from the get-by-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends dept.
China spins up giant battery built with US-patented tech:
The world's largest vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has been connected to the grid in Dalian, China, where it was built using technology patented in the United States.
With a current capacity of 100MW/400MWh and plans to double it, the Dalian VRFB will reportedly be able to meet the daily energy needs of 200,000 people, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said. The battery will be used to manage supplies during peak power demand periods, and could allow electricity companies in the Dalian region to adopt more renewables to feed the system.
VRFBs are free of lithium-ion and are far safer than traditional batteries, instead relying on mixtures of liquid electrolytes and acids. VRFBs can hold a charge for far longer than traditional batteries as well, and are also designed to be charged and discharged for decades without degrading.
The Dalian VRFB dwarfs other projects – Australia's largest VRFB only boasts 2MW/8MWh of capacity, and a similar test project in the San Diego area recently stood up a similarly sized battery. Other large VRFB projects are still far smaller, like the Sumitomo battery in Hokkaido, Japan, that was brought online earlier this year. It has a capacity of 17MW/51MWh and was described as one of the world's largest VRFBs.
As reported in August, the VRFB built in Dalian appears to be one designed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that cost US taxpayers $15 million dollars to develop, and for which the US government owns the patent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HammeredGlass on Monday October 03 2022, @10:27PM (7 children)
they would do away with any patenting or profiting of tech that could be used to "save the planet", but then the green scammers wouldn't be able to bilk as much out of "angel investors"
disclaimer: anthropogenic climate change is mostly real, but there's nothing that will make a significant difference for hundreds of years aside from that vaporware "carbon capture" which needs to scale ?n^1000?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Monday October 03 2022, @11:28PM (6 children)
Stopping making the problem worse would be a great start... Unloading the second barrel into your foot after you've already done the first is not sound strategy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Monday October 03 2022, @11:53PM (2 children)
Yes, I've seen a bunch of people over the years claiming that we can't solve the problem with cuts to our emissions. And that might well be true, but if the focus isn't on that primarily, then we're in a position where if the technological advances don't materialize, then we're royally boned. Not to mention that over time the scale of the problem is just going to increase drastically.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday October 04 2022, @11:52AM
I've seen people who just think this is a choice between less and more emissions without regard for the tradeoffs. There's several problems with the above narrative. First, the problem isn't people who claim cuts to emissions aren't a solution. It's that we're doing important things collectively with the activities that generate those emissions and we will do less of those important things, if we cut emissions. It isn't a choice between better and worse - why would anyone choose worse? It's a tradeoff not a "more magic" button that we refuse to press.
Related to that is the poor outcomes of emission reduction schemes to date: for example, Germany's Energiewende program which hasn't reduced Germany's dependence on fossil fuels in large part because they decided to tilt at the nuclear power windmill - more on that later, and doubled the cost of electricity in Germany. If these emission reduction policies and programs would actually achieve the goals they claim to want, it would make some sense to consider them. They don't even do that.
Third, our focus should not be on emission reduction, but on poverty reduction. I keep hammering this point, because it is the single most important difference we can make in our world. Not only do we reduce genuine suffering in the world, but we also reduce population growth in the mildest and lowest pain way we know. Wealthy people are low fertility people and we have a many decades trend towards both greater wealth and lower fertility. And there's a lot of stuff, including climate change, that is positively affected by having less poor people in the world.
