What is a 10 to 15 hour battery for?
Batteries are difficult.
Good startups are defined by how well they understand a consumer problem. The solution method is secondary.
Therefore to go from a solution to thinking of a problem to solve is not the best idea.
Here, however, I plan on doing just that.
Problem Statement:
Imagine that we have an energy storage technology that can store energy at 100% energy efficiency for up to 15 hours a day. Its cheap, a bit complicated to use, but usable.
What sort of problem would this technology be best at solving?
Ideas
Energy Security for Telecommunication
According to an India Infrastructure Conference in 2013, “about two thirds of the mobile towers in India face electrical grid outages in excess of eight hours a day.”
Currently they use diesel gas and batteries to mitigate the problem, but due to government tariffs on diesel gas they have to look for alternative solutions. Having used batteries as their other options, it seems evident that this would be a good transition.
Perhaps, a battery that can store energy for up to 15 hours a day would be a good fit for this.
This, of course, assumes that the excess of eight hours of day ranges up to 15 hours.
According to another source on the cost of energy used at these telecomm sites, it costs around 102,000 INR or $1460 USD to run a 7kW power source for a month. This turns about to be around 27 cents/kWh. Thats really expensive.
For comparison, renewable energy in America can cost as low as 4 to 5cents/kWh and an energy storage solution would cost as low as 12 cents/ kWh.
So perhaps this is an area to go into.
Renewables Firming in Underdeveloped Countries
From a paper published in 2015, below shows what the energy use in India looks like.
As is evident, most of the energy is used around 6 pm, generally when the sun is starting to wane, as shown below which is the solar irradiance received in parts of India.
From the image above, it seems useful amounts of solar energy can be obtained for 7 to 8 hours of the day leaving for 15 to 16 hours of the day that are without. This can be resolved using batteries.
In the title, I mention underdeveloped countries because I believe convincing electric companies in developed nations difficult to do. This is because they already have an infrastruture in place.
This means that, in using a novel solution to their problem, they have to break down their old method. But as we all know, breaking down something requires time, money, and mental energy. The first two can be justified by having a significantly better technology, but mental energy is subjective and harder to influence.
On the contrary, developing nations which don’t necessarily have a predisposition towards a certain type of solution would be more readily accepting of novel technologies. They have nothing to break down.
One good narrative making this point is NYC’s subway system.
NYC used to have the best subway system in the world, bar none. Countries like Japan and China pailed in comparison. But because the technology was developed decades ago, replacing the old system when it still functioned seemed ridiculous to do — especially with all the regulations. Japan and China, which started from scratch, however, could develop and make their system effective from the beginning using novel technologies.
I wrote this piece in a rush, and will be fixed in due time
Hope you still enjoyed it!
