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According to a new report from Lux Research, the market for batteries, supercapacitors and fuel cells targeting transportation and smart grid applications will more than double from $21.4 billion in 2010 to $44.4 billion in 2015.

ACerS’ upcoming Ceramic Leadership Summit will introduce key figures in the energy storage technology sector that will expound on how to harness that $44 billion. The Energy Innovations track on Tuesday, June 10, will include talks on enabling a nuclear renaissance, current and future prospects of fuel cells, the strategic field of energy conversion. A representative from United Technologies will also present an industry perspective on energy storage, SOFCs and energy and emission reduction in gas turbines.

The Lux report, titled “Emerging Technologies Power a $44 Billion Opportunity for Transportation and Grid,” analyzes the prospects for several technologies, including batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells in transportation and storage, distributed generation and transmission and distribution technologies on the power grid.

Some key findings are listed in the summary:

• Electric vehicle storage technology markets will nearly double from $7.7 billion in 2010 to $14.5 billion in 2015, a CAGR of 13.5 percent. Surprisingly, markets for electronic bike (e-bike) and scooter batteries will lead the charge, growing from $6.4 billion this year to $10.9 billion in 2015, a CAGR of 11 percent.
• Lead-acid batteries will drive 93 percent of China’s e-bikes in 2010, and dominate the micro-hybrid automotive market. However, lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in e-bikes are growing fast, and have gained further momentum from plug-in and electric vehicles. The upshot: With a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent through 2015, Li-ion battery markets are growing almost three times faster than those for lead-acid.
• Markets for emerging technologies in the power grid will skyrocket from $13.7 billion in 2010 to $30 billion in 2015, a CAGR of 17 percent. Here the largest market is the smart-grid, which will grow at an explosive CAGR of 23 percent, from $5.4 billion this year to $15.8 billion in 2015.

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Ann Arbor-based Adaptive Materials Inc, a specialist in making microtubular solid oxide fuel cells, announced yesterday that it has won $3 million in new funding through Michigan’s Centers of Energy Excellence Program.

AMI, until now, has focused most of its efforts on military uses for its SOFCs, such as soldier-worn units, power sources for unmanned vehicles and field uses. The company has both 50- and 250-watt SOFCs that can be fuel with off-the-shelf propane and butane canisters.

While AMI’s business plan has always mentioned applications in the recreational vehicles, boating and medical devices markets, the reality is that it has been easier for military customers to justify the relatively high costs of these portable power devices.

However, a press release from AMI notes that, “The company will use the funding to support the commercialization of its fuel cells within the consumer leisure market.”

AMI may be on to something. It has always struck me that there is some pretty strong logic behind developing small SOFC products whose form factor incorporates safe, cheap and easy to find fuel cartridges. Generations of campers, for example, have grown up using portable stoves and lamps that use these small gas canisters.

Michelle Crumm, AMI chief business officer, says, “Funding from COEE provides the extra boost we need to break into the consumer market and deliver a truly game-changing technology. . . By focusing our technology on readily-available fuels, Adaptive Materials solved a problem associated with fuel cells: Consumers could certainly find need for a fuel cell, but no fuel to actually sustain the unit.”

Presumably, AMI will use the funds to continue to drive down the production costs of making their SOFCs. The company uses a unique co-extrusion method to form its microtubular SOFCs. Earlier this year, in the pages of ACerS’ International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology, the University of Birmingham’s (U.K.) Kevin Kendall praised recent developments in microtubular SOFC science and applications:

Significant progress is being made in the development of microtubular SOFCs. Since its invention in the early 1990s, information about its benefits has been disseminated, leading to the start-up of several companies interested in applications from laptop power supplies to combined heat and power to transport and APUs.

Plastic extrusion is the main method for producing microtubular cells. This is an economic process, which can lead to high-quality ceramics with good strength and Weibull modulus. Co-extrusion is also a promising possibility that could produce one-step processing of cells.

A key benefit of microtubular SOFC is the increased power density, inversely proportional to diameter. Power densities of 1 kW/L are possible but the number of cell connections rises with the square of power density and could become the limiting factor. Thermal shock resistance of microtubes is many orders of magnitude better than that of planar SOFCs. Ramp rates of 8000 K/min are possible.

Aaron Crumm, Adaptive Materials’ chief visionary officer and co-founder, along with John W. Halloran, published an excellent paper in ACerS’ Journal of the American Ceramic Society back in 1998 about innovative methods to micromanufacture complex ceramic–metal structures:

These structures are fabricated by multiple pass co-extrusion of a feedrod comprised of several powder-filled thermoplastic compounds. The compounds contain either ceramic, metal or fugitive powders. To illustrate the capabilities of microfabrication, a demonstration part containing lead manganese niobate-lead titanate ceramic and silver palladium was fabricated. The final part was microconfigured, with a fenestrated structure containing 3110 repeat units per square centimeter. The repeat unit feature sizes were 15 and 5 µm for the ceramic and electrode, respectively. Microfabrication by co-extrusion is proposed as a fabrication technique for the production of smart structures and materials.

