The Missing Link in Renewables

Here's a link to the podcast. watchnebula.com/modulus/battery-breakthroughs

Sony: "Fine, I'll just do it myself."

I love how Prof. Sadoway addresses scalability & affordability. Making something work in a laboratory environment is a very different problem than implementing it at a large scale.

"you know in university, you build 5 cells, one of them works and you get a publication and everyone is high fiving and so on - but in manifacturing, everything has to work" lmao

This astounding amount of quality research and detailed facts paired with beautiful and comprehensive presentation is seriously above anything else on youtube. Please keep up the awesome work!

Didn’t know that Sony was the first ones to introduce lithium-ion batteries to the masses. They, if not invented, started something big.

I wonder if the term "lava battery" has any marketing merit.

Thank you for actually talking about power frequency regulation, which is a measurement often forgotten or misunderstood by other YouTubers talking about next generation grid storage. Storage capacity and output power are good measurements for medium and long term energy storage, but short term frequency smoothing for renewables like wind is something that is essential in a green power grid!

@4:21 I can't unsee that smiling gauge :D

I really liked how you covered the "challenges" of manufacturing, and how that is a barrier. Almost no battery video which talks about "breakthroughs" touches this aspect.

Please do keep us updated on those batteries : )

I loved this. Two things: 1) CNTs are actually plausibly commercializable in ten years. Arguably they're already commercialized as they're deployed in a lot of contexts, albeit haphazardly (lightweight tennis rackets being the constant example). The fact that they're being put into products, and have been for years now is actually a cause for alarm given that they're able to infiltrate the body and cross the blood/brain barrier. I worked as a policy research assistant to a nanotechnology lab and there was a lot of excitement about doping battery anodes with CNTs and whatnot at the time. So both CNTs and hyper-energy-dense battery technology are just about fully realized. 2) I did my PhD dissertation on technology policy, and used grid-scale energy storage as a case study. I think the title of your video is a little misleading: the economics and technology development aspects of grid-scale energy storage are solved at this point. Ambri's battery chemisty is SUPER exciting and will, no doubt, push the economics even further, but we can go ahead with renewables today. I would argue that the real missing link is the political and sociofinancial wherewithal. Just as you describe lock-in as a function of a LI+ manufacturer's sunk costs specializing in that chemistry, grid operators and utilities have a psychological lock-in to current grid technologies. They simply don't have the perspective to value storage, and so they keep telling policymakers and regulators that "it's too expensive" and "it doesn't work." Technologically, speaking, however, there is still a major innovation that we desperately need. We can go ahead and deploy 100% renewable grids right now, but they'll be more expensive than they really need to be because storage operation is a new concept to us, and every technology (Pumped Hydro/CCAS, flywheel, battery+inverter, thermal storage, etc) operates differently and is optimal for a different use case. Current grid planning tools, but in particular grid operating software, doesn't have the capacity to use these assets to their fullest potential. Massive upheval in grid tech is going to be needed, starting with the ability of the grid to self-monitor and then, as a consequence, cybersecurity for that capacity. I'd love to see you talk about the software side of all this. Great vid, though. Love your stuff.

Love your dedication to high quality research for your videos! You make your sources transparent and even put in an interview with a leading expert - great work!

"If you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt." Haha, I love it!

This might be the best video you ever made. The interview sections were also a great addition!

Imagine using the heat generated by that data center combined with a heat pump in order to keep the batteries at optimal temperatures.

I really like how you include references and indicate them in your videos.

"Well fine! I'll start my own battery manufacturing facility! With lithium! And ions!" -Sony

Im from South Australia. The blackout was good fun. My local pub had a generator built in and as word spread, a quiet bar became the most packed its probably ever been.

The fact that a private company is bringing into the world such an urgently-needed and revolutionary product while governments are sipping oil money and banning plastic straws is ridiculous.