Our December 9th MeetUp demonstrated just how many and how broadly innovations are being made in storage, especially in our own back yard.  There could be tenfold improvements in the technology coming, but these are limited by how fast all the performance claims can be validated and when the financial community, especially the banks, will trust them.  We had presentations from Mark Roest at Sustainable Energy, Mike Gravely of the CEC, and Garrett Woodroof of Villara Energy.

Mark told us about the breakthrough innovations Sustainable Energy Inc. (SEI) is pursuing in creating batteries with ceramic anodes and cathodes and a saline-based gel electrolyte, using no lithium, cobalt, or rare earth materials.  These are based on the decades of proven innovation from William Todorof, holder of numerous patents for ceramic materials in the electronics industry and a well-known expert.  Because of the improvements in ion transfer in these electrodes, the energy density could be 8X the best of the current batteries (2300 Wh/kg vs. 250-300), they could last far longer and take many more charge cycles.  The higher energy capacity also means less space needed and more range from a battery pack.  This advance has focused SEI on trucks as their beachhead market, specifically in cargo transfer vehicles in ports and long-distance Class 8 trucks.  SEI has interest from companies converting standard vehicles to all-electric versions.  That is a market not really open to conventional batteries due to weight and size limitations.  It also opens up more possibilities for electric aircraft where weight and size are so important. 

Todorof is making prototypes in a small lab and showing very good performance (2.4+ open-circuit voltage, resistance around 1 Ohm).  The next step is likely to find $1-5 million to produce enough finished batteries to demonstrate the technology and eventually move to a $100-300 million production facility.  Todorov has decades of experience engineering ceramics manufacturing processes for electronics companies, so is no neophyte in this kind of scale-up.  The materials cost is modest.  The long-term goal is to make batteries at a cost of $20/kWh capacity, compared to current prices ten times higher.  

Mike Gravely explained just how serious the CEC is in accelerating innovations in storage technology.   Over $100 million was invested in storage technology in 2020 (including matching funds) and with awards to 15 teams.  That number is boosted to a planned $340 million investment in FY 2021-22 intended to go to over a dozen awards.  While some of the money is focused on supporting innovators at the earliest stages, the bulk of the money is targeted to underwrite the building of demonstration projects that will provide the experience needed to make storage projects financeable and commercially viable.  The CEC well understands that the success of a zero-carbon energy system may depend crucially on having inexpensive, high capacity and long-duration storage.    The CEC is looking at non-lithium ion battery technologies as well as improvements to current technology.  The range of options they are funding includes flywheel systems (“mechanical batteries”), flow batteries, compressed air energy storage, and water storage.  If you are pursuing some kind of energy storage product, you really should reach out to Mike at the CEC.  (Mike.Gravely@energy.ca.gov)

Garrett showed how local long-time building systems company Villara (through a new subsidiary) has come up with its own home energy storage product (VillaGrid) to challenge the established players with a new technology concept that promises superior results.  It comes in two sizes with 5+ or 10+ kWh of storage.  The main difference in Villara’s product is the use of Lithium Titanate Oxide (LTO) batteries from Toshiba.  LTO batteries do not use a graphite anode, which is a safety risk.  LTO batteries also last longer, hold more charge per unit, and can operate in a much wider temperature range.  The come in two configurations—one that maximizes energy storage, and one that maximizes power output. The product is more expensive on a first cost basis than a Tesla PowerWall, but on a full lifetime kWh cost is actually much less than the cost of Tesla.  

Villara Energy is assembling these systems locally in space at McClellan Business Park and have ten employees.  Their current production rate is about 50 per month.  Garrett said they hope to increase to 30-50 people next year, with a goal to having as any as 500 employees.  At that scale they will definitely be selling products beyond the local area.  

Villara Energy has also entered into a deal with Lumin to use its smart panels as a way to achieve load control and best use of the battery systems for backup of critical loads.  

The parent company, Villara Building Systems, has been on a path to diversify its offerings and be at the frontier on new energy technology.  They are becoming a much more significant clean tech player in the region.  They started with an increased focus on energy efficiency improvements and now have created a unit focusing on solar installations, which will be working in tandem with Villara Energy to offer storage options.  

