The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World

[Disclosure: My company TalinoEV sells lithium-ion battery powered motorcycles (called tricycles, bajaj or tuktuks) to the South East Asian market.] Steve Levine's book, The Powerhouse is an eye opener for a number of reasons, most of which augur well for the United States' role in the world's use of this technology. Firstly, author Steve LeVine posits that the lithium-ion battery sits as the transistor's "equal in terms of social and economic consequence. Not to mention pure ubiquity, inventions without which the lives of the majority of the world's population... would be utterly different."That got my attention. After all, the transistor is what made silicon valley, "Silicon Valley." It was an eye opener also in that I did not fully realize that large-form lithium ion batteries for transportation use is such a very recent phenomenon.While lithium ion in small-form has been used since 1991 for Sony video cameras, and then subsequently in the early 2000s for laptops (and then in the mid 2000s for smart phones) it was only in the 2011 Chevy Volt that the large form lithium ion battery was used for transportation, according to the book.There is a lot of hand wringing about whether the 200 mile distance threshold can be reached for developed country vehicles. And this is where much of Argonne labs' massive research is being devoted. However, from what I see on the ground, (and to echo Clayton Christensen's theory of disruption) - much of what lithium-ion even in larger form batteries (eg, 40 Ah) can do right now is "good enough." Christensen talked about how incumbent companies ignore new technologies that don't serve the needs of their customers or fit within their existing business models. That fits the GM described in the book to a "T". However, as the new technology, which excels on completely different attributes than the incumbent's product, continues to mature, it eventually takes over the market.The hand wringing to me is akin to asking if a particular brush can paint the side of an aircraft carrier. Of course, this developed country problem will require large, specialized technology. However, to carry the analogy further, in large swaths of the world, another brush - a toothbrush - has been performing its job perfectly: up, down, up, down. day in and day out. It is the perfect tool for its use - short haul, quick, on-demand bursts of use. In South East Asia, the main market for lithium ion batteries is the same market that has given Uber its multi-tens of billions of dollars of valuation - it is the short haul, on-demand, point-to-point, daily use in dense urban settings (requiring 3-6 km trips) that is perfectly suited for Goodenough's lithium ion battery invention.The answer to how to pay for the cost of the lithium ion battery is also in South East Asia and how data plans are consumed - in pre-pay/pay-per-use increments. It is called sachet-sized billing, and it is uniquely the opposite of Costco-sized developed country selling. By breaking sales sizes down in granularity, most anyone of the two or three billion "rising global middle class" can buy - and profitably use - a lithium-ion battery that is "good enough" to last 60 km (or 10 money-making trips on a tuk-tuk).The technology to harness these granular payments in conjunction with 'good enough' lithium ion batteries are available today - IoT, bitcoin/blockchain, cloud SAAS switching - are are often very strongly U.S. technology. A TEDx talk by Jeff Chamberlain (a prominent character in The Powerhouse) talks about this 'energy Manhattan Project' changing everything. I now have a better perspective on why, thanks to this book.

