Batteries and Energy Storage Lunch and Learn
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topics Covered: Renewable Energy, Energy Storage, Battery Power, Lithium Ion, Marketing Energy Companies, Financing, Current and Future Energy Needs
Hear from two speakers, professionals in the ‘energy storage’ industry, at this short lunchtime meeting. The event brought together leaders of all sorts related to the energy industry. We all depend on it, so many people like to get involved. The ‘energy’ industry has a lot of potential and continue to grow, as we are fueled to find solutions. Read more below!!
Why Attend: My goal is to attend events in Seattle often. The idea/thinking is that there are so many brilliant minds in this city, so let’s see what they’re talking about. Great, intelligent people from all over the world are coming together to innovate the future. It’s exciting to hear what’s going on, connect the dots, and become more familiar with these important industries. ‘Energy’ is something the effects us all. With rising demands continuing to grow, it’s interesting to learn about how we’re going to adapt as a society. We are problem solvers, so let’s learn more about energy storage and our fight to maintain power sustainability.
Event Ratings: Food: 4/5, Venue: 5/5, Speaker Content: 3.75/5, Networking Opportunities: 4/5, Likeliness to Return: 4/5
Photo Collage & Commentary
Notes from the Event —
Arrival:
The check-in was effortless enough and there was a coat check, as well. The lunch was decent, though it had huge salads and then big sandwiches. I feel like I’m kinda a fan of either/or… or a smaller salad and smaller sandwich.
I couldn’t get myself to have a salad, so I had two sandwich halves.
The view was STUNNING!!!!!! This is really one of the best views I’ve ever seen in Seattle. Amazing of the mountains and city. And for 99% of the time I saw no chemtrail airplanes, until the very end. But these past 24 hours have been the least I’ve seen them in months. Hope it ends forever soon!!!!!!
Everyone at my table went around and introduced themselves. I said that I work doing content creation and education, mostly financial literacy for kids, but also longterm thinking, sustainablilty, smart uses of resources, etc.
One guy joked asking when we will get back financial literacy in schools, but I told him that it was removed from schools in the 1920’s from JPM, as well as natural medicines. They wanted to create longterm clients.
Then another girl asked which company I worked for, but I told her I jsut work for myself. She was a just graduated student from Grad School at UW.
Suddenly the event/presentation began.
The hosts are a group called the Clean Tech Alliance:
They work together or clean tech (they work with helios who just closed 425M dollars for funding)
I’m pretty sure that’s the group doing the Hydrogen energy? But not 100% sure, I’ll look it up later and update this. Or you just look it up if you see this before I do hahahah. Do your own research. It’s a habit you won’t regret growing.
Public utilities in the room, construction, international consulates here, public affairs firms in the climate tech space, financial services, financial insurance… all the players come together
Love it. Actually, hearing about all of the random people attending this event, but important people, I feel like it made more sense that someone like me woudl be here. My goal is to collect info, learn, and turn this content (and ideally this content + even more sources to back it up + fun graphics and even more explanation, links, rocking ‘knowledge graphs) into stuff thats even more useful, as it comes out. So, it made me feel like it makes sense that content creators with a goal for learning, education, and efficiency in our world, would be here too!
It takes a lot of people to keep the momentum going in the clean tech arena.
Member companies in 17 states and 4 provinces. Wide variety of work in advocacy in state and in Olympia.
Lots of networking events (last year 40 events: webinars, conferences, and lunches in person to connect the ecosystem)
Working on closer economic development
Fusion development work - especially fusion development and “Fusion Week 2025”
Up at Washington State University, Monday September 29th
If you’re interested in “joining the cluster” - idk what that means
Workforce development committed: work two align workforce initiatives with industry needs
Next event I may go to: Ai Applicaitons in CleanTech
2025 Wednesday, Nov 5th: annual 2025 clean tech innovation showcase. Sold out last year. Full day at there.
The sponsors: Thanks for having us here, great room, great space.
International law firm here in the states and all over.
Full service, 1000+ attorneys
Legal services, transiactional, etc
Lawyer that generally works with startups and investors
LOL - this next speaker’s voice is so funny. It’s so raspy and his goal is to be the one to introduce the next speaker. But its funny they picked him, just in a meta way, cause his voice is so hard to understand and raspy.
