Why Rust Batteries May Be the Future of Energy - Iron Air Battery Technology

[@UndecidedMF]

What do you think? Do you think Iron-air batteries have a shot at becoming one of the go-to energy storage technologies for the grid? If you liked this video, be sure to check out Perovskite Solar Cells Could Be the Future of Energy: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j4i4aWydbNidbdU

[@shaunhall6834]

Wow! This is a game changer. The cost/performance ratio I think will make this an appealing option.

[@daveansell1970]

Nice story, I think you need to quote both power (MW) and energy storage (MWhr) for batteries, as you seem to just be just quoting power, which isn't that interesting, especially for long duration batteries.

[@daveansell1970]

@Kelly Smunt it is for a battery that can store a kWHr, so you can use it to store that energy probably on average once a day all year round.

[@kroee]

What does "17x longer duration" mean? It just sounds like it has lower peak power, which is a disadvantage.

[@paulhaynes8045]

Just Have a Think had a look at this a couple of months ago - and came to much the same conclusion: m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3XNmIaJhJ5rjKs.

[@nothing1707]

Out of all the tech you've talked about recently, this one seems like the most likely to take off. Mostly because of the simplicity of the design and the cheap cost of production. Great work Matt!

[@robweaver8872]

There is a huge downside to this tech... Very poor amperage/current. The only reason they have "days of power" is because they have such insanely low amperage it takes days to get the energy out.

[@msihcs8171]

@@robweaver8872 I could see that being easy enough to work around, stringing them together in series. I could be mistaken though, most of my experience with generating energy is in nuclear (the US Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Program is where I learned a lot of what I know about power) the problem with a background in nuclear is ofc it's basically an infinite energy source so we just turn it up higher, or add more :)

[@angmohnize-to-atasify]

Nah... there's always a catch. I've been to many presentations on various "new energy" or "new battery storage solutions" that touts themselves as the "THE Next Big Thing"... then only to fizzle out due to some trade offs (cost / toxic waste / insufficient energy density / unscalability etc.). Lol.

[@robweaver8872]

@@msihcs8171 Stringing them together in series? That doesn't solve the problem.. But of course tons more cells and MASSIVE cells will help increase amperage. But no configuration or any amount of cells will change the problem of their low power density. I think the only solution would be to combine them with massive super capacitor banks or other lithium banks. Think about it, if you need a battery half the size of a house just to keep up with a single household draw, you will need town size battery stations to keep up with a single city.

[@Phazaar]

@@msihcs8171 Parallel. But yes, this would address the problem; the question is HOW BIG of a problem is it. Or rather, how big would your battery end up needing to be.

[@patrickbryant_]

It’s a common misconception that grid storage discharge time has anything to do with physical limitations of the battery tech. Lithium ion batteries can easily discharge for hundreds of hours. The issue is the market value of energy over these time scales versus the cost of the battery. Li-Ion is so expensive that it is only cost competitive for short time intervals where short peaks in demand place a strain on the usual suppliers. These peaks can generate enormous energy prices 100-1000x the average. Iron-air’s raw material cost and simplicity has the promise to reach the $20/kWh point where it becomes profitable to sell energy over tens or even hundreds of hours of continuous discharge when the price is much closer to average and you have to compete with traditional suppliers.

[@solarsoils7368]

​@Patrick Bryant - Thank you for this particular explanation. I was getting skeptical with the price difference between Li-ion cost @ $200/MWh ($0.20/kWh) and Rust cost @ $20/kWh. The point is that the $0.20/MWh of Li-on discharge is ONLY during peak hours of usage, whereas the $20/kWh of Rust discharge is "all day, every day". @Undecided with Matt Ferrell - What did you find was the average cost of Li-ion during _non-peak_ hours?

[@SuperFlamethrower]

There is dollars per Wh, maybe there needs to be dollars per W (i.e., discharging speed) to go along with that.

[@adrianthoroughgood1191]

@@solarsoils7368 What Matt didn't make very clear in the video is that the kWh number and MWh number are not comparable because they are measuring different things. He ought to have provided equivalent numbers so people can compare them properly. The kWh price is the price of the battery, IE one full discharge cycle. The MWh price is the price for all the electricity you can store over the entire life of the battery. It is roughly equivalent to the LCOE for a generation system. What really surprised me was that Li ion batteries are so expensive that the electricity they supply over their lifetime is much more expensive than nuclear power over it's lifetime. Somewhere between 1.5-2x as expensive. So it may be cheaper to build enough nuclear power to supply all night time needs rather than building batteries to store solar power to use at night, even if you then just throw away the excess solar generation. If this rust battery really achieved what they are claiming it could (a big if as it's just a marketing claim with no public data to back it up) then it could be 1/10 of the cost of Li ion or better, which would make it much cheaper than nuclear.

[@memesfromdeepspace1075]

In other world capitalims destroy the planet 👀👀👀

[@zweigackroyd7301]

@@memesfromdeepspace1075 Which world?

[@AageV]

Something you might be interested in is the CESAR Basalt battery. It is a way to store a surplus of electrical energy as heat inside a body of concrete mixed with steel slag to use this heat in the winter to heat up houses.

[@jasozilux3791]

Scott brought me here. Gotta say it's nice having two reliable science based channels. Regardless of whether it's the same topic of not, having multiple sources is important.

[@theagemaway]

If the battery is going to take up a massive amount of land, then just put solar panels on top of it, that way the land is used for two complementary projects.

[@TechnoGlobalist]

How about solar freakin' roadways?

[@scottsuhr2919]

@@TechnoGlobalist Its been tried -- they just don't hold up to the abuse of traffic

[@luisgutierrez8047]

@@scottsuhr2919 r/woosh

[@Stormblessed72]

they probably will

[@mnomadvfx]

*solar above, geothermal below. 3 for 1 deal. The geothermal heat can be used to regulate the temperature of the containers if they start to drop to the point that the molten electrolyte might cool and become useless.

[@billr8667]

My '77 Honda Accord would have made a great source for an iron-air battery. I could practically hear it rust away while it was just sitting in my garage! As I recall, Honda paid two replace and repaint the front fenders two times in the four years I owned the car.

