Batteries and energy storage

While consumers may simply crave longer-lasting batteries for electronic gadgets, the holy grail for many material scientists is batteries that can pump power into the grid for hours.

Stanford University researchers today detailed a new electrode material they claim holds promise for grid storage batteries that can work 30 years without a dramatic decline in performance.

In the lab, the copper and iron-based nano-engineered material was able to take 40,000 charge/discharge cycles while still maintaining an 80 percent capacity. By contrast, the lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics degrade noticeably after only a few hundred cycles.

The … Read more

Beacon Power, the energy storage company that received a federal loan and later declared bankruptcy, said it intends to sell off its assets to repay the loan.

The Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company said yesterday it reached an agreement with the Department of Energy where it will sell the Stephentown, N.Y., flywheel storage facility financed by a DOE loan guarantee. The sale of that facility need to be before January 30 next year.

Beacon Power owes $39.1 million on a $43 million loan guarantee it secured to build a 20-megawatt power plant that uses spinning flywheels to supply quick … Read more

The GE WattStation EV charger has become the recommended charger for Coda's upcoming all-electric vehicles.

Coda has signed an agreement with GE Energy Industrial Solutions to sell the Level 2 charging stations for recharging EV batteries alongside its Coda sedans and to market them together.

GE WattStation's is a 240-volt Level 2 charger that is compatible with any standard EV. Currently, its competitors include the Ecotality Blink station and the Coulomb Technologies ChargePoint station.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Coda is a fairly new automotive company that has set the ambitious goal to sell 50,000 EVs by 2015. … Read more

Liquid Metal Battery, a company formed to make cheap storage for wind and solar power, has hired its first CEO.

Phil Giudice, who was the third employee of demand-response company EnerNoc and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Commissioner until earlier the year, announced his "new gig" on Twitter. One of his tasks as CEO is to raise more money to build up the company, he told The Boston Globe.

Liquid Metal Battery was spun out of the lab of Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Funding for the company has … Read more

Designing Windows 8 for virtually any device from smartphone to PC, Microsoft says it's had a key goal in mind for all hardware platforms--energy efficiency.

With laptops and mobile devices slurping up battery power and desktops and servers chewing up electricity, Microsoft has wanted to ensure that any device running Windows 8 can tap into better power management.

"Very small changes done well in Windows can result in very large positive environmental impact because of our scale," Pat Stemen, a program manager on Microsoft's Kernel team, said in the latest Building Windows 8 blog. "In … Read more

Late-to-the-EV-party Fisker Automotive may be dragging down suppliers with its tardiness. A123 Systems lowered its 2011 revenue forecast due to reduced orders, and it's pointing a finger squarely at the hybrid car maker.

Fisker, which began selling the Karma plug-in hybrid sedan in October, cut the number of battery orders from A123. The auto manufacturer said the reduction was to help it balance inventory levels from all suppliers, which could mean that sales of the $96,000 vehicles aren't as brisk as planned, or that production was slowed due to a reported manufacturing strike in Finland.

A123's … Read more

The CEO of Beacon Power, a government-backed energy storage company that has filed for bankruptcy protection, said today that the company could still survive.

Bill Capp released a statement (click for PDF) taking issue with comparisons to Solyndra, a solar collector maker that received a $535 million loan guarantee, then abruptly shut down at the end of August, declaring bankruptcy.

Beacon Power, which makes a flywheel storage system for steadying the grid's frequency, on Sunday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Both Solyndra and Beacon Power received loans through the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee program, which immediately … Read more

The bankruptcies of Solyndra and now Beacon Power show that green-technology startups are still struggling to find ways to cross the dreaded "Valley of Death" into mass commercialization.

Flywheel storage company Beacon Power filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday after running out of options to raise money and fund operations. "The current economic and political climate, the financing terms mandated by DOE, and Beacon's recent delisting notice from Nasdaq have together severely restricted Beacon's access to additional investments through the equity markets," CEO William Capp said in bankruptcy papers, according to reports.

There are significant … Read more

Beacon Power, which secured a $43 million federal loan guarantee to install a flywheel grid storage system, has declared bankruptcy in a case that will likely draw more complaints about government loans to small clean-energy companies.

The Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company yesterday filed for Chapter 11 protection in bankruptcy court because it was unable to raise money through the stock market. Beacon Power has never been profitable and earlier this month received a Nasdaq delisting notice after its stock had been under $1 for more than 30 days.

"The current economic and political climate, the financing terms mandated by … Read more