For
over a year I’ve been cautioning readers that while lithium-ion
batteries are glamorous, sleek, sexy and hot; they are about to
face a formidable challenge from lead-carbon batteries that
are a little bulkier and heavier, but offer competitive cycle-life and
power for a tiny fraction of the cost. To placate lithium
fundamentalists and EV evangelists, I want to clearly state up front that
lead-carbon batteries will
probably not be the first choice for plug-in vehicles. Nevertheless, it
is crystal clear that lead-carbon batteries will be the only sensible
choice for micro, mild and full hybrid electric vehicles (HEV’s) and many grid connected energy
storage applications. A July 30th article from Earth2Tech titled, “Vinod
Khosla On Why Lithium-Ion Batteries Are Overhyped” says it all,
“The most important thing to remember is economic gravity – the
cheapest thing ends up winning.” What do you know; somebody far smarter than me who
believes cheap
beats cool.
As regular readers know, I recently participated in Infocast’s
Storage Week 2009 and served on three discussion panels.
The core data for this article came from a slide-show that Patrick T.
Moseley PhD, the president of the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery
Consortium (ALABC), presented at the conference. While I’ve known
about the surprising gains
that come from the integration of advanced carbon materials into
conventional lead-acid batteries for several years, the Moseley
presentation is one of the first public documents to explore the
details. A copy of Dr. Moseley’s Storage Week presentation is
available here. A complete archive of my
articles on the energy storage sector is available here.
The media began paying attention to lead-carbon batteries in January
2008 when Autobloggreen
reported the results of a road test that used a
split-electrode lead-carbon “Ultrabattery” developed by Australia’s Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to power a
modified Honda Insight for 100,000 miles. The gist
of the report was that in exchange for a weight penalty
of 17 kg (37 pounds) and a fuel economy penalty of 2.8%, the
Ultrabattery promised to shave up to $2,000 off the sticker price of a
mild hybrid. Dr. Moseley’s presentation took the Autobloggreen report
a couple steps further and provided the following graph of
ALABC-sponsored cycle life testing that compared the Ultrabattery to a
standard NiMH battery through 180,000 cycles at discharge rates of up
to 5C and recharge rates of up to 4.5C using the European Council for Automotive R&D
(EUCAR) Power
Assist Profile (click on the graph for a larger image).
Similar cycle-life improvement was clear in another graph from the
Moseley presentation that
compared the performance of conventional lead-acid batteries with
lead-carbon batteries that incorporated 2% carbon black and 2% graphite
by
weight (roughly 10% carbon by volume) in the sponge lead paste for the
negative electrodes (click on the graph for a larger image). This particular series of tests compared the
two battery strings at discharge rates of up to 4C and recharge rates
of up
to 3C using a duty cycle developed by BAE Systems for its hybrid
transit bus program. Once again, the cycle-life
gains were remarkable.
The real meat and potatoes of the Moseley presentation, however, was
a slide that compared the performance and price of the
Ultrabattery against (click on the graph for a larger image):
- The Power
Assist HEV Battery Goals established by the US
Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC); - An Advanced
Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) performance report on NiMH
batteries; and - An AABC forecast on future generations of lithium-ion batteries.
While I hate belaboring the obvious, a simple battery technology that
surpasses USABC goals by a
comfortable margin while reducing the sticker price of a mild hybrid by
up to
10% is important in hard times because the majority of
American and European consumers are carefully weighing car buying
decisions and demanding real value. More importantly, lead-carbon
batteries can be manufactured in existing plants without building a new
manufacturing, supply chain and distribution infrastructure from the
ground up. As a matter of simple capital efficiency, lead-carbon
battery manufacturing will be an order of magnitude cheaper. It can
also ramp up to required volumes in years rather than decades.
In a January 2009 article titled “Lead-Carbon:
A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage” I reprinted a graph
that showed the results of a series of partial state of charge (PSOC)
cycle-life tests that Sandia National
Laboratories performed in 2008 on five different batteries including
a valve regulated lead-acid (VRLA) battery, two VRLA batteries with
carbon
enhanced pastes, an Ultrabattery, and an advanced lithium-ion
(Li-FePO4) battery. I also reprinted Sandia’s summary
slide which
concluded, “The new carbon enhanced negative electrodes in VRLA
batteries have dramatically improved utility PSOC cycle-life up to a
factor of 10.”
In a follow-up article titled “Lead
Carbon Batteries: A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage – Part
II” I compared the relative strengths and weaknesses of the
principal lead-carbon battery developers, both public and private. The
four public companies that are actively developing lead-carbon battery
technology are:
- MeadWestvaco (MWV), a packaging
material and container manufacturing company that is developing carbon
additives for the sponge lead pastes used in
conventional lead-acid batteries; - Furukawa
Battery Company (Frankfurt – FBB.F), which licensed the
Ultrabattery from CSIRO and built the batteries used in the 100,000-mile road
test; - Axion Power International
(AXPW.OB)
a manufacturer of lead-acid batteries that has built a
formidable patent portfolio in lead-carbon battery technology and
was recently awarded
$380,000 in ALABC grants for lead-carbon research
and
development; and - Exide Technologies, Inc. (XIDE), a
leading global manufacturer of lead-acid batteries that recently
teamed up with Axion for the manufacturing and distribution of
products based on Axion’s proprietary lead-carbon technologies.
A 10-fold improvement in the performance of any technology is highly
disruptive. The fact that lead-carbon batteries can do the work using cheap and plentiful raw materials
from domestic sources and provide a product that is easily recycled in existing facilities is a game
changer; particularly when both lithium-ion and NiMH batteries are based on imported
raw materials that are likely to face substantial short-term supply
constraints and will require the development of new recycling techniques and the establishment of a new recycling infrastructure.
In America we get up in the morning, we go to work and we solve our
problems. NiMH and lithium-ion batteries cannot help the auto industry
meet accelerated EU tailpipe CO2 emission standards and
US CAFE standards because factories to make the batteries do not exist
and even if they did the world’s mines couldn’t extract the needed raw
materials fast enough to satisfy the demand. Over the next decade
there’s a fair chance that lithium-ion batteries will complete the
development and testing path described in an unpublished
“pre-decisional draft” of a DOE report titled, National Battery
Collaborative (NBC) Roadmap, December 9, 2008, which discusses the
merits, risks and expected costs of an aggressive eight-year initiative
to foster the development and facilitate the commercialization of
lithium-ion batteries. However those future advances will have no
impact on our current problems.
It’s time to quit talking about the distant future and focus on solving
today’s problems.
In closing I want to once again share an image from cartoonist Jan Darasz that was published
in the Winter 2008 edition of Batteries International
magazine with my article, America
Must Rebuild Domestic Battery Manufacturing Infrastructure.
DISCLOSURE:
Author is a former director of Axion Power
International (AXPW.OB)
and holds a large long position in its stock. He also holds a small
long position in Exide (XIDE).
John L. Petersen, Esq. is a U.S. lawyer based in Switzerland who works
as a partner in the law firm of Fefer
Petersen & Cie and represents North American, European and
Asian clients, principally in the energy and alternative energy
sectors. His international practice is limited to corporate securities
and small company finance, where he focuses on guiding small
growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process,
beginning with seed stage private placements, continuing through growth
stage private financing and concluding with a reverse merger or public
offering. Mr. Petersen is a 1979 graduate of the Notre Dame Law School
and a 1976 graduate of Arizona State University. He was admitted to the
Texas Bar Association in 1980 and licensed to practice as a CPA in 1981.
