Energy Storage News

A renaissance of creativity around developing innovations for energy has emerged in the wake of Silicon Valley’s cleantech bust in the U.S. It’s taken several years to materialize. Bolstered by a series of energy success stories, this newfound creativity has been propped up by increasingly low costs of clean energy technologies and energy storage, and has floated on a change in the political winds.

Inside a sunlit, cramped office near San Francisco’s financial district, entrepreneur and former political operative Susan Kennedy has been leading a team that is at the forefront of the emerging market for energy storage. The company, Advanced Microgrid Solutions, was in stealth mode until it became one of a handful of companies that recently won contracts — and a whopping 50 MW order — to build and manage large installations of batteries in buildings for utility Southern California Edison.

Volkswagen has invested in stealth battery startup QuantumScape, according to a Bloomberg report, which said VW plans to invest in battery technology as a way to boost the range of electric cars and compete with companies like Tesla Motors. Volkswagen is investigating using QuantumScape’s battery for its cars and VW America bought a 5 percent share, according to the report.

Breakthroughs in energy technologies are just plain tough — they can take a long time and a lot of money, and usually require hard core specialty science knowledge. These are some of the reasons why venture capitalists have fled investing in “cleantech,” as they couldn’t make the same type of easy, quick money that can come from investing in internet companies.

.

Drive about 45 minutes southeast of downtown Pittsburgh, out to the edge of Westmoreland County, and you’ll reach a sprawling, cavernous factory whose history shadows the ebb and flow of technology trends and American manufacturing. In the late 1960s, Chrysler, fresh off the American muscle car wave, started building the plant, but as the seventies approached and the price of oil rose, it suspended construction without making a single car. Fast forward a decade and German car company Volkswagen stepped in — rolling the boxy Rabbit off the line — but that era was hit with a lethal combo of worker unrest, awkward car designs and dropping oil prices that took the sheen off Volkswagen’s small-car edge.

In the future, materials that could make a super efficient solar panel or a breakthrough battery probably won’t be discovered by a smart human scientist. Like everything else in this world, computers and software are increasingly identifying the best combination of materials to deliver a desired result, and then human researchers are testing out those computers’ choices in the lab.

Drive about a hundred miles east of San Francisco, and you’ll hit the heart of the Central Valley, Stanislaus County, where agriculture is king, trucks have four-wheel drive, and the temperature commonly creeps up into the nineties in the summer. The county’s larger towns were founded in the late 1800′s as stops on the railroad. The biggest city, Modesto, was forever immortalized in the movie American Graffiti as the backdrop for cruising teenagers, diners and late 1950′s Americana.

A battery that lasts longer, is safer, charges faster and is less expensive than a standard lithium ion battery: That’s the powerful idea behind a new type of battery under development by a young Japanese startup called Power Japan Plus, or PJP, which came out of stealth on Tuesday. The year-old company uses carbon for both the anode and the cathode portion of the battery and hopes to start producing it later this year.

When it comes to clean power and energy grid innovation, Hawaii is becoming ground zero. That’s because the state imports billions of dollars worth of oil a year, delivering electricity prices to its residents that are three to four times the national average. Enter the Energy Excelerator, a startup accelerator that provides funding, connections with Hawaiian organizations, and advice to some of the most promising energy-focused startups out there. In an exclusive interview Energy Excelerator Director Dawn Lippert tells me that the group will open up applications for its 2015 program on June 1, and for this upcoming class they’re looking for companies focused on innovations around the edge of the power grid, from energy storage companies to smart grid developers to distributed clean energy innovators.

How many times have you dashed out of the house and realized your cell phone battery was about to die? Who hasn’t frantically searched for a cell phone USB charger at work or even a party? Yep, we’re all guilty. The humble lithium ion cell phone battery is pretty much the bane of existence for the modern mobile world, and it hasn’t gotten all that much better despite the best efforts of many companies and people.

Since Tesla confirmed last month that it plans to build a massive battery factory in the U.S., there’s been exuberant speculation that the electric car maker will disrupt not just the auto industry, but also the global market for power grid energy storage (the key to solar and wind). But, as is usually the case, the real story is far more nuanced and complex.

The lithium ion battery could get a boost from the humble pomegranate. According to researchers at Stanford, including Amprius founder Yi Cui, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, clustering tiny silicon particles in a hard carbon rind — like seeds in a pomegranate — could be a helpful design breakthrough for using silicon in the next generation of lithium ion batteries.

So we’re still sticking with the term “cleantech,” eh? Well, six years after launching the focus on this subject for Gigaom, I still don’t have a better description for the next-generation of energy technologies, which include both clean power, and energy efficiency, as well as the better management of resources like water and food. So, yep, again this year, we’re keeping it around, though I’m sure we can all agreed it’s flawed and now a dirty word for venture capitalists. Anyways, onward!

The market for big batteries that store electricity across the power grid or at buildings, as well as power electric vehicles, has long been just around the corner. But hurdles still remain, despite bullish predictions from analysts in recent years. What obstacles are still out there that are holding this market back?

Power companies and utilities the world over are beginning to get new options for low cost batteries used for the power grid. This week New Jersey-based startup Eos Energy Storage announced that it will soon ramp up manufacturing of its inexpensive zinc-air batteries in conjunction with manufacturing company Incodema Group.  Eos Energy has been planning to start delivering its first batteries to market in 2014, and its first pilot project will be with utility Con Edison in New York. The batteries are meant to be used on for the power grid to help customers add in solar and wind energy and produce other services like frequency regulation.

Battery startup Ambri has officially cut the ribbon on its first ever battery manufacturing factory in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The company (formerly called Liquid Metal Battery) and backed by Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and oil giant Total, will use the factory to make its first prototype battery systems for deployment next year and in 2015.

California regulators approved an ambitious plan to install a large amount of energy storage projects by 2020 to help the state meet its renewable energy mandate. The decision should be a boom for battery and other technology developers.

A young startup is building a business around installing solar panels and batteries. Innovation in the energy industry isn't just about new technologies, it's about new business models, too.

As California plans to require its big utilities to pay for energy storage, banks are trying to figure out how they could get in on this new and potentially lucrative market. And one bank, Wells Fargo, has an interesting idea: install energy storage at one of its buildings, examine the data over time, and figure out if there is a business case for it.

Startup Eos Energy ... raised a $15 million series B round from a group of investors including power company NRG Energy.  Eos Energy ... has been building a low cost grid battery using air and zinc that it hopes utilities and power companies will buy to help manage their grids and combine with solar and wind projects.

A Norwegian company called Subhydro is making forays into underwater hydroelectrical power plants, and Canadian company Hydrostor is creating an underwater grid storage system.

SunPower plans to sell lithium ion batteries -- or other energy storage technology -- bundled with solar panels. The move follows other solar companies into the energy storage space.

Battery startup Aquion Energy is raising another round of $35 million from Bill Gates and other new and existing investors. The company has been planning to build a factory in Pennsylvania that can produce its low cost power grid batteries.

Cleantech VC is receding because of poor short-term performance – no surprise in a post-bubble field with outsized time and money requirements. The category is about to go on a walk in the woods, where innovators will blaze a new trail.