There's a rapidly growing need in the U.S. for large-scale battery storage, to store excess renewable energy from wind or solar plants, to use when they are not producing. But many batteries need rare metals like cobalt.
A Holland technology company says it has developed a cheaper, more sustainable large-scale storage battery that doesn't use the controversial rare metals.
Jolt Energy Storage Technologies co-founder Tom Guarr said cobalt mining in particular is bad for the environment and is often done by children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He said his company's batteries — called flow batteries — don't use metals. Instead, they use common compounds in solution, often byproducts from other industries, that pass between large tanks. Instead of electrodes, there's plumbing.
"We use very abundant natural resources to make a battery to store energy in a sustainable way, in a low cost way," he said.
Guarr said another advantage of the technology is it is easily expandable. For example, a utility that originally planned on needing four hours' worth of battery storage and later decided it needed 12 would just need to add larger tanks.
Jolt is raising about five and a half million dollars for its first pilot project to prove the technology. Guarr said they hope that pilot project could happen in Michigan next year.
