Haley Zaremba

Haley Zaremba is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. She has extensive experience writing and editing environmental features, travel pieces, local news in the…

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• A UK team has created a supercapacitor battery using contact lens polymer materials.
• The technology promises faster charging, better safety, lower cost, and recyclability compared to lithium-ion batteries.
• Energy storage innovation is critical as grids increasingly rely on variable renewable energy sources.

The energy storage sector is on the cusp of a revolution. As variable energies like wind and solar become more prevalent in global energy grids, energy storage becomes increasingly pivotal for maintaining energy security and grid resilience. But our current battery storage solutions have some major limitations that are holding the clean sector back. So, the race is on to find the next big long-term storage solution. And a team of scientists from the United Kingdom thinks they may have just found it using the humblest of materials.

The new battery storage system uses a supercapacitor and a system built from – no, really – the same types of polymers as your contact lenses. And it could revolutionize the global energy industry forever. The team that developed the technology says that the new battery model has critical advantages over lithium-ion batteries, the current industry standard. 

“The company’s system features zinc halide electrolytes separated from carbon electrodes by a polymer membrane,” reports New Scientist. “This membrane technology is low-cost and uses abundant and widely available raw materials, and it can unlock a new generation of supercapacitors with high energy storage potential.”

While New Scientist reports that the new battery, developed by UK firm Superdielectrics, is not as energy dense as a traditional lithium-ion battery, “it has other advantages including a faster charging time, better safety standards, low cost and a recyclable design.” Lithium-ion batteries have huge existing supply chains, making them an accessible choice. But they are relatively costly, depend on a critical mineral tied up in a geopolitical minefield, and are very tricky to recycle. Oh yeah, and they explode if they get too hot.

The drawbacks of lithium-ion batteries are well known, and the competition to discover and patent the technology that will ultimately replace them – or at least capture a significant part of their market share – is fierce. The Economist has reported that energy storage is “clean energy’s next trillion-dollar business,” and leading law firm Morgan Lewis has described the sector as “the technology that will cash the checks written by the renewable energy industry.”

The sector is so critical because solar and wind – the fastest growing forms of renewable energy – are variable energy forms. This means that their production is volatile and outside of human control, depending on the weather, time of day, and the seasons, rather than responding to demand. This can place a significant strain on electric grids designed for a steady supply of fossil fuels. As a result, in regions with high levels of renewables in their energy mix, we are already seeing historic blackouts and energy prices dropping below zero as a result of energy variability. 

Energy storage evens this out and protects energy grids by capturing excess energy during production peaks and storing it until demand outstrips supply, at which point that energy is fed back into the grid. And there are a million ways to do this – the question is which one of them will rise to the top. Will it be thermal batteries? Gravity storage? Lithium iron phosphate batteries? Or will it be Superdielectrics’ souped-up contact lens? 

The technology is still in early phases of development, and is not going to “leapfrog” over lithium-ion batteries anytime soon, but its makers are confident that it’s on track to do just that in due time. 

“We believe that the home energy storage market today is where the computer market was in about 1980,” Superdielectrics’ Marcus Scott told an audience of journalists and investors. “Clean, reliable and affordable electricity is no longer a future vision. It’s a reality, and we believe we’re building the technology that will power it.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

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