Todos with Dick Flasck, Founder RAF Electronics

Todos with Dick Flasck, Founder RAF Electronics

Our guest Richard “Dick” Flask is the founder and CEO of RAF Electronics, a 2019 CALSEED awardee pioneering new technologies to dramatically improve directional lighting by using non-imaging optics to produce high technology lighting. Dick will discuss share how they have leveraged the resources in California to grow their business.

Check Out More:

Growth Factory Filling Gaps in Regional Ecosystem

Growth Factory Filling Gaps in Regional Ecosystem

Based on the idea that the Sacramento region is “primed for success” in launching new businesses, but that entrepreneurs needed help in getting started, Mark Haney and Monique Brown founded a new business accelerator based in Rocklin—the Growth Factory.  On March 10,...

Venture Catalyst Expanding at UC Davis

Venture Catalyst Expanding at UC Davis

Janine Elliott was our guest on October 12 for a Perspectives podcast, explaining her new role.  She comes to us from 6 years at VentureWell in Amherst, MA, one of the best- funded and most complete tech incubators, and from the Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator, which...

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EY, Stoel Rives,

Greenberg Traurig LLP, BlueTech Valley,

Buchalter, Moss Adams, PowerSoft.biz

College of Engineering & Computer Science

at Sacramento State

Follow us on Social Media to keep upto date!

ToDos with Eco-Alpha

ToDos with Eco-Alpha

Our guest is Eco-Alpha Environmental and Engineering Services. Our guests are Melanie Harrison Okoro, PhD, founder and CEO, and Uzoma Okoro, president. We talked about them in our blog here. They also have resources for Covid-19 Support.

Check Out More:

Growth Factory Filling Gaps in Regional Ecosystem

Growth Factory Filling Gaps in Regional Ecosystem

Based on the idea that the Sacramento region is “primed for success” in launching new businesses, but that entrepreneurs needed help in getting started, Mark Haney and Monique Brown founded a new business accelerator based in Rocklin—the Growth Factory.  On March 10,...

Venture Catalyst Expanding at UC Davis

Venture Catalyst Expanding at UC Davis

Janine Elliott was our guest on October 12 for a Perspectives podcast, explaining her new role.  She comes to us from 6 years at VentureWell in Amherst, MA, one of the best- funded and most complete tech incubators, and from the Los Angeles CleanTech Incubator, which...

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EY, Stoel Rives,

Greenberg Traurig LLP, BlueTech Valley,

Buchalter, Moss Adams, PowerSoft.biz

College of Engineering & Computer Science

at Sacramento State

Follow us on Social Media to keep upto date!

Elon Musk Makes a Tantalizing Announcement on Battery Costs

Elon Musk Makes a Tantalizing Announcement on Battery Costs

There was a time when the “impossible” target for battery costs was $300/kWh.  At the time the going price was $1,000+/kWh.  Now battery systems in large volumes for long-duration storage are being quoted at $150-180/kWh.  Elon Musk says he will soon crack $100/kWh and likely achieve $80/kWh.  Even more importantly, he believes the batteries will remain useful up to the equivalent of using them in a vehicle for a million miles.

Now a digression on how battery costs are measured.  A figure like $100/kWh seems high when considering the best wholesale market price for power is around 5 cents per kWh.  So what gives?  The metric for batteries is basically a capacity price.  Think of a battery as a bucket.  The metric is based on how many kilowatt-hours your bucket can hold, repeatably, and for thousands of cycles.  Done properly, it does not assume the battery is discharged to zero (which is hard on a battery), but rather assumes a reasonable operating range between “full” and “empty”.  The harder a battery is pushed, the shorter its lifetime (or so most think).  So, it would be unfair to judge the size of the bucket based on a capacity which makes it fail prematurely.  

Also, one must be careful on these measures whether one is talking about a single cell, a packaged set of batteries, or a whole system with charging and discharging management, cooling, and a support frame.  Usually the figures are quoted for a package.

Anyway, if a battery pack is priced at $100/kWh of usable capacity and can handle 3,000 cycles before deteriorating so much it is not useful in its intended application (that’s about what a million miles of use in an EV would require), then the cost of its use is $100/3,000 = 3.3 cents per kWh.  That seems pretty trivial.  When batteries cost $1000/kWh and had an expected 1000-cycle life, the effective cost was $1 per kWh.  No wonder people thought battery storage was pretty expensive.

So that’s why Musk’s announcement is such a blockbuster.  How did he do it?  He has been working for years with a team at Dalhousie University in Canada that has created chemical additives and nano-engineered materials to gradually improve performance.  That team has been working on this problem since 1996.  Not exactly an overnight breakthrough, but one most people did not appreciate was underway.  To that Musk is adding crazy scale (a manufacturing plant 30 times bigger than the current Gigafactory) and some more changes in chemistry to eliminate the more expensive components (like cobalt).  

Analysts have used the $100/kWh figure as a target for when EVs would be no more expensive to buy than conventional vehicles.  Clearly Musk rose to the challenge.  However, there is still more ferment in hundreds of labs working on even more battery innovations and this is likely to push costs lower still.  If you are looking at a business that touches the battery world, and if you are not considering that battery costs could fall below $50/kWh and maybe to $20, you are likely missing the competitive threat—or opportunity—batteries can provide.  

Read the this article for more details.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | Tobin, EY, Moss Adams

BlueTech Valley, PowerSoft.biz

College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State

Valley Clean Energy Seeks Local Renewables

Valley Clean Energy Seeks Local Renewables

The CCA in Yolo County has just put out a solicitation for standalone renewable generation projects or combined with storage in the 2 to 25 MW range, operable by the end of 2023.  The projects would need to be in Yolo or the adjoining six counties.  This could be a good opportunity for those in the regional cleantech cluster.  Check out the opportunity here.

Big Leap in Big Storage

Big Leap in Big Storage

SCE has signed seven contracts for 770 MW of battery energy storage projects, pending CPUC approval.  The largest contracts were three signed with NextEra for 460 MW.  Commercial online dates are expected to be 8/1/2021.  All the projects are in relatively remote areas, far from load.  You can read the press release here.