REPOST: Why Tesla is backing batteries

Electric car manufacturer Tesla is branching out to batteries with efficient energy storage, which have profound implications beyond just powering its cars. According to the BBC, it's all in the name of good business.

Image Source: bbc.com

Powerwall uses the same basic batteries found in many electronic gadgets

Car maker Tesla has unveiled plans to start making large batteries that can be used to store power in homes and businesses.

It has unveiled two versions of the wall-mounted battery packs and said it hoped to start shipping and installing the devices by the summer.

BBC News looks into the announcement and its implications.

Why is a car maker helping power homes?

The same technology used to power Tesla cars, a lithium ion battery, will also be used in the large battery packs it is about to start making.

It is likely that many of the first people to buy a battery pack will be people who already own a Tesla car and are looking for a cheaper way to charge their vehicle.

In many places, charging the car's battery using solar power will be much cheaper than doing it using electricity from the grid.

Aside from this, the battery packs could prove useful to people keen to cut their electricity bill by generating some of the power they use from the sun. Others may use them to store energy bought when it is cheap so they can avoid paying for higher-priced power.

Tesla also has plans to sell the batteries to utility companies as a way for them to store the power they generate at times of low demand.

Are the home batteries the same as those in Tesla cars?

Not exactly. Those in the cars are optimised to charge more quickly than the domestic versions.

Lithium-ion technology is very well established and is used in the majority of gadgets that have rechargeable batteries. Other electric cars use them to store power too.

Before now one of the bottlenecks holding back wider adoption of lithium-ion batteries has been a lack of factories making them. Tesla hopes to address this with the building of what it calls a gigafactory which, when completed in 2020, will be the world's biggest.

The building of the factory, says Tesla, should help drive down the cost of the technology.

Are there other obstacles to large-scale adoption?

Image Source: bbc.com

The cost of installing solar panels and the Tesla battery may be too high for many people

Yes. Cost. The price quoted by Tesla does not include installation of the unit. To this needs to be added the cost of installing solar panels to gather energy.

It might take years for the combination of solar panels and battery to pay for itself.

Tesla claims that its batteries could be useful during disasters when power is knocked out for days. However, well-established generator technologies that are powered by petrol or diesel will probably remain cheaper than lithium-ion batteries for some time.

Despite this, Tesla is working to remove one big obstacle which is getting commercial partners aligned to be able to deliver and install the technology in homes.

Is Tesla the only company doing home power storage?

No. Many other companies and nations are keen to find ways to power energy generated from renewable sources. Sometimes this is because the supply of the power from wind, water and the sun can fluctuate - a reliable store will help smooth out the peaks and troughs.

In addition, some sources of renewable energy, such as solar power, are absent when people need power the most - at night. Again, storing power would help solve this problem.

Home storage of power is also getting more interest because in many nations, established electricity generators are slashing the rates they pay customers who provide them with power from the solar panels mounted on the roof of their home.

In the UK, there are several small-scale trials involving a few hundred homes that are based around systems that store power generated from the sun.

Could the battery systems be used in developing nations?

Image Source: bbc.com

Many regions lack the power infrastructure to keep homes lit at night

Tesla thinks so. However, there can be many reasons why people in such places do not have power. It is not clear that a relatively expensive system such as Tesla's will work well in such locations.

In addition, there are many NGOs and green innovation firms looking at bringing much cheaper, and more robust, power generation systems to developing nations.

What is clear is that although many of these places have an abundant supply of solar power they lack the infrastructure and local expertise that are likely to make the Tesla initiative a success in the US.

Having backed several biotech startups, Janique Goff is an ardent supporter of the development of green technology. Follow her on Facebook for more updates on eco-friendly tech developments.

REPOST: 13 Unexpected Sources of Energy that Could Save the World

The future of renewable energy may come from an unconventional place. Annelie Newitz lists down some of these wayside sources of power.

If humans are going to keep living in the style to which we're accustomed, we need to find alternatives for fossil fuels. Partly that's because we need to reduce pollution — and partly because those fossil fuels are going to run out. But alternative forms of energy may look a lot weirder than you think.

Image source: io9.com

1. Tobacco Leaves

Most people have heard about turning corn into biofuel. But corn is actually a terrible biofuel source for a number of reasons, which is why many scientists are looking to other plants for future fuel — including tobacco. Genetically modified tobacco, that is. The main building blocks for biofuel in plants are starch and sugar, so naturally, increasing the amount of starches and sugars in a plant will improve fuel production. An agricultural engineer recently found that she could tweak a gene in tobacco to boost starch production by 700%, which translated to an increased sugar yield (a step in biofuel production) of 500%. As a bonus, this technique could be used on food crops to increase starch and sugar production.

