Are These Batteries The Future Of Energy Storage?
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- Опубліковано 11 лют 2025
- Are These Batteries The Future Of Energy Storage? See why hiring doesn’t have to be difficult - when you try ZipRecruiter for free at www.ziprecruit.... There’s a huge number of lithium-ion battery alternatives in the works … so many that it can be hard to keep track of them all. Let’s take a look at 5 next generation battery contenders, if they’re overhyped, and when they might end up in our smartphones, homes, or EVs. What does the future of energy storage look like for us beyond the tried-and-true lithium-ion battery?
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Hey Matt, could you possibly make a video about microturbine generators as energy storage? its like a gas turbine but small, the upside is they can use hydrogen as fuel. i recently came across them , but there's barely any talk about them. thanks!
IMO the nano diamond 'battery' is the most interesting one to watch. Top contenders are the ones that reduce material cost by 2 or 4 orders of magnitude (think silicone, carbon, sulfur, aluminum, sodium, etc - and NOT nickel, cobalt, lithium, etc. ) solid state is promising too...
Other battery enablers include coating technologies (perhaps Kodak has the most IP in this field), and other roll to roll processing and vacuum deposition techs including printing and miniaturized lithography (such as dominated by Intel...), etc. ...
I see you’re really enjoying the puns here today.
I see video like this, and 15 years I buy CALB LFP 9000 cycles at 80 % DOD to 80 % SOH. Who can compete ? USA ? CHIle ? INdia ? Germany ? Russia ? Nobody in the world produces sych cheap battery, and cheap mean, that U sell GWh of capacity.
One important thing missing in this video (and many videos from many sources about energy storage systems) is the *EFFICIENCY*. For instance, some of the grid-scale storage systems are only 30-50% efficient, loosing the rest to heat in some part of the process of charging, storing, or discharging. I think this is a metric that we simply can't ignore, as it has fundamental implications for their long term economic viability, payback time, and appropriate use-cases.
I totally agree with you on the "efficiency" aspect of energy storage.
Efficiency aside, having a use for the waste heat could be a good solution to help reduce power use elsewhere. Having small distribution level battery storage in a city or near a pool and using a cooling loop to heat water for homes and the community.
This is a major benefit of small nuclear, with rated power being around 200MW - 300MW but the heat output which can be used in industrial processes being a massive additional boost.
@@je8277 very true. That I agree should be a part of the efficiency conversation all of the time. I think there are so many missed opportunities for using waste heat - the more conversation the better. I often think of even rooftop solar voltaics as being a huge wasted opportunity for waste heat collection. Even in the most efficient panels,, 60+ percent of the energy is getting lost as heat that could be heating or pre-heating domestic hot water or in-floor heating. Solutions like concentrated solar with heat-pipe transfer to an insulated water collection, or evacuated tube systems with the photovoltaics inside with heat pipes and water heat transfer could make for an absolute ton of additional waste energy recovered and used. Heat pumps could amplify those optimal photovoltaic temperatures to domestic hot water temperatures while still using so much less energy than direct gas or electric heating.
Industrially, of course, there are so many more waste heat options at many different temperature ranges.
Well you could just save the heat and pump it in the battery as electricity
Batteries in general tend to be inefficient. Mainly by the nature of converting one form of energy into another. Something is pretty much always lost. The main advantage to batteries is that they're an investment in the future. On a really sunny day, we couldn't possibly harness ALL of the sunlight falling on the Earth, but the excess gets stored away for later. The more efficient the storage, the better, but at the end of the day, any amount of stored power is huge, because otherwise it would be going to waste doing nothing, and then not end up available at night when the solar panels are no longer generating power.
Think of it like a sink that's constantly running. We can drink from it, but when nobody is drinking, it's just going down the drain, so you grab some water bottles. Even if the water bottle you try to fill doesn't have a big enough opening to collect 100% of the water that's coming out of the faucet, filling that bottle is still water for later, should the faucet stop flowing.
#1 Solid State 4:59
#2 Sodium 6:14
#3 Aluminum-Ion 7:33
#4 Niobium 8:43
#5 Lithium Sulfur 10:21
thx for saving me from wasting more time here
2x speed as well
Solid state.. Glass or ceramic? So they element use is sillicon? Sand?
Lithium Sulfur seems interesting.
Hero
Aluminum Ion and Aluminum Air batteries are still the two I'm most interested in seeing develop. It feels like the wait for new battery types has been one of the longest in technology.
Iam more interested in aluminum ion, lithium sulfur and sulfur ion batteries, lithium sulphur could replace li-ion if they managed to improve charge and discharge rate to be at least on bar with li-ion and sulfur ion would be suitable for grid storage where size wouldn't be a problem i guess but aluminum ion would drastically improve mobile devices performance and battery life and bring more range to EVs while being lighter
Takes 20 years for the FCC to improve new battery technology to be safe for use. There have been new battery technologies approved that end up bring scrapped because they proved to not be effective as originally thought
Understand the fact that you're calling them aluminum ion and lithium ion batteries is very bad and you really don't understand the technology. They are called Lithium polymer because they are lithium ions stuck to a plastic it's kind of sad that no one knows that
@@RekySai Um... Was this reply meant for a different comment?
@@3laarafat625 Lithium Sulfur is 100% going to be the next gen of Li-ion. They basically have been solved in the lab.
My uncle worked on battery technology for Dunlop here in Australia in the 1970s and 80s - it always frustrated him how slowly they made progress due to the relatively primitive materials science they had at the time. Sadly he is no longer with us but I often think about how excited he would be if he could see how things have progressed in the 2000s since NiMH (which is probably more of a nineties thing), then Lithium Ion arrived. Despite some of the challenges the modern world is throwing at us today it is great that there are still things to wonder at.
