News

October 17, 2017

Alpha-En Wins Grant to Commercialize Lithium Metal Anodes

New York-based alpha-En has won an award of $750,000 from the DOE’s Office of Technology Transition Technology Commercialization Fund. The funding will be used to commercialize Argonne National Laboratory’s proprietary highly conductive solid-state electrolyte coating for alpha-En’s lithium metal anodes. alpha-En says its lithium metal is purer than what is currently available […]
October 11, 2017

Battery Storage Uptake By Households Surges In Oz As Grid Costs Soar

Battery storage system installations in Australia look set to confirm predictions they will treble in 2017, driven by a growing uptake of home battery systems. New data shows more than 7000 were installed across the nation in the first six month of the year – surpassing the 6500 sales recorded […]
August 18, 2017

Volcano Lakes May Contain Vital Lithium Deposits, Say Stanford Researchers

Lithium is a key component of lithium-ion batteries and lithium-ion batteries are a key component of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric cars. But until now, it has been in relatively short supply, sparking fierce competition among mining companies. It is one of the most abundant […]
August 16, 2017

Report: Transportation and Stationary Storage Battery Demand Will Surpass Consumer Electronics by Next Year

Consumer electronics have traditionally driven the demand for energy storage devices, but transportation and stationary applications will soon become the largest storage markets, according to Lux Research. By 2025 the energy storage market will top $100 billion, with applications in transportation alone reaching $69 billion, Lux forecasts. The highest growth […]
August 11, 2017

DOE awards $6 million to first crop of Battery500 Seedlings

The Battery500 consortium, led by the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), intends to build a battery pack with a specific energy of 500 Wh/kg, which would more than double the 170-200 Wh/kg per kilogram in today’s typical EV battery. Part of the initiative is the “Seedling” program, which identifies […]
August 9, 2017

Panasonic Expects to Turn a Profit on Model 3 Battery Cells by Next Year

Panasonic’s new 2170 Li-ion battery cells, which it manufactures at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, are a key component of the new Model 3. The Japanese manufacturer says it is now supplying the batteries at a loss, but expects to turn a profit next year. “For battery cells for the […]
August 6, 2017

Kreisel Electric Wins Frost & Sullivan EV Award Thanks To “Lightest” Battery

Kreisel Electric recently won the 2017 European Electric Vehicle Technology Leadership Awards from Frost & Sullivan for having the “lightest” battery on the market. This is a high honor. This also confirms that, although breakthroughs and innovations are great, squeezing more performance and efficiency out of what we have today (lithium-ion batteries) is […]
August 6, 2017

Molecular Pulley Leads to Silicon Anode Breakthrough

Silicon anodes are receiving a great deal of attention, as they can enable batteries to deliver 3-5 times higher capacities compared with current graphite anodes. Although silicon is abundant and cheap, Si anodes have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles – typically less than 100 times. Their volume expands enormously […]
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 […]