Using electricity rather than fossil fuels to power our world offers many pluses, especially since electricity is increasingly being produced from the sun, wind, ocean currents and tides. Microgrids and sophisticated software monitoring power needs and providing instantaneous switching are making communities even less dependent on fossil fuels for peak demand periods. Battery storage is the key component that will enable us to get to 100 percent clean electricity. One of the biggest obstacles in this trajectory is the limited, costly, and environmentally damaging mining of lithium, nickel, and cobalt — all of which are used in the manufacture of batteries.
A lot of research is going into making batteries using other, more abundant materials with fewer of the drawbacks of current batteries, namely, flammability and spiky dendrites. The spikes are caused when batteries are charged too quickly and result in shortening the battery’s life.
One international team is getting results using aluminum as one of the electrodes and sulfur as the other with a common salt as the electrolyte. The 230-degree Fahrenheit temperature required to melt the salt and run the battery can be generated internally by normal charging and discharging cycles — charging from the sun during daylight and discharging after dark when electricity is needed. The scientists estimate that the cost will be 12-16 percent of today’s lithium-ion batteries.