Back in January 2021 I made a video about a liquid metal battery technology that was
being hailed as a potential market disruptor in the energy storage sector. Unlike many of the
other start-up battery technologies that also claim to be game-changing market disruptors
this one did actually appear to be quite an interesting proposal for large, utility-scale
stationary energy storage, and the company that made it - Ambri Inc based in Massachusetts USA,
boasted Bill Gates as their largest investor. So it looked like all we needed to do was just sit
back and wait for the revolution to transform our electricity grids and accelerate the mass adoption
of wind and solar power. We haven't seen much about Ambri in the mainstream media since then,
and 18 months or so further down the road, quite a few of you good folks out there
have been asking me what's happened to the company and whether the dream of cheap, safe,
Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. The Ambri liquid metal battery was the brainchild
of this guy. He's called Donald Sadoway and he's a charismatic professor of materials
chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sadoway has been working on the
technology for more than a decade since setting up the Liquid Metal Battery Corporation in 2010
using seed money he received from Gates. Since then the company has overcome setbacks and
disappointments that would have deterred lesser entrepreneurs from carrying on. But Donald and his
colleagues were convinced they had something that could fundamentally work in principle
and that could be scaled up if they could just find the optimum combination of materials and
operating parameters. So let's just have a quick recap on how the liquid metal battery works.
Two different elements - antimony, which melts at about 630 degrees Celsius,
and an alloy of calcium which has a melting point of more than 800 degrees, are combined with a
solid electrolyte and put inside a sealed chamber insulated with a ceramic material. The whole thing
is encased in a positively polarized stainless steel case with a negative terminal at the top. At
room temperature the internal elements are all in their solid states and it's impossible for them to
react with each other, which makes the batteries completely safe for transport. To initially charge
up the system the contents are heated to 500 degrees Celsius, at which point the metals
and the salt electrolyte become a single molten mass. Then gravity separates them out according
to their density. The antimony sinks. The molten salt stays in the middle, and the calcium alloy
rises to the top. Antimony is much more electrically negative than the calcium alloy
so there's a potential difference, or voltage, between them. As the battery discharges,
the calcium alloy breaks down into calcium ions and electrons. The ions move down to the antimony
layer and the electrons flow out through an external circuit to do some useful work.
The result of the discharge phase is a completely homogeneous new alloy of antimony and calcium
inside the battery with the electrolytes sitting on the top. After that initial start-up blast of
energy to get things going after installation, the reaction generates its own heat, keeping
the battery at optimum working temperature and eliminating the need for an external heat source.
That means everything stays in a molten state, which eliminates problems like deformation and
dendrite formation that electrochemical batteries tend to suffer from over time.
To recharge the system, an electrical current is passed through the battery to reverse the
reaction and place the calcium alloy and the antimony back in their original positions.
Liquid metal batteries need to be worked hard - ideally being fully charged and discharged
twice a day to maintain their constant high temperature. Under those conditions,
Ambri claims an overall end-to-end efficiency of 80 percent and tens of thousands of cycles with
negligible degradation or capacity fade. And that self-maintaining temperature means the batteries
will work just as safely and effectively in very hot or very cold climates around the world.
In May 2021 Ambri commenced a project with a company called Terascale
to provide 250 megawatt hours of liquid metal battery storage for their Energos data centre
out in Reno, Nevada at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center next to other existing
data centres operated by Apple, Google and Switch and close to Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory.
The Energos project will be developed over 10 years and will cover 1497 hectares and
include 500 megawatts of renewable power capacity generated on site and distributed via a microgrid
backed up by Ambri's technology. Ambri's chief commercial officer, Adam Briggs, said "The Ambri
systems are particularly well suited for the project's high desert operations for shifting
of its large amounts of renewable solar load and for its grid system peak shaving capacity."
In August 2021 Ambri announced it had secured 144 million dollars worth of funding from a group
called Reliance New Energy Solar, with Bill Gates also chipping in a bit more of his own capital.
The money was earmarked for the design and construction of high-volume manufacturing
facilities in the US and around the world to meet what Ambri sees as a growing demand from
grid scale energy storage markets and large industrial clients. Reliance New Energy Solar
plans to work with Ambri to build out a network of liquid metal battery storage
across its facilities to secure a domestic source of energy for its supply chain. Reliance chairman,
Mukesh Ambani, said "Reliance Industries sees this strategic partnership with Ambri as an
important step in its journey of achieving its decarbonisation goals. Our investment in Ambri
is part of our broader plan to develop the Durubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex, which
will be amongst the largest integrated renewable energy manufacturing facilities in the world and
the epicentre of India's green economy movement. Since then, Ambri has continued the search for
new partners. In June 2022 the company secured a deal with an independent South African renewable
energy provider called Earth and Wire. The contract will see Ambri supply a battery system
to serve a 300 megawatt, 1200 megawatt-hour, combined wind and solar power generation site
in the Eastern Cape, which will be the largest battery energy storage system in South Africa.
As demand for energy in South Africa increases and the publicly owned electricity utility Eskom
starts to decommission its coal generation fleet, Ambri are well placed to support the
introduction of renewable energy resources that can connect effectively and supply consistently
into the South African national grid. Ambri will begin shipping batteries for this project in 2024
with installation completed in 2026. Then in July 2022 Ambri achieved a landmark accreditation when
it received certification for UL 1973. which is the standard for batteries for use in stationary
and motive auxiliary power applications. "This is an important milestone for our company",
said David Bradwell, chief technology officer at Ambri. "It sends a strong and positive message to
the market about the safety and resilience of our battery technology." That was followed by
news just this month that Ambri's now using some of the investment money from Reliance Industries
to expand its manufacturing capability at a new facility in Milford Massachusetts. The new
facility, which Ambri is calling its Innovation Hub, will enable the company to significantly
broaden its manufacturing operations to cope with what looks to be some pretty rapid growth in the
size and scope of its operation. The facility has a footprint of 140,000 square feet, which is more
than triple the size of the current manufacturing facility. That'll allow for a production capacity
of 200,000 battery cells per year which Ambri will start installing into customer systems in 2023.
"This exciting new step in commercialization marks a major moment for our company and its future"
said Ambri's Adam Briggs, "expanding our operations makes it possible for us to continue to
innovate and produce with the speed and the scale needed to deliver quality cutting-edge products
that meet the growing demands for safe and affordable long-duration energy storage." It's all
starting to sound a bit like a PR video sponsored by Ambri themselves isn't it? But you guys did
ask for an update so I'm just reporting what's happened since we last took a look at the company,
and in this case it really does look like there's been some positive progress.
And just for full disclosure I've absolutely no ties to Ambri and no stake in their business,
and no, this video is not sponsored by them either. So, can you sink your retirement funding
into Ambri and join Bill Gates and the others as an investor? Well, apparently not just yet. Ambri
isn't available to retail investors right now because it's not currently traded on the public
stock exchange which means only venture capital funds or other major investors are able to invest.
At the time of researching and writing for this video there haven't been any IPO announcements for
Ambri, but with an energy storage market projected to be worth at least 50 billion dollars by 2030,
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the lure of Wall Street proves impossible for the
company to ignore. So what's your view? Do you think this liquid battery system has a
promising future? Maybe you even work at Ambri and you can give us a bit of additional insight.
Either way, as always, the place to leave your thoughts is in the comments section below. That's
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