The discussion sessions was extensive with lots of good nuggets that came out.  If you missed it or want to review it, the session was recorded and is available on YouTube.  You should take a look.  

This was the last MeetUp of the year.  We will return in January with the next one.

One of the limitations on fast charging is how much current the cable can carry from the charger to the EV.  It’s a problem of heat dissipation.  The more heat, the higher the resistance and the more dangerous the cable becomes.  The usual solution is to get a thicker cable, but that also means a heavier and less wieldy cable.  Or increase the voltage to push more energy down a small cable.  But there are probably valid concerns about just how high a voltage one would want an individual handling.

Researchers at Purdue University tackle the problem in a different way—introducing a simple way to cool a cable.  They have been testing a way to use a special liquid that will boil at low temperatures to keep a cable relatively cool.  The liquid-to-vapor phase change keeps the liquid at safe temperatures and the “bubbling” action provides a way to for the liquid to flow up and down the cable.  No pump is required.   Clever.  The team has demonstrated the effectiveness of this scheme to allow current up to 2400 amps in a relatively lightweight cable.  This is much higher than the 500 to as much as 800 amps in the fastest chargers announced to date.  

It turns out this innovation has been hard to tackle.  But it is based on an old idea.   Many automobiles at the start of the twentieth century were water-cooled but had no water pumps to circulate the water.  Instead, the water moved by convection and ended up in a big radiator where the water boiled and was re-condensed.  The industry came up with the lyrical term “ebullient cooling” for this system.  Eventually as engines became more compact and higher horsepower, a water pump was necessary to boost the flow to ensure enough cooling.  However, lots of farm equipment, mostly stationary engines, continued to use ebullient cooling for decades.  The adaptation for cooling a cable has taken the Purdue team over 37 years to master, but now they think it is ready for prime time.  

Every year we make predictions and then see how we did. Overall, our predictions were too conservative for 2021. We got seven right, two wrong, and one undecided.  There were some big improvements in clean tech areas like ZEV, Solar, Batteries, and more.  We also saw companies receive enormous investments and make a splash on Wall Street.  Read below to see how we did.

1. EV Sales in the US will top 500,000 for the year.

It looks like the 500,000th vehicle was sold near the beginning of November.  Despite the chip shortage, EV sales in the US have been record-breaking.   Last year ended with just over 322K EVs sold in the US.  As of the end of Q3 of 2021, there were 481,226 EVs sold in the US (BEV+PHEV+FCEV).   California alone accounted for 187,678 or 39% of that total.  By the way, as of Q3, Tesla has delivered 627K vehicles worldwide and with a strong chance to be over 1 million by year’s end by itself.  Rating: Nailed it.

2. QCLN CleanTech Stock Index to reach a new high over 125. 

The high for the year was 87.  At the end of November, the index sat at 78, pretty far from the predicted mark.  While the past gains retreated, the number of indexes being created to support passive cleantech investment has grown. The top 5 Renewable Energy ETFs saw their Assets Under Management grow by over $3.6 Billion (about 20%) . More and more people are demanding their investments support what they believe in.  Rating: Missed the number, hit the intent.

3. There will be a huge increase in installed storage projects—3,000 MW will be added in 2021 in the US counting both grid-tied and behind-the-meter storage, and 1500 MW grid-tied capacity added in California alone.   

It has indeed been a big year for storage additions.  The Sept. estimate for the additions in all of 2021 from the same source (Wood Mackenzie) is 14,585 MWh of energy capacity (5,130 MW installed power capacity), with 12,980 MWh (4,568 MW) of projects tied directly to the grid and 1605 MWh (562 MW) in the residential and commercial behind-the-meter segment.  That is considerably more than we anticipated.  However, by the end of 2Q2021, only 1920 Mwh (625 MW) had been added in the US. The additions of storage in the US for all of 2020 were 3751 MWh (1320 MW) with 3.5X growth over 2019.  The fourth quarter in 2020 was when over half of all the additions of the year were made (about 900 MW). The Wood Mackenzie forecast for 2021 seems to be based on the assumption that 2021 would grow the same 3.5X over 2020 mostly in the last half of the year.  That would mean adding 4500 MW of power capacity in the last two quarters of 2021.  That’s a big leap and very well might not occur.  But adding about 2400 MW more by year-end to reach our projected number could still happen.   As far as the California additions go, on Sept. 28 of this year Cal ISO said there were 1500 MW of storage online in the state in 2020  (net addition of 950 MW over 2019), with a total of 3000 MW anticipated by year end 2021. Rating: Spot-on for California capacity, and possibly a big underestimate for the US pending final year end numbers. 

