RE:SJL into lithium ion batteriesAny insight how Lithium will compete against Sodium batteries? Bill Gates has me thinking with him putting money into Sodium batteries and Aquion Energy. Competition is good of course.
https://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/31/bill-gates-backs-renewable-battery-start-up/?__lsa=1966-8d68
MAYBE THEY WILL GO PUBLIC: I'LL BE WATCHING
Aquion Energy is a Pittsburgh based company that manufacture sodium ion batteries and energy storage systems.
The key points of their system is it is low-cost way to store large amounts of power, has a long life and that it uses no rare, poisonous or dangerous chemicals or materials.
Details
The company was founded in 2008 by Ted Wiley and Jay Whitacre. Whitacre is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The company currently has research and development offices in Lawrenceville, where it makes about 60 batteries a day on a pilot basis. It is setting up manufacturing facilities at a former Sony television assembly plant in East Huntingdon which will make tens of thousands of batteries a day.[2]
The ambient-temperature battery is designed for affordable storage for wind and solar power. It will be 85 percent efficient and use non-toxic materials (Manganese Oxide, Sodium sulphate, Carbon and Cotton).[3] An individual battery stack stores 1.5 kWh, a pallet sized unit 180 and a shipping-container-size box would allow for 2.88 MWh.[4][5] Aquion prefers not to divulge precise functional details on their new battery at this relatively early stage of commercial development.
The firm wants to build a factory with a capacity of 500 megawatt-hours' worth of batteries a year in 2013 and 2014. The plan is to build it in the U.S. in 2015, with the goal of replicating that factory in other parts of the world.[6]
The company was the corporate winner in the energy category at the 2011 World Technology Awards.[7]
Investors include Bill Gates[8]
Aquion batteries can fast charge (1 to 2 hours). Takes battery to ~85-90% of full charge with a small efficiency penalty[9]
In October 2013 it was announced they had started a Memorandum of understanding with Siemens that could help see Aquion’s batteries move into the market more quickly by coupling it with their Power inverter technology.[10]