Yes, Batteries Are Our Future. Here’s Why.

everyone so just a quick update the new thinking book has sold out but there'll be more stock by next week welcome to another cold fusion video one of the most important and fundamental technologies which most people take for granted are batteries without batteries some of the most common technology couldn't exist such as mobile phones laptops electric scooters and even the 12-volt batteries that run the electronics in a regular car in 2019 battery technology is finally starting to move and in this video we'll see how a new industry is emerging from a recent wave of development you are watching told even TV so batteries are thought to have been used for thousands of years with the earliest discoveries being the Baghdad batteries believed to be roughly 2,000 years old however the invention of the battery wasn't recognized until 1800s when Alessandro Volta debuted his zinc copper battery in recent times the battery has become crucial to technological advancement batteries have also allowed aircraft to go electric you can check out my previous video on electric planes if he interested to see how this all works the link will be in the description the main limiting factors from modern batteries are they cost size and storage capacity over the last decade the so-called breakthroughs were announced many times but fell short of their promises that's not to say that they haven't been improvements for example Tesla's battery cost has been cut in half and capacity increased by 60% between 2008 and 2015 it's also reported that between 2012 and 2017 general battery cell prices fell by 70% however despite the progress batteries are often a limiting factor of new technology and by that sentiment they must improve that is easily said but improving the technology is hardest to do particularly in finding appropriate materials one issue with renewable energy is storage electricity can be generated by renewable sources but the production by these sources don't coincide with the electrical demand of the population for example in solar the Sun sets just as the electricity demand increases when people come home from work better batteries will make renewables able to supply more of the electricity demand even if the source isn't live MIT professor Don Sadoway is trying to do just that patenting a battery to run entire neighborhoods the company developing the technology is called Ambree and even has Bill Gates as an investor what separates Ambree batteries from the rest is that it is the only battery where all three active components are in liquid form both the electrodes the terminals are liquid as well as the Molson solution between them as a result the battery has a low cost and a long lifespan Tesla is also aiming to solve the same problem with a neem giant battery storage facility in California is expected to debut in the near future the company has already solved South Australia's blackout issues by installing their battery facilities in under 90 days the Tesla battery pack was a massive success and performed well possessing the ability to supply a hundred megawatts of power in just 140 milliseconds the energy prices for on current demand response services went down 90% in the first 4 months of operation furthermore the state saved 35 million dollars in that same 4 month period the state's premier unveiled the giant battery which is powered by nearby wind farm Australia is a major exporter of coal and is considered one of the world's worst greenhouse gas polluters a freak storm last year caused a statewide blackout highlighting the unreliable supply of electricity the billionaire business tycoon Elon Musk offered to build the battery it's a an exciting development electricity storage has kind of been the holy grail for the whole power business for 200 years now wind and solar produced their electricity when they want not necessarily when we want and so some way of storing the excess that they're producing has been something we've looked for for many years the horns del power reserve or Tesla big battery has been mocked by critics since day one by all means have the world's biggest battery have the world's biggest banana I have the world's biggest prawn like we have on the roadside along the highways around the country but that's not solving the problem the naysayers said it was a waste of money but this big battery is already playing a key role in stabilizing the grid and it's doing so with a speed precision and agility that's never been seen before this is the market operators instruction this is the response of a conventional power station the battery is far swifter and more accurate while undercutting the price big power generators charge for these frequency control services it's basically providing much-needed competition to a very concentrated segment of the electricity market and where fame you had quite pleasantly surprised and would encourage more of this technology into the grid it's coming this is proof that maybe it's time to stop laughing at the concept of batteries powering an electrical grid so it's clear that things suddenly seem to be changing but why what caused all of this to happen surprisingly it all starts with an individual cell small enough to fit in the palm of your hand these are the fundamental building blocks of the massive utility batteries powering cities Elon Musk and his team at Tesla saw a unique business opportunity that opened up due to advancing technology you see all they had to do was build an efficient cheap battery cell and scale it up it goes something like this a single battery cell powers something like a vaporizer a few order of magnitude more cells powers a car a few orders of magnitude above that powers a town and you get the point batteries have only just reached the point to make all of this possible it's such a simple concept but it's changing the world to pull this all off Tesla needs to make a lot of batteries and the gigafactory one of the biggest buildings on earth was built to do it the company is said to be the largest battery maker in the world as battery technologies continue to improve who need drastically less batteries to achieve the same scalable power it's all pretty cool but even more exciting is the fact that these battery projects are coming online all around the world today we've already deployed battery systems in 16 countries around the globe we've got some of the largest systems existing in places like Arizona California Hawaii New York coming online but other places as well the United Kingdom Australia Japan around the world of course battery technology would also mean that electric vehicles could become more commonplace in order to achieve better batteries and v's China has implemented a policy to provide more subsidies to manufacturers of longer range EVs China will subsequently pull back the subsidies on companies