Back in January 2021 I made a video about
a liquid metal battery technology that was being hailed as a potential market disruptor in
the energy storage sector. Unlike many of the other start-up battery technologies that also
claim to be game-changing market disruptors this one did actually appear to be quite an
interesting proposal for large, utility-scale stationary energy storage, and the company that
made it - Ambri Inc based in Massachusetts USA, boasted Bill Gates as their largest investor. So
it looked like all we needed to do was just sit back and wait for the revolution to transform our
electricity grids and accelerate the mass adoption of wind and solar power. We haven't seen much
about Ambri in the mainstream media since then, and 18 months or so further down the road,
quite a few of you good folks out there have been asking me what's happened to the
company and whether the dream of cheap, safe, Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. The
Ambri liquid metal battery was the brainchild of this guy. He's called Donald Sadoway and
he's a charismatic professor of materials chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Sadoway has been working on the technology for more than a decade since setting
up the Liquid Metal Battery Corporation in 2010 using seed money he received from Gates. Since
then the company has overcome setbacks and disappointments that would have deterred lesser
entrepreneurs from carrying on. But Donald and his colleagues were convinced they had something
that could fundamentally work in principle and that could be scaled up if they could just
find the optimum combination of materials and operating parameters. So let's just have a quick
recap on how the liquid metal battery works. Two different elements - antimony, which
melts at about 630 degrees Celsius, and an alloy of calcium which has a melting point
of more than 800 degrees, are combined with a solid electrolyte and put inside a sealed chamber
insulated with a ceramic material. The whole thing is encased in a positively polarized stainless
steel case with a negative terminal at the top. At room temperature the internal elements are all in
their solid states and it's impossible for them to react with each other, which makes the batteries
completely safe for transport. To initially charge up the system the contents are heated to 500
degrees Celsius, at which point the metals and the salt electrolyte become a single molten
mass. Then gravity separates them out according to their density. The antimony sinks. The molten
salt stays in the middle, and the calcium alloy rises to the top. Antimony is much more
electrically negative than the calcium alloy so there's a potential difference, or voltage,
between them. As the battery discharges, the calcium alloy breaks down into calcium ions
and electrons. The ions move down to the antimony layer and the electrons flow out through
an external circuit to do some useful work. The result of the discharge phase is a completely
homogeneous new alloy of antimony and calcium inside the battery with the electrolytes sitting
on the top. After that initial start-up blast of energy to get things going after installation,
the reaction generates its own heat, keeping the battery at optimum working temperature and
eliminating the need for an external heat source. That means everything stays in a molten state,
which eliminates problems like deformation and dendrite formation that electrochemical
batteries tend to suffer from over time. To recharge the system, an electrical current
is passed through the battery to reverse the reaction and place the calcium alloy and the
antimony back in their original positions. Liquid metal batteries need to be worked hard
- ideally being fully charged and discharged twice a day to maintain their constant
high temperature. Under those conditions, Ambri claims an overall end-to-end efficiency of
80 percent and tens of thousands of cycles with negligible degradation or capacity fade. And that
self-maintaining temperature means the batteries will work just as safely and effectively in
very hot or very cold climates around the world. In May 2021 Ambri commenced a project
with a company called Terascale to provide 250 megawatt hours of liquid metal
battery storage for their Energos data centre out in Reno, Nevada at the Tahoe Reno
Industrial Center next to other existing data centres operated by Apple, Google and
Switch and close to Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory. The Energos project will be developed over
10 years and will cover 1497 hectares and include 500 megawatts of renewable power capacity
generated on site and distributed via a microgrid backed up by Ambri's technology. Ambri's chief
commercial officer, Adam Briggs, said "The Ambri systems are particularly well suited for the
project's high desert operations for shifting of its large amounts of renewable solar load
and for its grid system peak shaving capacity." In August 2021 Ambri announced it had secured
144 million dollars worth of funding from a group called Reliance New Energy Solar, with Bill Gates
also chipping in a bit more of his own capital. The money was earmarked for the design and
construction of high-volume manufacturing facilities in the US and around the world to
meet what Ambri sees as a growing demand from grid scale energy storage markets and large
industrial clients. Reliance New Energy Solar plans to work with Ambri to build out a
network of liquid metal battery storage across its facilities to secure a domestic source
of energy for its supply chain. Reliance chairman, Mukesh Ambani, said "Reliance Industries sees
this strategic partnership with Ambri as an important step in its journey of achieving its
decarbonisation goals. Our investment in Ambri is part of our broader plan to develop the
Durubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex, which will be amongst the largest integrated renewable
energy manufacturing facilities in the world and the epicentre of India's green economy movement.
Since then, Ambri has continued the search for new partners. In June 2022 the company secured a
deal with an independent South African renewable energy provider called Earth and Wire. The
contract will see Ambri supply a battery system to serve a 300 megawatt, 1200 megawatt-hour,
combined wind and solar power generation site in the Eastern Cape, which will be the largest
battery energy storage system in South Africa. As demand for energy in South Africa increases
and the publicly owned electricity utility Eskom starts to decommission its coal generation
fleet, Ambri are well placed to support the introduction of renewable energy resources that
can connect effectively and supply consistently into the South African national grid. Ambri will
begin shipping batteries for this project in 2024 with installation completed in 2026. Then in July
2022 Ambri achieved a landmark accreditation when it received certification for UL 1973. which is
the standard for batteries for use in stationary and motive auxiliary power applications. "This
is an important milestone for our company", said David Bradwell, chief technology officer at
Ambri. "It sends a strong and positive message to the market about the safety and resilience of
our battery technology." That was followed by news just this month that Ambri's now using some
of the investment money from Reliance Industries to expand its manufacturing capability at a
new facility in Milford Massachusetts. The new facility, which Ambri is calling its Innovation
Hub, will enable the company to significantly broaden its manufacturing operations to cope with
what looks to be some pretty rapid growth in the size and scope of its operation. The facility has
a footprint of 140,000 square feet, which is more than triple the size of the current manufacturing
facility. That'll allow for a production capacity of 200,000 battery cells per year which Ambri will
start installing into customer systems in 2023. "This exciting new step in commercialization marks
a major moment for our company and its future" said Ambri's Adam Briggs, "expanding our
operations makes it possible for us to continue to innovate and produce with the speed and the scale
needed to deliver quality cutting-edge products that meet the growing demands for safe and
affordable long-duration energy storage." It's all starting to sound a bit like a PR video sponsored
by Ambri themselves isn't it? But you guys did ask for an update so I'm just reporting what's
happened since we last took a look at the company, and in this case it really does look
like there's been some positive progress. And just for full disclosure I've absolutely no
ties to Ambri and no stake in their business, and no, this video is not sponsored by them
either. So, can you sink your retirement funding into Ambri and join Bill Gates and the others as
an investor? Well, apparently not just yet. Ambri isn't available to retail investors right now
because it's not currently traded on the public stock exchange which means only venture capital
funds or other major investors are able to invest. At the time of researching and writing for this
video there haven't been any IPO announcements for Ambri, but with an energy storage market projected
to be worth at least 50 billion dollars by 2030, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the
lure of Wall Street proves impossible for the company to ignore. So what's your view? Do
you think this liquid battery system has a promising future? Maybe you even work at Ambri
and you can give us a bit of additional insight. Either way, as always, the place to leave your
thoughts is in the comments section below. That's it for this week though. A massive thank you,
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