Massachussetts Institute of Technology Engineering professor Donald Sadoway recently gave a Technology, Entertainment and Design, or TED talk, about a liquid battery that could one day cut the need for new power plants, reports Agence France Presse. TED talks present cutting-edge ideas. The key metals in the battery are common: vanadium and magnesium. “The way things stand, electricity demand must be in constant balance with supply,” Sadoway said. Inexpensive batteries made from liquid metal could store electricity from solar panels, wind farms, or existing generation facilities and save it for when it is most needed, a major change from today’s consume-it-now-or-lose-it systems. Sadoway and his MIT student team started the Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, backed by Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and plan to have bistro-table size models out in two years. They eventually plan to market a liquid battery the size of a 40-foot shipping container, capable of serving 200 typical US homes. “It means we don’t have to build more plants and power lines just for peak use,” Sadoway said. He notes “The limits are way out there, not only in terms of what it can do for renewables.”
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Liquid battery could charge green energy. Engineering professor Donald Sadoway on Thursday used an old-school chalk board at the prestigious TED gathering to write the formula for a liquid battery that could one day cut the need for new power plants. Agence France-Presse http://news.yahoo.com/liquid-battery-could-charge-green-energy-003943812.html
