[Graeme]

Samsung Develops Tech to Double Lithium Battery Capacity

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he research arm of Samsung Electronics announced on June 25 that it has developed a technology to make a silicon cathode material for coating high crystal graphene on a silicon surface to realize an energy density almost two times more than that of existing lithium batteries.

Existing lithium batteries, which were developed and commercialized by Sony in the 90’s, has been developed in a way of extending the capacity rather than increasing the life and density owing to limitations of material itself. The expansion of capacity has remained at best two times more than that of the first commercialized batteries.

[ennui2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'I')'m communicating with an American startup who can make a pack which produces hydrogen in the vehicle.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ccording to the post, the battery swap is expected to cost "slightly less than a full tank of gasoline for a premium sedan." This jibes with the estimates discussed last year, which put the cost in the $60-80 range. However, Model S battery packs have a rated design life, and customers would be expected to eventually return to the swap station and reclaim their car’s original pack; failure to do so would incur a fee equal to the difference in value between the two battery packs (there are no details as to how high this fee might be, but out-of-warranty battery pack replacements for the Model S can range as high as $12,000).
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/12/tes ... ack-swaps/

[sparky]

.
That's the old business model of the stage coach ,
..... get there change horses (for a fee) , the old set get a break and rest ,
to be swapped to the next coach coming along ,
as long as the nags are not half dead , the customer can complain but has little choice but to take what he is given
his choices are
1-to get lucky and get a fine set
2-to slip a bit of money to get the best available
3-to pull a flintlock pistol threatening mayhem (doesn't work , the stage coach boss would pull a blunderbuss )
4-to do without and use the same old worn down set

the profit of a swap should cover the cost and take old crappy batteries out of circulation

Batteries don't wear out , they loose their capacity , the human equivalent of getting old
all the materials making the battery can be easily recycled , especially if there is only a few models .
beside avoiding disposal hassle and lawsuits , it make good business sense

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sparky', '.')
That's the old business model of the stage coach ,
..... get there change horses (for a fee) , the old set get a break and rest ,
to be swapped to the next coach coming along ,

[dolanbaker]

Surely this is like buying bottled gas, you pay for the first cylinder and then when you go for a refill it gets swapped and all you pay for is the fuel (charge) and maintenance fees for the cylinder (battery).

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', 'S')urely this is like buying bottled gas, you pay for the first cylinder and then when you go for a refill it gets swapped and all you pay for is the fuel (charge) and maintenance fees for the cylinder (battery).

[ennui2]

I mentioned in another thread that Tesla is abandoning battery-swaps. I don't know why there's a discussion about it like it still might take off.

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/06/tes ... st-enough/

[Graeme]

Bosch & GS Yuasa on-target to double battery energy density & half costs by 2020

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')erman supplier Robert Bosch and Japanese battery partner GS Yuasa Corp. are "on a good path" toward their goal of developing a lithium ion battery that costs half as much as today's batteries but has twice the energy density, a top Bosch executive said.

The companies aim to produce such a battery by 2020, Wolz said. "We are on a good path to reach that target," he told reporters.

Achieving such performance in automotive power packs will be a major breakthrough in popularizing electrified drivetrains, Wolz said.

Bosch is positioning vehicle electrification as a pillar of growth as carmakers tap batteries to meet increasingly stringent emissions regulations. The supplier expects hybrid and electric-only drivetrains to account for 15 percent of the global automotive market by 2020, Wolz said.

[Graeme]

LG Chem Pushes Australian Battery Storage Prices Further Down The Curve

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he competition in the nascent battery storage market continues to intensify, with South Korean appliance manufacturers LG Chem launching a new 6.4kWh battery storage system that approaches the key $1,000/kWh mark.

The new battery storage system is being made available to consumers in the next few weeks, and follows the release into the Australian market of AU Optronics, promoted by AGL Energy, and rival offerings from Samsung, Enphase, Panasonic and SMA.

But the LG Chem system is already bringing costs down at the top end of the market – matching the assumed pricing of the much vaunted Tesla Powerwall, with the advantage that it is actually in the market.

LG’s Chem Residential Energy Storage Unit (RESU) 6.4kWhr battery is similar in size, shape and capacity, to the Tesla offering, and is expected to last 15 to 20 years, or at least 6,000 cycles. It is being offered in Australia at $A6,898. The first supplies have arrived in Australia via wholesalers Solar Juice.

LG Chem, in its blurb to installers, says it expect the units to have a retail price of a bit more than $1000 per kW/h ex GST plus inverter solution. “The cost curve will come down over time,” it says.

The units can be upgraded to a total of 12.8kWh with 3.2kWh expansion units. LG Chem says these are expected to be slightly more than 50% of the RESU 6.4Ex price.

Jeff Wehl, from Brisbane-based Ecoelectric, says the technology will easily defy grid costs with a typical cost per kWhr of around 15 cents over 15 years.

