![F8B5233F-5224-4B64-ABE2-03F781B0076E](https://www.frackcheckwv.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/F8B5233F-5224-4B64-ABE2-03F781B0076E-300x165.png)
Cambridge Energy Storage Project, a demonstration plant in Minnesota operated by Great River Energy that will use Form Energy’s “iron-air” battery technology.
From an Article by Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker Magazine, 11/28/22
“Hope is the pillar that holds up the world,” Pliny the Elder is supposed to have observed. “Hope is the dream of a waking man.” Go looking for hopeful climate stories and they turn up everywhere.
Not long ago, I came across one in a defunct wine distributorship, in Somerville, Massachusetts. The cavernous warehouse had been taken over by a company called Form Energy, whose waking dream concerns rust. Rusting usually proceeds in one direction, and the end result is a corroded nail or screw that winds up in the trash. But, as iron oxidizes, it gives up electrons.
Therefore, if a current is applied to rust in solution, the process will run in reverse. At Form, the goal is to use this reverse-rusting trick to make a new kind of battery, one so cheap and durable it could power an entire city.
Billy Woodford, Form’s chief technology officer, studied material science at M.I.T. “Batteries have cool technical problems,” he told me as we descended into the warehouse turned research lab. The huge room was lined with experimental chambers that resembled glass-fronted refrigerators. Each was labelled, according to an inside joke that I never quite got, with the name of a different Oreo variety, like lemon or s’mores or gluten free.
Inside the chambers were collections of some kind of high-tech Tupperware, with wires poking through the lids. The containers, in turn, held plates of iron bathing in liquid. Woodford explained that these were test batteries: “We’ll put in different iron — there’s different versions, depending on whether it’s produced, say, in Texas or Germany — and then different electrolytes.”
Iron-air batteries’ active components are iron, salt water, and air. They can soak up energy from wind farms, feeding it into the grid when needed. Form Energy’s full-scale batteries will be packaged into modules of fifty, each about the size of a washer and dryer placed side by side. Ten of the modules will be big enough to fill a shipping container. On blustery days, they charge, using an electric current to convert rust into iron. On calm days, the iron rusts and releases electricity into the grid.
The first thirty shipping containers’ worth have been promised to Great River Energy, a Minnesota-based utility that buys a lot of wind power. (See the conceptual plant layout photo above.)
Form’s C.E.O., Mateo Jaramillo, studied theology and later became a Tesla executive. While at Tesla, he worked on lithium-ion batteries, which are the sort used in most electric vehicles (and in the Alia), and also, in a slightly different form, in laptops and cell phones.
“Lithium-ion is fantastic,” Jaramillo told me. “And yet, if that’s the only tool you have, you still have a really hard time replacing high- capacity coal and natural-gas plants. To replace those, you need something that’s at least an order of magnitude cheaper than lithium-ion.” The materials needed for reversible rusting — air, salt water, and iron — are available in practically limitless quantities. “Besides coal, iron is the most-mined mineral on earth,” Jaramillo said. “So it scales.”
#######+++++++#######+++++++#######
Billionaire-backed ‘Iron-Air’ Battery Maker Picks WV Site for First Factory, Darrell Proctor, POWER Magazine, December 23, 2022
A battery manufacturing company with plenty of high-profile financial backing said it has picked a site for its first factory that will build “iron-air” batteries. Form Energy touts its technology as a breakthrough for long-duration storage of solar and wind power.
Form, which counts Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and British tycoon Richard Branson among its supporters, was founded in 2017 by veterans of the energy storage sector. The group said its mission was to create low-cost, multi-day energy storage systems. Company officials have said their iron-air battery can store electricity for as much as 100 hours. They’ve also said the technology will be competitive with electricity produced by traditional power plants.
Form, which is headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Dec. 22 said it will begin construction of its first factory in Weirton, West Virginia, in 2023. The company expects to begin manufacturing commercial iron-air battery systems the following year. The plant’s cost is estimated at about $760 million, and officials said the project would create 750 jobs. Form completed a $450 million Series E funding round in October.
