Want to work in battery technology

If you want to ensure that you have a challenging problem to work on in the next 20 years related to energy, then batteries are what you need to work on. Work for a company with a mission that keeps you motivated to get out of bed in the morning and make the world a better place.

Battery technologies do keep getting better. Recently, Jack Goodenough, the inventor of the Li-ion battery, came out with a new fast-charging battery technology using that uses a glass electrode instead of a liquid one, sodium instead of lithium, and may have three times as much energy density as lithium-ion batteries.

The work done by a battery is equal to the product of the current flowing through the circuit and the resistor. It is also equal to the work needed to move a single charge from one side of the battery to the other. Furthermore, it is equal to the thermal energy dissipated by the resistor. Lastly, it is equal to the emf of the battery.

Our current batteries, particularly Lithium-ion which is the most commonly used type, are not sufficient due to being expensive, slow charging, bulky, fast to degrade, and having a tendency to catch fire, as well as being unfriendly to the environment.

A lot of battery companies are full of people who were the smartest kids in their high schools and the smartest in their undergrad or grad programs. Now if you hire these people, you're never gonna build consensus and you're never going to get 100% of people to agree on something.

Batteries have always been challenging where you have to keep your work a secret but Mateo Jaramillo, the cofounder of Form Energy, tells a really convincing story about where the world is going in terms of energy storage, the falling price point of renewables, and where our technology fits into the puzzle.