Greentech media has an update on Ambri's liquid metal battery - Update on Ambri’s Liquid Metal Grid-Scale Battery.

Ambri hopes to have its first scaled 20-kilowatt-hour units operational early this year, with 35-kilowatt-hour commercial units coming in 2015. A larger system will reach 200 kilowatt-hours in 3 cubic meters. The 10-ton weight of that unit will serve as an effective theft deterrent, joked Bradwell.

The company's pilot project in Hawaii will have two cores installed this year in partnership with First Wind and HECO, with funding from the DOE- and ONR-sponsored Hawaii Energy Excelerator. The goal is to improve integration of solar power and reduce wind curtailment.

Another project at Joint Base Cape Cod will see deployment of a 35-kilowatt-hour prototype to improve grid security and reliability.

IEEE Spectrum reports liquid metal battery company Ambri is about to commence production - A Liquid Metal Battery for Grid Storage Nears Production.

MIT spin-off Ambri is a step closer to bringing a novel liquid metal battery to the electricity grid.

The company on Thursday cut the ribbon on a new production facility in Marlboro, Mass., where it intends to make shipping-container size batteries. Ambri also said its first two customers will be a military base on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and a wind project in Hawaii. The company will be making prototypes and demonstration units in Marlboro for installation next year and intends to have a full-scale manufacturing facility in 2015.

To keep battery prices low, Ambri uses inexpensive materials and a simple design. Each battery cell is a square metal box about 10 centimeters per side. (The image is a beta cell that was larger and circular.) Each cell contains two metals and a salt electrolyte that are all in liquid form when the battery is running. Because the materials have different densities, three distinct layers form. When discharging, metal ions from the top layer, which is the anode, travel through the electrolyte to combine with ions from the bottom layer, which is the cathode. The process works in reverse during charging. The battery operates at hundreds of degrees Celsius, and the heat generated by the charging and discharging keeps the internal cell components liquid.

MIT professor Donald Sadoway and his then-graduate student David Bradwell designed the first proofs of concept using antimony and magnesium with a salt electrolyte. In 2010, they formed a company, which has been funded by venture capital, energy company Total, and a Department of Energy ARPA-E grant.

Greentech Media reports that the liquid metal battery company I mentioned recently has received a round of venture capital funding - Sadoway’s MIT Liquid Metal Battery Startup Adds $15M and Khosla Ventures as Investor.

It's almost a cliche that the missing piece of a renewable energy future is low-cost energy storage.

"Until we find a technology that is low-cost, highly scalable, and long-lasting, ubiquitous grid storage won't be possible. The all-liquid battery's elegant materials design and simple assembly process makes it the best chemical option we've seen for storing the grid at massive scale."

That's Khosla Ventures partner Andrew Chung's comment on Liquid Metal Battery Corporation (LMBC). He's now on the board of the firm; he funded founder Don Sadoway's research at MIT before the firm won the top ARPA-E award back in 2009. LMBC just announced that it raised an additional $15 million in funding in its Round B from Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates and energy company Total

We spoke with Phil Giudice, the CEO of LMBC, as well. He said, "Our Liquid Metal Battery technology is tremendously exciting because it has the potential to dramatically change the electric power system everywhere," in a release. The CEO told GTM that the company had passed the R&D stage and was moving into commercializing the technology for large-scale grid applications.