Finally, what is next? If we cripple our economies just to do token efforts on climate, what poor policy choices are next? 4 day work weeks [soylentnews.org]? Trace amounts [soylentnews.org] of chemicals we don't like? We already see the nonproblems that will be attacked next - causing real harm to avoid an imaginary one. It's time to get sensible before we throw away this opportunity to be a better people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HammeredGlass on Tuesday October 04 2022, @02:33PM
This is the part that hasn't settled into the noggins of the average do-gooderer. We are boned either way. Our great-great-great-great-grandchildren may see the benefit of our curbing emissions now. Everybody in between is going to experience global climate disruption and destruction. Wasting money and resources on green scams that will do little to nothing even in aggregate is a mistake.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HammeredGlass on Tuesday October 04 2022, @12:33AM (1 child)
I appreciate the total collapse folks. At least they get even 50 years, let alone 100-200+, will bring about the end of the U.S.. And if that goes tits up, then the rest of the world has to step up to protect the high seas from a new era of piracy. Global commerce will grind to a halt as bad actors at every level turn the open oceans into non-stop territorial spats. The somewhat flush nations of the, rapidly undeveloping, developed world would spend quickly on becoming more militant, something which the prestige of the U.S.A. has paid in dollars and blood for them to enjoy the privilege of having their enlightened positions of anti-war(unless someone is hurting israel's feelings that week). Those nations would inevitably become more militant in their rhetoric and policies, leading to quite a lot of fun for the fascisto-technocratic elite, who are currently at the top of the economic power pyramid, who depend on global materials inter-connectivity to put their control modules into the hands of every adherent. I'm looking forward to the fashion show roll out of GlobalCorp's new line for their private police force with international jurisdiction and national preemption written into the fealty clause of each member state's licensing agreement for citizenship. The total collapse folks are silly only in that they think all modern life will disappear. No, it will only disappear from our control and use of it for anything not prescribed by our masters. FOSS? HA! OSS? HA! MS?? HA! It will just be _S_.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2022, @03:37AM
I can't see you become less relevant than you managed to be. Kudos for the low you achieved.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by captain normal on Tuesday October 04 2022, @03:14AM
Yep, as my old Granddad said, "If you find your self in a self dug hole, stop digging."
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 03 2022, @11:11PM (2 children)
I'd like a black dalian for my garden! I'd name it Elizabeth.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2022, @11:13PM (1 child)
> I'd name it Elizabeth.
That's odd, I thought you didn't like queens?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 03 2022, @11:50PM
Would a "Whoooosh" mod be positive or negative?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2022, @11:27PM
And exactly why isn't the government building one then? In Puerto Rico maybe? They could use some of that juice.. Wow, a real public works project... Whodathunk?
They're letting China beta test it for us.. that's cool, as long as the thing gets built and works as promised, and knocking patents out of the way ain't a bad thing either
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Some call me Tim on Tuesday October 04 2022, @02:22AM (3 children)
Did China steal them? Is there a Chinese national working at PNNL that gave them the plans? WTF!
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday October 04 2022, @03:49AM (1 child)
Chill. Or ask those journos to give back the money you paid for the news, they misled you.
https://www.energy-storage.news/discovery-and-invention-how-the-vanadium-flow-battery-story-began/ [energy-storage.news]
It's an old Australian invention.
It requires vanadium oxide dissolved in concentrated sulfuric acid, you can forget installing one into your backyard (hint:it's a flow battery, has moving parts, it's not quite maintenance free)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday October 04 2022, @04:44AM
It's even more complex than that, half the planet has been working on VRFB tech, and every other imaginable battery tech, for decades. This is just the US getting butthurt because China actually did something while the US sat there squabbling and bickering, then cherry-picking one of a bazillion random patents on the tech that happened to be held by a US entity and claimed those evil Chinese stole it from them.
I'm not from the US or China so have no skin in the game apart from thinking that if you choose to wilfully ignore a technology then you shouldn't whine about it if someone else does something with it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 04 2022, @06:07PM
I appears China licensed the technology properly:
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday October 04 2022, @03:56AM (4 children)
If it's patented, it's not that secret anymore.
It it's secret, then it's not patented, thus the owner of the secret can do whatever it pleases with it.
So, what gives?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday October 04 2022, @05:47AM (3 children)
I believe the modern "best practice" for patents is to strive to make them broad enough to cover every remotely similar invention, while simultaneously leaving out as many critical "do it right" details as possible to maintain a competitive edge.
Basically, try to make it so that you can't (legally) do it at all without licensing the patents, but also can't do it well without the secrets. Best of both worlds, and all it takes is completely ignoring the spirit of the law.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday October 04 2022, @12:17PM (2 children)
Also patents expire. Since first battery of this type was patented almost 40 years ago....
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 04 2022, @02:23PM
That means, it should be in the public domain sometime in the next 60 years! Oh wait, this isn't copyright for books? Nvm, carry on.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 05 2022, @04:27PM
Eventually - but then you just patent some of your unpublished secrets and continue to exclude competitors. The technology has also likely continued to improve, and you can probably patent the improvements you can't hide, maintaining a competitive advantage. Not many people will buy a v1 instead of a v7, not unless you *really* overcharge.