Jon Chesto writes for The Boston Globe about a new battery technology from Professor Don Sadoway’s company, Ambri, that allows for more efficient grid-level power storage: “The goal is to allow electric utilities or big industrial plants to store power so it can be released at times of high usage.”
According to The Economist, a battery design “being developed by Donald Sadoway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would use two sorts of liquid metal, separated by a liquid electrolyte.” Using metals of varying densities, Sadoway’s design would allow the substances to float as separate layers in a container.
Forbes reporter Bill Tucker writes about battery innovation, highlighting a liquid battery system developed by MIT researchers. The proposed system would operate at dramatically lower temperatures and would allow renewable energy sources to compete with conventional power plants, reports Tucker.
“A team of MIT researchers has built an all-liquid battery prototype that's designed to store excess energy from solar and wind power plants,” writes Francie Diep for Popular Science. “[F]uture versions of this battery could release energy captured during more productive times into nations' power grids.”
Mark Peplow writes for Nature about a new molten-metal battery designed by Professor Donald Sadoway’s team: “A battery made of molten metals could help to make sources of renewable energy more viable by storing the excess electricity generated by these intermittent sources.”
Professor Donald Sadoway’s team has designed a battery that makes use of molten metals, which could allow for large-scale power storage, reports Jonathan Webb for the BBC. “Previous battery designs have largely been too expensive to help store energy on the scale of a national power grid,” writes Webb.
Living on Earth reporter Steve Curwood highlights new MIT research that casts doubt on how methane’s global warming power is measured. “Professor Trancik proposes an alternative method of measuring the climate impact, weighting methane as thirty times more destructive than CO2 now,” he reports.
MIT Professor Tonio Buonassisi speaks about the current state of the solar power industry and the future of renewable energy on NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook.