Ambri and Calcium Antimony batteries for the grid

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I've been interested in this development for a while, ie. grid batteries for assisting renewable energy sources in storing excess load without needing to use lithium ion.

The story goes that Ambri, and it's founder Prof Donald Sadoway (MIT), had been working with very common earth metals trying to find the right combination, along with a salt layer in the middle, to get a reliable grid battery which would have inexpensive and easily sourced materials and would have a long battery life. They settled on Calcium Antimony, seems like the melting point for it is relatively low (500-550 C°), materials are relatively cheap, and they've boasted something like 80% efficiency.

Their first big application will be a TerraScale facility in Nevada, supplying a 250mMWh array to keep the facility running at night. Seeing this project is encouraging because one of the challenges right now is new technologies that haven't hit peak production efficiency yet making their way to market at a competitive enough price to get in - and that takes at least having a small market to start with.

Some videos and article on the topic:

https://www.energy-storage.news/news/am ... -in-nevada

I'm intrigued to see calcium used in a battery- an alkali earth metal instead of the more usual alkali metals. Good to see they've found buyers for a slightly unusual technology. (I've been ranting a bit about the lithium problem elsewhere.)

I figured John B. Goodenough was a joke name.

Thanks for sharing!

i thought the idea of "Massless" batteries was interesting too

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2 ... eight-evs/

Yeah, that's a really smart idea - if the car/EV battery is the structure of the car there goes the added weight.