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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

#131

Post by philipkglass »

ksec wrote: post #116

Let's just assume this works as advertise, at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion. And we can scale it to practically infinity. And available by 2023. What is left missing in the big picture for 100% clean, and renewable energy? As far as I can tell, Solar and Wind has already achieved cost/Wh lowered than all other form of energy and has a decent roadmap to further drive down the cost by another 50 - 60%. Or ar…

Abundant, inexpensive storage plus inexpensive renewable electricity would mean one big problem solved. There are still a lot of non-electrical sources of emissions that still need to be addressed:

- Steel production

- Ammonia production

- Organic chemicals production (polymers, lubricants, solvents...)

- Electrification of transport (world car and truck fleet is still 99% combustion powered, and these iron batteries aren't the right kind for mobile usage.)

- Synthetic fuel production for applications that can't use batteries, like rockets and trans-Atlantic passengrer flights.

- Cement production, which currently releases large amounts of CO2 from fossil combustion and from the chemical transformation of limestone.

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

#132

Post by Animats »

coder543 wrote: post #76
lowercase1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can take a battery and just decrease the discharge rate and claim "long duration storage". The hard part is making it cheaper per kWh. If they made it cheaper per kWh then they should say that

> If they made it cheaper per kWh then they should say that They do say that. Quote from the article: > at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion "100 hours" isn't an advantage for this technology. The advantage is the cost effectiveness. "100 hour battery" mostly means that it will take 100 hours to discharge one of these batteries (of any capacity) at the maximum discharge rate that the technology allows. Obvious…

> Also, people in that industry know that surely no one would proudly advertise a "100 hour battery" if it weren't significantly cheaper than lithium ion on a per kWh basis

Or they just have a slow-discharge technology and are trying to create the illusion it's good for something.

> at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion

That's just a PR statement at this point. They haven't built many batteries.

If the materials cost for a lithium-ion battery went down 90%, battery cost would only go down 50%.[1]

The number of "it's going to be really cheap" battery claims far exceeds the number of really cheap and usable batteries that actually ship.

[1] https://qnovo.com/82-the-cost-components-of-a-battery

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

#133

Post by coder543 »

Animats wrote: post #132
coder543 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they made it cheaper per kWh then they should say that They do say that. Quote from the article: > at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion "100 hours" isn't an advantage for this technology. The advantage is the cost effectiveness. "100 hour battery" mostly means that it will take 100 hours to discharge one of these batteries (of any capacity) at the maximum discharge rate that the technology allows. Obvious…

> Also, people in that industry know that surely no one would proudly advertise a "100 hour battery" if it weren't significantly cheaper than lithium ion on a per kWh basis Or they just have a slow-discharge technology and are trying to create the illusion it's good for something. > at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion That's just a PR statement at this point. They haven't built many batteries. If the material…

As I said, whether they succeed or not is an open question.

Their claim is not referring to the raw battery materials. Their claim appears to be that they will be able to offer grid scale batteries for 1/10th of the cost of lithium ion, all in. Obviously, the drawback is that these batteries take over 100 hours to discharge and recharge, so they’re slow.

They are doing a pilot project for Great River Energy in 2023. That’s when we will know how real this product is.

Industry experts that I respect believe that Form Energy is very real, unlike all the vaporware that exists out there.

You can remain skeptical and dismissive if you want. It’s irrelevant to whether Form Energy succeeds or fails.

I haven’t seen anyone here saying that Form Energy has a 100% chance of success, and skepticism is warranted for any startup. Even if a battery startup has perfect battery technology, they can still fail for many reasons.

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

#134

Post by Izkata »

coder543 wrote: post #118
amelius wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a term that summarizes many of the complex properties you mentioned. Ok, then would you be so kind to show how to compute these properties from this single term?

Would you be so kind as to show how to reverse a hash? A summary is like a hash; it throws away information deemed irrelevant to the task at hand, but it is still related to the input information. So, no, I won't show how to do that, because it's impossible, and I never claimed otherwise. I just love these "gotcha!" comments that pop up on HN so frequently. I'm having to explain what it means to summarize information…

That isn't a gotcha comment. If it's a summary, you should be able to compare it to something else, or pick a baseline to reverse it. For example:

* What's the equivalent summary statistic for an iphone battery?

* If it has the same discharge stat as an iphone battery (just picked arbitrarily for calculation purposes), the 100-hour battery's capacity should be calculable.

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

#135

Post by coder543 »

Izkata wrote: post #134
coder543 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be so kind as to show how to reverse a hash? A summary is like a hash; it throws away information deemed irrelevant to the task at hand, but it is still related to the input information. So, no, I won't show how to do that, because it's impossible, and I never claimed otherwise. I just love these "gotcha!" comments that pop up on HN so frequently. I'm having to explain what it means to summarize information…

That isn't a gotcha comment. If it's a summary, you should be able to compare it to something else, or pick a baseline to reverse it. For example: * What's the equivalent summary statistic for an iphone battery? * If it has the same discharge stat as an iphone battery (just picked arbitrarily for calculation purposes), the 100-hour battery's capacity should be calculable.

