When Batteries Get A Face Lift, So Do Renewables

Batteries are everywhere. They're in our phones, our remote controls, smart-watches, electric cars and so much more. They could also be the solution to a problem that renewable energy companies have faced for years: How to store the mass amounts of energy they produce for later use. Some companies are using batteries to make renewable energy accessible 24/7. Today, we dig into how the technology is rapidly progressing with Cooper Katz McKim, a producer from fellow NPR podcast The Indicator from Planet Money. https://www.npr.org/people/1200794832/cooper-katz-mckim Listen to The Indicator's three-part battery series https://www.npr.org/series/1265481061/the-indicator-takes-on-batteries. Have questions about the future of technology? Contact us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:16Emily Kwong?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers. Emily Kwong here with Cooper Katz-McKim, a producer at The Indicator from Planet Money, as he is...

• 0:29Emily Kwong?

  Wait, what are you doing, Cooper?

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Oh, Emily, hi. That's just me turning on and off the lights at a facility in California where there is battery power energizing the grid. Like, literally, holding energy and then releasing it onto the grid that powers all our homes.

• 0:46Emily Kwong?

  Interesting, but in California, I'd expect energy to be coming from places like natural gas or hydro. You're telling me batteries are in the mix?

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Gridscale battery storage is surprisingly, oftentimes, the second-largest source of energy on a given day in California.

• 0:59Emily Kwong?

  I didn't know that battery storage could be used at that level.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  I mean, just a few years ago, it was unimaginable. Gridscale storage like this, it was basically a dream technology for renewable companies, a what-if scenario.

• 1:11Emily Kwong?

  Right, and those companies historically have been using technologies at the whim of the weather. If the sun doesn't shine, solar energy isn't so great.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  If the wind doesn't blow, exactly. And battery storage, it changes that equation.

• 1:24Emily Kwong?

  Right, because you can store energy inside a battery somehow.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  And then tap into it whenever it's needed. Well, that dream tech is now very much mainstream. Around 2020 to 2021, battery storage capacity jumped 230% across the US.

• 1:39Emily Kwong?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  More and more was added in '22, '23, and it really took off, particularly in California. To see it for myself, I showed up to a site called Cal Flats in central California. It's this 2,900-acre plot of land just covered in solar panels. There's, like, goats running around, there's little fox habitats. The extra energy generated from all that solar flows straight into batteries right on site.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  These containers you see with, you know, what is it, six or seven doors? And each one of these containers has a bunch of modules that would look like big suitcases that have the battery cells, the DC battery.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  That's Justin Johnson, the COO of Arivon, the company that owns Cal Flats. When we talk about battery storage, this is what people are referring to. Rows and rows of stacked battery suitcases, basically, in a container that's like eight feet high, basically a cabinet.

• 2:31Emily Kwong?

  Oh, that's kind of small. How much power is this site creating?

• 2:35Speaker 02

  So the site has enough storage capacity to provide electricity to around 60,000 homes for a few hours.

• 2:41Emily Kwong?

  Oh, that's a lot.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot. Arivon sells that energy to Apple and PG&E, the state's largest utility. Justin Johnson says there is no shortage of customers, though.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  If you have a solar plant or a battery plant or a combination, you know, a solar and battery plant, anywhere in the US that's ready to be built these days, you can find an off-taker.

• 3:06Emily Kwong?

  Right. I mean, so much more electricity is needed these days with so many electric vehicles on the road and new data centers for artificial intelligence.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 3:15Emily Kwong?

  Well, it's clearly a big topic. And you produced a three-part series all about batteries for your podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Right. But there were still a few questions that I wanted to dig into. So Emily, today on the show, we tackle the technological reasons behind batteries taking off so fast and what's next for them.

• 3:33Emily Kwong?

  Let's go on a battery-powered magic carpet ride. You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

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• 5:07Emily Kwong?

  So grid-scale battery storage has taken off the past few years. But Cooper, a lot of different technologies have their moment. So why is this rise to the mainstream for battery tech different in some way?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's not like one day some company said, "We're going to make batteries powerful enough to support the grid." That would have been awesome, but it kind of has to go back a ways. The batteries I saw on Cal Flats, it arguably goes back to the 90s, when Sony introduced their camcorder with a little rechargeable battery inside of it. Dan Walter studies the rapid growth of electro tech-like batteries.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  In the first sector, you roll out batteries that are just good enough for that sector, and they just meet the demands of the Sony camcorder.

