Batteries and energy storage

Tesla Motors will officially open the doors today on what may be the only automotive factory left in California.

The Fremont, Calif., plant was formerly a New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI) facility that had been opened in 1984, but closed in 2010. Tesla bought the plant and has plans to renovate it to accommodate assembling its Model S electric cars.

The Model S is the Tesla Roadster luxury sports car's practical sibling. The all-electric sedan will have a range of 160, 230, or 300 miles on a single charge depending on which Model S Tesla battery pack option is … Read more

General Motors plans to produce as many as 60,000 Chevy Volt cars in 2012.

While not an official announcement, Doug Parks, GM's global vehicle line executive, told The Detroit News his company expects to produce 10,000 to 15,000 Volt electric cars in 2011, but that in 2012 GM may ramp up its production of the hybrid-electric car to as much as 60,000 cars.

"Starting in '12, we'll be in this max rate of 60,000....We have the ability to increase volume and crank that up, We don't have any firm plans … Read more

Ecotality announced today that it's been chosen to partner with the government of the Australian province Victoria to install and monitor Blink electric vehicle charging stations in a test project.

As part of the Victorian Electric Vehicle Trial, the Victorian Department of Transport is asking 180 households to volunteer to have Ecotality's Blink Level 2 fasting-charging stations installed in their homes and drive an electric vehicle (EV) for at least three months.

As with the U.S. EV test project, those who join the Victorian test project will be agreeing to have their chargers monitored so the government … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif--During a tour of Tesla's headquarters, a big, black slab caught our attention. It was sitting in a thermal testing station that would put it through a range of temperatures from -104 degrees all the way up to 122 degree Fahrenheit. This slab is the battery pack for the upcoming Tesla Model S.

Tesla's first production car, the Roadster, had a boxy shaped battery pack designed to fit right behind the seats of a Lotus Elise, the chassis that Tesla uses for the Roadster. As the Model S was designed and will be built by Tesla, the company had a lot more leeway on how it formatted the battery.

Tesla decided to package it in the floor of the car, contributing to the vehicle's handling by keeping its center of gravity low. Tesla has not specified how much the Model S' battery pack weighs, but it looked bigger than that in the Roadster, which comes in at close to 1,000 pounds. To our quick eyeballing of the Model S battery pack size, we're guessing at 7 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 6 inches thick.

Similar to the Roadster, the Model S battery pack is filled with cylindrical lithium ion cells dubbed 18650s. Tesla does extensive testing of these cells at its headquarters, cycling them at different temperatures, trying different discharge rates, and even crushing them. The data Tesla collects gets used to refine the specifications sent to its suppliers, among them Panasonic and Samsung. … Read more

Whereas many Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs are trying to cook up the next Facebook or cool iPhone app, a group of San Francisco entrepreneurs is designing a brick-shaped battery for poor people.

"Social venture" Fenix International officially launched yesterday with the opening of its Web site, which describes its plans to sell off-grid power systems for people in developing countries.

It plans to start manufacturing its battery pack this fall and is now negotiating with potential distributors in Africa, India, Bangladesh, and Latin America, company executives said today. It plans to first launch its products in four African countries first.

Fenix International, a for-profit company, is trying to reach the 1.6 billion people who live without regular access to electrical power, explained CEO Mike Lin, a former Apple employee and environmental engineering lecturer at Stanford University, who started the company almost two years ago.

The company's core product is a 12-volt lead acid battery designed specifically for frequent charges from a variety of sources, including a solar panel, bicycle generator, the power grid, or eventually hydro and small-wind turbines.

The battery, called the Fenix ReadySet, includes two cigarette-lighter and two USB ports for charging mobile phones, LED lights, fans, or other small electronics. Company engineers created a custom formulation of lead acid battery so it can last for years and adapt to different power sources.

Demand for electric power is soaring in "frontier countries" because of mobile phones, explained Lin. There are now 500 million off-grid mobile phone subscribers around the world right now but growth is being limited because of no power or unreliable power, he said.