Sad reality is no matter how much you work or passionate you will leave leaving everything
True, sounds like he was an interesting guy
@@MrDrone-qt6sw In such a scenario, it's better to not consider your work for yourself, but rather a contribution and investment into a future beyond yourself
@@Gogglesofkrome but beyond yourself itself is a concept based on beliefs lol
dunlop like the tire company?
Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the work you do and I really appreciate the fact that you called your channel undecided. I think the world could use more undecided people rather than actively picking at Black or White. Our world is full of Gray. Thanks for all you do.
Yeah, with that undecided nature we would be still living in caves and under the trees. Has Matt's any video's subject came into a product on the shelves? Correct me if I wrong but I dont think so. These kind of videos mostly advertisements for opportunistic groups in the industry. On the other hand I agree with you the world is more colorful and complex than being simple black and white but that doesn't mean that our choice and actions are not binary that comes down to yes and no all with advantages and disadvantages of our choices and actions.
@@Krushx0 you just saw the man build his friggin' house based on tech shown in this channel.
Also, take into account that from lab, to economically viable prototype, to mass production, a lot of steps must be achieved. Current breakthroughs won't be seen at shelves for some years.
Great point, it's like being curious versus being sure.
You appreciate a grift, ha
Even Gender is not binary, go figure…….
I'd love to see more on recycling or environmental impact in general and fire/explosion risks. Safe energy storage is one of my main concerns, next to being able to properly recycle batteries.
As you mentioned, there is no battery to rule them all. A smaller capacity EV battery that can be charged super fast (like the Al-ion at 6C) means more charge cycles on the road but with the same energy demands as a double size 3C battery. Even if that Al-ion battery last half as long as traditional EV batteries but can be recycled properly (and does not cost as much) then this is a great solution for a lot of EVs.
My main thought was what the fire risks for these five were. If they're safer than lithium, that's an added incentive to switch.
Big fan of this comparison type video, would love to see a similar one on grid scale energy storage.
Energy Dome is the only solution for that.
Current batteries are cheap enough to transition all power generation to renewables and storage but new tech like sodium ion batteries will be even better where power per weight is less important. Super cheap and long lasting...
I second that ❤❤❤
Pumped hydro, hydrogen and Sabatier process methane (ideally with captured Co2)
+1
Great video, something to point out on the Lithium Sulfer batteries is the C-Rate comparison. You mention that they "only" have a 0.5C rate, whereas in reality that is basically the same as the Li-ion. A 1C rate at 200WH/KG is the same as a 0.5 C rate of a 400WH/KG battery in terms of power delivery per density. So basically, a 1KG battery in either chemistry could potentially deliver 200 watts over an hour, which to me sounds very promising.
everyday, we see a new battery tech without change, i've been seeing this since 2005
A year ago I swapped out my Lead-Acid for Lithium Iron Phosphate 100 amp batteries in my simple off grid home solar. Manufactured by Chins, (there are others also) they are a HUGE improvement in holding charge and charging speed at a cost very near Lead-Acid. Light weight , compact and available on Amazon. I'm now in off-grid heaven.
I think sodium ion will be a game changer in both grid and home stationary storage. What I have read has them at 30% of the cost of NMC, so figure a powerwall or Generac PWRcell for $5,000 instead of $15,000.
A lot more people could get home storage, including lower income households with subsidies or grants.
They could do this even before installing solar and use them for arbitrage reducing peak demand on the grid.
You wont see those kinds of price reductions for products like powerwall. While the battery is a big chunk of the cost it is only one piece. Just look at a Chevy Bolt $30,000 for 65kwh vs powerwall at $15000 for only 10kwh.
On the other hand grid scale components like Megapack and similar would be significantly impacted by the cost of the primary component.
More like 30% less than NMC. That's 70% of NMC.
@@adon8672 You're thinking of LFP. They are about 65% of the cost of NMC.
Na-ion will be 29% of the cost of NMC, about 1/2 the cost of LFP.
@@cmbakerxx Power wall is over priced and you can buy a server rack battery for 1500 bucks at 5kwh plus and a all in one inverter for 1500 bucks. You are in it for 4500 dollars now, add another battery and you have the same capacity as the powerwall. Now I am not sure what the specs or inverter are on the powerwall as I have given up on keeping up with the overpriced unit. EG4 all in one unit are. You know what let me just copy one of their full systems at or close to the 15k a powerwall cost.
Complete Off-Grid Solar Kit - 13,000W 120/240V Output / 48VDC [20.5kWh EG4-LifePower4 Lithium Powerwall] 48VDC + 11,970 Watts of Solar PV | [KIT-E0002]
Your Price: $15,395.92
I do not think you can go wrong with that, add under 5k to install and set up you are in it for 20k total and if you factor in 2k total electric cost for a year (166 month) you can have a payback of 10 years. With this system lets assume you get an average of 8kwh five times per day for a total of 40 times 365 gives you 14600 times 15 cents per kwh 2190. Now this does not factor in your service charge which is 20 dollars per month and increase of electric prices in the coming years. You could see a return on your investment in a much shorter time as well. Buy used panels and it will reduce your price by a huge amount. Fill out your array to 100% and your return changes. Have you ever wanted to run an extra freezer or run your ac unit a bit cooler. With some of this extra energy you can do that. Also if you really want to increase your savings you can spend just under 2k to buy a EG4 mini split 2 ton unit that offers you a direct solar connection of around 3kwh of solar and works in grid only, solar only or both modes. Meaning that if you bought and installed one of these units say in your garage or shed and put it on solar you could heat and cool it with out it costing you any out of pocket costs per month. how about a chicken barn keeping it warmer or cooler will keep them happy and laying eggs all the time.