The comparison has to be meaningful. This is a term used for grid scale batteries, and the capacity is irrelevant to this number. Lithium ion grid scale batteries are “4 hour batteries”, roughly. Depending on the exact chemistry and configuration, they could be anywhere from 2 hour batteries to 8 hour batteries.

You can compare Form Energy’s 100 hour batteries to traditional lithium ion and see that Form’s batteries are 25x slower. That’s a valuable datapoint, and speaks to a limitation of Form’s batteries.

The time to discharge an iPhone battery at maximum supported output of the battery is entirely irrelevant to iPhones.

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

#136

Post by andrew_ »

Robotbeat wrote: post #90
andrew_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LiFePo are starting to make a splash (pun intended) in the marine sector now that costs have started to fall, but lead acid still rules the roost. I have 4 AGMs and one Lithium in my vessel.

Yeah, LFP is where it’s at as far as longevity and price and price per cycle and safety. Lead acid are still more forgiving (although with the caveat that they don’t last long even if we’ll cared for), but LFP is pretty wonderful.

I'm on year 3 with some AGMs. I bought used group 24 AGM batteries from a local used/recycler battery joint that were used in large hospital battery backup applications - they're typically never cycled but once for testing and always kept topped off. Very common to find these kinds of batteries in bulk a few times a year where I'm at. The flooded batteries (mostly Interstate) that I used in years prior would last at most two years even when properly maintained. The FL heat just nukes those things.

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

#137

Post by Hypx_ »

adrian_b wrote: post #101
Hypx_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All metal-air batteries have similar thermodynamic properties. If you can make a iron-air battery with good efficiency, than you can make a hydrogen-air battery with good efficiency too. Since water is significantly more available than just about any other material, hydrogen-air cells should be the ideal battery for anything that isn't volume limited. Which is frankly a lot of cases. Unless there's some specific need…

You are right about metal-air batteries, but IIRC hydrogen-air ideal efficiency is still significantly lower than the ideal efficiency for carbon-air (using fuel cells with solid carbon) or metal-air batteries. You are also right about synthetic hydrocarbons. The extra hydrocarbon synthesis step lowers the total efficiency, compared with using hydrogen. Nevertheless, the lower efficiency is more than compensated by t…

As I understand, the byproduct of a carbon-air cell is carbon dioxide. This doesn't mean such a cell can't make sense, but it has some fundamental downsides that are hard to mitigate. It will requirement a very specific form of carbon capture where the result is hard carbon for such cells to make sense.

That might be partially true. Especially in the case of hydrogen-to-ammonia where the process of conversion is much more straightforward. However, storing hydrogen in salt caverns for years at a time is already proven. So further conversion steps might not prove any real value except where volume of storage is important.

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

#138

Post by Jweb_Guru »

hinkley wrote: post #130
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone care at all about portability for grid storage? This makes no sense.

Why would anyone favor lithium ion for grid storage? Makes no sense. So if someone is comparing their product to something that makes no sense, they aren’t making sense. Are they confused, or just lying?

I would pretty much agree except that lithium ion keeps being sold as a grid storage solution for some reason. But yes they should obviously be showing superiority to lead acid, pumped hydro, etc. as well.

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

#140

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

lazide wrote: post #124
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey battery engineer. can you help me out with this stupid solar home battery confusion i have been having? 1 battery system is 12volt X 180AH =2160WH. (lets say lead acid) 2 battery system is 48Volt x 45AH=2160WH(Lets say this is lithium) if i am using an inverter to convert DC to AC viz 220volt where my AC appliances run, does it matter on the battery side? if i have a load, say a pc running 1 KWH, will these two b…

Not the parent poster, but do have some familiarity here. Higher battery voltage == less copper, smaller wires for the same wattage. Sometimes also a bit more efficiency too (less resistance, smaller absolute voltage drop moving current around). Your units are a bit messed up load wise - is your computer running at 1 kWh per hour? For how long? (Yeah, that is confusing - but that would be the energy used to power a 2…

Thanks. How we see load is, the product advertises 1000 watts so for me that means 1kwh or one unit of electricity. Same for something that is 200 watts or 2000 watts.

I am aware of the solar thing. I have a grid tied system and I sell the energy to grid. I produce around 30 kWh a day which is good.

My problem is storage. If I want to store energy, should I go with 48volt 24 ah battery or 12volt 96ah ? As I said, there will be an inverter giving 220volt output so does battery voltage matter?

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