from Hacker News

Hydrogen battery startup says it has $700M order backlog

by Nazzareno on 9/7/22, 2:31 PM with 97 comments

• by xcskier56 on 9/7/22, 3:22 PM

  Been thinking (daydreaming) a lot about a fully off-grid house and how in the summer, you get more solar than you need and in the winter you use much more electricity than you produce. What I'd love to see is some sort of system that used batteries for short term storage, and then during the summer, would convert excess energy to a long-term storage format like methane or LNG.

  I have not run any numbers on this, but the idea behind it is to stockpile your energy in the summer to be able to make it through the winter without having to resort to some outside source of energy like wood or gas delivery.

  I initially thought about hydrogen, but given it's storage density, and the problems that SLS has had with leaks, taking the additional step to convert into methane would greatly simplify storage and use, and likely improve reliability since you'd be able to use COTS products for natural gas instead of custom hydrogen storage

• by rch on 9/7/22, 2:57 PM

  > To date, only prototypes of the Lavo domestic system have been built, and the company has not yet decided where to build a factory.

• by controversial97 on 9/7/22, 3:16 PM

  If that thing goes seriously wrong it could be an impressive incendiary device.

  I would want that to be in it's own separate brick outhouse or on a concrete pad twenty feet from anything that should not be sprayed with fire.

  See this video of taking apart a USB power pack that runs on hydrogen.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y48wCuC3KcA

  Lavo seems to be claiming that one of their devices will last 30 years, which is better than a flooded lead acid battery system, if that is actually true.

• by discordance on 9/7/22, 3:00 PM

  I admire the audacity and the inventiveness of Lavo, but buying these seems nuts to me.

  A 40 kWh LiFePO4 battery + grid tie inverter can be had for much less. Safe, well tested and already in high volume manufacturing. Shipped to your door tomorrow.

• by mgkimsal on 9/7/22, 3:58 PM

  Might be a dumb question, but would they be profitable?

  I worked at a small company that had $1.5M in 'backorders'. But it was going to take more than $1.5M to fulfill the orders, which ... is not a place you want to be in (regardless of how many zeroes?). Half the company was laid off shortly after this 'milestone' was reached.

  Now.. perhaps with more zeroes... there's seemingly enough wiggle room to move stuff around in the books to balance things out...?

  Also, I realize it might be premature asking that type of question, but... having been burned once, it sticks to top of mind.

• by gamblor956 on 9/7/22, 6:40 PM

  A lot of people didn't read the article before commenting.

  1) This battery is not affected by hydrogen embrittlement, in which hydrogen reacts with metals to form hydrides, and is not explosive like compressed hydgrogen, because it stores hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides (but note that hydrides are still very flammable). They did not disclose what metal(s) are used for storage.

  2) They don't have a factory, but have been in talks to outsource the actual manufacture of the utility-scale version of the product.

• by controversial97 on 9/7/22, 6:07 PM

  It appears that this system turns tapwater into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis.

  I'm not a chemist, but I messed around with electrolysis decades ago when I was a teen who was into chemistry sets.

  I am not convinced that tapwater is anywhere near pure enough that this system can work without frequently changing electrodes and removing gunge, even with some filtering.

  Electrolysis does not just split the water molecules, there is a chemical reaction with whatever else is dissolved in the water.

• by ngcc_hk on 9/7/22, 3:32 PM

  Does it leak? It is a solid state and I guess unlike the nasa liquid one and no senator become the administrator game etc, it is easier. But at least someone has to ask the question. Hence, does it leak?

  The other issue is how it compete with lithium battery it also used. May be unlike car …

• by jryb on 9/7/22, 3:19 PM

  I've always wondered why this kind of thing wasn't available much earlier. We've had electrolysis for a long time now - are fuel cells the limiting technology here? Are electrolyzers not as simple as I expect?

• by Kasutaja11 on 9/7/22, 6:01 PM

  Patents for such things that would help humanity and earth get better should be invalidated. Fuck your profits, let's have better battery tech. Patent your iphone round corners all you want

• by panick21_ on 9/8/22, 7:16 AM

  And there are 10s of EV firms with billions in orders.