#video on #jugaad #aluminum-air #batteries #toread
on 02026-08-24solid-state #batteries and their #materials #toread
on 02026-07-30#USA #manufacturing #statistics on #batteries: skyrocketing to 240 (240 whats?) since 02020, when it had dipped to 65. It turns out that this is 240% of the index year of 02017, seasonally adjusted.
on 02026-06-15From the discussion of Tom Brown’s #solar-energy calculations, ronb1964: “I build off-grid camper vans for a living and install solar + lithium battery systems regularly. The technology has matured a lot in the last few years. What used to take a massive roof array and a bank of heavy lead-acid or AGM #batteries to run basic appliances now fits in a fraction of the space with lithium.” morphle gives #pricing: “15kWh 48V LFP battery around $1800 with low quality battery management system in metal box on wheels. Car batteries need more expensive inverters if you want to fast charge them (150kW-950kW) and super fast discharge them while driving fast (>100 kW). (...) The Mercedes eSprinter 56kW van costs around $80000 new but we sell 3 year old vans like this for $4000 without battery. So refurbished and converted to eCamper with 1800 mile range you pay $6700.” #vanlife #energy
on 02026-04-09Tom Brown’s “Solar and #batteries can power the world”. He summarizes, “Solar and batteries are cheap enough that most people can get most of their electricity from them, and save money. This equation gets better and better over time as their costs decline,” and more specifically, “solar and batteries can supply 90% of electricity for 80% of the world’s population at less than 80 €/MWh (including a fuel backup) with 2030 assumptions.” He doesn’t rely on wind, but does include it. He thinks stored fuel is the solution to Dunkelflauten. Based on “the Danish Energy Agency Technology Database for 2030 in 2020 euros: solar PV installed cost 384 €/kWp, lithium-ion battery installed cost 157 €/kWh.” Open code and data. He’s summing up his computations for “the 9196 1° by 1° pixels that contains more than 10,000 people, which is enough to include 99.86% of the population,” using capacity factors for wind and solar per pixel, though I’m not sure where his pixels are from. He assumes no demand response (conservative) and no seasonality (overoptimistic). #pricing #solar-energy #energy
on 02026-04-09more about the #LG #Hyundai #batteries raid in #USA
on 02026-04-08#LG and #Hyundai had 300 workers arrested and deported to #Korea from their nascent Georgia (#USA) plant for #batteries
on 02026-04-08#PDF on servicing the #Hubble nickel-hydrogen #batteries after 19 years of 15 charge/discharge cycles a day. #energy-storage
on 02026-03-03Nickel-hydrogen #batteries use a hydrogen anode at about 3.4MPa and are commonly used in space systems due to long life. #energy-storage
on 02026-03-03#JGC dissects disposable Fizzy Max III 60K Rechargeable Red Bull disposable vape #hardware and finds 800mAh LiPo #batteries, three microphones, and a microcontroller labeled “B0081S1” he wasn’t able to get into.
on 02026-01-14#video #toread on #bootstrapping aluminum-air #batteries
on 02026-01-14#video on #bootstrapping aluminum-air #batteries with charcoal. Pounds homemade wood charcoal with hammer in a rag, then powders in a blender and adds (non-gelatinized!) cassava starch and water as a binder. Pounds this paste, still lacking any electrolyte, into a cut-off rectangular aluminum profile with a wooden ramstick, producing 7 bricks he sun-dries. Inexplicably he then puts the dried bricks into 7 aluminum profiles, using surgical masks as separators to prevent electrical contact. His current collector for the charcoal is a graphite rod from a carbon-zinc AA battery. Oh, and finally he adds seawater as his electrolyte. Measures 860mV open-circuit initially. Unclear how air is supposed to get to the cathode. Maybe he doesn’t know that’s necessary?
on 02026-01-14#video #toread on #DIY #manufacturing of aluminum-air #batteries
on 02026-01-14#Murray-Smith #video #toread on #DIY #manufacturing of metal-air #batteries
on 02026-01-14another #video #toread about aluminum-foil #batteries by #Thoisoi, who turns out to be Polish or Estonian, not Russian. He uses stainless-steel window screens as the cathode current collector, because it’s an #aluminum-air battery; in one case he adds a layer of graphite conductive spray paint to the screen. Additionally he’s going to use activated carbon for the cathode, sprinkling it on the epoxy-coated graphite-coated fine stainless-steel mesh, then pressing it in a jugaad five-tonne hydraulic press at 100° for 40 minutes, though he says you could just leave it for 12 hours at room temperature. In the end he has eight cathodes, four with a coarser mesh; the dry cathodes measure as only 8Ω or so on a non-autoranging multimeter. He’s making pouch cells with a food-bag hot sealer, which melts sheets of polyethylene (LDPE) together with a hot wire. His anode is 8-layer-thick aluminum foil. As an electrode separator, he uses a wet paper towel, and sandwiches the anode between two cathodes, I suppose to keep air from getting to it. Weirdly, he seals the pouch cell in plastic, so I’m not sure how the air is going to get to the cathodes. One of the cells uses 20mℓ o an electrolyte made from 5g NaCl and 5g NaHCO₃ #materials in 100mℓ of water, giving 0.75V which rapidly declines. On injecting 10mℓ 10% NaOH into the bag with a syringe, it perks up to 1.6V. Short-circuit current is 750mA, but he needs two in series (measuring 2.60V on the multimeters) to dimly light a red LED, suggesting an “internal resistance” of hundreds of ohms. With the NaOH he thinks its shelf life is only a few hours; his batteries were dead in four hours of playing his CD player.
