Energy On Tap: game changer

As a somewhat younger man, I had a ‘Sliding Doors’ moment. I’d just completed my degree and thought I would go onto do my thesis on batteries at the gorgeous UBC (University of British Columbia). I then thought: “nah”. UBC would have been a bit too distracting, and it was probably time to make some revenue. I never went back. Did I save a lifetime to get where the world is now, or would I have contributed to getting here earlier? I’ll never know.

In my work with startups Redgrid and IOEN, the intent is to create a new economy based on energy. But electricity is ephemeral; use it, or lose it. Batteries of all sizes will change that completely. In 2022 Redgrid had successfully completed a project in the NBI, or Neighbourhood Battery Initiative. Here in Australia there will be major rollouts at both state and federal levels in 2023 and beyond. Putting aside the major shift towards EVs (electric vehicles) with the big auto companies ramping up, there is also a need to ‘save the grid’ as increasing, and increasingly, extreme weather events disrupt our electrified life. Local batteries will smooth the demands, shift the loads, provide resiliency.

This MIT Technology Review article looks at what’s coming, and includes one of their own and one on my watch list: Form Energy, a battery based on iron and air. Wikipedia has a nice, short summary of their tech, so I’ll point you to it rather than copy and paste. What actually caught my eye initially was the startup finance, which included Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, amongst others. They are still hiring like crazy, not affected by the Web 2 downturn (see my other article “Web 2.0: We Begin to Doubt En Masse”).

Electrify everything: your house, your suburb.. ramp it up. What I didn’t appreciate was the small end of the market: rechargeable light bulbs. These are being positioned as emergency lighting; we already have plenty of that. I believe this woman has got it right: “cord cutting”. Let’s keep getting rid of wires (maybe someday we can go full Nikola Tesla). I have an idea I’ve been carrying around since uni days where we get rid of power points in houses through inductive flooring: combining the idea used in creating an inductive electric stove with some safe encrypted handshaking. Put your lamp or TV anywhere you want. Charge your phone by putting it on the floor. I have done zero feasibility on this (and welcome any readers to shoot this down), but.. just imagine.

My colleague Simon also extrapolated that every appliance could have a battery, and the intelligence of when to use it. Let the dishwasher itself decide the optimal time to minimise grid power and maximise power generated.. and stored.. by the home (or in fact, your EV).

Batteries are big news and I look forward to seeing what replaces lithium-ion (still a bit dodgy when flying a crate to its destination). Maybe it’s not too late to study..