Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites.
The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.
> The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.
what makes it so? I don't know anything about this subject, I'm really curious now about what the perfect battery would be.
No idea why polymer single ion conducting would stop dendrites (I know people are looking for it, I don't know why).
But 10kJ/mol of activation energy is another way of saying less than 100mV of internal loses, and avoiding phase transitions means that your battery won't stop working on that temperature range.
The only thing different from this list is the ceramic separator. It’s not polymer. However, the ceramic is ultra thin to the point that it’s flexible so volume expansion isn’t a problem and it solves the dendrite problem.
Perhaps a polymer will be invented that can’t be pierced by dendrites. But existing polymers need to be heated for ion transfer efficiency and are combustable.
Technically, QuantumScape also uses an organic liquid catholyte inside the cathode. So it’s not “pure” solid state.
Lithium Titanate batteries can do this now, somewhat. I have some 35 Ah batteries that claim they can charge in 9 minutes (compared to traditional Lithium Ion, that would take hours).
I don't have a charger that can supply the necessary 350 Amps though.
They also have ridiculous amount of charge cycles. 10x higher than regular Lithium Ion IIRC.
They are more expensive and are larger and heavier for the same stored energy though.
And, while they CAN still catch fire, they are apparently way harder to do so.
Zero Point Module, often abbreviated ZPM, is a power source, created by the Ancients, capable of supplying tremendous amounts of energy. It is one of the most formidable power sources known to exist, having been developed by the Ancients several million years ago during their reign of the Milky Way galaxy
My motherboard has useful lights. They illuminate according to the current stage of startup. I think it's CPU, RAM, VGA, and something else I don't remember. Got a RAM problem preventing boot? It hangs with RAM lit up. This is infinitely more useful than the arbitrary undocumented 2-digit BIOS codes that it also has.
The regulatory approval for those is just too expensive in practice. I mean you blow up one star due to cost cutting and nobody trusts the tech ever again...
But that was a Joviet power plant with a severe design flaw. They had a foot of up-quark matter at the bottom of their control rods, which increased the reaction rate for a brief moment after the emergency ABSCOND button was pressed. Plus, they were running the reactor at dangerously low graviton flux levels, leading to a pion buildup, during a shift change. Everyone knows those Joviets can't do anything right.
Our Amearthican designs would never have such flaws. They are completely safe, and several are operating around the galaxy already, producing hundreds of exawatts. Unlike the stellar panels recommended by those ill-advised "environmentalists" which can't work in nebula weather, or helioshock plasma turbines that rely on the stellar wind, our plants provide a sustainable base load in all conditions.
The problem was that the science behind those fancy power plants of yours is so complicated, the rest of the galaxy found it easier to just oxidize biomass, and are now scouring every known sector for M-class planets they haven't yet strip-mined from all organic matter.
I say was, because the current problem is that those "environmentalists" you mentioned managed to scare remaining interstellar governments away from this technology, which made them double down on biomass extraction.
I love how Carter blows up a star system, and then later McKay blows up 5/6ths of a star system which it turns out is deeply more complicated to pull off.
On the other hand Carter did what she set out to do while McKay fscked up and wasn't trying to blow anything up, so there is also that.
Well that's fine for terrestrial use but aerospace needs that range to be expanded a little in both directions, otherwise it won't be much of a holy grail if it won't cover the needs of one of the largest growing industries.
"It isn't perfect so therefore it's trash" is not a helpful or intelligent take. You are not contributing to the conversation, you're wasting everyone's time by trying to appear smart.
Please don't attack another user like this, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It only makes things worse.
I believe I get the positive intention behind your post, btw - to defend conversation against shallow dismissals - and of course appreciate that. But if you'd please express it in a respectful way in the future, then you'll be contributing to good conversation rather than degrading it further.
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
If you know more than others do, that's great! But please contribute by sharing some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn, rather than putting others down.
