Form Energy reveals the chemistry of its long-duration battery • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by lowercase1 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

coder543 wrote: post #50

Animats wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you buy a sample battery? The announcement is suspicious. "100 hours" is not a meaningful number for a battery. The numbers you want to hear are KWH/Kg, KWH/m^3, max charge and discharge rates, number of charge/discharge cycles before storage drops off, efficiency, and cost/KWH. "That project, announced in May last year, was originally due to be a 1MW/150MWh demonstration plant capable of outputting 1MW for 150 h…

> "100 hours" is not a meaningful number for a battery. It is a meaningful number... in the grid scale energy storage market. It's a term that summarizes many of the complex properties you mentioned. For a given energy storage technology, there is a certain duration that it tends to be most effective at. For traditional lithium ion batteries, that duration is about 4 hours. If you want to use lithium ion storage for…

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

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

#72

Post by motohagiography » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #38

motohagiography wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was a time I would have agreed, but when you seed 5-10 companies engineering a solution, if it's possible, one of them is probably going to succeed and take all. Unit economics are an optimization problem, which is literally what engineers solve, and you can hire them at scale. What doesn't work with climbing walls and beanbag chairs in the bay area might work remote, or somewhere outside the US.

If there is still science to be done, sure, higher risk, but even paying a few scientists to develop IP for 2 years is a rounding error on what investors put into novelty software projects.

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

#73

Post by newyankee » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

jiminymcmoogley wrote: post #35

Andys wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Do you think they are expensive because new and not manufactured at scale, or because titanium/titanate is expensive ? I know that Toshiba manufactures these and apparently it was in talk with Apple to contract manufacture it for them.

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

#74

Post by newyankee » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

andrew_ wrote: post #26

jeffbee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I have heard that large contracts on LFP batteries have touched under 100$/kwh in China, but on the retail side i have never seen anything cheaper than 300$/kwh ever sold. I guess even touching something like 200$/kwh retail is a big deal and might happen sooner than later with the flood of battery makers coming in.

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

#75

Post by coder543 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #55

coder543 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "100 hours" is not a meaningful number for a battery. It is a meaningful number... in the grid scale energy storage market. It's a term that summarizes many of the complex properties you mentioned. For a given energy storage technology, there is a certain duration that it tends to be most effective at. For traditional lithium ion batteries, that duration is about 4 hours. If you want to use lithium ion storage for…

I’m sorry, that really doesn’t make any sense. There is several missing factors here, and it’s a useless metric. Lithium ion can do ‘100 hours’ as well - based on discharge rate. It can also do 10 minutes - based on discharge rate. 100 hours is literally useless on it’s own because it doesn’t tell you anything concrete. 100 hours….. of what? It looks like a classic science writing article where they left all the impo…

> > You could do the same thing with Lithium Ion, it would just be cost prohibitive... 10x as expensive, supposedly.

> Lithium ion can do ‘100 hours’ as well

Did you reply to the wrong person? I already addressed your entire comment several different ways in my original comment, and you didn't address anything I wrote in mine, as far as I can tell. Maybe I'm not the best at explaining things?

> 100 hours... of what?

Cost effective energy storage solutions that can discharge for 100 hours at maximum operating output. "Cost effective" is absolutely the key factor. Lithium ion is not currently cost effective at such durations. It is cost effective at about 4 hours, but some sources will say anywhere from 2 to 8 hours.

If you aren't familiar with a particular industry, it's perfectly logical for that industry's shorthand to sound like total nonsense. You (and most of HN) are not the target audience for a statement like "100 hour battery". Grid scale energy storage operators are the target audience, and they understand what that means. It means slow batteries, which also implies cheap, because no one would buy slower battery technology if it weren't a lot cheaper. Form Energy explicitly declares the technology to be 10x cheaper. We'll see if that holds up in reality.

Someone unfamiliar with computer science who overhears a conversation about "garbage collection" would likely be very confused. "Computers don't emit garbage! RAM is reusable, how could bytes of RAM become garbage?" But, obviously garbage collection is a real thing with computers, even if it sounds like nonsense to someone outside the industry who just knows enough to know what RAM is.

Here's an article[0] that talks about long duration energy storage, and they even mention Form Energy. Relevant quote from the article:

> Lithium-ion batteries have absolutely dominated new storage construction in recent years. But they rarely can deliver their full power capacity for more than four hours — that’s what people mean when they say “discharge duration.” Batteries technically can go for longer, but it generally costs more than it’s worth in today’s market dynamics.

One more choice quote:

> Batteries cannot yet compete with gas plants in providing prolonged power for multiple days. But a cost-effective 24-hour duration storage system could handle longer demand peaks, and a 48-hour system could do even more.

It's all about cost effectiveness.

[0]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/so-what-exactly...

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

#76

Post by coder543 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

lowercase1 wrote: post #71

coder543 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "100 hours" is not a meaningful number for a battery. It is a meaningful number... in the grid scale energy storage market. It's a term that summarizes many of the complex properties you mentioned. For a given energy storage technology, there is a certain duration that it tends to be most effective at. For traditional lithium ion batteries, that duration is about 4 hours. If you want to use lithium ion storage for…

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. Obviously that is a huge downside compared to lithium ion, which is able to respond to grid energy needs with much higher power density!

But it doesn't really matter, if the price is right. Long duration energy storage is all about lowering the cost per kWh by developing technologies that have lower power density in exchange for also lowering cost per kWh of storage. Lithium ion isn't cost effective for long duration storage right now.

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, so the term "100 hour battery" also means (to the right audience) that the batteries have to be cheaper than lithium ion.

Whether Form Energy will succeed in their claims at scale is TBD. I hope they do well, because cheaper energy storage is immensely helpful for decarbonization of the grid.

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

#77

Post by tuatoru » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

iseanstevens wrote: post #65

tuatoru wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don’t think functional prototypes have negative value…

The cost of the great number of prototypes that fail to scale far exceeds the value of the few that do go on to be workable technologies.

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

#78

Post by laurencerowe » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:06 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #68

jeffbee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly, I'm so thrilled to find another person that realizes that we have a future of super abundant, cheap energy from renewables. That really makes my day!! 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 curr…

I think every solar installation will end up incorporating storage so they can share the same grid interconnection. But if enough storage is built it will act as a kind of arbitrage smoothing out the pricing peaks and troughs throughout the day.

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

#79

Post by azernik » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #55

coder543 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "100 hours" is not a meaningful number for a battery. It is a meaningful number... in the grid scale energy storage market. It's a term that summarizes many of the complex properties you mentioned. For a given energy storage technology, there is a certain duration that it tends to be most effective at. For traditional lithium ion batteries, that duration is about 4 hours. If you want to use lithium ion storage for…

I’m sorry, that really doesn’t make any sense. There is several missing factors here, and it’s a useless metric. Lithium ion can do ‘100 hours’ as well - based on discharge rate. It can also do 10 minutes - based on discharge rate. 100 hours is literally useless on it’s own because it doesn’t tell you anything concrete. 100 hours….. of what? It looks like a classic science writing article where they left all the impo…

100 hours = (kWh/kg) / (kW/kg) - ie capacity divided by the most cost-effective discharge rate.

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

#80

Post by dylan604 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

iseanstevens wrote: post #69

jeffbee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lead acid are not particularly great as far as DOD (depth of discharge) or longevity. 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.

What about the deep cycle batteries that are designed specifically for full discharge? Or am I believing marketing? I have a couple Optima Blutops that I've built a remote cart off of, but I don't use them nearly as much as the market they are targeted which is fishing boats. Run your pumps, gadgets, and trolling motor all day on the water, then charge them back up over night.