And you’re right that it’s not a new chemistry. It’s abundant on every continent … and it’s one of the largest scale industries in the world. And we still use it, of course as the main input for steel production today. We had a whole age named after it because we were playing with it so much. Iron is a phenomenally abundant metal substance. And that means it also has to be a lot cheaper than what lithium-ion can do. If we’re going to have an electric system that is not only 100% renewables driven - by wind, water and solar - then we do need to think about these periods of intermittence that are longer than just a few hours at a time.
However, as we start to get to these deeper penetrations of renewable energies, we need something that’s a bit different from what lithium-ion can do. Right now, at this event, I’m guessing everybody here has five lithium-ion batteries on their person right now, just as an example of how prevalent that chemistry is. But the technology that is quickly coming up on that is, of course, lithium ion. That’s by far the most amount of energy storage that we have out there in the world today. Jaramillo also addressed why iron-air technology, which is what Form relies on and that was first investigated nearly 50 years by federal agencies (and never commercialized), suddenly makes sense as a way to store energy:įirst of all, the technology that’s most deployed is pumped hydro.
#Mini cooper chip tuning generator#
But then we start to think about gaps associated with seasons or with longer-period weather patterns, and because renewable electricity has made such huge gains in the last 15 to 20 years, we’re now at penetration levels where we do have to think very hard about the last 30% or 40% of the electric system and exactly how we’re going to provide a level of reliability and cost using a renewable or generator like what we have. Yes, the sun does go down every night and very helpfully comes back every morning - so that’s one gap that we have to bridge. That means that in order to enable a fully renewable decarbonized grid, we need to be able to store intermittent sources of energy over all the relevant timescales. And of course, the thing about renewable energy is that it’s driven by weather, and weather is only predictable to a certain degree, and it’s intermittent.
But if you’re looking for the marginally cheapest cost of electricity, it is going to be renewable today. The cheapest available source of electricity in the world today comes from a renewable resource, and that’s either solar or wind, depending on which region you’re in. On why we’re seeing a renewable energy wave right now, with many companies aside from Form garnering attention and investment dollars:
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