Battery recycling is expected to become an increasingly significant part of the electric vehicle supply chain in the near future.
In order to prepare for it, China is launching an electric car battery recycling standard as old batteries are expected to come back in high numbers as EV adoption ramps up in the country.
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Israel-based startup StoreDot has been making waves in the battery world for the past few years with its ‘ultra-fast charging battery’.
As we often point out, It’s hard to gauge the credibility of new battery technologies without hard data, but in the case of StoreDot, It is starting to get some massive backing from giant companies.
Today, British oil company BP announced that it invested $20 million in the startup.
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For DIY enthusiasts in the green energy community, homemade lithium-ion battery packs have long been a holy grail. For everything from home solar energy storage to garage-built electric bicycles, go-karts and full-size EVs, lithium-ion batteries were once one of the most limiting factors for hobbyist and makers.
However, the last few years have seen an impressive upswing in availability of parts, tools and knowledge in the DIY lithium-ion battery pack space. This has led to increasing opportunities for creative DIYers to shuck the bonds of traditional suppliers of expensive Li-ion battery packs and instead develop their own custom batteries for a variety of projects and applications.
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Apple is reportedly in talks about buying cobalt direct from miners in a long-term deal set to span five years or more. The report is given weight by the CEO of one mining company confirming Apple has held discussions about cobalt, which is used in the lithium-ion batteries which power Apple devices …
Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), China’s largest automotive battery maker, has been making strides in the past few years thanks to the country’s rapid deployment of electric vehicles.
The company is now reportedly aiming to become the world’s largest automotive battery maker with a new factory financed by an initial public offering (IPO) valued at $2 billion.
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The two former Tesla executives that broke out on their own to build a battery gigafactory in Europe have just secured backing from Volkswagen through their Scania division.
The two companies will develop and commercialize battery cell technology for heavy commercial vehicles at their facilities.
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Samsung SDI has been pushing to carve itself a bigger space in the EV industry and it has been using auto shows to showcase their latest battery products.
They are doing it again at the 2018 Detroit Motor Show this week with new batteries that they claim will increase electric car range and charging capacity.
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The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) – the group that manages 80% of the electricity used in California – has begun showing utility-scale batteries charging and discharging into the power grid via their website.
By resolution, due to a natural gas emergency, the State of California requested large-scale battery based energy storage projects be attached to the grid at the end of 2016, early 2017. Now we get to watch the systems – some that we covered – do their job.
Bosch is the world’s largest automotive supplier and it is heavily investing in electric vehicle components to support the industry’s transition to electric vehicles.
But there’s one important electric car component that Bosch is not making: battery cells.
The company now says that it is considering a significant investment to start producing batteries.
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Battery costs have been falling fast for years now, but commodity prices of several key raw materials have been increasing recently and some predict that the supply won’t be able to keep up with the demand.
Now Hyundai, which is currently trying to build its battery supply chain for upcoming electric vehicles, predicts that battery costs could stop falling starting in 2020.
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In the latest battery breakthrough claim of the week, researchers from the University of Waterloo released a new paper claiming a breakthrough involving the use of negative electrodes made of lithium metal.
They claim that it has the potential to “dramatically increase battery storage capacity,” which could triple the range of electric vehicles.
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The battery supply chain to support the electric car revolution and energy storage industry is slowly becoming stronger. Tesla has been leading new battery production in America with its Gigafactory and Panasonic, Samsung, and LG have been leading production in Asia, but Europe has been lagging behind.
Now a new massive li-ion battery gigafactory has been announced in Germany.
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Global solar PV manufacturing capacity expansion plans rebound in Q1 – First quarter 2017 saw 10GW announced of solar power manufacturing capacity. With global capacity somewhere in the 115-135GW/year this is a big uptick – 7.5-8.5%. A few hours later, I get a Q2 announcement of a 2GW solar factory coming to Taiwan. This tells me that the demand of solar PV is predicted to continue to grow, and that significant investment in new factories, new machines and new technologies will continue. And since newer technologies, at the same price or lower than old technologies, are more efficiency – we will see continued increases in efficiency in the coming years.
Maryland governor has battery tax credit law on desk – The measure provides for a 30 percent tax credit on the installed cost of a storage system, capped at $5,000 for residential and $75,000 for commercial projects. The total credits awarded cannot exceed $750,000 in a year, and the program will run from 2018 through 2022. This is against state taxes – and state tax rates are lower than federal – so its not as strong as the federal incentive for solar, but its pretty close – and it will drive business. A Tesla PowerWall 2, costing $5500 retail plus about $500-2000 to install, will end up costing $4,200-5300 after $1,800-2300 tax credit.
