New, Inexpensive and Long-Lasting Battery Technologies for the Grid and Beyond

The growing demand for energy and the movement towards green and sustainable energies has spawned research into new battery technologies for energy storage that will be more cost effective and environmentally friendly.  Some of the new technologies tout low fabrication costs, scalability and longer lasting battery life.  I selected two articles which represent two different but interesting solutions.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110929074021.htm

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/38689/?p1=A4

One such solution was from the September 28, 2011 posting on Technology Review titled “New Battery Could Be Just What the Grid Ordered” using sodium and manganese based technology and the other solution came from the September 29, 2011 posting on ScienceDaily titled “World’s First Energy-Stored Membrane Devised” using a synthetic polymer membrane.

Surprisingly both solutions are responding to the same issue---cost effective and environmentally friendly energy storage capabilities for the power grid revolutionizing energy storage.   Applications these batteries could be used for include: hybrid vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and storage of excess energy produced by power plants.  Other applications using the membrane might be for use with dynamic prosthetic limbs, other medical devices and beyond.

Polymer membrane                                                                      

Scalable Sodium Ion