We would welcome a genius like Musk on board, says Czech inventor Jan Procházka

If Czech inventor Jan Procházka is right, his unique HE3DA battery has a great future ahead of it, including on the US market. HE3DA is now negotiating with the Nevada state government on the construction of a factory for Czech batteries. Jan Procházka is convinced that his invention will create an entirely new market.

“Some may see Elon Musk as our competitor, but I do not think so,” Jan Procházka says in an exclusive interview with the oEnergetice website. HE3DA batteries will specialise in huge energy storage systems, while the world-famous visionary Elon Musk will naturally be strong in many other segments. Procházka even believes that Musk might give serious thought to the HE3DA battery concept. Asked directly, he says he certainly would not reject potential cooperation with Musk. “We would very much welcome such a genius businessman on board,” the Czech inventor adds.

Both the planned HE3DA battery factory in the Karviná region and another planned plant in the United States are to manufacture enormous batteries weighing roughly half a tonne. They are primarily intended for the energy sector and for facilities that need to create their own energy storage systems or want to disconnect from the distribution grid. These are batteries with 3D spatial – or, in layman’s terms, very thick – electrodes based on lithium nanomaterials.

You lived in America for twenty years and know the environment there well. What do you think the chances are of succeeding specifically in the US market?

I think it is almost impossible not to succeed there with our battery. As long as you are in the research phase, you earn no money and only have to invest. But we have already progressed with the construction of a battery manufacturing plant in the Karviná region. We will be producing batteries in 2019. At that point, the economic parameters, production costs and calculations will be clear. I believe we will become Europe’s largest manufacturer of lithium batteries. That will naturally attract further investors and have a positive impact on our project in America as well. We want the battery to be certified for the US market by the time the first batteries begin to be produced at the new plant here.

In America, everyone is now obsessed with Elon Musk, who has already brought a number of his projects, including batteries, to an advanced stage. Yet reports are emerging that his financial situation is not ideal. He still has to raise more funding…

That is related to how highly ambitious Musk is. He keeps launching more and more projects that could potentially create entirely new market segments. And Musk does not go into small projects. He is attracted by technological progress and shows how to achieve it. If you look at each of his individual projects, you will always find commercial potential there. His applied research naturally requires considerable investment. Overall, however, Musk is a hundred times more commercially successful than anyone could possibly imagine.

Are you also attracted by technological progress?

I am, but on a smaller scale. On the other hand, I do not think our HE3DA battery project should have any less of a global impact. On the contrary, I am convinced that its potential impact is at least on the same level.

The attractive American West

So let us assume that it is impossible not to succeed in America with a good product. What leads you to that view? The enormous local demand for batteries?

That is one thing. Another is the unique characteristics of our batteries. Take the prospects for electrifying desert highways in states such as California, Nevada and Arizona – essentially the entire American West. Building power lines there is virtually impossible. Yet the desert there now has a completely different economic value than before, as solar farms are being built. If you have a battery and solar charging, you do not have to worry about infrastructure. People today often think about wanting cheap electricity. But I say that is not the main thing. You pay far more for distribution. In Las Vegas, for instance, we could see that large MGM-type casinos are trying to free themselves from distribution charges. And it costs them considerable sums.

Is it possible that you will ultimately build the factory in a US state other than Nevada?

It could be elsewhere. We will seek proposals, but the number of states under consideration is limited.

Why?

Florida, for example, is certainly not an option because humidity there is too high. That would mean very high energy costs. The most suitable locations are the states of the American West, which also have enormous market potential. I will give you another example. Looking only at the western part of the United States, there are roughly 14 million ranches that need to be energy-independent in one way or another. A friend of mine also has a large ranch, with solar panels and lead-acid batteries. He needs to replace those lead-acid batteries with something more reliable and with a substantially longer lifespan. And now imagine how many banks, data storage facilities or hospitals there are in America – there are some 85 thousand hospitals. For us, it is an almost unimaginable market.

You have said several times that you do not intend to enter an existing market, but rather that you are creating an entirely new one. What do you mean by that? Will Elon Musk be your competitor or not?

Some may see it that way, but I am convinced that is not the case. In the first phase, we will focus on huge energy storage systems; that will be our domain. It is true that Elon Musk recently supplied an energy backup unit to Australia and is planning other similar projects. Nevertheless, I think our battery is better suited to this market, both in terms of safety and price. Elon Musk will certainly be strong in other areas; he will probably be able to refine electric mobility very effectively, and perhaps electronics as well.

If I understand correctly, you want to create a new market for huge batteries weighing roughly half a tonne, which are primarily intended for the energy sector and for facilities that need to create their own energy storage systems or want to disconnect from the distribution grid. Is that right?

Exactly. A typical battery cell weighs around 40-50 grams. Ours will genuinely weigh half a tonne. I would not even call it a cell anymore – it is simply an energy block, a modular component for large storage systems. Storing energy in our batteries will be much simpler. It will place lower demands on software, while the reliability of storage systems will increase. In terms of monitoring, control and safety, it is entirely different when a storage system has, say, 150 such energy blocks instead of a million small batteries assembled together.

Musk and I are both pioneers

Nevertheless, Musk’s delivery of a large storage system to Australia has at least attracted enormous attention…

Musk truly is a pioneer and a great visionary. His projects accelerate further development. And the delivery to Australia perfectly illustrates the huge possibilities of storing energy in batteries. Everyone can also see that it is possible to make money in this business. But that does not mean an even better economic solution cannot emerge.