Incentive Package ~ West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said his state is providing Form with an incentive package worth as much as $290 million in what he called asset-based, performance financing for the factory’s construction. The package includes $75 million for land purchase and building construction in Weirton. Justice said he will work with state lawmakers and the federal government to obtain an additional $215 million.
Mateo Jaramillo, Form’s CEO and co-founder, said Weirton was chosen from among more than 500 possible locations for the company’s manufacturing plant. He called Weirton “a historic steel community that sits on a river and has the rich heritage and know-how to make great things out of iron.” Jaramillo, who headed Tesla’s energy-storage business before leaving in 2016, said his company expects “to be generating meaningful revenue in 2025.”
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Gov. Youngkin halted Ford battery plant efforts in Virginia over concerns about China
>>> Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, January 12, 2023
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration halted efforts to site a Ford battery plant in Virginia late last year over concerns about Chinese Communist Party influence.
Speaking to reporters after the annual State of the Commonwealth address Wednesday, Youngkin said his administration “felt that the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford as a front for China to America.”
A spokesperson for his office said the governor’s comments were linked to the possibility of Ford Motor Company building a battery manufacturing plant in Virginia that would be operated by Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, a Chinese company that is the largest producer of electric vehicle batteries in the world and under the Ford agreement would retain ownership of the technology used in building the battery cells.
Bloomberg reported this December that Ford was eyeing Virginia as a competitor to Michigan, the auto giant’s home state.
Less than a week later, right-wing news outlet The Daily Caller published a story citing an anonymous source who claimed Youngkin had directed the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to remove Virginia from the running for the project.
The Youngkin administration did not provide further details about incentives considered for the project, potential sites or when Virginia withdrew from consideration.
Suzanne Clark, a spokesperson for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, said that “for competitive reasons and to protect company confidentiality, VEDP will not comment on unannounced projects.”
Ford did not respond to specific inquiries about Youngkin’s remarks about the Ford plant serving as “a front for China” and whether the company’s plans were a security risk.
“As we shared in July, Ford plans to localize and use approximately 40 GWh of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery capacity in North America starting in 2026,” spokesperson Hannah Ooms said in an email. “We also announced a separate (memorandum of understanding) with CATL to explore a cooperation for supplying batteries for Ford vehicles in markets across North America, Europe and China. Our talks with CATL continue – and we have nothing new to announce on either front.”
The governor’s comments about the Ford proposal followed a series of dire warnings about Chinese influence and farmland purchases during his Wednesday speech to the General Assembly, which convened for the 2023 legislative session earlier that day.
Youngkin, who was the target this November of a social media swipe from former President Donald Trump that called him “Young Kin” and said the name “sounds Chinese,” denounced “the ever-growing threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses to our national security, our privacy and our way of life in Virginia.”
“Virginians should also be wary of Chinese Communist intrusion into Virginia’s economy,” he said. “We welcome and encourage economic cooperation with international companies. … But let me be clear, ‘Made in Virginia’ cannot be a front for the Chinese Communist Party.”
Youngkin later told reporters that his prior role as co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that has invested extensively in China, made him “uniquely positioned to understand how the Chinese Communist Party works.”
“I understand what they’re doing,” he said. “They have one objective: global dominance at the expense of the United States.”
Much of Youngkin’s criticism of the Ford proposal Wednesday was accompanied by criticism of what he called Democratic President Joe Biden’s “maniacal focus on getting rid of all fossil fuel generation, replacing it with solar, wind, or replacing every car immediately with batteries” when “the reality is that the technology that in fact drives all that is owned and dominated by the Chinese.”
Concern over China’s primacy in the manufacturing of batteries and solar panels is shared by many policymakers in Washington on both sides of the aisle, particularly as renewables increasingly displace coal and put pressure on natural gas. Federal legislation backed by the White House and congressional Democrats has sought to jumpstart American manufacturing in both sectors: The CHIPS Act commits $52 billion in subsidies to domestic semiconductor manufacturers, while the Inflation Reduction Act ties tax credits for wind, solar and battery components to those materials’ production in the U.S.
Source: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/01/12/youngkin-halted-ford-battery-plant-plans-in-virginia-over-concerns-about-china/