The company's strategy is to sell its ReadySet batteries--priced at about $150 with a power source, such as a solar panel--through phone distributors, which are losing potential revenue because customers can't keep phones on. … Read more

GE is launching a new residential electric-car charger that promises to be faster and more user-friendly than traditional charging stations.

The new GE WattStation unveiled today is a residential version of the public charger announced in July. The home WattStation will lower the time it takes to charge from 12 to 18 hours for a standard charger to as few as 4 to 8 hours, assuming a full-cycle charge for a 24 kWh battery.

Created by industrial designer Yves Behar, the residential WattStation joins its public counterpart with controls that should be easy to use, according to the company.

"… Read more

International Battery and Electric Marine Propulsion have partnered to build a yacht that runs on wind energy even when its sails are lowered, both companies announced on Tuesday.

The Tang is a 60-foot hybrid-electric Tag Yachts catamaran with twin E motion 18-kilowatt permanent-magnet motors powered by a 144-volt lithium ion battery pack. The batteries charge onboard from wind-generated electricity of sorts, though this boat isn't exactly sporting small-wind turbines.

"The main renewable energy input to the large-format battery pack is electricity regenerated by wind power as the boat's propellers spin in the wake, under sail. The propellers turn the 18-kilowatt propulsion motors, which automatically become generators and send electricity back to the batteries," according to International Battery.

… Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Aaron Feaver's bio below.

Humankind has seen the Stone Age, the Golden Age, and the Iron Age. Some would argue the 20th century should be called the Silicon Age. Based on the events of its first 10 years, the 21st century may very well become known as the Carbon Age.

An important tension is unfolding between two types of carbon--atmospheric carbon in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and elemental carbon as a building block for a new generation of devices designed to manage and abate those same pollutants. Our way of life has become dependent on energy generated by the process of extracting carbon from the earth in the form of fossil fuels and then burning it to form carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, we have begun developing carbon in solid form as an advanced material to counter the effects of its atmospheric cousin.

From the days of Thomas Edison, when an exhaustive list of carbon fibers were pyrolyzed, or thermochemically decomposed sans oxygen, from natural materials to form the filaments of the first successful lightbulb, to the development of activated carbon as the first commercial nanomaterial, to the discovery of buckyballs and the invention of carbon nanotubes, carbon has always generated an abundance of near-term change, cutting-edge breakthroughs, and even economic prosperity.

Our future will be brighter because new materials built on the many allotropes of carbon will function as the base-building blocks for a host of solutions--including cleaner batteries, cleaner water, and cleaner air--that will benefit our society, our economies, and our planet.

There are legions of carbon-based innovations to watch between now and 2020. As the research deepens and expands, and the technologies are fully developed and rolled out, new products and processes will be embraced by the automotive industry for hybrid electric vehicles, by electronics manufacturers for enhancing the life and usability of consumer goods, and by a variety of industrial customers to deliver an ever-increasing breadth of new ways to improve energy efficiency.

Here are the highlights of what we can expect:

Lithium ion batteries They are among the best-performing batteries because of their combination of relatively high power and energy density. They also, unfortunately, have a very high cost. While relatively well known in the market, the role of their carbon ingredients is less understood and appreciated. These batteries use a lithium-based oxide cathode, which can store an abundance of lithium but is not conductive. … Read more

Adobe has hired Bloom Energy to install enough fuel cell servers to provide one-third of all electricity for Adobe's San Jose, Calif., headquarters, both companies announced today.

Specifically, Bloom will install 12 of its fuel cell servers on the fifth floor of Adobe's West Tower at the campus. Each Bloom box, as the company calls them, is roughly the size of a small van and contains thousands of ceramic fuel cells that can convert fuel and oxygen from the air into an electric current. For the Adobe installation, the units will use biogas for fuel.

One Bloom box … Read more