A guy is going to be giving the presentation from Oak Ridge in Tennessee, calling in virtually. He came on screen with a huge smile (though this introduction didn’t make sense to me, like the context)
I think the fact he came on the screen with a big smile made people like him from the start
… but the tech was REALLY really bad. The connection was not good and his voice was hard to understand because of the glitches in the audio, the lack of captions, and the delay in his voice and lips on screen. Ontop of that, his speech was super niche to the industry and technical.
I asked them to turn up the volume.
The global vehicle sales of electric vehicles are increasing.
It’s super hard to understand him. The connection is terrible so all the spacing is glitchy and his accent is tough to understand too.
Lot’s of vehicles are catching on first because of overheating. Now we need to make next generation SSB’s (solid-state batteries)
Global EV sales are projected to surge go over 26M by 2026
Why are we interested in Sulfide SSE’s?
Honestly, this is too niche and the audio is so hard to hear, it’s hard to understand what he’s talking about - but I’ll post this picture. But it’s too complicated for someone who doesn’t know what this is talking about.
Looking to get loose leaf type of powder to go into the batteries. The powder can be a separator of ion conductors with other cell components.
Pelletized SSE: easier to make, good for small lab scale materials test (but it’s too thin~1mm, brittle, low energy density, high manufacturing costs)
Sheet Type SSE: reduced thickness, reduced raw matierlas, flexible and compatible with R2R process, improved energy density
There are two general processing ways to make using the powder…
Dry Processing: limited binder options (-PFAS binder), hard to incorporate the current R2R of the Li-ion infrastructure, binder is unstable against Li metal.
Wet Processing: leveraging LIB-established know-how and facilities with a wide range of solvents/binders tailored for SSEs. Its is hard to identify solvent-binder pairs compatible with sulfide SSEs. No one size fits all solvent/binder for different SSE’s.
Two-Year Achievements of ORNL’ Sulfide SSE Team
Material Section
Film optimization
Binder for high-V NMC cathodes
SSE Film Casting
Compatible High-V Catholyte
>400 Wh/kg Si Sulfide SSB system
This event/topic is SOOO intensely specific . I don’t see many people paying close attention, I think it’s like over everyone’s head. Hahah or I’m just trying to feel relatable.
Trial and errors arrive team to get to the find results
Key Challenges We Are Addressing:
Non-passivation behavior
Further push the 400k to more
They need to replace the materials
The takeaway is that when they put the work together, after a few cycles, there is thick layer.
Electrolyte interface
Liquid batteries usually lgeneratle 10-100 millimeters
With this, (omg legit, I can’t understand what h’s talking about and even the car
50 micrometers are growing, totally anit-sometihng
Labs w/ Specific Focuses (Lithium Labs, Sodium Labs):
In order to make functional batteries, they work in the lab. They make tiny batteries and practice.
But they need to think of other means for pressure processing SSB pouches.
They think maybe they can develop folded pouch sells with reduced areas
Develop a paper calendaring cross
Develop means reducing pressure
The challenge is low fracture toughness
Some labs are dedicated to sulfur/sulfide. The labs and facilities seek for collaborations to strength and grow related BMR programs
Central expertise tailored to this sulfur/sulfide chemistry
7000 sq ft lab
1000 sq ft dryroom
10 dedicated gloveboxes for slurry/dry processing, casting, surface coating, sheet-type SS fabrication ,pouch type SSB fabrication, and multi-modal characterizations
>300 channels for SSB testing
Operando Neutron and Raman Imaging System + Machine Learning Analysis
OMG his speech is over???
Hahahah it’s over so fast.
No Q&A…
Oh, but this was a technical presentation!! Okay
NEXT SPEAKER:
He works in design, finance, construction, energy storage systems.
When he started in the industry, 10 megawatts was a lot, now its 500 megawatt
He leads a team of 4 at his consulting team
He went into the peace corp after university to help build energy grids internationally.
Recently started as an author, writing a book with two friends, covering all aspects of the energy storage industry
Then he offers a book to the person who guesses the number (fun pop quiz)
Today 96% of batteries are lithium ion, so that is what he focuses on and this persentaiotn is on today.