A new project put in motion in South Australia in order to help with the region’s energy problems is likely to become the largest solar plus battery project in the world.
Lyon Group, an energy company backed by Mitsubishi, Blackstone and Magnetar Capital, has announced that it secured land and is in the “advanced stages” of negotiations for a grid connection on a 330 MW solar farm linked to a 100 MW/400 MWh battery installation.
John Goodenough, who is credited as the co-inventor of the li-ion battery cell, and his team at the Cockrell School of Engineering have released their findings of what is being described as a “breakthrough” for solid-state batteries.
We don’t really like to report on battery “breakthroughs” since most of them are usually just sensationalist statements that don’t really qualify as “breakthroughs” or amount to anything, but it appears that Goodenough’s findings could be good enough to qualify as a breakthrough if you can excuse the bad pun.
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Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL), a relatively new Chinese li-ion battery maker, is shaping up to become a major player in the industry in the coming years with plans for several important battery factories comparable in size to Tesla’s Gigafactory.
The company has now signed a supply contract with SAAB successor National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) in order for the electric vehicle maker to deliver on its orders for electric car fleets in China.
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Have you seen an all-electric commercial airplane before? Neither have we or anyone. But Luke Workman, a highly regarded battery designer, thinks that he has an idea that will make that become a reality in the not so distant future. He hopes to accomplish this through optimizing existing battery technology and designing the battery layouts in planes so that they become more efficient and effective for long distance travel.
Massachusetts is taking aggressive steps toward cleaning electrical grid and in doing so is joining a select group of regions around the world. Of course Germany and California get all the headlines, but also deserving are Portugal, Scotland, Hawaii, Iceland, Costa Rica, Uruguay throwing down part of $285B worth in 2015. There are also the global giants China and India building massive amounts of infrastructure.
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The partnership between Tesla Energy and Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) recently won yet another contract to install energy storage in California. This time, AMS will be developing a system for Morgan Stanley’s One Maritime Plaza skyscraper in San Francisco.
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Near Melbourne, Australia lies an incredible suburban project underway dubbed Yarrabend. This development is currently home to 60 houses and is planned to eventually hit around 2500. What is unique about this venture is not only the art, food or shopping that will be near it, but that all of the houses will come standard with Tesla Powerwalls and solar panels. Via the Heidelberg Leader, Nick Marinakis, sales and marketing manager of the Glenvill development team for Yarrabend, states that the suburb…
will achieve the highest possible ESD rating under the UDIA (Urban Development Institute of Australia) Envirodevelopment scheme, a first for an infill development site in Melbourne.
The Economic Times released an interesting article with a reaching title ‘How Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors maybe killing flamingos with its electric cars‘ yesterday. The claim is so absurd that it prompted Musk to mock it on Twitter:
Because of course I hate flamingos…(maybe try eating fewer flamingo eggs in your salad)https://t.co/tUKsWqCobo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2016
While the endangerment of the Flamigos’ environment is not a laughing matter, the publication’s link back to Musk and Tesla certainly looks like one.
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A new research report from Lux Research looked into the projected growth of the battery sector for electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs) and concluded that the market will rise to $10 Billion in 2020 with six large carmakers led by Tesla accounting for 90% of the demand.
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For the most part, Tesla’s Gigafactory has looked the same from the outside since the beginning of the year. The first phase consists of 4 sections of about 475,000 square feet for a total of 1.9 million square feet. The final version of the building, which should be completed by the end of the decade, is expected to have 13 million square feet of manufacturing and work space. It should be enough to become the biggest building on earth by footprint and Tesla plans for the factory to produce at least as much battery capacity as the entire world production of li-ion cells.
Now we learn that Tesla is planning to add a new section to the plant with an estimated completion date by the end of the year, according a building permit recently issued to Tesla.
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Tesla’s energy division has had success in winning contracts for significant energy storage projects at educational institutions in California. Last year, we reported on Tesla installing battery packs at 3 high schools in the San Diego County school districts totalling 32 MWh of capacity. The company also signed a similar deal with the Temecula Valley district and last month, we reported on Tesla installing a 4 MWh project at the College of Marin in Marin County.
Now we learn that Tesla Energy won an important 12 MWh Powerpack contract with Cal State University (CSU).
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