In Search Of Solid State Battery Stocks
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
Greater energy density or the amount of energy stored is the mission of every battery developer. The higher the energy density, the longer a battery can serve its owner. Scientists have been adjusting circulating chemistry, cloaking electrodes in exotic metals, and otherwise tinkering with conventional battery designs. Debate even spills over into the raw material supply chain as it has recently over the use of expensive and sometimes difficult to source cobalt as an additive to lithium ion battery designs. Others are trying to tame silicon for use in battery anodes.
Perhaps the most daring developers have abandoned conventional battery design...
USPS Study: EV Economics Depend On Smart-Grid Revenue
John Petersen On August 28th, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service published the results of a feasibility study titled, "Electrification of Delivery Vehicles." While the feasibility study reaches a foregone conclusion and recommends the purchase of a 3,000 unit demonstration fleet, I was surprised by the high level of Federal subsidies the Inspector General thought necessary to bring EVs within Postal Service capital investment policies. I was even more surprised by the conclusion that the tipping point in the economic analysis was revenue from ancillary vehicle to grid, or V2G, services. The...
Johnson Controls Forecasts Enormous Stop-Start Growth
John Petersen On June 27th Johnson Controls (JCI) hosted their 2011 Power Solutions Analyst Day and unveiled their expectations for the future of stop-start idle elimination systems. After noting that all automakers are developing a range of powertrains, JCI used this graph to emphasize their view that the overwhelming bulk of alternative powertrain vehicles over the next five years will have simple, cost effective and fuel efficient stop-start systems. You don't see much about stop-start systems in the mainstream media because politicians and reporters are too enchanted with plug-in vehicles and other exotica...
The Rocky Road to Lithium Ion Battery Commercialization
by Debra Fiakas CFA A bit of history… Schematic of a Lithium Ion Battery by Materialsgrp, via Wikimedia Commons Lithium ion batteries are a relatively recent innovation. Scientists and engineers first began working with lithium applications in the 1970s. A number of companies and laboratories worked through the next decade to perfect lithium ion batteries, using various materials for the business ends of a battery - the anode and the cathode. It was not until the mid 1980s that developers settled on cobalt as...
Arotech Receives Battery Development Contract from Leading UAV Supplier
Arotech Corporation (ARTX) announced that its Electric Fuel subsidiary has been awarded a development contract to develop a high energy density rechargeable Lithium Battery and Smart Charger from a world leading supplier of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). The batteries and chargers will be used to power the company's man-packed, hand-launched UAV, used for close range, over-the-hill reconnaissance missions.
Electric Vehicles Will Increase China’s Air Pollution
John Petersen Last week the American Chemical Society published a white paper in Environmental Science & Technology from a team of researchers at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Argonne National Laboratory Center for Transportation Research titled "Environmental Implication of Electric Vehicles in China." This white paper concludes that: Implementing electric vehicles in China will increase national CO2, SO2 and NOX emissions; and Gasoline HEVs are more environmentally friendly, more commercially mature, and less cost-intensive. The following graph comes from page 4 of the white paper and compares the relative fleet wide CO2 emissions for gasoline ICEs,...
GE and EnerDel: Obvious Bedfellows
by Debra Fiakas CFA In April 2015, General Electric (GE: NYSE) won a contract to supply Con Edison Development with an 8-megawatt-hour battery storage system at a solar project in California. The system will incorporate GE’s Mark IVe control system and Brilliance MW inverters. However, instead of GE’s Durathon sodium-ion batteries, GE will be outsourcing or acquiring lithium-ion batteries for the project. Where will GE source the lithium-ion batteries for the Con Edison Development project? So far, spokespersons have been non-committal on the name. GE has had a number of...
Ener1 And Delphi Sign LOI To Form Lithium Battery Joint Venture
ENER1 INC (ENEI) and Delphi Corp. (DPH), today entered into a non-binding letter of intent to create a joint venture to leverage their combined expertise in lithium batteries. Delphi and Ener1 will be negotiating definitive agreements and conducting due diligence in the coming weeks. "The combination of Ener1's vapor deposition process and its nanotechnology for production of high-rate, low-cost lithium batteries with Delphi-developed high energy capacity technology would allow the venture to have a key advantage in penetrating its target lithium battery markets," — Kevin Fitzgerald, Ener1's CEO. ENEI is up over 14% on this news...
