Building the next generation battery
The good part is the fact that many researchers around the world started to work to create the next generation of storage energy devices, i.e. the next generation of batteries.
Our society is evolving to the next level, which requires a bigger quantity of clean energy and of course a better way of storing it.
In a recent article called Building the future battery which will improve the quality of our life, I announced that the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) is working to create a better energy storage device which will be able to perform 5 times better than a normal and Li-ion battery and the price will be 1/5 of the cost used to build the same Li-ion battery.
Professor Jay Whitacre worked for N.A.S.A. before starting its next-generation battery company called Aquion Energy.
At N.A.S.A., professor Whitacre worked with small niche applications for spacecraft where energy was also involved, but only for use in the outer space and when he came to Carnegie Mellon University, he made the transition to something that is made for this planet and for the people who live here.
Jay’s batteries are powered today by a substance that can be found all over the world and is called salt water.
The biggest challenge was to find the right materials that can work in the environment created by the salt water.
Jay’s company, Aquion Energy is producing cheap but high performance batteries which are safe, sustainable and also cost-effective.
The cells used in these batteries could last up to 10 years longer than comparative battery technology.
Jay says that he and his team try to find a way of increasing the energy storage availability around the world without harming the environment and this means that they need to use renewable energy sources.
He came with the idea of removing the necessity of the diesel generators which are used to fill the gaps between the days when the renewables are producing and the days when the weather conditions are not suitable for clean energy production.
He says that in such days we will not use generators anymore, because the new batteries produced by his company will change the way of storing energy.