Batteries and energy storage

Battery maker Boston Power is shifting its operations to China to capitalize on the electric-vehicle market.

The Westborough, Mass.-based company today announced that it has raised $125 million from Chinese venture capital firm GSR Ventures as part of an expansion into China. In addition to the private equity, the company is receiving grants, low-interest loans, and other incentives from the Chinese government, which will lead to construction of a large-scale battery manufacturing plant.

By the end of next year, the 400-megawatt-hour-per-year plant will be capable of making enough lithium ion batteries for about 10,000 all-electric cars a year, … Read more

Replace the insides of a lithium ion battery with a jelly-like goo and you get inexpensive, safe, powerful, lightweight batteries that can power everything from cell phones to electric cars.

These solid-state lithium ion batteries are just around the corner. A gel electrolyte from Leeds University in the U.K. is ready for prime time and the university is looking for commercial partners to use the electrolyte for the next generation of portable batteries. Gel electrolytes have been percolating in laboratories around the world for years, and other research outfits, notably NASA, have recently been offering to license out their technologies.

A key advantage of the Leeds electrolyte is the way it's made. It's extruded in continuous sheets like fresh pasta or fruit leather. The result is a thin, flexible battery that can be stacked in layers to make batteries that hold more energy than today's batteries of the same size and weight. Even better, the pasta-like process means batteries that are cheaper to manufacture.… Read more

Makers of lithium ion electric-vehicle batteries worldwide are outpacing EV automakers in terms of manufacturing capacity.

This is likely to result in a temporary idleness on the part of some factories by 2013, according to a report released today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The report (only available to BNEF subscribers) shows it's simply a matter of doing the math based on manufacturers' reports and commitments worldwide from both the auto and battery industries.

Automakers are expected to produce roughly 839,000 plug-in EVs worldwide by 2013, which in turn will drive lithium ion EV battery demand to 18 … Read more

Aquion Energy, a developer of nontoxic batteries, announced today it has raised $30 million in venture capital funding.

Investors in this round of funding include Foundation Capital, TriplePoint Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.

The company previously was operating on venture funding from Kleiner, as well as a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Pittsburgh, Penn. start-up, which grew from a Carnegie Mellon University research project, has been developing grid-scale energy storage without the use of "hazardous materials, corrosive acids, or noxious fumes," according to Aquion.

Specifically, Aquion Energy has developed … Read more

It's not the first concept we've heard of that uses human motion to charge our batteries, but it could be far more efficient than anything up to now.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison say that one day soon, any portable device--including the meatiest smartphones--could be charged by simply taking a stroll.

"Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy-producing machines," Tom Krupenkin, a UW-Madison associate professor of mechanical engineering, said yesterday in a statement. "While sprinting, a person can produce as much as a kilowatt of power."… Read more

Rather than cranking up a generator during a blackout, Nissan Leaf drivers may be able to tap into the electric car's batteries.

Nissan earlier this week unveiled its Nissan Leaf to Home system, which it plans to commercialize in Japan within a year.

The system uses the Leaf charging station to draw from the car's lithium ion batteries and feed current into a home's electricity distribution panel. The 24 kilowatt-hours of energy storage in the Leaf is enough to power an average Japanese home, which uses about half the energy of an average U.S. household, for … Read more

BrightSource Energy today announced molten salt energy storage for its heat-driven solar power plants, touting the advantages over flat solar photovoltaic panels.

With the storage, BrightSource solar power plants can deliver electricity to the grid consistently and into the evening hours. That makes the solar power more valuable because utilities pay more for power during peak hours, which continues past nightfall.

BrightSource's solar tower technology generates steam from a field of mirrors called heliostats shining onto a tower. The steam is fed into a conventional turbine to generate electricity. After turning the turbine, the steam is condensed into water … Read more

Lithium ion battery company Leyden Energy said today it has raised $20 million to ramp up production of its long-lasting batteries for consumer electronics.

The 4-year-old company said the funding, led by venture capital company New Enterprise Associations, will be used to add manufacturing capacity and build out its sales channels.

Leyden Energy's batteries last week become available from online retailer Dr. Battery, which is offering "Advanced Pro" battery replacements for Acer, Gateway, Lenovo/IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba notebooks.

A conventional battery has between 350 and 400 charge cycles before performance starts degrading. The Leyden Energy … Read more

The stringent fuel economy standards announced today will make existing auto technologies, such as start-stop hybrids, commonplace and push the industry to cut the cost of electric vehicles.

President Obama today unveiled new corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards which will require automakers to achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The national agreement, which builds on a landmark compromise deal from 2009, will reduce oil imports, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and save consumers on average $8,000 per vehicle by 2025, the White House said in a statement.

The new standards are considered aggressive--the average … Read more