MaryAnn’s extensive experience will benefit all those interested in Advanced Energy Storage.

 MaryAnn leads JCI’s Research and Development organization responsible for establishing Power Solutions technology and innovation road map, application segment R&D and value chain strategies to accelerate the global growth of advanced energy storage systems. 

MaryAnn served as Vice President and General Manager for Johnson Controls Hybrid Systems business, and CEO of Johnson Controls-Saft. She played a key role in establishing Johnson Controls-Saft as a leading independent global provider of hybrid battery systems.

  MaryAnn’s front line experience in product development, the automotive industry, hybrid technology as well as Advanced Energy Storage technologies will benefit everyone interested in this rapidly developing sector.  

 Please register early as seating is limited.

 If you require more information or special accommodation, please contact:

Jennifer Linart, Operations, Lakeshore Advantage

p. 616.772.5226

Jennifer.linart@lakeshoreadvantage.com

Johnson Controls is scheduled to begin production of battery packs this spring at its advanced battery plant in Holland for a German company’s 80-horsepower all-electric outboard boat motor.

The company, Torqeedo, will use Johnson Controls’ Li-ion automotive battery packs to power its award-winning 80-horsepower electric boat motor called Deep Blue.

“With our leading battery expertise, we helped our customer combine two distinct technologies — the large outboard engine and electric motor — making the Torqeedo Deep Blue system a real game-changer,” said Holger Jetses, vice president and general manager for Johnson Controls Power Solutions’ Original Equipment group, EMEA. “In bringing this innovative product to the marine market, we are helping to provide a cleaner, quieter and more economical boating experience for users.”

Johnson Controls modified its Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) battery, making the product waterproof and resistant to salt water, for Torqeedo’s marine application.

Read more.

LEMONT, ILLINOIS | The Economist

KRIS PUPEK, an industrial chemist at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, near Chicago, waves a tube of white powder in the air emphatically. A mere pinch of the contents is sufficient for his analytical colleagues to work out if it has the potential to be the next whizzy material in battery research. But Dr Pupek does not deal in pinches. His job is to find out whether potential can be turned into practice—in other words, whether something that has the right properties can be made cheaply, and in bulk. If it can, it is passed on to industry for testing. The hope is that at least one of the tubes will start a revolution.

Batteries are a hugely important technology. Modern life would be impossible without them. But many engineers find them disappointing and feel that they could be better still. Produce the right battery at the right price, these engineers think, and you could make the internal-combustion engine redundant and usher in a world in which free fuel, in the form of wind and solar energy, was the norm. That really would be a revolution.

It is, however, a revolution that people have been awaiting a long time. And the longer they wait, the more the doubters wonder if it will ever happen. The Joint Centre for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), at which Dr Pupek and his colleagues work, hopes to prove the doubters wrong. It has drawn together the best brains in energy research from America’s national laboratories and universities, along with a group of interested companies. It has money, too. It has just received a grant of $120m from the country’s Department of Energy. The aim, snappily expressed, is to make batteries five times more powerful and five times cheaper in five years.

Think positive

Most batteries, from the ancient, lumbering lead-acid monsters used to start cars, to the sleek, tiny lithium cells that power everything from e-book readers to watches, have three essential components: two electrodes (an anode and a cathode) and a medium called an electrolyte that allows positively charged ions to move between the electrodes, balancing the flow of negatively charged electrons that form the battery’s useful current. The skill of creating new types of battery is to tinker with the materials of these three components in ways that make things better and cheaper. Dr Pupek’s white powders are among those materials.

To discover more of them, Argonne will make use of a rapidly growing encyclopedia of substances created by Gerbrand Ceder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr Ceder runs the Materials Project, which aims to be the “Google of material properties”. It allows researchers to speed up the way they search for things with specific properties. Argonne will use the Materials Project as a reference library in its search for better electrodes, and also hopes to add to it.

