Llewellyn King: Entering an iron age for batteries

The old steel mill in Weirton, W.Va., from which a Massachusetts company’s perhaps revolutionary iron-air batteries will be shipped.

WEST WARWICK, R.I. 

Since electricity was first deployed, there has been a missing link: storage.

The lead-acid battery was first developed in 1859 and has been refined to the effective, utilitarian box we have in cars today. Gone are the days when you sometimes had to top up the car battery with sulfuric acid and, often, distilled water.

These batteries, these workhorses, never made it far beyond their essential role in automobiles. Although early car manufacturers thought that the future of the automobile would belong to electricity, it was the internal-combustion engine that took over.

While battery research continues unabated – especially after the energy crisis that unfolded after the fall of 1973 -- it wasn’t until the lithium-ion battery arrived in the 1980s that batteries became a transformative technology. From cell phones to Teslas, they have upended the world of stored electricity.

Lithium-ion was the clear winner. It is light and suitable for transportation. It has also been the primary battery for utilities, which have been installing them at breakneck speed. But they are costly, and lithium is at the end of a troubled supply chain.

Batteries are essential to realizing the full potential of electricity generated from wind and solar. They provide power when the sun has set or the wind isn’t blowing. They can capture surplus production in the middle of the day when states like California and Arizona already have overproduction of solar power and it becomes negative energy, wasted.

Enter iron-air batteries. That is right: Iron with an “r,” which is the basic material in steel and one of the most plentiful elements on Earth.

Iron-air batteries use rusting as their central technology. In an iron-air battery, iron, water and air are the components. The iron rusts to discharge power and the rusting is reversed to charge the battery.

Form Energy, based in Somerville, Mass., will be shipping these revolutionary batteries to utilities late this year or early next from their manufacturing plant at the site of the old steel mill on the Ohio River in Weirton, W.Va. This means transportation infrastructure for heavy loads is already in place.

Form Energy got started with two battery experts talking: Mateo Jaramillo, the head of  battery development at Tesla, and Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor at MIT who devoted his career to the study of batteries, primarily lithium. Indeed, he told me when I met with him in Somerville, that he fathered two successful battery companies using lithium.

But clearly, iron-air is Chiang’s passion now — a palpable passion. He is the chief scientific officer at Form Energy and remains professor of materials science and engineering and professor of ceramics at MIT.

Chiang, Jaramillo and three others founded Form Energy, in 2017. Now it has contracts with five utilities to provide batteries and appears to be fulfilling the dearest wish of the utilities: a battery that can provide electricity over long periods of time, like 100 hours. Lithium-ion batteries draw down quickly — usually in two or four hours, before they must be recharged.

An iron-air battery is capable of slow discharge over days, not hours. Therefore, it can capture electricity when the sun is blazing and the wind is blowing — which tends to drop in the afternoon just when utilities are beginning to experience their peak load, which is early evening.

Iron is very heavy and so the use of iron-air technology would appear to be limited to utilities where weight isn’t a problem and where the need for long, long drawdown times are needed; for example, when the wind doesn’t blow for several days.

Jaramillo told me the company has finished its funding and is well-set financially. It has raised $860 million and was given $290 million by the state of West Virginia,

The smart money has noticed: Early funders include Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Is a new Iron Age at hand?

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email address is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.

whchronicle.com

It will calm down

“Angry Nimbus” (limited edition fine art photograph), by Robert Thomas, at Spectrum Art Gallery, Centerbrook, Conn., a village in the town of Essex.

Early 20th Century postcard.

Before Fenway

Playing at the Huntington Avenue field in the early 20th Century.

Excerpted from The Boston Guardian

“The Huntington Avenue American League Baseball Grounds was one of the most popular and well-attended baseball fields in Boston in the early 20th Century. The large open-air field was on Huntington Avenue, just west of Massachusetts Avenue and opposite the Boston Opera House. It was the first home of the Boston Red Sox.

