Donate to Remove ads

Got a credit card? use our Credit Card & Finance Calculators

Thanks to johnstevens77,Bhoddhisatva,scotia,Anonymous,Cornytiv34, for Donating to support the site

Storage stuff

spiderbill
Lemon Slice
Posts: 543
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 9:12 am
Has thanked: 155 times
Been thanked: 182 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389516

Postby spiderbill » February 24th, 2021, 12:50 pm

Noticed this article on Yahoo from the Independent
Sulfur battery breakthrough could be the future of electric planes, trains, and automobiles, scientists say
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/sulfur-battery-breakthrough-could-future-171015839.html

Anyone with more knowledge care to comment on whether this is a genuine development or something that's too far away to make a difference for a while?

Spiderbill

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389537

Postby dspp » February 24th, 2021, 1:40 pm

spiderbill wrote:Noticed this article on Yahoo from the Independent
Sulfur battery breakthrough could be the future of electric planes, trains, and automobiles, scientists say
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/sulfur-battery-breakthrough-could-future-171015839.html

Anyone with more knowledge care to comment on whether this is a genuine development or something that's too far away to make a difference for a while?

Spiderbill


I've insufficient insight on the proposal itself to comment (though I am always leery of this stuff), but what I can say is that even if it is screaming great news it would be a minimum 5-years from initial deployment.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389591

Postby dspp » February 24th, 2021, 3:39 pm

dspp wrote:
spasmodicus wrote:Hi dspp,

As your previous two posts suggest, the main bottleneck in building EVs and storage more generally is battery supply. As regards raw materials, there is maybe a short to medium term shortage of lithium, due to production constraints rather than shortages of minerals themselves. Consumption of nickel at 110,000 tons from a total world nickel production of about 2.5 million tons/annum would not seem to be a big problem. Cobalt at about 25000 tons/annum from about 140000 tons/annum total production is potentially more significant, especially as much of current production comes from a single country, the (ironically named) DRC.

Regarding battery production itself, the headline below is pretty interesting
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9046779/Electric-car-battery-giant-Britishvolt-plans-float.html
I wonder whether private investors will get a look in, if/when a floatation occurs, cf recent complaints by HL and AJBell that institutional investors get unfair priority.

regards,
S


That's useful & interesting.

Re nickel. Let's assume your 110k/yr is correct (I don't know, seems slightly high on a t/car basis) (but Inote that EVs are currently about 1/3 of global cell consumption, maybe 1/2 - I'm still digging).

Tesla take about 1/3 of EV batteries each year, so say 30,000 tons/yr. They aim to scale from 0.5mln cars/year to 20 mln cars/yr during this decade. So a straightforward pro rata scaling would take Tesla alone to 1.2 mln tons/yr of nickel vs existing supply of 2.5m t/yr. And that is just Tesla, multiply by 3x for all the other car mfg. You can see why Tesla have asked anyone with a) suggestions for increasing supply to step forwards, and b) any suggestions for reducing nickel content in batteries.

Here is the Tesla take of EV batteries, and their suppliers. This by the way ought to give some food for though for those folk wanting to invest in carpetbagging UK cell manufacturing shyster hypester projects,

regards, dspp

Image

and

Image


spasmodicus wrote:Hi dspp,

As your previous two posts suggest, the main bottleneck in building EVs and storage more generally is battery supply. As regards raw materials, there is maybe a short to medium term shortage of lithium, due to production constraints rather than shortages of minerals themselves. Consumption of nickel at 110,000 tons from a total world nickel production of about 2.5 million tons/annum would not seem to be a big problem.


I've briefly dug into the raw material stuff a bit further.

Using the Adamas "State Of Charge" report for 4th Biannual, 2020 H2 https://www.adamasintel.com/reports/ one can calculate the following average raw material use per average BEV battery per kWh,

Per kWh
Lithium (LCE) = 0.62 kg
Nickel = 0.58 kg
Cobalt = 0.14 kg

In 2020 there were 113 GWh of cells deployed into BEV + PHEV, and we know from Adamas that the plain HEV cell consumption is trivial (2% of total). So ignoring the HEVs we can say that all EVs used the following:
113 GWh x 0.58 kg/kWh = 65,540 tonnes nickel in 2020

mm......... something odd going on a Adamas also say "In 2020 H2, 53,150 tonnes of nickel were deployed globally in the batteries of all newly sold passenger EVs combined, an increase of 69% versus the same period the year prior." That Adamas number of 53k tonnes in H2 2020 corresponds well with your number of 110k tonnes in 2020, better than my calculation from the ground up of 65k tonnes. There is something odd going on, but at least it is only a factor of 2x out, not a factor of 10x.

