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Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Batteries

Dyson and Ann Marie Sastry Making Strides In Solid State Li-ion Battery Development

October 2, 2017 By Rod Adams 15 Comments

Dyson cordless vacuum model V-8 Animal.
Dyson cordless vacuum model V-8 Animal.

Sir James Dyson, known to housekeepers around the world as a creative problem solver, has announced that he will be investing £1 billion ($1.3 billion) to develop a premium electric car and an equal amount of money on solid state battery development. The battery effort is key to his automotive dreams, and his star player and not-so-secret weapon in the crowded field of advanced battery technology development is Ann Marie Sastry, a former professor at the University of Michigan who left in 2012 to focus on her battery startup Sakti3.

The vacuum cleaner mogul has been interested in building cleaner automobiles since at least 1998 and is investing in a serious effort that should be putting cars on the road by 2020. The primary design detail released about the car Tuesday is that it will not be a sports car. Dyson also revealed that the car project began in 2015, that it employs about 400 engineers, that its total project budget is on the order of £2.5 billion and that it is being developed in Wiltshire, where the company recently purchased a former WWII RAF base to provide room to expand its British research and development arm.

This article will focus on the battery technology development.

In addition to the technical expertise of Sastry and the portfolio of patented technology that has been developed by her Sakti3 team, there are a number of synergies that give Dyson’s privately held, family-owned corporation formidable capabilities in manufacturing lightweight, energy dense batteries.

Solid State Li-ion Batteries

Sastry, who earned her PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1994 from Cornell University, did the math and agreed with a number of other researchers in chemical battery development that the energy density of Li-ion batteries could be improved by a factor of 2-3 by replacing the liquid electrolyte with a thin film of solid material.

As a mechanical engineer, she recognized that the key to enabling the technology to serve a mass market would be focusing on improvements to the process of depositing the thin films to enable economic manufacturing on a large scale. She and Sakti3 have attracted a lot of attention from technology observers, politicians and from major investors like GM Ventures, Kholsa Ventures and Bering LLC. In March 2015, Dyson joined the other backers with a $15 million investment in Sakti3.

“Dyson is a scientist, and he reached out to us,” Sastry told Crain’s. “He’s been very good at taking new technologies and integrating them into products, and they have a very strong need for better batteries.”

By October of 2015, Dyson had learned enough about Sakti3 and its leader to buy out the rest of the investors and offer all of the employees a job with his company. Sastry remained as the president of the unit.

“Dyson is a global heavyweight but still operates in many ways like an agile startup in its technical pursuits, and particularly in the way they bet on new technology,” Sastry told Crain’s. She added: “It was a complete win-win, a profitable exit for all involved. But not just an exit, a very nice entrance for all of us into the next phase of development.”

Though Sakti3 batteries are not yet on the market as a stand-alone product, the company has announced that it has achieved an impressive energy density of 1143Wh/liter.

Are Sakti3 Batteries Already Driving Cordless Appliances?

Unlike Elon Musk, James Dyson has a track record of developing successful, profitable, manufactured consumer products. His privately held company, which sells vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, air purifiers, energy efficient lighting and hand dryers, recently announced ordinary and preferred share dividends of £111 million for 2016. Nearly all of that was paid to Dyson and his family. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $4.5 billion.

He chose to invest in Sakti3, not for a distant payout, but because the company had developed a technology that he could bring to market quickly as game changer in a business he was already in – manufacturing and selling high value cordless appliances.

When I learned about Dyson’s announced investment in battery technology development linked to electric cars, I remembered that the company had been advertising cordless vacuum cleaners that caught my attention.

(I’m the vacuum cleaner operator in our house; we have a 6 year old Dyson that has provided excellent service. The company earned my respect with the roller head failed after 4 years and 11 months; the replacement part was delivered in about 3 days under the original 5 year warranty. Both of my 30-something daughters also use Dyson vacuums, partly based on my praise of the products.)

The company’s newest models of cordless vacuums include an impressive upgrade in battery performance. The motor is 30% more powerful, but the battery lasts twice as long. Though the newest V8 models are slightly heavier than the previous, less powerful model, it doesn’t appear that the company simply added a bigger battery. Not only is the motor more powerful, but there is a larger dust reservoir; those changes likely explain the 12 ounce weight gain.

