Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy

http://www.ted.com What’s the key to using alternative energy, like solar and wind? Storage — so we can have power on tap even when the sun’s not out and the wind’s not blowing. In this accessible, inspiring talk, Donald Sadoway takes to the blackboard to show us the future of large-scale batteries that store renewable energy. As he says: “We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big. We need to think cheap.”

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate

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20 thoughts on “Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy”

  1. So many unbelievable comments that this would be a scam, you guys are ridiculous. Just make a google search to find out the status of this project. The MIT University wrote a news article about this quite recently, in 2016.

    "Ambri researchers are now tackling one final engineering challenge: developing a low-cost, practical seal that will stop air from leaking into each individual cell, thus enabling years of high-temperature operation. Once the needed seals are developed and tested, battery production will begin. "

    news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112

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  2. This is an old video. Tesla is building and selling grid storage batteries packs as fast as they can build them.

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  3. Graphite is a key material in the use of Li-ion batteries. Huge News from Lomiko – new drill results of 110 Metres of 14.56% Flake Graphite

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  4. Tell them that in South Australia??!! Coal, Oil, Nuclear and hydro are Synchronous, Wind/Solar produce Asynchronous power, you cant restart the system with Asynchronous power!

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  5. Very nice invention. yet, solving the irregular output of old expensive alternative sources by adding to the cost of those systems that already had no ability to "scale to economy" is illogical.
    Energy storage is a misdirection in effort. Real solutions exist, but the trained engineer has been robbed of his ability to see – and that blindness is admired by the academia.

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  6. Can't find anything as of 8/11/16 as to where they are. Also don't like how he immediately dismissed coal and nuclear as poor responses to peak times. Does he really not think the utility companies have meteorologists who look closely at wind and cloud forecasts? The response times for peak shaving is incredible. Also 2MWh doesn't keep 200 homes going each day… thats only 10kWh of consumption. His Tesla takes at least 13kWh to charge!

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  7. 12:29 ok, let's see: 16 inches, meaning 4 dm. volume of device: 2^2*3.14= 12 dm^2. the height seem to be slightly more than half the radius, like 1.2-1.3 dm, so volume=15 dm^3 more or less, or 15L. meaning that the Volumetric energy density is 1000Wh / 15L = 67 Wh/L. for a lithium-ion battery it would be 250 to 620 Wh/L so best case scenario it's 4 times less energy packed (per unit volume). not the greatest but if it's scalable and versatile enough it doesn't really matter. we have twice as much anthimony as we have lithium, so that's something.
    i'd like to know how reversible it is though, and how difficult it is to keep the phases separated, not to mention charge loss at rest (self discharge), i can't imagine this construct being too good at actually storing energy for long periods of time.

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  8. I honestly dont understand the opposition to renewable energy. Beyond the obvious beneficial environmental impacts, we complain about the economy(which is actually doing just fine) but anyways I have to imagine an energy infrastructure overhaul on a national scale would be a colossal economic stimulant. You would have large quantities of engineers, technicians, construction workers, and everybody else associated gainfully employed. Im totally open and curious to feedback about the opposition to renewable cleaner energy. I just honestly dont understand it

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