OK then turning to nickel we find 2.7 - 2.5 m tonnes /year is smelted https://www.statista.com/statistics/693 ... -industry/ and most of it goes into steels leaving only 175k tonnes for all batteries (https://www.statista.com/statistics/693 ... -industry/), so probably 100k tonnes into cars, and 65k tonnes into computers and consumer electronics.

Most of the nickel is in the core, leaving scattered deposits https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/nicke ... nformation . The best place to ramp up nickel production seems to be Indonesia, and surprise surprise the Chinese are all over it https://www.reuters.com/article/china-n ... FL4N2HQ40A

So scaling nickel production for car use by 50x to get from 2m BEV/yr to 100m BEV/yr is going to be an interesting challenge.

Hmmmmm .........

Are there any good public reports that break all the various material supply chains down neatly ? My hunch is that the nickel and the cobalt ones will be more of an issue than the lithium one, but I am open to correction on that.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389629

Postby dspp » February 24th, 2021, 4:53 pm

Utility scale battery storage facility going in at Moss Landing, CA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgXnddg ... e=youtu.be

That is a total of 182.5 MW of power and 730 MWh of energy capacity.

(all 256 Tesla Megapacks :) )

regards, dspp

scotview
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 1480
Joined: November 5th, 2016, 9:00 am
Has thanked: 602 times
Been thanked: 911 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389653

Postby scotview » February 24th, 2021, 5:33 pm

Interesting post re the utility scale battery storage, thanks for posting. I'm trying to get an idea what that could supply, so:

Typical home uses say 50 kWh per day.

I make it that 730 MWh would supply 15 thousand homes for one day, in the event of a power cut.

Does that seem correct ?

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389702

Postby dspp » February 24th, 2021, 6:55 pm

scotview wrote:Interesting post re the utility scale battery storage, thanks for posting. I'm trying to get an idea what that could supply, so:

Typical home uses say 50 kWh per day.

I make it that 730 MWh would supply 15 thousand homes for one day, in the event of a power cut.

Does that seem correct ?


Your usage per home numbers seem a bit high to me (but may be OK for USA-ian profligacy) as my house uses 3kWh/day, but nonetheless in the right ballpark for the intermittency use case, but read on.

There are various use cases for storage. My recollection - which may be wrong, my memory is imperfect - is that the Moss Landing use case is not for continuity of supply in the event of an outage from the incoming feeds. Instead my recollection is that the incoming feeds from the out-of-town power stations into this conurbation load are bottlenecked and cannot cope with the peak (early evening) usage. Note Moss Landing is/was fairly close to and within the conurbation area. So the storage is intended to peak-shave the load and thereby avoid the need to add additional HV cables from out-of-town just to carry the peak load for 30-mins every now and then. As someone who currently makes HV grid thingamijigs for a living anything that avoids grid reinforcement is a bad thing, but nonetheless this is a very valid use case. Given the price of real estate in most city centres, and the cost of putting cabling into these areas, and the sheer hassle of getting any HV cable past a nimby-city population, I think that quite a lot of storage will go into this or similar use cases.

As you can see the majority of work is done in the factory environment. What happens on site is minimal - drainage, ducts, gravel, some concrete pads, and hook-em-up ! The risk manager in my project heart would be overjoyed at all the avoided cost over-runs.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389888

Postby dspp » February 25th, 2021, 10:51 am

So we now have three of the top cell manufacturers going for the 4680 in public, racing,
https://equalocean.com/briefing/20210223230026764

LG, Panasonic, TSLA, and that's the ones who are known about.

