Officials with battery maker Form Energy have announced the development of the Iron-Air 100-hour storage battery—a battery meant to store electricity created from renewable sources such as solar and wind. As part of their announcement, they note that their new battery is based on iron, not lithium, and thus is much less expensive to produce.
The team at Form Energy describe their new battery as a multi-day energy storage system—one that can feed electricity to the grid for approximately 100 hours at a cost that is significantly lower than lithium-ion batteries.
The basic idea behind the iron-air battery is that it takes in oxygen and then uses it to convert iron inside the battery to rust, later converting it back to iron again. Converting back and forth between iron and rust allows the energy that is stored in the battery to be stored longer than conventional batteries.
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