The Good Stuff team got to go check out a new kind of battery. It's completely environmentally friendly because it runs on iron and water. It's called an All Iron Flow battery and it's being developed by ESS, Inc. Join us as we go take a look at how it works, what makes it better than other batteries, and how it can help solve our energy storage problem. We even go inside of it! Thanks to ESS, Inc for their help making this video and letting us invade their factory floor.

"The sun tends to only shine during the day". This man knows his shit.

I'm an engineer, I have had my doubts about renewables for a long time for all of the reasons mentioned here. This is truly progress & something a great many should get behind as the potential is phenominal.

I'm going to guess that drawbacks include: lack of power density, prohibitively expensive transport costs, inefficient non-integrated design(pvc piping can't possibly be the most efficient option here) Still a very promising and intriguing company

So plants do crave electrolytes. It is what the plants need.

This video is basically a big advertisement for ESS without going into the science at all. This should not be in The Good Stuff. It should be in The Meh Stuff.

How can you go all video without explaining how they work??

So... what are the battery specs? What's the efficiency compared to alternatives? Caveats have been circumvented to get the sponsoring I guess.

You be seeing all kinds of innovative technology like this all over the web. It's strange how such technology like this never seems to goes into full mass production, it always gets swept under the rug doesn't it.

You guys said it best, it takes multiple approaches to solve our energy concerns. Li-ion batteries might remain the standard for personal use whereas these will be limited to commercial and industrial applications.

I was wondering if this could be scaled down for use in a residential setting. A major cost for going off the grid for homeowners are the Li storage batteries, and they also require strict maintenance, and carry the same hazards that Li batteries in cell phones do.

I drank a liter of water and ate some liver, it kept me running for 6+ hours. Can confirm this technology is good and safe!

Congratulations! You re-created a Galvanic Cell. And then put them in a truck container as a Voltaic pile. Aquion Energy did this as well about 6yrs ago. They are currently out of business. I hope you guys are able to survive! best of luck.

I understand concerns people are addressing about sponsored videos, but I enjoyed this episode solely for the fact that yall went out and saw something, with real footage and real people. Reminds me of a lot of the original videos on this channel, which I found so much more interesting than voiceovers over stock footage on random topics. I backed the original kickstarter and it's nice to see some of what made the channel unique again.

Something fishy is going on when you have to pay a suscription to get information about the spec of this battey. There's no straight answer in their web site.

It's noteworthy that many breakthrough ideas in battery design are happening now. I'm glad we've come to a time that these ideas can move toward useful production.

i want to see a diy of an iron water flow battery

This is so incredibly hyped....no mention of the power required (net loss) to constantly circulate the conducting (electrolyte) liquid....not sure about charge and discharge losses...compared to the iron edison batteries and what about self discharging...?

Unfortunately, environmental concerns will always take backseat to economics. So I'm curious as to the price of these containers compared to a comparable Li-Ion setup. A Tesla Powerwall 2 holds about 13kwh at about $7300. So about 30 Powerwall 2's would have same capacity as one of these containers. Therefore if one of ESS's Fe-H20 400kwh flow battery containers comes in under $200K, they're definitely on to something here.

I think many missed the point. They showed that the storage and converters are separate. This means that the systems are not restricted to containers. The storage tanks could be separate and much larger. The converters could be located at the source of electricity and the 'juice' could be piped to storage tanks and then on to converters at every point of consumption.

Might be one of the many effective solutions needed to store energy as part of a smart renewable grid and independent energy systems. Not particularly energy dense but long life and low cost components should fill some important applications.

good show! this is weird, but I actually like this kind of sponsored film: sometimes good stuff happens to be a company with an effective promotions budget who figured out an important link in the chain of energy storage, which is cool

*Good technology to clean up our planet.* The electricity is wining on our planet. It might as well be non-toxic in storage.

The early Electric cars in America started with the invention of the Nickle Iron Battery by Thomas Eddison in 1901. Called the Eddison Cell they lasted more than 20 years if properly looked after, they also used a mild alkali as the electrolyte. (salt water is an alkali.)

There may have been some biases here and there in the video, but I believe this energy could actually be beneficial; give technology sometime and find a way to get solar energy to be more effective with energy intake, Im excited for this.

3:38 "Typical Li-ion batteries can only do it from 1 - 2 hours". Um no, but good try. You can make a Li-ion pack that can do as many hours as you wants, it's just a case of sizing it appropriately.

Tesla now makes batteries at $100/kWh, so one of these containers would need to cost less than $40,000.- to be competitive. The fact that they don't mention the price suggests that they are not.

