The search for long-duration energy storage
“Today, most lithium-ion battery systems provide power for only a few hours at a time, but the technology continues to get cheaper and better, says John-Joseph Marie, an energy storage analyst at the Faraday Institution who recently authored a report on stationary batteries. Production and engineering improvements are allowing some companies to plan lithium-ion storage projects that could, in the coming years, discharge up to 8 h of energy, about 4 times as long as an average battery in 2023. ‘That’s made it really difficult for anything else to really compete,’ Marie says. ‘It’s a constantly moving goalpost.’
Combining lithium-ion batteries with the generation of huge amounts of renewable electricity plus lots of new transmission lines to move that energy could go a long way toward decarbonizing the power grid, but building that infrastructure would be incredibly expensive.”
Lonestar's Freedom Data Center payload sits onboard Intuitive Machines' Athena lander for IM-2 before takeoff. Credit: Intuitive Machines
Lonestar Data Holdings is launching a test mission to place a mini data center on the Moon, aiming to safeguard sensitive data from earthly hazards like natural disasters and geopolitical conflicts. The data center, weighing just 1 kilogram and carrying 8 terabytes of SSD storage, is part of a broader effort to explore the feasibility of lunar-based data storage. The Moon's stable environment and lack of climate disturbances make it an attractive location for secure, resilient data storage, though challenges like high latency and difficult repairs remain. Despite these obstacles, Lonestar is optimistic about the potential of lunar data centers, with plans to expand to lunar Lagrange points and lava tubes in the future. (via IEEE Spectrum)
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