Containers of batteries outdoors in California
The batters (on the molecular scale) is a reaction. The anode, cathode, and electrolyte
Anode: usually made of graphite
Cathode: a few different chemistries (nickel, magnets cobalt used to be more popular) but now its LFP (lithium ion phosphate)
Electrolyte: lithium salt
When batteries charge, electrons go in, and then exit. Electrons come in and out on a cellular level. The energy is stored while they charge and discharged when they discharge.
A cell has anywhere from 200-2000 watt hours of energy
A car batter has 1 kilowatt hour.
Cells are put into bigger containers. The cell is the size of a shoe box, then they get stacked like the size of a phone booth, then they’re stored together to be a 20ft container size. Holding 3-6 mega-watt hours of energy storage. The container is put totgether and made to be an energy storage system.
Out on the sites, you have the container, then the converter turning from AC to DC.
The majority of large-scale storages are next to transformers, (so you can step it up from 33kV up to 230kV)
All of this is the BESS: Battery Energy Storage System
Systems switch often, charging and discharging. It can switch on the order of milliseconds whether it’s charging or discharging.
Worked on a project in Australia associated with BlackRock. It used to be a coal plant, but now they’re using it to make Waratah Super Batteries. Later this year the system will come on a nd it’ll become the most powerful battery in the world. At 80MW - most powerful, b ut not biggest.
BlackRock has not earned my trust.
In this case, it’s a 2hr battery. It can discharge 850MW before it’s fully discharged.
Batteries can do a number of different services on the grid.
The batteries can jump online and prevent outages on the grid
Within milliseconds it has to discharge its power with the contract it has with the Australian grid.
The wrap up:
3 charts on the battery revolution:
1. Beware, falling prices from 1992-2030 (in 1992 $6,000/kwH), 2016: $244/kwH (declined about 24x in 24 years.
Then from 2010 to today, it went from 2010: $500… now we’re at $75kwH.
It’s projected that by 2030, we’ll be around $50/kwH
The price of batteries has continued to fall and fall and fall. Same with solar
2. Power generation. 2000-> projected 2050
In 2000 coal was 30%
Solar is emerging… solar + storage is barely emerging
On-shre wind and offshore
Going to 2050, project coal declines under 10%… the big story is renewables.
Solar, Solar + Storage, wind (all projected to grow)
3. Unleash the Batteries! 2020-2050
Up to about 160 Giggawats by 2024
2025 we’re around 6 Terrawatt hours of energy storage.
Pumped hydro will be growing, right now it is a lot of the supply… but over time we’re going to get lithium ion storage, solar storage, li-ion
It’s an exciting time to be in the battery industry.
“Tell the young people: jump in (to ‘energy’) any way you can, it’s a great field to be in, we are excited and don’t know where it’ll grow, but it’s sure to grow!”
QUESTIONS From Audience:
Are there any viable competitors to lithium ion batteries?
Lithium is king of storage, around 98% some sort of lithium ion involved. The biggest issue is duration. It thrives when you talk anywhere from 4-8 hours, can go down to 2 or below. 4-8 is commercially viable.
*lol, earlier he said 96!
When you think of our grid, if you want to go to increasing penetration of renewables, eye level sun goes down and we have over 12 hours till it comes back. We have that longer duration needed.
Seasonal variation, like wind when it’s more common and abundant
Long duration energy storage has a lot of innovation happening. Tech like compressed air is up and coming + solid state (Dr. Yang talked about) where energy storage can go, allows for higher density. Density is important in electric vehicles, allowing the range to go up
EV currently has 300-400 mile range, but as the density goes up you can get 1000 mile ranges and compete with the industry
What are some of the challenges for commercialization
Lot of road blocks for the battery world
We’re in the early stages.
Toyota has a roadmap to commercialize electric vehicles but they just pushed their dates back from 2026 to like 2028.
The costs are high, the costs of raw materials.
It’s a problem to address, unless you lower down costs
Consumers won’t buy the vehicles at these prices
(The host from another event is here I think!! The one from the other Ai event. She asks a question, I recognize her.)
