4 April 2016
Researchers from the companies Exergy and EME join forces with DIFFER to develop a novel battery technology that uses abundantly available materials including sodium. Such a battery has the potential to achieve lower costs than current lithium-based technologies. The end goal is battery technology that helps homeowners and communities make the most of their renewable energy generation. Even a modestly sized battery can more than double end users' self-consumption of generated solar electricity and can drastically reduce the amount of electricity fed back into the grid. This research is supported by the Top Sector Energy iDEEGO-program.
The NaSTOR project
The NaSTOR project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel sodium-based battery technology and to provide evidence that costs for production will be below the 100 EUR/kWh level. Such a breakthrough cost level would bring down costs for residential and community storage of solar energy to a few cents per kilowatt-hour of stored electricity.
Research by the two partners
Exergy - cell R&D, product development and cost analysis
Exergy Storage is the project leader and is performing cell R&D, product development, and production cost analysis. Gert Jan Jongerden founded Exergy based on his long experience as an R&D scientist and manager in the industrial development of low-cost solar cells. His vision is to base the novel storage technology completely on materials that are as abundantly available and ubiquitous as “iron, sand and salt”, so that its production can scale indefinitely in lockstep with the advance of renewable generation worldwide.
EME – engineering and instrumentation
EME is an engineering company, also based in Arnhem. EME has cooperated with Exergy since 2012 and its founder Ferdy Jongerden is developing technology concepts for the novel battery. Further, EME performs the instrumentation to analyze and test the laboratory devices which currently are being developed within NaSTOR.
DIFFER - fundamental insights in cells, materials and interfaces
Postdoctoral researcher Ilker Dogan at DIFFER will be responsible for developing fundamental know-how on the cell operating mechanisms for the novel sodium battery technology and to develop know-how that relates to cell performance and stability. To help establish this knowledge base, he will be testing cells, cell materials and interfaces with the institute's chemical and physical analytical techniques.
Enabling a large-scale energy transition
Low-cost stationary storage is essential for a large-scale transition to renewable energy from variable sources including solar photovoltaic and wind energy. The sheer scale of our ever growing energy infrastructure and the stringent economic and technical requirements pertaining to stationary storage for the application of renewable integration conspire to create an urgent need for breakthrough innovation.
Stationary storage solutions will need to be based on earth-abundant materials so that costs can be drastically reduced and production can continue to scale as renewable generation becomes commonplace – in doing so we need to move beyond lithium-based technologies.
Batteries for renewable integration based on such a ‘beyond lithium’ technology can create a large contribution to the economy and know how position of the Netherlands, to its industry due to the large, global market with export opportunities, and to the stability and flexibility of its own electricity grid infrastructure.
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