If asked to describe their battery breakthrough in layman's terms, Columbia scientists might call it a salty banana.
OK, no actual bananas here. Technically speaking, the battery uses abundant, low-cost potassium, sodium, and sulfur as part of a power pack being designed to one day store loads of intermittent renewable energy from the sun and wind for long stretches, according to a news release on the research.
"It's important that we be able to extend the length of time these batteries can operate, and that we can manufacture them easily and cheaply," Associate Professor Yuan Yang, the lab lead, said in the summary.
Lithium-ion batteries like Tesla's Megapack are already being deployed in groups to store electricity. Tesla says one pack can power 3,600 homes for an hour. But they use expensive materials that are often subject to foreign supply challenges.
In answer, the Columbia lab came up with a new electrolyte. When a battery operates, ions move between two electrodes through a substance called electrolyte, as described by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The recipe for this part of the new innovation isn't as easy to put into plain English. It's a solvent of acetamide and epsilon-caprolactam. Importantly, the mixture helps the pack store and discharge power efficiently. The operating temperature is also a manageable 167 degrees, all per the lab summary.
"This is very exciting," study co-first author and doctoral student Zhenghao Yang said in the report.
The research has been limited to small, coin-size batteries for now. But the team plans to keep scaling up the dimensions as the experiments continue. Optimizing the electrolyte is a focal point of the work now, per the news release.
The goal is for the potassium/sodium packs to one day hold loads of solar and wind power for use on the grid. Shifting to renewables is something that homeowners can take part in, as well. Rooftop solar systems have been proven by a government study to save the average homeowner up to nearly $700 a year in energy bills — even after subtracting costs for the setup. Valuable tax credits for up to 30% of the installation costs make the systems more affordable.
Adding a battery to the works, like Tesla's Powerwall, can save the electricity for later use. Savvy homeowners may also be able to take part in so-called virtual power plants, selling some of the excess juice back to the grid for a profit.
Better batteries can only improve storage capacity, and profit potential, for these projects.
"Making renewable energy more reliable will help stabilize our energy grids, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and support a more sustainable energy future for all of us," Yuan Yang said in the lab summary.
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