Can Hydrogen Usurp Lithium Ion Technology?
Energy
9 min readEnergy storage technologies
The major drivers for energy storage technologies across the globe have primarily been government push through funding and grants, the rapid growth of smart grid infrastructure development, a push towards a cleaner environment, and therefore push for hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles.
The current energy storage market is dominated by Lithium-ion technology and it seems to continue for the coming decade as batteries pouring from new factories in China, the U.S., Thailand, and elsewhere will further drive down prices. Lithium-ion batteries were developed for widespread use in consumer electronics, now it is being used beyond consumer electronics- Transport and power sector primarily. Many countries have adopted policies encouraging the increased deployment of electric cars, further accelerating the decline in lithium-ion battery prices. Simultaneously, the power sector now offers tremendous opportunities for the use of lithium-ion batteries to support the integration of renewables such as wind and solar PV into the electricity systems.
The key applications of energy storage technologies currently include grid balancing and emission-free transport. As the penetration of renewable energy into the grid increases, the requirement of energy storage capacity increases in order to balance the grid when supplied with intermittent wind and solar energy. The lithium-ion battery can supply to grid balancing services for a short time duration – typically a few hours on account of higher discharge rate and hence are useful for managing only intraday variations. On the other hand, Hydrogen fuel cells can assure the grid balancing for a longer time- a week, a month, or a season. This can also cater to grid imbalance due to seasonal variations of wind and solar resources.
Lithium-ion battery packs cost has dropped almost ten folds, from US$1,183 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to US$156/kWh in 2019. With the costs reduced significantly over the past few years, Lithium-ion technology continues to be the leader in ‘Clean Transport’ evolution.
Along with lower costs, high efficiency, an expanding network of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, high volume energy density are the key drivers of Lithium-ion batteries. But with the booming market of battery-powered electric vehicles, the supply shortage of batteries has been anticipated; in fact, it is already a problem by now. The carmakers are opting to collaborate with the battery manufacturers to avoid this supply shortage, but still, there are many occurrences of delay in delivery of EVs and long waiting lists have become an obvious thing.
Even though Hydrogen is abundantly available in nature with no fuel cost in real, there are multiple limitations that hold back Hydrogen from large-scale deployment. Hydrogen fuel cells demonstrate much higher mass-energy density and hence have the potential to bring down the weight of the vehicle. But the roundtrip conversion efficiency for hydrogen technology is very low. Further, low volume energy density poses a challenge to hydrogen storage tank size. The safety concerns associated with hydrogen storage is yet another barrier. The cost of hydrogen technology remains on the higher side which hinders the adoption of technology.
Hydrogen fuel cell car can recharge at a station in a few minutes in contrast to lithium-ion battery electric vehicles which typically takes a few hours depending upon the power level of charging infrastructure. But currently, there are very few hydrogen refilling stations across the world with California hosting the maximum number of stations i.e. 39 stations with another 25 in development and Japan being second on the list. There is also a case that existing infrastructure can be used as hydrogen fuel refilling stations in densely populated cities across the world instead of building new infrastructure for charging of Lithium-ion batteries.
Although Hydrogen fuel cell ensures the ‘Zero-Emission-Source’ of power when hydrogen is produced with 100% renewable energy, there are a few more years to go for this technology to surpass the Lithium-ion technology in terms of large scale deployment and conversion efficiency.
Recent Advancements
Ever since Tesla sparked the completion of the world’s biggest battery, the market players are racing to beat the challenge. Multiple Lithium-ion technology-based energy storage projects are coming up with higher and higher storage capacity each day.
LS Industrial Systems (LSIS) and Macquarie Capital Korea have won the contract to build and operate a 175-megawatt-hour battery storage system across five sites owned by SeAH, a steel conglomerate, in South Korea. Iberdrola’s UK subsidiary ScottishPower is adding a 50MW lithium-ion battery – one of the largest in the UK – to its 539MW Whitelee onshore wind project in Scotland. The California Public Utilities Commission approved Pacific Gas & Electric’s proposal to replace three natural-gas power plants with utility-grade lithium-ion batteries from Tesla at four different sites. This includes a 183-megawatt facility south of San Jose, California, that will be designed and built by Tesla and owned by PG&E. Vistra Energy Corp. is planning a 300-megawatt installation; Hummingbird Energy Storage LLC is developing a 75-megawatt project, and Micronoc Inc. plans to install 10 megawatts of capacity at customer locations.
While Lithium-ion technology is enjoying its peak success, there are multiple advancements going on to explore alternative energy storage technologies; Hydrogen fuel cell is one of them. Some of the recent and important advancements in Hydrogen fuel cell technology have been captured in the following section.
