Rust to the Rescue: Are rust batteries the missing link? - 262

You have probably heard this, “Sure, renewable energy is the least expensive way to produce electricity, but what do you do when the sun doesn’t shine, or the wind isn’t blowing?”

The reply was, “The wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun is shining somewhere.” So, to make our grid function, we need to interconnect regions with massive solar and wind resources through high-voltage direct current lines (HVDC) to energy users. In effect, sunny and windy areas would become our power plants. But even with an ambitious and successful HVDC interlocked grid, we would need some natural gas-fired quick-start power stations to cover the intermittent loss of solar or wind. Plus, putting up new HVDC lines takes decades.

If only scientists could create an inexpensive means of storing energy. This is considered the best fix. When operating, wind and solar produce large amounts of electrical energy, but what do you do with the excess? Engineers have built mechanical devices that lift weights with the surplus generated solar or wind power (gravity storage). Later if the wind or sun is insufficient, the weights can be lowered to drive a generator. Another storage technology uses excess energy to break the water molecule apart into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Later these can be rejoined to produce energy by burning or via a fuel cell. The most common means of storing energy is pumping water uphill to a reservoir, storing it to be released later to run downhill to drive turbine generators. All these work, but it is costly.

The best solution is a cheap, powerful battery. We have one already, maybe two. I heard of iron-air batteries as a potential storage system a few years ago. They seemed feasible, but many ideas never pan out. Getting any concept up and running is an incredible challenge. First, someone must imagine them. Then scientists must prove them feasible in the lab. Subsequently, engineers must build demonstration batteries and troubleshoot them under real-life conditions. The new battery assembly plant can be constructed if those stages are successful. After this, large-scale deployments are undertaken. Each step mentioned is expensive. You need large-scale venture capital from the beginning through deployment.

Flow Energy, a new high-tech battery company, is already deploying long-duration energy storage batteries for Xcel Energy. They have the right mix of people with skills in science and economics to make things happen.

The original five men who started the company are all experienced experts in the fields needed to win.  The technology was created and tested at MIT. The funding for each step has had different contributors. Initial funding often comes via the DOE’s ARPA-E program.  The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E awardees are unique because they are developing entirely new ways to generate, store, and use energy.

When the initial concept for rust batteries was proven, venture capital Investors contributed millions to the program. These initial investors include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and the iron and steel colossus ArcelorMittal.

This has all come together in an amazingly short period of time. When you look back at Lithium-Ion batteries, it took 20 years to ramp up demand and production. While the potential of Iron-air batteries has been recognized for years, the technology must be conclusive. Form Energy created, tested, and successfully marketed the new grid backup battery in just six years.

The iron-air battery works with steel, in a water-based electrolyte solution the steel is bathed in a stream of air passing through a membrane. Not surprising to anyone in the UP; it rusts. The rusting creates electricity. In reverse, if you apply electricity to the battery the steel “unrusts”.

Flow says if the wind and solar arrays linked to their batteries cannot produce power, their batteries will supply power for over four days (100 hours). Their long-duration batteries cost one-tenth that of Lithium-ion batteries.

Coal, Oil, and Gas have been dominant only because we have subsidized the fossil fuel industry with billions of dollars while ignoring the health issues of burning fossil fuels. We were fooled into thinking excessive carbon dioxide will not dangerously heat the earth.

The problem of wind and solar intermittency is solved.

I have three reasons to believe these batteries will make green energy the logical way to go without knowing the technology myself.

First, Flow Energy quickly raised hundreds of millions of dollars from various investors. These investors are guided by teams of experts who evaluate feasibility.

Second, Xcel Energy has purchased two 10 MWs of Iron-air batteries from Form Energy to install at Becker, MN, and Pueblo, CO. Xcel would not be making this investment if it were not bullish on these batteries after a thorough evaluation.

My third element of optimism is indirect. It is Texas. Texas has the nation’s largest number of solar and wind farms. You would think Texans would be elated. But not all Texans. Republican OIL politicians dominate the Texas State Government. The Republican Texas State Legislature is passing bills to hinder their wind and solar projects to protect their fossil fuel business. This is truly a last-ditch effort to placate the fossil fuel business, which knows it is losing in the marketplace.

The marketplace is moving to renewables because it makes economic, health, and climate sense. You know you are successful when the only way to keep an obsolete industry viable is for them to lobby their politicians, so they pass laws designed to kill the competition. If you cannot win by playing by the rules, change the rules.

The last hurdle to electrifying the grid has been jumped. But, saying this, the race to save the earth has not been won. If Texas indicates what politics can do to slow progress, we must move forward more decisively.

I apologize for not writing about Iron-air batteries sooner. I thought the technology would be fielded slower, if ever. So you know, there are more scientific advances in batteries in the mill now. For example, Noon Energy has a carbon/oxygen battery competing with Flow Energy in the long-duration energy storage market.

In the lightweight, high-power marketplace, the Vienna University of Technology has an oxygen-ion battery it hopes will replace the Lithium-ion battery.

Stay wired in and charged up. Science, technology, and the entrepreneurial spirit are racing to save the planet.

For more on breakthrough venture capital, search:                  “MIT’s the Engine” or Bill Gates’s and Jeff Bezos’s investments in “Breakthrough Energy Ventures.”

And if you want something new, simple, and exciting, search “Finnish Sand Battery.”