February Round Up
The nights are growing shorter, spring bulbs are out and about and the battery business has not taken a quiet winter! Something we really don’t talk enough about is slurry quality.
Electrode slurries need to offer good electrical conductivity to support electrode performance and overall battery energy density and electrochemical performance. While impedance spectroscopy of slurries provides an indication of conductive material dispersion in the slurry after mixing, it does not account for shear-induced changes from the coating process. Simultaneous rheology and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy directly measure shear-induced changes in the microstructure to confirm that the electrically conductive network is maintained in the finished electrode.
TA Instruments’ new Discovery Hybrid Rheometer Rheo-Impedance Spectroscopy accessory achieves unmatched data quality in both dielectric impedance and rheology measurements. The novel design eliminates the need for electrical contact with the upper tool, allowing for testing across the full range of the DHR’s torque sensitivity to enable precise characterization of viscosity, yield stress, viscoelasticity, and structure recovery. Rheo-IS measurements help predict successful electrode performance prior to full battery assembly, saving time and money while optimizing slurry formulations.
Here are our top picks for February.
👔 CEO shake-ups in the industry
A big news highlight of February is the change in upper management in many prominent start-ups in the field, including Cuberg and ONE. Head to the excellent write-ups by Andrew “From C-suites to C-rates” or “Why Next-Gen Battery CEOs are dropping like flies” from The Electric for more details.
🇺🇸 Batteries 2024 🇨🇳
In preparation for the 2024 US election season, batteries have started occupying the center stage of business news, often painted in a US vs. China light. A recent article from Forbes entitled The Green Industrial Race: US Versus China praises the impact that the IRA had on strategic sectors such as batteries**.** In a recent Twitter post from Fortune, Ford's CEO, “who's been worrying about China's EV dominance for years”, says "the world has changed" and he'd work with rivals on a cheaper battery. Coming at a moment when GM just announced a joint venture with LGchem for building a gigafactory in Tennessee, I couldn’t help making this illustration with Dall-E:
On the global stage, it seems that legacy automakers like GM and Stellantis are starting the new year well on the back of their gas and hybrid vehicle sales. At the same time, Tesla’s shares have dipped approximately 20% this year amid concerns over slower EV adoption, as reported by Times of India. Heavier transportation is also a tough market to be in at the moment, as illustrated by the UK truck and minibus company Arrival going into administration. Valued three years ago at £3bn, Arrival struggled to raise the capital needed to make its designs a reality. US automotive Fisker is also likely to go bust by the end of the year.
🚀 Energy storage starting the year strong
While EVs may have been in somewhat of a slowdown phase, Tesla’s energy storage business seems to be doing great:
their revenue from power generation and energy storage businesses surged to $1.559 billion, marking a 39.57% year-on-year increase and a 3.31% quarter-on-quarter growth. Furthermore, they achieved a remarkable 24.4% gross margin rate, which represents a notable improvement of 15.1% year-on-year and 6.0% quarter-on-quarter. […] Consequently, energy storage is gradually emerging as Tesla’s most profitable business, and it’s noteworthy that this quarter marks the first time that Tesla’s energy business gross profit margin has surpassed that of its vehicle business.
California has just registered the biggest solar+storage project to date at a staggering 3.3 GWh, totaling nearly 2 million solar panels and more than 120,000 batteries. Europe is also sending strong signals, with a forecasted sevenfold increase in its storage capacity by 2030, with the UK, Italy, and Ireland leading the pack, according to a recent Bloomberg report. BNEF also forecasts a strong 2024 for storage installations:
Stationary storage additions should reach another record, at 57 gigawatts (136 gigawatt-hours) in 2024, up 40% relative to 2023 in gigawatt terms. We expect stationary storage project durations to grow as use-cases evolve to deliver more energy, and more homes to add batteries to their new solar installations.
Speaking of home storage, the UK recently announced that it is suppressing VAT on home storage batteries.
🔥 Concerns about battery fires rising
However, as more MWh of batteries are being installed in cars and on the world’s grids, the concerns around battery fire are also rising: a recent comprehensive report by Clean Energy Associates, where the firm conducted more than 320 inspections and collectively audited over 30 GWh of lithium-ion battery storage projects, underlined that 26% of battery storage systems have fire-detection and fire-suppression issues, while about 18% face challenges with thermal management systems. These figures spark concern, as illustrated by a recent pushback in Christian County:
The residents' concerns pivot around the risks of fires, potential leakage into the ground, and what many perceive as inadequate notification about the project's commencement. These apprehensions are not isolated but echo a global conversation on the safety and environmental impact of battery storage technologies.
Battery fires also occur in facilities hosting used batteries, as illustrated by this impressive video from a few weeks ago where 900t of batteries caught fire in France.
The main takeaway here is that better quality control is required at the production level, to avoid the probability of fires stemming from defects in the cell. Better Battery Management Systems are required, to avoid harsh conditions during battery operations and detect the onset of thermal runaway events, especially in large systems that are made of hundreds of battery packs. Finally, better norms for handling both disposed and new batteries would help avoid the events that occurred in France. Coincidentally, these points are addressed by many of the startups that we recently reviewed in our Battery Software Deep Dive part 2.
Maybe there will also be room for inherently safer battery technologies in stationary storage? Safety and materials supply chain concerns are some of the most discussed potential future problems for wide-scale adoption.
⛏️ Lithium supply chain
Speaking of the supply chain, here is an excellent piece by Emily Hersh, a lithium exploration projects developer on LinkedIn, on “the Lithium period: a cyclical bloodbath”.
Volatility is inherent to creating the scale of opportunities that exist in lithium. Bears and bulls are like broken clocks in that they'll all be right at some point along the cycle. I come at my decisions by forming views on what I consider to be the key high-level metrics: EV penetration rates, lithium intensity in an average battery pack, government policies that impact EVs, and whether investment dollars globally will hold people accountable for ESG and climate goals.
Also fresh from LinkedIn, this piece by Jordan Roberts, a battery raw materials analyst, entitled “Hello Scale what do you say?”
📈 Factory tour trend
After CATL’s factory tour video earlier this year, factory tours seem to have become trending, with ONE, Morrow, and Toshiba releasing their own version. Head to the write-ups by Evgeny Malyshev on the ONE battery tour, the Morrow battery tour, and the Toshiba battery tour for a digestible overview of the details in the videos.
🇨🇦 🇪🇺 Canada and Europe ramping up
According to a recent article by Electric Autonomy, Dalhousie University plans to build a new $13.5-million R&D prototyping facility: the Canadian Battery Innovation Centre (CBIC). The school also plans to launch a new Master of Battery Technology program to provide the facility with talented workers, with a projected start in fall 2025. In Europe, ACC just raised 4.4 billion euros to build gigafactories in France, Germany and Italy.
🏭 Startup out of stealth
Glimpse just launched out of stealth mode. The US-based startup proposes X-ray computed tomography scanning for better quality control on gigafactory production lines, joining the “quality control” category of the startups that we recently reviewed in our Battery Software Deep Dive part 2 (updated figure coming soon).
🎧 What else we're reading/listening to
Catalyst with Shayle Kann episode on 2024 trends: batteries, transferable tax credits and the cost of capital on Spotify.
Season 2 Episode 10 of Insights on Energy Transformation & Clean Tech Investments by Battery Associates on YouTube.
Part1: Are batteries the new oil? By The Big Switch on Spotify.
Decoding battery analytics with Accure Battery Intelligence CEO, from the Battery + Storage podcast by Troutman Pepper.
🌞 Thanks for reading!
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