Solid-State Energy Storage News Around the World

Year - 2024

Year - 2023

Year - 2022

Year - 2021

Year - 2020

Year - 2019

Ford has already confirmed that it is finally making an all-electric version of its best-selling F150 pickup truck, but it wasn’t clear when it would be available until now. The automaker says the electric F150 will hit the market ‘before 2022’. [Read more]

From smartphones to laptops, electric vehicles and solar panels, lithium-ion batteries power our world. But the lithium boom appears – on the face of it – to be slowing. Two of the world’s top producers of the metal have seen precipitous drops in profits in the first half of 2019, thanks to China cutting subsidies for electric vehicles and an oversupply of the metal. [Read more]

In the 1967 film “The Graduate,” Mr. McGuire gives young Benjamin Braddock the famous one-word piece of advice, “plastics.” Today he might well say “batteries.” The overall market for battery-based energy storage doubled in 2018 and is expected to do so again in 2019. Sales of home-based systems are growing even faster and actually quadrupled in 2018. Increasingly, homeowners, utilities and state regulators all have begun to see value in using electricity generated by rooftop solar panels in the home rather than shipping it onto the grid. [Read more]

“As wind provides an increasing percentage of capacity in organized markets, however, and battery prices continue to fall, we are seeing more developers speculating that storing wind energy may be viable,” says Finn-Foley. [Read more]

A peek at Wood Mackenzie’s latest outlooks for solar, wind energy storage and carbon emissions. [Read more]

One of the most heated and interesting debates in the energy world today has to do with how far the US can get on carbon-free renewable energy alone. One faction believes that renewables can supply 100 percent of US energy, with sufficient help from cheap energy storage and savvy management of demand. Another faction believes that renewables will ultimately fall short and need assistance from nuclear power and natural gas or biomass with carbon capture and storage. [Read more]

Imagine a moving tower made of huge cement bricks weighing 35 metric tons. The movement of these massive blocks is powered by wind or solar power plants and is a way to store the energy those plants generate. Software controls the movement of the blocks automatically, responding to changes in power availability across an electric grid to charge and discharge the power that’s being generated. [Read more]

"The Vision Fund shares our passion to combat climate change through innovation in energy storage technologies and, with its support as a strategic partner, Energy Vault is well positioned to meet the large and currently unmet demand for sustainable and economical energy storage worldwide," Piconi said. [Read more]

The electric revolution in transportation is as significant as the switch from the horse and buggy to the Model T. In the not-too-distant future -- some project as soon as 2030 -- the majority of new cars on the road will be electric. [Read more]

The falling price of renewable energy has been dominating the headlines, but more dramatic change is happening behind the scenes, where battery storage is disrupting the way utilities provide power. The change is driven not just by cheap renewables and cheap batteries, but by the electronics that link them together, said Mark Ahlstrom, the president of the non-profit Energy Systems Integration Group. [Read more]

Global Solid State Battery Market Forecast 2019-2027

Solid-state battery refers to the battery technology that employs both solid electrolytes and solid electrodes, rather than using the polymer or liquid electrolytes that are found in lithium polymer or lithium-ion batteries. Solid-state battery technology is considered to be an alternative to the Li-ion battery technology. [Read more]

This Is A Game-Changer For Lithium-Ion Batteries

The latest news in the battery space has been about alternatives to lithium-ion technology, which still dominates the space in electronics and cars but is being increasingly challenged from several directions, notably solid-state batteries. Now, a team of researchers has reported they have improved lithium-ion batteries in a way that could discourage some challengers. [Read more]

Ford teases all-electric F-150 pickup truck by pulling a million-pound train

It’s a nifty stunt meant to allay the concerns of the truck-driving public that electric can be “Built Ford Tough” too. Ford has a lot riding on the electric F-150, which will drop around the same time as the company’s forthcoming battery-powered Mustang-inspired crossover. The company has said it will spend $11.5 billion to produce over a dozen electrified models (which includes EVs and hyrbids) by 2022. [Read more]

Development in the mobility technology ecosystem—how can 5G help?