@@cmbakerxx Hence why I mentioned the Generac PWRcell. It's one of many options for home storage besides the powerwall.
As for the Bolt, how does it charge off solar when it's parked at work? For homes without solar, how does it power the house during the day in summer when the kids are home during summer break?
The reality is that a lot more people will have home storage before they get their first EV because it will become much more affordable and it will allow people to save money from day one with or without solar, or wind.
Awesome! Made me feel confident that the scenario in 5 years will be vastly different (or at least at the brink of becoming so) with several innovations still to come. Which is something VERY much needed.
For my small off-grid power system, the sodium-ion battery looks promising to me, especially with a potentially lower price tag and environmental footprint than lithium. And with the manufacturer being in Wales where I live, it's double lower footprint with short travel. I hope they are ready soon. My old lead acid batteries are close to dead.
I think lead acid is very under rated for grid or stationary storage. It really depends on how good (advanced) the charger set up is and the depth of discharge, as I'm sure you know. Their simplicity, and ease / low cost of recycling make them very easily one of the best choices.
@@anydaynow01 Lead acid is being now revived for the storage applications with the carbon augmented electrodes. Prices are atrocious, so is the weight, but at least the cycle life and current ratings are there.
These will be manufactured in China like everything else, then hauled to the west with giant diesel and coal burning vehicles. They don't give a damn about any kind of footprint sadly.
Lithium iorn phosphate or lithium titanate oxide may be a good holdover for you that will last until other chemistries mature with a lifespan in the decades
@@noobulon4334 yes, I will be going for a LiFePO4 battery for now. I contacted Faradion about the Na-ion batteries, but was told that they won't be available to the public for a year. Incredibly they sent a personal reply within 10 minutes!
Hey Matt, I think an interesting topic for a video would be the toroidal propellers currently being tested/manufactured at MIT and Sharrow given how they have so many potential applications across so many different markets.
I think they've been overhyped a bit tbh. If you look at the graph comparison they are better, but at peak efficiency, they are only marginally better. The big differences are only under certain conditions and won't make that much difference in real world situations.
Of course, better is better, they just aren't as good as some of the headlines claim.
@@jdmjesus6103 Things can't always be best for everything.
A supercharged v8 race engine is great on a race car but not on a lawn mower nor on a semi truck nor on a forklift, etc.
A new type of vibration fan that was recently presented is great for clean rooms and spaceships, but not for your gaming computer.
An 8k 88" tv is great for a big ass corporation conference room, but not for gaming at home
If that propeller is used specifically for what it can do much better than anything, then is the best solution
Yeah, they're not original. They took the idea from preexisting, already patented boat propeller designs, and independent tests have already shown they give you no significant advantages in air.
@@jdmjesus6103 that's exactly why I think it would make a great topic for the video. Discerning what's unnecessary hype vs. actual science is exactly what this channel is about
@@sudonim7552 then why are they being used in drones?
great stuff, i'm surprised some of these are so close to commercial use, obviously there might be some delays but it really feels like the next couple of years are going to see a lot of exciting stuff..
something like 5 years is really not _that_ long :) also having more options for battery tech will reduce the pressure on any one technology, like we have for lithium today, so that's only a good thing i think
Hi. You touched on the vehicle charging issue briefly. This is one of the big elephants in the room. I'd like to hear some more discussion on the huge infrastructure limitations that apply fairly universally. As an exercise use a low "C" charge rate of 5C (12 minutes) to charge a 60kWh EV battery. Now multiply that by 10 cars at the charging station at once. The power being drawn from the grid is enormous. I've worked in the electrical industry for over 30 years and know there's decades of upgrades ahead of us and we're already way behind. Don't get me wrong. I love EV's. There's a lot of work to be done on the entire electrical chain in addition to battery development. Most of which seems to be getting put in the too hard basket.
Perfect timing Matt! Always doing the research I am too lazy to do! Best science reporter on youtube!
My focus is home energy storage which carries over to EV (eventually your EV will also provide home energy storage for backup power and for arbitrage scenarios). I think the technology with the greatest potential to change the world is the graphene super capacitor (similar to the Superbattery in your video). The technology is already here, but cost is still too high due to the manufacturing processes for graphene, but strides are being made in the right direction. The main advantage is the availability of raw materials (primarily aluminum and carbon), energy to weight ratio, and extremely fast rate of charge (minutes instead of hours). No more slave labor lithium or nickle mines. and recycling is easy. As for cycle life.....the potential is for 100,000 cycles. Only cold fusion will be better.
i agree and i was doing my research on batteries storage and the best option we have is graphene all other battery they're just hoping and they can't accept the fact that they failed specially solid state battery been there since 1994 until now nothing for real just marketing while graphene it's different story they just focusing how they can make it cheap i think in the next 5 years graphene is the future and it will kill it.
It's not technically a sealed battery, but I think vanadium fuel cells (aka flow batteries) are borderline criminally underexplored for grid scale storage, given that they've got far longer cycle lives than lithium based chemistries and their primary disadvantage is weight, not to mention that recycling of the electrolyte, the bit that's scarce in lithium cells, is trivial in vanadium based systems because it's a completely separate liquid that can be just drained off to allow only the fuel cell module to be replaced.
Thank you for the quick overview, Matt and Undecided team!!