[Graeme]

UK Energy Storage Startups Take Aim At EV Battery Market

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ithium-ion is the gold standard for chemical energy storage, but a pair of UK companies have been working on alternatives that could knock down the cost of electric vehicles — and knock Li-ion out of the running. The two companies, Oxis Energy and Faradion, caught the eye of the American Chemical Society, which just gave them a huge write-up in its Chemical & Engineering News publication, so let’s take a look and see what’s up.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '[')b]UK Energy Storage Startups Take Aim At EV Battery Market

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ithium-ion is the gold standard for chemical energy storage, but a pair of UK companies have been working on alternatives that could knock down the cost of electric vehicles — and knock Li-ion out of the running. The two companies, Oxis Energy and Faradion, caught the eye of the American Chemical Society, which just gave them a huge write-up in its Chemical & Engineering News publication, so let’s take a look and see what’s up.

[Keith_McClary]

The various criteria are summarised on these charts:

See
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/arti ... _batteries
for captions.

[StarvingLion]

Forget it, its over. The PHD scientist flunkies are scientifically illiterate, nevermind the general public. They are so clueless that they don't even understand the common mistakes of basic physics in the textbooks such as:

1. The Earth goes around the sun. It doesn't, and in fact, this is just as wrong as saying the sun goes round the Earth. Both positions implicitly advocate there's some privileged and special frame of reference in which to view the universe, and Einstein says there isn't one. It's sort of like people who say there's no such thing as centrifugal force: stand inside a rotating reference frame and derive Newton's Laws and yes, yes it exists, and yes, yes it's real. The mistake: "some reference frames are more true than others." The reality: "you pay your money and you take your frame of reference."

2. Conservation of energy. Conservation of energy only happens in a static spacetime; astronomy says our spacetime is dynamical; energy is not conserved in our universe.

3. E=mc**2. Only true for objects at rest, and pretty much nothing in the universe is at rest. The real equation is E**2=m**2c**4 + p**2c**2. This is why light can have energy without mass: a photon's energy is carried entirely in its momentum.

4. If you measure a particle's position, you'll necessarily tweak its velocity. That's the Uncertainty Principle. No, that's the Observer Effect. The Uncertainty Principle isn't a statement about the fidelity of our measurement apparatus: it's a statement about the total information available, period. If you think the data actually exists but we just can't measure it, then you're subscribing to a Hidden Variables interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the Aspect experiments put a pretty comprehensive set of nails in that coffin.

... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The Anglo-Saxon banking system is degenerate.

You may as well stick your head in a gas oven...its hopeless.

[ennui2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')One wonders how bad the climate has to get before "Joe everyman" gets some sense of URGENCY about the AGW and air pollution problems.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('StarvingLion', ' ')The PHD scientist flunkies are scientifically illiterate, nevermind the general public. They are so clueless that they don't even understand the common mistakes of basic physics in the textbooks such as:
1234

[dohboi]

https://www.skepticalscience.com/Graphe ... l#comments

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is a very stable, chemically inert material which has x200 the strength of steel yet is malleable - its surface area can be stretched by 20%. It can be folded and crumpled, vastly increasing its surface area within the confines of a very small space. When coated with Lithium it becomes a superconductor, having no resistance to an electric current at room temperature. Graphene is an excellent thermal conductor and in its pure form is 97.7% transparent.

Inability to produce graphene on an industrial scale initially limited development of technology into an ever-growing range of applications. These problems have now been overcome, even to the extent that a graphene ink has been developed enabling the printing of graphene sheets and other items containing graphene. Sir Andre rightly describes Graphene as the foundation of far reaching disruptive technology.

It has the potential to replace and bring about the rapid demise of fossil fuels as an energy source, possibly within a decade and this alone justifies its description as a ‘wonder material’.

[Paulo1]

The research that I have recently done suggests it is still kind of a 'pie in the sky' not easily scaled up. Hopefully, it will revolutionize batteries. We'll see. Hope to see it available.

[Peak_Yeast]

Yeah - I have also read that the scaling up and production of large sheets of graphene is the problem.

I can see that there are at least 10 "breakthroughs" in this area this year, but as always - there is about 1000 such breakthroughs before we see anything being commercialized.

Perhaps THIS time its different?

[JV153]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is a very stable, chemically inert material which has x200 the strength of steel yet is malleable - its surface area can be stretched by 20%. It can be folded and crumpled, vastly increasing its surface area within the confines of a very small space. When coated with Lithium it becomes a superconductor, having no resistance to an electric current at room temperature. Graphene is an excellent thermal conductor and in its pure form is 97.7% transparent.

Inability to produce graphene on an industrial scale initially limited development of technology into an ever-growing range of applications. These problems have now been overcome, even to the extent that a graphene ink has been developed enabling the printing of graphene sheets and other items containing graphene. Sir Andre rightly describes Graphene as the foundation of far reaching disruptive technology.

It has the potential to replace and bring about the rapid demise of fossil fuels as an energy source, possibly within a decade and this alone justifies its description as a ‘wonder material’.