• 5:52Emily Kwong?

  Hmm. These batteries, I feel like I've seen a descendant of them in my digital camera. They're the kind of boxy cube batteries that you can recharge.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Right, it's kind of satisfying to click in, that one.

• 6:04Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  We've all definitely used those batteries at some point. That's basically at the root of what Dan calls the battery domino effect.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  Because that is a growing market, and that market expands, you can create more and more factories that make batteries. And as you build more factories, it becomes cheaper, and the batteries become of higher quality.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Over time, people wanted longer-lasting and cheaper batteries, so companies had an incentive to develop them.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  You get a technology development that's very rapid, driven by a group of consumers that has a very high willingness to pay.

• 6:40Emily Kwong?

  We're battery hungry in the 90s and the aughts.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the whole story starts over as another sector finds use for that same battery. Camcorders to laptops, e-bikes, three-wheelers, cars. Each sector is full of people who want better batteries and will pay for it.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  It really has been a story of consumerism, but also clever policy of countries that have realized that there's a competitive advantage in winning batteries.

• 7:05Emily Kwong?

  What's astonishing about this story is I was alive during this battery revolution, and I witnessed it from childhood to now. And I kind of just took it for granted that battery tech was racing to keep up with our voracious need. Then, you know, I think about electric vehicles coming along. I mean, those must have bumped this development even more. EVs are everywhere.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a perfect transition to Dan's second point, because the growth of EVs is a big part of this story. Long before others were investing in battery storage, like back in the aughts, leadership in China saw an opportunity with the technology and became a hub for manufacturing batteries. It wasn't a big market yet, but they saw an opportunity.

• 7:42Emily Kwong?

  Wow, okay.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  And as EVs got more popular, it drove the volume of larger, lighter, denser batteries way up that made batteries way cheaper.

• 7:51Emily Kwong?

  How cheap are we talking?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Since 2010, the average cost of batteries has fallen more than 90%, which is one of the fastest cost drops of any energy technology ever.

• 8:01Emily Kwong?

  Whoa.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  It's grown into new markets, new countries. And by 2021, battery storage finally reached that tipping point in the US, where they were literally contributing electricity to the entire grid.

• 8:12Emily Kwong?

  Right, and you mentioned that earlier, that 2021 was the year there was this big jump, that battery storage capacity increased 230%.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Right, no, exactly.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  And that brings us to the situation today where batteries are all over the economy in cars and mopeds and buses and trucks to drive them around.

• 8:34Emily Kwong?

  I have chills. I mean, this is a great time, and it's kind of cool to hear that the legacy of my iPod served a greater purpose.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Never let it go. Yep, exactly. Now, you remember the battery I mentioned earlier?

• 8:46Emily Kwong?

  Oh, yeah, the Cube battery that debuted in the 90s with the Sony. Camcorder.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  That's the one. Yeah.

• 8:52Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  That was a game changer for battery storage because it used lithium ion technology, which was way more energy dense than what we had. Nickel cadmium or lead acid batteries.

• 9:03Emily Kwong?

  Energy dense, meaning?

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Meaning lithium ion batteries can hold a charge for longer. They're lighter. It can be recharged a lot more time. It's more energy efficient.

• 9:11Emily Kwong?

  I've always wondered this. Is there anything specific to lithium that makes this possible? Like, why is this so special?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, for one, they're incredibly light compared to nickel or lead. It also gives up its electron really easily, which is important, given that a battery works when electrons flow from the negative electrode to the positive one.

• 9:29Emily Kwong?

  I've made enough lemon batteries to know this. Yes.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:32Emily Kwong?

  The negative electrode is the anode.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 9:36Emily Kwong?

  And it releases electrons and the positive electrode is the cathode.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 9:41Emily Kwong?

  And that absorbs the electrons. And when they are recharged, the electrons move back. It's like a cycle.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  We should just use lemons to power our grid. What are we doing?

• 9:50Emily Kwong?

