Beyond Lithium

🐝 What is >100X more energy dense (33 kWh/kg) than Li-ion batteries (0.3kW/kg), and why is it so hard to store it at room temperature? What is a naturally-occurring gas that can be uniquely compressed into a non-toxic, non-flammable liquid at room temperature? And, how is beekeeping like energy storage cleantech?! To answer these questions, we're joined by Cullen Quine. He provides insights on his team's work, both as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and as Co-Founder of Activated Energy (unaffiliated with NREL), in conversation with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer.

At NREL, Cullen's team focuses on addressing the challenges associated with hydrogen (H2) storage: H2 has low volumetric energy density as a gas, and to increase that energy density, it must be liquefied, which requires energy and an extremely cold temperature of -423°F (-253°C or 20 Kelvin). The main issue then arises during the transfer between containers: to cryogenic liquid H2, everything looks scorching hot, so it flash boils, leading to significant boil-off losses. His solution employs a solid-state material to absorb the gas as it boils off, allowing for recapture and reuse, mitigating losses. This is critical research because H2 has many advantages as a storage medium, including the separation of Power and Energy (which conventional batteries fail at), but there are not good materials for storing it at ambient temperature (where Li-ion currently shines) despite proficiency storing at both cryogenic and hot temperatures.

At Activated Energy (one of the 27 companies in CalSEED Cohort 6 along with BioZen), Cullen's team is working to revolutionize energy storage with a system based on compressed liquefied carbon dioxide (CO2). The system discharges energy by releasing the high-pressure liquid CO2 through a turboexpander and then storing it in a low pressure solid state medium. This technology may be particularly appealing for urban environments due to its safety that addresses concerns associated with deploying energy-dense devices near residential areas.

Hang around for some discussion of efficiency, market segmentation, NIMBYism, and some advice from Cullen for individuals interested in entering the renewable energy or clean tech sectors. Hint: it's all about the people!

Recorded 14 November 2023.

BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes.

If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support

🌡 What's the difference between a heat pump and a heat engine? What is synchronous inertia? What are the four horses pulling the chariot of a startup company? Why does a technology need its own sandbox? For answers, we're joined by Ben Bollinger, a career early-stage tech startup pro, PhD scientist, and currently VP of Strategic Initiatives at Malta Inc.—where they're working on molten salt thermal energy storage for grid-scale synchronous long duration energy storage (LDES). See Ben's slides here.

Ben tells BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer that Malta's mission is "to enable the broader deployment of intermittent renewables and help with the energy transition decarbonization." The discussion ranges from the California "Duck Curve" and why we need to time-shift energy generated during the day to when it's needed at night, to Malta's electricity-in-electricity-out molten salt thermal energy storage, to considerations of marginal costs and separation of Power and Energy (a hallmark of LDES), to "policy and remuneration" being the biggest challenge for alternative energy storage. 

Stick around to hear about the present load following capability of gas and coal plants and how incentives are moving LDES towards that role (internationally!) and away from its problematic classification as either a power plant (while discharging) or end-user load (while charging). This is critical because renewable wind and solar generation plants cannot turn their power output up and down to follow people's consumption of electricity—necessitating complementary storage. "And that's where technologies like Malta come in, that can provide those same synchronous inertia, short circuit current, resiliency, and the other grid stability attributes that really complement the clean kilowatt hours that are produced by solar and wind," says Ben. That's also what the recently-formed LDES Council is advocating for. 

The conversation finishes with some international trends in energy storage policy, Malta's recent funding announcement with Siemens Energy as a strategic investor, the 9-figure cost scales of 100 MW scale energy projects (which is beyond the scope of VC) that requires consortia of companies to achieve rather than single startup companies, and some startup journey advice from Ben. Get in touch with Malta at [email protected].

Recorded 19 Dec 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

🚗 What is the most recycled product in the world, with 99.7% being collected into the recycling stream? Where does it get used beyond the starter / lighting / ignition functions in your car? Why does it have such a bad rap, and why should you in fact be excited about it? To answer these questions, we bring in Matt Raiford and Alyssa McQuilling from the Consortium for Battery Innovation (CBI) to talk with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer.