In addition to making the car itself more connected, stakeholders need to build roads and infrastructure capable of supporting the car of the future. We envision a multitude of connected “devices” along the roadside, including cameras to monitor traffic situations, sensors to gauge temperature and driving conditions, temporary roadwork signs, and so on. All these devices will have to communicate—with cars as well as central intelligent traffic-management systems. While some of these devices will have a fiber connection and a reliable power source, many will rely on wireless links and battery power. [Read more]

Mobility’s second great inflection point

Significant improvements in battery technologies and the use of renewables, plus evident regulatory will from many governments to impose regional and global carbon limits, means the likely end of ICE’s technology predominance. That spells new opportunities for those in the energy and metals and mining industries, among others. While government-funded subsidies for EVs are expected to be phased out over time in the United States, Europe, and China, electrification mandates appear here to stay. [Read more]

There's One Metal Worrying Tesla and EV Battery Suppliers

attery producers and electric automakers, including Tesla Inc., are concerned over longer-term supplies of nickel, a key material in their supply chain that’s forecast to fall into deficit, according to an Australian miner that’s held recent talks with the sector. [Read more]

Energy Storage Boom Goes Into Overdrive

Continuously falling battery costs, and rising capacity and usage of clean energy are set to result in booming global stationary energy storage over the next two decades, which will require total investments of as much as US$662 billion. [Read more]

Tesla launches its Megapack, a new massive 3 MWh energy storage product

Megapack significantly reduces the complexity of large-scale battery storage and provides an easy installation and connection process. Each Megapack comes from the factory fully-assembled with up to 3 megawatt hours (MWhs) of storage and 1.5 MW of inverter capacity, building on Powerpack’s engineering with an AC interface and 60% increase in energy density to achieve significant cost and time savings compared to other battery systems and traditional fossil fuel power plants. [Read more]

The long read: The dawn of megastorage

Plummeting costs, industry maturity, and the ever-increasing penetration of global renewables are expanding the use cases for battery storage technology. Over the past year and a half, storage projects are increasing significantly in both scope and capacity. [Read more]

Tesla opens new V3 Supercharger with solar and battery – looks like EV charging station of the future

Tesla has opened a rare new V3 Supercharger station after launching the new generation of its EV charging infrastructure months ago.

It was worth the wait because this new Supercharger station in Las Vegas looks like the electric car charging station of the future with solar and battery power. [Read more]

GE and BlackRock Launch Distributed Solar and Storage Business

General Electric is a big and sprawling company that’s undergone some dramatic reorganizations over the past few years, particularly in its renewable energy, energy storage and grid edge business lines. [Read more]

Coalition of Automakers and Utilities Unveils Transportation Policy ‘Roadmap’

“The climate impact of what we’re talking about would be enormous,” said Natasha Vidangos, vice president of research and analysis at the Alliance to Save Energy. “I think there’s an accelerating appreciation for how important the transportation sector is for us to address the increase in our climate emissions. Making a transportation system function more efficiently is really a great proxy for reducing emissions.” [Read more]

These 3 industries are kickstarting the 3D printing revolution

For oil, gas, and renewable energy, GE and other companies are using 3D printing to cut down on the cost of materials and speed up production times. They are able to print replaceable parts on the spot instead of waiting weeks for new pieces, as noted at the event. [Read more]

MIT researchers develop method to make smaller, safer, and faster lithium-rich ceramic electrolyte

Researchers at MIT have devised a new pulsed laser deposition technique to make thinner lithium electrolytes using less heat, promising faster charging and potentially higher-voltage solid-state lithium ion batteries. The method enables future solid-state battery architectures with more room for cathode volumes by design, and reduces the processing temperature. [Read more]

A major US utility is moving toward 100% clean energy faster than expected

In a broad sense, the shift to renewables is good for such utilities. When they shift from existing fossil fuel plants to new renewable energy, they shift from fuel (coal and natural gas) costs, which they make no money on, to investments in new renewable energy power plants, new batteries to store power and electric car chargers to help electrify the vehicle fleet, and tons of new transmission lines, much of which they can rate-base. [Read more]