[@joeylawn36111]

🤣🤣🤣🤣!

[@michaelwing1501]

Police caught two men, one drinking battery acid, the other eating fireworks. One was charged, they let the other one off.

[@UndecidedMF]

😂

[@reedr1659]

Groan!

[@blackbearelectronicswithco9541]

This comment is so underrated…

[@christopherleubner6633]

Since it was a big one and he got a hernia in the process he was charged with substantial battery causing severe bodily harm.

[@Statistica101]

😂😂

[@larryseibold4287]

For grid storage, the cost to deploy a MWh (over its life, taking cycle life in) and the conversion efficiency cost/loss (charge*discharge=eff) both really matter. How does rust compare to pumped water towers?

[@adrianthoroughgood1191]

I don't think a water tower could hold enough to be worth it. Pumped hydro uses 2 *lakes* to pump between. Which means you are very limited in where you can install it and the people and animals who live in the valleys you flood tend to be displeased.

[@Achrononmaster]

@@adrianthoroughgood1191 Yeah, but if you already have a dam.... then it is the pump efficiency which matters. So for some cities with predominantly hydro generation it is a good question.

[@stevesmith1512]

2 dams with solar or wind above to pump water up and hydro down. Also allot of cities have water issues. Most countries biggest problem is government with short vision (next election).

[@philipwoodgate9555]

I have been looking endlessly at potential battery solutions, but this seems to be the one that ticks the most boxes. Simple, cheap and very scalable. As long as the claims are legit.

[@vvvci]

The EDISON Battery, aka nickel-iron batteries.... last 100+ years, and have NO enviro impact. They are big, bulky, and heavy, and must be kept from freezing... but from what I understand, a small shed sized battery room would power a home all day,

[@intensitydigital]

@@vvvci how is energy density though?

[@CorwinPatrick]

@@intensitydigital Who cares about density? We're not trying to move them in cars. That they work and are cheap are the only criteria that matters.

[@williamdowling7718]

@@CorwinPatrick space is very valuable in urban environments. It doesn't matter whether you need to move it with a car. The vast majority of people live in population dense environments which means there isn't enough room for each household to have an entire shed sized battery.

[@Hjernespreng]

@@CorwinPatrick what? It absolutely matters how dense they are! That affects their SCALABILITY.

[@Project337]

Has anyone calculated the energy density of your puns, Matt? Dad jokes could also be a completely overlooked source of cheap and infinitely renewable energy.

[@PeppoMusic]

I agree, fellow human, humans and cringing from "Dad jokes" and such, could be effective sources of energy. This would be very good for humans and cheap and infinitely renewable energy.

[@Gabrong]

I don't know if that would be safe. I worry that in a day or two we would be all dad.

[@ppipowerclass]

He has charged up the Dad jokes / puns.

[@Project337]

@@ppipowerclass Are you sure he's not powered BY the dad jokes and puns?

[@TheJesusFreeke]

the cringe is strong with this one keep up the good work. I appreciate the open-handed, open-minded approach you have, allowing the data to lead rather than whatever you may wish to be true or which tech you might personally prefer to become dominant. At the end of the day, the more of this tech we have and the less of the old tech, the more sustainable it will be for Earth.

[@dogphlap6749]

That was LCOS. LCOS includes initial cost and ongoing costs like maintenance mediated by anticipated usable life in hours. I had to look it up.

[@brianklaus2468]

Gave a thumbs up since this indirectly led to me having more puppy videos in my life

[@MrGonzonator]

Speed of discharge "100hr of storage" is meaningless since you can discharge a lithium battery slower if you want, you just won't get much power. Your video doesn't mention the power density of these iron batteries.

[@JWQweqOPDH]

As far as I understood, he was implying that iron-air has significantly less power/weight and power/volume, but significantly more energy/cost. For longer discharges from large facilities, power density isn't really important. However, we have yet to see if the efficiency (discharge/charge) is sufficient (80%+).

[@MrGonzonator]

@@JWQweqOPDH ok so if it's one football field per kw, that's ok?

[@musicbox4022]

Yeah because you know… 100 hours. Lol

[@MarkkuS]

Jeah, these claims of a long discharge time being a good thing is just marketing speech. I love these videos, but when the science video just copies the marketing lingo I get disheartened.

[@InfernosReaper]

Yeah, charge/discharge times are more about load vs storage capacity than how the battery specifically works. Hell, the fact this video is touting the ability of grouping the batteries into larger blocks for more capacity really makes this feel like paid advertising instead of an educational video. All batteries of the same voltage/capacity can be linked together to get larger capacities. That's literally just how power works. Plus, there's the who electrolyte solution and the questions about how long it will last and much it costs. Depending on the answers, this could actually end up costing a lot more to operate in the long run. That aside, after like 2 decades of "this new battery tech will be significantly cheaper and store *significantly* more energy" claims with it either not even coming close or going nowhere at all, I'm a bit skeptical.

[@NirvanaFan5000]

Super excited about long-duration batteries that are more eco-friendly. also, if lithium isn't being used for grid-scale projects, it'll help free it up for EVs... until we find a more eco-friendly option for that as well.

[@absalomdraconis]

Unless you're looking at isomer reactors, or at sulfur, you're not going to take autonomous electric cars beyond lithium. The moment that you abandon combustion, your options collapse.

[@benvoliothefirst]

@@absalomdraconis *IN BED

[@manninggrinnan621]

@@absalomdraconis After 100+ years of combustion, our options HAVE collapsed. We have to stop burning stuff.

[@oggyreidmore]

Or...we could build compact walkable cities with biking infrastructure and good public transit so people don't NEED cars - whether they are gas or EV. Then we could reduce lithium need altogether and not do so much mining with slave labor.

[@KoenvanGorpAstronomy]

I wish you wouldn't conflate capacity (kWh, etc) and power (kW, etc)... People are confused enough as it is. It would be nice that educational channels would at least get this right...