CBI is a global research organization, with over 130 member organizations, dedicated to improving lead battery performance across various applications. The consortium is committed to both applied and fundamental pre-competitive research, working on projects ranging from evaluating new lead battery technology in residential installations to in-situ neutron diffraction studies of lead battery electrodes.

While lead batteries may not match lithium-ion in energy density (nor need to), they excel in robustness, safety, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness, particularly in stationary applications like telecom and broadband backup systems. Lead batteries pose lower fire risks, have well-established end-of-life plans, and maintain a fully established circular economy from over 100 years of research and manufacturing..

The discussion moves to a few unique lead battery projects such as microgrids, solar/battery-powered tractors, and the unique harvesting of (typically undesireable) electrolyzed hydrogen from the battery as a source of energy.

Looking at the future, we discuss the challenges and potential of energy storage, underlining the necessity for better performance, particularly in terms of cycle life and total energy output: By 2030, energy storage systems will need to exist on the terawatt/terawatt-hour scale, necessitating a diverse mix of technologies, including lead batteries.

Recorded 28 Nov 2023

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

💡 Can you trademark a sound? Why can you only patent "non-obvious" inventions? Who decides what is non-obvious? What is Enablement and how does the Supreme Court's ruling on it affect cleantech?! For answers to these questions and lots more, today's episode features Brendan Serapiglia, PhD and Jason Feldmar—partners and intellectual property (IP) attorneys at Gates & Cooper LLP—in discussion with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer. Brendan's technical background is in Materials Physics and he focuses on high-tech and university clients, whereas Jason's technical background is in Computer Science with a focus on software inventions as well as Gates & Cooper's Trademark portfolio.

Tune in to learn first what exactly a patent or trademark is, how they are different, reasons to apply for them, and how they're strategically valuable especially in the context of high-tech and clean energy sectors. A recent Supreme Court ruling in a case with Amgen has influenced Enablement ("to enable any person skilled in the art . . . to make and use the [invention]," or describing how to make and use the full scope of what is claimed). From this ruling, patent applications will likely have more stringent requirements for describing how to make and use the full scope of claimed inventions, especially in fields like chemistry and alternative energy where you're dealing with an "unpredictable art." The discussion also touches on so-called "101 issues" (35 U.S.C. 101 requirements), also known as what constitutes patentable subject matter; patenting abstract ideas or natural phenomena is difficult, as is defining and claiming cleantech and software inventions in ways that satisfy these legal requirements.

The human art of crafting patent claims is another focal point of the discussion. Defining claims in a manner that convinces a patent examiner and captures a wide range of potential infringements without overstepping the actual scope of the invention is vital for both enforcing and making them sufficiently broad to be commercially valuable.

Often seen as controversial players in the IP landscape, Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs) hold patents but don't necessarily implement the technologies themselves, often agressively litigating. Patents serve as both a "sword" and a "shield" in business strategy, offensively to sue for infringement or defensively to deter lawsuits and encourage cross-licensing.

Recent market trends have shifted focus in patent and trademark filings toward battery technology: In 2023, over 1000 Li-ion patents were published, whereas long duration energy storage (LDES) mechanisms like flywheels, flow batteries, supercapacitors, thermal storage, etc were all at ~100 per year—an order of magnitude less. Read: non-lithium energy storage is a potential greenfield market opportunity.

The discussion highlights that IP is a critical component of business strategy, especially for startups and universities: IP assets can be crucial for attracting investment and establishing a competitive edge in the market.

Additionally, the conversation covers the implications of H.R.4346 Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, 2022 legislation aimed at boosting technology development in underserved communities. This act is part of a broader trend where the government is encouraging job creation and technology development through strategic collaborations, often involving universities feeding their technology into their local ecosystems through startup spinout and IP.

Recorded 8 November 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

♾ That's right: Invinity, with a V for vanadium. How many square meters does it take to set up 1 MWh of vanadium flow batteries? For the answer, we turn to Matt Harper, CCO and Co-founder at Invinity, in discussion with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer.