Illustration from Crumm and Halloran paper. Credit: JACerS

The COEE program, administered by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., supports the development, growth and sustainability of alternative energy sectors throughout the state. The COEE program focuses on where the state has competitive advantages in areas of the workforce, intellectual property and natural resources but where funding is required to overcome technical and supply-chain hurdles that could prevent or stall the commercialization process.

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Jeff Stevenson is a Laboratory Fellow in the Energy Materials Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and has been working on SOFCs for more than a decade. This video, shot at the recent ICACC’10 conference in Daytona Beach, Fla., provides some history on the development of these fuel cells, and discusses some of the remaining science and manufacturing challenges that are hindering their widespread commercialization.

Stevenson also discusses some of the work being done by the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, a government-industry collaboration, that is working on methods to employ SOFCs that can make cleaner use of coal and other fossil fuels for energy generation, and describes some of the “early adopters” of SOFC systems, such as systems being used for auxiliary power units (APUs) used by some tractor-trailer operators.

Besides working at PNNL, Stevenson serves as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and reviews and edits manuscripts in the field of SOFCs.

7 minutes.

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Like shootin’ fish in a barrel. Me, six days ago:

Prediction: Tom will state that Bloom Energy changes everything!

Today from Friedman:

Several months ago, though, Sridhar took me into the parking lot behind Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters and showed me the inside of one of his Bloom Boxes, the size of a small shipping container. Inside were stacks of solid oxide fuel cells, stored in cylinders, and all kinds of whiz-bang parts that I did not understand.

[ . . . ]

Our politics has gotten so impossible lately, too many Americans have stopped dreaming.

Here’s my latest scorecard on Tommy’s ideas:

• Free trade!
• Invade the oil cartels! (aka, Suck On This)
  
• Free trade, except for Silicon Valley!
• Ambien!

Actually, he writes something even more inane today:

All I know is this: If we put a simple price on carbon, these new technologies would have a chance to blossom

There is already a simple price on carbon and TF knows it. Unfortunately, it is mispriced and artificial because of various policies, taxes and subsidies that will continue because there is an army of lobbyists screaming OMG! REAL CARBON PRICING IS THE END OF CIVILIZATION, and they know they have pet-dog pundits like Friedman who will provide the cover they need.

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Today was Bloom Energy’s big media extravaganza and it seems like they were aiming for something on the order of what Apple or Microsoft would try to pull off. The stage was shared by big name politicians (Schwarzenegger and Powell) the online gods (Google and eBay), the movers and shakers in the investor class (Kleiner Perkings Caulfield & Byers and Morgan Stanley) and an impressive array of mega-brand customers (FedEx, Coca-Cola, Walmart, Staples and Bank of America).

Generally speaking this is all great stuff for those of us in the ceramics business. Incredible, really.

But what did anybody actually learn? Maybe that Bloom has a great marketing team? But, we already knew that was true based on Sunday’s exposure, courtesy of 60 Minutes.

What new information did we get about Bloom’s technology/engineering achievements and business plan? Not much.

It’s one thing to try to throw a coming-out party like Apple would. It’s another thing to pull it off when you have no track record of actually bringing an insanely great product to market at a price people are willing to pay, all while beating your competitors to the punch.

Some of the technology questions may be relatively easy. One expert tells me the ceramic electrolyte layer is is probably yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), the green “ink” is NiO-YSZ serving as the anode (NexTech already offers an ink like this) and the black “ink” is a cathode layer made of lanthanum strontium manganite (LSM). What’s less clear is how Bloom solved stack expansion and seal problems that plague other SOFC makers. (Solved them in the sense that these units will perform reliably for years and years.)

But, Jonathan Fahey at Forbes, gets closer to the heart of the matter:

So while Bloom Energy may have some very promising technology to show off, we almost certainly will hear that its business hinges on a plan to lower the cost of its fuel cell by some large amount in some short period of time. It could be that Bloom Energy has the money and the brains to pull it off. Maybe it has already pulled it off. But if that business plan sounds familiar, it’s because that is the same refrain heard from solar companies, biofuels companies and fuel cell makers around the world.

[. . .]

It’s difficult to design components that can survive for decades in those conditions, especially the ancillary components that take the electricity out of the cell - for cheap. Then there’s the bugaboo of many a clean tech company: Designing a manufacturing process that can produce enough high quality devices to push costs down.

United Technologies produces a phosphoric acid fuel cell commercially and is working on a number of other fuel cell programs. Its fuel cell sells for $4,500 per kilowatt, and the company says it needs to get to $2,500 before it can be a real success

“We’ve figured out the durability problems,” says Mike Brown, a vice president at UTC Power, the United Technologies unit that makes fuel cells. “We haven’t figured out the cost problem yet.”

Fahey thinks that the unsubsidized cost of Bloom’s systems is about $9,000-$10,000 per kilowatt, so its not clear why Bloom’s units would be financially sucessful when UTC Power is struggling.

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