Hi folks - Dave here from the Just Have a Think channel.

Following the publication of this video I received some important feedback from a very well respected industry analyst which highlights some facts that I failed to spot during my research and which in hindsight, should really have been included in the video. Here is a summary

1. Claimed round trip efficiency in FORM Energy due diligence documents is 36%. That is very low and could be considered 'the kiss of death already'.  This analyst regards 70% as a cut off before electricity costs just kill the business case.

2. Form is on their fourth pivot. They started with one chemistry, pivoted to another, bought the iron air technology from a failed company, and now are openly talking about shifting to make green iron. That’s not a good sign.

3. 100 hours is good if it’s flexible. What this analyst has heard is that Form is inflexible. You have to fill it up for 100 hours and when you start it you have to take all the energy it produces over the 100 hours. This is kind of the opposite of a useful component on a grid dominated by variable renewables. You can’t turn it up, you can’t turn it down, you just get all the electricity back. That severely limits the range of applications where this technology might be useful.


Having received those caveats from my contact, I note that several utilities in the USA have added FORM Energy's system to their portfolio, so perhaps they have calculated that even at such low efficiencies it is still worth having this additional 'string to their bow' for very worst case scenarios.

Ultimately, facts are facts - if the numbers don't stack up for Form Energy's system in real world operation then, just like any other start up with a misguided business model, the company will not succeed. I will be watching closely to see how they progress in the coming months and years.

Cheers

Putting the factory in ''rust belt'' is amazing thinking... since rust is abundant there :D

Great to see follow up videos. Too many channel  tell us about the "next big thing " but never follow up if it does not pan out.

Looks like they've ironed out the problems!

we appreciate you every week, Dave. Thank you. Upvote.

I just applied to form energy! Wish me luck! 😆

Yay! Fixed grid power storage, cheap, easily done, and doesn't require anything rare or expensive, and can be readily built and put to use!!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

The iron air battery sounds perfect for not just low cost, easily obtained materials, but also for iron recycling, such as the iron that was used to build so many older buildings that are in need of tearing down, so loads of iron could be recycled and made into iron batteries, rather than construction debris going into landfills.

Dave's graph shows pumped hydro and he said that the sites needed a mountain.  But the pumped hydro can use a surface reservoir and an abandoned underground mine for storage.  There was a study that found thousands of spots suitable for pumped hydro.

It's got elecrolytes!?
I'm sold.

Thank you for good content and not peppering it with ads.

Thank you for following up on this!

Very good of you to revisit the systems you presented after a few years, showing their viability. Cheers

Hi Dave,  please do a show on CATLs announcement they will install the latest 'real' sodium batteries in cars within weeks. -40 deg C and 10000 cycles specs. Surely this has a huge impact on all you previous videos

Thanks for the video mate. We can all use the good news.

In Germany they are also planning on installing iron air batteries into the coal plants

That's fantastic news. Who would've thought rust could help stabilise the grid!

This was a just scratch your head episode. It seems so obvious, and it's the perfect niche solution for our toolkit of renewable solutions. Great presentation, as always!

Thank you, Dave. I was excited to hear about this technology after watching your vid a few years back (energy-dense and very heavy seems a perfect fit for power generation fleets), and more excited when my company became one of the utilities to pursue construction of a 500 MWh battery storage pilot with Form. I am hoping to take the opportunity to visit as the project gets closer to completion.

I am the only one that says "Hello, Dave" back to Dave, at the start of these videos?