2. Sugar Batteries

Current battery technology relies on toxic metals, which are difficult to mine, have limited lifespans, and create recycling and disposal issues. Sugar, on the other hand, has none of those problems. Recently, a group of bioengineers built a prototype of an "enzymatic fuel cell" that imitates the behavior of biological systems (like plants) that convert glucose to energy. The resulting battery creates more energy than a lithium-ion battery, is biodegradable, and refillable.

Image source: io9.com

3. Jatropha curcas

This plant produces oil-rich seeds which are excellent for biodiesel, and it is able to thrive in dry, sandy lands that aren't good for food production. That means the plant could be grown in areas that aren't required for food crops. Unfortunately, the plant's seeds don't thrive as easily as the plants do in poor soil. Now, scientists are working on ways to genetically modify this crop in a number of ways make it more suitable for biodiesel production. The result could be a hardy crop that can live almost anywhere, and produce incredible amounts of fuel.

4. Algae Machines

Unlike Jatropha curcas, which is a plant that might one day be a source of fuel, microalgae are pretty much fuel-ready. They grow in the ocean, and thus don't compete with food crops. Plus, they produce more starch and sugar than the blue-green algae known as cyanobacteria, which are also being explored as a source of alternative energy. The problem? It's hard to get a giant crop of microalgae. Currently, researchers are looking at ways to genetically modify this microalgae to make it a more robust fuel source.

If that isn't futuristic enough for you, researchers are also integrating genetic "circuits" into bacteria and algae in order to produce biofuels from photosynthesis. Essentially, they'd add new molecular machinery to bacteria and algae that don't already have them. There are even proposals to engineer the actual light-absorbing antennae in these organisms to increase efficiency and biofuel output. This would mean genetically altering the systems that these microorganisms use to absorb light — we wouldn't actually be adding tiny metal antennae to them, though that would be cool.

5. Super Yeast

Conversion of plant material to fuel isn't always efficient, especially because that plant material is often waste left over from forestry and agriculture. However, biologist Na Wei and colleagues have discovered that they can genetically modify a form of yeast to digest the tough, fibrous xylose in plants. Normally this part of the plant goes unused, as it creates a toxic, acidic environment for the microbes that would normally break it down into those much-needed sugars. But the enhanced yeast are able to digest xylose into the chemical components that could make biofuel. This super-yeast could help us convert plant waste into valuable energy.

6. Corny Switchgrass

Switchgrass is a controversial biofuel crop. It is fast growing, produces a lot of material for fuel production, but is also invasive, taking over new lands where it is introduced. Still, it might one day prove very useful — especially if we add a few extremely useful genes to its repertoire. A group of biologists found that by genetically modifying switchgrass with a gene from corn, they could boost the amount of starch and digestibility of the switchgrass (making it easier and more productive to convert to fuel), and completely shut down the flowering of the plant, potentially preventing invasion.

Image source: io9.com

7. Artificial Photosynthesis

Researchers at Caltech and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are researching what they call "artificial photosynthesis." Their goal is to produce a synthetic version of the molecular machinery that plants use to make energy from light and water. The result would be something that looks like a solar panel inside a plastic chassis — it's made of thin membrane sheets comprised of semiconductor materials. By pumping water through the device, and bombarding it with light, we could produce liquid hydrogen or hydrocarbons. This solves the typical problem with solar energy, which is storage. Because this solar fuel would be liquid, we could use our current fuel storage infrastructure to hold and distribute it the same way we do with oil and gas.

Read the rest of the list on io9.

Janique Goff, a business development manager, specializes in providing marketing and developmental assistance to biotechnology startups. Get updates on biotechnology and the environment on this blog.

Second Life for Old Electric-Car Batteries: Guardians of the Electric Grid

By Josie Garthwaithe, National Geographic. Original article and images can be accessed here.

Imagine a future in which old electric-car batteries are deployed in neighborhoods as energy-storage systems that guard against power outages, while paving the way for wind and solar power—and more electric cars. The idea has moved one step closer with the demonstration of a boxy unit of used Chevy Volt batteries capable of providing enough electricity to power three to five average American homes for up to two hours.

Developed by General Motors and ABB, one of the world's largest electric-technology companies, the device features five lithium-ion battery packs from plug-in hybrid Volts, strung together in a new arrangement and cooled by air instead of the liquid used in their former lives on the road. The batteries are degraded below acceptable performance levels for cars, but the companies say the batteries have enough life to serve the grid for at least ten years in this device, a community energy storage unit.

