Canadian public utility company, Hydro-Québec recently announced that it is working on commercializing Nobel Prize winner John Goodenough’s non-flammable and rapid-charging battery, which he and Maria Helena Braga, an engineering professor from the University of Porto, co-developed in 2019.
The electric company says that it expects to get the technology built within two years for one or more commercial partners. Reportedly, Goodenough and Maria Helena Braga designed a solid-state lithium rechargeable battery that employs an alkali metal covered glass as its electrolyte.
For the record, an electrolyte is often found between anode & cathode and is usually present in a liquid state in batteries. As a result, these batteries are potentially vulnerable to battery fires and possess flammable characteristics.
Commenting on the development, Karim Zaghib, General Director of the Center of Excellence in Transportation Electrification and Energy Storage, Hydro-Québec, said that the company has been commercializing patents from the University of Texas at Austin, Goodenough’s parent institution, for the last 25 years. In the coming two years, the company would focus on conducting research and development to scale materials and to prove the concept.
Meanwhile, Braga claims that their battery charges in minutes rather than hours and is of high capacity. Moreover, it works well in both cold and hot weather, and its solid-state electrolyte is fireproof.
Apparently, the research lab of Hydro-Québec works with both technologies already at commercial scale and also with early-stage technologies such as the Goodenough glass battery.
In other news, Hydro-Quebec made some major ripples in the renewable space when it purchased a 19.9% stake in Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. The Canadian utility company made an investment of CA$661 million which, according to reliable sources, would take care of a newly-agreed strategic partnership between both the firms.
Reportedly, half of the investment amount (CA$275 million), would be kept aside for Innergex so that it can bankroll potential purchase for two operating units in Chile and the US. Moreover, the firm hopes to ink definitive agreements by the end of the quarter.
Source Credit: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/batteries-storage/john-goodenough-glass-battery-news-hydroquebec