The Powerhouse is not foreign correspondent Steve Levine’s first book on the politics of energy, but it is his first book on the politics of electric batteries. Levine has published books on Russia and oil exploration. It’s a good book, but you feel the author struggle with the science throughout it. To his credit, Levine is able to master most of the scientific terminology needed for it.Steve Levine managed to embed himself with some of the best minds developing electric batteries during the course of writing this book. He’s managed to give the reader an inside view into the struggles, politics and funding, the coin of front-line science. And he manages to bring it across with all the gushing of a kid with his first chemistry set. Although it does at times read like a “championship season” sports book.The book is broken up into 3 sections: 1) The Stakes, 2) Foreigners in the Labs and 3) Reckoning. Most of the first section is background on the labs and major players in the quest for a battery which will power an electric car. Part two lets the reader in on the current research and researchers. The last section looks at the attempts to get a marketable battery out of all the work done before.It begins with China’s minister of science’s visit to Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne is where much of the leading battery research is accomplished, so naturally the representative of the country where much of the batteries in the world are used wants to see what the competition is up to. From there we get a detailed history or Argonne labs: how the federal government bought the country estate of a hot dog maker to set up a research lab. Founded after WWII, the lab became a vast research center with small communities growing up around it for the scientists and workers. With the pollution concerns of the 1960’s a new section was created: the battery department.Chapter 5 looks at Professor James Goodenough, the man who made lithium-ion batteries a commercial reality. The author describes some of the problems with the first round of lithium-based batteries:“But basic physics got in the way. The same electrochemical reactions that enabled lithium batteries also made them want to explode: the voltage would run away with itself, a cell would ignite, and before you knew it the battery was spitting out flames. But you seemed no better off if you played it safe and used other elements—you’d find that they slowly fell apart on repeated charge and discharge.”Fortunately Goodenough and his team solve most of the problems. The book details how South African researcher Mike Thackery, working with Goodenough at Oxford was able to find the right formulation using iron oxide spinels. By the 1990’s the technology we use today to power cell phones and many other consumer electronics were in place. The section on how the right alloy was chosen for the first lithium-ion battery makes for a compelling read.The Powerhouse delves into the back-story of battery research. It’s not a pretty sight-seeing PhD’s going at it over who invented what. Nor are accusations of idea theft something to endear you to a career in science.Quite a bit of the book is devoted to Khalil Amine, battery researcher from Morocco who runs most of the battery research at Arragone labs. He’s one of the key players trying to push American dominance in the international battery market. There is a lot of discussion on the NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) formulation for the electric car GM is introducing, The Volt. And there are plenty of other stock characters in the book too. Such as Don Hillebrand, who oversees the internal combustion engine work at Argonne and still sees a lot of life in the older technology.One of the central themes of the book is how international composition of the teams are who are working on battery development in the US. There’s no shortage of immigrants from all over the world. One researcher snips that native-born Americans don’t want to do the tedious work, instead they go for the glory positions in places such as Silicone Valley:“Moroccan-born Khalil Amine unapologetically hired only foreigners. His group included not a single American-born researcher. Over the years, Amine had employed the occasional American and even a Frenchman. But now, apart from two other Moroccans (and himself), his group was entirely Chinese. Over sushi after work, Amine said he had concluded that the job was too demanding for United States–born Americans. And not just for them—some Asians, too, were not up to the task. “I have had Caucasians in my group before. Also Indians, Koreans,” Amine said. “But I will tell you this—I’m very demanding. I come to work at six A.M., five A.M. I work weekends. I have to make sure that we produce. The Chinese work this way, too—they are extremely hardworking. But some of the Caucasians, they don’t like that. It seems like big stress on them.”’General Motors makes a number of appearances in the narrative as well. Much of the book is taken up by GM’s instance on exact standards for the battery they need for their electric car, the Volt. GM comes across as a demanding company, one which makes sure it’s suppliers deliver what they promise. The crash of 2008 has left some bad memories among the staff at GM.Much of the book reads like a novel:“Hillebrand strolled through an airport-hangar-size warehouse. The structure was among several from Argonne’s first decade. When Hillebrand first happened upon them a few years prior, they had been crammed with magnets and nuclear equipment. He had four of them emptied and retrofitted into automobile labs.”The book ends with a failed attempt to get a battery accepted by GM for their Volt electric car. It’s an amazing story in the larger narrative of the book, but one which shows the lengths people will go to bring a product to the market. I don’t want to go into it any further as it would ruin the book’s conclusion for the reader. Suffice it say, GM really wanted that battery that would send an electric car 200 miles on a single charge really bad.Steve Levine has taken the Tom Wolfe New Journalism approach to showing the race to produce high energy batteries. There is plenty of discussion among the major characters about technology, but no charts or diagrams. Powerhouse has a sense of wonder lacking from other books covering such a dray topic. To its credit the book is extensively noted, indexed and filled with references. I recommend this Powerhouse as a good way to see what kind of people will be creating the next generation of batteries.www.howdobatterieswork.com

This is written in the manner of a first hand account of actual events and presents them in a chronological format, this format portrays the excitement and push behind creating an almost impossible battery as though you were there. There are aproximately a half dozen historical points in relation to a few companies designing next gen batteries , there employees and investors and even includes quotes from Obama adding to the excitement of this new technology. At the end if the story I was disapointed that a positively good writing ended - I wanted more to read. The story 'could have' been improved with graphics showing details of the batteries, their constituent parts and their construction. Inclusion of fact sheets on the parts of batteries, their histories, and a math primer on the units of measurement expressed within the text to help provide a greater understanding as appendix or other could make this book and story much more interesting to the reader who wants to understand in more detail, or wants to learn more, and any whom would like to get a closer look at exactly what was being built.

翻訳ではなかなかニュアンスが掴めなかった箇所を原文で確認してみた。一層理解が深まった。

Es informativo sobre los acontecimientos recientes en el mundo de las baterias pero tienen que recurrir a demasiados detalles para rellenar el libro, no lo termine por que lo encontré repetitivo.

Apesar de conter elementos interessantes do trabalho realizado no laboratório Argone, minha expectativa em relação a este livro não foi totalmente satisfeita.

I was expecting this book to be about energy storage technology in general, but the story is really about only one kind of battery technology -- the Lithium-ion NMC (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide), and about various political power struggles surrounding the invention and the mad rush to improve it. NMC is great and is used in pretty much all smartphones and portables, but has only recently started making inroads into electrics (pioneered by Volt, but notably not used in Tesla S and some others). If you wanted to know everything you wanted to know about NMC (without actually having to read published scientific papers), this is your book. It explains the challenges behind the technology, the breakthroughs and setbacks experienced by scientists working on it (sometimes in too much detail, to my liking -- I would easily slim down the book to half its size by omitting most details such as who got a raise at Argonne, when, and at who's expense).If, however, you wanted to learn more about energy storage technology in general (molten core, lithium-air, aluminium-air, etc) this book will not even mention them. Heck, Elon Musk and Tesla earn merely a half-page mention -- being mostly scorn for choosing to go with 18650 cells instead of the author's favourite NMC. Similarly absent are such topics as in-house battery storage, municipal infrastructure challenges, smart grids, etc.I still think it's essential reading for any electric car and energy storage enthusiast, but it must be supplemented by other reading materials for a more wholesome picture of modern energy storage field.

An excellent read if you have any interest at all in Lithium-ion batteries. At the moment I have a professional interest and found the book excellent "background". Steve Levine has a way of explaining pretty complex concepts in a way that most people should be able to understand without being patronising. As well as the technical side of things he offers insights into the drivers behind companies making great promises - lesson learned - beware promotion by press-release!