News

August 5, 2017

sonnen — the utility of the future? (CleanTechnica Interview)

Highly regarded battery storage firm sonnen was one of the big winners of the 2017 Zayed Future Energy Prize, winning in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) category. I interviewed sonnen CEO and co-founder Christoph Ostermann in January just after the company won the prize. It was a fun interview because of how futuristic […]
September 24, 2016

A123 and Argonne Collaborate to Develop a Safer Cathode

on a three-year, multi-million-dollar cathode development program that will focus on improving cathode safety without compromising energy density or battery life. A123 will leverage its battery expertise to commercialize advances in nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) technology originally developed by Argonne, which already accounts for nearly half of the company’s […]
September 16, 2016

Samsung SDI Building Battery Plant in Hungary

Samsung SDI has decided to make Hungary its Li-ion battery production base in Europe, and will build a new battery plant north of Budapest on a 330,000-square-meter site, using an existing facility that the company built in 2001, and used to make cathode ray tubes. Aiming to start commercial production […]
September 14, 2016

XALT Claims Unprecedented Cycle Life Performance For Its New Lithium Titanate Batteries

XALT Energy, a manufacturer of prismatic, large-format battery cells and packs, has launched a new Lithium Titanium Oxide (LTO) cell that it says has achieved better cycle life performance over a wider range of operating conditions than any lithium-ion cell ever built. XALT’s Li-ion LTO cell offers specific energy greater […]
September 6, 2016

Using Fungi to Recycle Li-ion Batteries

As rechargeable batteries proliferate in everything from cars to smartphones, recycling is becoming a critical issue. Now a team of researchers at the University of South Florida has found a way to use naturally occurring fungi to extract cobalt and lithium from waste batteries. The scientists presented their work at […]
September 6, 2016

Tesla CTO: Tesla Batteries Expected To Last 10–15 Years At A Minimum

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some interesting comments Tesla CTO JB Straubel made regarding vehicle-to-grid technology and using old EV batteries for stationary energy storage (for homes or the grid). There was a tidbit in there that I wanted to further highlight on its own, since it’s […]
September 4, 2016

Bloomberg: Second-life EV Battery Storage Will Total 26 GWh by 2025

In a new report for clients, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts that there will be 29 GWh of used EV batteries available in 2025. This far exceeds the size of the current stationary storage market. Of this, almost a third will get a second life as stationary storage (10 […]
September 2, 2016

Ethylene Carbonate-free Electrolytes Promise Less Oxidation and Better-performing Li-ion Cells

A team led by celebrated battery boffin Professor Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University has demonstrated that a common electrolyte additive is detrimental for Li-ion cells at high voltages, and suggest some alternatives. Dahn and his team discuss their latest work in two papers: “Enabling linear alkyl carbonate electrolytes for high […]
August 30, 2016

Tesla Introduces Third-generation Battery Pack Technology

As is often the case with Tesla, the mainstream press has missed the true significance of the company’s latest product. Tesla’s announcement of its new P100D battery pack option focused on the quicker 0-60 time, so that’s what most media outlets wrote about. Everyone other than acceleration junkies greeted it […]
August 26, 2016

Microsoft Visited By Zinc-Air Battery Startup

Zinc-air batteries are widely used in devices like hearing aids for their good performance-to-price ratio. The tricky part is of course to make them rechargeable. This is one of two technologies that ZAF Energy Systems has been working on for the last couple of years. [Note that CleanTechnica published an […]
August 25, 2016

Water-in-Salt Electrolyte Boosts Energy Density

Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the US Army Research Lab (ARL) are collaborating on a new type of lithium-ion battery that uses a high concentration of salt in an aqueous electrolyte. They hope to develop a battery that offers greater energy density and better safety than current […]
August 23, 2016

SolidEnergy Systems Promising To Double Battery Life Of Lithium-Ion Batteries With New Lithium-Metal Technology

The MIT spinoff company SolidEnergy Systems is claiming that it can double the battery life of regular lithium-ion batteries and reduce battery sizes though the use of its new lithium-metal technology. More specifically, the company is claiming that its battery technology allows for energy densities of 400 Wh/kg. The technology […]