The first test of any combination of substances that comes out of the Materials Project, or anywhere else, will be to beat the most successful electricity-storage device to emerge over the past 20 years: the lithium-ion battery. Such batteries are now ubiquitous. Most famously, they power many of the electric and hybrid-electric cars that are starting to appear on the roads. More infamously, they have a tendency to overheat and burn. Two recent fires on board Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliners may have been caused by such batteries or their control systems. Improving on lithium-ion would be a feather in the cap of any laboratory.

George Crabtree, JCESR’s newly appointed director, thinks such improvements will be needed soon. He reckons that most of the gains in performance to be had from lithium-ion batteries have already been achieved, making the batteries ripe for replacement. Jeff Chamberlain, his deputy, is more bullish about the existing technology. He says it may still be possible to double the amount of energy a lithium-ion battery of given weight can store, and also reduce its cost by 30-40%.

This illustrates the uncertainty about whether lithium-ion technology, if pushed to its limits, can make electric vehicles truly competitive with those run by internal-combustion engines, let alone better. McKinsey, a business consultancy, reckons that lithium-ion batteries might be competitive by 2020 but, as the chart below shows, there is still a lot of work to do. Moreover, pretenders to lithium-ion’s throne are already emerging.

The leader is probably the lithium-air battery, in which metallic lithium is oxidised at the anode and reduced at the cathode. In essence, it uses atmospheric oxygen as the electrolyte. This reduces its weight and means its energy density is theoretically enormous. That is important. One objection to electric cars is that petrol packs six times more joules of energy into a kilogram than a battery can manage. Bringing that ratio down would make electric vehicles more attractive.

The lithium-air approach has consequently generated a lot of hype. It has problems, though, which will take years of research to resolve. Lithium-air batteries are hard to recharge and extremely temperamental. The chemical reaction which powers them is not far removed from spontaneous combustion. Lithium-air batteries are thus highly inflammable and require heavy safety systems to stop them catching fire.

Luckily, the researchers at JCESR have other irons in the fire. One is the multivalent-ion battery. A lithium atom has but a single electron available for chemical reactions. A magnesium atom, by contrast, has two such valence electrons, and an aluminium atom three.

Theoretically, says Dr Chamberlain, this means it might be possible get two or three times as much energy out of a magnesium or aluminium battery. Though these metals are not as light as lithium (nor as electropositive, to use a piece of chemical jargon that is pertinent to the argument), their extra valence electrons increase the amount of energy they can store, thus pushing them forward in the competition with petrol. They are also cheaper than lithium. And safer. Their ions, however, are harder to move around inside a battery, which is why they have not been used much in the past, and this is where new materials will need to be sought out.

The second transformation, besides electric cars, that better batteries might bring about is what is known as grid-scale storage. If this could be done cheaply enough it would revolutionise the economics of wind and solar energy by making the main problem with such sources—that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow—irrelevant. To this end, Argonne’s researchers are working on what are known as flow batteries.

Go with the flow

In a conventional battery the electrolyte is contained within the cell and serves to transport ions between the electrodes. The battery’s charge is held as chemical potential energy in those electrodes. In a flow battery the charge is held in the electrolyte itself, which is stored in a tank and then pumped through the cell to the place where the electrochemical reactions occur.

Unlike batteries based on cells, flow batteries can be made very large indeed, so they can store vast amounts of energy. Hence the idea of using them to collect surplus power from wind turbines and solar panels and squirrel it away for use later. But their water-based electrolytes limit their potential, because of water’s tendency to decompose by electrolysis. That restricts the voltage at which they can operate. Replacing their aqueous electrolytes with organic ones would overcome this limitation, and Argonne’s researchers are endeavouring to do so.

A battery-driven world, then, would electrify parts of the economy, such as transport, that have been recalcitrant, and would encourage the shift from costly (and polluting) fossil fuels to “fuels” such as sunlight that cost nothing. As a manifesto for a revolution, that takes some beating. The question is, will the revolutionaries win, or will the ancien régime prevail?

From the print edition: Science and technology

While hybrid vehicles have been widely available for more than a dozen years, the market for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) has grown rapidly in the last 2 years, reaching more than 120,000 unit sales worldwide in 2012. While the market has positive momentum, it still faces hurdles. This market data report provides updated Pike Research forecasts for these vehicles based on several key assumptions, including vehicle availability, economic growth, petroleum fuel prices, government influence on the market, and the overall vehicle market.