I wonder how much of the TSLA proprietary IP they have shared with LG and Pana, and on what basis.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#389905

Postby dspp » February 25th, 2021, 11:07 am

gbjbaanb wrote:
spasmodicus wrote:
dspp wrote:
The slightest bit of sunlight getting onto a scrap of solar panel produces a little bit of electricity, as well as the straight heating effect on the dark surface. That electricity then flows through the silicon that is still under the snow and, due to the electrical resistance of the silcon, heats up the other areas of the panel. This in turn melts a bit of snow, further clearing the panel and it all tends to go very fast from that point onwards. The water lubrication, the clean surface, and the angle all generally cause the rest to slide off at some point rather than melt off. This is why, if you fly over a solar array after snowfall, you will so often see the panels themselves are completely clear and stand out like sparkling back diamonds in a white landscape.

regards, dspp


Thanks for putting me right, dspp, I would never have guessed that self clearing effect! One of my colleagues in Houston is staying with his sister in law, while the family home still has no power and a burst pipe as well. :(

regards,
S


However, sand doesn't slide off nearly as well so all those solar power panels bvuilt in places that have lots of sun end up requiring a horde or workers armed with brooms to keep them clear (or robots, in less sandy areas)

In the UK apparently lichen growing all over them is more of a problem.


A video showing how fast a solar roof clears of snow
https://twitter.com/danfonzi/status/1230502356871270400
- dspp

spasmodicus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 259
Joined: November 6th, 2016, 9:35 am
Has thanked: 65 times
Been thanked: 117 times

Re: Storage stuff

#390200

Postby spasmodicus » February 26th, 2021, 11:05 am

dspp wrote:So we now have three of the top cell manufacturers going for the 4680 in public, racing,
https://equalocean.com/briefing/20210223230026764

LG, Panasonic, TSLA, and that's the ones who are known about.

I wonder how much of the TSLA proprietary IP they have shared with LG and Pana, and on what basis.

regards, dspp


I've been taking a closer look at the technology in Tesla's 4680 cell. FIrst, it's a cylindrical cell and 4680 means 46mm diameter by 80mm long, considerably bigger than the cells previously used. This article explains some of the details of its construction

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/just-how-much-breakthrough-teslas-tabless-battery-cell/

Basically, tabless cells acheive a more uniform current distribution across the electrode foils, reducing ohmic losses and eliminating hot spots, leading to higher efficiency, better reliability and enabling larger cells to be used, which also improves energy to weight and volume ratios. Apparently the idea of eliminating tabs is not new, having been used by Energizer and others for some years in primary cells, but is more difficult to implement in mass production than designs having tabs. Obviously, overall reliability is extremely important as a short circuit in a fully charged Li-ion cell is likely to cause a serious fire.

there is more detail about Tesla's cell design in
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/22/everything-you-need-to-know-about-teslas-new-4680-battery-cell/
the bit that caught my attention was that Silicon is used in Tesla’s batteries today, but its physical properties make it a bit of a challenging element to use at higher volumes. “The challenge with silicon is that it expands 4× when charged with lithium,”

Silicon is in this case, I think, a substitute for the graphite normally used in the anode of Li-ion cells.
Further To work around silicon’s rough edges, Tesla perhaps unsurprisingly started with raw silicon. Right off the bat, that lowers the cost of the silicon, and Tesla simply built a new chemistry to complement it. “Stabilize the surface with an elastic ion-conducting polymer coating that’s applied through a very scalable approach,”

This suggests to me that Tesla are very aware of the potential for reducing cost and improving efficiency through better battery chemistry and that they must be working hard on ways to reduce the amount of expensive NIckel and Cobalt used in cell cathodes. Whether this will come soon enough to affect the dynamics of Ni and Co world supply and demand remains to be seen

S

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#390208

Postby dspp » February 26th, 2021, 11:18 am

spasmodicus wrote:
dspp wrote:So we now have three of the top cell manufacturers going for the 4680 in public, racing,
https://equalocean.com/briefing/20210223230026764

LG, Panasonic, TSLA, and that's the ones who are known about.

I wonder how much of the TSLA proprietary IP they have shared with LG and Pana, and on what basis.

regards, dspp


I've been taking a closer look at the technology in Tesla's 4680 cell. FIrst, it's a cylindrical cell and 4680 means 46mm diameter by 80mm long, considerably bigger than the cells previously used. This article explains some of the details of its construction

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/just-how-much-breakthrough-teslas-tabless-battery-cell/

Basically, tabless cells acheive a more uniform current distribution across the electrode foils, reducing ohmic losses and eliminating hot spots, leading to higher efficiency, better reliability and enabling larger cells to be used, which also improves energy to weight and volume ratios. Apparently the idea of eliminating tabs is not new, having been used by Energizer and others for some years in primary cells, but is more difficult to implement in mass production than designs having tabs. Obviously, overall reliability is extremely important as a short circuit in a fully charged Li-ion cell is likely to cause a serious fire.

