Getting rid of fossil fuels is relatively simple for some things. Housing? Replace furnaces with heat pumps. Cars and light trucks? Ditch internal combustion for batteries and electric motors. Yet for many industries like cement, steelmaking, and more, it’s hard to replace the heating power of fossil fuels. But Dan Stack thinks bricks have a […]
Phillip Man was burned out. He had founded a watch trading company with his flatmate, but the grind was wearing him down. “We did that for ten years,” Man said. “It’s very difficult to keep yourself motivated when you know the whole reason for your operation is to sell expensive stuff to wealthy people.” He
Former watch trader is now building the AWS of grid storage, Terralyr Read More »
Phillip Man was burned out. He had founded a watch trading company with his flatmate, but the grind was wearing him down. “We did that for ten years,” Man said. “It’s very difficult to keep yourself motivated when you know the whole reason for your operation is to sell expensive stuff to wealthy people.” He
Former watch trader is now building the AWS of grid storage, Terralayr Read More »
The federal government is handing out another $3 billion to startups in the buzzy battery tech sector. The investment, which the Biden administration announced Friday, is the latest injection of capital to come from a $16 billion pot that the Department of Energy set aside to build out local battery manufacturing, processing, and recycling facilities.
The 25 battery tech startups that just got a piece of $3B in federal funds Read More »
Nearly 20 years ago, Andrew Bissell was sitting in the living room of his beachfront home in the Edinburgh area. He and his wife, Susan Lang-Bissell, had just sold their medical imaging startup, and he was pondering his future. “Do we retire or do we go again?” Bissell told TechCrunch. Around that time, he was
Sunamp’s thermal battery uses a chemical found in salt-and-vinegar potato chips Read More »
Wind and solar power have become so cheap to install, and at times so abundant, that utilities don’t know what to do with it all. Sometimes they’ll even pay the owners of other power plants not to generate electricity. In response, scientists and engineers have been racing to find inexpensive ways to store that power
Cache Energy’s mysterious white pellets could help kill coal and natural gas Read More »
The biggest limitation of tiny robots is, naturally, their size. The smaller the robot, the more difficult it is to develop components. Among the key challenges is finding a power source. Some systems utilize clever work-arounds, like these cell-sized bots, which use a photodiode to access the minute level of electricity needed to do their
Researchers develop hair-thin battery to power tiny robots Read More »
Hannah Sieber knows just how transformative batteries can be. At her previous startup, EcoFlow, she used them to replace generators, whether for powering homes after a bad storm or RVs at a campsite. The experience made her wonder what else batteries could do, especially smaller ones. “What are the other industries that could dramatically change?”
Cold shipping might be the next industry that batteries disrupt Read More »
Amid a fraught environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory that will scale its next-generation battery technology for customers like Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic by the end of 2025. Sila, formerly known as Sila Nanotechnologies, is slated to finish construction of its Moses Lake, Washington plant in
As battery startups fail, Sila snaps up $375M in new funding Read More »
If there’s one thing holding back batteries, it’s cost. The most widespread type of battery, lithium-ion, still costs around $140 per kilowatt-hour for a pack. While that’s low enough to have triggered quickening adoption of electric vehicles, even the cheapest lithium-ion chemistries are still too expensive to put a big battery in every home to
Unigrid wants to make batteries cheaper and safer using sodium Read More »
