Iron air Battery - Looking like a winner for a grid battery

[peakbagger]

https://www.rechargenews.com/energy...-factory-to-reshape-energy-system/2-1-1379772 Looks like the big hitters are funding a factory to build them. No lithium, no rare elements and cheaper than Lithium chemistry. Also nice that that they are building in West Virginia as that state really needs a helping hand to get decoupled from coal.

Not something for car due to energy density but real nice for storage purposes.

The one caveat is Bill Gates also funded a similar factory to build Aquion a non toxic battery to compete with lead acid and it failed.

 

[begreen]

They are being used out here in Oregon. It's good to see production ramping up. And yes, Bill Gates hopefully won't be the kiss of death. A common joke amongst investment advisors is that the best shorts are with Gates's battery investments.

Some background discussion:

New utility-level storage battery

Form has developed an iron-air battery that they claim will provide power for 100 hrs at a cost of below $20/kWh. It is scheduled to go into real-world trials in 2023 with the production goal of 2025. The battery is much too heavy for cars and trucks, but it could provide the solution necessary...

www.hearth.com

 

[begreen]

Georgia is putting in a 100hr grid backup system by Form Energy. I think there will be many more like this going in.

Form Energy to deploy 100-hour iron-air battery system in Georgia

Georgia Power has more than 850 MW of active energy storage projects under development or in operation across its service territory.

pv-magazine-usa.com

 

[woodgeek]

I find the '100 hour' moniker very concerning re economics.

I assume they are telegraphing that the operation rate of discharge is C/100. I wonder what the charging speed is? At $20/kWh (which I assume is projected at scale, not current prices) you still want to do several thousand cycles to amortize the cost. If I can only do 1 cycle a week, that is several decades.

Right now, the money is on 4 hour systems, or C/4, which seems to be a sweet spot for utility shifting loads from RE generation to user loads. Lithium does C/4 very well. For the same storage capacity, a C/4 system puts out 25X as much power as a C/100 system. Even if it costs 5X as much than the form system ($100/kWh), you are getting up to 25X the cash flow from customers.

I'm going to vote against Bill Gates on this one... true to form.

Ofc, battery tech does evolve, and I hope these folks can make a go of it. And get their C-rates improved.

 

[peakbagger]

I am not so sure, having been on the fringes of the power market on occasion, there are so many unusual types of contracts for power that I gave up trying to understand them all. I had a client with 25 MW turbine that could run on gas or distillate and they made more money letting it sit than running it. It had been in place for more than 20 years and the only time it ran was a twice yearly test. They paid me to come up with a way to get more peak output out of the unit so they could get paid more for not running it.

Frequently these contracts are based on counter hedges on hedges. A former coworker was working on a pumped storage system years ago, the dispatchers were buying and selling power into and out of the system on a minute by minute basis to cover other contracts, yet the hydro had a lot of inertia in it, switch modes too quick, and expensive stuff breaks. Odds are they have a backup in case those minute to minute contracts line up the wrong way.

 

[woodgeek]

I don't have your knowledge, but I still worry.

It is clear that the old/current system has brief periods with very high prices around peak demand. I am sure that creates some weird niches for peak power producers and backups.

But as you said, the payback depends on power output during those brief periods, over a rather small number of cycles.

If my inference that this new battery tech is currently a C/100 technology, that would be a major headwind even if the $/kWh capacity price were significantly lower than lithium.

 

[EbS-P]

I imagine the 100 hours output puts them in a different class and allows them to operate in a different category thus getting higher paying contracts.

What we saw during the Xmas day cold snap was that the market broke down. Many of the standing contracts could not be delivered as there was no extra generating capacity on the grid. Duke had a couple units go down and more derated.

While the 100 hour tag has merit I wonder if they could discharge faster. Like during a two day cold snap.

I wonder if renewables will change the electricity market framework much

 

[begreen]

I'm probably missing something as a layperson, but I would think that the 100 hr capacity would only rarely be tapped. Say after a major hurricane. If so, I'd expect the normal duty cycle to be more like 8-12 hrs. discharge, using just a fraction of capacity, say for nighttime power when solar and/or wind are not generating sufficient capacity. ESS also makes iron oxide battery systems and these appear to be typically rated on an 8-10 hr daily discharge cycles.

 

[EbS-P]

I'm probably missing something as a layperson, but I would think that the 100 hr capacity would only rarely be tapped. Say after a major hurricane. If so, I'd expect the normal duty cycle to be more like 8-12 hrs. discharge, using just a fraction of capacity, say for nighttime power when solar and/or wind are not generating sufficient capacity. ESS also makes iron oxide battery systems and these appear to be typically rated on an 8-10 hr daily discharge cycles.

My guess is that once you have a rated 100 hour on site capacity you are in a different tier of generation more akin to base load. Think how much fuel you would have to store for a diesel or gas plant for 100 hours.

 

[woodgeek]

I'm probably missing something as a layperson, but I would think that the 100 hr capacity would only rarely be tapped. Say after a major hurricane. If so, I'd expect the normal duty cycle to be more like 8-12 hrs. discharge, using just a fraction of capacity, say for nighttime power when solar and/or wind are not generating sufficient capacity. ESS also makes iron oxide battery systems and these appear to be typically rated on an 8-10 hr daily discharge cycles.

But if you have 100hr capacity (and hypothetically) can only tap 10% of it in a typical 10 hour discharge bc of a C/100 limit... then you are not using 90% of your capacity. If the battery cost 10% per kWh of lithium, you don't get to realize those savings, except when you are running it on a more than 10 hour cycle. And it sounds like it is MORE than 10%/kWh of the price of lithium.

And thus we get back to sodium batteries.

 

[joop]

you guys give me a headache.