Battery metals: How quickly can supply ramp up?
A couple of weeks ago, Goldman Sachs sent shockwaves through battery metals markets, issuing a prediction that cobalt and lithium in particular were due for a sharp price decline in the next two years. But London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is loudly pushing back, outlining its reasons why it believes the call on lithium was wrong. Meanwhile, US analyst Wood Mackenzie says that the battery raw material chain will remain tight, but notes that recycling could help to ease the supply deficit.
US grid-scale energy storage quadruples
Grid-scale and residential storage installations have set new records in the United States, despite supply chain concerns and pricing issues.
EV battery can reach 98% charge in less than 10 minutes
Enovix has shown that its US-made silicon anode lithium-ion batteries can charge from 0% to 80% in just five minutes.
Lithium-ion vs. vanadium redox flow storage
UK scientists have compared the performance of lithium-ion storage systems and vanadium redox flow batteries for a modeled 636 kW commercial PV system in southern California. They have found that both technologies, coupled with an oversized PV array, could achieve a levelized cost of electricity of less than $0.22/kWh, while offering a self-sufficiency ratio of 0.95.
Solar-powered offgrid residential unit from Japan
Japan’s Arth has designed an autonomous habitation module that produces water in places without energy and water infrastructure. The company said the residential unit could also be used as an emergency evacuation site.
Japanese solar building up resiliency against curtailment
Mitsubishi and Japanese utility Kyushu Electric Power are teaming up to use more grid-scale storage, in order to reduce financial losses caused by curtailment.
EDF Renewables signs 1 GW of solar, storage contracts in New York
France’s EDF Renewables has won contracts for three large solar and storage projects, with a combined 1 GW of capacity.
General Electric to triple solar, battery production capacity in India
The US multinational will expand the solar and battery energy storage manufacturing capacity at its factory in Tamil Nadu to 9 GW per annum by the end of 2022. The factory manufactures the FlexInverter power conversion solution and the FlexReservoir utility-scale energy storage systems.
Redox flow battery based on ion-sieving sulfonated polymer membranes
UK scientists have designed a new type of aqueous organic redox flow battery based on ion-exchange membranes made of a polymer of intrinsic microporosity. The battery showed a very low-capacity decay rate of 0.0335% per day for 2,100 charge-discharge cycles.
Large scale CO2 battery facility comes online in Italy
Energy Dome built its first pilot facility in the Italian province of Nuoro. It said the battery was performing under the expected standards for both long-duration and round-trip efficiency and that it plans to build another full-scale commercial facility with a capacity of 20 MW/200 MWh by the end of 2023.