“In 1901, ground was officially broken in the Fenway area of the city for the new baseball field, with a covered grandstand and high wood fences, that was to have a capacity of 11,500 spectators….

“The baseball field was the site of the World Series game between the current American and National Leagues in 1903, the first perfect game in the modern era, thrown by Cy Young in 1904.’’

Hit this link to read the whole article, by historian Anthony Sammarco

Using fungi instead of petroleum

A series of fungi.

— Collage by BorgQueen

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Anything we can do to get off many manmade toxic chemicals the better, in small and large places.  Researchers and business have been stepping up efforts to get off problematical chemicals by turning to natural solutions.

Boston’s WBUR reports that one quirky example is on Nantucket, which is experimenting with “MycoBuoys,” made from the root-like part of mushrooms (which, of course, are fungi), to replace petroleum-based Styrofoam buoys used in scallop, oyster, and mussel aquaculture to hold up spat collectors. The Styrofoam degrades, releasing microplastics that pose health risks to animal life in general. In this case, they may have been harming shellfish reproduction.

When shellfish reproduce, they spawn tiny larvae that move in the water until they find a structure to settle on. Once the larvae permanently attach to a surface, they are known as spat and, hopefully, grow to harvestable-sized shellfish.

The hope is that the buoys will last five to eight months. Town officials will see if their use can increase the number of scallops. If so, that could be an economic boon. Scallops sell for a pretty price.

Fungi can be used in a wide variety of ways to reduce the use of manmade chemicals. These include medicine, fuel, fertilizers, cosmetics, clothing and footwear. And reducing the production of manmade chemicals reduces the burning of fossil fuels.

Hit this link.

Woods on the grid

“The Woods Maine” (grid-based painting), by Rhode Island artist Kristin Lamb, at the Jennifer Terzian Gallery, Litchfield, Conn., April 27-June 15.

—Image courtesy of the gallery

The gallery promotes Ms. Lamb’s labor-intensive grid-based paintings {that} focus on the beauty of lush, green New England forests. Ms. Lamb says her work is a“blur between a focused photorealism, a computer-generated pattern and a fetishized repetition of an acrylic paint mark.’’

William Morgan: Big bargains and major mysteries at Savers

Photos, except for the picture of the author himself, by William Morgan

Savers (“make secondhand, second nature”) is the largest for-profit thrift retailer in the country, serving 29 states. There are a half dozen Savers close to us in Rhode Island and Massachusetts that we frequent, but the one on Branch Avenue at Interstate 95 in Providence is the motherlode. Since we discovered Savers, I cannot remember buying an item of clothing anywhere else. Where else could I find a Harris tweed jacket from Edinburgh for $9.99 or a university scarf from a Glasgow department store that closed in 1943 for $3.99?

That said, I hate to shop. So, when my wife, Carolyn, is in Savers in search of fabric with which to make clothes, tchotchkes to incorporate in art, or household furnishings for young newlyweds, I roam the bookshelves there (or what we call The Library). Then with a couple of British murder mysteries (mystery reading is an addiction, said W.H. Auden, like smoking or alcohol), I head for a comfortable chair or sofa in the furniture section (which we call The Lounge), where I settle in for some reading and likely a nap.

The author reading in Savers.

— Photo by Gabs Chioniere

Sometimes a napping man causes a stir, and once someone asked if I were dead. Other times, I may head outside to get away from the pervasive used-clothes smell. There’s not much room around our Savers to walk safely; still, beyond the cigarette butts, dental-flossing devices, and candy wrappers, the parking lot can yield some treasures. A recent perambulation suggested that there’s darker side to Savers: unsolved mysteries.

Why the abandoned trousers? An after-hours tryst interrupted and the pants left behind? 

A dismembered ear? Presumably a discarded part of a Halloween costume (Halloween is huge at Savers). Although, at first glance, there is a suggestion of violence, as with the blue jeans. Instead of behind a bar in Arles, a contemporary Van Gogh and Gauguin had a knife fight outside of the thrift store.