[@Al3xki]

@@mrxmry3264 You make a good point. I do think though he said 100 MW, which will be the maximum output. This is for 4 hours which would be equal to 400MWh. 100-hour battery is indeed meaningless. I don't think there is any industry standard jargon for this.

[@UndecidedMF]

Yes, I mean MW not MWh's there. I didn't misstate anything. The initial facility is 300 MW along with another 100 MW unit coming later. All in it will eventually provide 400 MW. You can calculate the MWh by the fact it can provide 4 hours of energy.

[@KoenvanGorpAstronomy]

@@UndecidedMF Ah yes, you are in fact correct. If you are talking about power plants the maximum power output is indeed referred to as capacity. I was thinking in terms of battery storage where capacity is the stored energy.

[@TheDebasishable]

I am learning about more new topics every month than I have learned in my undergrad. That's how much I am in awe of this channel. Thanks, man.

[@scbastve69]

Doesn't this have its roots in the ancient Baghdad batteries? They were built with a clay pot a tube of copper and a rod of iron. I believe it was the oxidation of the iron rod inside of the vinegar solution that was inside the copper tube. The chemical reaction was Fe -> Fe2+ + 2e- and produced around .44 volts.

[@randyosgood4729]

"The chemical reaction was Fe > Fe2+ + 2e and produced around .44 volts." Just enough voltage to please the gods!

[@absalomdraconis]

To the best of my memory, the Baghdad "batteries" are believed to actually be a method of protecting papyrus scroll on long journeys, such as from Egypt to Sumeria. I'd kinda like to believe that someone knew of electricity beyond lightning and amber, but there are better explanations for everything that I've heard of.

[@NakedSageAstrology]

*I came here because Joe Scott told me to support you.*

[@o0Avalon0o]

I hope something like this could apply to smaller towns like my home town. Our grid goes down for an average of 3 hours almost every month. If you can't afford a generator here, you're out of luck in an ice storm.

[@kensmith5694]

Local storage in each house sounds like the solution for small towns. They need to make a box that is good for about 10KWH and zillions of cycles. If you don't do anything silly, 10KWH will power your house for a day.

[@joe7272]

what's your town population? solar and batteries are completely scalable right now, the problem is high energy use devices like electric heaters, AC units microwaves, toasters, etc.

[@joe7272]

@@kensmith5694 You can already do this. 16kwh of lithium battery is as cheap as $10,000. 3kw all in one solar charge controller containing the solar 3kw MPPT charge controller, AC to DC grid charger 1.4kw, and 3kw inverter. best part? If you want to start building a power grid that is balancing, they ALREADY have the AC to DC circuity built in, in the form of a grid to battery charger! This lets you scale systems in very interesting ways!

[@kensmith5694]

@@joe7272 To many people $10K is a lot of money to invest. Also Lithium batteries won't do zillions of cycles.

[@absalomdraconis]

If ice storms are taking down your power, and you have hours of outage each month, then it's the grid itself (more particularly, some mix of neighborhood trees & people hitting poles), so a grid-scale option won't help. The household options mentioned here are what you want.

[@defeqel6537]

There was also an aluminium-ion battery mentioned a few months back, with apparently great properties. Whatever the future, I'll believe it when I see it, as too often new battery tech is either overadvertised in hopes of getting funding, or never pan out in mass production.

[@eternialogic]

Can they put a blender-like device inside the battery to get rid of dendrites? It is just sand with air bubbling through it I assume so it should be possible to just stir it every now and then, and possibly even actively filter out large connected particulates. If you bubble air through sand-like metal, the large pieces should goto the bottom like water, so you just belt out the big stuff and put small sand particulates back in. If you bubble in pure oxygen, will you get much more 'burst' energy at once, on-demand?

[@totherarf]

You could just let a cell discharge completely and apply a reversed voltage. It would "burn" the dendrites out!

[@rednammoc]

I'm disappointed that there's a lack of puppies in this otherwise great video with well-produced graphics ;-)

[@JohnnyWednesday]

Hi Matt :D thank you so much for dedicating your time to help teach and inform us about a sustainable future - you're doing good in this world :)

[@UndecidedMF]

Appreciate that.

[@Nightowl5454]

@@UndecidedMF kzbin.info/www/bejne/rYuXpJRrZa1ojJo here's a very interesting possibility for you to cover in a future video.🤔😁

[@solarsoils7368]

@@UndecidedMF - What did you find was the average cost of Li-ion during non-peak hours? @Patrick Bryant - Thank you for this particular explanation. I was getting skeptical with the price difference between Li-ion cost at $200/MWh ($0.20/kWh) and Rust cost at $20/kWh. The point is that the $0.20/MWh of Li-on discharge is ONLY during peak hours of usage, whereas the $20/kWh of Rust discharge is "all day, every day".

[@by9917]

2:00 LiON for $245 / MWH? sign me up for a few of few of those. Yet they hope to get iron air batteries down to $20 / KWH or $20k / MWH. And that makes sense to Matt?

[@permagnusandersson6052]

I came here to comment that exactly. That must be a mistake of his. Very surely, 245 bux for one MWH is not right. That way the 100MWH storage facility he's talking about at 1:25 would only cost close to $25k :D lol. That mistake is actually silly.

[@bongeyedbill9355]

Yea well spotted bro. I hope he corrects that .

[@nitinmittal213]

Typo....kWh not MWh

[@totherarf]

He was talking about storage costs Not the cost of the units to manufacture!

[@UndecidedMF]

I didn't make something as clear as I should have. The $245/MWh is the LCOS (levelized cost of storage) from this report: www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/. The $20/KWh is not a LCOS analysis. That's manufacturing cost that Form Energy is trying to hit. A separate LCOS analysis will have to be done once these batteries really start to hit the market and prices become widely available.

[@Mr_RichardH]

What an incredible development. It's great to feel a little optimistic about the future of the planet.

[@motleywells]

Great video! I am learning as much as I can about this process as the company I work for is helping build some automated equipment for them. This is by far the best education on the topic so far!

[@curtiscarpenter9881]

I'd like too see this in the UK like a pilot project to see how it would work on a smaller scale first then on a greater scale for cost purposes, knowing the profitability of growth then when theres direct to market evidence.