SunEdison Adds Batteries to Its Arsenal with Acquisition of Solar Grid Storage
Meg Cichon The renewable energy market has been slowly strengthening ties with energy storage, and it now seems to be tying a secure knot. Wind and solar developer SunEdison (SUNE) announced today that it bought the energy storage team, projects and 100-MW pipeline of Pennsylvania-based Solar Grid Storage (SGS). SunEdison is now able to offer integrated battery storage solutions for its renewable energy project portfolio, and delve into an energy storage market that is set to grow 250 percent in 2015, according to a new report from the Energy Storage Association and GTM Research. The solar plus battery...
Exide: Many Alliances, Fewer Results
Debra Fiakas Alliance photo via BigStock Exide Technologies (XIDE: Nasdaq) is one of the largest transportation and industrial battery suppliers in the U.S., vying for market share with Johnson Controls (JCI: NYSE) and EnerSys (ENS: NYSE) among others. Batteries are a competitive business, even as the automotive sector has attempted a recovery from the 2008 free fall in new car sales. Electric vehicle and renewable energy storage applications have helped expand addressable market. However, for a conventional battery producer capturing a share of these...
What Do Investors Get With BioSolar?
by Debra Fiakas, CFA
Last week management of energy storage developer BioSolar, Inc. (BSRC: OTC/PK) provided an update on the company lithium-ion battery design. The company’s engineers along with a manufacturing partner are still making changes to the design called the 21700 cell. Additionally, the company recently decided to take greater control over raw materials supply, potentially sourcing and processing materials in the U.S.
Engineers at BioSolar have been trying to increase the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries by improving the anode component. The plan is to sell 'super anodes' to battery manufacturers to make existing lithium-ion batteries work like super batteries. Prototypes were tested in July...
Stop-start Idle Elimination Crossed The Chasm While Everyone Was Distracted
John Petersen John Lennon once quipped, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." A classic example of the phenomenon is the quiet emergence of stop-start idle elimination as standard equipment on new vehicles while politicians, pundits, the media and mechanical monkeys beat the drum and played the kazoo for the amazing EV sideshow. Stop-start is more than a vague promise of hope and change. It's a reality that's sweeping through the auto industry today and will conserve more gasoline in 2013 than all of the worlds HEVs and plug-in vehicles combined....
LG Chem: Storage Battery Leader
by Debra Fiakas CFA The post “Energy Storage Restart,” which was published last week, discussed the efforts by General Electric (GE: NYSE) to get back into the market for utility-scale energy storage. After some difficulties that required the partial closing of its battery manufacturing plant, GE has got back in the game with new contracts wins. In April 2015, the company won a contract to supply Con Edison Development with an 8-megawatt-hour battery storage system at a solar project in California. GE will be integrating lithium-ion batteries rather than...
Ultralife Batteries Receives $1.9 Million Battery Order
Ultralife Batteries Inc (ULBI) has received an order valued at approximately $1.9 million for its new BA-5390A battery with state-of-charge indicator from the U.S. Defense Department. Deliveries are expected to be completed this quarter. This is the second order against the company's Next Gen II, Phase IV five-year battery contract.
Cleantech, Optimism Squared and the Family Reunion Investment Test
Last November, Merrill Lynch released "The Sixth Revolution: The Coming of Cleantech," a thematic report from strategist Steven Milunovich that heralded cleantech as a new investment theme and forecast a coming age of plenty. A few days later venture capital icon Vinod Khosla warned a Palo Alto audience “500 million people on earth enjoy a lifestyle that 9 billion people will want in 2050.” The differences between these two informed viewpoints are more than a little stark, but they highlight a frightening truth about cleantech: for the first time in human history the fundamental drivers of a technological revolution...
Electro Energy Receives Approval for NASDAQ SmallCap Market Listing
Electro Energy Inc (EEEI) announced it has received approval for listing on the NASDAQ SmallCap Market. The company's common stock is expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ SmallCap Market on December 31, 2004 under the symbol "EEEI."