I like the way he says "the sun only tends to shine during the day" ha ha what a hoot.

Chinece company BYD specializing in batteries created a CAR using Iron based battery cells. They are heavier but they are also biodegradable and its have a good milage :)

Are the Pyramids, iron flow batteries?

I got to be honest. I'm sick of "10 more years" technology. I'm really glad things are moving and there is hope. I'm glad people are working hard on these issues. It just seems like everything is 5 or 10 years away until surprise it is patented out of usefulness.

using the shipping docks, truck infrastructure, and most common containers as built in infrastructure for simultaneous transportation storage and modular walk in operation is an amazing efficiency innovation. it was right under our noses!

Salt water and Iron - its basically fertilizer ?! It would be nice to have some real facts and not those in the sales brochure. There are lots of negatives and limitations to this technology which aren't mentioned.

@The Good Stuff Thank you for this video, it is always nice to learn something new with your videos. But I have some issues with this one: I don't mind, if a website or a company supports you, as long as it has no vested interest in the direct content of this certain video. It only hurts your credibility, if your content is about the exact product of your sponsor. Especially technologies as such usually don't only have pros, and for a balanced view I would have liked to have the downsides of this technologies discussed also, if there are some. I would like to have some questions answered: What is the life expectancy of this battery? Where lies the capacity compared to other technologies? How does the battery work? How fast can it charge? Etc. And last but not least: On the container it said 400 kWh. Let's put this in perspective. A Medium sized Wind turbine produces 2 MW of power equals to 2000 kW, so you would need 5 container to capture the power, that is produced in 1 hour! The need for power storage occurres usually at night for wind turbines, so let's say in a realistic scenario a wind turbine would produce power for 6 hours that is not need, so to store these 12 MWh you would need 30 of these containers. Don't get my wrong, I agree, this technology is cool, but please show a realistic image of how it could be implemented. Greetings, A Fan

I've been following the flow battery concept since the Vanadium Redox battery, which is very similar, and has an installed base in specific locations where it makes sense. Flow batteries are the future of alternative energy. There none of the issues that result in limited cycle life, only pumps and membranes that may someday need replacement. It's easy to say as Peter Faber did "Nice technology, but 50 kwh in a whole shipping container isn't a whole lot. No mentioning of the cost per kwh?", but that would be to entirely miss the point.... he obviously wasn't really watching. Half the container is tankage. There is no limit to the amount of external tankage that is possible, and the storage of the battery is the amount of charged liquid stored. Thus one could easily install external tanks, and increase the storage. Cheap plastic tanks set beside the container could increase the storage many times over. On a "battery farm", many thousands of gallons of shared tankage would make sense. This battery is only contained in a semi trailer because it's a convenient package. In a real world application such as a wind or solar farm, the components would be warehoused rather than absurdly contained in individual trailers. It makes far more sense to construct a large metal building, and place the components inside it, scaled to load than to connect semi trailers in parallel as is apparently done here. This video is very much dumbed down, making little effort to explain the ins and outs of the technology..... explained as if to children or stupid people. It does nothing to really help understand the technology and it's immense potential value. We are not all Facebooking morons with EDD and a third grade mentality. Much can be found on flow batteries on the internet for those who's interest is more than superficial. I'm not involved in the battery industry in any way except as a buyer of batteries. I just bought two little 20ah batteries for my one of my UPS units...$150 yesterday..... storage is expensive. Google "flow battery" for a good explanation of how they work.............. H.W.

Wow - a ton better than the last video about ... mowing your lawn! Thank you!

What about membrane and electrode erosion? What about membrane or electrode clogging ?

What till Thunderfoot sees this.

Cearing the semantics, a charging battery is really a capacitor. A true battery regenerates.

Verygood production for the future.

What about Molten-Salt batteries ?? Please investigate.

Nice technology, but 50 kwh in a whole shipping container isn't a whole lot. No mentioning of the cost per kwh? How fast can these batteries charge and discharge? Would it be possible to increase the capacity using different materials?

Sounds real good for large storage batteries? we still need the smaller stuff though???Thank you Ronald.

I heard of aluminum plus salt electrolight battery from Isreal using oxidation the same way this does. Fuel cell configuration was the differing factor for a car not large storage where I can reasonably see why there is lot of electrolight plumbing.

So we learned that there are iron + water batteries ... but no specs, and a lot of propaganda and misinformation about Li-ion batteries. Shame on you, whoever made this video without doing at least some research!