In terms of most capable battery systems, I’m interested in learning about the ‘small stationary’ class we could think of as home energy storage, esp when trying to get close to off-grid, where renewable energy can be stored for longer to provide >1-2 days home energy and nearly eliminate intermittency as an issue for powering a home. I haven’t seen much around flow or other non-Li tech batteries for home energy storage. Nearly all of them are (rightly) focussed on business -> industry scale, in part due to space requirements. Looking to see if any flow/plating battery companies are working in the home / small business scale.
Thanks again for your persistent and detailed interest in energy storage!!
Great overview. I've been in the Li-Ion battery industry for over 10 years now. I'm not sure what to think about solid state batteries. They have been "a few years from market" since about 2010. I've started to think of it like nuclear fusion. Also, an interesting thing is electrode specific energy as measured in the laboratory does not translate well to system energy density (volumetric or gravimetric). Many exotic chemistries need extra systems for thermal regulation, electrolyte circulation or a pressurized air vessel. By the time a functional pack is assembled all the energy density gains at the electrode level disappear with these added components. There is no free lunch with physics. I believe we will be seeing NMC, NCA, and LFP chemistries for a lot longer than battery optimists want admit 🙂
Thanks Matt. Always enjoy your videos and hi tech news in general. My favorite is aluminum graphene one. It should be easiest to make, cheapest to produce and 100% recyclable (at least in theory). Almost too perfect to be true.
Could you also look into Exro Technologies and their new type of electric engine for us. Seems to have a great potential to save 5 to 50% of battery power depending on use. Substitutes need for multiple engines in EV or need for a transition. Also it simplifies drive train and reduces cost of EV to manufacture. It also comes with smart electronic coil drive/converter which enables charging EV directly from any electrical source. They also claim that their coil drive can manage Li-ion batteries to charge more efficiently on every cell level prolonging life and making them safer to use.
Looking forward to your next video.
Cheers
The Sodium Battery is by far the winner imo. The raw materials are often byproducts of other chemical processes.
Every week there is a new battery technology that is going to revolutionize the technology for over 20 years... But never comes out...
This is one of them...
Thanks for quick updates, I'm really excited to see what future will unfold.
imo top 3 contender which we'll see soon are Solid state, Aluminum ion battery (for Ev, and smaller electronics), And Sodium batteries (for home/grid purposes).
*"Lithium-ion replacement? Great new battery tech coming soon!"* Sorry, but we've walked past this same tree a dozen times and the thrill is gone. Wake me when lithium-ion has _been_ replaced.
Matt your puns and dad jokes are just flowing today and you worked them in seamlessly. What a presentation.
Great video with clear simple comparisons. It would have been a lot more helpful to see cost if that information was available
👍 Glad you liked it. In some cases costs weren't available (highly speculative), so I opted to just leave it out at this high level view.
I imagine the physical density of these battery types varies as well, so energy/volume might be a good comparison attribute to highlight in addition to energy/mass. Volume matters.
I personally like the concept of the aluminum ion battery quick charging quickly charge an abundant of materials
Good to hear that the arrival dates are almost there, having in mind hearing of these tech several years ago and finding out that it will take like 5 years to reach the market.
or perpetual "10 more years"
Great video, it would be amazing to see the comparison focus on grid scale batteries recap too, like sand battery, brick battery, molten salt battery vs Li-ion
Thank you!!! We needed an update on the "top five" batteries even if it's subjective & changing almost daily. Greatly appreciated! Maybe consider a regular (quarterly maybe?) part of the format?
Great to see improvements.. I would be really interested in all those implementation on grid scale batteries that are already operational or in the phase of executing. These cases would be interesting to pitch to the company I work for to implement them ourselves. (we kinda use a lot of energy.)
Yes, same for the company I work for. Large distribution centres that could have massive solar arrays on them and grid storage which could be charged during off peak times for use during peak periods, it’d save the company money as well as giving the company a backup power source for our data centre during power outages. We could probably also have relatively large wind turbines on some of the same sites.
Hi Matt, when comparing battery technologies, one important metric is energy efficiency (not coulombmetric). Could you include this in the future?
The reason that many salt-water batteries do not make sense is that they have an efficiency of around 30-70% whereas Li-ion can be 95%+. When assessing new startups in battery tech this is probably the first thing I ask (also because it is never in the pitch).
Great video again. Makes me think-what more could a person ask for. My thoughts run 2 directions: First toward EV uses for possible investment purposes and second toward Home Power storage, which is personal to me because of local grid power outages. We live in a new age of inventing/engineering on both micro and macro scale. Please keep up the good work.
Learn to be less dependent on electricity and technology. Carbon Footprint instantly and drastically decreased
Unless you get to zero electricity dependence, battery backup makes sense
You should investigate the Redflow zinc bromide flow battery, mainly for home and industrial applications due to it's size. No loss of capacity over its life, can discharge 100 percent with no issue, can sit at any charge without loss of power, much more than just these qualities
One of my friends recently described to me the idea of "pumped storage hydropower" essentially being a mechanical form of a battery. Although it's not exactly a new concept I had never heard of it before and I thought the simplicity and practicality of it (in regions where it can be done of course since topography is a big factor) was actually really neat.
They built a facility like that in my region back in the late 1980's I am not sure if it is still being used or not because it has been years since I have heard anything about it.
Where I live they could easily do this in many suburban places and run the water down the hills from a tank during the night and then pump it back up during the day from the excess solar being put back into the grid..