[@richardproctor6251]

That would be a sensible project.. so very little chance Tories wilould ever let it happen

[@DavesaysHi]

Apparently Maine just bought a HUGE one that's supposed to be three days worth of energy. Seems to be limited by the maximum energy it can put into the grid at any given moment but three days of duration should work in snowy Maine. Would love to see an update to this wonderful video!

[@xeridea]

Worth noting that this battery isn't necessarily longer duration by itself. Lithium batteries have incredibly low self discharge, easily lasting several months with minimal loss. The advantage would be in cost. If you can install much higher capacity due to lower cost, assuming they aren't really big, and require more land, you can provide power longer. 16-24 hours would be good with Solar since it is cyclical, though 2-3 days would be better due to clouding. If you are just talking about reducing peaker plants, 4-8 hours is fine to power through the evening when sun goes down, but demand is still high.

[@piccalillipit9211]

THANK YOU - I was trying to work out why they were saying that when I have Lithium batteried that i charged 3 years ago and they still have some change in them...

[@damonmaddox1313]

We are always talking about commercial size battery storage and power generation. The cost to build these facilities and the transmissions lines could be offset by doing this more residential because the residential housing is already tied to the grid. Miniaturize these batteries to power a house for 100 hours and put solar panels and smaller wind turbines on the houses to produce electricity. The cost of electricity would drop like a rock. This is another way the government helps their cronies off the backs of the citizenry.

[@Loaderdani]

Absolutely. But how do you convince every home owner of this? Or even just the majority of them? There aren’t enough climate conscious people to make that viable.

[@someonespotatohmm9513]

You know what would be even easier then to give every house a shed that requires special maintenance. PUT THE DAM THINGS AT DISTRIBUTION/GENERATION LOCATIONS!!! srsly there is a reason not every home has its own power plant, decentralised is more costly.

[@SpykerSpeed]

This would dramatically reduce the price of electric cars, too - by removing the demand for lithium in grid storage batteries, that frees up huge lithium supplies for use in vehicles, which drops prices there!

[@joaopedrocruz6432]

Electric cars are unsustainable,they are comparably as bad for the environment.

[@hostjhall]

@@joaopedrocruz6432 giant old computers the size of an apartment are unsustainable. Thankfully tech improves over time

[@joaopedrocruz6432]

@@hostjhall Electric cars will never be as efficient as public transport or even bicycles,they are just a waste of time to preserve a car centric model.

[@johnclamshellsp1969]

It would not. If you think a multi billion dollar corporation is going to cut its commodity price because one is using less of it, no happening. If you cut a current commodity use by 50%, you raise the price 51%. Business is about making 100% profit sir.

[@richdobbs6595]

@@joaopedrocruz6432 Mass public transport is only feasible when you have a poor populace or high population density which causes other problems. Electric cars could be used as shuttles in combination with mass transport to give a hybrid public transit system that is cost effective and convenient.

[@williamgwyntreharne9966]

I support the use of iron-air batteries for power storage. We can try to stop any charge leaking away. Hydrogen can also be used as storage for power. Just make it using electrolysis. The oxygen produced can be given off and that will help to reduce the heat absorption coefficient of the atmosphere. Hydrogen can be transported short distances.

[@danmallery9142]

6:04 Seems like a huge opportunity for solar on top of the building of the battery storage facility.

[@SF-li9kh]

Please keep the new battery videos coming. Awesome series

[@neilreynolds328]

Grest video Matt. If you look at the varying combination of power generation and storage in use now, it is easy to see how a large, varied combined approach will best suit in future. One size rarely fits all, that being said. Go big or go home.

[@jimmym2719]

Yeah..what a great idea Neil, go big or go home.. we’ll it’s true not one size fits all.. I prefer the go HOME small modular system off grid 3-5kw power generation.. Any excess can feed back into a shared neigbourhood grid.💕

[@specialopsdave]

@@jimmym2719 If thousands of 5kwh batteries are linked together, that's 5 mwh, which is big, not home

[@jimmym2719]

@@specialopsdave u r right, every HOME has their own generator, I am just seeing a great future where humanity share their free resources, small community clustered together, build n lived together.💕

[@drumkommandr9779]

@5:00 At below $17 per kWh, it becones cheaper to switch than it does to keep going as we are.

[@theplaylab9336]

This Undecided series has the same vibe of Beyond 2000 from the 90s, albeit with an updated, chill soundtrack.

[@mrbizi5652]

This is so true and exactly why I subscribe :)

[@btrswt35]

I remember beyond 2000! Used to watch it all the time.

[@joeylawn36111]

Aluminum would be a really tough material to use in a similar battery system due to the fact it passivates when exposed to oxygen. All "bare metal" aluminum you see is actually coated with an ultra-thin layer of aluminum oxide that doesn't flake off like rust does with iron. That's good for corrosion prevention, but not for when you need it to easily switch back and forth like iron/iron oxide does.

[@Loaderdani]

Thank you! I was wondering why this is rechargeable but aluminium air not.

[@CUBETechie]

2:50 why they don't put the solar panels on the roof of this storage device?

[@parthkulkarni04]

If you look closely there's wind turbines

[@Loaderdani]

It’s a render, rather than an actual structure, but at this scale, the roof could be made of solar panels and it would be hard to tell. I think the reason that they aren’t is that batteries of this size produce a lot of heat when they charge or discharge, and solar panels are most efficient at low-room temperatures. Additionally it takes surprisingly pure water (9 ppm impurity’s) to keep solar panels optimally clean, and pure water is a very good solvent. It’s best that the battery cases don’t have to be designed to deal with that, though you totally could.

[@christopherleubner6633]

The iron would be in the form of course tunings sintered into porus plates. The electrolyte would be a salt mixture KFe(SO4)2 in water. The anode would be acivated carbon, gaphite fiber, silver, and mangenese dioxide.

[@alastairweems7450]

There will be no single solution. Although we may not match lithiums usefulness for small applications. We may find better solutions at large scale grid stations.