"In a car, you want immediate power, and you want a lot of it," said Alexandra Goodson, business development manager for energy storage modules at ABB. Many grid storage applications, on the other hand, involve slow, steady delivery of energy. "We're discharging for two hours instead of immediately accelerating," she said. "It's not nearly as demanding on the system."

The Road to Renewables

The partners previously demonstrated the technology in a lab environment. Now, said Pablo Valencia, senior manager of battery lifecycle management at GM, "It's become a reality," during a presentation Wednesday in Sausalito, California, where GM set up a demo unit about the size of a few refrigerators to power video, lights, and audio in an outdoor tent. "This is an industry first, to be able to use secondary automotive batteries in a grid-based application," Valencia said.

To test the repackaged Volt batteries in the real world, partner Duke Energy, the largest utility in the United States, plans to install this unit next year in the field alongside a transformer. "We'll test it as long as it takes to highlight all the value streams," said Dan Sowder, senior project manager for new technology at Duke.

Deployed on the grid, community energy storage devices could help utilities integrate highly variable, and sometimes unpredictable, renewables like solar and wind into the power supply, while absorbing spikes in demand from electric-car charging.

"Wind, it's a nightmare for grid operators to manage," said Britta Gross, director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization for GM. "It's up, down, it doesn't blow for three days. It's very labor-intensive to manage." Sowder, whose company serves 7.1 million customers in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast, explained, "Our grid, and most electricity grids, are not really designed to handle that kind of rapid swinging. Storage can help dampen that out." Smooth delivery of renewable energy has been a major research area for Zurich, Switzerland-based ABB, the world's largest supplier of electrical equipment to the wind power industry.

Meanwhile, on the demand side, utilities are staring down the possibility of huge spikes in energy demand from electric cars, which represent "probably the largest electrical load introduced to a residential setting in 50 years," said Scott Hinson, director of the Pike Powers Commercialization Lab in Austin, Texas.

"That is a little bit alarming for a grid that was not designed to handle that load," adds Sowder. Community energy storage devices can be charged at times when, say, wind is kicking up a storm at night but there is little demand for electricity, and make it available when needed. "The result can be less infrastructure upgrades needed to support electric-vehicle charging."

Seeking Grid Solutions

GM isn't the only automaker looking to help build a secondary market for its electric car batteries. In January, Nissan North America joined with ABB, 4R Energy, and Sumitomo Corporation of America to announce plans to build a prototype of a grid storage system using Nissan Leaf batteries.

After all, if the battery—the most expensive part of an electric car—remains an asset beyond its useful life in the vehicle, Valencia said, "It helps with residual values." That's the term used to describe how much a car is worth at the end of its lease or the end of its useful life—a key factor in determining lease rates and resale values. As a result, he said, "We're helping the first customer."

"If there is a market in stationary power for spent batteries, consumers could recognize this as an increased resale value at end of life, however small," said Kevin See, an analyst with the research firm Lux Research.

Of course, because electric cars like the Volt and the Leaf are new to the market, there will not be a large supply of spent electric-car batteries for some time to come. The batteries are supposed to last for up to ten years in the car. For the demonstration unit, GM scavenged its own laboratories to find batteries that had been degraded by simulations.

The batteries in the demo unit had been degraded down to about 85 or 90 percent of their original capacity, Valencia said. "We were calling everybody and saying, 'Give me your oldest batteries,' " he said. But GM envisions old batteries eventually will be tracked down and purchased for grid-storage use through the same system used today to auction off parts like water pumps and starters at the end of vehicle life for recycling or rebuilding. Before a vehicle is scrapped, its ID number is scanned to pull up a list of all the "core" components for which there is demand.

Adapting lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles adds complexity to the task of designing energy storage for the power grid, however. "You must take a battery that's designed to function in a very specific, mobile, volume- and weight-constrained application in cars," said See. And the necessary adaptations vary by type of car. "A fully electric vehicle battery is designed to hold maximum energy, while a hybrid is designed to have a higher ratio of power to energy." Ultimately, he said, this extra complexity "could add further cost in preparing those systems for an entirely different application than the one they were initially designed for."

Spent car batteries face tough competition from new lithium-ion batteries designed specifically for a given grid application, said See, as well as alternative technologies like flow batteries and molten salt batteries, which have the potential to cost less. "There is and will be no shortage of Li-ion batteries given the explosion of manufacturing capacity in the face of limited demand," See said.

Yet it's possible that stationary power customers looking for batteries could purchase spent EV batteries at significant discounts, he said. "Those customers would be the real winners, provided those batteries hold up, rather than the automakers." Indeed, according to Sowder, Duke Energy is "hopeful," but not sure yet that adapted Volt batteries will save money.