Afc Energy Share Discussion Threads

[beeezzz] 27/11/2014 11:59

Posted on STGR by comet.....will this affect FC's Hmm

Imagine 1000 gigafactories - that's what's coming
MATTHEW WRIGHT
14 NOV, 9:08 AM

Imagine 1000 gigafactories – that’s what we’ll be seeing in the coming decade.

Tesla is everyone’s favourite motor car company, a darling of investors large and small. Rev heads who have driven a Tesla give it the nod, even Japanese uber conglomerates are lining up to get in on the action. It’s a marriage between high tech performance cars and dot.com risk takers, fast paced development and cleantech, all of which has the company growing in leaps and bounds.

Tesla’s big announcement following the launch of their lotus bodied Roadster and the new seven-seater family Model S, is their new (battery producing) 'Gigafactory'. Most people who hear about the $5 billion battery factory probably think it’s mind-boggingly big, and a big gamble on the future of motoring. They would be right; based on current production the Gigafactory is going to double the size of global lithium-ion battery production.

Figure: Tesla’s gigafactory will double global Li-ion battery supply


Source: IIT

Some pundits have speculated that the factory will create overcapacity and that Tesla, along with partner Panasonic, will lose money on the venture. But if current and rapidly declining battery costs are any indicator, the Gigafactory will go nowhere near supplying worldwide future demand for lithium-ion batteries.

So if the naysayers are wrong (and they almost always are when Elon Musk is involved) then what’s in store for the battery industry?

Answer: A likely massive upscaling of the global battery industry in the same way that occurred in PV panel production from 2008, which targeted a very similar market with the same money to spend from the same diverse funding sources.

So the Tesla/Panasonic Gigafactory, even with that huge expansion of lithium-ion battery production, is insignificant compared with the battery production tsunami coming in the next decade. It’s also a baby when compared to the 72 million units, $1.5 trillion a year car industry and the $3 trillion oil industry.

So the Gigafactory will cost $5 billion, but the kind of scale that will get us an electric transport future, with batteries costing less than $100/kWh, will involve building 1000 gigafactories or perhaps just 200 that are each five times the size of it. Kicking off the march to 1000 is stealthy German concern Alevo, which has just announced an initial $1 billion for converting a former Philip Morris factory in North Carolina to build its lithium-ion for grid storage battery solution based on a proprietary inorganic electrolyte.

It is highly likely that these (let’s call them 'terra') factories will be built in China, as has occurred with solar panel manufacturing. Once the improved battery technology out of Nanyang Technology University, Singapore – which increases the lifetime and cycle life of lithium-ion batteries – is commercialised, taking away the risk for Chinese investors, they’ll kick-start an investment cycle bigger than we’ve seen for solar photovoltaic.

So how is it that the Gigafactory is being lauded as a huge development? It is only the beginning of an industry that will need to multiply output 1000 times from where it is today to dislodge the internal combustion engine.

The Gigafactory is sized to provide battery packs for 500,000 vehicles produced by Tesla per annum. If we were to scale the Gigafactory to meet global annual cars production, we’d need to expand 144 times the Tesla factory’s current size. With the cost reduction we’ll see through the doubling of lithium-ion battery density (coming soon care of Nanyang University, Stanford and others) and the more than halving of costs of production (through economies of scale), electric vehicles will be able to be supplied with larger battery banks for longer range. These will most probably be twice as large at 120-170kWh from 60-85kWh increasing range to 320-400km. So just to scale the world’s battery supply to meet a future of pure electric and range, extending plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will need 288 times the capacity of today’s lithium-ion battery production.

But there’s more, once batteries are at the point where we’re buying them in all our cars, they’ll also be at the point where they’re completely competitive (in stand-alone home power systems) with capacity supplied by electricity distribution and transmissions companies at the customer point of use. This could result in a doubling again. From 288 to 576 times today’s annual production, as households use the batteries to get off the power grid.

And what about the rest? To make up 1000 times today’s production, the developing world’s growing consumption (with its trends towards the standard of living that we’ve become accustomed to in the West) will be putting batteries in everything from bicycles, motor bikes and scooters to home and business storage systems.

Once the investments have been made in the first dozen or so factories mimicking Tesla, it will be game over for the conventional petrol and diesel engines and today’s electricity grids in their current form with their current structures. Lithium-ion batteries will finish the job that solar has started, advancing the world out of the fossil fuel age.

Matthew Wright is executive director of Zero Emissions Australia, director technical sales at Efficiency Matrix and resident columnist at Climate Spectator.

[beeezzz] 27/11/2014 11:25

Waving good bye to a fool and his money are parted so easily by AFC....take good care of those losses.....luckily I brought at 9p in 2009 and sold half my holding at 30p.

I'm afraid like all technology they can be overtaken by a better technology.....may take a few years but how long will it take AFC to get their contraption working.

[norbus] 27/11/2014 05:16

bz
could be the naswer to your prayers : theclaw on ITM; Interesting ; less threatening than cold fusion. more for clorine process plants and others , the domain of AFC , generating hydrogen as a byproduct than P2G storage and Grid balancing

theclaw 27 Nov'14 - 03:25 - 11226 of 11226 0 0

A weak spot found in otherwise ultra-strong graphene -- the thinnest, strongest and least permeable material known to science -- could in fact be a boon and could lead to a revolution in fuel cell technology, researchers say.

Research at Britain's Manchester University led by Andre Geim -- who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of graphene -- has shown that the material is not quite as impermeable as previously though and will, in fact, allow protons to easily pass through it.