Batteries are definitely in our future, no doubt about it. And this particular type is wildly innovative. The fact that its non polluting is going to give it a great big leg up! I think it has a very big future.

brilliant at its simplicity. here is a clear case where simple utilitarian design excell. storing energy for later use. I wonder if you could turn every swimming pool into a battery simply by solvating ions to its bottom / concrete walls.

how the hell do you not have more views? defo one of the best channels out there! people need to see this!

I'm not sure you can call salt 'fertiliser'.

Excellent video!

This is a very useful part of the power storage solution - it has some very exciting prospects.👌👌👏👏👏👏

"The sun tends to only shine in the day." Talk about understatement!

Nearly every video on this channel should have a few more zeros on that views-number.

So what are the downsides?

Definitely enjoyed the Bladerunner stylish music :) and great company that you interviewed !

Good to see you guys are back with great videos

that was some good stuff

Better inform Elon Musk that he needs to switch production, at all his Giga Factories.

Would love to have one as a backup for my house, I may share with my elderly neighbors. LOL

7:00 Have one of these on every willing neighbourhood block, solar panels on the roof and no need for the coal power station! I really wish Green Politics and fund raising would focus on organizing people to fund Green Energy solutions like that and be an example of 100% Renewable, rather than fund campaigns to try to convince everyone to change or make a sacrifice. And I have even donated to raise money to such a waste. This is far better. I would tell my local energy Community Energy Company, Evona.

Wow this is so exciting. Storage of electricity is a huge hurdle to overcome. The government may surpress it on behalf of fosel fuel interests.

These kind of videos depress me. Maybe the flow battery that is the subject of this video is the best answer to store renewable energy for the grid but how could you trust it when such outright lies are told about the obvious competitor. Li-ion batteries used in those applications do not die after 2 years, why even the Li-ion battery in my EV is 3 years old and it has a warranty of 8 years (so far with no loss of capacity) with an expected life of 10 years, maybe more (and Li-ion cells used in the world's largest grid storage applications have a different chemistry, one optimised for long life and many charge/discharge cycles unlike EV cells that are optimised for high power and high energy density). If you expect to be taken seriously stick to the truth, people understand that if they are lied to about one well understood aspect you could well be lying about anything.

Whitehorse Yukon Canada has millions of tonnes of the highest purity iron in powdered magnetite form contained on the surface ready for an energy application.

Ok, here we go. I love the way we as a species is at least trying to handle our energy needs , and freaking finally be the host to harmless renewable energy storage , that this Earth deserves. That our children and children's children deserve! Well done ESS.

That one thing is 400kwh? The Tesla roadster is a 200kwh battery powered car

if it worked they would have it on the market by now its 2019 when I view this still no graphite or this muggufinyet .the misinformation about lithium cells in this story earns it a thumbs down

My AT EVOLVE electric longboard has lasted 4 years and still charging fine. The lithium battery is getting a bit tired after helping me generate income with my dial a driver service since 2014.

Redflow Ltd in Australia has something similar which they called a Zinc Bromine Module (ZBM2) flow battery. They are modular and can be just one for a home or a large number in a container like this one which they call a Large Scale Battery (LSB) rated at 300kW Peak 100kW Continuous/600kWh in only a 20-foot container!

50kW in single shipping container? LOL you would need a thousand for a tiny tiny 50MW gen? And in the tens of thousands to support a nuclear reactor sized facility replaced by green alt. If you believe for a second that electrolytes have no breakdown over time you should believe in free energy and perpetualmotion. Pumping water uphill has been and always will be the only viable solution to large energy storage that's green. You can do the basic numbers on a shipping container full of water drawn up a hundred meters and it will blow this thing out of the water. You all need to get a little more scientifically literate.

keep this man alive

Imagine my surprise when suddenly at 1:46 a wild coal plant appears that is from my home town (Ljubljana) :D Awesome vid & channel!

Nobody is asking the most important question... Can this power a flying spaceship??

Did i hear right that it hold the charge for 4 hours and would only be good for a buffer for a limit of 4 hour if no grid or sun was available?

So they found some kind of ancient power device, put a bunch of plastic pipe around it, sprinkled some computers here and there. Hide the thing in a truck trailer. And call it their own? That orb looks very out of place

Thx, this helps me in what I can do with my future projects.

This was one of the best episodes in a long while, ever since the kick starter. Well done. I approve of more sponsored episodes.

One of these sunken into the backyard of a residential house or a few below an apartment building would do well.

How much do plans cost to build a small unit for our off grid refuge place with say eventually 12 homes? We are using regular golf cart batteries right now.

