The Story of Today’s Battery Technology in 12 Tweets

A summary of batteries in a dozen bite-sized tweets: 

Guess which battery will power most phones, EVs, and home solar in 2025?  A lithium battery. Yes. Really. Good luck new chemistries.

 

Lead-acid (yes, that old dog), will destroy Li-ion for grid storage. Oh ya… there is that sulfation thing to solve. 

 

The 2017 Li-ion battery is not your grandfather's one.  It is oh, so different on the inside. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

 

Is there a solid-state battery in your EV future?  Not unless you are less than 50 years old (assumption: life expectancy=70). I made it.

 

Reuters: Toshiba Turns Down Hitachi/CVC Offer for Landis, Banks Prep Buyout Debt: Sources

Toshiba has turned down pre-emptive bids for its Swiss-based smart meter group Landis+Gyr, hoping for a higher price at auction, for which bankers have begun preparing debt packages of around $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

Buyout group CVC and Japan's industrial conglomerate Hitachi several weeks ago offered to buy Landis+Gyr for almost $2 billion, and another private equity group also made an offer earlier this year, but both were declined, the sources said.

Toshiba is instead waiting for tentative offers to come in by a May 22 deadline, they said, adding that groups including Advent, AEA, BC Partners, Bain, Blackstone, Carlyle, Cinven, CD&R, Onex and Triton are expected to bid.

 

Bloomberg: France Emerges as VC Dealmaker for Alternative to Nuclear Energy

 

Three French companies have emerged as the most prolific venture capital dealmakers for new energy technologies as the country starts to seek out low-polluting alternatives for its aging nuclear reactors.

Engie SA, Demeter Partners SA and Total SA participated in more green-energy deals than any other venture capital firms last year, according to the most recent data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. While the $62.3 million that French funds put into the industry is a fraction of the overall $7.5 billion VCs invested in green energy, the number of deals indicates a budding community of early-stage financiers outside Silicon Valley.

Even as Electricite de France SA seeks to prolong the lives of aging nuclear reactors, the leading presidential contender is pushing for a shift toward renewables and companies are gearing up to make bigger investments in wind and solar farms. The VC funds are backing technologies that modernize the power grid to cope with power supplies that vary with the weather and can accommodate more electric mobility.

Inside Climate News: U.S. Wind Energy Installations Surge -- a New Turbine Rises Every 2.4 Hours

Every two and a half hours, workers installed a new wind turbine in the United States during the first quarter of 2017, marking the strongest start for the wind industry in eight years, according to a new report by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released on May 2.

"We switched on more megawatts in the first quarter than in the first three quarters of last year combined," Tom Kiernan, CEO of AWEA, said in a statement.

Nationwide, wind provided 5.6 percent of all electricity produced in 2016, an amount of electricity generation that has more than doubled since 2010. Much of the demand for new wind energy generation in recent years has come from Fortune 500 companies including Home Depot, GM, Walmart and Microsoft that are buying wind energy in large part for its low, stable cost.