How does someone with such short temper get to work in the aerospace industry? You know we are just a bunch of random strangers on the internet and telling someone to "sit down" just comes across as funny more than authoritative. And I don't think telling someone "I know exactly what the fuck I'm speaking of" has ever had the desired effect on the internet, it just screams insecure - if you're really an expert make it show through your words not by trying to intimidate people.
"How does someone with such short temper get to work in the aerospace industry?"
My temper is very even. I simply do not tolerate bullshit from nobodies who are speaking garbage. And I get to work in aerospace because it seems that out of the millions of people that tried to get my job I'm the only one with the relevant mixed-domain expertise to realize what a company wants to do and get it done.
I have hardware in orbit, I can with 4-sigma certainty guarantee the poster trying to chide me does not.
Right, so were you like this before you started working there, or was putting hardware into orbit what made you behave this way in internet comments? I mean I imagine it must be a huge ego boost, but I don't know, I've done some really cool stuff too but I don't go around telling people to sit down when they try to talk about my domain.
The advance would come from building systems that can scavenge waste heat from multiple sources instead of just exchanging with outside air.
The model Y introduced the "octovalve" which regulates flow in 13 different configurations to bring the highest quality heat to the cars heat pump.
In a house this might be something like extracting heat from grey water, or even cold tap water, ports for a solar heated loop, fresh air exchange etc.
System integration enabling efficient use of heat transfer is the opportunity
The Tesla heat pump also introduced high volume low cost manufacturing processes like semisolid aluminum casting and friction stir welding. That promise to lower costs.
Another thing that is potentially achievable with a low cost integrated approach is staged heat pumps for hot water tanks.
The possibilities are endless really, at the limit these ideas lead to integrated neighborhood scale heat networks tied to rooftop solar that can replicate district heating strategies.
… I mean, again, that all pretty much exists (except maybe the thermal solar stuff, but PV ate thermal solar’s lunch about 20 years ago). Any new home built here at this point will generally have a heat pump with MHRV, which heats the hot water.
Generally the major cost in retrofitting such a thing isn’t the unit; it’s the modifications to the home to support it.
Dude, you were messing with the canbus network. If FSD got into an accident because of some communication failure it could potentially cost the company billions of dollars and get people killed. I would do the same thing.
I have some experience with distributed energy generation and have met with senior utility executives many times while trying to implement some grant supported projects through my work.
It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money. They bundle the cost of grid maintenance into their per kWh charges. These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage.
This business model, which has bundled grid maintenance into usage costs means that utilities put up huge roadblocks for distributed generation. They say they love it, but they actually hate it. Utility executives have looked me in the eye and said as much.
It gets worse though, because energy infrastructure is backed by trillions in utility bonds. These "low risk" debt instruments are owned by national and private pension funds of mind boggling size. In order to bring about a distributed energy future the grid (and low pressure nat gas infrastructure) must be reorganized in a manner that is likely to make those bonds worthless. These background factors are definitely in play when you see these bait and switch enthusiastic green energy programs that turn out to be a regulatory quagmire when you dig into them. Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China.
> It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money
So a question:
- Lets hypothesize that distributed, decentralized systems cost way more than centralized systems
- If you agree with that hypothesis, can we next hypothesize that building a distributed, decentralized system that can support power on one block and can allow it to continue to stay on while the "central feeder line" (please tell me the proper word for this made up word is) to all the blocks is down, because that one block has a local distributed, decentralized power source, is of value to the community?
In the past, commercial factories were the only places that could afford this kind of redundancy but it feels to me, thanks to crashing prices of solar and batteries (I could never have imagined 12kWh brand new LFP could be purchased for $2k), this level of redundancy is now very much realistic at the consumer, residential level. It just doesn't work locally today because the utility poles lack the smarts to do the isolated switching and safe islanding. For example: one unsettled question today is if a lot of customers on one such island are on solar and the grid is down, how do we safely supply power within nominal specs to the whole of the island - but this isn't a physical unknown, we know how to solve it. It just is lacking implementation.
> These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage
Capitalism has repeatedly proven its ability to cut costs down while improving QoS. I realize you really believe in the numbers you have been provided - that it costs a utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of my usage, but before SpaceX, it used to cost multiple millions of dollars and years of planning and design to launch one rocket.
