Hacker News with Generative AI: Energy Storage

Largest compressed air energy storage facility starts operation in China (ess-news.com)
A 300 MW compressed air energy storage (CAES) power station utilizing two underground salt caverns in central China’s Hubei Province was successfully connected to the grid at full capacity, making it the largest operating project of the kind in the world.
Solar desalination and electrolysis system with energy recovery and storage (sciencedirect.com)
Agricultural activities in remote desert locations face significant challenges due to high water and energy demands and the lack of necessary infrastructure.
Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Prices See Largest Drop Since 2017, Falling to $115kWHr (bnef.com)
New York, December 10, 2024 – Battery prices saw their biggest annual drop since 2017. Lithium-ion battery pack prices dropped 20% from 2023 to a record low of $115 per kilowatt-hour, according to analysis by research provider BloombergNEF (BNEF). Factors driving the decline include cell manufacturing overcapacity, economies of scale, low metal and component prices, adoption of lower-cost lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, and a slowdown in electric vehicle sales growth.
Lower-cost sodium-ion batteries are finally having their moment (arstechnica.com)
Sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage are moving toward the mainstream. Wider use of these batteries could lead to lower costs, less fire risk, and less need for lithium, cobalt, and nickel.
TagEnergy to build France's largest battery, 240MW/480MWh (ess-news.com)
Lisbon-headquartered renewable energy company TagEnergy has launched construction of France’s biggest battery energy storage system (BESS). Tesla will contribute to the project also, offering market access services and its expertise in advanced storage solutions.
Gyrobus: A Bus Powered by a Flywheel (wikipedia.org)
A gyrobus is an electric bus that uses flywheel energy storage, not overhead wires like a trolleybus.
How We Got the Lithium-Ion Battery (construction-physics.com)
The lithium-ion battery is, obviously, an extremely important technology. It helped make portable electronics possible, from laptops to smartphones to drones. It’s literally powering the transition to electric vehicles, and it’s increasingly finding a role in grid-scale energy storage, enabling more construction of intermittent renewables and helping with electric power decarbonization.
BYD launches sodium-ion grid-scale BESS product (energy-storage.news)
Chinese EV giant BYD has launched what an executive claimed is the ‘world’s first high-performance’ sodium-ion BESS product, using its proprietary form factor Long Blade Battery cell.
Solid-state batteries enter pilot production, costs expected to drastically drop (pv-magazine.com)
The push to commercialize solid-state batteries (SSBs) is underway with industries from automotive to storage betting on the technology. But while the hype around full solid-state batteries has somewhat subsided, with the technology taking longer than expected to take off, semi-solid-state batteries, which use a hybrid design of solid and liquid electrolyte, have been making steady progress toward commercialization.
US power grid added battery equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors in past four years (theguardian.com)
Faced with worsening climate-driven disasters and an electricity grid increasingly supplied by intermittent renewables, the US is rapidly installing huge batteries that are already starting to help prevent power blackouts.
Energy Storage is a solved problem (pv-magazine.com)
There are thousands of extraordinarily good pumped hydro energy storage sites around the world with extraordinarily low capital cost. When coupled with batteries, the resulting hybrid system has large energy storage, low cost for both energy and power, and rapid response. Storage is a solved problem.
$1B Solar and Battery Storage Project Breaks Ground in Utah (electrek.co)
Renewables developer rPlus Energies has broken ground on one of the largest solar + battery storage projects in the US, in east-central Utah.
Grid-scale batteries: They're not just lithium (arstechnica.com)
As power utilities and industrial companies seek to use more renewable energy, the market for grid-scale batteries is expanding rapidly.
Sunamp's thermal battery uses a chemical found in salt-and-vinegar potato chips (techcrunch.com)
Nearly 20 years ago, Andrew Bissell was sitting in the living room of his beachfront home in the Edinburgh area. He and his wife, Susan Lang-Bissell, had just sold their medical imaging startup, and he was pondering his future.
Batteries Will Not Solve Renewable Energy Storage Problem (2023) (dailysceptic.org)
Form Energy to build largest battery energy storage system in Maine (cleantechnica.com)
Form Energy to Build World’s Largest Battery Energy Storage System in Maine (cleantechnica.com)
An open-source flow battery kit (dualpower.supply)
Group1 Unveils First Potassium-Ion Battery in 18650 Format (prnewswire.com)
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (wikipedia.org)
Compressed Air Storage Redux – LightSail and Hydrostor (cleantechnica.com)
Europe's solar power surge hits prices, exposing storage needs (euractiv.com)
TerraPower's Natrium: A Fast Neutron Reactor with Built-In Grid Level Storage (hackaday.com)
New concrete can turn homes into giant batteries (independent.co.uk)
Researchers make a supercapacitor from water, cement, and carbon black (bbc.com)
Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts (technologyreview.com)
China's first large-scale sodium battery energy storage station now operational (cnevpost.com)
China's first large-scale sodium-ion battery charges to 90% in 12 minutes (electrek.co)
Batteries Taking Charge of the California Grid (gridstatus.io)
First sodium-ion grid battery opens with cells that can be charged in 12 minutes (notebookcheck.net)