New Solar + Battery Price Crushes Fossil Fuels, Buries Nuclear

Los Angeles Power and Water officials have struck a deal on the largest and cheapest solar + battery-storage project in the world, at prices that leave fossil fuels in the dust and may relegate nuclear power to the dustbin. [Read more]

Eversource Wants to Back Up an Entire Rural Town With Batteries Large and Small

Eversource is developing a 25-megawatt/38-megawatt-hour battery in Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, to avoid running new wires through the scenic national seashore there. A 5-megawatt/20-megawatt-hour battery is slated for the island of Martha’s Vineyard, to retire five diesel peakers. Both should enter service by the end of 2020. The utility is also working on storage projects for Connecticut. [Read more]

The Potential for Battery Energy Storage to Provide Peaking Capacity in the United States

Providing peaking capacity could be a significant U.S. market for energy storage. Of particular focus are batteries with 4-hour duration due to rules in several regions along with these batteries’ potential to achieve life-cycle cost parity with combustion turbines compared to longer-duration batteries. However, whether 4-hour energy storage can provide peak capacity depends largely on the shape of electricity demand—and under historical grid conditions, beyond about 28 GW nationally, the ability of 4-hour batteries to provide peak capacity begins to fall. [Read more]

Machine learning collaborations accelerate materials discovery

Whereas artificial neural networks must typically be fed large data sets before they produce useful results, over at the University of Virginia in the US, Prasanna Balachandran employs tools that are not so data-hungry. The aim of his research is to identify, from the vast, multidimensional space of possibilities, the relatively few formulations that yield materials with favourable properties. To explore such a space by trial and error would take much too long, and the mapped regions – corresponding to materials whose properties are known – are a vanishingly small part of the whole. [Read more]

X-ray imaging provides clues to fracture in solid-state batteries

Solid-state batteries—a new battery design that uses all solid components—have gained attention in recent years because of their potential to hold much more energy while simultaneously avoiding the safety challenges of their liquid-based counterparts. [Read more]

Solid State Batteries: The Next Big Thing In Electric Cars

Automakers using solid-state batteries will be able to increase the range of electric cars without having to make battery packs bigger. Solid-state electrolytes are also expected to be nonflammable, unlike current lithium-ion batteries. Tesla, Nissan, and General Motors, have had their share of battery pack fires to deal with. [Read more]

Tesla has a secret lab trying to build its own battery cells to reduce dependence on Panasonic

The company has been "battery-constrained" in the past, CEO Elon Musk acknowledged at the company's annual shareholders meeting earlier in June. That means a lack of batteries limited Tesla's production and sales of electric vehicles and energy storage systems (Powerwalls and Powerpacks). [Read more]

The Price of a Fully Renewable US Grid: $4.5 Trillion

The cost of shifting the U.S. power grid to 100 percent renewable energy over the next 10 years is an estimated $4.5 trillion, according to a new Wood Mackenzie analysis. [Read more]

How much renewable energy does the world use

According to an IEA estimate, we humans produced and used 5.67 × 10^20 joules of energy in 2013, equivalent to about 18.0 terawatt-hour (TWh). One TWh is equivalent to 5 billion barrels of oil per year or 1 billion tons of coal per year, it also used to be the globe’s entire energy consumption in 1890. How far we’ve grown, and how fast. What our fellow Earthlings didn’t know more than a century ago, however, is that you can only get so far burning fossils fuels until 1) they run out and 2) the planetary system collapses under catastrophic climate change. [Read more]

Imec Doubles Energy Density of its Solid-State Batteries

Making the announcement at the European Electric Vehicle Batteries Summit in Berlin this week, Imec said its battery cell has achieved an energy density of 400 Wh/liter at a charging speed of 0.5C (2 hours). The organization's engineering roadmap for solid-state batteries says it will surpass wet Li-ion battery performance and reach 1000Wh/L at 2-3C by 2024. [Read more]