[@landoncharlton7071]

Another issue with lithium is the amount of fresh water that is wasted. I get the capacity needs for mobile uses but we have to figure out a way to collect that water. They could filter and sell it which isn't the most ideal situation, but it's better then not using it at all

[@kriegtiger]

I think the iron air battery is a good step forwards for grid level energy storage. I really hope to see more about it and hope that technologies like this take off and have industry disrupting results that favor the common person :) It's far and away better than the aluminum air one that was mentioned. Single use replaceable batteries are a crutch that tries to keep us in the 'stop at the corner store to fill up your tank' mentality, which is purely a factor of the fossil fuel industry. In the course of the lifetime of a single current gen Lithium ion EV battery (Tesla, just for easy reference), the number of '1000 mile' or even '1500 mile' aluminum batteries you would consume (and force the re-manufacture of) would be in the hundreds. This is wildly different than grabbing small bits of fuel each time you fill up your car out of a tanker's total capacity. This is multiple hundreds of manufacturing processes being re-done for EACH aluminum air battery (packaging, electronics, casings, screws, etc etc etc), each with their own demand on energy and CO2 production outputs. It's cool tech, and it's *a* solution, but it's a bad one IMO because it keeps us in the same usable/disposable mindset that we need to get away from.

[@someonespotatohmm9513]

If you do it properly you would only recycle the ...nodes and electrolyte, then reatach that to the already existing casing, could be quite efficient especialy if you consider all the extraction and transport required for that "small bit of fuel". The problem is the ~20 eff of the alu battery.

[@LefteyeL]

More people need to hear about this..

[@audigit]

This Iron Air technology seems brilliant for investing in our carbon_free future. Thanks for your research!

[@richardmeiners6535]

Finally, someone brought up Zinc8

[@adam-g7crq]

I think liquid air batteries will provide long term affordable grid storage over any of the others highview power already have demonstration units up and running in the UK.

[@Sinaeb]

Or you just, just dams.

[@siresbrs]

Hey Matt. Love your channel. Keep up the excellent work. Just watched Joe Scott's Rust Battery episode...I think he won this round. PUPPIES!🤣You may have to improve your game!

[@2nd-place]

What about massive ferris wheel sized flywheels? Or are we too concerned about them breaking free and sawing a city in half?

[@Loaderdani]

My guess is that it has more to do with the difficulty of mass producing bearings that can continuously support the flywheel for decades with minimal lubricant or loss of energy. They don’t seem to need vacuum chambers to achieve high efficiency, so it must have to do with rolling resistance and manufacturing or maintenance.

[@tomellis4750]

Electric storage heaters are a way of storing energy. I have them. They are fine when it's consistently cold, but poor when the temperature varies, due to their slow response. Could the design be improved by having larger units, perhaps for district heating, that would store heat for longer periods, preferably several days, or even weeks?

[@Sinaeb]

Heat the ground! What great way to lose energy!

[@tomellis4750]

@@Sinaeb What do you mean?

[@dervakommtvonhinten517]

well, we have heared of iron air, zinc air, aluminium air... i wanna be decadent and demand a gold air battery

[@Loaderdani]

Gold doesn’t react readily with air, one of the qualities that make it desirable for jewellery. It is malleable and a very good electrical conductor though, so maybe you could get a high charge/ discharge rate using gold leaf rather than gold pellets.

[@dervakommtvonhinten517]

@@Loaderdani it was a joke dude XD

[@Loaderdani]

@@dervakommtvonhinten517 Oh. Sorry! I sort of knew that, but also thought it was a interesting thought experiment. Hope you’re having a good day!

[@dervakommtvonhinten517]

@@Loaderdani was just a way to one up the stuff that already exists. aluminium air uses some silver to filter the air so the widely considered more valuable metal would be gold.

[@fundude2679]

Feedback: So I watch in fullscreen and normally I have darkmode on every website, including yt. So when you show an "article" and it is bright white with black text, it kinda works like a "flashbang". Any chance it could be more yellow-white or graytoned white. Anyways I love watching your videos and learning about new tech is cool! Keep up the good work!

[@ajemohaltom3560]

Between Lyten, ESS, and Form Energy, it looks like cheaper than Li-ion is going to be commercially available in the next couple years.

[@joe7272]

Sodium ion was already released this July! Costs will reduce further

[@TheJesusFreeke]

Even as a Tesla shareholder, I really hope something like this works out for grid-level storage. Li-ion is supply constrained, and my impression is that this will not be. The sooner we get off of coal and natural gas, the better!!!

[@DrakeTech-kh8hs]

The main problem is that this consumes massive space compared to LFP, it's the difference between a bus-sized pack VS a whole acre to get the same 3MWh. The solution in my opinion would be to stack iron-air/rust batteries, forming types of skyscrapers.

[@kingwr12]

If Li+ costs $132-$245 per MWh, how is $20 kWh for Air-Iron batteries an improvement in cost?

[@kalvindeane1]

@sp0777iXdlMLalN0dsXxlMlNdsM0jdsjThe $245/MWh is the LCOS. $20 kWh is the manufacturing cost. Two completely different metrics.

[@westganton]

Finally, a relatively elegant solution to energy storage. I have no doubt that we'll hear more about this as time goes on

[@mnomadvfx]

It will certainly improve in value as economy of scale brings out its strengths.

[@shiveditasingh4593]

Iron is the gamechanger here. As a complementary solution, this is the one to seriously think about. If you will add some economic numbers, it would further add and would help in analysis that to what extent, we have the chances.

[@N0Xa880iUL]

Yes!

[@dangingerich2559]

Large, centralized stuff like this is NOT the right way to do this. We need this on a local home level. We need more homes with low level wind power and battery banks. HOAs are the biggest opposition to this.

[@Loaderdani]

Yes. But how do you convince every home owner of this? Or even just the majority of them? There aren’t enough climate conscious people to make that viable.

[@peterbristol5604]

Who's here because of Joe Scott?

