Are you avoiding buying an e-bike because you’ve heard of scary battery fires? No need to live in fear, instead just purchase a battery that isn’t illegal. I have an e-bike battery that I charge inside with nary a worry as it’s a legit battery that is safe to use. You don’t need to take my word for it, in the video above Evan Edinger breaks down why people think e-bike batteries are a concern and the reality of how dangerous they are. Spoiler: not that dangerous, in fact they are likely less dangerous than the gas you use in your car or in your house.
Tag: batteries
Packing Potential Power: Better Batteries Blasting Baselines
The baseline power that a battery can deal out is increasing at a faster rate than anticipated. This s-curve of growth reflects the burgeoning demand of batteries as we increasingly electricity our systems and shift away from fossil fuels (finally!), and global industry is feeding that demand. As there is more demand for batteries we see an increase in supply and research into improving batteries, which lead to better batteries. This feedback loop of efficiency is driving growth in batteries to double every three years! Even government subsidies for the fossil fuel sector won’t keep the oil companies burning our planet once these bigger market factors really are felt on the global economy. Once you go electric, you never go back.
If we look forward to the next seven years, we see the drivers of change strengthening. Notably, we see costs continuing to fall, policy support continuing to rise, and competition between economic blocs continuing to drive a race to the top. And while there are barriers to battery adoption on the horizon, humanity’s wit, will, and capital are scaling proportionally faster. Thus, we do not see a scenario of slow adoption as credible; instead, we model two futures: fast or faster. Reality is likely to lie somewhere between the two.
RMI forecasts that in 2030, top-tier density will be between 600 and 800 Wh/kg, costs will fall to $32–$54 per kWh, and battery sales will rise to between 5.5–8 TWh per year. To get a sense of this speed of change, the lower-bound (or the “fast” scenario) is running in line with BNEF’s Net Zero scenario. The faster S-curve scenario exceeds it.
Faster Than Oil, Clean Energy on the Rise
Economists are really bad at predictions, but their views carry sway over large amounts of capital. Their most recent inaccuracies have been in the energy sector. Clean, renewable, energy is making faster progress than previously predicted.
Renewables have seen faster implementation, more investment, and quite massive technical gains in the past few years. And all of these gains have happened despite the fact that oil is so cheap (in terms of money, not carbon).
Each of these trends — cheaper batteries and cheaper solar electricity — is good on its own, and on the margin will help to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, with all the geopolitical drawbacks and climate harm they entail. But together, the two cost trends will add up to nothing less than a revolution in the way humankind interacts with the planet and powers civilization.
You see, the two trends reinforce each other. Cheaper batteries mean that cars can switch from gasoline to the electrical grid. But currently, much of the grid is powered by coal. With cheap solar replacing coal at a rapid clip, that will be less and less of an issue. As for solar, its main drawback is intermittency. But with battery costs dropping, innovative manufacturers such as Tesla will be able to make cheap batteries for home electricity use, allowing solar power to run your house 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Earth Rangers Launches Battery Blitz
Earth Rangers has launched a new campaign for kids to learn about the potential danger of batteries. Battery Blitz Mission encourages kids to collect used household batteries and dispose of them properly. When batteries are improbably thrown out it can cause a lot of harm to the environment due to the dangerous chemicals inside.
Since batteries provide energy for so many of the things we use every day, what to do with batteries once they are dead is a big problem. When batteries are thrown out in the trash, they end up in landfills where they add to solid waste and can also leak dangerous chemicals into the environment. These chemicals are not only harmful to humans but to animals as well.
Even though there are many places where you can dispose of used batteries properly – you can’t recycle batteries in your regular recycling bin – only 5% of alkaline batteries are recycled in Canada each year. In 2010, Canadians threw out 745 million household batteries! Did you know that parts from recycled batteries can be re-used to make new batteries or stainless steel products, like the pots in your kitchen?
Encourage your young Earth Rangers to accept the Battery Blitz Mission and we’ll send you a Mission Brief and a biodegradable bag to keep track of all the batteries. The website will also allow you to find the nearest recycling station and tell Earth Rangers about your mission once you have completed the challenge.
Bacteria Batteries
Regular readers know that algae is a potential source of energy (and many other things), and in other small-life form news some researchers have found that bacteria can be used as a battery.
WorldChanging has all you want to know about bacteria batteries.
The system’s active ‘ingredients’ are a combination of tiny microbes and CO2. Placed under an electrical current – for example from an off-grid renewable power source such as wind or solar – the microbes convert the CO2 into methane. Professor Bruce Logan, head of the research team, explains that they work in a similar way to the natural process found in marshes.
He suggests that the initial carbon dioxide needed for the chemical reaction could even come from industrial sources: “CO2 is soluble in water, so the gas stream could be bubbled or transferred†in pipes from factories, for example. The ‘battery’ is designed to work as a closed loop, capturing and reusing the CO2 that’s released when the methane is burned.