Most mysterious of all was a single high-heeled shoe abandoned at the edge of the Savers parking lot.

Was this pump left behind by a hasty Cinderella fleeing a wee hours ball held on the asphalt?

 William Morgan is a Providence-based architectural writer. His latest book is Academia: Collegiate Gothic Architecture in the United States.

‘And you’re two months back’

Western face of Camel's Hump Mountain (elevation 4,079 feet), in Vermont.

— Photo by Niranjan Arminius

“….You know how it is with an April day

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,

A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March….’’

— From “Two Tramps in Mud Time,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Artists' homage to trees in a state that is mostly trees

“Uproot III” (charcoal on paper), by Julie Comnick, in the group show RISE: Trees; Our Botanical Giants, at Mad River Valley Arts, Waitsfield, Vt., through April 26.

The gallery says the show “features 20 artists paying homage to the tree in the creative process. Artists salute their relationship with wood materials reclaimed or formally crafted and in doing so push the conversation between man-made and nature into one of collaborative celebration.’’

The Mad River.

WPI to launch PhD program in financial technology

Boynton Hall, WPI's main administrative building, built in 1868.

— Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel

Edited from a New England Council report

“Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has announced that it will establish America’s first PhD program in financial technology (fintech). WPI already offers both bachelor’s and master’s programs in fintech, making the school the first in the nation to offer fintech programs for all three degree options.  

“According to a press release from WPI, the curriculum will ‘offer a comprehensive, multidisciplinary education that bridges finance, mathematics, computer science, and ethics.’ Students will study various topics in these areas, such as AI, analytics, data science and applied statistics, as well as material on ethical challenges within the industry, such as data privacy.  

“‘Introducing a doctoral degree program in FinTech exemplifies how WPI is a global innovator at the intersection of business and technology,’ said WPI President Grace Wang.

“‘Graduates of this program will emerge as academic and industry leaders who will shape the future of financial technology education and the financial services sector.”’

Room service will be late today

“Waking Up” (photomontage on aluminum), by Deer Isle, Maine-based artist Jeffrey C. Becton, in his show “Framing the Domestic Sea,’’ at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, through May 5.

— Image courtesy of Mr. Becton

The museum says the show “evokes New England’s varied histories, the maritime world and the impacts of climate change on coastal communities.’’

David Warsh: What George W. Bush did right

Federal Reserve System headquarters, in Washington, D.C.

— Photo by DestinationFearFan

SOMERVILLE, Mass.
Before my column, called Economic Principals, goes monthly, I want to revisit what now seems to be its single most important misjudgment in forty years. While it occurred fifteen years ago, it has relevance to the present day.

The Jan, 25, 2009, edition of the weekly, “In Which George W. Bush Enters History,” I began:

George W. Bush left Washington last week amid a hail of jeers. “The Frat Boy Ships Out” headlined The Economist. “Serially incompetent,” declared the Financial Times. “Worse than Hoover,” concluded Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley.

Bush arrived in Midland, Texas, to find a cheering crowd of 20,000.

I was a little more temperate.  Bush’s admirers for years had for years portrayed him as resembling Harry Truman – unpopular when leaving office, later remembered with “a tincture of admiration and regret.” A more re-illuminating comparison, I suggested, citing expert opinion, was to Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), the last president with a faith-based foreign policy.

I said nothing  about the apartheid policy that Wilson, a Virginian, reinstalled; this was before the Third Reconstruction gathered steam, George Floyd (1973-2020) and The New York Times’s 1619 project. It was a pretty good column, worth reading today, emblematic of the weekly’s style, before, a year later, I began writing the book that has preoccupied me ever since.

Wilson’s case is a good illustration of the fact that every president makes so many decisions about so many polices that it is difficult, if not  impossible to single out in his day the one for which he’ll be remembered decades later, depending on the decade.  Bush’s great achievement grew out of two decisions he made during the final quarter of his administration.

The second half had started badly enough with his Second Inaugural Address.