Invinity Energy Systems was formed from the merger of RedT and Avalon in 2020 and focuses on vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) for large-scale, long duration energy storage (LDES) solutions. VRFBs directly complement renewable energy projects, with superiority over lithium-ion batteries in longevity, cycle life, and operational flexibility.

According to Matt, Invinity makes VRFBs more accessible and practical by adopting a modular, plug-and-play design that is 100% ready to go off the factory floor, significantly reducing deployment time and increasing adoption. With over 1200 of their "VS3" units in the wild (the largest fleet of flow batteries of any company), Invinity has a constant stream of data for continual performance improvement and understanding of the varied demands of LDES technologies.

The conversation continues to Invinity's experience in the challenges of site-specific installations as well as the benefits of their merger during the pandemic, which provided resilience through dual operational supply chains as well as reaffirmed that people make the technology work. Matt comments that his career goal is to "work on hard, meaningful problems with smart, dedicated people ... It's the people who I'm working alongside to make this stuff happen that makes the journey worthwhile."

We hear some about Invinity's next-generation product, Mistral, developed in collaboration with Siemens Gamesa. Mistral targets the wind energy sector with a modular design offering improved scalability and cost-effectiveness, and will be deployed for a variety of projects, including collaborations with Everdura in Taiwan, PNNL in the U.S., and several rural electrification projects.

Recorded 28 September 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

🐻 The capybara is nature's ultimate collaborator, existing peacefully in diverse global ecosystems. That harmonious disposition is exactly what CapyBara Energy seeks to bring to the energy storage market with their aqueous supercapacitor technology. How? CapyBara's Founder & CEO Matt Millard tells BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer that it's possible because their technology is uniquely "Sustainable, Affordable, and Scalable." And let's be honest, all energy storage should strive for those three characteristics!

At $20/kWh capex, CapyBara "supercaps" might be hard to beat on cost, not to mention that their raw materials are carbon waste, they won't catch fire, they have an effectively infinite lifecycle, they are adaptable to intermittent generation, and they are possible to discharge for a huge range of durations from 2-100+ hours—hardly the "delicate flowers" that certain other energy storage technologies might be.

Matt has a ton of experience scaling energy storage technologies from lab to commercial scale, so stick around to hear some of his tips for that process, as well as some fresh, surprising insights from the DOE Office of Electricity Energy Storage Program Annual Meeting and Peer Review. One key theme: >4 hours of storage.

And, there's one facinating, validated metric from that meeting: Take a guess at just how much it costs (in $/kWh) to decommision a Li-ion battery at end-of-life (EOL). The answer was bigger than expected! (Ref: Dai et al. Ensuring Knowledgeable End-of-Life Considerations in Stationary Storage Applications)

Contains one sentence of explicit content.

Recorded 26 Oct 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

0️⃣ What's your favorite zero-emission load following dispatchable resource to enable green baseload? What even *is* green baseload?! For this episode, Mark Wanamaker of Lockheed Martin Energy Storage joins BioZen Batteries' CEO Nate Kirchhofer to discuss one possible answer to that question: Lockheed Martin's GridStar™ Flow Batteries!

This technology was acquired from MIT-spinout Sun Catalytics in 2014 and has been under development since then, and the aqueous electrolytes can't catch fire, don't degrade based on use case or state of charge (SOC), and don't need thermal management, all serving to lower the cost. Lockheed Martin was also recently awarded a 1 MW / 10 MWh project at Fort Carson Army Base run by the Department of Defence Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center Construction Engineering Research Lab (DOD ACE ERDC CERL), an encouraging pilot microgrid project.

Flow batteries are typically thought of as long-duration (>6 hour discharge) energy storage, but Mark makes the case that they are even economically viable for replacing gas peaker plants or combined cycle plants too. Mark shares a key insight that energy storage system developers need to simultaneously consider bankability, flexibility, future adaptability to changing markets, and separation of Power and Energy capacity to tailor a storage system—in addition to more conventional metrics like levelized cost of storage (LCOS) or capex measured in $/kWh. The DOE thinks flow batteries need to get under $0.05/kWh, and we think we can!

