LF: Government agency claims to have found ‘holy grail’ of batteries than can outdo Elon Musk's Powerwall (but won’t say what it is)

Title: Government agency claims to have found ‘holy grail’ of batteries than can outdo Elon Musk's Powerwall (but won’t say what it is)
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet ... -s-Powerwall-won-t-say-is.html
Published: Mar 5, 2016
Author: Ellie Zolfagharifard
Post Date: 2016-03-05 10:52:56 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 2196
Comments: 15

A US government agency claims it has battery technology that could outdo anything dreamt up by the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) – a branch of the Department of Energy – says it has several next-generation battery storage projects in the works.

While the organisation won't go into details about its technology, it says it has found the 'holy grail of batteries' could transform the US electrical grid within five to 10 years.

The battery division of Musk's Tesla Motors turned a profit in the fourth quarter.

This came after the first shipments of its rechargeable products helped to reduce losses from the company's auto business.

Its Powerwall batteries store energy that homes and small businesses generate with solar panels. The Powerpack model is designed for large commercial facilities.

Ellen Williams, director of Arpa-E, said her agency has helped kickstart a dozen high-risk projects based on newer technologies that could soon outperform Tesla batteries.

'What Musk has done that is creative and important is drive the learning curve. He's decided to take an existing, pretty powerful battery technology and start producing it on a very large scale,' she said.

'But it's not technology innovation in the sense of creating new ways of doing it. We are pretty well convinced that some of our technologies have the potential to be significantly better,' Williams said.

The battery division of Elon Musk's Tesla Motors turned a profit in the fourth quarter. This came after the first shipments of its rechargeable products helped to reduce losses from the company's auto business. Its Powerwall batteries (pictured) store energy that homes and small businesses generate with solar panels

'Five years from now there will be a few technologies out there that nobody saw coming.'

ARPA-E is set to get a huge boost after the US and 19 other countries launched Mission Innovation at the United Nations climate summit in Paris late last year.

The governments pledged to double spending on clean energy research and development over the next five years.

The US will boost its overall energy research and development budget to $12.8 billion by 2021.

ARPA-E was launched in 2009 with a budget of $400 million and a mandate to fund the most cutting edge technologies.

President Barack Obama's budget request for 2017 would increase its allocation to $1 billion in five years.

'With that increased budget we can definitely make a difference,' said Williams.

Pictured is a utility-scale version of Tesla's Powerwall that can be used by businesses and scaled up for more power. Ellen Williams, director of Arpa-E, said her agency has helped kickstart a dozen high-risk projects based on newer technologies that could soon outperform Tesla batteries

Government invents most really complicated things. The question then becomes whether what government scientists invent can be turned into something commercially viable. With unlimited funds, the government can make materials do things that can't be done on a real budget.

I'm thinking this is likely one of the advanced aluminum battery projects that have been underway for years. Several key breakthroughs with these in recent years. And it is a non-toxic solution, unlike lithium and other battery types.

As a solution for remote power and the grid, the aluminum battery seems like the best fit with the info they have provided.

Having been there, done that, I can assure you government contractors deserve most of he credit.

Government contractors succeed in spite of government bureaucracy not because of it, imho.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

Government contractors would not do squat if they were not paid by the government.

Only the government has the resources to be able to put together the biggest, hardest, longest- term projects.

That's why all of the major modern technologies and breakthroughs were first invented by government.

"phrase" ... even, government NEVER works administrating technology. What government is good at ... is turning the taxpayer up-side-down and emptying their wallets for failed projects while the bureacrats go home with fat, juicy, piggy banks and honourariums.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

But to hear some tell it, there would be no progress but for bureaucracies and bureaucrats.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

Not an accurate statement on several fronts. The government didn't invent anything, it financed others that did the inventing. That is a distinction with a difference.

I was thinking more the computer, space travel, nuclear power, submarines, jets, sattelites, lasers, the Internet - you know, major MODERN technologies.

You gave me steam engines and lightbulbs, things that some guy sitting in a home lab could invent.

