Decades of sexy computing, web and mobile startups have emerged out of Silicon Valley built on the backs of low-cost, commoditized hardware. Some of these startups have gone on to fundamentally change technology and society. A similar thing is starting to happen—though at an early stage—around batteries.

    While these batteries, mostly manufactured in bulk in Asian countries, have long been widely used in laptops and cell phones, similar batteries are now beginning to be made at a much higher volume and are becoming cheap enough to start to have an influential effect on both the power and auto industries.

    Tesla’s battery ambitions

    Tesla (with its planned huge battery factory under construction outside of Reno, Nevada) is using this low-cost battery thesis as an underlying tenant for its business model, and is probably the most well-known company leading this ‘battery-as-a-platform’ wave. However, there are many other startups, big power companies, Internet companies, solar and clean energy firms, auto makers and battery giants pushing this trend, too.

    Tesla’s business is as much about creating a battery pack that can be used as efficiently, safely and as low cost as possible for whatever application, as it is about wowing customers with a sexy electric car. Its batteries are being used in many more applications such as the recent announcement of the Powerwall, which stores energy from a rooftop solar panel in a home, and the Powerpack, which can provide a utility with a burst of energy to help it avoid using an expensive and dirty peaker plant (a power plant only used during peak grid times) on a hot Summer afternoon.

    数十年来，随着廉价商品化硬件的普及，电脑、互联网和移动领域的优秀创业公司层出不穷。有些已经开始从根本上改变科技与社会。同样的事情也正在锂离子电池领域发生，虽然这种变革仍然处于早期阶段。

    过去，常用于笔记本电脑和手机上的电池大多是由亚洲工厂生产的，现在，类似的电池产品容量开始比过去要高得多，同时价格也变得足够便宜，足以对能源和汽车行业产生重大影响。

    特斯拉的“电池雄心”

    特斯拉汽车公司正以这种“廉价电池理论”作为商业模式的潜在赢利点，目前其超级电池工厂正在内华达州的里诺市紧张施工。它大概也是引领这股“电池即平台”潮流的知名度最高的公司。但除此之外，还有很多创业公司、大型能源公司、互联网公司、太阳能和清洁能源企业、汽车制造商和电池行业的龙头企业也都在推动这股潮流。

    在特斯拉的业务版图中，研发一款安全、高效、低成本，同时能够用于几乎任何领域的电池，与制造令消费者目眩神迷的电动汽车的重要性可相提并论。特斯拉的电池目前已经开发出多种用途，比如该公司最近推出的家用电池Powerwall，它可以储存家用太阳能电池板收集的电能。另一款商用电池产品Powerpack，则可以在夏季午后用电高峰时为企业提供储备电力，从而避免使用既昂贵又不环保的峰值电厂（即只在用电高峰时启用的发电厂）。

    The grid software startups

    Like Tesla before them, many of the startups building software, data analytics, user interfaces, visualization and simulation tools, and plug-and-play electronic product designs, on top of low-cost, lithium-ion batteries are coming out of Silicon Valley and backed by venture capitalists. These include Stem (based in Milbrae, Calif.),Greensmith Energy (Rockville, Maryland), Green Charge Networks (Santa Clara, Calif), GELI (San Francisco),Advanced Microgrid Solutions (San Francisco), Coda Energy (the reborn former electric car company in Los Angeles) and Sonnenbatterie (originally from Germany, with an office in Los Angeles).

    Stem CEO John Carrington says even in the time between when he joined Stem in late 2013 and today, there has been a “massive decline in battery prices.” The world’s largest battery suppliers have been investing heavily in the battery manufacturing side of their business, much of it for electric cars, said Carrington, but with the recent drop in oil prices, electric cars might be a little slower coming to market than expected.

    Beyond the pull of electric cars, and the already-established market for lithium-ion batteries for computing devices, the market for grid storage is emerging first in regions with strong incentives for clean energy and for lowering carbon emissions, as well as in places with very high electricity rates (such as islands like Hawaii). California in particular has a first-of-its-kind mandate that says utilities need to buy over a gigawatt of energy storage in the coming years. Germany has strong incentives that encourage batteries paired with solar panels for homes and businesses.

    Stem, which is in various stages of installing a couple hundred battery projects, deploys its batteries at its business and industrial customers’ buildings, and the company’s software switches the building over to using battery power when electricity rates from the grid are high. Stem offers financing for the batteries — so it’s “no money down”—then leases the batteries while the customer saves money on the electricity rates. The company also installs big battery banks for utilities, such as Southern California Edison, for helping them manage the grid.