This quality could be utilized in the future to create graphene membranes that could "sieve" hydrogen gas directly out of the air to be used to generate electricity, the researchers say.

"We are very excited about this result because it opens a whole new area of promising applications for graphene in clean energy harvesting and hydrogen-based technologies," says a co-researcher in Geim's study, Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo.

Graphene, at a carbon atom thick, is 200 times as strong weight-for-weight as steel.

Its impermeability to atoms of any gas or liquid has made it a candidate for use in impermeable packaging and corrosion-proof coating.

Although even the smallest atoms cannot pass through graphene, Geim and his researchers suspected that protons -- hydrogen atoms that have been stripped of their electrons -- might find a way through.

Confirming that they could in fact do so means graphene could be used as proton-conducting membranes, considered a vital component in developing fuel cells, the researchers said in a report of their study published in the journal Nature.

Fuel cells and other hydrogen-based technologies require a barrier that only allow hydrogen protons to pass through, they point out.

A significant problem with existing fuel cells is that the fuels that allow them to convert chemical energy into electricity leak across their membranes, reducing the cell's efficiency by "poisoning" the chemical processes -- something the researchers say can be solved using graphene.

"When you know how it should work, it is a very simple setup," Lozada-Hidalgo says. "You put a hydrogen-containing gas on one side, apply small electric current and collect pure hydrogen on the other side. This hydrogen can then be burned in a fuel cell."

Although the scientists worked with very small membranes yielding tiny flows of hydrogen, the technology to make large graphene sheets exists, notes researcher Sheng Hu.

"Because graphene can be produced these days in square meter sheets, we hope that it will find its way to commercial fuel cells sooner rather than later," Hu says.

[norbus] 27/11/2014 00:22

When Warren Buffet comes onto these FBBs to gat his inspiration, he is reputed to have said he has as much laughter in 10 minutes than watching Jon Stewart for half hour; Acta needs pump and dump artists, this one is in intensive care

[ride the wave] 26/11/2014 20:18

Beeez

You admitted to being a long term sharholder since 2009 . Since then you have lost your pants . So did you sell at a loss ??

If so Why are you posting your drivel on here every single day (lol) . You should move onto a share that you think will do well instead of hanging around here like a low life .

You could be a good Samaritan , are you here out of the goodness of your heart ?

These bbs are funny !!!

[rovi67] 26/11/2014 11:05

He's In Ramsey, I of M Saw him yesterday at Looney's

[beeezzz] 26/11/2014 11:03

NB.....ITM....are releasing good news which is good...saw the new hydrogen car at LA motor show....they hope to sell 3,000 cars next year....well its a start.

What year to you expect them to make a profit?

Who? I saw Sheila the other day does that help.

NB...are you correcting my grammar...if so thanks.

[broshm] 26/11/2014 09:38

Anyone here seen Kelly ?

[norbus] 26/11/2014 08:12

You don't half talk some $hit mate (lol)

He gets it out of your mouth lad; what is the company trying to do? do you know? and where are they now? Has your merchant bank sent you its analysis?

[norbus] 26/11/2014 08:08

bz
What do you think of your Tri-part regulations now Mr Brown which you setup to regulate the city... useless to the point of incompetent.

incompetent to the point of uselessness

Do not puncture the punks balloon; he could not ride a donkey; this company is a gonner for 2 years at least ;I'd sell and get back in at 2p. meanwhile ITM is looking to have a sparkling future

[brutus8] 25/11/2014 19:31

Ride the wave.Wait to see if the Koreans sign up first because if they don't this will go in the bin.I look forward to putting a claim to HMR if that happens and get my money back in full minus interest. A bit like premium bonds but sadly bankrupting the country further.

[ride the wave] 25/11/2014 17:01

You don't half talk some $hit mate (lol) . The Party hasn't even begun yet IMO . I know this share is a punt , but boy if they get to be commercial then I can see this doing a Microsoft in the future and that's no ramp . Time will tell who was right .

I like the risk vs reward ratio and I for one will be increasing my holding at the end of December (as long as the price doesn't rise too much) .

Bears and derampers (paid trolls) will be toast soon enough . All we have to do is let afc get on with their job . Everything else is just noise and that's why it goes in one ear and out of the other .


GLA

[beeezzz] 25/11/2014 15:43

New comers ever the optimist....sadly the party is over here.

NB...YOu are so right...the few really good honest directors are far few between.

Program on banks just points out that our crooked government are in cahoots with the stinking lying down right dishonest bankers....they have got used to making huge profits by gambling and will use any methods to get there fix...even if it means destroying good businesses in the process....what a state of affairs, it just saddens me we have allowed this to happen.....

What do you think of your Tri-part regulations now Mr Brown which you setup to regulate the city... useless to the point of incompetent.

[ride the wave] 25/11/2014 15:28

Ticking up !

All the negative posts are having the opposite effect .

[norbus] 25/11/2014 11:16

globalisation, deregulation licensed thugs , nomads and crooked enterpreneurs to chance their arms at AIM. nothing will happen unless you get a group to sue LSE
ACTA would be perfect

[broshm] 24/11/2014 17:52

how do we get this yz thing off here ?
Are we on a lost cause ?

[hereford29] 21/11/2014 09:54

this is what happens when an incompetent Board hires an incompetent ceo

[norbus] 21/11/2014 09:15

bz
Dr Ruth, Dr Roy, what difference does it make?
Start and strip the company down to bare essentials; CEO goes first.
Ascertain if there is ANY technology realistically suitable to commercialise profitably within 2 years, and if not I's sell up to ACTA spa.