[@owenbradshaw9302]

This is an interesting technology my question will be , how sustainable is the recycling/refurbishment process ? And what is the energy efficiency of the charging cycle ? It’s contending with nearly 100% for lithium ion storage . And how much will it cost to build once at scale? Hopefully the answers to these questions will be good .

[@Tsudkyk]

As someone who worked as an electrician for 5 years, and continues to pursue electronics projects- corrosion is the enemy of circuits. I’m very curious about this rust technology. We need to reinvestigate the things we think we know.

[@magic_cfw]

I'm always cautious when companies say "it would be cheaper" because it either means that it's really expensive to maintain, or they increase the price to make even more money.

[@Hallowed_Ground]

Or, they keep the price the same (raise it asap ofc) but just make things cheaper and more efficient so they can pass on the savings to themselves. Of course, these energy technologies are great to have in the world regardless of these monsters.

[@TheRetsehc]

Form Energy's 1-hour resolution is a little dated in the US energy industry. Five minute resolution for demand prediction and settlements is more current.

[@sufferr2914]

Joshua you look like balloony from phineas and ferb

[@Al3xki]

I can see two things holding this technology back. Cooling and impurities. First, the iron air reaction is highly exothermic, so the higher the density of the system the greater the cooling challenge. There is a company in scandinavia that is using iron air for renewable heat which makes more sense to me. Second, air tends to be a mixture of various compounds. Combine that with low flows and a hot environement (point 1) and you will be getting a lot of crap on your batteries that will significantly reduce their lifetime. Most other battery systems are only worried about internal impurities.

[@Loaderdani]

It would be cool if they could recycle the oxygen as well as the iron, but I guess that air tight seals that can handle the change in pressure must be difficult/expensive to produce reliably.

[@dahahaka]

Damn watched the whole thing on 500x speed what a great video as usual!

[@UndecidedMF]

😂

[@CGFUN829]

i think i get it

[@miinyoo]

The best inventions are made of the simplest of things. Hand warmers. Nice.

[@junkerzn7312]

This sounds like the battery equivalent of base-load, albeit without the down-sides of base-load. The biggest problem with iron-air, even for a fixed installation, is probably going to be the bulkiness required to get a decent amount of storage capacity vs lithium, and I expect somewhat more expensive maintenance cycle. Anytime you have moving parts on an industrial scale, maintenance becomes a major issue. Perhaps a bigger over-arching issue is that far more resources are being put into lithium research than into iron-air research. Certain lithium technologies, for example the LiFePO4 chemistry, can easily compete on cycle life (4000+ cycles for LiFePO4 under these sorts of controlled circumstances, easy), don't require any moving parts, and don't have any of the capacity or power density downsides of iron-air. Also, LiFePO4 is a far more robust chemistry than NMC or NCA or other similar lithium-ion chemistries, so the fire danger is not really an issue either. I suspect that the research cycle into lithium chemistries like LiFePO4 will trump these other battery technologies over time. Throw in solid-state in a couple of years as well... then even the liquid electrolyte goes away. -Matt

[@absalomdraconis]

The quoted LCOS incorporates the cost of maintenance, that's what's cheaper. Personally though, I want to know the LCOS in _energy_ rather than dollars.

[@michaelcrockis7679]

The bulkiness is not a problem for installations that are not mobile. No one complains about dams. Because no one uses dams to power vehicle propulsion. Although they could've. :)

[@adrianthoroughgood1191]

Build the solar farm on the roof of the battery farm then you don't need any additional land for the battery.

[@artboymoy]

I often wonder what sort of storage solutions would be good for my home. I wouldn't mind having batteries that last 4 days but don't have the cash to shell out for the top of the line storage. I have a basement and backyard to build a shed with batteries, but just haven't researched all that much. Like, how many of these would I need to power my house for 3 days or a week? I feel that with the amount of solar that people have that storage options for consumers would start building up as well.

[@kensmith5694]

Good old lead-acid car batteries may be the way to go for you. One car battery is worth about: 60AH * 12V = 720WH AKA 0.72KWH Check the specs for your freezer and see what it averages to. That is the highest priority thing in most houses.

[@rummy98]

cool vid, could use more puppies though.

[@Bonjour-World]

Back in the Day, EDISON batteries were used to power telegraph and phone systems. When the last one was taken out of service it was OVER 100 years old. Energy density is low for this technology but no one has come with a battery technology that has better longevity.

[@zinaj9437]

It could make the grid very stable because rust never sleeps.

[@Yora21]

Excess energy that can't be delivered anywhere is apparently a big problem for power plants. Reducing the output but getting back to full power in just three of four hours isn't that easy. If you had always somewhere where you could dump the excess power, that would be really useful.

[@Ravenlight_303]

This is a great development! One question; why do we as a society insist that electricity, power generation, and storage are centralized? Wouldn't electricity be more dependable and reliant if power generation and storage are decentralized? What if power was generated and stored by local buildings and dwellings with excess feeding a local grid that is publicly owned and maintained by local companies?

[@kensmith5694]

The only way someone can be filthy sinking rich from providing electrical power is to make it centralized. Putting solar panels on the roof of each house and then using the grid to share the power around won't get anyone rich.

[@civosborne]

I think I found a new way to endanger your health: Take a shot every time Matt makes a pun.

[@tmac8396]

My liver punched me for even reading your comment.

[@TimCamilleri]

The puns are indeed painful

[@notnotalwen4891]

@@TimCamilleri very punful 😅

[@___.51]

After some google searching I’m seeing articles from this month (august 2023) that still have headlines like “iron-air batteries _could_ reshape our energy future” and “why rust is the _future_ of energy storage”. So, claims that rust batteries would be on the market by no were wrong. On a positive note, a headline from July 2023: “super-cheap gigawatt-scale rust battery greenlit for Minnesota”. So maybe that is the future of this technology. Rust batteries are so big that they need to be greenlit by state and local governments to install. We’ll see.

[@ThapeloMKT]

The knowledge and technology to make these "rust" batteries, has been around for many decades (maybe even a century or two) there must be a good reason why they're not common.

[@specialopsdave]

The knowledge and technology nessecary for internal combustion engines was invented in the 1600s, and steam engines in the 1200s, but they remained unused technology for centuries. I mean, rockets were invented in the 8th century if I remember correctly, and it took nearly a millenium for them to be regularly used.

[@khenricx]

It's simple : until now we did not need them. Batteries were used in transports, or small objects, so what you needed was energy density. In that regard, rust batteries cannot compete with lithium ion. And rust batteries will never replace lithium ion in the transport industry. For large scale storage however, we don't really care about energy density anymore. The demand for this kind of facilities is new, that's why rust batteries are being discussed now.

[@johnhenson8862]

Last time I played with rust all had was dirty water and mud in the bottom of a bucket. Last time I changed the aircon and car filter all I saw was a hair mat. How any air got through in a mystery. So an Iron Air battery seems to me to be a cinch.

[@VictorGallagherCarvings]

Different chemistry's for different applications. The cost of stationary energy storage is projected to drop by 80% by 2030. When you combine that with the 50% minimum drop in cost of solar cells in the same time period you are looking at a killer combination.

[@johnhenson8862]

says who? Think about what you wrote. It means for the same mass the energy density goes up 5 fold. Or something is 1/5 the cost. Next question, degradation rate and useful life? Replacing the entire global installation of batteries every 20 years is a dead cert loser proposition. The planet might be able to do it once. Then our grandchildren will abhor the mindless follies of the 2020's and go all Nuke.

[@someonespotatohmm9513]

@@johnhenson8862 Energy density != cost. And look at what we do now, dig ridiculous large ammount of earth or maintain expensive large instalations in the ocean + a world wide transport infrastructure just to burn some carbon, talking about insanity XD.

[@ehombane]

unfortunately, solar cell are just a third of the cost of a solar plant. the other two are the electronics and the structures holding the cells. And for these the price may go up due to demand. But even it stays the same, still the price will not go down more than 15 percent. So by cost alone solar will be not a killer for coal. The switch still needs to be reinforced through law. There are some centuries of coal and gas, and till they became scarce those who are getting rich from them, will do anything possible to burn as much as they can. The last hoax I heard is that oil is regenerating. There seems to be some bacteria that regenerates it. And this was repeated to me by a smart guy. When I confronted him with logic he admitted that is obvious that it does not regenerate at the rate of consumption. And when asked why he says that it regenerates if is just symbolic he said that he does not cares he want comfort, and electric cars are polluting more. More than an ICE care on its life time? Yes, because the engine, on a hybrid... So are we talking about electric cars or what? So if a smart guy is victim to these disinformate what can we say about morons or regular people but who does not care?

[@gloriouspopemantom373]

@@ehombane EVs and energy storage is getting there, but forcing it is foolish, give it 15-20y and the tech will be mature. I mostly question the religious nature of current climate alarmism, something I highly doubt is emergent behavior. It would be preferable if reality was the focus of discussions instead of dogma for the carbon control economy. A simple proof is to look at how NASA erased the 1920s "blip" in temperature and ice cover from their graphs, breaks the Co2 correlation.

[@asandax6]

@@gloriouspopemantom373 It's easier to control those who are in a constant state of fear because they don't think they just act.

[@joeblack4436]

$20/kWh. Heck. Give me 20 of those for my house. Honestly. With decent home storage coming it at around $500 to $1000 per kWh (i know... there's an inverter and a few other bits in there, but still. Yikes.) it really is a tad... aspirational to get one. These people are more than welcome to conquer the entire home storage market if they feel like doing so. Even at $30/kWh they would be able to. Easily.

[@NinetooNine]

Pair this with Flywheels and it could be an all-in-one solution for grid storage.

[@jemsterr]

I was interested to hear his take on that. From what he said here, I would say that flywheel storage would replace Lithium ion storage for all but the most immediate response need. But that's just an armchair opinion.. Wish it had been mentioned in the video. He has access to a lot more information than I.

[@yoshikhurazi1769]

@@jemsterr It's honestly not a very desirable solution on earth. You either have to contend with heavy air resistance continuously draining the power being stored or invest in energy expensive evacuated chambers which kind of defeats the purpose of an energy storage device. In vacuum or very thin aired environments like space, the Moon, or Mars though, the game changes.

[@jemsterr]

@@yoshikhurazi1769 Thanks for that. Matt's video from 9 months ago sounded much more hopeful, which is why I thought it strange that it wasn't mentioned.

[@yoshikhurazi1769]

@@jemsterr It does have advantages in certain circumstances - such as when the power generation method itself involves kinetic energy such as a wind turbine, a decent portion of which would be lost to inefficiencies otherwise. It's just not a very good general solution despite being technically the first power storage method humanity had - long before we even had batteries or electricity.

[@alphaxfang]

@@yoshikhurazi1769 i think humanity can made vacuum casing + magnetic levitation for those flywheel...

[@woot808]

It would interesting to see a video on Vanadium redox flow batteries.

[@Draxis32]

These types of batteries are ideal for home usage. If the problems could be solved the cost could be lowered to such a degree that, if you live in a sunny area, you could just have a surplus of energy all time. Due to it being so durable, cost-efficient, and safe to store.

[@michaelfelder2640]

Freeing up lithium is good for the weight advantage. Needed now in cars, boats... until something lighter comes along. I see a place for iron in fixed location storage solutions.

[@andymanaus1077]

Start-of-life and end-of-life environmental costs are often ignored when it comes to "green" energy production. For example, lithium production is extremely dirty and requires massive inputs of fossil fuels to power the needed vehicles and machinery. lithium ores are rare, they produce mountains of tailings and require huge settling ponds. They are derived mostly from water-poor locations, leaving the local peoples short of water. End of life is no better for lithium. Lithium batteries nearly impossible to recycle, resulting in almost all of the rare, expensive element going to landfills instead of new products. Iron is much more abundant, can be derived from recycled metal, and can be recycled easily. The additional weight doesn't matter for power station batteries. It's a great idea and I hope it is widely adopted.

[@canpow98]

There are other sources of lithium utilizing existing oil/gas well infrastructure. Pump up the salt water from down deep - extract the lithium and pump the rest of the salt water back where it came from.