    电网软件创业公司

    像特斯拉一样，许多主打低成本锂离子电池业务的创业公司也从硅谷中脱颖而出，并获得风投资本的支持。它们从事的领域包括软件、数据分析、用户界面、可视化仿真和即插即用的电子产品设计。这些企业包括加州米伯莱市的Stem公司，马里兰州罗克维尔市的Greensmith Energy公司，加州圣克拉拉市的Green Charge Networks公司，旧金山的GELI公司与Advanced Microgrid Solutions公司，原本从事电动汽车行业的洛杉矶Coda Energy公司，以及来自德国的洛杉矶Sonnenbatterie公司等。

    Stem公司CEO约翰•卡灵顿指出，从2013年年末他刚加入Stem公司到现在，在这样一段短短的时间内，“电池价格就已经大幅下降。”全球各大电池供应商纷纷在电池生产方面投入重金，其中多数投资都瞄准了电动汽车方向。但随着近期石油价格的下跌，电动汽车进入市场的速度可能要比预期更慢一些。

    除了电动汽车，以及各种各样的计算设备对锂离子电池的需求以外，电网市场对锂离子电池的需求也正在增长，尤其是在一些对清洁能源和降低碳排放有较强需求的地区，以及一些电价很高的地区（如夏威夷等岛屿）。加利福尼亚州率先出台一项政策，要求电力公司在未来几年内必须拥有10亿瓦特以上的电力储备。德国也出台了强有力的激励政策，鼓励人们购买电池，与家用和商用太阳能电池板搭配使用。

    Stem公司正在安装几百个电池项目，主要是为企业和工业客户的建筑物安装电池组。当电网电价处于高位时，Stem公司的软件可以自动切换到电池组的电力。Stem还为它的电池组提供了金融方案，即所谓的“零首付”模式，用户可以在需要的时候租用电池，然后靠与电网电价的差价省钱。该公司还为电力公司安装大型电池组，帮助他们管理电网，南加州爱迪生电力公司就是它的大客户之一。

    Seven-year-old Greensmith Energy, which says it manages over a third of all the energy storage capacity installed in the U.S. last year, also uses software to manage low-cost batteries for both businesses and utilities. Greensmith CEO John Jung says that even though the power grid runs on software, it has largely been an afterthought for a long time.

    While the majority of the batteries Greensmith has installed — it has 30 projects for 17 customers including nine utilities—have been lithium-ion, it has also used other kinds of batteries for its customers such as flow batteries. The startup offers its customers software that can simulate how batteries would work for whatever purpose the customer needs, and then helps them choose the right battery and configuration to solve their problem.

    Sonnenbatterie, which has 8,000 battery systems installed, is different in that it sells its battery systems mostly for homes and small businesses for daily use. The company uses lithium ion batteries from Sony (Fortelion), and Sonnenbatterie CEO Boris Von Bormann says those are the only batteries on the market today that can fulfill the daily charging and discharging needs of its residential customers.

    Other big companies are jumping into the grid battery market, too, looking to stay on the right side of the tech curve. GE has appeared to have scaled down its sodium-grid battery manufacturing division, and has more recently started to offer a lithium-ion battery grid product using third-party batteries. Kyocera is selling home energy systems using lithium-ion batteries from Samsung.

    EnerNOC, which built a business off of turning down its customers’ energy during peak hours (called demand response), is quickly becoming an energy software services company, and is testing out Tesla’s batteries for that purpose. A scan of the publicly available data of the incentives that the state of California offers for the deployment of energy storage projects includes other electronics giants like Sony, as well as power behemoth Schneider.

    创立刚刚7年的Greensmith Energy公司据说管理着美国去年三分之一以上新安装的电力存储设备。该公司为企业和电力公司提供的电池组也是借助软件进行管理。CEO约翰•荣格表示，虽然电网是依赖软件运行的，但在很长一段时间里，软件并没有得到足够的重视。

    虽然Greensmith公司安装的大多数电池组都是锂离子电池（该公司总共为17个客户实施了30个项目，其中包括9家电力公司），但它也为客户提供流体电池等其它类型的电池。该公司的软件可以模拟客户的任何需求和用途，从而帮助客户选择正确的电池和配置来解决他们的问题。

    Sonnenbatterie公司已经为客户安装了8000多套电池系统，不过它的客户主要是家庭和小企业，并且以日常使用为主。该公司使用的是索尼Fortelion系列锂离子电池。CEO鲍里斯•范•伯尔曼表示，该系列电池是目前市面上唯一能够满足家用日常充放电需求的电池。

    其他大公司为了保持在技术上的同步性，也正在纷纷进军电网蓄电池市场。比如通用电气公司最近就对它的钠电池生产部门进行了“瘦身”，同时开始利用第三方电池提供锂离子电网蓄电池产品。日本京瓷公司也开始销售家用能源系统，它使用的锂离子电池来自三星公司。

    EnerNOC公司是做需求响应系统（即在高峰时段调低用户用电量）起家的，现在它已经迅速成为一家能源软件服务公司，目前该公司正在测试特斯拉的电池。此外，加利福尼亚州政府的公开数据显示，加州还为索尼、电气业龙头老大施耐德公司等企业的能源存储项目提供了政策激励。

    Beyond lithium ion

    Battery innovation is notoriously tough, and always seems to take far longer than expected. But battery makers will continue to innovate around new chemistries. GELI CEO and co-founder Ryan Wartena says “we are still in the early days of battery commodification. We will see continued advances in technology over the coming years that lead to hyper-cycle batteries that will open more and more markets.”