I thought he was going to explain the results he got from different cathode geometries, but he never does. Also he never reports the power output of the battery or explains how the air is supposed to get in.
on 02026-01-14RUiXU (“pronounced /rʊk su/”) #pricing of #batteries is US$3299 for a “51.2V 314Ah 16kWh Battery” rated “UL1973,9540A,9540,CEC,SGIP,” “IP65 waterproof,” and 9500 cycles. On casters. 280mm × 924mm × 594mm. 137kg. That’s US$206/kWh, US$57/MJ, and 420kJ/kg. Inverter not included.
on 02026-01-13#HN comments on #solar #energy #pricing pointing out that #Scott-Helme’s setup is amazingly overpriced, in part because of #Tesla and predicting a “bloodbath in that market in the next years”. Also £25420 for three 13.5kWh Powerwalls is £628/kWh or US$840/kWh (my calculations) while actual #pricing of #batteries are US$60/kWh and UL-listed 16kWh prebuilt battery packs are US$3300 (US$210/kWh). “scarecrowbob” reports, “I am writing this off grid, using about 15kwh of #batteries and a $1200 (6kw) inverter. My entire system puls [plus] panels and racking those panels, plus wiring some un-powered shacks was about $10k.” “jstsch” reports, “Just received a 15kWh battery from China. A ‘Humsienk’. Combined it with a GroWatt SPA3000TL-BL inverter. Total price, 1600 euros. So close to the magical 100 euros per kWh. Driving it with some interesting combinations of Raspberry PI’s and serial interfaces and custom written Go code, but it works... :)” “Dylan1312” confirms. 1600€ is US$1900, so that’s US$125/kWh, less than a sixth of the Powerwall price. Meanwhile, “bob1029” says, “The rooftop solar game in Texas is strongly into scam territory.”
on 02026-01-13#HN comments on #solar #energy #pricing pointing out that #Scott-Helme’s setup is amazingly overpriced, in part because of #Tesla and predicting a “bloodbath in that market in the next years”. Also £25420 for three 13.5kWh Powerwalls is £628/kWh or US$840/kWh (my calculations) while actual #pricing of #batteries are US$60/kWh and UL-listed 16kWh prebuilt battery packs are US$3300 (US$210/kWh). “scarecrowbob” reports, “I am writing this off grid, using about 15kwh of #batteries and a $1200 (6kw) inverter. My entire system puls [plus] panels and racking those panels, plus wiring some un-powered shacks was about $10k.” “jstsch” reports, “Just received a 15kWh battery from China. A ‘Humsienk’. Combined it with a GroWatt SPA3000TL-BL inverter. Total price, 1600 euros. So close to the magical 100 euros per kWh. Driving it with some interesting combinations of Raspberry PI’s and serial interfaces and custom written Go code, but it works... :)” “Dylan1312” confirms. 1600€ is US$1900, so that’s US$125/kWh, less than a sixth of the Powerwall price. Meanwhile, “bob1029” says, “The rooftop solar game in Texas is strongly into scam territory.”
on 02026-01-13“What would it take to 100x the power density of (...) batteries? (...) We build #batteries as mechanical devices, combining anodes, cathodes, separators, and current collectors microns or mm apart. Could we make them far more powerful by instead synthesizing them (...) by integrating anode, cathode, and separator as separate functional groups along a single polymer chain?” #Orca #toread
on 02025-12-12#bigclive #video on putting a 1N5187 Schottky diode in series with a TP4056 lithium-cell charger to keep it from charging the battery all the way to 4.2V, potentially significantly extending the battery’s lifetime. The diode drops 350mV at 250mA, over 400mV at 500mA, and 330mV at 110mA. The charger starts oscillating toward the end of the charging process, and in the end the battery charges to 3.89V, which is supposedly 80% capacity. #batteries #electronics
on 02025-10-15#video on charging #NiMH #batteries with an LTC4010, which includes a synchronous buck converter to efficiently charge the battery
on 02025-08-14#video on #CATL "Naxtra" #sodium-ion #batteries for #energy-storage at (rumored) US$10/kWh rather than Li-ion’s US$115/kWh. Also 175Wh/kg, compared to LFP Li-ion’s 185, though far below 250–300 for high-density non-LFP Li-ion batteries. The video is just talking heads and stock footage, though. #energy
on 02025-08-12page giving #energy-density of different kinds of #lithium-ion #batteries #materials.