[I]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

Then came the Hurricane Katrina flood, the plan to privatize Social Security,  the  two-thousandth American death in Iraq, Vice president Dick Cheney shooting a fellow fowler during a Texas partridge hunt. An old friend dates the low point as Bush’ s attempt to appoint one of his staffers to the Supreme Court.

After that, things improved. After heavy losses in the mid-term election, Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, turned away from Cheney in favor of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He appointed corporate attorney and former appellate court judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court. A year later he picked Goldman Sachs chief executive Henry Paulson as Treasury secretary. 

Most important, in October 2005, Bush chose Ben Bernanke an expert on the Great Depression, to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Bernanke, a former Princeton University professor, had spent four years of his administration as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, then two as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The joke at the time was that Bush chose Bernanke because he wore white socks with his dark suits to White House briefings.

Bernanke had a relatively peaceful first year as chairman, but by 2007 was  preparing measures behind the scenes to defuse or at least contro a slowly building crisis.  By the summer of 2008, the banking system was on the verge of collapse. Even after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, in September, Paulson continued to argue that a combination of lending and takeovers by a consortium of big banks could resolve it. Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said no.  After three days, Paulson folded his hand.  Government lending to stop the crisis would be required. A day of meetings with legislators followed.

And on that Friday Bush made his second crucial decision. He walked out with the others to the Rose Garden to make an out-of-the blue plea for a something called a Troubled Asset Relief Program. Nobody seemed to know quite what it might do. Never mind that five weeks of negotiation were required to clarify the matter. By October the panic had been quelled. Last-minute lending by the Fed Reserve, backstopped by the U.S. Treasury, and ten other central banks around the world, had prevented what otherwise virtually certainly would have turned into a second Great Depression had a lawsuits race to the bottom begun.

Bush got little credit for his courage. Barack Obama defeated John McCain in November and attention quickly shifted to blame, and the steep recession that had already begun. Unemployment climbed to 10 percent, not the twenty or more that had been feared in those five desperate weeks. Ahead lay Obamacare and the Tea Party.

Like the rest of the press, I mostly missed the story at the time. Bush’s admirers turn out to have been right. That was my single worst miscalculation.  Second, of course, was America’s invasion of Iraq. Like most of the rest of the mainstream press, I was for the war before it was against it. It took about four weeks to change its mind.

And the significance to the present day? It is two-fold. 

The first has to do with  is the carom shot that today’s is war in Ukraine. Instead of committing American forces to free the world from tyranny, the U.S. has offered intelligence and arms, and otherwise depended on the willingness of Ukrainian soldiers to repel the invaders of their homeland. Tens of thousands have died.   

As Fareed Zakaria writes in the current Foreign Affairs, “America shouldn’t give up on the world it made.” Mike Johnson’s willingness to risk his speakership to build a bipartisan coalition ensure that America keeps its promises, as best it can. His choice is the true beginning of the end for Donald Trump.

David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com

Lots of choices

1922 road map

Early Modernist chowder

Today we take New England clam chowder as something traditional that makes our roots as American cooking very solid, with a lot of foundation. But the first person who decided to mix potatoes and clams and bacon and cream, in his own way 100 to 200 years ago, was a Modernist.

Jose Andres (born 1969), Spanish-American chef, restaurateur and teacher. Beginning in the fall of 2010, Andrés taught a culinary physics course at Harvard University with Ferran Adrià.

Digging for clams on Cape Cod in 2008

— Photo by Invertzoo

Colors at Walden Pond

“Blue Water” (oil on canvas), by Patricia Crotty, in her show “Sky Water: Reflections on Walden Pond”, at Walden Pond State Reservation Gallery, Concord, Mass., through April 30.

The gallery says:

“The colorful abstract paintings and collages of local artist Patricia Crotty are inspired by the connection with nature that Walden Pond {made internationally famous by Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden} provides visitors. They celebrate the beauty of nature in all of its forms and seasons. Co-sponsored by Friends of Walden Pond. The exhibit is free; parking fees apply.’’

