." I can't even count the number of lab-stage announcements that I have seen in HN. This will be of interest only when they can get it to scale

This is quite a bit more promising than a lot of those projects. They are actually manufacturing the batteries for a battery plant. That's quite a bit further along than a lot of battery announcements are.

Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#18

Post by Andys »

Faaak wrote: post #4

I'd love to be able to buy "cheap" batteries that are big, large, heavy, but cheap (per kWh). Sadly there are many startups but none are selling as of now. The only one I found ("Salt battery") was more expensive than Lithium but with less cycles...

Edison batteries (Nickle-iron), although expensive initialy, are apparently the cheapest batteries once you factor in their lifetime of multiple decades without degradation.

Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#19

Post by amluto »

philipkglass wrote: post #10

Wiley said that a 300MW “pilot” project for Minnesota-based Great River Energy will be commissioned in 2023. That project, announced in May last year, was originally due to be a 1MW/150MWh demonstration plant capable of outputting 1MW for 150 hours straight. If the energy had gone up 300x from the originally announced pilot project the same way the power did, this would be a huge storage project boasting 45,000 MWh o…

> It took nearly a week to fully charge/discharge. At the time they put a positive spin on it by emphasizing "long duration." That's not really an advantage, though. You can just discharge a high-rate-capable battery slower for long duration applications.

If the price is right, long duration is just fine. One week of storage to get through a spell of cloudy weather or poor wind conditions is quite useful. It doesn’t obviate the need for daily storage.

Re: Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery

#20

Post by musingsole »

2sk21 wrote: post #9

“We’ve completed the science, what’s left to do is scale up from lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants." I can't even count the number of lab-stage announcements that I have seen in HN. This will be of interest only when they can get it to scale

But why is that? Have they not completed the science? Or is scaling up the controllable elements of a lab environment for fullscale production really so difficult?

I've seen the inside of some magical labs...Their actual setup when you stared real close and knew enough of how they were doing things was anything but.

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