ENERGY STORAGE NEWS
Bill Gates-funded aqueous air battery start-up attracts another $70m Form Energy, the US startup that previously received funding from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures organization, confirmed to Reuters on November 12 that it has received another $70 million to develop its stationary aqueous flow batteries — which it says dispatch power for days, not hours. While remaining secretive about the investors in this latest funding — details of which the company says
will be forthcoming — the firm did release a Solving the Clean Energy and Climate Justice Puzzle report in July 2020. In this it laid out how its aqueous-air technology could cost effectively replace nearly all fossil-fuelled peaker plants in New York State. It said the technology would enable the city of New York to meet its goal of carbon-free electricity by 2040. Although giving no details of its chemistry other than
describing it as ‘aqueous-air electrochemical energy storage’, Form Energy’s modelling said that where capex on lithium-ion storage is between $85 and $95/kWh, its technology would be between $3.75 and $4. It says where lithium-ion has the duration of more than an hour, its long-duration storage would provide up to 200. In May 2020, Form Energy announced a pilot with Great River Energy, a utility
in Minnesota, to deploy its first 1MW commercial installation with duration of 150MWh. “The electrical grid is increasingly supplied by renewable sources of energy,” said Great River vice president Jon Brekke. “Commercially viable long-duration storage could increase reliability by ensuring that the power generated by renewable energy is available at all hours to serve our membership.
Lithium battery recycler closes undisclosed funding to develop and expand internationally Li-Cycle, the Canadian lithium-ion battery recycling company, has closed a series C equity funding round to develop its New York commercial hub and move into international markets, the firm said on November 18. Details of the financing were not given other than to say Moore Strategic Ventures, the Delaware, US asset management firm, had led the round. “This is a market that re-
quires significant development — specifically when it comes to handling the incoming tsunami of spent lithium-ion batteries,” said CEO Ajay Kochbar. Kochbar is not wrong. The problems with recycling lithium batteries from both a technical and cost perspective are well known. In its Green Chemistry 2020, No. 22 Critical Review, the Royal Society of Chemistry says that lithium
batteries should be designed with recycling in mind. The review talks about lead batteries, which have ‘a simple design, a low-cost recycling process, a structured collection programme and a significant environmental impact if not recycled’. “Achieving the same for lithium-ion batteries is difficult, due to the more complex cell design and cell chemistry. The lack of any standardization of cells and
Highview breaks ground in UK plans to work on giga-scale cryogenic storage in Chile Cryogenic energy storage developer Highview Power said on November 6 it had broken ground on its 250MWh CRYOBattery installation in Manchester, UK, the company’s first commercial system. The project won a £10 million ($12.5 million) hand-out from the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s ‘Storage at Scale’ competition, and is being installed at a decommissioned thermal power station.
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In October it said it had agreed to work with Chilean power generator Energia Latina SA (Enlasa) to develop giga-scale energy storage systems in Chile, which would be equal to nuclear and thermal power in terms of performance. Highview’s system is called the CRYOBattery. It uses insulated, lowpressure vessels to store cooled liquid air which, when exposed to ambient temperatures, re-gasifies rapidly and expands 700fold in volume, driving
a turbine and generating electricity. Highview claims it can provide four hours to four weeks of energy and its systems have a life span of more than 30 years. “Chile has one of the best solar irradiations in the world and the deployment of solar power together with the national decarbonization strategy require longduration energy storage to provide the needed energy balance to achieve a sustainable grid,” says Highview.
the predominance of cells from small portable devices means that initial recycling approaches will be more similar to solid municipal waste, producing streams of lower purity,” the review says, and calls for more homogenization within the industry to address some of these problems. According to a recent study by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Boston Consulting Group, the world’s economy is only 8.6% circular — a far cry from politicians’ projections. “Without sustainable and economically viable lithium battery recycling, we believe it’s likely that electric vehicle proliferation will be substantially hindered,” says Kochbar. Li-Cycle says its ‘spoke and hub’ technology, which does not use a smelting process, is a low-cost, environmentally safe process that can recycle all types of lithium-ion batteries with a recovery rate of up 95% of all materials. The resulting supply of materials was critical for the burgeoning battery sector, said Moore Strategic Ventures’ senior managing director James McIntyre.
Batteries International • Winter 2020/21 • 35
