The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery -- then gave the technology to China

[dalton99a]

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-technology-china-vanadium

The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China
August 3, 2022 5:00 AM ET
Courtney Flatt | Laura Sullivan

When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

"It was beyond promise," said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. "We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected."

But that's not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The Chinese company didn't steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of U.S. workers in multiple instances.

[Grins]

1. Who was president, and who was Sec. of Energy in 2027...?

Yeah.

The guy who thought bird-killing wind turbines cause cancer, and the guy who thinks prayer will bring rain and got a “D” in a college course titled, “Meats.”

[rzemanfl]

3. Darn keys are right next to each other....n/t

[blm]

2. Spread this one around, DU.

It’s probably why Trump and his family were given all those trademarks in China they wanted.

[Bayard]

4. K&R

[hunter]

5. China has achieved technological parity with the U.S.A.

We're better at some things, they are better at others. For the most part China is no longer copying or stealing "our" technology. They have more scientists and engineers than we do.

The problem with such batteries is that most of the proposed uses for them are not economically viable. Many are, in fact, stupid. It's immediately apparent nobody has done the math. Or they don't care. Some schemes are valuable as greenwash.

Solar-wind-battery systems are not drop-in replacements for fossil fuel or nuclear power plants. The environmental footprint of such battery based "renewable energy" systems would far exceed that of nuclear power and the electricity would be costly, too high to raise living standards in impoverished places, not anything that will save the world.