A Massachusetts-based company called Form Energy recently unveiled the details of its much anticipated, multi-day energy storage system, a technology that’s been known for decades but never truly commercialized: iron-air batteries.
Thing is that even though this is indeed the main focus, as a byproduct of that research we literally have dozens of alternative battery chemistries available with different features.
Indeed, but they need to be also be made available for people to buy and that usually still involves a lot of further product development. Right now it seems more common to just re-purpose automotive lithium-ion batteries for stationary storage, which might be better than lead-acid batteries, but really isn’t ideal either.
still involves a lot of further product development
That’s what hackerspaces and fablabs are for!
Disclaimer: I am a member of a fablab that explores open hardware automation and solar techs :-) We have talked about producing batteries but have too many items on the todo list for now
Thing is that even though this is indeed the main focus, as a byproduct of that research we literally have dozens of alternative battery chemistries available with different features.
Indeed, but they need to be also be made available for people to buy and that usually still involves a lot of further product development. Right now it seems more common to just re-purpose automotive lithium-ion batteries for stationary storage, which might be better than lead-acid batteries, but really isn’t ideal either.
That’s what hackerspaces and fablabs are for!
Disclaimer: I am a member of a fablab that explores open hardware automation and solar techs :-) We have talked about producing batteries but have too many items on the todo list for now