  Right. Yeah. So you're saying lithium ion batteries are easily allowing this like electron

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:57Emily Kwong?

  transfer to happen.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Exactly. And as these batteries became more advanced, new types of lithium ion batteries came about. So there's lithium iron phosphate battery, for example, which is cheaper and less flammable than its precursors. It's also less energy dense, but its low cost made that worthwhile. The batteries at Cal Flats, for example, are LFPs, this lithium iron phosphate, and they can hold like four hours of energy.

• 10:23Emily Kwong?

  Okay, so that's where we're at today. Um, these cabinets of

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:29Emily Kwong?

  lithium iron phosphate batteries, LFPs, have become the standard for grid scale battery storage. And it sounds like that technology is growing quickly.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the domino effect and an affordable, powerful chemistry for batteries have allowed this technology to grow exponentially.

• 10:47Emily Kwong?

  Is there any reason for this momentum behind battery sales to ever stop? Like, can we forever expect batteries to keep growing at this exponential rate?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Well, forever, I don't know, but analysts like Dan Wolter definitely see the dominoes continuing to fall for the foreseeable future. He sees battery storage advancing from cars and the grid to maybe even like freight ships, even planes.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  Five years ago, everyone would have called us crazy for saying electric aviation can be possible. Today, I think we're seeing some really interesting first signs that, you know, 20-seater electric planes that can fly most of the flights within the US, within Europe, and within China.

• 11:26Emily Kwong?

  That is wild.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  This plane, it's on an upward trajectory, and so is battery storage. It's really in that position to be disrupted further, and likely through new chemistries.

• 11:37Emily Kwong?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  For example, sodium ion batteries are still a young technology, but they're projected to follow in the footsteps of LFP batteries.

• 11:44Emily Kwong?

  Oh, why is that?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Sodium ion batteries are even cheaper than LFPs, in part because they rely less on critical minerals. But also, sodium's just kind of everywhere. It's literally 1,000 times more abundant than lithium. And these batteries don't perform as well as LFPs, but the market could say will take lower performance at that cost.

• 12:03Emily Kwong?

  Right, okay.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  The other benefit of sodium ion batteries, they're less taxing on the environment. So sodium is so abundant, there's less pressure to dig deeper and deeper or into far-flung places of the world. They also don't rely on minerals like cobalt or nickel, which are both known for being super water-intensive and having polluting mining processes.

• 12:23Emily Kwong?

  That's an exciting prospect, that these sodium ion batteries might be a thing. Okay.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:29Emily Kwong?

  You mentioned earlier that most batteries used for grid-scale storage have but a four-hour capacity. What about batteries that can last longer?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  So there are some versions that can go for days. And one of those is the Redox Flow battery, which is currently used on a much smaller scale, but it could change the story from just four hours to daily or even multi-day capacity.

• 12:54Emily Kwong?

  That's amazing to imagine a battery that could last for days. How would that work? How does this Redox Flow battery work?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  It really would redefine how batteries are made. Inside each battery, there are two electrodes that we talked about, the cathode and the anode, and in between them, there's liquid. Whenever electrons move from one side to the other, there's an automatic discharge. And with the Redox Flow battery, those two sides are completely separate, so it can maintain a charge way better.

• 13:23Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, I can see that. So how batteries are made, they're changing chemistries. These are all reasons batteries have followed this upward trajectory. Cooper, I am located in DC. Are you telling me that if I turned on the lights someday, is there a chance that power could come from a battery?

• 13:44Speaker 02

  It's grown fast. By 2030, some forecasts have capacity increasing by like 400%. And it's already high. So all this, it's very exciting to Dan Wolter.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  So we all hear about like new AI breakthroughs every day, every sort of extra billion parameters on a new AI model everyone gets super excited about. But when we talk about batteries, there are huge breakthroughs happening that are changing our energy landscape and therefore our entire economy. And no one really seems to be paying attention to it.

• 14:12Emily Kwong?

  Well, we are definitely paying attention to it. Short Wave and The Indicator, thanks to you.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Thanks, Emily.

• 14:22Emily Kwong?

  Short Wave, the full battery series Cooper led for The Indicator, is out now. We will link to the series in our show notes in addition to a previous episode we did on long-term battery storage and batteries of the future. Check them out.

• 14:37Emily Kwong?

  This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Quacey Lee was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director. And Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 15:12Speaker 06

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