Despite political targets that are likely to be missed, these assumptions point to robust growth worldwide for electric vehicles, with hybrids growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6%, and PEVs (combined plug-in hybrid and battery electric) growing at a CAGR of 39% between 2012 and 2020. While Japan is anticipated to be the largest market for hybrids in 2020, the United States is anticipated to be the largest market for PEVs that year. However, European countries, with the combination of high gas prices and supportive government policies, are anticipated to have the highest concentrations of plug-in electric vehicles.

This Pike Research report provides forecasts, market sizing, and market share analysis for light duty hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric cars and trucks. The report includes comprehensive data for sales and underlying forecast assumptions for the consumer and fleet markets. Annual vehicle sales by electric vehicle segment and market share for key manufacturers are forecast through 2020, segmented by world region and key countries.

Key Questions Addressed:

• How many hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles will sell each year through 2020?
• What are some of the key factors that are driving growth in the electrified vehicle market?
• What will be the penetration of hybrids and PEVs within the total annual vehicle market?
• Which plug-in and hybrid models are OEMs expected to launch in the next few years?
• What are the anticipated gas and diesel prices in the coming years?
• What incentives are available for PEV purchases?
• How many hybrid and plug-in vehicles will be sold to fleet customers?
• Which manufacturers are the most likely to see the greatest market share in the United States and Germany?

Who needs this report?

• Automotive OEMs
• Electric vehicle component suppliers
• Electric motor manufacturers
• Battery manufacturers
• EV charging equipment manufacturers
• Utilities
• Government agencies
• Industry associations
• Investor community

HOLLAND, MI — The lithium-ion car batteries being built in West Michigan may someday be used here as power storage batteries for electric consumers and power generating companies.

That was one of the potential “second life” uses for high-storage capacity lithium-ion batteries offered by renewable energy expert Jeremy Neubauer at a business meeting Tuesday at the Haworth Inn Conference Center in Holland.

“Energy storage batteries could be placed just before the end users — say 24 houses — and go on the grid during localized blackouts, peak (electric) usage and as a reserve for the grid,” said Neubauer, senior engineer for National Renewable Energy Laboratory of Golden, Colo. which is researching second-use capabilities for used lithium-ion car batteries like those going into the Chevy Volt.

Read more.

By Michael Wayland | MLive

DETROIT, MI- It’s charging up to be a pretty good year for General Motor Co.’s Chevrolet Volt.

Through the first half of this year, sales of the extended-range sedan have already surpassed all sales in 2011.

According to the Detroit-based automaker, Volt sales through June were at 8,817 units, up 221.2 percent compared to the same time period last year and up nearly 1,200 units sold from all of 2011. GM sold 7,671 Volts in 2011, which was well below GM CEO and Chairman Dan Akerson’s target of 10,000 units.

Read more.

Battery companies around the works are heavily investing in research to maximize the potential of lithium, as are governments and universities. Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago is at the forefront of basic and applied research into lithium-based technologies.

SAE Vehicle Electrification went to the U.S. Department of Energy lab in late May to meet with Daniel Abraham, a materials scientist who has been at the lab for 19 years and has focused on lithium battery technology for the past 12. He highlighted some of the work Argonne is doing and offered a Li-ion battery primer of sorts.

Read more.

Fran Elenbaas and a team of engineers at Johnson Controls are looking for ways to incorporate bio-based materials — soy, corn, hemp, linseed or coconut — in automotive applications as a replacement for petroleum-based plastics and as a weight-reducing option to help achieve better efficiency. PHOTO: JOE BOOMGAARD

By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz

HOLLAND — Automobiles of today have been described as computers on wheels.

They have back-up cameras, seat warmers, cylinder deactivation technology, antilock brakes and sophisticated electronic stability control systems.

With all that embedded technology, it might come as a surprise that many automakers and their suppliers are turning to soy, corn, coconut, hemp and linseed for feedstock materials for various parts throughout the vehicle.

Read more.