The whole state is renewable energy . So we don't use carbon generators its hydro and wind generation for the grid. unless there is a drought
There has been done extensive research about the feasability of this kind of energy storage in Germany / Europe. Basically there are no places in Germany anymore to build such plants.
The concept is not new at all. And yes, the stats are incredibly good! So I guess in the US they already build these plants where they it made sense?
Hi Matt, I work in a building that’s part of the old Kodak "Eastman Park" in Rochester and it’s Huuuuge plus it has processing and infrastructure it sells out to companies.
The ability to place materiel on film and substrate in large quality controlled environment and then roll them up and put in a can is"Eastman Kodak". In fact they had a battery division.
While touring a small part of this old giant called Rochester Silver Works, I was gobsmacked at the ability to receive train cars of spent film and X-ray materials come in and virgin high quality material go out, one of which was silver nitrate . On my walk through I saw a rejected roll of material (large master rolls of film the size of rug rolls at Home Depot) that was from Tesla with copper rectangles (shhhhh). It’s above my pay grade but if there isn’t something brewing here there should be and it would be a sin. The infrastructure and skills are priceless an d dozens of times in my 63 years here-seen the leaders of Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb frozen and unable to see a way not to rest on their upper hand position. If I had an idea for a new type of battery chemistry consisting of a "jelly roll " format, anode,cathode; rolled up and put in a can, this is where I would go.
Love this type of video. Please make them every once in a while to keep us updated!
I'm not sure at what point I realized I wasn't at the Practical Engineering channel. It was actually pretty eerie. Fantastic, fantastic video.
Other metrics that _would be useful_ are *safety* and *cold weather* operation (such as mentioned only for niobium battery).
Lithium ion batteries have issues with runaway thermal effects, leading to fires, and exploding electronics and EV fires when damaged.
This is a very important issue for consumer goods, particularly in EV's where a slight performance loss would be acceptable for increased safety - consider how much of a car's weight and cost is already invested in safety.
And there's the much higher risk of having a car accident damaging the battery pack compared to crushing the battery of a tablet or smartphone. This would also be a concern of military users, as having batteries damaged by battle damage is certain to happen (you don't want a runaway battery fire on a military hybrid engine).
The other issue that particularly concerns EV's is cold weather performance, EV cars just don't do well in sub zero (Celsius) conditions. There's a lot of anecdotal reports of EV range being limited in Canada for example.
So the operating temperature when the battery starts getting degraded performance would be useful for comparisons.
I'd love to see you cover all of them, make it a series. Personally I'm bullish on aluminum-graphene and iron-flow batteries but your spot on about there's no battery that will replace all others. Since GMG's aluminum-graphene batteries are rated at 60c-70c, I think they could be used very successfully at charging stations to prevent sudden grid loading during heavy use and speed-up turnover times. Iron-flow is a great answer to any NIMBY sentiments and has basically no down-sides for its intended role of long duration, stationary power supply and most importantly, it's a product you can buy right now.
For EV's high C rate not only means charge time, but it also strongly impacts how powerful of a EV you get out of a given battery size. It'll mean you don't have to spring for the long range version of a car to get the couple seconds quicker 0-60. C rating is arguably the most important metric provided we have charging infrastructure. It enables super quick charging cars with small batteries that are still powerful. Small batteries means cheaper cars and charging time is probably one of the biggest drivers of range anxiety.
Right. Hearing "6C" for some of these techs is great, but is that sustained or instantaneous? A lot of EVs are hitting 15C for short bursts.
It's unfortunate that Lithium Ion is so expensive and harmful to the earth, but it hits all of the needs, high energy density (for batteries), incredible C rates, and high cycles.
When we see an alternate tech that can beat Li-Ion in those categories, and be cheaper, then we're in business.
Some RC car racers routinely discharge LiPo batteries at a C40 rate and charge them at C6. That is full to empty in 90 seconds and empty to full in 10 minutes.
For thermal reasons, those batteries are thin, so there is a lot of surface area to dissipate heat. Power density is high, but energy density is low.
The most shocking statistic is the incredibly poor cycle life of batteries treated this way. 50 cycles is an aspirational goal.
@@hamjudo I have 120c RC batteries, but they die insanely quick as you said and its more about voltage sag than actually drawing 120c. It would be interesting to see formula E rates as they probably drive the batteries at much higher rates.
Fast 0-60 is a marketing gimmick, fast charge would be nice for road trips but a car can easily charge in the garage overnight when power is cheap, best overall for the grid
@@ThomasBomb45 Logical or not charge time is a huge driver of range anxiety, which in turn drives preference for larger batteries, which drives high EV prices. If you could charge a car in a couple minutes a EV very low range would be much less of a problem even if it came up in day to day driving once in awhile. 100mile range EVs would be much more viable. Also a lot of people live in places without access to overnight charging. Overnight charging doesn't really impact that equation. Imagine a 300 mile $50k EV that takes 30min (2C) or $30k EV with 100 miles range and takes 10 min to charge. In an overnight charge situation they would be the same, but in nearly any other day to day situation the cheaper EV is probably better. For really long trips a bigger battery is still better, but a 200 mile 6C battery will outperform a 300mile 2C battery in terms of Miles per minute of charging at still be cheaper, lighter, etc.
I really appreciate this video and all you do, Matt. So clear! In fact, I've watched dozens of your videos and this is the first time I'm going to request more clarity. Please, when you do a list video, before going into each item, at the end of the intro, say, "The five battery technologies I am reviewing today are" ...
Would also love to see the comparison expanded to include things like environmentally friendly source materials that you mention in other videos, and a full comparison chart either in the video or available for download. And a video segment for each battery type even better.
