Over lunch with Christina Lampe-Onnerud, CEO fo Cadenza Innovations, I learned more about the future of battery power for electric cars and grid storage applications than I thought possible.
The Tesla Powerwall is an intelligent 14kWh (13.5kWh usable) residential energy storage appliance that offers homeowners the ability to store power generated by an onsite solar system or from the grid for use as an emergency home battery backup. Despite its attraction as an emergency power device, Powerwall was designed from the ground up as a way for homeowners with onsite solar systems to extend the power they generate during daylight hours into the night.
The top CleanTechnica stories of the past week in terms of reader interest were — surprise, surprise — Tesla stories. Actually, the 5 most popular stories of the past week were Tesla-related stories. I guess that means we should stop covering Tesla, yeah?
The electric vehicle revolution presents a once-in-a-century opportunity. Countries around the world import an insane amount of oil. They send their hard-earned cash abroad — billions of dollars of it every day — to oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, the USA, Russia, Canada, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, and Venezuela because of a deadly and economically debilitating addiction.
Dendrites that grow on the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries can cause short circuits that can lead to fires. Adding nanodiamonds to the electrolyte inhibits dendrite growth and allows for cathodes with more energy storage.
Apparently, slamming the Big 3 of Germany — Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen — is in fashion in German politics. Or chief politicians in Germany are just fed up.
Mark Jacobson of Stanford and 26 colleagues have created a road map showing how 136 countries could transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050.
As Tesla races to deliver its grid and wind farm-connected 129MWh lithium-ion battery in time for South Australia’s coming summer, a much smaller-scale version of some of the same technology is set to be switched on at a salt manufacturing facility across the Tasman, on New Zealand’s South Island.
Solar and wind power are slashing the cost of electricity in Australia and driving coal and natural gas out of business. That’s a good thing for the country and an even better thing for the planet.
Considering the far-reaching cascade of change that is about to be unleashed on human society by the transition from the internal combustion engine to the electric motor, there’s a good case to be made that everyone should have at least a rudimentary understanding of how these two competing forms of propulsion work (many journalists, to say nothing of political and business leaders, are in dire need of a basic primer).