In this case the utility executives work for public utilities. So capitalism isn't to blame. It's about the incentives of the incumbent energy providers.
It is already cheaper to build the distributed energy solution you describe but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed.
Costs of distributed energy may drop so low in the next 5-10 years that it will no longer be possible to keep things from moving to a micro grid network.
> but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed
fair. I appreciated the insight in your original message - datapoints from industry insiders like yourself do help people like I gain some understanding of why we have to go in alone on this and not wait
> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China
No this statement is absolutely wrong. Here's why:
> west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China
China is dominating energy because the CCP doesn't care what their citizens think. They need energy and they are doing everything they can do to get it. They will put you behind bars at best or kill your family and demolish your house if it gets in the middle of a power line trench. For China, energy isn't a "nice to have" - they realize it's essential and they won't stop until they get there.
China is the person out in the mountains being chased by a hungry bear while we in the west is the person sitting in their air conditioned room debating whether to drive or take an Uber to have a drink with buddies.
News came out last week that you can buy a Chinese hypersonic missle for $100k - you can't even build a little two car garage where I am for double that price.
> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy
Pension funds don't care whether energy is green or orange. What they hate are the horrible returns affected by all the stealing and grifting that happens in the name of "green energy".
Public utilities (atleast in the jurisdictions that I am aware of) love any infrastructure work - they are guaranteed a 10% ROI by the government on any approved infrastructure work they do. If you could work with them to build infrastructure to cremate just newborn kids and get it approved by the CPUC, they will happily start work on it tomorrow. The reason why they hate green energy is because after they've made their 10% ROI, they are now stuck with a power source that costs them more than their non-green sources and that hurts their razor thin margins.
However, as the customer - I don't care either about what public utilities and pension funds hate or don't.
What I do care about is having affordable and reliable power and I absolutely can get that with my own solar panels and batteries. The fact that it's green is a happy sideffect for most.
The reason why every home in the U.S. isn't overflowing with solar panels and batteries is because of regulation and government shenanigans making retail costs really high. Average people in Pakistan, South Africa and Lebanon certainly power their whole homes with solar panels and batteries but their governments don't have nonsense taffifs and fees on Chinese solar equipment.
Totally agree that regulations and government interference are the reasons we don't have cheap solar panels.
Those regulations and that interference result from the fact that in a distributed world the current utility bond value drops to zero. Utilities will not build infrastructure that makes their existing infrastructure lose value.
I recently negotiated with a government owned utility on a large solar project. They were 100% against it until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid and wouldn't reduce the amount of power we currently buy from them. Zero interest in distributed solutions on their side. They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro.
> They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro
Is that because of the scale they need to achieve to support the investment?
> until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid
Financial greed aside, and I mentioned this previously, feedback at a large scale isn't free especially if the impedance of the grid cannot be predicted - the frequency or voltage or both would spike. Monitoring for these conditions are expensive and addressing them is even more expensive - the cheapest solution is you do a shutdown until things stabilize but this is kinda catch-22 because that itself might have its own cascading effects.
Let me ask you this - if you were to update a local neighborhood (like a block or two of 1000 homes) distribution station, that all have their own solar and battery, where the homes could independently power themselves for a day - what changes or upgrades would you make to ensure they can share load for that one day when the larger grid is suffering an outage?
Now would that cost and complexity be lower or higher if instead, nothing was changed at grid scale at all but each of the individual 1000 homes doubled their own capacity (let's say 30kWh a day if you're OK with that)?
I recently specced a 500kW project. Quote was $CA1.67/Watt. But I'm pretty sure they would have bumped that up a lot higher later in the process if we hadn't stopped due to permitting hurdles.
The viability of direct to cell connectivity at scale is unproven. This is actually the core value of SpaceX in the next 3-5 years.
The other core value generation product will be financial transactions. It is unproven whether X money will be adopted for friction free transactions across national boundaries and whether the company can compete in the financial services sector.
reply