Just thoughts to make a great channel even better!
I like science/news videos like yours a lot. In my years I saw A LOT groundbreaking concepts for battery, energystorage and powerplants; not only here, but on many channels. Not one single item reached the public so far and I am honest here: I am tired of hearing about the 1000´s lithium-kobalt-iron-airFlow-water-sand-nickel-roboter-Pirates-from-outta-space-battery technologie of the future. It´s cool that people work on solutions, but so far nothing came out of it besides the always-same-feeling videos, I can´t feel hype for there anymore
Same. And I can't nag the feeling that some of these are actual scams. Though for certain some are real. I guess that now, when we're already bottlenecked by the Lithium production, the current batteries price will increase to insane levels, which should allow the other types that haven't reached the economies of scale to finally surface in the consumer market. But I still don't know if it will be this year or in 5 years. The hype always hides or kills good estimations on this regard.
I would say that LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries are the first battery types that are not NMC (lithium nickel-metal-cobalt) that have reached commercial scale and may soon overtake NMC batteries in both stationary storage and EV markets. A few years back, LFP was only a promise of a battery that did not require the toxic heavy metals of NMC (it was just "hype", like the many other technologies mentioned in You Tube videos). So, that is at least one exception to the "all-hype" battery types. I think the second one to hit commercial scale will be sodium-ion batteries for stationary storage, simply because CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer, will be producing it in volume next year.
I second @Excelential in that yes, there’s a lot of hype, but that’s the nature of the beast nowadays. It’s what is needed to get funding to complete the R&D and commercialization of some of these technologies. I take the 50,000 foot view that the various projects researching batteries are all coming up with innovations, and given that humans have really only been focused on improving batteries in any significant way for about 10 years, there are a lot of approaches, or combinations of approaches that will bear fruit.
If there was any real reporting on the state of battery research even in 2010, the number of videos would be small and boring, mostly discussing small improvements to LiOn batteries rather than completely different chemistries. Also, the leaps and bounds in materials science is helping enable this explosion in research, and some of the materials advances have only come about in the last decade at most. For example graphene has only existed since 2004 and volume production is still challenging for this material.
So I understand the frustration and feeling of being deceived, but humanity really does seem to be heading towards a new phase of technological progress, especially with batteries.
A someone working in the field: I kind of have a problem how you compare the new technologies to standard Li-Ion. For Li-Ion you show average values that an existing battery can have/keep all at the same time. For the new technologies you show ranges of values that have been demonstrated but in different cells. For example the solid state cells with very high energy density do not at the same time have the highes lifetime and high current capability.. The high values demonstrated in each subfield are not currently achievable while also having all of the other subfields in place. In individual subfield Li-Ion cells right know can achieve much higher values than depicted here albeit with the trade of in other fields. The new technologies have the same trade off.
Fabulous content. Really appreciate this comparative walk-through of various battery architectures. Of these, I've heard quite promising specs from Lyten's research in Li-S battery cells, which as you mentioned have superb energy density. I've heard Lyten state they see a pathway to 900w/kg and $80/kw, with the kicker being that it's a practically non-flammable chemistry and operates in a -40 to ~160C environment. Obviously if this verifies, and it's commercially scalable, it's a game-changer, and spells the almost immediate demise of any EV transition resistance. But I believe the much larger point is that battery cell R&D is in widespread, full-swing, and we're barely in the first inning. There is much reason to be optimistic.
Lithium-anything has inherent problems... thankfully sodium-sulphur's being worked on too.
Lithium sulfur is still problematic in terms of cycle life, but as time goes on, it is being improved.
The Journal of the Electrochemical Society has a lot of studies in this regard.
@@neutronpcxt372 It's problematic in terms of being LITHIUM. Lithium is expensive and has a lot of geopolitical issues associated with it. Only really worth it for aviation and even then, aluminium-ion should be better (comparable energy density, safer).
Thank you, Matt, for providing this comparison list. It is much appreciated.
I love the breakdown as the number of innovations is mind-boggling and it's hard to imagine what lab innovations are actually going into commercialization. It would be interesting to have some more statistics compared though. Like expected $/KWH, recyclability of the batteries and usage of critical materials as these might have a significant impact on the implementation of these batteries as well (I do understand that it might take too much time and resources to procure those stats though).
Thanks for the great video.
my whole life has been spent with people like you saying the next gen is almost here. We stil have the same energizer and duracells as we did in the 80s.
I am still tickled pink that I have 2kwh of LiPO4 batteries in my little camper van when just a few years ago that would have required at least 8 times the weight using lead acid tech… not to mention the dramatic increase in discharge cycles. But I would totally accept twice the weight in sodium ion tech, especially with a 6C charge and discharge capacity. We truly live in amazing times.
The technological jump we took when we moved from Ni-Cd batteries to Li ion was mind bending by itself from EVs to smartphones, can’t imagine what the future holds when Li is dethroned for real and the new king of battery tech becomes mainstream & how it will modify the ways we live:)
I would love to see the stats from this video on a single table for comparison.
I'm optimistic, but I've been reading similar articles and watching similar videos for literally the past 2 decades. Each was about a new breakthrough in battery technology that was 1-2 years away from large-scale manufacturing.
Appreciate all this work on innovations and showing people a "brighter" future with all the gloom content these days that grabs attention faster... 🙏
Yesterday In the Dutch universities of Delft, There has A revolutionary new discovery for Lithium batteries. The electrons + that go to a sold layer have bin replaced with 5 different Salts. That means that less + electronics get stuck in the sold, and double the capacity.