there is more detail about Tesla's cell design in
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/22/everything-you-need-to-know-about-teslas-new-4680-battery-cell/
the bit that caught my attention was that Silicon is used in Tesla’s batteries today, but its physical properties make it a bit of a challenging element to use at higher volumes. “The challenge with silicon is that it expands 4× when charged with lithium,”

Silicon is in this case, I think, a substitute for the graphite normally used in the anode of Li-ion cells.
Further To work around silicon’s rough edges, Tesla perhaps unsurprisingly started with raw silicon. Right off the bat, that lowers the cost of the silicon, and Tesla simply built a new chemistry to complement it. “Stabilize the surface with an elastic ion-conducting polymer coating that’s applied through a very scalable approach,”

This suggests to me that Tesla are very aware of the potential for reducing cost and improving efficiency through better battery chemistry and that they must be working hard on ways to reduce the amount of expensive NIckel and Cobalt used in cell cathodes. Whether this will come soon enough to affect the dynamics of Ni and Co world supply and demand remains to be seen

S


S,

Have you listened to the Tesla Battery Day presentation (https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/2020shareho ... ic%20below.) and reviewed the slideset (https://tesla-share.thron.com/content/? ... ey=S1dbei4) ?

I think there are other aspects to the 4680 than just the size and the tabless connections. For example I think the secret to the silicon is in the binder which I suspect flexes. And a key aspect is also the dry manufacturing eliminating ovens, capex, and a slow process. And in fact lots of other stuff. If you haven't listened then I suggest you do. If you have I would be interested in your overall thoughts on the implications.

It is not clear to me whether Tesla have licenced all their 4680 technology to LG and Panasonic, or just some of it. Do you have any insight on that ? My tentative thoughts are that Tesla have Kato Rd running at sufficient throughput to build stock for Berlin start in maybe July 2021 as the priority. Unless there is some being set aside for S Plaid, which is unclear at present.

regards, dspp

spasmodicus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 259
Joined: November 6th, 2016, 9:35 am
Has thanked: 65 times
Been thanked: 117 times

Re: Storage stuff

#390267

Postby spasmodicus » February 26th, 2021, 2:13 pm

thanks dspp,

the slides more or less confirm that Tesla's goal to improve the whole manufacturing process includes working on the battery cathodes, as nickel constitutes about 35% of the cost. I think that the implication is that Ni content will eventually be much reduced or eliminated.

However, from an investor perspective, all of this innovation and more is maybe already factored in to the Tesla share price. I wonder what the relative profitability of large scale and household battery storage is relative to EVs. Powerwall prices (discussed above in this thread) would seem to indicate that EVs might actually have lower profitability, given hot competition from other car manufacturers. I suppose it depends on the relative takeup of battery cells for automotive versus bulk storage use. I already have exposure to TSLA through EQGB and other US market trackers. I wonder whether focusing on Ni miners is even worth consdering in view of some of the above. Again, the big miners like Billiton and Norilsk already feature in various index trackers that I hold, but it might be fun to look at smaller nickel stocks on the TSXV etc.

regards,
S

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#390298

Postby dspp » February 26th, 2021, 3:27 pm

spasmodicus wrote:thanks dspp,

the slides more or less confirm that Tesla's goal to improve the whole manufacturing process includes working on the battery cathodes, as nickel constitutes about 35% of the cost. I think that the implication is that Ni content will eventually be much reduced or eliminated.

However, from an investor perspective, all of this innovation and more is maybe already factored in to the Tesla share price. I wonder what the relative profitability of large scale and household battery storage is relative to EVs. Powerwall prices (discussed above in this thread) would seem to indicate that EVs might actually have lower profitability, given hot competition from other car manufacturers. I suppose it depends on the relative takeup of battery cells for automotive versus bulk storage use. I already have exposure to TSLA through EQGB and other US market trackers. I wonder whether focusing on Ni miners is even worth consdering in view of some of the above. Again, the big miners like Billiton and Norilsk already feature in various index trackers that I hold, but it might be fun to look at smaller nickel stocks on the TSXV etc.

regards,
S


S,

0. Glad you've seen the Battery Day stuff now, nice is it not !

1. Agree on nickel, that is why I am not too tempted to go in that end of it. Nor any of the other materials at present. In general I think the miners will struggle to capture value, and that instead the bulk of the value capture will take place at cell manufacturer and/or device OEM level. Increasingly TSLA will be both of the latter. Which is not to say that good miner selections might not be lucrative and maybe I would have thrown the right darts at the right miners .....

