UFO Energy Official Blog

Harvard University researchers reckon they can make flow batteries cheaper using an electrolyte based on vitamin B2. Flow batteries function much like lead-acid batteries, with a fluid that reacts with electrodes to store charge. However, the liquid is cycled through an external tank in the charge/discharge cycle. The external “refresh” of a flow battery's fluid means it can handle very deep discharges, while lead acid batteries have to be kept above 50 per cent charge. For a static application like storage from solar power, that makes flow batteries an attractive third alternative to both lead acid and  lithium batteries . Harvard's research is on improving the electrolyte, so the external tanks can store more energy per unit of volume, and that's where the vitamin B2 molecule comes in. The university had previously worked on naturally-occurring quinones in the electrolyte; B2 is similar, they say, but uses nitrogen as the electron carrier. The important molecule in B2 i

LG Chem, the South Korean company with the biggest share of the grid-connected battery storage market in Australia, has released its new generation systems, promising they will offer more choice, and be cheaper, smaller, lighter, and with improved aesthetics. LG Chem, which claims nearly half of the nascent but rapidly growing Australian grid-connected market, is offering low voltage and high voltage options to Australian households, with its new battery storage systems ranging from a stackable 3.3kWh lithium-ion system to a 9.8kWh system. The three low-voltage battery systems (48 volt) are being offered in 3.3kWh, 6.5kWh and 9.9kWh units, while 7kWh and 9.8kWh high voltage (400 volt) battery systems are also being offered. The new series of battery storage systems will be offered globally but will be launched in Australia first as it remains the most attractive market for  battery storage  because of its high electricity prices, tariff structure, high levels of rooftop solar (now

Elon Musk’s plan for Tesla Motors Inc. to acquire SolarCity Corp. hinges on a symbiosis that doesn’t exist. At least not yet. The key to the proposed $2.86 billion takeover is combining Tesla’s electric cars and wall-mounted  battery units  with SolarCity’s rooftop panels, letting homeowners store solar power to use at night. Here’s the catch: Creating this end-to-end energy company would negate the main financial incentive for rooftop panels. Utilities let consumers sell power into the grid at rates generous enough to cover most or all of their utility bills. That benefit, known as net metering, loses its value when electricity is instead squirreled away in a Tesla battery. Musk has said the combination will make economic sense within five years. “The value proposition for solar plus storage is at odds with net metering,’’ said Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage at GTM Research. Tesla announced the friendly offer to acquire SolarCity June 21, and the solar company’s board is

By 2021, electricity use in the west Los Angeles area may be in for a climate change-fighting evolution. For many years, the tradition has been that on midsummer afternoons, engineers will turn on what they call a “peaker,” a natural gas-burning power plant In Long Beach. It is needed to help the area’s other power plants meet the day’s peak electricity consumption. Thus, as air conditioners max out and people arriving home from work turn on their televisions and other appliances, the juice will be there. Five years from now, if current plans work out, the “peaker” will be gone, replaced by the world’s largest  storage battery , capable of holding and delivering over 100 megawatts of power an hour for four hours. The customary afternoon peak will still be there, but the battery will be able to handle it without the need for more fossil fuels. It will have spent the morning charging up with cheap solar power that might have otherwise been wasted. Early the next morning, the battery wi

Eager to cut back on his quarterly $1700 bill, the Millroy St resident is now leading the pack as the first in Rockhampton to have installed and registered the Tesla Powerwall home battery - designed by the entrepreneurs behind Tesla vehicles and privately owned satellite launch company Space-X, which works for NASA. Solahart manager and design engineer Grant Bond installed the system about one month ago, and explained the system was a "scaled down" version of the  batteries  used in Tesla's solar-powered cars, and worked with solar panels to potentially cut back your usage from the grid to zero. "In essence the solar panels produce power through the day, that power initially is going into Peter's house so any power he is using during the day he is using through the solar panels," Grant explained. "And any leftover is then going into the battery, charging the battery, and then in the afternoon and evening he is drawing power back out of the battery.&q

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla [NASDAQ:TSLA], plans to buy his cousin’s company, Solar City [NASDAQ:SCTY]. That has generated a lot of head-scratching in financial circles about how it will work out. Some facts commonly cited: Tesla is the most successful and biggest electric car company the world has ever seen. Solar City is America’s biggest residential solar company. Both companies lose money. Both are deeply dependent on billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, and both are at the epicenter of dreams to ‘green’ the highways and the grid. Strip away debate about operational synergies and the sustainability of subsidies and you find a single technological article-of-faith animating believers in the companies’ conjoined vision: the idea that fantastically better  batteries  are in the imminent future. The battery pack is by far the most expensive component in a Tesla. In a conventional car, there is no equivalent component so expensive and dominant. Fantastically better batteries are k

Australian homeowners may be flocking to energy storage in droves. But one of the country’s biggest engineering consultancies doesn’t see the financial sense in it. Victoria-based Aurecon, which has operations across Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Middle East, and which has been associated with major renewable energy projects such as the Kogan Creek Solar Boost plant, says the financial impact of adding batteries to residential PV is “negative." “Aurecon has modeled multiple scenarios with a Tesla Powerwall  lithium-ion battery  coupled with a 4-kilowatt rooftop PV system,” said Victor Young, the company’s market director for energy, oil and gas. “Adding batteries increases the cost of power even in the most favorable circumstance of a zero feed-in tariff from the network provider.” As it happens, the Powerwall might not be the best battery on the Australian market, on a cost per total warranted kilowatt-hours basis. That honor currently goes to the Redflow ZCell zinc-bromide