Today, when I was flooding the world for green energy headlines, I came across an item in the NY Post about the Empire3NY (iM3NY) battery plant near Binghamton, New York, with commercial operations. I quickly searched for the CleanTechnica archives to see if we’ve covered this topic before, and sure enough, we made a story about it — on October 7, 2017. While the company has some enticing new technology, it takes a long time to reach the production stage. The plant should be operational in the fall of 2019.
Now the plant has a capacity of only 1 GWh per year, but that’s not the big news here. Importantly, the company has contracts with 230 suppliers, none of which are located in China. Not only do the Imperium3 batteries use a new chemistry that makes the batteries cheaper to manufacture, but most of the battery materials needed come from household sources.
The secret sauce
The exact chemistry of the Imperium3 battery is unknown. What is is known to contain no cobalt and no nickel. However, performance specs are hard to come by. Perhaps the most important piece of information is that the research was led by M. Stanley Whittingham, also known as the “father of the lithium-ion battery.” In 2019, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino for their work on lithium-ion technology.
Whittingham is a professor at Binghamton University and his team has been working closely with researchers in Australia to bring their new lithium-ion batteries to fruition. Australian businessman David Collard is the CEO of Scaling Facilitation, a company whose goal is to find international customers for Australian resources. In an interview with the New York Posthe said: “China controls 80% of the world’s population” lithium production of ion batteries. In Australia60% of the world’s lithium comes from one mine, and that mine is 51% controlled by China.”
The Chinese-owned mine then sells the lithium to a processing plant in Australia, also owned by China, before shipping it to China, Collard said. “It is a very strategic industry where the West and Australia need to play a more active role. Putting unhealthy trust in an industry or sector or a person or a company only puts you at potential risk in the path.
Collard was instrumental in getting the New York-based experts to partner with researchers and entrepreneurs in Australia so that his country can one day be self-sufficient in lithium-ion battery production. “It’s the cleanest of all technologies,” Collard . told me The mail. “And that’s largely because of the chemistry.”
As a result of his efforts, Charge industries plans to build a sister facility in Victoria, Australia, which will produce 5 GWh batteries each year. It is expected to come online in 2026. Hopefully Australia will have an EV industry by then.
The Binghamton Battery Factory
The new factory in Endicott, NY — just outside Binghamton — may start small, but expects to employ up to 5,500 people once production hits full throttle. It will be the first lithium-ion battery factory in the US to mainly use North American resources for its battery materials. The battery cells will be used to power electric cars and trucks, energy storage in the power grid and sensitive projects in the defense industry. The company says prismatic battery cells will be available this year, with pocket cells and cylindrical cells in sizes 2170, 3270 and 4680 available from 2024.
Image Courtesy of iM3NY
The so-called Charge CCCV (or C4V) lithium-ion battery “uses fewer metals and less toxic materials than comparable lithium cell batteries,” which could then lead to “lower global warming, acidification, smog and energy consumption,” an independent agency quoted as saying in a New York State Report.
Although the plant has been in operation for 5 years, it will benefit from the economic incentives in the new Inflation Reduction Act intended to encourage domestic production of batteries for electric vehicles in the US. A 1 GWh capacity will hardly make a dent in the amount of batteries needed to power the EV revolution in the US, but it’s a start. Now the question is how much the iM3NY batteries will cost and how their performance – charge and discharge rates, life expectancy and resistance to thermal runaway – compares to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
The path to the future consists of many baby steps. Imperium3NY has taken one of those steps. It will be interesting to see where this leads. We will be monitoring the progress of this business and when we know more, you will know more.
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