Back in 2015 Tesla launched their now legendary Powerwall to great fanfare. It wasn't the only
battery energy storage system that you could buy, but it was well packaged and very well marketed,
and for the most part it did exactly what it claimed to do,
which was to offer homeowners a degree of flexibility and independence from the grid,
often in combination with a domestic solar PV array. Today in April 2023 around 250,000
households around the world have a Tesla Powerwall installed, so it's not surprising that,
just as they have done in the electric vehicle world, other manufacturers have looked at Tesla's
success and thought 'I'd like a piece of that action' But of course you need an angle don't
you? If you just try to rip off Tesla's design and technology then you'll probably fail. You have to
offer the customer something uniquely different and hopefully better if you're going to wrestle
market dominance away from a company headed by one of the world's most eccentric and quirky showmen.
Well now journalists in the science and technology community are wondering whether that moment may
have arrived with the launch of the Ampricity battery, which claims to be using solid-state
cell chemistry and have all sorts of benefits and advantages over its competitors. So let's
take the cover plate off and see what's going on inside one of these contraptions shall we?
Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. Not another video about bloody solid state batteries
Dave!? We've been listening to you YouTube types droning on about these things for years
now and no one's managed to properly nail one at scale yet have they? Well no, not really, that's
true. At least not one large enough to power a house anyway. Which is precisely why this new
Amptricity domestic battery storage system seems to have raised some eyebrows in the tech press.
So who are these folks then and why have they apparently suddenly materialized out of the ether
with a game-changing cell chemistry design that no one else seems to have been able to produce,
despite many years of research and development. Well Amptricity was founded in Florida in 2020
and operated in stealth mode until November 2022 when they first announced their claimed industry
breakthrough. Ampricity reckon their battery technology is at production ready status and
they're taking pre-orders right now at their website. In fact they say the first deliveries
will actually be happening in quarter one of 2023, which has just ended. But they also say that their
first factory will be built by 2024, so it's not clear where the initial production run is actually
being made. Nevertheless, Ampricity clearly have big plans. They reckon they're on track to
manufacture and deliver as much as four gigawatt hours worth of domestic batteries in the next 13
months. That's enough for 400,000 homes, which these sharp-eared among you will already have
worked out is about 50% more units than the total number of Tesla Powerwalls shipped since 2015. So,
you know, nothing if not ambitious! And they're not finished there either. The
plan is to ramp up to 16 gigawatt hours worth of production at manufacturing facilities that
they're currently looking at in various U.S states. The company also say they have a one
megawatt hour demo unit available right now for commercial customers to come and have a look at.
The company certainly has one of the ingredients that made Tesla so successful - a charismatic and
delightfully overconfident alpha male CEO. He's called Damir Perge and my goodness he certainly
doesn't lack motivation! Take a listen to this little snippet from a recent conversation with
Mitch Radcliffe over at the superb Earth 911 podcast... "I mean it's a box that will take
energy in and and give it to you when you want it. And then the Holy Grail is that we can discharge
it over eight hours. You know what, I'll tell you this way... because of our solid state solution
today people can be completely off the grid. This is the Holy Grail. This is absolutely the
holy grail for someone that wants to be off the grid." So, the holy grail, eh? Them's big
claims Mr Perge! Now of course the ability to be off-grid as Mr Perge describes it has absolutely
nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not your battery's are solid state or otherwise. You could
theoretically go off-grid with lead acid leisure batteries if you wanted to. I wouldn't recommend
it, but I bet some of you good folks out there have already done it, and you can tell us all
about it in the comments section below if you like. So, where's the unique selling point here,
really? Well we had a look at the difference between solid-state lithium-ion batteries and
normal liquid or gel batteries in a video back in November and I guess it's worth a quick recap
here. In theory solid-state batteries are a far better solution to the problem of storing as much
energy as possible for as long as possible with total safety, but also instant deliverability.
