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Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy

TED · 777.1K views · 2012-03-26 · 15:16

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Overview

MIT professor Donald Sadoway argues that grid-scale storage is the missing piece for renewable energy. He sketches at the blackboard how large, cheap liquid-metal batteries could store wind and solar power.

On Hacker News

Referenced as an early, inspiring presentation of the molten-metal battery idea that later grid-storage startups pursued.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2013–2025

Topics

Renewables, batteries & storage
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liquid metal batteryrenewable energytedenergy storageelectrochemistry

What people said

lifeisstillgood · 2013-04 · Strong recommendation

Meh. There are two roles for Tenured College Professors: * Making intellectual bets that might not pay off for decades * Making Graduate students work hard Everything else is gravy. The university and country that puts most effort into these two will over the long term get the most out. The important thing here is tenure . The next most important thing is you get to be a professor because all the other professors think you might make a good one. Just pay up the money, and make the empirical sciences better paid. Its like a magic machine is edication. Put in money get out more. If you want to see my poster-child for College Professors (#) go [VIDEO] . (#) No, not that Playboy spread. Different poster.

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philo_sophia · 2025-12 · Reference

Remember seeing this idea 13 years ago [1] Glad they're finally coming online, though I think these iron-air batteries[2] will take most of the market share (room for all though!). [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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panick21_ · 2023-02 · Reference

This is the company cofounded Prof. Donald Sadoway from MIT. I have been following their progress for a while. He made a lot of media around this technology 10 years ago. See the TedTalk: [VIDEO] So this is one of those case where you hear some news about amazing battery tech, and the reality is it minimum 10 years before it ever on the market. The company had ups and downs and it seems they are actually pretty close to actually deploying a major system within the next year or so. This if further then most other grit batteries companies get. This is a bit of newer talk with some more information: [LINK] He also worked on a really cool idea for Green Steel making, producing iron from iron ore like we do aluminum from Bauxite. The startup company for that is called 'Boston Steel'. Short video: [LINK] Full presentation for more technical people: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by TED, played through YouTube.

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