2. I'm not sure all the value is factored into TSLA share price. I can make arguments both ways, and given the fluctuations in share price I don't think I am alone in dithering & swithering on that. So for now I am sitting on my hands looking at a portfolio where TSLA has grown to become over 25% of the portfolio. I try not to look really, it is scary. But just topslicing my original stake out of it would make almost no difference to that ......

3. I think that at present even the Tesla storage is so mandraulic and unoptimised that although the first scan suggests >90% gross profit, when you really start to dig into the full costs it reduces to something equivalent to, or less than, the cars. Add in the drag of the Tesla solar and that division struggles to break even. However I can see that the scale is building, that the product set is building, and that the process/install flows are building. I expect that when they get the full value stream in place they will then do a product refresh on the storage itself and then scale massively, and that at that moment they will set the GM% for storage to equal the GM% for auto so that they are indifferent which channel a cell goes down. (I also expect that the GM% on the solar will be far lower, so the division will be lower). I think this is coming towards us and I tentatively suggest it is about 2-years away. In the meantime I think, but am struggling to get good quality data, that TSLA storage is killing its competitors on price, scale, growth%, and GM% which is a sweet spot to be - however given the scarcity of good quality data there is a big error bar on my opinion on this. Have you any good data on this ? ( I have slowly pieced together a pretty good data set on the car side of things, but I am struggling on the storage side of things - and I once worked in that sector !).

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#390514

Postby dspp » February 27th, 2021, 10:28 am

If you look at the first 4 mins of this you get an insight into how far advanced TSLA is, and how big it is thinking, in terms of vertical integration and scale. Both making cells and using them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xh0-sP ... e=youtu.be

regards, dspp

spasmodicus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 259
Joined: November 6th, 2016, 9:35 am
Has thanked: 65 times
Been thanked: 117 times

Re: Storage stuff

#390720

Postby spasmodicus » February 27th, 2021, 8:58 pm

dspp wrote:If you look at the first 4 mins of this you get an insight into how far advanced TSLA is, and how big it is thinking, in terms of vertical integration and scale. Both making cells and using them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xh0-sP ... e=youtu.be

regards, dspp


Yes, these guys mean business. Hugely impressive. On the broader question of how large scale batteries will be used for grid backup, I must confess to complete ignorance of this subject and a bit of googling to try and remedy this didn't really help, e.g.
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/uk-battery-storage-will-be-allowed-to-stack-revenues-in-key-grid-balancing
the article talks about the business model for storage companies to derive revenue by providing stored power on demand to stabilize the UK national grid. It is riddled with opaque terminology like "multiple application stacking" and "Dynamic Containment" with which I am unfamiliar. In search of elucidation, I found another article
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/uks-new-dynamic-containment-auctions-are-twice-as-lucrative-as-other-freque
It outlined how the daily auction winning prices have consolidated on a price of £17/MW/h (US$22.71), representing a net income of nearly £150,000 per MW per year.
Sounds nice, but it really isn't at all clear how battery storage companies make money from those batteries. When they talk about "per MW per year" what do they mean? Obviously, one needs to know both a storage battery's capacity, in MWh, as well as its sustainable power input/output in MW to determines how long it can sustain a given power level. So, the article statement National Grid ESO’s initial requirement stands at 500MW. This is set to increase to 1GW from next year. The reason behind the low levels of participation is the service being challenging to qualify for and deliver, Arenko said. only informs us about the peak power, but not about the storage capacity in MWh, i.e. how many cells Mr Musk has to manufacture to fulfil such a requirement. Or am I missing something?
regards,
S

spasmodicus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 259
Joined: November 6th, 2016, 9:35 am
Has thanked: 65 times
Been thanked: 117 times

