India's Big Bet on Sodium Ion Batteries

in january 2022 reliance new energy solar limited a subsidiary of india's biggest private enterprise purchased the company called varadian limited for about 100 million british pounds varadian is a technology pioneer in the sodium ion battery space these batteries have had a higher profile recently due to sustainability concerns around lithium-ion batteries i've previously done a video about sodium ion batteries in this follow-up video let's take a look at this purchase and what it says about this tantalizing technology but first gosh another newsletter ad i'll make it quick i'm putting more time and effort into new content for the newsletter including my exploration of taiwan's startup space i think it's cool and worth checking out the link is in the video description below i try to put one out every week maybe two alright back to the show varadian was founded in 2010 by dr jerry barker dr chris wright and ashwin kumaswami they founded the company with the goal of bending the cost curve on large lithium-ion batteries for energy storage and ev cars he observed not incorrectly that rare materials like lithium were adding significant costs to new energy adoption in 2012 an unnamed energy multinational invested a seed stake then in 2014 danish catalyst company haldor topsoi bought 18 of varadian in a series a haldor also received the right to manufacture and sell cathode materials for sodium ion batteries it had seemed like varadian thought that haldor could have provided essential manufacturing scale expertise and heft then ceo chris wright said the relationship with haldor provides us with a fast track route to bring our proprietary materials to market in commercial quantities it will enable the future users of our technology to secure high quality materials in commercial volumes at competitive prices how door kept their stake until reliance bought varadian eight years later but i was not able to dig up any additional information about the company being able to achieve its commercialization goals in partnership with haldor three years later mercia asset management a fund that provides small rounds to uk companies led another capital infusion with a series b round with this varadian raised in total about 3.2 million pounds co-founder azwin kumara swami works as a venture capitalist at mercia so i reckon that he provided that connection the stake murcia sold to reliance was worth 19.4 million pounds so i reckon that a 5 to 6 times return is not too bad as mentioned i did a whole technical deep dive video about sodium ion batteries in the summer of 2021. i recommend that you watch it because i have little else to add sodium ion batteries are very similar to lithium-ion batteries they have a cathode an anode a porous separator between the two and an electrolyte the primary difference are the compounds in these components batteries compete in the market on the basis of three criteria safety obviously cost defined usually in dollars per kilowatt hour and performance like cycle life energy density power density and so on to summarize sodium ion battery ingredients are conceptually cheaper than that for lithium-ion batteries this is because sodium is the sixth most common element on earth one thousand times more abundant than lithium we have a practically infinite supply of it generally material costs are quoted to be thirty percent cheaper at the cell level a sodium ion battery appears to also be safer and less toxic most importantly the ability to store sodium ion batteries under a condition known as 0 volt storage lithium ion batteries on the other hand have to be transported at a finite charge state usually 30 percent however this comes at a cost that is fundamentally unavoidable sodium ion batteries are less energy dense than lithium ion batteries a function of the element being heavier than lithium varadion's latest offerings are at 160 watt hours per kilogram with a pathway towards 200 or more to compare good lithium-ion batteries that are available for sale on the shelf today can offer 250 watt hours per kilogram specialist batteries can do even higher with 300 and advanced chemistries can go yet further up to 400. this does seem to be an issue with regards to commercializing the product we will talk more about it later but there is a lot of potential here dr barker noted that when veradian was founded in 2010 the company had basically no competition in the sodium ion battery space but interest has grown and a variety of companies has since then emerged they include hyna battery technology a corporate spin-off from the chinese academy of sciences tiamat a french corporate spin-off from a government-funded research center they were one of the first companies to develop a sodium ion battery in a traditional form factor aquion energy which is now bankrupt this had been an american startup based in pennsylvania nature and energy a spinoff from stanford university in the united states altruise a b a spinoff from sweden base uppsala university and of course there is cadal the 800-pound gorilla in the industry they demonstrated their sodium ion battery technology in mid-2021 with plans for manufacture in 2023 the space has also seen an immense amount of patenting activity indicating widespread industrial interest in this post-lithium technology this leads then to a very big question about commercialization sony pioneered a lithium-ion battery in 1991 and sales immediately took off at double-digit growth rates it took just six years for lithium to win the market from traditional chemistries like nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride in 2015 ferradian said in a guardian article that they were able to produce material which outperformed lithium-ion phosphate which has until recently been the workhorse in automotive batteries so the materials to make sodium ion batteries are apparently 30 percent cheaper than lithium ion and the battery's material and safety benefits were apparent from the very start so why hasn't sodium ion taken off yet early on ferradium seems to have examined the possibility of getting their technology into cars by 2015 they had scaled up some manufacturing and demonstrated a 400 watt hour battery for an e-bike application but the energy density shortfall was one of two really big issues there's another one which we will talk about later as i said before off the shelf lithium ion offers 250 watt hours per kilogram and even that is deemed insufficient for evs it was never said allowed but sodium was simply uncompetitive there are other mobility applications forklifts telecoms scooters and so on but cars were out furthermore the same 2015 article has varadians saying that the product development process can take eight years from when the deal is done to the vehicles going on sale too long a cycle for a small vc funded entity this caused them to turn their focus to energy storage units either for the home or the larger grid in april 2020 vradian signed a joint venture deal with the privately owned agribusiness icm australia to offer energy storage systems for households in australia the products seem to be geared towards providing energy for home solar installations ceo james quinn mentioned shortly thereafter in the news that the company was targeting the