Perspectives on transparency

“Transparency’’ — a show by members of New England Wax

May 21 – June 27, 2024

Wellfleet Preservation Hall
335 Main Street in Wellfleet, MA

Reception: Saturday, June 1, 5–7pm

Open to the public Tuesday – Friday 10am–4pm, and during events.

Transparency, featuring works from 27 artists, seeks to investigate the concept of transparency in all its forms. Wax is a mutable material, capable of changing its form and adapting to its environment. Utilizing light, texture, form, and color, works in this exhibition play with the literal qualities of transparency, with pieces that are both ethereal or illusory and grounded in the physical world. Others explore the metaphorical dimensions of transparency, examining issues of trust, accountability, and communication. Through the works of a range of artists working with wax, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the significance of transparency in our society and explore its relationship to power, communication, and the human experience. Each piece in the exhibition offers a unique perspective on transparency and its many layers of meaning, creating a cohesive and thought-provoking narrative.

Wellfleet Preservation Hall is a vibrant cultural center that uses the transformational power of the arts to bring people together and impact positive change. It is a community center that celebrates people from all backgrounds and walks of life.

335 Main Street, Wellfleet, MA • 508-349-1800

Exhibiting Artists:
Katrina Abbott
Lola Baltzell
Edith Beatty
Hilary Hanson Bruel
Lisa Cohen
Angel Dean
Pamela Dorris DeJong
Heather Leigh Douglas
Hélène Farrar
Dona Mara Friedman
Kay Hartung
Anne Hebebrand
Sue Katz
Janet Lesniak
Ross Ozer
Deborah Peeples
Deborah Pressman
Stephanie Roberts-Camello
Lia Rothstein
Melissa Rubin
Ruth Sack
Sarah Springer
Donna Hamil Talman
Marina Thompson
Lelia Stokes Weinstein
Charyl Weissbach
Nancy Whitcomb

‘Lengthens the perspectives’

Town common in Princeton, Mass.

“Predating the merciless grid that seized Manhattan and possessed the vast Midwest, New England towns have each at their center an irregular heart of open grass, vestige of the Puritan common. {The} idea, of land held in common, as ….part of a workaday covenant with the Bestower of a new continent, has permanently imprinted the maps of these towns, and lengthens the perspectives of those who live within them.’’

— John Updike (1932-2009), American novelist, poet, short-story writer and literary and art critic. He lived for most of his adult life in Massachusetts North Shore towns.

Chris Powell: More absentee ballots means more election corruption; boffo at Bradley

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Judging by voter participation in Connecticut's most recent municipal elections, Hartford may be the most demoralized place in the state.

The Hearst Connecticut newspapers report that only 14 percent of Hartford residents who are registered to vote did so in last year's municipal election, when the city had the lowest voter participation among all Connecticut municipalities. The city's voter participation rate is actually far worse than reported, since, as with all other municipalities, many eligible residents don't even register to vote.

What is the City Council's idea for curing this civic demoralization? It's to diminish election security by mailing absentee-ballot applications for future elections to all residents on the voter rolls.

Of course, absentee ballots have been at the center of the recent election-corruption scandals in Bridgeport, where absentee ballot applications have been pressed on people who did not apply for them and completed absentee ballots have been stuffed by political operatives into unsecured ballot deposit boxes.

Absentee ballots are a necessity of democracy, but for election security their use should be minimized, not increased. For the more a voter is separated from the in-person casting of his vote, the more potential there will be for corruption. Requests for absentee ballots should be scrutinized for validation as much as the casting of completed ballots in person should be.

The Republican minority in the General Assembly is serious about this issue. The Democratic majority is not.

