A decade ago, Professor of Electrical Engineering and renowned expert in electrical power, high voltage engineering and power systems?Dr. George Karady discussed energy storage as a highly promising direction for everything from everyday cell phones, smart watches, and AR/VR devices to electric vehicles and power grids, all of which need energy storage to keep their devices functioning properly.
Nowadays, in the global transformation of renewable energy technology to replace fossil energy, the energy storage market is also growing rapidly along with the development of clean energy technology and market, and gradually highlighting its important position and strategic value.
As a technology startup that focuses on environmental protection and sustainable development, Freedom Founder Technology has been focusing on clean energy and various types of environmental technologies. In this post, we will introduce some of the energy storage technology and innovative ideas, hope to give entrepreneurs who are looking for energy storage direction some inspiration, interested partners can contact us.
Energy Storage: The Key to a Reliable, Clean Electricity Supply
|?1. Lithium Battery
When it comes to energy storage, the current preferred energy storage technology must be mentioned lithium battery.
Lithium batteries are widely used in chemical batteries, and the development of electric vehicles has led to a growing demand for them in the marketplace.
The MIT Technology Review 2021 Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies include lithium batteries and green hydrogen energy.
But most lithium batteries still have problems with the number of charge/discharge cycles, service life, material recycling, and their impact on the environment. Many labs, factories and companies are already working to improve the capacity, energy density, battery life and materials of lithium batteries. For startups, however, the cost and technical requirements of lithium battery innovation are high, making it difficult to develop independently, and some startups are working with battery manufacturers and large companies to realize products of their own design.
In addition to hardware innovation, startups can also improve and optimize battery performance at the software level, such as by utilizing a BMS (Battery Management System) system. Since the specific requirements for BMS vary by size and type of battery, and BMS will vary across batteries and application scenarios, startups interested in this part of the market can find a niche market to try to develop their own software products.
|?2. Green Hydrogen Energy
Green Hydrogen Energy is the storage of hydrogen energy produced by water electrolysis through electricity produced by renewable energy sources such as wind-solar. During the epidemic, governments introduced green energy programs, the European Union released its European Hydrogen Strategy, and China added a new program in its government business report to "promote the construction of hydrogen energy equipment-level charging stations".
As the "core" of renewable energy, green hydrogen energy is the hope of many energy sectors. "The learning rate of electrolyzer technology is approaching the historical learning rate of wind power. Google website search data shows that searches for the term 'green hydrogen energy' increased to triple the number of searches in 2019." (BHP, June 2021)
The 75 hydrogen technology startups and companies disrupting the space
(Contrarian Ventures, 2020)
Startups working on green hydrogen energy Companies working on green hydrogen energy startups can think of innovation in terms of the different life cycles of hydrogen energy, such as hydrogen energy storage, applications, switching stations, charging, and all kinds of auxiliary hardware, to name a few. Hydrogen energy is still in the early stages of development, and the technology is not yet mature, but it has a wealth of application scenarios, and has a trillion-dollar market scale in the future, with both risks and opportunities.
|?3. Electromagnetic energy storage
There are two main types of electromagnetic energy storage solutions, namely, Flywheel and SMES.
Flywheel energy storage (Flywheelenergy storage) works by accelerating a rotor (flywheel) to a very high speed and keeping the energy in the system as rotational energy, the structure is precise and has a large capacity. Flywheelenergy storage has a large capacity, and is currently used in large-scale energy storage equipment in the power grid. And superconducting magnetic energy storage system (SuperconductingMagnetic Energy Storage, SMES) is a kind of electric energy will be stored in the magnetic field without converting into chemical or mechanical form of energy storage device, smaller capacity, but can be almost instantaneous storage and release of a large amount of electric energy.
Magnetic energy storage is a comprehensive field that involves the coupling of multiple fields such as electricity, magnetism, heat, and stress, and is flexible and theoretically mature enough for startups to try and innovate from multiple perspectives, including cost, materials, engineering, and composite energy storage.
|?4. Supercapacitor
SupercapacitorSC is a high-capacity capacitor with a much higher capacitance value than other capacitors, but with a lower voltage limit, bridging the gap between electrolytic capacitors and rechargeable batteries. It typically stores 10 to 100 times more energy per unit volume or mass than an electrolytic capacitor, can receive and deliver a charge faster than a battery, and tolerates more charge/discharge cycles than a rechargeable battery.
Startups in Europe and the US have made some interesting breakthroughs in this area.
British startup AllotropeEnergy, for example, has developed ionic supercapacitors, which store energy through the interaction of charged electrons and oppositely charged ions, offering both the high energy density of a battery and the high power density of a supercapacitor, and are being used in automotive parts, hybrid vehicles and fast charging, among other scenarios.
American startup Capacitech, on the other hand, has created a Cable-Based Capacitor, which has very flexible physical qualities that can be wrapped around wires or circuit boards, and has been a big hit in the electronics, solar, and energy storage sectors.
Capacitech Cable-Based Capacitor ()
|?5. Other
In addition to the above, there are also water storage (e.g., Three Gorges Hydroelectric Power), thermal storage (molten salt technology), and so on. The research community has also been making many new attempts at energy storage, such as MIT's proposal to utilize molten silicon at 2400°C to achieve long term thermal energy storage that is also highly affordable, and some research has been done on storing solar energy as liquid energy through a chemical reaction for ease of transportation and sale. For startups, consider starting in a directional area of interest or familiarity.
Of course, it's not just energy storage technology that's relevant to energy, but also battery recycling, which has a lot of innovative directions to try. For example, how to reduce the environmental pollution of chemical batteries such as lithium batteries and efficient recycling, or improve the recycling rate of solar panels and so on. Battery recycling is currently the focus of many domestic and overseas university laboratories, and Tesla also sees it as one of the focus directions, in which there are a lot of technologies and contents that can be explored, so if you are interested in it, why don't you have a chat with us?
Concluding Remarks: This is the first introduction to the types of energy storage and innovation, I hope this article can help you. Our free founders in the direction of energy storage hardware and environmental technology has a wealth of project experience and top professionals, if you are interested in energy storage, or are doing the direction of energy storage products, welcome to contact us