4. The installed cost of a utility-scale storage project will fall below $350/kWh of energy capacity.  

Going back to NREL for an update, the cost in 2020 came in at $345/kWh and is estimated to be under $340/kWh by the end of 2021.  We will take that as a win.  The new NREL estimate for 2025 is $245/kWh, but we still think that will prove to be too high.  We are sticking with the $225/kWh forecast. Rating: We got this right, but we thought the pandemic would result in less progress than was actually made. 

5. A bill will be introduced in Congress to extend Investment Tax Credits to storage projects.

A bill was introduced in March, but was not passed giving ITC for storage projects, although the credits were extended for solar and wind.   The infrastructure bill included some incentives for standalone storage projects but no ITC.  Rating: It happened, but went nowhere.  Some incentives were added another way.

6. Two renewable-based microgrids with over 1000 customers each will be established in Northern California.

We have been bullish on microgrids and continue to think they will make a significant impact during the energy transition. But have been miffed by the complexity they face. Despite being supported by most and with some positive regulatory progress, coordinating stakeholders is the biggest obstacle to building microgrids, showing even when everyone agrees you still have a long way to go. Rating: We missed. We still see a bright future for microgrids, DERs, and VPPs, though.

7. The revenue generated by our regional clean tech companies will top $6 billion.

The pandemic resulted in a number of company casualties.  We may not have hit the $6 billion mark, but there were some gains.  We will not know for sure until we can collect information from the companies that were idle for so long and not answering inquiries.  Rating: Don’t know yet.

8. The price of California Carbon Allowances for the first time will exceed $20.

The high for the year was over $35.  By year end, prices had gone down to $29.  The spike was much higher than anticipated, indicating the offsets in this post-pandemic transition year were harder to find. This bodes well for sustainability projects. (Check out our blog on this.) Rating: It happened, but the jump was much higher than expected.

9. Installed residential solar PV costs for systems under 10 kW will drop below $4.60 per watt. 

The cost dropped to $4.57 per watt, even though the tariff on imported panels remained.  Even with supply chain issues in procuring panels from China, competition and innovation have continued the downward pressure on prices. New financing, B2B services, and hardware companies continue to make an impact. Including local Companies LoanPal and Assent.  Rating: Another Win

10. Two regional cleantech companies will raise a total of more than $50 million to propel their growth.  

Two companies had outstanding success.  Infinium closed on $69 million and Origin Materials went public through a SPAC acquisition and raised a net $900+ million.  Obviously, we were too modest in our forecast. Rating: Too modest by a factor of 20, but big win for the Clean Tech Hub!

Here’s one idea that was sure to happen.  PowerEdison, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison in New York, has created a large-scale charger site based on battery-filled trailers.  Having those trailers both avoids the need to upgrade the grid to handle the recharge power requirements and provides a quick way to move the chargers to new sites, even on barges.  It looks like the grid upgrades are avoided by choosing the right place to deploy the mobile system.  The system deployed provides 250 kW fast chargers, with an ability to move those up to 1000 kW when the technology is ready.  The system also allows a measure of control to be exercised by ConEd on when the battery banks can be used in order to manage the grid.  It is deployed in the Kearney Industrial Park near Newark, which is indicated to be a high-traffic area, and can serve both cars and heavy trucks.  See their news release here.

PowerEdison previously launched a mobile battery storage system on wheels.  That system is now incorporated into this mobile charging arrangement. 

PowerEdison intends to market its products far beyond the Northeast, so it would be no surprise to see some of them end up in California—and create an interest in even better products from innovators as well.