A solid electrolyte takes up far less space than the liquid version found in existing Lithium-ion
batteries. That makes the whole thing much more compact with a much higher energy density,
potentially as much as three times that of a standard lithium-ion battery. Solid-state
batteries can work at very high rates of power as well. Research suggests that they may be capable
of recharging up to six times faster than current technologies and achieve far more charging cycles
during their useful working lifetime, and because they don't have a volatile and highly flammable
liquid electrolyte they don't have the potential for thermal runaway which, while very rare,
is nevertheless a factor that needs to be closely monitored and managed with traditional Lithium-ion
batteries. Ampricity tell us they combine their solid-state polymer electrolyte with different
chemistries for the cathode depending on the application, with the highest energy density
configuration having been tested at the Chinese National 201 Institute as having a gravimetric
energy density of more than 377 Watt hours per kilogram. Now that's an impressive statistic.
It beats any existing lithium-ion battery available on the market today hands down,
which means maybe we're on to something here. So let's take a closer look at their own data sheets.
According to Amptricity's own website, that claimed 377 Watt hours per kilogram
comes from this option, which is a very small nickel-manganese-cobalt, or NMC battery cell,
designed for some very specific applications and definitely not the cell chemistry they'll be using
in their domestic energy storage units. For those devices Ampricity, quite understandably, revert
to lithium-ion phosphate chemistry which means they don't use any of these somewhat troublesome
and now very expensive materials like cobalt and nickel. But that cell has a rated energy density
of just 180 Watt hours per kilogram which is really nothing special, and about on a par
with all the other non-solid state lithium-ion phosphate batteries already available on the
market. By comparison Tesla currently used their own 2170 cells for the Powerwall 2 model, which
have a cell level energy density close to 300 watt hours per kilogram. Amptricity are not yet
marketing their product in Europe so we can only really do a price comparison in U.S dollars. So
the Tesla Powerwall, not including installation, costs ten thousand five hundred dollars in the US
for a 13.5 kilowatt hour battery. The Amptricity unit, not including installation, costs just short
of twenty thousand dollars for a 12 kilowatt hour battery. So at least on the face of it we've got
a product here with no published technical data on its claimed solid state technology
and a performance rating that's no better than a bog standard lithium-ion phosphate battery.
So what else can Amptricity offer us then? Well if I'm understanding their CEO correctly, the virtues
he really wants to sell you on are safety and longevity... "and so no now you've got a magic
energy box that can last more than 25 years. We're giving a lifetime warranty. You don't need to uh
worry about it uh exploding on you and so... and you know you've seen the cars blowing up, for
example, because they're using current uh lithium technologies, because they're all gel based." So,
safety then. Well, we've touched on this several times in videos in the past and I'll admit that
I'm as guilty as the next YouTuber of showing dramatic images of unsuspecting members of the
youth setting their trousers on fire or slightly sad Tesla owners watching their prize assets going
up in flames. And it is technically true to say that any damage causing a short circuit, including
the growth of those pesky dendrites that we've looked at before, or any overheating or badly
managed overcharging can cause thermal runaway that can result in fires or even explosions.
But there are literally billions of lithium-ion batteries in mobile phones, electronic devices,
and electric vehicles all over the planet, and the reality is if you buy a properly
manufactured lithium-ion battery, pre-fitted with an appropriate battery management system or BMS
and you use the correct charger and not some ropey piece of wire that you bought down at
'Honest Harry's Mobile Phone Emporium', then unless you choose to smash it with a hammer
and a hole punch the chances of an unexpected conflagration really are vanishingly small.
'But hang on Dave!' Mr Perge would no doubt say, 'you're not comparing apples with apples here',
because Amptricity claim their battery is good for 11,000 charge cycles and they provide a
25-year warranty compared to only 10 years but the Tesla power wall so they argue that over an
entire life cycle you're actually getting better value for money with the Amptricity option. They
also say they'll come and collect your battery at the end of that quarter century, strip out all
the metals and recycle the solid electric polymer into a second life use as a fertilizer component.
If that's true, then that really is a very positive benefit. Whether or not you,
as a consumer, feel a 25-year promise is enough to sway you towards this apparent holy grail,
gamechanger, instead of an existing competitor is a decision I'll have to leave to you.
I'll be very interested in your views though, so as always I'll be down in the comments
section below this video for a while now and I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
That's it for this week though. Thanks as always to the Channel's fantastic Patreon supporters who
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very much for watching. Have a great week, and remember to just have a think. See you next week.