What I find really interesting is the huge growth in stationary storage - I believe it's the fastest growing segment.
https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/dry-cell-ba... https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002805.htm https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-703-health-concerns...
And cannot always be easily recycled:
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-09/Lithium-I...
In addition to general concerns about chemical availability, and processing issues.
E.g. Demand expected to outstrip supply as soon as next year:
https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...
Only some are toxic. But can you name the poison or danger with saltwater batteries?
"Chinese automaker Yiwei debuted the first sodium-ion battery-powered car in 2023. It uses JAC Group’s UE module technology, which is similar to CATL's cell-to-pack design.[82] The car has a 23.2 kWh battery pack with a CLTC range of 230 kilometres (140 mi)."
And for grid storage, "slightly bigger size" really doesn't matter.
Why would want to build an enery system on low-energy-density technology?
That would be equivalent to using relays for building computers in 2024.
We have nuclear energy, we don’t need to use technology from the medieval ages.
But there are many battery companies for gird batteries. Flow is just one type and one that seems far less poplar now-days. They were all the hype like 10-15 years ago.
The problem is the Li-commodity race has already beaten most of those designs. You need to use very, very cheap materials. Form Energy considered some flow designs but rejected them.
That's why Form Energy are going to things like Iron batteries, because Li batteries will never reach those numbers.
But very few of those alternative have had any real commercial success yet.
Peaker plants are power plants sitting there ready to turn on during peak power usage. I think they used to be often coal, which took a while to start up and produced lots of pollution, but then more recently natural gas plants start up faster and have much lower emissions. So during an evening power usage peak, or during really cold or hot times when power demand is high, the grid can tap that power source. Now you can replace those plants with a bunch of batteries that are ready in milliseconds to provide additional power, and then you can charge them if they get used up at night when electric usage is low.
The major problem with hydrogen is the fuel cell efficiency. Electrolysis is above 80%, but fuel cells are barely at 60% and it gets lower when you try to make the design more practical (lower temperature, less platinum). So batteries just have to hit 50% to compete. But that 50% includes both inherent cycle efficiency and self-discharge and Form Energy isn't putting their numbers up front, as far as I can see.
More importantly, seasonal storage is heavily concerned with heating, and the conversion of hydrogen to heat is a different matter. The batteries have heat pumps going for them, but you can make a gas-powered heat pump too. So rather than the fuel cell efficiency you look at the CoP difference between electric and gas heat pumps. The latter have received little attention, but could see a surge of interest if green hydrogen becomes more popular (and easier to transport). But here we exhaust my understanding of the situation.
I don't think seasonal storage will ever be thing. Having storage for a few days or weeks is practical.
Non of the technologies we are talking about will work for seasonal.
Most of the non Li-Battery grid cell systems have not yet proven much. Many of the first generation of such system went bust. And many of the others have taken a long time and are still not deployed.
So far the successful grid battery companies are mostly repackaging other cells.