Modern inventions are very complex and require deep science and huge funding efforts. Government is the only one with the deep enough pockets and long enough time horizon to do it.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

No. Velcro and Post-Its are the sort of modern conveniences that, like zippers, can be fiddled with by people and invented privately.

Nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, soace travel, rockets and satelilites, supercolliders, jet aircraft, computers - high tech things that are immensely complex and expensive to develop, that might not work at all - only the government has the resources and the ability to take on that level of risk.

It's the fatal flaw in the pure libertarian argument, and most people know it instinctively. To go to a pure libertarian state, we have to abandon electricity and sewerage, because eminent domain is inherently un-libertarian. You cannot have an electrical grid or sewerage system, or gas pipelines or long, straight major roads, or railroads, if ten or fifteen Greens in strategic places refuse to allow the wires or pipes to cross their land. You must break the pure symmetry of libertarianism and admit to an ultimate government override of property rights if you want to have electricity, sewers, gas pipes, and roads.

And libertarians for the most part will not do that. They retreat to the ivory tower of absolute individual sovereignty. People hear that, and think yep, that'd be nice, absolute individual sovereignty. But they weigh the nice things about that versus flush toilets, electricity, gas heat and roadways, and 95 out of 100 get real and say "It'd be nice, but we'd have to give up way too much."

And libertarians, being ideological purists, have no real argument in reply other than "It'll be great!" (on the positive side) and "Sheeple!" on the negative side.

Most of us see the choice, and decide that personal sovereignty would be great, but living without electricity isn't worth it. And most of us don't thing of ourselves as sheep because we don't want to go shit in a shed. If wanting sewers makes me a sheep, then I choose to be a sheep. They're not sheep in Africa, and they die in their thirties.

We used to, a long time ago. It was called the middle ages and feudalism. We developed better government, and we choose, by overwhelming numbers, to cede a considerable portion of our unfettered liberty (not all of it - in fact, sexual liberty is EXPANDING), in order to have much, much better physical conditions and live twice as long.

The price of absolute individual sovereignty is much too high to bear. We choose to trade some sovereignty for greater prosperity.

The Libertarians have no answer to this other than fantasy: that we can have everything we have, AND have unfettered personal sovereignty. That's ridiculous and untrue, and 95% of the population knows it.

Which is why libertarians, for all of their sincerity, never get anywhere except on the "legalize pot" and "get out of the bedroom" stances. The government HAS gotten out of the bedroom - and indeed has forced private people out of the bedroom too. The government can't prosecute you for sodomy anymore, and the boss can't fire you either anymore. That's more liberty for everybody but the boss. Libertarians would key on the boss, but really, the sexual activities of an employee barely affect the bosses business, so the notion that the boss can use the economic lever of employment to menace employees for what they do in their free time off the job - who they love - is ridiculously anti-libertarian.

Most American libertarians are not really libertarian in that sense. They are authoritarians who believe that MONEY should determine sovereignty, that a person should be able to buy his sovereignty, and then exert it absolutely over anything he touches.

But some libertarians are purists, but then don't think through the conflict. If people are free to do as they please sexually, that's liberty. But if people are free to deprive them of a living because they don't like what they're doing, htat's a massive invasion of freedom. 9 our of 10 libertarians will line up on the side of the boss...which means we don't end up with personal sovereignty, really, we just end up with private regulation of everybody through money. In other words, feudalism.

As a civilization, we've been there, done that, learned a lot, appreciate its advantages, but we prefer greater economic liberty for greater numbers of people.

And in the battle between sexual liberty and economic liberty, sexual liberty is even more personal, and has won out, even to the point of women having the liberty to slay their unborn babies.

We've got a lot of liberty in this society, just not the money-based kind of sovereign authority that libertarians favor.

They don't recognize it, but at heart, American libertarians are neo-feudalists, and dream of being feudal lords (never feudal peasants).

I didn't know Goddard or Atanasoff were government bureaucrats. I'd dispute several others on you list as well but why bother?

You never met a bureaucracy you didn't like and I've never known one whose power I wouldn't try to reduce or or scope I wouldn't try to narrow.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can add and those that can't

But it's stupid to suggest we can do away with it, and I've gotten tired of the stupid.