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Noon energy is working on an alternative ultra-low-cost rechargeable battery technology.
- The company’s solution utilises cheaper materials like carbon and oxygen instead of lithium and cobalt.
- The company expects to make this solution available in a couple of years.
Although the prices of lithium-ion batteries have dropped by over 90 per cent since they first became widely used in electronics, they are still not cheap enough isn’t quite cheap enough to be the best solution for electric grids. An Us-based startup, Noon Energy, is working on an alternative, an ultra-low-cost rechargeable battery that would be powered by CO2 that’s been split into carbon and oxygen using excess energy produced when renewable supply is high. While most common batteries utilise expensive materials like lithium and cobalt, the company hopes to reduce long-term storage costs by using carbon and oxygen as storage materials.
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“To enable a 100% solar and wind scenario, several-hour capacity [storage on the electric grid] doesn’t cut it,” says Chris Graves, founder and CEO of Noon Energy. “You need at least one day capacity to get from day-to-day. But then you’ll also have days that aren’t sunny and seasonality in summer and winter. When you do the full analysis of that, you need quite long storage capacities in the 100-plus hour storage capacity range, and this will give you the full on-demand electricity that normally would have some fossil fuels. That’s what we’re going for. And when you’re going for that, there are only so many options on the periodic table that are low cost.”
Hydrogen made from splitting water through electrolysis is one option. But Noon says its technology has double the energy efficiency of hydrogen hence cheaper. However, the batteries only make economic sense in large-scale applications, which could be beneficial to electric grids and long-distance transportation.
Noon Energy has already developed a working prototype of the technology and has received grants from the California Energy Commission and ARPA-E, the federal agency that backs high-impact energy technology.
The company believes that because of the straightforward manufacturing of their technology, it could be available within a couple of years. .”