“We’ve completed the science, what’s left to do is scale up from lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants."<p>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
<i>Wiley said that a 300MW “pilot” project for Minnesota-based Great River Energy will be commissioned in 2023.</i><p><i>That project, announced in May last year, was originally due to be a 1MW/150MWh demonstration plant capable of outputting 1MW for 150 hours straight.</i><p>If the energy had gone up 300x from the originally announced pilot project the same way the power did, this would be a <i>huge</i> storage project boasting 45,000 MWh of storage capacity. It would surpass big pumped storage projects like the Bath County station (capacity: 24,000 MWh):<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...</a><p>But this news article doesn't highlight any superlatives like that.<p>Reading between the lines, here's what I think has changed:<p>- The original announcement of a 1MW/150MWh project was an implicit admission that their battery could not charge or discharge quickly. It took nearly a week to fully charge/discharge. At the time they put a positive spin on it by emphasizing "long duration." That's not really an advantage, though. You can just discharge a high-rate-capable battery slower for long duration applications.<p>- Since this updated pilot project announcement touts more power and leaves any <i>energy</i> increase unspecified, I think that they found a way to increase the charge/discharge rate for their chemistry. That would be good because it would mean that the chemistry is suited for grid tied storage in general, more like lithium ion. If it can charge and discharge at high C-rates and it has lower lifetime cycle cost per megawatt hour than lithium ion batteries, it could be very successful.<p>EDIT: new user "tiddelypom" below says that he works at Form Energy and that this article is incorrect about the project size:<p><i>Not sure where that article got the 300MW number, the GRE project is on track for the original size.</i><p>If that is the case, my remarks about the limitations of batteries with low C-rates still apply. But my speculation that the company has drastically improved the C-rate of its chemistry would be incorrect.
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...<p>[1] <a href="https://newatlas.com/energy/bavarian-brewery-carbon-free-renewable-iron-fuel/" rel="nofollow">https://newatlas.com/energy/bavarian-brewery-carbon-free-ren...</a>
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). <a href="https://jobs.lever.co/formenergy" rel="nofollow">https://jobs.lever.co/formenergy</a>
Let's just assume this works as advertise, at less than 1/10th the cost of lithium-ion. And we can scale it to practically infinity. And available by 2023.<p>What is left missing in the big picture for 100% clean, and renewable energy? As far as I can tell, Solar and Wind has already achieved cost/Wh lowered than all other form of energy and has a decent roadmap to further drive down the cost by another 50 - 60%.<p>Or are there some other puzzles we dont know? Or if Iron Battery works, and this will be "it" ?
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...
My biggest concern is round trip efficiency, as other iron chemistries are only around 50%, which severely limits arbitrage opportunities:<p><a href="https://www.alexhsain.org/blog/ironair" rel="nofollow">https://www.alexhsain.org/blog/ironair</a><p>This could be super useful for all sorts of backup situations, from homes to data centers to hospitals.<p>And once they are installed generally, they can be combined together as a virtual power plant and start partially paying for themselves.
A little annoying they don’t mention cost per kWh, just “1/10th of lithium ion” which could mean almost anything. If you say lithium ion costs $1000/kWh (not far from short-lived grid lithium ion or residential), then maybe they’re $100/kWh. Or perhaps they’re using $125/kWh and they’re really $12.50/kWh.<p>Also, working for 150 hours is no great feat. Just means they undersized the inverter and power electronics. If you did that with lithium ion, you’d also have much lower cost per kWh (for small systems with only an hour or two, the inverter could be half the cost or more), so going to 150 hours would also reduce costs by a lot as you’d be closer to the raw cell price.<p>I suspect that unless there’s a chemical reason why they have to discharge over many days, any real system is likely to be more like 12-24 hours as you’d be wasting the usefulness of the battery by picking an impractically small inverter.<p>Here’s hoping it’s actually a huge cell cost reduction while keeping decent round trip efficiency and cycle life.
More information in this article: <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9814873/Scientists-develop-iron-air-battery-stores-electricity-days.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9814873/Scie...</a>
Hydrogen-air batteries already exist and work extremely well. I think we are approaching the end of people seriously trying to make a new novel type of metal-air battery. Stuff like these are probably the last of its kind.<p>BTW, hydrogen-air battery = hydrogen fuel cell, if you didn't realize that.
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.
Enovix now has a 100% silicon anode battery in actual production. Looks like they will win the race. Former IBM / FormFactor probe card guys. Factory in Fremont California. From last week: <a href="https://vimeo.com/575951266" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/575951266</a>
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?<p>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.
This battery can be used continuously over a multi-day period and will enable a reliable, secure, and fully renewable electric grid year-round,” said Form Energy.<p>Or as Greg Lydkovsky, global head of R&D at steel giant ArcelorMittal — Form Energy’s latest investor — put it, the technology “holds exciting potential to overcome the intermittent supply of renewable energy”.<p>Form Energy president and chief operating officer Ted Wiley said: “We’ve completed the science, what’s left to do is scale up from lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants.<p>“[At full production], the modules will produce electricity for one-tenth the cost of any technology available today for grid storage.”<p>The battery is said to work through “reversible oxidation of iron”. In discharge mode, thousands of tiny iron pellets are exposed to the air, which makes them rust (ie, the iron turning to iron oxide). When the system is charged with an electric current, the oxygen in the rust is removed, and it reverts back to iron.<p>Wiley said that a 300MW “pilot” project for Minnesota-based Great River Energy will be commissioned in 2023.
Why would it? The culture on the west coast does not understand consent. The believe everyone is opted into to having their stuff shared, sold, and spread around by default, not the other way around.