

The search for better ways of storing electricity is hotting up - frrp
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21571117-search-better-ways-storing-electricity-hotting-up-batteries

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dmlorenzetti
The article doesn't mention it, but HNers may be interested to know that a lot
of the materials research behind batteries is done computationally. Numerical
models are used to vet materials for desired properties, before having to
physically test them.

The "Ceder Group" mentioned in the article has a cleverly-chosen name. While
Dr. Ceder runs the group, its name also is an acronym for " _Computational_
and Experimental Design of Emerging materials Research".

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ynniv
The article points out that gasoline has sioux times the energy density of
current batteries, but doesn't also mention that internal combustion engines
are only about half as energy efficient as electric motors. By the time
batteries are five times more energy dense, they will outperform gasoline in
cars.

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redwood
"hotting up" hmm is this correct in British english? I swear I've never heard
this in place of "heating up"

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to3m
As I interpret it, "hotting up" is purely metaphorical, and "heating up" is
usually literal (though not always). You might heat up your cup of tea by
putting it on the stove, for example, but you would hot it up by tipping in
some cocaine, adding a little umbrella, and drinking it from a pyrex glass
covered in glitter.

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redwood
Love the explanation, thanks!

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rwmj
Yet another obscure Economist diagram! I really like the Economist -- indeed,
I'm a subscriber -- but they do need someone like Tufte to give them advice on
making decent understandable diagrams.

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martythemaniak
I don't think it's obscure - it's essentially a phase-shift diagram, which are
very effective when you need to understand how two variables impact a system.

The very best diagrams in Visual Display require you to spend a bit of time
understanding them, but once you do they are highly effective (for example the
train schedule that's on the cover of the book, or the diagram of Napoleon's
invasion)

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EwanToo
Personally I think it's an awful diagram, it'll either confuse or mislead the
vast majority of people who see it.

The "best" is a personal opinion, but I think the best diagrams are ones that
make something that's hard to express in words easy to comprehend. This one
fails massively at that, which is a shame in an otherwise excellent article.

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stcredzero
There's work at University of Nottingham in the UK on using bags of air under
water to store energy as compressed air.

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=UkY2bmBUito>

Now why didn't I think of that? This might be perfect for storing coastal
windpower.

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rorrr
Energy density of that solution must be ridiculously low. It's pretty much
equivalent to raising water to a certain height.

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stcredzero
_> Energy density of that solution must be ridiculously low. It's pretty much
equivalent to raising water to a certain height._

I really hope you aren't representative of the typical HN reader in terms of
evaluation of engineering. That may be true in some pedantic sense, but the
practical economics of this is more like what you get from compressed air. The
pressures you can achieve wouldn't be as large as in steel tanks, but really
large units could be made cheaply and in large numbers. Also, with his
weighting scheme, they could be really cheap to deploy, especially for
offshore wind, where they already have the mooring rights.

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lifeisstillgood
[http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html)

MIT prof. Donald Sadoway here explains his large scale cheap "battery" -
capturing the output of whole power stations if you like.

But that's not why you should watch it. Watch it because it is far and away
the best demonstration for why you need universities, tenure and opinionated
professors.

If you aren't whooping at the end of the talk, you have not spent long enough
in and around academia.

#oldskool

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MikeCapone
I came here to post about Sadoway's grid-scale liquid metal batteries. These,
or others like it, have the potential to be absolutely world-changing, IMO.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am fascinated by the number of "disruptive technologies" That are appearing
on my limited radar - if you know of any others dump them here - we can tidy
them up and may e start a thread - it would be fascinating to see what HN
thinks are disruptive within the next five years

Me:

Military:

\- directed energy weapons. Real life trials of 25kw weapons Have shown
ability to instantly deliver plastic explosive levels of energy (1g PETN ~
1kj). Link this to optical targeting and you have ability to cut the wings off
an entire airforce, stop any human walking a Ross miles of ground and plain
old assassination from a drone.

The US has more aircraft carriers than most of the res of the world. What now?

Transport:

\- driverless car - natch \- electric cars - storage batteries could supply
off line grid level storage too

Energy

\- solar power from desert to city \- grid level storage from LmBC

Medical

Err - need to dig out my notebook but its a start

Thoughts?

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sbirchall
I think one of the most important disruptive technologies I've noticed over
the years is the production of electrostatically controlled nano-valves. This
(in my limited opinion) is on par with the "trick" life got involved with many
billions of years ago when it chanced on lipid bi-layers with embedded protein
gates. It promises a level of material science that is ultimately a phase
transition in complexity for life. With the Nokia/Graphene news recently I am
confidently hopeful that this technology will produce huge advances.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I was thinking of disruptive in 5 years and disruptive in 50. This I assume is
a 50year scale technology?

However, with apologies to Drexler, hasn't nano-technology just failed to
deliver over past twenty years? What makes this trick so different?

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sbirchall
yeah I can dig that, there's a hell of a lead-in for any nano-tech.

I guess this trick is different because it's a process or function - similar
in vein to those used in the nano-tech drug delivery systems. Which, if you
think about it, are very similar (in kind) to viruses in the way they work.
Whereas the nano-valve allows the (directed/conscious/intelligent) production
of controlled environments - which are similar to cellular structures.

When I first read about it I figured it would be jumped on straight away by
the big material science players like Intel or IBM for the production of VERY
highly controlled doping for instance. Which is why I think it could be
accelerated in it's development in comparison to other nano-tech. But I'm no
expert in this area. I'm just interested in the intersection between
technological solutions and biological solutions and nano-tech is a big ping
on my radar in that respect.

To me it represents a phase-transition in the development of life. First we
had utilisation of latent energy, self replication, environmental
stabilisation (cellular), multi-cellular structure, agent based systems,
environmental stabilisation (social), meta-agency ("knowledge" and "culture")
and now meta-matter. But as I say, this is not the considered analysis of an
expert, just something I find intriguing. In my wildest dreams this new phase
will attain stability and the descendents will look back on our current phase
like we now do with mitochondria. (Suffice to say I'm a fan of "Deep Time").

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nextparadigms
This is what I like about the world focusing more and more on renewable
energy. You get more billions of dollars being invested in the technologies to
make them better and cheaper, and you get more scientists focusing on the
problems, and coming up with more and more unique ways to solve the problems.

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frankus
I'm surprised they don't mention vanadium, with its 5 oxidation states. It's
already used in commercially-available flow batteries for grid energy storage
([http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-largest-
vanad...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-largest-vanadium-
flow-battery-goes-online-in-usa-149083905.html)).

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Qantourisc
We can easily produce enough energy, it's storing enough for a month that is
the issue !

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jessriedel
The US prices listed on that diagram are at the pump (i.e. they include
taxes). If that diagram is accurate, why isn't Europe, where typical pump
prices reliably exceed $8/gallon, already running on hybrid cars?

