Forming the Future
Image: Form Energy
96 hours is considered a minimum for a multi-day renewables storage solution to be a core component of a city electricity grid. Four days to buffer shifts in weather, spikes in demand, and disruptions to non-renewables. Some say 100 hours and less than $20/kWh in all-in capital cost. On opposite ends: lithium-ion batteries with broad adoption but high cost and incumbent non-renewables with longer storage duration but high carbon costs. I was reminded about the need for longer term storage during a recent April drive through Palm Springs, CA: why are some windmills turning and others not? Was disrepair that rampant?
Oh that’s right: where is all that electricity generated from all windmills simultaneously turning supposed to go with no matching demand or storage infrastructure. It was not disrepair. It was low asset utilization.
Operations is essentially the balancing of three interconnected factors: the variability of information to which you must accommodate, the inventory of goods or services in order to meet desired outcomes, and the capacity of assets and people available to meet the moment. The more variability of information, the more inventory and/or capacity needed. Electricity demand and disruptions by nature are without doubt highly variable. Windmills not turning at full speed all the time meant that there was some misalignment between the demand variability and capacity planning.
Source: First Slide Deck
I met Mateo Jaramillo, Co-Founder and CEO of Form Energy, and his wife Virginia many years ago when our daughters were in the same pre-school together. We talked about parenting and theology before anything related to energy. As my climate education journey continues, I cannot seem to unsee Mateo and Form Energy. Form Energy storage and 3 recent US studies April 16, 2021. The State of Long Duration Energy Storage. Form Energy Unveils Its Iron-Air Battery. I remember chatting with Mateo, during his early Tesla years in 2012, about a conversation I had with a PG&E operations manager at an IT conference break session. This PG&E person described, in passing and somewhat nonchalantly, how much electricity had to be grounded (i.e. put into the ground because there was no place to store it) as a matter of normal practice. I wanted this person to give my mobile workspace software startup a look, but my enthusiasm to engage was immediately replaced by disappointment about what I just heard. How could there be no storage capacity to handle demand variability that was certain to be introduced into the system? I started to imagine the real estate needed to create some kind of storage, either next door or underneath existing power stations. I had no idea of what that storage solution should actually be though.
Fast forward to 2021. The people at Form Energy are doers in action creating a solution that is renewables-first, city grid-scale storage capacity for 100+ hours, $20/kWh or less in all-in capital cost, and beyond. The core of the technology is rusting and un-rusting iron: one of the the most plentiful materials on Earth. Replacing peakers with storage seems like-for like. I eagerly await to see what they will build.