I'd be interested in a video about the conceptual battery that John Goodenough came up with a few years back. The one that various other physicists believed to be physically impossible.
Are we talking about liquid metal batteries? Thought they're currently being tested
@@ThomasBomb45 The problem with liquid metal (Indium, Gallium, etc...) is that they are EXPENSIVE. We really need to get rid of metals that are more expensive than the current ones...
I heard about a battery using Plutonium waste in microscopic quantities - they allegedly last for up to 15 years. THAT would actually be nice in a smartwatch, smartphone or car. And we would get rid of nuclear waste.
Your intro is one of the most memorable ones i have ever heard! Ty for the interesting videos!
It is so annoying waiting year after year for these to change me to market. I bet in 3 years we will still be waiting.
Ikr? So many videos about awesome break throughs, and world changing technologies, but nothing really seems to happen...
These are all coming soon, any day now, I can feel it, right around the corner, going to be a game changer… soon…
Excellent work.
The comparison with lithium was easy to make sense.
I've been watching this show for a couple of years now, and I have yet to see just one thing you talk about hit the market. Just one thing. This show is FOS!
Uhm... Last week's video is literally just that. Also, solar panels, solar roofs, smart home automation, passive houses, agrivoltaics, mycelium, etc.
@@SunnyNatividad Solar panels and solar roofs have been around for decades, the rest that you mention is vaporware.
@@skunkhammer But, you said just one thing.
@@skunkhammer I didn't know agrivoltaics is vaporware. Thanks for the info.
I haven't yet seen a video or an article by anybody which describes how sodium is extracted from sea-water. Could you please do a video on Na-ion batteries, including how sodium is extracted from the sea - after all, that's why it is a) so cheap, and b) so environmentally friendly
To be honest, I don't really care how much of in improvement these are. If they can't be produced and manufactured in an ethical and environmentally friendly way, there is no chance I'm going to buy them.
OK ready to admit my reasons for watching your videos is 50% informative 50% jokes like the zoom in on the 'to keep your eye on' pun.
I wil be keeping an 'ion' all potential new battery tech. Hard to predict which wil come out on top as one option may be a better solution for 1 niche area but a poor solution for another.
Better not to put all of one's eggs into 1 basket...
Do you put Lithium iron phosphate batteries in the same bucket as Lithium ion? Thanks for the deep dive into other resources.
The nice thing about Al-ion is that it doesn't get as angry at everyone when try to set on fire. Just keep it away from the iron oxide (thermite) and don't powderize it exposing it to more air. It should put itself out.* Not on expert on aluminum, I just haven't heard of it being nearly as ill tempered as lithium.
Awesome.
It’s fun to hear about the other techs that r being worked on. Thank you
Maybe a mix of batteries that hold a lot of energy for low cost but lower cycles and maybe lower C, and batteries with high C and high cycles. For everyday driving, you mostly use the latter while keeping the former charged up to prevent range anxiety.
What about the diamond batteries? You featured these about a year ago, I am personally excited by these because of the benefits they may provide while helping to decrease the waste products we have to contain.
most "new and incredible battery tech" is just vaporware meant for you to invest. There is a new promising battery tech every week.
Man I remember watching videos like this in 2016 about how much better the technology will be in 2020. Hopefully it’s coming soon, I can’t wait for the day I have a phone that charges at 6c and an electric skateboard with 2kwh of battery in a small form factor
Thank you for this roundup video! It's really interesting to compare the different battery technologies with each other. Of the four alternatives in the video, I think aluminium ion batteries are the most intriguing.
I wish you had added cost, charging temp, and your best guess of years to market to the graphic stats for each battery and built out a comparison table as we went along. Then showed it at the end.
i think for use cases, a metric of power per unit of volume would be nice to see along side power per unit of mass
Yes, these are critical metrics.
DO a video on Sodium Ion batteries, how they are made and how they work
How Enovix did not make it on the list is mind blowing. Would love to see it covered as it’s much further along the manufacturing and commercialization cycle.
Thks for informative podcast again and would be nice to see this top 5-10 batteries for larger stationary, non-ev if and when you get a moment.
Matt, I so rarely post that I had to figure out where to type.
That said, I'm a full time investor and specifically an EE and very successful tech investor.
So, IMO, it's extremely hard to accurately value and project battery technologies. I do it all day long, every day. And people should NOT assume anything without a major set of due diligence.
The most important points to ponder.
1. Is it what it says it is. Example, QS is NOT a SSB. It is a hybrid. It uses gel. There is only one true SSB out there that has made it to EV vendor testing and that is Solid Power's 20Ah and 100Ah EV cell.
2. A viable battery must include the following.
A. Safety, B. Performance, C. Cost/Pricing Capability, D. Scaled Manufacturing Capability.
Performance is broken down into charge rates, charge cycles, discharge rates, gravimetric, volumetric density and packaging.
Miss one of the above, and you don't have a viable product. Aggregating all of this is very complex. But to date, only Solid Power, Factorial and Toyota are the players that have "true SSBs" again QS is NOT SSB technology. Now of the 3 only Solid Power is testing at the OEM level for EV cells. Toyota does have a SSB. But it is so expensive to make, that they can't do an EV, so they are rolling it out only in hybrid form, since it take a much smaller battery to power a hybrid. That leaves Factorial and since they have not independently lab tested, you can't be sure of what they say. (Just as QS has never independently tested anything but a single small one layer cell.)
There is much hype and misunderstanding around SSBs. I bet my capital. And I do my DD. So I'd warn anyone, not to accept "aggregated" opinions, because they can be uninformed. There's nothing wrong with being uninformed, as long as you rectify that.