The Republicans propose to outlaw the mailing of unsolicited absentee-ballot applications, to require people voting by absentee ballot to include a copy of an identification document bearing a photo, to require municipalities to provide voters with photo identification without charge, the cost to be reimbursed by state government; to require municipalities to update and audit their voter rolls regularly, and to suspend use of absentee ballot deposit boxes, since the U.S. mail can do the job more securely.

xxx

PLEADING POVERTY: Should poor people have to obey the law in Connecticut? Legislation approved by the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee suggests that poverty should confer exemption from the law.

The legislation, sponsored by four Democratic state representatives, would forbid the suspension of driver's licenses for people who have failed to appear in court as ordered or who have failed to pay fines. Suspension of the driver's licenses of people who ignore court orders and judgments has been an incentive for obeying the law.

The rationale of the legislation is that poor people are less able to take time off from work to attend court and less able to pay fines, and of course they are. But if poverty is to excuse people from respect the law and the courts, why should they obey any law at all? 

Connecticut's courts already carry hundreds of cases of failure to appear. If the Judiciary Committee's legislation is enacted, the state is sure to experience much more contempt for law and an ever-growing inventory of "failure to appears" -- and somehow the Democrats will call it justice.

At Bradley International Airport

DILLON IMPROVED BRADLEY: In recent years Connecticut has put many millions of dollars into Bradley International Airport. Though the correlation between spending and improvement in state government is usually weak, the airport has improved much since the Connecticut Airport Authority was created to operate it and the other state-owned airports in 2013.

For the 11 years since then Kevin A. Dillon has been the authority's executive director, overseeing a great expansion of service at Bradley -- more international and nonstop flights, more airlines, better facilities, and more passengers, though the passenger total from the year prior to the virus epidemic has not quite been surpassed yet.

Bradley makes a huge contribution to Connecticut's economy, its business environment, and quality of life, for which Dillon must be credited. He plans to retire early next year. Before he leaves the authority should name something after him.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).  

‘Joy shivers in the corner’

“Aunt Karen in the Rocking Chair,’’ by Edvard Munch, 1883

Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast
Of love that you will hear them at a feast
Where demons would appeal for some repose,
Still clamoring where the chalice overflows
And crying wildest who have drunk the least.

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

‘‘New England,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), famed poet who grew up on the Maine Coast

Old High School (1870-1969) in Gardiner, Maine, which Robinson attended.

What happened to downtown Boston 'height bonus' model?

From The Boston Guardian

“The Downtown’s deferred zoning update has abruptly lost one of its core propositions, replacing a pay-for-height proposal with new ‘skyline districts’ and leaving compensation for that height to the yet undecided Article 80 process.

“The Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) outlined the changes in an April 9 public meeting on PLAN: Downtown, a sweeping set of reforms that drastically changes downtown zoning to allow more businesses and, in some places, increases the maximum building height by hundreds of feet.

“PLAN: Downtown was supposed to be resolved back in November but proved controversial enough to delay full adoption and split into three parts to be debated separately this year.

“Now PLAN: Downtown seems to have lost its central ‘height bonus’ model that allowed developers to build by right up to state shadow and aviation limits in exchange for proportional donations to a community fund.’’

To read the whole article, please hit this link.

‘Protection and service’

“Freedom Arrows” (arrows, feathers (mostly turkey), wood, paint, metals, brass, beads, leather plastic, twine, acrylic paint, bone, human hair, stone, arrow heads), by Ari Montford, at the Fitchburg (Mass.) Art Museum, through June 2.

—Image courtesy of the artist

The museum says that the work “amplifies the arrow’s symbolism as tool, weapon, and message to explore Indigenous Black themes through the lens of the Native American experience of genocide. Within the museum lobby, a volley of hand-beaded arrows is suspended midair (as if just unleashed from unseen bows) and embedded in the walls. Dual concepts of protection and service, aggression and power blend with the arrows’ spiritual presence to create a space that provokes conversation about racial justice and narrative-making. Montford’s installation engages with the impact of structural racism, Indigenous trauma, and the process of creating safe spaces for restorative justice through their own voice as a Black Two Spirit Indigenous cultural practitioner.’’