Recorded 6 September 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at [email protected], write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

🔥 Is it just a glorified toaster? Not quite: At more than 1500 °C (2700 °F), the carbon blocks inside Antora's unique thermal batteries are resistively heated (like toaster coils heat bread), storing energy glowing-hot at >1/4 the temperature of the Sun's surface. Our guest for this episode, Leah Kuritzky (Antora's Head of PV Operations) tells BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer that the stored thermal energy can be used on demand, directly as heat for industrial processes (think anything from boiling water to melting steel), or converted back to electricity using thermophotovoltaic cells (which is Leah's expertise at Antora), all without burning fossil fuels.

Just like any other battery, including Li-ion, you charge Antora's battery with electricity. If it's renewable-energy-generated electricity—the cheapest form of primary energy in the world—it's going to be intermittent due to natural fluctuations in wind and sunshine. And that's where Antora shines: soaking up excess power when it's overgenerated and/or cheap, and then delivering it back 24/7 on demand. "It's really a beautiful marriage of technology and economics to tackle climate change," she says. And this is critical because 30 percent of all global emissions come from industry, with industrial heat alone accounting for 10 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.

Stick around to hear about Antora's recent pilot near Fresno, CA and learn more about Leah's career path from energy efficient lighting (LEDs) to energy storage, guided by a focus on environmental impact, sustainability, and climate change. She has advice for anyone looking to pursue cleantech or make a jump to a new career.

Recorded 26 September 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

🍣🐟 "Operating the electric grid without energy storage is sort of like operating a sushi restaurant without a refrigerator." Tune into this episode to find out what Otoro Energy's CEO Michael Marshak means by that in conversation with BioZen Batteries CEO Nate Kirchhofer. Then, stick around to learn about Otoro's key innovation in higher-voltage, non-flammable, highly-stable, aqueous-soluble metal-chelate flow battery electrolyte liquids that just might be so non-toxic you could drink them (not that you should).For flow batteries, Mike points out, we need to think about the total power capacity, the duration that you can operate at that power, and also the location for storage—not to mention being able to combine all of those things together with cost, safety, scalability, raw materials abundance, efficiency, and more, to make a complete economic picture.

Also, because of the decoupling of power and energy (just like how a car's engine and gas tank provide the cars's power and energy, respectively), there are scalability advantages for flow batteries. But, one of the clearest needs is lower-cost electrolyte liquids because the cost of the dominant incumbent, vanadium, has fluctuated dramatically enough to undermine long-term massive deployment.

It's also worth innovating not just on the core chemistry for energy storage, but the commercialization and path to market as well: even though the utility markets that want to see $0.05/kWh LCOS are huge, that low payout could undermine profitability. Islands, microgrids, and remote installs might be more well suited—but then again they are difficult to access—so maybe the answer lies in places like Texas during the summer time? Burning man? "One of the challenges I think with batteries is that they're fundamentally boring. If they're working properly, you don't notice them until they fail." How do you market something like that? Tune in to find out!

Recorded 25 August 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]

⚡ Which metal was used as far back as 1799 when Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, the original battery? Hint: It's still in use today in single-use alkaline batteries, and it's gaining adoption for safe, high-cycle, high-efficiency, high-energy-density grid scale batteries too. For this episode, Onas Bolton joins BioZen CEO Nate Kirchhofer to dive into how Octet Scientific is making these metal batteries better: modifying their aqueous electrolyte composition with Octet's organic (carbon-based) Octolyte™ chemical additives that improve cycle life, shelf stability, and charge transfer efficiency—among lots of other advantages—at just ~1% concentrations. Stick around to hear some trends from Octet's 30+ customers, the interplay between grant funding and private finance (they're gearing up for a Series A raise, by the way), and their transition from an R&D company to a manufacturing company.

Recorded 31 July 2023.

[BioZen Batteries produces this show as part of the Clean Power Media Group at cleanpower.media. If you would like to interact more, please send us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠, write a comment, like, follow, share, or even leave us a voice message on your favorite episodes. If you like our content, please support production with a recurring monthly donation here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beyondlithium/support]