indian and australian markets at the same time of their icm australia joint venture varadian partnered with a company called ipl tech they also mentioned they would examine doing their manufacturing in india where faradian's product focus for the australian market was energy storage for india it seems like they were targeting ev mobility technologies it's a bit strange considering the history but it is in line with the indian government's target of 30 ev adoption by 2030 ipl tech seems to be developing heavy electric vehicles for the indian market founded in 2018 they launched the rhino 5536 a year later which they called to be india's first electric truck the indian truck market is indeed very large but appears that the deal did not quite work as expected they did try to use sodium ion for their trucks but had unquote mixed success per a later story ipl tech eventually decided to use traditional lithium-ion batteries for their rhino trucks disappointing but it's all right the publicity from the two deals seemed to have attracted a lot of attention with dr barker saying on his personal blog that varadian received 120 requests for partnership perhaps one of those companies was reliance like i said varadian's real sweet spot was probably in stationary energy storage rather than ev but going after this market presented real risks for a small british company to undertake dr barker said that the biggest issue to scaling up had to do with taking it from the prototype to full manufacturing in a 2021 parliament meeting he said right now one of the challenges that we have is that we as a uk company prefer to do this in the uk but all our larger format cells are put into demonstration units in china our biggest problem is that we would prefer to do it in the uk somewhere but there is not the infrastructure so we are forced to do it quite a long way away which does not make it easy to coordinate the work manufacturing capital and execution is a big problem especially in the super dynamic advanced battery market the story of the aforementioned aquion energy serves as a stark warning founded in 2008 by a carnegie mellon professor aquion had their own sodium ion battery technology which they marketed as being made from cheap non-toxic and abundant materials this battery would be safe to make and transport while lasting many charge slash discharge cycles the technology was mentioned as one of popular science magazine's best of what's new in 2014 mit technology review ranked it number five on their top 50 smartest companies same has faradian aquion targeted the large-scale energy grid application market which requires a lot of capital in total the company seems to have raised nearly 200 million dollars of capital from investors kleiner perkins bill gates the corporate venture arm of royal dutch shell and others they raised 91 million dollars in 2014 alone over two rounds with that money they set up a 350 000 square foot manufacturing facility in pennsylvania they tried to scale up and find customers for their energy grid solutions despite some success they ended up filing for bankruptcy the company was eventually acquired by a chinese company it re-emerged that all production was moved to china this is super disappointing considering the company got a 5 million dollar grant from the department of energy in 2010 and 16.6 million dollars in grants from the pennsylvania department of community and economic development so now comes the second big issue with sodium ion commercialization lithium-ion batteries for all their sustainability issues are cheap and getting cheaper it is very difficult to compete against the big lithium-ion manufacturers raw materials are just a fraction of their overall cost and sodium ion sustainability advantage is not factored into the final price scale government incentives and manufacturing savvy annihilated the market in 2012 acquion targeted manufacturing costs of 300 per kilowatt hour of capacity but lithium ion reached that number in 2016 and kept going as of now lithium-ion battery prices threatened to breach one hundred dollars per kilowatt hour of capacity hundreds of millions still could not have kept aqueon competitive the market is just too fierce and varadian would be joking if they think they can scale up to match kadel lg energy solution and others without a rich friend of their own so i guess they went out and found one reliance new energy solar is in the midst of a technology shopping spree reliance industries traditionally an oil and petrochemical giant recently founded the subsidiary in 2021 they have moved fast since its founding reliance new energy has made six transactions with the goal of acquiring an integrated end-to-end value chain i don't even think they have a logo yet reliance has set a target of several gigafactories within india by 2024 an integrated solar photovoltaic module factory for the production of solar panels an advanced energy storage battery factory an electrolyzer factory for the production of green hydrogen and a fuel cell factory and by 2030 the company hopes to have 100 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity in line with the indian government's goal for 450 gigawatts of renewable capacity these transactions include singapore-based rec solar holdings and germany-based nex-wave for the ip and manufacturing know-how surrounding solar cells modules and panels and investments in sterling and wilson and denmark-based steisdel for supply chain management and maintenance as well as technology expertise the faradian acquisition gives reliance new energy access to a distinct battery storage technology for its planned solar farms one that sidesteps the heavily patented lithium-ion space and the acquisition helps cash out all the workers who stuck with varadian for 10 long years well at least the founders with a chunk of that 100 million pounds they might even be able to buy a house in london now reliance will begin to invest now on commercialization and manufacturing of sodium ion batteries for the planned energy storage solution they have allocated some 25 million pounds as growth capital to start before moving on with the conclusion i want to thank an asionometry viewer for recommending this topic i love taking topic suggestions so feel free to email me varadian's issues exhibit a persistent problem with the united kingdom technology industry they're good at the pure sciences and fundamental research but have problems commercializing and capitalizing on those discoveries for several years the company went from door to door trying to find someone to put money behind their technology but has steve jobs famously once said they were a feature not a product they needed to be put into a larger system to really work out the kinks and get competitive being the end-to-end ecosystem within reliance new energy will help them maximize the uses of this unique technology hopefully reliance is able to pull it off alright everyone that's it for tonight thanks for watching subscribe to the channel sign up for the newsletter and i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Asianometry

Views: 272,114

Keywords:

Id: W2PmRT3akGk

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Orwellisright]

Ambani also bought a startup which is UK based. They have lots of patents I guess