Innovative Energy Storage

Batteries of Yesterday, Today, and the Future

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Use of Batteries

3. Secondary Cells and Rechargeable Batteries

4. Properties of Batteries

5. Future of Batteries

6. Concluding Remarks

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Bitesize Edition

• After a period of exploring electric vehicles and lithium, we’re going to explore batteries as a more general topic. Battery innovation is an exciting area of modern research, especially when coupled with AI. Google Deepmind’s new AI tool discovered 700 new materials in November 2023. This will aid in innovative battery research as expensive trial and error when combining elements can be avoided.

• Batteries will be a necessary part of the clean energy transition. Whether in electric vehicles, energy storage for intermittent renewables, a smart electricity grid, or home energy storage systems, we need batteries.

• Lithium battery costs have dropped 98% since the 1990s. However, other batteries are struggling to scale and reduce costs. It’s said that when an option is naturally more efficient and cheaper than current existing options, it’s bound to scale and become cheaper.

• These batteries need to be known about, and their advantages in different situations need promoting. We could find some batteries are better equipped to fulfil certain tasks that lithium-ion batteries currently fill since they’re the only choice. Today, we cover Aluminium-ion batteries.

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Introduction

Before the holiday season, we had been discussing electric vehicles and lithium for quite some time. We’re going to stick with the vital topic of “The Future of Energy”, but we’re going to transition to alternative battery chemistries.

The innovation of batteries has occurred over centuries since its invention in 1800 (Voltaic Pile), and the lithium-ion battery is the current stop on the journey. One issue, however, is that lithium-ion batteries sometimes explode due to their flammable electrolyte. Not a great trait for a battery used in transportation.

With us needing to electrify the global economy, the innovation train still has many stops left to travel towards. Will the batteries that power the future be made from lithium at all?  Naturally, innovation works to solve problems that exist in the current technology, and exploding batteries are a problem.