She says: Let me ask the ‘Turd in the punchbowl question’: this entire presentation you both just gave assumes that the world is running as normal. But now the previously unimaginable things are not just being imagined but are happening.
The asusumption is that private industry isn’t going to step in and fund this work.
Who is thinking about Plan B… does Elon really like batteries? Are we safe?
The world is not normal and it does everyone a disservice if we say “this is what’s happening, but not actually thinking about this answed asking this
We are going to be hung by our own sides and cards
RESPONSES:
the way I view the current political climate in term of batteries… they have a big push in terms of incentives in the USA. 30-50% of a new battery facility built today gets tax credits. 30-50M dollars
A lot of battery projects out there are making amazing returns (private investors — 12-14% return, quit high for infrastructure)
Plus with the tax credit, its up even higher 18%
Other projects have 2% return, but then the ITC brings them up to what is viable. So, there is a world of projects out there.
Without the ITC, it’s not viable for some projects, but in the USA - we’re the second biggest battery market in teh world. China builds more, will continue to build more… in the USA it’s slowing, but if you look at the cost closely… batteries are going down 40% from 2023-2024. In th short run these incentives will allow fewer battery projects to happen, the benefits will still outstrip the risks
Even more projects will become financial viable, even without the tax credits
That said, we’re going to be blown to decarbonize our economy with those incentives.
I’m learning with you from the perspective on batteries. I totally agree that in the short run we might get hit on th green energy storage world, but think of the long run. President Trump announced we want to Make America Great Again. So maybe we lose the battle for Lithium to Asia and Japan, but we can not afford to lose the battle of fabrication the next generation of solar batteries
In this regard, it’s the future, I have a very optimistic view of this.
Post Doc at UW studying batteries asks a question:
Lithium batteries used more than 8hrs.
Lithium can store energy for long times… so if you want to store energy to get from one season to another
You need a lot of storage and lithium batteries are expensive? Or what is the limitation?
Battery duration = 1megawatt power rating = 4 hours from 100% to 0%
Nothing says you can’t store for a long time or build a battery with long capacity (a long duration battery)
But the commercial vilability starts to go down because of lithium ion
The sweet spot of where the ratio of energy and power make financial sense
If you build a 30 minute battery… you could make good money in th marketplace but you are stressing the battery too much that it can’t operate for 20 years. THat’s the commercial life of most battery plants
If you build a 100 hour battery with 1mW of power… it’d be really expensive for the markets you can play in.
You look at the return, it’s like 0.05% and not commercially viable.
ANOTHER QUESTION: Lots of litigations are coming up in this space, so what are some of the headwinds coming up in these battery projects?
The headlines say new systems are coming online, but unfortunately we see distressing headlines too
About a month ago there was a huge fire in Moss landing (the 2nd biggest battery storage we have)
Only 5 years old, it shoudl have gone through to 2040…
We don’t build batteries the way we built them in 2020.
It was only 5 years ago, but already there’s a lot of change
800M of batteries burned up in 55 minutes)
Less visible is warranty claims. They get issued with a 20yr warranty or thermal management claims (like they get to higher temperatures than expected)
There are a lot of disuptes and warranty claims that pop up as they get into operations. A lot of times its countries from all over the world. The battery from china, converter from Spain, happening in th USA. It can be intercontinental lawsuits
There’s going to be a lot more disputes going on.
WRAP UP:
Leaving time at the end to network (not interested)
Nice venue 100% impressive
Lunch + sandwich (lunch is too big!) but maybe take one to go.
AV team good job.
Learn about fusion, focus on fusion cluster
“If you enjoyed today’s event we hope to see you later this month at more programming” hahah I love this wording.
Nov 5 at Hyatt Olive 8 - feedback on survey, topics o n how to improve current programming. It’s so sweet.
As I was leaving, another person at my table asked the recent grad student, “so did you already know all of that?” and she replied, “actually, a lot in there was new. I learned a lot.” - something like that. It was good to hear.
Especially the first part, it was SUPERR complicated. It was good to hear people in the industry (especially recently educated) enjoyed the speech & felt it provided new info for them.
For me, I learned a lot too, but a lot was totally over my head - still cool to learn these ideas though… like “powder base ingredients that get turned into the inter-workings of batteries. Cool!