Re: Storage stuff

#391455

Postby spasmodicus » March 2nd, 2021, 11:23 am

Who would have thought it? Our old friend, the lead acid battery is back in town! Shurely shome mistake, but no
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-Battery-Tech-Could-Make-Solar-Energy-Storage-Even-Cheaper.html

a bit more detail here
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58f794fe1b10e3798cc36413/t/59a44c452994ca9bf617f764/1503939688354/SiliconJoule.CaseStudy.080217.pdf

the name "Gridtential" is somehow a bit nauseous and doesn't quite have the snappiness of "Tesla" or "SpaceX", but these guys seem to be serious. I remember as a child being fascinated by rechargeable batteries (how sad, I hear you cry) and trying to make my own with bits of lead sheet, offcuts from roof flashings being repaired at our local church and jam jars filled with sulphuric acid. The technology described above seems a bit more technically advanced than that.

Sparkily,
S

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#391484

Postby dspp » March 2nd, 2021, 12:14 pm

spasmodicus wrote:Who would have thought it? Our old friend, the lead acid battery is back in town! Shurely shome mistake, but no
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-Battery-Tech-Could-Make-Solar-Energy-Storage-Even-Cheaper.html

a bit more detail here
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58f794fe1b10e3798cc36413/t/59a44c452994ca9bf617f764/1503939688354/SiliconJoule.CaseStudy.080217.pdf

the name "Gridtential" is somehow a bit nauseous and doesn't quite have the snappiness of "Tesla" or "SpaceX", but these guys seem to be serious. I remember as a child being fascinated by rechargeable batteries (how sad, I hear you cry) and trying to make my own with bits of lead sheet, offcuts from roof flashings being repaired at our local church and jam jars filled with sulphuric acid. The technology described above seems a bit more technically advanced than that.

Sparkily,
S


Who'd have thought that carpetbaggers would try to jump on a bandwagon and flip old burgers for quick bucks ! Buyer beware.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#392312

Postby dspp » March 4th, 2021, 2:57 pm

"Tesla has agreed to buy nickel from a mine in New Caledonia in a move to secure its supply of the battery metal, which its chief executive Elon Musk has called the group’s “biggest concern.” The electric-car maker will become a technical adviser at the Goro mine on the Pacific island and also get long-term supplies of nickel from the project as part of an agreement with the New Caledonian government, according to a person directly familiar with the matter."

https://tradeticker.news/tesla-to-becom ... the%20news.

- dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#392323

Postby dspp » March 4th, 2021, 3:25 pm

The list of 8 freeports in England does not include Bristol / Avonmouth (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55819489). Seems like a clear signal Tesla is not setting up shop in the UK for manufacturing any time soon. Can't think why.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Storage stuff

#394857

Postby dspp » March 12th, 2021, 10:41 am

for those with an interest in rare earths, nickel, etc

https://secure.adamasintel.com/2020-super-recovery

The 2020 Super Recovery: EVs, Battery Metals and Rare Earths
Last year, in the face of the global pandemic, worldwide passenger EV sales increased by 21% year-over-year, translating to a 40% increase in EV battery capacity (in GWh) and a 35% increase in EV motor power (in GW) deployed onto roads over the same period (see Figure 1). In a normal year, this growth would be impressive but in light of all the world experienced in 2020, it is remarkable. ........... This tsunami of demand placed unprecedented strain on global battery and motor material supply chains in the second half of 2020, and especially in the fourth quarter, and has underpinned a surge in prices of lithium, nickel, cobalt, neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, as we will explore.

free, but registration required,
regards, dspp

88V8
Lemon Half
Posts: 5769
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 11:22 am
Has thanked: 4097 times
Been thanked: 2560 times

Re: Storage stuff

#395088

Postby 88V8 » March 12th, 2021, 11:02 pm

dspp wrote:....a 40% increase in EV battery capacity (in GWh)

And regular reports of potential quantum leaps in battery efficiency.
At lab level, at any rate.

Another one:
Through experimentation with a newly created type of material, scientists in Russia have landed on a battery design with a number of promising performance benefits, in particular an ability to offer triple the capacity of today's solutions. The breakthrough comes from replacing the material used for one of the battery's electrodes with hollowed out nanospheres that enable the device to not only hold more charge, but remain stable over an impressive period of time.
https://newatlas.com/energy/hollow-micr ... m-battery/
(original paywalled)

It must be hard for manufacturers and venture capitalists (and govts) to know which of the many quantum leapers to back.

V8


Return to “Oil & Gas & Energy (Sector & Companies)”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests