When it comes to generating renewable energy, storage has proven to be key to efficiency. It is therefore not surprising that the major battery developers are fighting over the most important advances. But now an energy company is making a statement with a battery that breaks the storage record to date. And by far.
Until now, the record was held by Edwards and Sanborn’s solar-plus-storage project in California, which uses more than 120,000 batteries to store 3,287 MWh. But Form Energy has decided to build the world’s largest battery in Lincoln, Maine, to help ease the strain on the region’s power grid. The project is being funded by the Department of Energy and if current plans remain unchanged, it will be able to store 8,500 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy.
To put that 8,500 MWh of energy into context, it’s estimated that a single megawatt-hour would provide enough power for an electric car to travel 5,800 kilometers. If Form Energy’s battery system could somehow be connected to that electric car, it could travel approximately 50 million kilometers on a single megawatt-hour. A single charge is enough to orbit the Earth 1,228 times..
Meanwhile, the capacity of the best laptops is about 65 Wh, which means that this battery can store 130 million times more energy. And for a smartphone this can mean about 500 million times more.
The battery bank will be built using Form Energy’s iron-air battery system, which works through a “reversible oxidation” process: when the battery is discharged, absorbs oxygen from the air and converts the iron inside the battery into rust. Then, when the battery is recharged, the process is reversed: the rust turns back into iron and oxygen is released into the air.
The storage system will be built from several individual battery modules, each about the size of a washer and dryer set, Form Energy representatives said. Each module will contain approximately 50 cells of 1 meter height.which contain iron and air electrodes together with a non-flammable water-based electrolyte solution.
Iron-air batteries have several advantages over traditional lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries used in everyday technology. For example, there are no heavy metals in the batteriesYoiron-air aces, which means a reduced environmental impact of miningYoa lithium. Alsoandn are much mtos cheaper to operate than their lithium-based relatives, and Form Energy representatives claim that a batteryYoa iron-air “stores energy”Yoaa less than 1/10 the cost of technologyYoa lithium-ion battery”.
But for now There is no chance that iron-air batteries will replace lithium-ion batteries in consumer electronics. While they’re useful for large-scale storage, they charge and discharge energy much more slowly than lithium-ion cells, which isn’t ideal for smartphones or electric cars. It’s also difficult for researchers to shrink batteries down enough to fit inside these everyday devices.