Good job, this is the need of the hour.

looking at the inside of that shipping container, thats a HUGE space, and from my untrained eye, that looks like A LOT of membranes that need to be replaced, cleaned, etc on a regular basis.... there are a lot of these "flow battery technologies" out right now, none of them seem very efficient or practical, yes technology can improve this, but you cant beat science and physics, everything has a limit

Two of the most abundant and cheapest: salt water, and iron. This is a natural outcome. Why didn't anyone see this long ago? The simplest solutions are the most brilliant.

Interesting how KZfaq shows you things you recently watched. I watched another flow battery by Ambri. "Comprising two liquid metal electrodes and a molten salt electrolyte, the liquid metal battery offers colossal current capability and long service lifetime at very low cost." Sounds like maybe they have the same customers, batteries in shipping containers, they did not seem to need as much space but I'm just a person and don't know if one is better then the other but he would be happy you made it from none rare earth metals. I wish you both all the best.

Energy Density is the issue of this type of battery & it is not for small stuff like smartphones, laptops & etc. But it is the best design for your own home, farms & power grids. If you want to create an off-grid system.

it will be handy if the unit can be scaled down to run a farm or single unit home.

Excellent explanation.

This might sound strange but that Oak is for sure at risk, but for completely different reasons. The container is huge and probably weighs a lot, it compresses the ground where the trees roots sit. They grow close to the ground, The compression will make it harder for the roots to pick up nutrients and oxygen resulting in the roots dying. If this happens it will not be notable for some time, but maybe 3-5 years after the container was placed you will see in the oaks crown closes to the container start to die. This is a common mistake, people often want to protect the tree, the stem, what they can see, but the roots go out from the tree a good way outside the crowns circumference and are quite fragile in these aspects. Hopefully it won’t happen, would be a shame on such a majestic oak :)

Could it be opensourced? Seems like it could be built in your workshop if properly designed

I knew that there had to be a better way to make energy storage a thing of today, not fifty years from now. Thanks guys!

Wow! This is really awesome!! ESS is now on my radar thanks to you! Energy storage is where it's at. I know what I want for Christmas now! 😆

Very low energy density ... Please correct me if I understood wrongly, one 40 ft container having 50kWh ?

Glad to see you going on location again :) Great video.

Using abundant basic common materials in a fairly low tech system that is not harmful to the environment could be a game changer. Combining this with solar and wind fields could be the 21st century energy source we need. These trailers could be easily installed in all power plants to handle high demand times and make them more efficient. We just need the political leadership to push this into reality.

Looks really great for warm climates but what happens at freezing temperatures? Giant iron and water ice cube?

It's another option, but there are a whole bunch of others. And for this type of battery, the competition is more stuff like pumped hydro, CAES, and possibly one or two other non-battery options. The storage density is not too high, and that's probably the biggest understatement of the year.

Pictures of mobile phones are misleading. These batteries are for stationary storage only (they won't be powering battery electric vehicles either). Cheap, long lasting and safe sounds ideal for stationary storage where weight and volume matter little. There are other competing technologies like Vanadium flow batteries and a non-flow type battery from an MIT start up. The more the merrier, may the best technology win.

So what's the power factor for the storage ratio cost to re delivery of power? there must be a cost for this storage they did not say and how much does the power container cost as well

It would be nice if they were more transparent with pricing on their website.

Nice. Assuming it also doesn't use Cobalt, it means we can build battery storage on a truly massive scale. Lithium and Cobalt just aren't up to the task. If the billion vehicles on the roads had a power pack like the Tesla Model S, it would require 63,000,000,000kg of Lithium. That's a whopping 63,000,000 tons. The world mines around 35,000 tons of Lithium a year, so it would require 1800 years of mining, at current rates, to get enough for a global fleet of EVs. The picture with Cobalt is even worse. And in 2035 there's expected to be 2 billion vehicles on the roads. While the batteries in the video were a mere 400kWh, I image they could be scaled up if need be.

Can you use fresh water that was dirty but filtered and cleaned and add table salt in place of ocean salt water

Bringing up LiIon batteries catching fire and losing capacity is a red herring and is a reliable indicator that someone's either scamming or running on the ragged edge. Ditto for recycling (it's easy for LiIon trivial for lead-acid and fairly easy for most other common formulations) There are a number of LiIon formulations around and the ones that catch fire are used in portable devices) because they're very high density and operational lifetimes are less important than how many hours runtime you get. Car ones are a different form which are lower density but don't suffer badly from fade and have 15 year lifespans (same for Tesla's battery in South Australia) Density isn't an issue for stationary applications.