HEADING HOME:
Transit safety came onto the subway on my way back - which made me feel safe enough to write this… but also it’s not the most efficient use of money. They have three guys come on and check the train, then I’m going to assume at the next one all three guys go look at the next train… train by train.
- If someone was really up to something maybe they know this happens and have plenty of time to alert - if this was even serious. Seems 3 peopel is a big waste of money. Instead, have a system where you can call if you need. So many times I’m at stations and see sketchy things going on but no one in sight. And one time a lady seemed lost and needed directions, while a guy was doing drugs by the elevator. Last thing you want to do is like yell loud, cause they were on the other side of the tracks - like “hey, come over here” cause they’ll get sketched out. This system could be better set up - money efficient and practicality. Get that money spent better on employee time. Have them come on demand. All the time people (staff) are standing in groups chatting at stations. It’d be nice to get the subways safer so more peopel want to use them. I like public transit and want more peopel to enjoy it, save money - and when there are peopel loitering and doing drugs and just wasting time creating a negative presence, it creates an environment that more peopel dont’ want to endure. So it’s making the subways less effective and welcoming to peopel who are on the fence.But it’s actually amazing.
Also, on the way here they scanned your card to see if you paid. Your first time is a warning. They say “thanks for your honesty” - but after that you’ll get ticketed. I had a warning once cause I paid for the bus ticket with cash then held onto the reciept/transfer thing bu they said it doesn’t work for the ubs. You need to pay with card for the transfer to be free. That’s an annoying rule IMO. Tracks you too lol. But also thats for data, and how they pick which stations to keep (hopefully) when they make changes. The most popular/efficient.
Also that reminds me of how today’s event was literally at one of the only places in Seattle that has “symphony” station as its efficient one - cause its like only 2.5 blocks from Westlake and probably the same or just a few more from the next closest. I joke about it a bit cause I think it’d be redesigned differently if it could -b ut this was right next door to the station - AND it was super crowded (relatively) compared to what I’d expect, with the trains coming so often. I was happy to be pleasantly surprised by the situation.
Conference “Overall Rating” Further Elaboration:
VENUE - 5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: This was one of the best places i’ve seen in all of Seattle, and i’ve been to a lot of places. It has a fantastic view, it’s easy to get to, the setup is nice. It was so great.
FOOD - 4/5
Room for Improvement: It was just not the best proportions (like the salads were too big) but it was healthy sorta. The sides were chips and cookies… could have been fruit (or smaller salads so you could just get it on the side) but it was good!
SPEAKER CONTENT - 5/5
Room for Improvement: The first speak was so hard to understand. The techinicals of the audio were really difficult for such complicated wording. But, overall, the event as a whole had good information and was relatable enough… just that one section was like, huh?? No matter how hard you were trying to pay attention, just really hard to pick up on much.
NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES - 4/5
Room for Improvement: They left lots of time before and after to network. Everyone was friendly, but there wasn’t any extra bonus event/thing/attitive workshop/activity to get you extra networking. So, I slipped away!! haha.
LIKELINESS TO RETURN - 4/5
Room for Improvement: Well, I was kinda unimpressed with the audio/quality of that speaker. Also the lunch wasn’t incredible and the price of the ticket was a little steep for all of that in mind. At the same time, it’s really relevent and interesting topics that they cover, so I’d like to see more of that, too. Just would like better food and better audio. :)
Kelly’s Remaining Questions:
Why wasn’t nuclear/hydrogen energy mentioned more?
Isn’t it so interesting/cool how many events this group has per year? 40!? The energy industry is super active.
These shipping container looking battery storage centers are so surprising and like “already old fashioned” looking. Like they seem like such a temporary solution for a longterm problem that we’re sure to solve. So, with that in mind, what do future battery/energy storage innovative solutions look like? Could it be stored underground in certain areas?
What types of requirements are there for these storage places? What holds us back from making more?
Is it a waste of time to make these 4-8 hour batteries, are there ways they can be increased in the future pretty low-cost-ly, or will they be trash soon?
Is there a lot of work going into renewable resource energy creation/storage? In the sense of renewable batteries and storage systems?
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
