In less than ten years new inventions and improved current technologies will be leading the way to a low-carbon world. ReNew takes a look at some of the contenders to see what’s in store for 2020 and beyond. Here’s the latest on electric vehicles and big batteries.
Electric vehicles
By 2020 electric vehicles won’t be the novelty they are today, writes Lance Turner.
With most major car manufacturers having EVs in the pipeline or already on the road, a large number of EVs will be trundling around in the next decade. While they may not make up the majority of vehicles on the roads, as petrol prices continue to climb the incentive to go electric will become irresistible for many people, especially those who commute relatively short distances.
What batteries EVs will be using in 2020 is up for debate but the majority will be using a lithium chemistry of some sort. There have been a number of advances in laboratories around the world in recent years, especially with nanostructure modifications to battery electrodes. These advancements have shown considerable promise in increasing battery capacity, from a few 10s of per cent to anything up to 1000 per cent. In around 10 years we should expect to see electric vehicles with ranges of 300km or more and charge times of only a few minutes.
The biggest hurdle will be charging infrastructure and the increased demand on the electricity grid. However, manufacturers are already looking at making EVs smart grid compatible so that they can act as energy stores to provide peak loads when they are parked and fully charged. Combined with inductive charging bays in carparks and domestic garages, where you won’t even have to remember to plug in to recharge, the often feared running out of charge will be a very rare occurrence.
There’s no problems with electric vehicles that can’t be overcome with some intelligent thought. As part of that intelligent thought, let’s hope the trend towards large SUV style vehicles will be reversed and we see smaller, more personal vehicles such as the Smart fortwo EV pictured here.
Big batteries
The world is powered by batteries. Lance Turner looks at future battery advances.
Battery technology over the next decade will tend to trend towards higher capacities in smaller volumes and with less weight—in short, higher energy densities. The main driver for this will be the need for higher capacity batteries for portable electronics, as well as for electric vehicles. While there are a number of interesting battery chemistries being worked on, for larger scale storage, lead-acid and lithium chemistries will still be the mainstays, with a trend towards lithium as the batteries become cheaper. Indeed, by 2020 we may even see the end of the lead-acid battery if lithium and competing technologies can become cheap enough.
While many people are predicting that lithium batteries may in fact become more expensive as demand rises, they seem to be overlooking the ingenuity of the human race. There’s vast quantities of lithium available in seawater, and while it isn’t economically viable to extract it now compared to land-based sources, history has shown that when faced with such problems it’s only a matter of time before it’s solved.
However, advances have been made in the efficiency of battery design, with several prototype designs providing huge increases in capacity for the same or less materials used. This has become possible with the redesign of battery electrodes and the inclusion of specialist materials such as carbon nanotubes and foams and silicon microfibres. While these are exotic materials at present, in time they will become as common as batteries themselves.
Large (utility) scale storage is now becoming realistic without huge lead-acid battery banks with the increased availability of flow batteries, such as the zinc bromine batteries from Redflow (www.redflow.com.au), Premium Power (www.premiumpower.com) and ZBB (www.zbbenergy.com). Redflow’s largest battery, the 120kVA, 240kWh model, is designed for large-scale network storage and stabilisation. There are also smaller units, down to 5kW, 10kWh models suitable for RAPS and backup power use. By 2020, much larger systems will be available that will allow utilities to flatten out demand and provide a reliable method of stabilising the varying output from renewables.
For smaller applications, lithium will most likely still be the mainstay and, as mentioned, advancements in this technology will see smaller, higher capacity batteries using less lithium. One company, Excellatron (www.excellatron.com), has recently opened a pilot plant producing their thin film lithium cells which are claimed to have almost twice the energy density and power density of current lithium cells. But more amazingly, they have demonstrated that some designs of their cells can retain 95 per cent of capacity after 45,000 cycles.
The pilot plant can produce 10,000 cells per month, with a target of ten times that. If the technology lives up to expectations, lithium batteries will have moved into a whole new arena.
Some battery technologies do away with one electrode altogether, replacing it with oxygen taken from the air. The most common of these is the zinc-air battery normally used in hearing aids, but lithium-air batteries are also being developed. Fluidic Energy, a spinoff from Arizona State University, is working on large-scale batteries that use ionic liquids for their electrolytes instead of aqueous solutions. The hope is that low cost, high capacity batteries will be the result.
Whatever the technology, by 2020 you can bet we will have low cost, low toxicity batteries with capacities that make current technologies look feeble. Electric vehicles with 500 kilometre ranges that can be recharged in minutes will be commonplace.
Read the full article in ReNew 116
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 11:11 am