New structures pave way for higher-capacity hydrogen fuel cells
- The main limitation of hydrogen fuel cell technology is to store sufficient quantities of hydrogen to serve the purpose.
- The researchers have identified ways to cram more hydrogen than ever before into small storage structures called metal-organic frameworks.
- This will facilitate increased energy density, and hence the projected driving range of a fuel cell vehicle. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are designer materials comprised of metal ions coupled with organic molecules. Their porous nature makes some MOFs among the most promising ways to store hydrogen.
- Nearly 500,000 MOFs were tested through computer-based simulation to identify the three best MOFs: NU-70, UMCM-9, and PCN-610/NU-100
China backs fuel cell technology
- China officials have decided to build a 13.4 sq. km industrial park focused on fuel cells.
- Beijing has spent an estimated $58.8bn subsidizing its electric car industry over the past decade creating the world’s largest market for electric cars as well as a dominant position in batteries and now hopes to do the same for fuel cells.
- The country believes that though fuel cells are unlikely to compete with batteries for small passenger cars because of the latter’s continued reduction in costs, they could play a role in larger vehicles such as trucks and buses, as well as in ships and trains.
- The subsidy has helped China reach its annual target of 5,000 fuel cell vehicles two years early – around the same number of vehicles as California. Industry experts say China could hit a target of 2m fuel cell vehicles by 2030, about 5 percent of the total vehicle fleet.
‘Deep Purple’ seabed hydrogen storage for offshore wind plan
- TechnipFMC, Energy Valley (a Bergen-based technology cluster), SINTEF (a research institution), and Hyon (a hydrogen power consultancy) have planned to develop an offshore renewable hydrogen storage project, known as the Deep Purple project in Norway.
- The project aims to convert electricity generated from the wind into hydrogen and store it on the seabed.
- The multi-company project group envisages that the stored hydrogen fuel can be used for refueling ships with a plan to deliver clean alternative fuel to Norway’s offshore gas and oil platforms.
- This project exhibits multiple benefits such as eliminating the safety concerns associated with storing the fuel on land and utilization of zero-emission fuel at sea
1 GW energy storage project coming up in Utah – The project to combine renewable hydrogen and compressed air caverns
- Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) announced that it planned to build the world’s first one-gigawatt (GW) energy storage network.
- The storage network would incorporate several different kinds of energy storage, including renewable hydrogen, compressed air energy storage, flow batteries, and solid oxide fuel cells.
- MHPS has developed an ‘Advanced Natural Gas Turbine’ that enables a mixture of renewable hydrogen and natural gas to produce power with lower carbon emissions. The technology is planned to be upgraded to use 100 percent renewable hydrogen as a fuel source, which will allow gas turbines to produce electricity with zero carbon emissions.
- Another part of the project will include Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) in salt caverns near the Intermountain Power Project.
The Future
As the world is becoming more and more conscious about climate change, rigorous efforts are being taken to mitigate the same; clean power generation and emission-free transport being two of them. The variable nature of wind and solar generation has created the need for energy storage technologies to balance the grid and make renewable power generation more flexible. The electric vehicle market is also driving the deployment of energy storage technologies.
Lithium-ion technology is the most mature energy storage technology of today. The technology has achieved benefits of economies of scale due to which the costs of batteries have come down significantly in the past few years. Also, there is a good likelihood that the lithium-ion battery will continue to improve in cost, energy, safety, and power capability and will be a leader in energy storage technologies for some years to come.
A hydrogen fuel cell is the cleanest source of energy with only water and heat as a by-product. As the hydrogen fuel cell has a long life and as energy can be stored for a longer duration of time, the focus on this technology is being increased to achieve a seasonal balance of the grid-connected to the wind and solar resources. This deployment is envisaged to widen in the future as the efficiency improvement and cost reduction efforts proceed ahead.
Hydrogen fuelled vehicles can be refueled faster than battery vehicles and have a higher driving range as compared to battery vehicles. These key features along with the abundant availability of hydrogen fuel will drive the application of this technology in vehicles.
Though Lithium-ion technology is poised to lead the energy storage market in the coming years, technological innovations to increase efficiency and to reduce the cost of fuel cells will uplift the deployment. Strong policy and regulatory push to incentivize hydrogen technology are necessary to realize hydrogen as ‘The Fuel of Future’.
References
- ESM_Final_Report_05-Nov-2019.pdf
- IEA –Energy Storage Report 2020
- 6 Ways Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Can Help Transition to Clean Energy
- A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-ion Battery Prices
- ScottishPower to Add 50MW Battery to 539MW Whitelee
- As battery costs plummet, lithium-ion innovation hits limits
- Hydrogen fuel cells: With a database of 500,000 materials, researchers zero in on best bets
- Power systems company to build world’s first 1 GW energy storage project in Utah