BMW invests in solid-state batteries with ‘2-3X’ energy capacity for next-gen electric cars

Solid-state batteries are thought to be a lot safer than common li-ion cells and could have more potential for higher energy density, but they also have limitations like temperature ranges and electrode current density. Not to mention we have yet to see a company capable of producing them in large-scale and at an attractive price point competitive with li-ion. [Read more]

Tesla will soon have a 400-mile electric car and you don’t need it

Elon Musk announced today that due to steady improvements in battery technology, “it will not be long” before Tesla will have new versions of its electric cars with a range of 400 miles on a single charge. [Read more]

Here's a First Look at Toyota and Subaru's Electric Car Platform of the Future

It was announced this week that Toyota and Subaru will work together on a new electric vehicle platform, one that will combine Subaru’s all-wheel drive expertise with Toyota’s electrification chops. Here’s a quick look at the new “e-TNGA” platform, which Toyota states will underpin future mid-size and large electric passenger vehicles and contribute to the company’s goal of selling 1 million battery-electric and fuel-cell cars by 2025. [Read more]

How much does lithium cost? The industry can't seem to agree

Opaque pricing for lithium, the powerhouse metal fueling the electric vehicle revolution, is expected to be top of mind this week as the industry's leaders gather in Santiago, with calls rising for more transparency to attract much-needed expansion funding. [Read more]

US Energy Storage Market Grows 232% In First Quarter

The United States deployed a total of 148.8 megawatts (MW) of energy storage in the first quarter of 2019, breaking the previous megawatt-record set in the preceding fourth quarter by 6% and growing 232% over the amount deployed in the first quarter of 2018. [Read more]

Electric Vehicles Are Driving Demand For Lithium - With Environmental Consequences

As the world moves towards a low-carbon future, there is a growing range of technological advancements facilitating the transition away from fossil fuels. Transportation and energy production are two sectors that desperately need to reduce emissions, and developments in electric vehicles and battery storage are rapidly changing both markets. Lithium, sometimes referred to as “white petroleum”, is a key component in energy storage and in recent years demand has skyrocketed . This week delegates are gathering in Chile, the country with the world’s biggest lithium reserves, at the 11th Lithium Supply & Markets Conference to discuss the latest advances in the industry. [Read more]

Toyota unveils images of upcoming all-electric cars, accelerates EV plans by 5 years

Toyota announced that it is accelerating its electric vehicle plans by 5 years and partnering with new battery makers to secure supply as it unveiled images of upcoming all-electric cars. [Read more]

Faster, Better, Cheaper — Fraunhofer Dry Film Battery Electrode Process Revealed

Believe it or not, there is a connection between lithium-ion batteries and the manufacture of cassettes. Early li-ion battery cells were made using machinery originally designed for making audio tape. While the technology has been updated over the years, the basic process is still the same. Take a substrate like mylar or aluminum, slather it with a coating — iron oxide in the case of cassettes, an electrolyte paste loaded with solvents in the case of battery cells — wind it up on big spools, cut it to size, and voila, you’re done! [Read more]

The Bull Case for Energy Metals Going into 2019

The rapid emergence of the world’s renewable energy sector is helping set the stage for a commodity boom. While oil has traditionally been the most interesting commodity to investors in the past, the green energy sector is reliant on the unique electrical and physical properties of many different metals to work optimally. [Read more] or [Download the article]Hyundai to Invest US$100 Mil. in All Solid State Battery Startup in U.S. - BusinesskoreaSolid-state batteries will change everything (redsharknews.com)Harley-Davidson is now building custom electric bicycles - ElectrekSolid-state batteries under development with Oxford University-led consortium | E&T Magazine (theiet.org)Sakuú starts 2.5 MWh/y pilot facility for solid-state batteries - Green Car CongressSakuu's 3D printed solid state battery could be a boon for electric vehicles | TechSpotHow to Find Happiness With LiFePO4 (Lithium-Ion) Batteries - Solacity Inc.Sakuu to start pilot line for solid-state batteries - electrive.com