11.8.22-Tokyo-Showcase-Ambri

ADAM BRIGGS: Yeah, I'm going to talk about Ambri's liquid metal batteries and the grid-scale energy storage market. So batteries, as you probably know, are a exponentially growing market-- we never say exploding-- business today, primarily because of demand for EVs, which is 10 times the battery demand than for large-scale energy storage. That is creating a problem because 95% of the batteries are lithium ion batteries, for both consumer electronics, EVs, and grid-scale energy storage.

So the demand for those materials has reached a point where the price of lithium has increased by over 10 times recently. And the availability of batteries for grid-scale is second in priority to the EV market. The good news is that the grid-scale energy storage market, which is today about 15 gigawatt hours per year, is growing to about 80 gigawatt hours in 2030. And but most of that growth is for long-duration energy storage.

So long duration means batteries that can charge and discharge energy over multiple hours, as opposed to most of the lithium ion batteries that are out there today. They charge and discharge over minutes. And that's a good fit for that technology. It's a good fit for the economics of that technology. But new, lower cost batteries are needed, that use different materials.

And so liquid metal batteries, which were invented at MIT by a Professor, Donald Sadoway, and his team, which included Ambri CTO David Bradwell, who's a PhD student of Dr. Sadoway. There must be a clicker here somewhere I guess. So Ambri's battery uses new materials, calcium and antimony, as its electrodes, and is a 4-hour to 24-hour duration battery. So it's designed specifically for stationary energy storage because it has a 20-year lifetime.

It utilizes materials that are not flammable. And over that 20 years it doesn't degrade meaningfully. As we all know, lithium ion batteries on our cell phones don't do well over multiple years of heavy usage. Lastly, the materials we use are recyclable, and that creates a much better battery than lithium ion for these long-scale energy storage systems.

So otherwise the technology is very similar to lithium ion batteries, except for the fact that it is at a high temperature. So these batteries are heated up upon installation at a project site. And upon reaching their elevated temperature, then they can be charged and discharged. And just like the phone and the battery in your phone, they generate their own heat.

That maintains their high temperature without utilizing energy in order to maintain that temperature. These batteries are suited primarily for large-scale installation. So we're talking about hundreds of megawatt-hours of energy storage being moved every day from essentially the peak solar or wind generation periods of the day to the peak electricity demand periods of the day.

So we call that essentially arbitrage market, where you're taking advantage of the lowest-cost price of electricity going into the battery. And then later in the evening, when the price of electricity is higher, you release that energy back into the grid. And that price difference is the arbitrage that pays for the use of that battery.

So that is what's needed in order to drive a stable grid that has increasing penetration of renewable generation. And that's the market opportunity that's driving the growth of energy storage going forward. So as you can see, Ambri's battery system has a lower cost of materials than lithium ion, about a third the cost for those electrodes. And that drives an opportunity for Ambri's batteries to be lower-priced than lithium ion as well as have better features.

And the way these batteries are assembled is cells, cells which are packaged into shipping containers, and shipping containers which are placed on the ground next to each other. One of the unique aspects of this technology is it does not, therefore, need air conditioning systems, which lithium ion batteries when they get hot need to have that heat removed. So we don't have essentially a drain on the energy of the battery in order to try to keep them cool.

And Ambri is a company that's approaching commercialization. So we have recently shipped our first system for a Microsoft data center, to be followed by five pilot systems in 2023, mostly for utilities. We've announced Xcel Energy and Reliance of India will be recipients of those. We've also announced our first large-scale commercial project starting in '24, which is a 300-megawatt 1.2 gigawatt-hour project in South Africa.

All of these systems will be designed and built in our US manufacturing pilot line and then high volume manufacturing plant. That will be followed by international manufacturing plants for these batteries. This is a picture of the Microsoft system.

So it's a single container. It has trays of those cells inserted into it, essentially looks and acts just like a lithium ion battery, and in fact was tested by Microsoft to deliver its power from 0 to full power in about 6 milliseconds. So it is incredibly fast-acting technology, which is one of the reasons batteries do well in energy storage applications, as opposed to gravity, pumped hydro, compressing air, and various other technologies that are being contemplated.

This is a picture of the large-scale energy storage system for South Africa. So this would occupy about two hectares of space, which is about the same footprint as the best lithium ion out there. So there's no trade-off associated with land usage. As you can see, we do stack these containers on top of each other. That helps drive the efficient use of space.

It also has an implication of the safety, because you could never do that with a lithium ion system, which if it created a fire in one of the containers on the bottom would clearly then burn up through the container on the top. And that would be something that any Fire Marshal would prevent from being possible. So Ambri has an international manufacturing plan.

We are working with partners who are interested in building these battery systems outside the United States. And here in East Asia, we'd be looking for opportunities to serve this market with a partner who is interested in joint venturing or licensing this technology in order for manufacturing in Asia to serve the growing markets in this part of the world. Thanks for your time listening to Ambri about batteries and look forward to seeing anybody after the show.