    New battery chemistries from startups have been slowly making their way to market. The CEO of battery startup Ambri, Phil Giudice, likewise says the market for grid storage is still “at an early stage.” Ambri is making a low cost grid battery using molten salt sandwiched between two layers of liquid metal.

    The company expects to ship their first battery prototypes this summer and fall, and commercial batteries by the end of 2016. He says “We’re not so worried about the first movers. It’s more important to get it right.” When Giudice joined Ambri three years ago, he says the grid storage market was far more conceptual, but now there are many more projects being done in reality.

    In that way, lithium-ion batteries could help pave the way for the next generation of batteries that some day will make it to market. Though, like what occurred with the solar manufacturing startups that tried to make solar panels from new materials years ago and struggled, there could be a lot of market ups and downs along the way.

    Most of the battery integrator and software makers are actually “battery agnostic,” and welcome any new battery chemistry that is low-cost, effective, and safe enough. However, for large grid projects that need project financing, lithium-ion batteries are more easily “bankable” right now than a new chemistry, explained Stem’s Carrington. Tesla’s Musk noted in the company’s latest earnings call that if there’s any breakthroughs in battery chemistry and new batteries beyond lithium-ion batteries, Tesla would be quick to implement these, too.

    Down the road, the dream for companies like GELI are to help the “Internet of Energy” emerge. Wartena says:

    “Over the coming years I expect to see similar business models that happened in the original build of the Internet, for energy software, energy computers, microgrids, networks of microgrids, energy operations, energy applications, networked energy services, and the list goes on.”

    When batteries become as low cost, reliable and widely available as chips for computers, radios for cell phones, and networks for the Internet, some day all that could become true.

    超越锂离子电池

    众所周知，电池领域的创新难度很大，而且创新所需要的时间要远远超过人们的预期。不过电池制造商们仍会围绕新的化学物质锲而不舍地研发。GELI公司联合创始人兼CEO赖安•沃特纳表示：“目前我们仍然处在电池商品化的早期阶段。在未来几年里，我们将见证电池技术的不断发展，最终会诞生所谓的超循环电池，而它也将打开越来越多的市场。”

    创业公司使用新型化学物质研发的电池，也正在缓慢地进入市场。电池创业公司Ambri的CEO菲尔•吉迪斯也认为，电网蓄电池市场仍然“处于早期阶段”。Ambri公司也正在研发一种新型的低成本电网蓄电池，它将熔盐夹在两层液态金属之中，作为电池的主要材料。

    该公司的首批原型产品预计将于今年夏秋两季正式问世，商用电池则要等到2016年年底才能出货。吉迪斯表示：“我们不担心有人行动得比我们早，因为比起‘做得早’，更重要的是‘做得对’。”3年前刚刚加盟Ambri公司时，吉迪斯觉得电网蓄电池更多是一种概念上的产品，但现在这个领域的很多项目已经成为现实。

    因此，锂离子电池或许有助于为下一代的电池产品铺平道路。不过正如几年前很多太阳能公司想利用新材料制做太阳能电池板，最终却以失败告终一样，新型电池大概也不会一帆风顺，难免会遭遇很多风风雨雨。

    在这个问题上，大多数电池集成商和软件商其实是“电池不可知论者”，不管是哪种化学物质，只要能做出低价、高效、安全的电池，他们都统统欢迎。不过Stem公司的CEO卡灵顿指出，对于一般需要金融方案的大型电网项目来说，锂离子电池要比新型化学物质电池更容易通过银行那一关。特斯拉CEO穆斯克在公司最近的财报电话会议上表示，如果新型电池和电池材料方面有了超越锂离子电池的任何突破，特斯拉公司都将迅速跟进。

    对于GELI这样的公司来说，他们将来的梦想，是要推动所谓“能源互联网”的出现。沃特纳表示：

    “我认为未来几年，最初由互联网构建的业务模式会出现在能源领域，使能源软件、能源计算机、微电网、微电网网络、能源设施、能源应用以及网络化的能源服务整合起来，构成一张‘能源互联网’。”

    等到电池像电脑的芯片、手机的无线电装置、互联网的网络一样低价、可靠和普及时，这一切都可能变成现实。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    审校：任文