Lead Acid Battery Horrors Spur Action at Last

The lead acid battery industry repeats a mantra that almost all of them are recycled and they are by far the lowest cost solution for cars and much else besides. Many forces now question and begin to change this. Faced with public outcry, the Chinese government has acted to reduce the deaths and birth defects from lead smelting and poor recycling of lead, as with the 150 million electric bikes and scooters. The action is inadequate but in the right direction, including restricting lead acid companies.

 

Fortunately, the plummeting cost of lithium-ion batteries and their longer life and greater reliability has led to the Porsche Spyder hybrid and many electric cars dispensing with the lead acid batteries with some mainstream family cars beginning to follow. Lead acid storage for grid electricity has given way to lithium-ion and redox flow batteries and German monster wind turbines incorporating gravity water storage.

Lithium batteries have their own lesser problems of pollution and flammability and they have negative recycling value, encouraging irresponsible disposal, but there are several ways forward. As detailed in IDTechEx battery reports, non-flammable, non-toxic lithium batteries are on the way and the IDTechEx report, Battery Elimination in Electronics and Electrical Engineering 2018-2028 details how many things from wireless light switches to minigrids are moving to fit-and-forget supercapacitors or no energy storage at all.

 

Consider Ghana. That now very progressive country has just placed an order for 100MW of the new invisible wave harvesting that needs no infrastructure and can partly be assembled locally. Those wave harvesters from Seabased in Sweden work in waves only one meter high: that is just about continuously. Energy storage can be minimal or not at all. See the IDTechEx report, Wave, Tidal and Hydro Power 1W-10MW 2018-2028. In addition, we are seeing first sales of Airborne Wind Energy this year, with drones and kites flying higher than wind turbines, where wind is almost continuous and conveniently stronger at night when solar is dead. Goodbye energy storage? See the IDTechEx report, Airborne Wind Energy 2018-2028.