Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture

Are liquid metal batteries the answer to solve our energy storage needs?

Lithium ion batteries require rare materials that are mined using child labor. Liquid metal batteries are made out of calcium and antimony, two extremely abundant materials.

Unlike lithium ion batteries which can only be charged and discharged a couple thousand times at best, liquid metal batteries can be charged and discharged almost indefinitely. The estimated losses after 20 years of continuous deep cycling are only about 5%

The biggest downside to liquid metal batteries is that they are a novel technology being developed by a single company. They don't have the economy of scale that decades of lithium ion production has behind it.

An off-grid datacenter with geothermal and solar panels is partnering with the battery company, hopefully giving them the funding they need to bring some awesome new sustainable batteries to market!

It's a shame about lead acid's lack of density, because you can disulfate and revive  the vast majority of "dead" lead acid batteries indefinitely.

Are liquid metal batteries the answer to solve our energy storage needs?

Lithium ion batteries require rare materials that are mined using child labor. Liquid metal batteries are made out of calcium and antimony, two extremely abundant materials.

Unlike lithium ion batteries which can only be charged and discharged a couple thousand times at best, liquid metal batteries can be charged and discharged almost indefinitely. The estimated losses after 20 years of continuous deep cycling are only about 5%

The biggest downside to liquid metal batteries is that they are a novel technology being developed by a single company. They don't have the economy of scale that decades of lithium ion production has behind it.

An off-grid datacenter with geothermal and solar panels is partnering with the battery company, hopefully giving them the funding they need to bring some awesome new sustainable batteries to market!

how far are they out from having these for sale, i want one for my house

altho a generator is more cost effective i don't like fuel dependence

how far are they out from having these for sale, i want one for my house

altho a generator is more cost effective i don't like fuel dependence

Unfortunately consumer versions are still years away from market. According to the timeline on their website, they are going to be demonstrating small scale commercial installations this year and ramping up production to 250 megawatt hours of batteries produced by 2023



So unless you work at a datacenter or a power utility company, you probably won't be able to get your hands on these for a while