Elon Musk has just announced the new Tesla Energy division, which aims to move the energy grid away from dependency on fossil fuels and toward renewables.

The new line features a suite of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries—similar to the batteries used in the Tesla vehicles—for homes, businesses, and utilities. The company states that the battery can store renewable energy at a residential level for load shifting, backup power, and self-consumption of solar power generation.

During his announcement, Musk stated that this move could help change the “entire energy infrastructure of the world.”

The batteries have the ability to charge during non-peak energy usage hours and provide the home with energy during peak usage hours. The batteries are available at 10kWh or 7kWh, with a selling price of $3,500 and $3,000 respectively.

To put this into perspective, an energy comparison firm estimates that 1kWh can produce enough power for a full washing machine cycle.

Tesla hopes that this new line of batteries gets us closer to zero emission power generation and fosters a clean energy ecosystem.

Registration for the ECS Conference on Electrochemical Energy Conversion & Storage with SOFC-XIV, convening in Glasgow, July 26-31, 2015, is now open. The plenary session will feature Nigel Brandon, Director of the Sustainable Gas Institute at Imperial College London.

Prof. Nigel Brandon OBE FREng is also Director of the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Hub, and Co-Director of the UK Energy Storage Hub. He held research positions with BP and Rolls-Royce before joining Imperial College as a Senior Lecturer in electrochemical engineering in 1998.

In 2000 he was a founder of the fuel cell company Ceres Power, acting as CEO to 2003, CTO to 2006 and Chief Scientist to 2009. He was appointed to the Shell Chair in Sustainable Development in Energy in 2005 and the BG Chair in Sustainable Gas in 2014.

He was the UK focal point with China in energy and climate change from 2007 to 2011, and Senior Research Fellow in Energy to the UK Research Councils from 2005 to 2014.

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“You’re not going to solve the energy problem by separating paper and plastic. We need to transition out of our dependency on fossil fuels and into renewables. As a society, it is really up to us to change.”

ECS Fellow Héctor D. Abruña recently spoke on the importance of developing better batteries to change the energy landscape at a Charter Day Weekend lecture at Cornell University.

The energy infrastructure as it exists today cannot maintain in its current form in the years to come. The United Nations expects the world’s population to reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Compare this to the current 7.2 billion population and the current issues with the energy infrastructure and the need for change becomes quite apparent.

Fortunately, Abruña and scientists like him are working to move us toward a more energy efficient and sustainable future through developments in fuel cells and batteries, which will power energy efficient and environmentally safe cars, as well as reshape the energy infrastructure itself.

“If we have any hope of solving the energy problems, we need better energy conversion and storage,” said Abruña.

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Deadline for Submitting Abstracts
May 1, 2015

Submit today!

Topic Close-up #1

SYMPOSIUM F03 Membrane-Based Electrochemical Separations

FOCUSED ON High or low temperature gas separations (e.g., H2, CO2, O2); Electrodialysis; Chlorine; production; water pollution remediation; other electrochemical separations

FEATURING Meilin Liu from School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology on Mixed Ionic and Electronic Conducting Membranes for Gas Separations and Michael Stockades of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece on Electrolyte Membranes in Heterogeneous Catalysis.

Learn about all the topics!

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Former ECS member Teri Odom has assisted in the development of the first ever liquid nanoscale laser. This development could lead to some very practical applications, as well as guiding researchers one step closer to developing a “lab on a chip” for medical diagnostics.

The laser is relatively simple to create, cheap to produce, and has the ability to operate at room temperature. Because the device works in real time, users can quickly and simply produce different colors.

This from Science World Report:

The laser’s cavity itself is made up of an array of reflective gold nanoparticles where the light is concentrated around each nanoparticle and then amplified. In contrast to conventional laser cavities, no mirrors are required for the light to bounce back and forth. As the laser color is tuned the nanoparticle cavity stays fixed and does not change.

