Welcome to the July issue!
This month, we celebrate the semiquincentennial of a very special little experiment that most of us call home. She may not be perfect (who is?), but she’s afforded me and countless others a wealth of opportunities over 2 ½ centuries, and I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate. Here’s to you, Griswold Inn!
Oh, and happy birthday, America!
Over the last month, schools have let out across the nation, and with it, summer has bludgeoned us with an insufferable heat wave. And with families turning their attention towards summer vacation (and not melting), their prospective means of propulsion, EVs and hybrids, have also begun to heat up (though hopefully not literally – darn those unquenchable EV battery fires!).
And so it’s apropos that this month and next focus on Batteries & Other Storage Devices and EVs, Hybrids, & Charging Infrastructure, respectively.
But before we look at the July issue, I’d like to call attention to some recent, high-profile battery content.
To start, we recently published an exciting piece from Canadian Light Source (CLS), a national research facility of the University of Saskatchewan, positing that seawater could help power the “next sustainable battery revolution.”
While lithium is arguably the world’s most critical mineral, it’s sequestered within comparatively few nations, making future scarcity and price increases a distinct possibility. By contrast, seawater is exceptionally abundant, covering the entire globe and making up about 97% of all water on Earth.
Back in February, we had an illuminating discussion with Wärtsilä regarding their 100 MW battery energy storage system (BESS) for Australian renewable energy retailer, Flow Power.
And in a massive boon for EVs and the nation’s power supply, GM recently announced native vehicle-to-grid support, with 250,000 EVs already on the road that support bi-directional charging. Moreover, utilities partners PG&E in California and DTE Energy in Michigan have already signed on in attempt to bolster the grid.
Finally, I’d like to briefly discuss one of July’s contributed articles that deals with the evergreen notion of battery swapping.
While EV battery swapping is the (mostly) impractical “innovation” that refuses to die, industrial and medical battery-swap systems show real promise. And as Green Cubes Technology’s Robin Schneider points out, “Traditional fixed-battery architectures — solid and predictable as they may be — are increasingly a poor fit for environments where a depleted battery means a stalled workflow, a missed delivery window, or, in clinical settings, a disruption that carries real consequences.”
And yet, as the automotive sector increasingly discovered, designing swappable battery platforms that work reliably, safely, and without nuisance interruptions is no small feat, and Robin discusses this further.
Enjoy the July issue!
Best Regards,
Jason Lomberg
North American Editor, PSD