Unlike the portable computers that represent a significant portion of the traditional Li-ion battery market, cordless vacuums with a high power boost mode are a good proving ground for the type of duty cycle that will be typical in an automotive or grid storage application.

It looks like the Sastry-Dyson duo is a force to be reckoned with in the battery market.


Note: A version of the above was first published on Forbes.com. It has been revised and republished here with permission.

Recommended reading about solid state batteries

MIT News Feb 2, 2017 – Toward all-solid lithium batteries


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Filed Under: Batteries

There’s Less To Musk’s Big Australian Battery Deal Than Promotion Implies

July 12, 2017 By Rod Adams

Tesla Inc. Powerpacks and inverters stand at the Southern California Edison Co. Mira Loma energy storage system facility in Ontario, California, U.S., on Thursday, June 1, 2017. The Mira Loma substation houses nearly 400 Tesla Powerpack units, produces 20 MW of electrical power and stores 80 MW-hrs of energy. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

It should surprise no one to learn that Elon Musk, a master of promotion, is capturing worldwide media attention Friday for Tesla’s selection as the winning bidder for a project to install “the world’s largest grid-scale battery” in South Australia.

It also shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who pays attention to claims made by promoters that the details are not as exciting as the headlines and are substantially more difficult to discern.

Where Did The Story Begin?

Four months ago, during a crisis in which South Australia’s wind-heavy power grid repeatedly failed to deliver, Lyndon Rive, the head of Tesla’s energy products division, bragged that his company could provide a quick fix to the Australian state’s power supply problems.

South Australian grid operators had indicated that their system woes could be alleviated by adding fast reacting electricity storage capable of providing 100 MW for somewhere between one and three hours. Supposedly, that amount of stored electricity would be sufficient to smooth out fluctuations produced by variations in wind speed.

Stating the obvious, there is a factor of 3 difference in size between a 100 MWhr battery and a 300 MWhr battery. However, Rive seemed to indicate during an interview with the Australian Financial Review that Tesla was interested in supplying the high end of the range.

“We don’t have 300MWh sitting there ready to go but I’ll make sure there are,” Mr. Rive said.

Rive’s confidence in his company’s ability to deliver was supported by the recent opening of Tesla’s famous battery production facility, the massive GigaFactory 1, near Sparks, Nevada. It was reinforced by the fact that Tesla had recently installed a 20 MW, 80 MWhr battery in Southern California.

That project was completed in less than three months. It was part of Southern California Edison’s response to electricity reliability concerns associated with the loss of local natural gas storage as a result of large, difficult to stop leak at the Aliso Canyon storage facility.

Unsurprisingly, there was some skepticism among observers about Tesla’s ability to deliver a system with five times the power rating and more than three times the storage capacity in the same period of time to a location approximately 8,000 miles farther from the company’s Nevada production facility than Southern California.

Rive has an established history of making visionary claims, but his record of delivery on those promises isn’t spotless. Before Tesla purchased the financially struggling SolarCity in August 2016, Lyndon Rive had been its CEO for 10 years. He and his brother co-founded the company with financial backing from their cousin, Elon Musk.

Musk stoked intense interest in Tesla’s desire to help South Australia – while generating publicity for its new line of grid-connected batteries – by publicly standing behind his cousin’s offer. The real attention-getter was the payoff if their company fails to meet the deadline – Musk promised that the system will be free if it is not operational within 100 days after the contract has been signed.

Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2017

How Much Power Will A Fully Charged Battery Return To Grid? How Much Energy Will It Store?

As the initial flurry of excitement generated by Musk’s offer began to dissipate, serious people attempted to determine exactly what Musk and Rive had promised to do and to estimate how much the project would cost.

On Twitter, Musk had made an attractive, but guardedly qualified price estimate of $250/kw-hr for installations larger than 100 MWhr. He quickly admitted that price does not include shipping, installation, taxes or tariffs. He failed to state that the price likely does not include site specific engineering, site appropriate cooling systems or site specific grid connection infrastructure.

Adequate cooling systems are important for high power, energy-dense battery installations. High discharge rates generate enough heat to damage the battery and its supporting electronics. Fires and explosions are more frequent occurrences than desired and are a high risk for improperly cooled or controlled systems.