[@MayankSingh-cy7lv]

Thankyou for your mind glowing vedios. We also like to see how these ideas make possible at Garage levels. With Tecnical hands .

[@marginbuu212]

Ah technology. About the only thing that gives me optimism for the future nowadays.

[@asandax6]

It also can completely eradicate us all because depending on how it's used. The push for Solar and wind is a little rushed. It's like the earth will end tomorrow but we'll still be around even in 2300 even if we keep using fossil fuels. What we should be doing is developing the solar infrastructure along with the fossil fuel infrastructure. Until we can use renewables as reliably as fossil fuels we shouldn't even be thinking of changing anything. But this 2030 push is gonna bring more problems than it fixes.

[@slitor]

Awsome! This would free up a lot of lit-ion resources for when bulk isn't an issue.

[@FrayAdjacentTX]

The problem with thinking storage will make up for times when renewables can't produce is that you have to have massive amounts of storage, AND you need a lot more production capacity than demand, so that storage can be charged up.

[@vitoravila9908]

But that's the thing, solar production, for example, tends to be way higher than demand during daytime. Integrated grid(sorry Texas)+ storage + multi-modal renewable (Solar+Wind+Nuclear+Hidro+Geotermal) is probably the way to go

[@Les_S537]

@@vitoravila9908 Why do you say, sorry Texas?

[@jimurrata6785]

@@Les_S537 Texas chose not to intergrate with the national grids, to avoid regulations. (like winterizing their generation capacity) Their grid failed because they couldn't source enough power to stabilize their grid in a cold spell. But _Ma Fredumbs_ ! 😅

[@vitoravila9908]

@@Les_S537 Just as he said, also, it keeps them out of the wider energy market, so they can't buy or sell energy outside of the state limits... As an exemple, as nightfalls in NY, Texas still have almost 2 hours of sunlight, where they could sell cheap and excess solar energy, while at nightfall, with the peak of domestic consumption that occurs at this time, you could still buy cheap solar power from California for about 2:30h. With an independent electrical grid, this energy transmission scheme becomes unfeasible

[@Les_S537]

@@vitoravila9908 Texas chose long ago to keep its grid separate from the rest of the country for two main reasons. A. Regulations that make sense for a place like New York, which gets lots of cold weather days, don't necessarily apply to a warm weather state like Texas which rarely gets below freezing for more than a day, let alone for a week like we had back in February. B. The Great Northeastern Blackout took place in the mid 60's where a cascade failure in the eastern grid resulted in several states being without power, including parts of Canada, for weeks, and easily 50 million people were affected. Texas chose to keep a separate grid because they didn't want an issue in another state to cascade into our grid, and we didn't want an issue in our grid to affect other states. There are 5 interconnects in the state to the outside grid that can be activated if we want. The northeast had another major outage in the 2000's as well, again with several states power taken out, and part of Canada, with close to 100 million people affected. Again for weeks in many cases. You clearly lack an understanding of what Texas is doing.

[@itzikgutzcha4779]

I think that the solution should be to store excess energy as potential energy and not chemical energy. chemical energy has its advantages by being mobile, something that you don't need in this case. Here (Israel) we have a "lake battery" where any excess power is used to push water uphill and fill a reservoir, and then use the potential energy when in demand as hydroelectric energy.

[@willykang1293]

By speaking the rust to generate electricity, I thought about I can generate electricity from those rusted iron bars in our factory.😂 But I think it’s not that simple.😅

[@richdobbs6595]

It generates electricity by making rust. To store energy, you make iron from rust.

[@benjaminniven4210]

Have you heard of Hybrid Hydraulic Vehicles? it uses hydraulic pressure differentials to power a motor with minimal input power. It's a really cool technology that could be used along with EV tech to extend their ranges

[@Wipsplash]

The answer is hamsters and wheels to drive generators. We use their droppings as fertilizer to grow gardens to feed the hamsters. We build a bio dome over them and bring in salt water to evaporate and cause fresh water rain to hydrate the plants and animals. it will take 100s of years before the hamsters revolt. By then we will be living on Mars. On a separate note I now realize I shouldn't have Tequila as breakfast. Lets Go Brandon! "Hiccup"

[@tomellis4750]

Just fix a generator to spaniel's tail with a video loop saying, " Ball."

[@egnegn123]

After 3 years the Iron Air battery seems to have lost against LFP batteries. LFP cell prices now below 50 USD, and there is no large scale production of Iron Air batteries yet.

[@walterlynch4820]

Thank-you for the great, timely and engineering level discussions on new technologies. I find the Fe air batteries fascinating as they are not using rare elements found in nature and are sustainable. I will keep watching as long as you are sharing!

[@rodericksabale2759]

Matt can you also discuss a subject based on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).

[@parthkulkarni04]

5:15 I would like to point out that lithium isn't the majority raw material in a typical battery, just 25 to 30 % of total raw material is lithium rest is cobalt, nickel,etc depending on the type .

[@Les_S537]

Lithium makes up on 2% of every Li-ion battery

[@JoeTaber]

I'm not very interested in qualitative comparisons to the alternative battery companies you chose. I'd rather have direct answers to more basic questions: Passive discharge rate (100h is very high) Efficiency (greatly affected by passive discharge) How they prevent the formation of rust from degrading the integrity of the battery, you mentioned "dendrites", and this battery doesn't have "dendrites" specifically but it still forms rust which breaks the chemical bonds with the rest of the iron so I'd like to see how they expect to maintain the integrity of the battery over time.

[@mementomori5580]

You know, the whole "may be the future of energy" becomes meaningless if every single thing you talk about "may be the future of energy" -.-

[@Bmanda-9000]

Hey it's better than putting all your eggs in one basket , but you're right either way I guess 😁.

[@ChristianJS610]

It is nice to hear those human beings are willing to learn and grow. Much hope for the future :)

[@2nd3rd1st]

As long as Alec Baldwin is not an investor in this I'll give Rust a chance.

[@chriskwakernaat2328]

ouch...