When Spain’s power grid failed on April 28th, 2025, it quickly became a very serious issue. Not only for the economic impacts, but life-or-death serious due to multiple, indirect deaths associated to the blackout. Emergency services, transportation, communication and other vital services were halted during this power outage. Not
Your lights just flickered. Not for long. Just a split second. You probably didn’t think much about it, but somewhere a battery may have just saved your city from a blackout. I’m not talking about keeping your phone charged or your EV running. These kinds of batteries are
NOTE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly associated the failure of Northvolt to their sodium ion battery production issues, but their challenges weren’t chemistry specific. That section has been removed. I’ve got sodium batteries right here in my hands, but three sodium battery companies went bankrupt in
If you’ve been following battery tech for the past decade, you’ve heard the solid state battery story before. Toyota promised them by 2025. Samsung said they were just around the corner. QuantumScape’s stock soared on promises of revolutionary batteries. And yet here we are, still driving cars
We’ve been told for years that fast-charging kills batteries. The typical warning is that if you spring for too much current too quickly, you’ll cook the lifespan. But what if that rule is wrong? A team at the Georgia Institute of Technology just flipped the script. They found
What if I told you the world’s largest battery company just announced batteries that cost as low as $10 per kilowatt hour? Not $100. Ten. That’s like going from paying for a luxury car to buying a bicycle. And the kicker? They’re not using some exotic new
This Battery Has Blood In It (Kinda). What if the secret to next-generation batteries is circulating in your blood, and the blueprint for powering AR contact lenses is swimming in the Amazon? Humans have been building batteries for a couple hundred years, but nature has been perfecting energy systems for
When is a battery more than just a battery? That’s not a riddle. A battery is more than a battery when it’s also a wall… or a floor, or even part of your car, or a plane. But what if that same battery could cut a laptop’s
Sodium-ion battery technology isn’t exactly new, but something interesting is happening. CATL, the world’s biggest lithium battery manufacturer, says that up to half the market could switch to sodium. That’s right—the biggest name in lithium batteries is betting against lithium. Looks like lithium might need to
You’ve heard of paper straws and cups, but how about a paper battery? One you can compost when you’re done with it. Two companies are already proving it works, one of them with a battery that runs on sugar. So how did humble paper become a next-generation battery
Lithium-sulfur batteries were once kind of a joke. A chemistry so unstable and unreliable that no one took them seriously. But now? Multiple research teams have recently made strides in transforming sulfur from stinky stone to capable cathode. Some claim they’ve cracked the code — creating prototypes that charge faster
Vanadium redox flow batteries are hitting the bigtime, and I mean big. One of the biggest Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) ever is a vanadium redox flow battery that just came online in China, with an even bigger one to come in Switzerland. And there’s even more on the