that are not producing as long-range batteries as their competitors [Music] currently lithium-ion batteries are the king of battery technology here lithium atoms are stored inside of graphite layers inside a cell the lithium atoms lose and regain electrons providing the electrical output SIL and nano technologies is a company based in California that's trying to get that breakthrough in lithium ion technology they intend to use microscopic silicon particles to store the lithium inside the battery their CEO Jean Berta Kazuki was quoted saying an atom of silicon can store about 20 times more lithium and atoms of carbon essentially it takes fewer atoms to store the lithium so you can have a smaller volume of materials during the same amount of energy in quite many companies and research laboratories are looking into this technology but what says still our part is that they claim to have solved the expansion problem this arises as silicon expands and damages the battery wood leads charged with this hurdle being overcome a new door has been opened the new batteries perform up to 40% better and charge up to nine times as fast because of the reduced thickness of the anode Silla have received 17 million dollars from investors including Samsung and I said to launch their products in 2019 they're able to do this so quickly because they're using existing battery manufacturing techniques and have working sellable batteries already research into aluminium iron batteries have been conducted for several years now it promises to be safer and cheaper than lithium iron lithium ion batteries have a tendency to explode or catch fire if damaged you may recall the samsung galaxy note 7 debacle of 2016 aluminum ion batteries don't react in the same way and can even have a hole drilled into them and still keep running the cost of the battery in comparison to lithium-ion is also much cheaper as aluminium is the third most abundant element taking up 8.1% of the Earth's crust researchers at Stanford and the University of New South Wales have both said that this is promising technology but still is in the early days in terms of development and commercial viability with 3.4 million AV batteries expected to be produced by 2025 what happens to these batteries after we're done with them well in the case of electric cars the batteries have a life of ten years after being taken out from the chassis of the car they can be used for anything from powering car charging stations to storing energy for homes currently there's a joint effort to keep batteries out of landfill here's a chart of where used electric car batteries are being implemented around the world after a decade these batteries raw materials can then be recycled so let's do a recap is there currently battery prices have fallen 70 percent since 2012 and Tesla's battery capacity has increased 60% from 2008 we have a liquid battery is set to power entire neighbourhoods Tesla's utility batteries are already proving practical for off-peak energy storage and solving blackout issues and drastically reducing cost lithium silicon batteries coming later this year that perform 40 percent better and charge much faster and research into aluminium iron batteries intensifying with such considerable demand for batteries the monetary incentive now exists to spawn a new wave of battery development for example Toyota has 233 patents and has invested 14 billion dollars into commercializing a new solar state battery for the early 2020s the company is so serious they're dedicating 200 employees to advancing this technology let's wrap this video up by seeing why this time is different there are countless other projects and types of batteries being developed such as vanadium redox lithium air fluoride ion and the list goes on and herein lies a fundamental truth of the progress of battery technology previous to the last decade there wasn't a strong financial incentive to improve battery technology now that electric cars and better a utility storage are proving to have a definite potential for a viable large-scale market everyone is rushing to create the best tech and sell it it all comes down to the profit in the end we all win 10 years ago people didn't even believe decent electric cars were possible and established car manufacturers weren't taking them seriously until 2018 a battery revolution is coming and this time it's different but for now lithium iron reigned supreme and the demand will not stop even in Western Australia where I live there's a new lithium mining boom caused by this new technological gold rush perhaps the future of the electrical grid will be a combination of renewable energy sources stored in batteries and clean energy as assets age out old power plants old transmission lines and things have to be replaced what we're finding is batteries and large format systems are just a better way to rebuild that structure and substitute in some cases for jobs we did with transmission lines in other cases they substitute for jobs we did with power generators that's more compact that fits in urban areas where we can't build power plants today then it allows our grids to be flexible and take the best advantage of the renewables that that are being built all over we can even begin to imagine what kind of technologies will be enabled by better batteries it will be the first to reach the breakthrough one thing is certain the race is on for me it's been fascinating to watch and track the progress over just the last few years if you want to see more and better advancements including new rapid charges and new concepts like Samsung's graphene battery stick around for the links they'll also be in the description below so thanks for watching guys that was a look at battery technology if you've learned something new feel free to subscribe this has been - go go you've been watching cold fusion cheers guys have a good one [Music]

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 1,144,468

Rating: 4.8741498 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla, Battery technology, Powerwall, Powerpack, Tesla battery

Id: dOn-L6nUS54

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MesterenR]

Lithium silicon batteries are coming later this year. They perform 40% better and charge much faster [up to 9 times faster].

That's going to matter. Too bad we don't have a price yet, but according to the video, they utilize existing production methods, so with luck they will cost about the same as lithium when comparing the capacity.

[u/Blahface50]

So what about graphene super-capacitors? I was hoping that those or carbon schwarzites would eventually replace the need for regular batteries.

Is there a known theoretical maximum energy density to supercapacitors?

[u/Alukrad]

How have we taken care of the disposal of dead batteries? I can imagine it's probably going to be a bigger issue in the upcoming years.