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Registration for the ECS Conference on Electrochemical Energy Conversion & Storage with SOFC-XIV is now open. The conference is set to take place this July in Scotland, a fitting venue when looking at the country’s goal of utilizing 100 percent renewable energy by 2020.

In 2012, Scotland pulled 40 percent of its power from renewable resources—a 24 percent increase over 2010.

Scotland is expected to hit the hallway point on the path of obtaining 100 percent renewable this year, making it the perfect platform for some of the top researchers globally in fuel cells and batteries.

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ECS will be offering three Short Courses at the 227th ECS Meeting this May in Chicago. Taught by industry experts, the small class size makes for an excellent opportunity for personalized instruction helping both novices and experts advance their technical expertise and knowledge.

Register online today!

Short Course #3
Scientific Writing for Scientists and Engineers
Noel Buckley, Instructor

Are you a graduate student, postdoctoral fellow or senior researcher who would like to improve your writing skills? This course is for you! Are you a professor who spends time rewriting students’ drafts of journal papers? Then, send your students to this course or attend it yourself and learn how to improve both your own and your students’ skills! Good skills in written communication are increasingly important, whether you are in an academic or an industrial environment. The course is intended for scientists and engineers with an interest in developing their skills in writing scientific documents, including journal papers, dissertations, proposals, abstracts, and reports. Read more.

About the Instructor
Dr. Noel Buckley, past President of ECS, is currently Professor of Physics and the University of Limerick, Ireland and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Cast Western Reserve University. Prior to his shift toward academica, Dr. Buckley spent 17 years at Bell Laboratories where he played a key role in the development of epitaxial crystal growth and characterization of compound semiconductor films for high performance optoelectronic devices and earlier worked on the development of rechargeable lithium batteries. He has more than 70 research publications and has made numerous presentations at international conferences. He has organized many technical symposia and has edited ~20 volumes of symposium proceedings. He has taught a graduate-level course in Scientific Writing since 2006 at the University of Limerick and via webcast at five other universities, and he has taught the present short course at previous ECS Meetings in Vancouver, Las Vegas, Montreal, Boston, and Seattle.

Registration for the short courses has been extended through the start of the meeting.

After a several year hiatus, the Chicago Section began the revitalization process in April 2015. Leading the effort in reengaging section members and activity are Alan Zdunek and Jordi Cabana from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Eungje Lee and Arturo Gutierrez from Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). They will serve as the interim executive board for the coming year.

A kick-off meeting/social reception is planned during the ECS 227th Meeting in Chicago, IL on Monday, May 25th from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., immediately following The ECS Lecture at the plenary. The reception will be jointly hosted by the Chicago Section, the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) and the Center for Electrochemical Energy Science (CEES) and the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory.

All ECS members are invited to participate in the event to learn more about future Chicago Section events and the program highlights from JCESR and CEES.

For more information contact, Interim Chair, Alan Zdunek, at zdunek@uic.edu.

Logan Streu, ECS Content Associate & Assistant to the CCO, recently spotted an article out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory detailing a new type of graphene aerogel that could improve energy storage, sensors, nanoelectronics, catalysis, and separations.

The researchers are creating graphene aerogel microlattics through a 3D printing process known as direct ink wetting.

This from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

The 3D printed graphene aerogels have high surface area, excellent electrical conductivity, are lightweight, have mechanical stiffness and exhibit supercompressibility (up to 90 percent compressive strain). In addition, the 3D printed graphene aerogel microlattices show an order of magnitude improvement over bulk graphene materials and much better mass transport.

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ECS student member Linsen Li, along with former member Song Jin, have recently completed the first part of their study focusing on the powerful potential of iron fluoride in lithium-ion batteries, which can improve energy storage.

“In the past, we weren’t able to truly understand what is happening to iron fluoride during battery reactions because other battery components were getting in the way of getting a precise image,” said Linsen Li, graduate student and research assistant at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

This development will likely impact energy storage and could, in the future, advance large-scale renewable energy storage technologies if the researchers can maximize the cycling performance and efficiency of the low-cost fluoride lithium-ion battery materials.

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