How to build a battery that replaces a coal plant

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, a visit to the energy startup trying to replace coal with a very cheap battery. Form Energy has attracted nearly $900 million in investments and is building its first manufacturing facility in the US. Its big innovation relies on rust. Really. The materials scientists at Form have taken the same process that’s a symbol of time slowly passing and turned it into electricity. It’s one of the first big bets that batteries could help push the grid closer to running without fossil fuels altogether.

You can read more about Form Energy and see what the battery looks like here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special Thanks to Kira Bindrim and Blake Maples.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati. This week, one question, two elements and $900 million.
0:20.2	Let's talk about the problem with renewable energy. Don't worry, this is not our climate
0:25.4	denial episode. It's just that renewables are not always available. The sun goes away,
0:30.9	the wind dies down, but our demand for energy never stops. And that mismatch is what keeps our
0:37.1	power grid tied to coal and natural gas. And that mismatch is what keeps our power grid tight to coal and natural gas.
0:40.1	And so one solution is to fill batteries with wind and solar power. But it's so expensive.
0:46.8	Today's episode is about a company trying to change that. Farm energy started with the goal of
0:52.6	making a really cheap battery, one that could replace a coal plant.
0:57.0	For a battery obsessive, it's an exciting quest. Forms only limitations were the laws of science and money.
1:04.0	And the startup seems to have found a battery that can be that cheap. I saw it, and the battery doesn't look like much.
1:12.6	Mateo Haramio, the CEO and one of the five co-founders,
1:16.6	showed us different prototypes, and as we went down the line,
1:19.6	the batteries got cheaper.
1:21.6	And cheaper looking as well.
1:24.6	Well, I mean, when we're working on something that needs to be as low cost as this battery needs to be,
1:31.3	you can put it to the eye test, right? Does it look expensive? Right? Does it look expensive to produce the parts?
1:36.4	Does it look expensive to deploy? We are passing the eye test. This does not look expensive.
1:41.3	And it works.
1:43.1	I should not have laughed, but it was shocking.
1:46.8	While lithium ion battery facilities, which is the battery that goes into smartphones
1:51.3	and electric cars, requires you to wear a hair net and a clean suit, this form battery was
1:57.5	out in the open, and it just looked like coke bubbling in a plastic milk bottle.
	...

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