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Wish I could answer more questions, but honestly the best way to learn more about our battery is to get involved! In addition to all the roles you'd expect on hardware and operations, Form also has openings on the software team (full stack, data eng, data platform). https://jobs.lever.co/formenergy
The main thing of interest (to me anyway) that seems to be missing from the articles I can see on this is references to energy density. Is it equivalent to Lithium Ion? Better? Worse? There's some tantalising research from a few years ago that suggests it could get way better energy density, but the same comes up frequently with battery technology.
Wish I could answer more questions, but honestly the best way to learn more about our battery is to get involved! In addition to all the roles you'd expect on hardware and operations, Form also has openings on the software team (full stack, data eng, data platform). https://jobs.lever.co/formenergy
I really despise how these job posting sites consistently refuse to have return links to the company itself. Why does the icon on this page not go back to your corporate site? It's maddening.
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Nobody cares about cycle efficiency when the inputs are free, which they are.
The design of the energy markets will determine how free energy can be, as well as if there are any of the arbitrage opportunities I talked about. The round trip efficiency of hydrogen is already something of a concern for grid backup power, as far as I know, ans that's only slightly less than 50%. As storage costs decrease, those moments in time when there's oversupply of energy from solar and wind will become short…
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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.
> Or is scaling up the controllable elements of a lab environment for fullscale production really so difficult? It's even more difficult than that. :-) Ideas have negative value; lab prototypes also have negative value; pilot plants are worth a small fraction of what they cost - scrap value. You get value from full scale production, and every bit of that value is paid for in the engineering required to get to full sc…
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.
Interesting concept. How does humidity affect it the oxidation/reduction process?
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The design of the energy markets will determine how free energy can be, as well as if there are any of the arbitrage opportunities I talked about. The round trip efficiency of hydrogen is already something of a concern for grid backup power, as far as I know, ans that's only slightly less than 50%. As storage costs decrease, those moments in time when there's oversupply of energy from solar and wind will become short…
I think you're missing the forest for the trees. The surplus we are going to have of renewable power is going to be huge . We are going to build way more than we need for peak grid demand, because we are going to need as much as we can get our hands on for direct air carbon capture. Our peak electric facilities are going to be phenomenally large, and the storage we need to cover the overnight grid is going to be a ve…
I totally agree that our peak energy outputs are going to be be absolutely massive, and for the past five years have been trying to think of the implications.
One of these is that it becomes impossible for solar or for wind to survive on its own with our current market clearing mechanisms. Which for those that don't know, works something like an auction where generators each say "I can provide X megawatts at Y $/MW" and then the operators sort the bids and choose all the operators needed to meet demand, and pay everyone at the highest bid that cleared. What happens in these markets when there's oversupply is that prices go to zero. (Or even negative. When generators have external income sources from producing generation, they will pay to put power on the grid if they can get more from those other sources).
When price on the grid is free, the solar and wind farms aren't making any money. Which means that they need to recoup all their capital costs in those hours where energy is not overproduced, but every other solar and wind generator is going to be in the same boat during those low supply times, and I don't know yet if there's a market equilibrium that will both allow pure generators to survive and for customers to not revolt and override this market mechanism.
This means that either 1) every single solar and wind farm will need to incorporate storage in order to be able to ever recoup their investment, is 2) market design has to change.
If it's 1), then in that case, the inputs to storage can't be free, because a combined generator/storage arbitrage agent, you have to value your generation at some cost, because you paid free capital costs and airs depreciating.
If it's 2), then I think any market design is going to require payments for energy even when there's oversupply. I don't see how a market design with long periods of zero-cost energy can survive (though I would love to see one, it's quite likely I'm not imaginative enough for that!)!
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...
The big, large, heavy, cheap battery you are looking for is the lead-acid battery. The market for them is still larger than the global lithium-ion market, and they're quite suitable for stationary applications. Many off-the-grid houses use banks of lead-acid batteries.
Comparing for example a 100ah lifepo4 to 100ah lead acid, the useable capacity of the lithium will be close to 4x more. Using the full capacity of the lead acid will make them wear out quickly.
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Is iron abundant enough for this to scale? Maybe this could kickstart the asteroid mining industry.
The earth is made out of iron. There is no point in mining it in space, and regardless anything mines in space would be far too expensive for a use like this, which is why the main prospects for asteroid mining are precious metals.