on 02025-06-17#video from a month ago saying lithium iron phosphate #lithium-ion #batteries had fallen in #pricing in December to US$115/kWh (US$32/MJ), quoting BloombergNEF. Says raw materials are 70% of batteries’ cost [citation needed], and that LFPs have #energy-density of 90–160Wh/kg (320–580kJ/kg), much worse than NCA (230–260Wh/kg) or NMC (250–320Wh/kg), citing a page on batterydesign.net. #energy
on 02025-06-17#video about #Mr-Electron #manufacturing #aluminum-air #batteries with a carbon brush from a motor as the cathode in a potassium hydroxide electrolyte, or some bent-up baling wire. He’s hacksawing the top off a lead-acid battery case from an old motorbike and gets an open-circuit voltage of about 1.6 volts and a short-circuit current that’s initially 20mA with an aluminum-foil anode; when he replaces the carbon-brush cathode with the bent-up baling wire this jumps to 40–80mA. #hoarding #electronics #energy #toread
on 02024-10-18#video about #manufacturing #aluminum-air #batteries with #3D-printing ABS. He says potassium hydroxide will eat PLA, which makes sense but which I hadn’t realized. #Mr-Electron here is using steel baling wire for his cathodes. For his anode he cuts up thick aluminum sheet metal with shears and then presses it flat in a vise. Each aluminum anode plate is crimped onto baling wire from the following cell in the battery using a hammer and anvil. He gets 10.2V open-circuit voltage from 8 series cells. I’m unclear how air is supposed to get to his cathodes. He does some load testing with small electric motors but doesn’t actually measure the current. The short-circuit current he measures is 160mA and rapidly dropping. After testing with LEDs for a while the open-circuit voltage has dropped to 3.8 volts. Later he cuts cathode forms out of CDs with an angle grinder and cutoff disc, wrapping them tightly with baling wire to maximize area. His higher-current anodes are aluminum-foil-wrapped popsicle sticks, dimensioned to fit inside the battery compartments, but for whatever reason he didn’t install the plates parallel, resulting in a dramatically unnecessarily high internal battery resistance, which he doesn’t bother to measure, but he gets 240mA out of it. His connections to the aluminum plates are made by torquing a pringled steel washer down onto their non-submerged ends with a bolt. The 6 cells in series ought to give about 9.6 volts open-circuit, but instead he gets only 4.8V (0.8V per cell), which he blames on residual sulfuric acid contamination, but commenter “gsestream” suggests might be due to a lack of oxygen. He uses a DFRobot USB boost converter to charge his cellphone. #bootstrapping #scouting #jugaad
on 02024-10-18#video about #manufacturing #aluminum-air #batteries with either KOH or NaCl electrolytes. #energy #electrolysis Unfortunately “members only”.
on 02024-06-25#video about #manufacturing #aluminum-air #batteries with dual electrolytes: potassium hydroxide and 50% H₂SO₄, separated by a membrane, to get a higher voltage, over 2 volts. Uses “activated carbon felt” (??) for the air electrode. With a single electrolyte he gets 1.56V. He suggests bleach as an alternative alkaline electrolyte and vinegar as an alternative acid. He uses paper towels to hold the electrolytes in place. For “some short testing” he uses baking paper as the membrane, but of course it won’t last long in that environment! He suggests Nafion as the only viable membrane option. His postage-stamp-sized test cell gets 2.2 volts and can light an LED. He adds MnO₂ to his graphite electrode as, I think, a depolarizer, boosting the cell to 2.5V. (Maybe it’s an actual electrolyte material, though?). For whatever reason he never measures its short-circuit current, except for showing that the LED lights and doesn’t immediately burn out, so the battery presumably has on the order of 100Ω of equivalent resistance. Finally he builds a version of the battery with a salt bridge instead of a membrane, but using zinc rather than aluminum. Surprisingly the salt-bridge version is also able to light the LED, despite presumably having much higher ESR. #energy #electrolysis
on 02024-06-25#PDF #paper on grid-scale #batteries saying they’ll be cheaper than gas peakers. A 322-page #ebook actually
on 02017-08-06Grid-scale Li-ion #batteries are predicted to reach parity with gas turbine peakers in a U Minnesota paper. #energy
on 02017-08-06#PDF of Energizer E91 AA #batteries #hardware #datasheet says it’s 23 g and 3000mAh (down to 0.8V) if discharged at 25mA, ∴ 16 kJ (!!) probably a bit high
on 02017-04-11#PDF of Energizer CR2032 #batteries #hardware #datasheet says it’s 240mAh and 192 mWh/g and 3 g, ∴ 691 J
on 02017-04-11household scale #energy storage to smooth out intermittency of common renewable power sources like #solar; #batteries are best. 10m³ of #lead-acid batteries weigh 19 tons and store 750 kWh (2.7 GJ), but they cost US$150/kWh (US$41/MJ). 360 kg lifted by 3 m is required to store 3 Wh (at 29J/kg at 3 m), about 500× less energy density per mass than lead-acid batteries, so gravitational energy storage is impractical. #Flywheel storage is practical at a multi-meter scale even with steel, but the construction is expensive. Compressed air at a multi-meter scale (10m³) is practical, but again expensive.
on 02015-11-16