With those additional installation investments, an estimate of $500-$600  per kilowatt-hour of storage is probably closer to reality. An installed 100 MW/300 MWhr lithium-ion power station would cost somewhere between $150 million -$180 million (200 million Australian dollars to A$240 million)

Within the context of addressing South Australia’s electric power system stability needs, a 300 MW-hr installation appears to have been unaffordable. Premier Jay Weatherill has a total of A$550 million available, and Tesla’s massive battery is only a part of the necessary capability.

As Gizmodo has reported, the system that Tesla will be installing will provide 129 MW-hr of energy storage capacity, less than half of what Rive originally hinted could be delivered. At a discharge rate of 100 MW, the battery will be totally depleted in less than 80 minutes. As all cell phone, tablet or laptop computer owners should know, it isn’t advisable to fully discharge a Li-ion battery. It can dramatically reduce battery lifetime.

Are Tesla Type Batteries Renewable Energy Saviors?

The system will not solve South Australia’s grid woes by itself.

The response plan also includes a new government funded, A$360 million, 250 MWe fast reacting gas turbine power plant, a bulk electricity purchase contract designed to encourage construction of a new privately owned power plant, a taxpayer financed exploration fund for additional natural gas supplies, special powers granted to the SA energy minister to order plants to operate, and a requirement for electricity retailers to purchase a fixed portion of their power from SA generators.

The South Australian government and Tesla have declined requests to provide details about the total project cost for the “world’s largest grid-connected battery.” Musk admitted that Tesla could lose in excess of $50 million if it is unable to meet its promised deadline.

Lyndon Rive, the executive whose promise evolved into this potentially game-changing project, was not part of the final negotiation and will not be involved in the project execution. He announced in May that he was leaving the company in June to spend more time with his family and to perhaps start a new business venture next year. That decision might have nothing to do with the South Australian project.


Note: A version of the above was first published on Forbes.com under headline of There’s Less To Tesla’s Big Australian Battery Deal Than Meets The Eye. It is republished here with permission.

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Batteries

“The Martian’s” RTG science includes jarring errors

July 6, 2016 By Rod Adams 56 Comments

During the holiday weekend, I finally got around to watching “The Martian.” Though it was a terrific, suspenseful drama, its treatment of the radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) was wrong on a number of levels. That was disappointing in the context of a high budget movie that has received numerous kudos for the significant effort its […]

Filed Under: Batteries, isotopes, RTG

Assembling reliable off grid power system for emergency preparedness

January 17, 2016 By Rod Adams 93 Comments

Many advocates of unreliable power sources like wind and solar blithely toss out the concept of “storage” as the panacea that makes their favored energy sources viable competitors in the potentially lucrative business of supplying on demand power. I’m skeptical because I have some experience with operating and budgeting for power systems that use batteries […]

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Batteries, Unreliables

Limitations of unreliable energy sources (aka “renewables”)

November 19, 2013 By Rod Adams

As part of the discussions stimulated by their airing of Pandora’s Promise, CNN hosted a debate between Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and Dale Bryk of the Natural Resources Defense Council. That debate included some commentary that I thought was worth promoting to the front page. A commenter named Fred, a tech who has […]

Filed Under: Alternative energy, Batteries, Solar energy, Wind energy

Building Curiosity’s nuclear power source at Idaho National Laboratory

November 28, 2011 By Rod Adams

NASA Curiosity nuclear powered rover

I have been fascinated by radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs), aka nuclear batteries, ever since I saw a display at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor sometime in the early 1990s. In that energy exhibit, there was a tiny RTG that was designed to power a cardiac pacemaker. What impressed me the most was […]

Filed Under: Batteries, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Technical History Stories

The Atomic Show #047 – Atomic Batteries that last a very long time

February 1, 2007 By Rod Adams 1 Comment

Atomic batteries can store thousands of times more energy per unit mass than chemical batteries – leading to very long lives in special applications One of our listeners – Bruno Garcia – asked us to talk about nuclear (atomic) batteries. These devices make use of the energy that radioactive isotopes emit on a continuous basis […]

Filed Under: Batteries, General, Podcast

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