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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

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this one: https://www.wsj.com/articles/startup-claims-breakthrough-in-... (I work at Form fyi)

Am I correct that the company has improved the achievable C-rate since the May 2020 announcement of a 1MW/150MWh demonstration project? Are there any publicly available documents about the chemistry, or how the product compares with e.g. the ESS Inc. iron flow battery? https://essinc.com/iron-flow-chemistry/

This is what we're saying publicly about the chemistry: https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/

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

#32
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

The whole point of venture funding is to scale though. Once the science is done, it's just an engineering problem.

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

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this one: https://www.wsj.com/articles/startup-claims-breakthrough-in-... (I work at Form fyi)

Am I correct that the company has improved the achievable C-rate since the May 2020 announcement of a 1MW/150MWh demonstration project? Are there any publicly available documents about the chemistry, or how the product compares with e.g. the ESS Inc. iron flow battery? https://essinc.com/iron-flow-chemistry/

Not sure where that article got the 300MW number, the GRE project is on track for the original size.

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

#35
post #18
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.

I'd also look into LTO (lithium titanate oxide) if you're interested in long term cost per KWh, not because they are cheap by any means but because they (allegedly) last so long that you'd only be able to replace them maybe twice over your lifetime, it's a pretty new chemistry so unfortunately it's rather early days to verify whether any of the consumer offerings available today will actually perform for as long as the companies manufacturing them suggest (I've seen figures quoted everywhere between 5000 and 30000 cycles at 70% DoD), or whether you could even take advantage of those kinds of cycle counts before the cells just died from calendar ageing.

Back to NiFe though, you can certainly get decades of use comfortably out of NiFe cells, but it's worth taking into account that they require a lot of maintenance, routinely topping up each cell with deionized water (there are automated systems you can buy or build yourself to manage this though), and every few years the KOH electrolyte inside them will need replacing every few years, plus you will want to keep your cells adequately ventilated as they vent hydrogen periodically.

I would definitely NOT recommend lead-acid, sure the upfront cost is lower than anything else by quite a ways, but they won't last long at all, and as a result I'd be surprised if you weren't paying a lot more in the long run.

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

#36

My biggest concern is round trip efficiency, as other iron chemistries are only around 50%, which severely limits arbitrage opportunities: https://www.alexhsain.org/blog/ironair This could be super useful for all sorts of backup situations, from homes to data centers to hospitals. And once they are installed generally, they can be combined together as a virtual power plant and start partially paying for themselves.

It would still be useful at night if paired with solar that produces more than the peek demand during the day.

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

#37

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...

Is iron abundant enough for this to scale? Maybe this could kickstart the asteroid mining industry.

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

#38
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

The whole point of venture funding is to scale though. Once the science is done, it's just an engineering problem.

"Just an engineering problem" is a massive oversimplification.

It's an engineering problem that requires financing. After that, you still need to figure out how to do it profitably at scale.

The vast majority of "the science is done" breakthroughs fail to be commercialized because they're too expensive or time-consuming to figure out how to scale, or the unit economics just don't work out.

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

#39
So, the article commits a pretty large error by describing this as the cheapest energy storage. This advance, even if we take a corporate press release at face value, only brings the cost down the the level of compressed gas storage. It's cheaper than lithium-ion but battery storage project costs, like most other utility projects, are dominated by infrastructure, land, regulatory costs, inverters, etc.

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

#40

My biggest concern is round trip efficiency, as other iron chemistries are only around 50%, which severely limits arbitrage opportunities: https://www.alexhsain.org/blog/ironair This could be super useful for all sorts of backup situations, from homes to data centers to hospitals. And once they are installed generally, they can be combined together as a virtual power plant and start partially paying for themselves.

Nobody cares about cycle efficiency when the inputs are free, which they are.
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