Presentation on grid-scale liquid-metal batteries (prof Sadoway, 2019)

[Liberty]

Iconoclastic and opiniated, but brilliant prof Sodoway from MIT talking about the grid-scale liquid metal batteries he's developing. I had heard him on them a few years ago, it was interesting to get an update. Talks about how Bill Gates was the first investor in his startup. I think some of you might enjoy it:

 

[Guest cherzeca]

Iconoclastic and opiniated, but brilliant prof Sodoway from MIT talking about the grid-scale liquid metal batteries he's developing. I had heard him on them a few years ago, it was interesting to get an update. Talks about how Bill Gates was the first investor in his startup. I think some of you might enjoy it:

 

 

thanks for posting

[jobyts]

Iconoclastic and opiniated, but brilliant prof Sodoway from MIT talking about the grid-scale liquid metal batteries he's developing. I had heard him on them a few years ago, it was interesting to get an update. Talks about how Bill Gates was the first investor in his startup. I think some of you might enjoy it:

 

 

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting topic and the presentation style.

 

The guy reminds me of Al Pacino from 'Scent of a Woman'.

[perulv]

Thanks for sharing this. Regardless of the success of the company and product, his point "Renewables minus storage is not a solution" must be true.

 

What would like to know more about, out of curiosity if nothing else, is some numbers on the actual storage needed. And I don't mean stuff like "London uses this much electricity in an hour". But some model, simulation, that looks at the whole system: It tends to be more windy in the winter, but much less sun (at least in my part of the world. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301214007_Design_of_Future_Pumped_Storage_Hydropower_in_Norway slide 3), so that kinda evens out the seasons somewhat. How much would a "smart grid" be able to compensate, by balancing charging of EVs, water-heaters, incentives via dynamic pricing, etc etc? Would we need storage for 10000 x the <power needed by a city for an hour> or 10? How much can we do with power transfer between regions/countries, and so on. Surely, this must be something that smart people think about and model?