(BTW, the picture of two SSBs that you show at the beginning of the video is (5:00) is from Solid Power . It is the tech holding the 20AH and 2Ah SSBs from the company. So, please while doing research, do not fall into the trap of using the wrong information simply because you saw it somewhere else. Source everything. That's how to be accurate.)
And yes, I was a bit peeved that you showed a Solid Power Battery, and didn't even bring them up.
Battery tech has always been extremely interesting to me. To even think power can be stored, to begin with, is mine blowing. Technology is truly mind-blowing, we've gone from the simple lead acid heavy battery's to super light lithium technology.
I'm partial to the sodium ones. Easy to resource for and especially large scale power storage can
use that, although I'd still prefer potential energy storage above most batteries.
just to highlight another extreme: turnigy graphene panther LiIon packs are available now, and almost exclusively used in drone racing and freestyle. they are big and chunky per capacity, but they are rated for 75c constant discharge current, 150C for up to 10s bursts, and well known for very low voltage sag when pushed to the limits of delivering obscene currents, and to take l LOT of abuse before degrading and puffing up.
definately a battery for few niche niche applications, but darn impressive!!!
Quite cool variety of an NMC battery is an LTO one. Switching graphite anode to effectively a ceramic material you get insane lifetime, temperature range and C-rates...at the cost of significantly lower energy density and lower cell voltage.
Thank you, always way ahead in you giving expert knowledge, so well put it together. Cool video's.
Cheers
A bit of a noob here…thanks for shedding some light Matt. An oversimplification but is there an opportunity to address fresh water resources and energy storage (sodium batteries) with desalination of sea water? Perhaps evaporation capture to lower the desalination energy and cost requirements. Considering 70% of our planet is ocean and the sun has been staring at us since the dawn of time, it seems like an obvious path thoughts?
Sodium is my very favorite!! The fact that you can get it out seawater and have drinkable water as byproduct, makes me dream.
10:11 that's fine though, you don't want to charge as fast as possible with any battery even if it can handle it. Some vehicles can't even handle full power level 3 charging anyway.
Hey! Thanks for the video. I have several topics for an open discussion. But first and foremost, please include sources for the data in video description.
-my main concern is about C-Rates. Solid state electrolytes cannot compete in conductivity with liquid ones, they are always at least 2-3 orders of magnitude lower. Similar argument goes to sodium and Al. Sodium being larger cation have significantly larger solvation sphere, and thus much lower mobility. Al with it's charge is extremaly acidic cation (in HSAB theory) with even larger solvation sphere. Not only it causes mobility hinderance but also thermodynamically it's much harder for this ions to lose solvating molecules before intercalation.
Intresting point, in solid state i think thermodynamics are less vigorous at loosing the coordinatoon sphere before intercalation. (The boundary between active material and electrolyte matrix has surface like properties).
Solid State: feels a little too sci-fi to be viable soon
Sodium: seems good, the lower energy density would be a hinderence for larger and more powerful vehicles but it's low cost is a very good step in the right direction
Aluminium: not one I've actually heard of, but the idea and sustainability aspect is really cool
Niobium: Niobium sounds like a pretty rare and expensive element so I'm unsure about it's viability
Sulpher: yes please, I know it's still a little ways off but the sustainability aspect, availability of materials and energy density are all extremely interesting. Can also be combined with sodium which furthers the cost savings
Other than the super flat discharge curve, LFP batteries are great for all but the most portable of devices. Prismatic cells are already at roughly 170Wh/kg. Not as good as 200+ in most modern NMC cells, but the cycle life and thermal stability more than makes up for it. I made my own solar storage pack using 280Ah prismatics.
Manufacturing and recycling LFP chemistry is also better for the environment from what I've read.
But LFP is tough to manage with that crazy flat curve when it comes to cell balancing and state of charge measurements.
Alternatives for things like stationary storage frees up lithium for EVs so anything is an improvement. If they are also less prone to thermal runaway that would be great for stationary power.
Indeed, and if they can make sodium work, it's a helpful use for the sodium that is a byproduct of desalination plants.
One thing that I wonder about is the ability to hold a charge while sitting on the shelf. IMHO, that is an important aspect for many applications. I would hate to have to charge up a battery every time I wanted to use something.
Thank you fr making this video. You are correct it is too early to tell which of these 5 technologies will capture a significant market share of which battery technology use markets. But it is good to share the possibilities with everyone. Would you please, make a similar video for the 5 most promising long and short utility scale battery storage technologies? and/or What combinations will help balance and meet grid the demands of the grid of the future that will rely on solar, wind, hydro and geothermal?
The sodium and aluminum sound amazing to me. Being able to reduce the environment cost of mining, especially with the sodium battery in mind, seems great.
The way to get around the problem of not having a fast enough grid connection to charge the aluminium battery at 6C is to not charge it direct from the grid. You have a cheap sodium battery charged from the grid at your charging point then you dump that charge into the aluminium battery in the vehicle very quickly. This combination would work great for battery trains where you need to charge very fast at the stations but you can afford to have quite large batteries hidden under the platforms so you don't need a high power grid connection.
Will clickbait finally dispense with the question mark?
Of course not.
Could you recommend any market analyst/experts to follow on the battery issue?
I understand your point that we can use multiple battery technology for different cases but what do you think about recycling? If we'll use 5-10 or more types of batteries how can we recycle all of them if currently even li-ion can't be properly recycled? What do you think about this problem?
Thanks for the video! Sodium-ion battery looks interesting for a home battery application!