You put it as if Musk is, de facto, opening the door for you with that Australian project…

Musk’s project is in any event an accelerator. But I can also point out that the first energy storage system with capacity in the megawatt-hour range was built using my technology, which I developed during my time in America around the turn of the millennium at Altairnano. So we were much earlier there. That battery received certification as a balancing unit for inclusion in a smart grid as early as 2008.

That was already a battery based on nanotechnology, like HE3DA… How does HE3DA differ from the battery you developed in America?

Within the HE3DA project, we use the rapid diffusion of ions into nanoparticles, but not to create a battery that you can charge in a minute and discharge in a minute. We seek to change the entire manufacturing process. We increase the thickness of the electrode, thereby eliminating some of the separators in the battery. It is a 3D battery concept characterised precisely by greater electrode thickness.

Did your former colleagues in America not continue in this direction?

No. This idea came later.

I read that your original goals within the HE3DA project were different from what you ultimately arrived at. You wanted to achieve longer battery life and faster charging, but as I understand it, that is not the main advantage of your solution today…

It is not. The truly significant advantages of the HE3DA battery, even compared with conventional lithium batteries, are much greater safety and cheaper overall production. That means lower capital and operating costs. We do not use any flammable materials. Today’s batteries are still very expensive, their safety remains questionable, and large storage systems place enormous demands on software. That is why we are convinced that we will be the ones to truly open the door to smart grids. That is the new market I was talking about.

As for cheaper overall production, your planned commercial operation still has to demonstrate that…

It is already clear now. Compared with the production of conventional lithium batteries, we are able to manufacture our batteries in a much smaller area. Our capital costs will be more than twenty times lower. And there is a third major advantage of our batteries: recycling. Current batteries are very difficult to recycle, and most of their materials cannot be recycled. The active materials are bonded to aluminium or copper foils, and removing them is not easy. In the case of HE3DA batteries, it will be possible to recycle 100 percent of all important materials – lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, aluminium and copper.

We are not changing the chemistry, but the design

Sceptics might argue that the future may not lie in lithium batteries at all. Researchers in different parts of the world are working on other technologies, and development could move towards an entirely different type of battery. Does that not concern you?

The die is cast, and changing direction is not easy at all. It does not appear that any other technology is yet on the horizon. But from our perspective, that is not so important. We have not developed new chemistry, but a new design. Our solution consists of a simple design combined with the use of nanomaterials. So if someone came up with a breakthrough solution concerning battery chemistry, it would not bother us at all. On the contrary, it could be another opportunity for us. We have demonstrated our design concept using twenty standard materials.

If Elon Musk offered you cooperation, would you go for it?

We are completely open to it. We would very much welcome such a genius businessman on board. And as I have indicated, I would not want Elon Musk to see us as competition. We do not intend to operate in the same market. But I hope that, as a genius businessman, Musk might look at our concept and give it some thought. Moreover, demand for batteries is now so enormous worldwide that many manufacturers can succeed here. The environmental aspect is also important. Over time, it will be necessary to replace all lead-acid batteries.

Potential investors in the HE3DA project may be concerned by your dispute with Chinese businessman Chu Yuan-pin, which has resulted in your accounts being frozen…

It can certainly concern them. The dispute is unpleasant, but for us it has effectively become a completely minor matter in terms of the total volume of investment and the scale of the entire project. The Chinese businessman pretended that he would finance the first part of production. Today, we are convinced that he was only after stealing intellectual property.

Businessman Jiří Grund, founder of the well-known textile company, recently told me that even a dispute with a Chinese partner had not discouraged the company from further activity in China. However, Grund, which managed to defend its trademark in the dispute, now wants to be much more cautious in the Chinese market.

We are still heading to China as well. Here in my office, you can see confirmation of our four Chinese patents. In fact, we cannot afford not to go to China; it is a huge market. But we will choose a strong and reliable partner, and this time we will conduct thorough due diligence.

Other inventions

The battery is not your only invention. You became known, among other things, for smart coatings, also based on nanotechnology. What is their commercial potential?

The parent company of HE3DA battery manufacturer, Advanced Materials, now makes its living from selling these protective self-cleaning coatings. We already have applications that have been in place for 12 years. Here too, I see an endless market with global impact. These coatings clean the air, but above all they keep building façades clean, as well as the environment inside buildings. The original invention of disinfection was fantastic, but disinfection is reaching its limits today. You can still go to hospital and catch staphylococcus. The world’s best hospitals have a rate of nosocomial infections – those contracted directly in hospital – of around six percent. In the Czech Republic, the average rate is around thirteen percent.

You have also said that at the American company Altairnano in Nevada, you helped invent the first battery based on nanotechnology. It found use in electric buses… What are its main advantages?

As I said, at the time our main goal was fast charging. A bus has to be charged in six minutes for another 120 kilometres. That is not a trivial task if the contacts in the bus are not to be damaged. It was necessary to use inductive charging. Today, this battery is already used on a mass scale. In China, these batteries are manufactured for ten thousand electric buses a year.

In a statement you released during your participation this year at the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, in Las Vegas, you said that electric buses made in Plzeň also use these older batteries…

On our recommendation, Škoda Transportation also uses these batteries in its electric buses and trolleybuses on a smaller scale. It has also supplied trolleybuses with these batteries to Boston in the United States.

But there must be many more electric buses using the batteries you developed at Altairnano operating in America?

The largest number operate in China. But there are certainly quite a few in America as well. Several hundred operate in Los Angeles. The city of Reno in Nevada, where I used to work, is also transitioning entirely to electric buses. The world is changing, and when you bring something new, the first steps tend to be uncertain. I think the trend towards electric mobility is completely clear. Driving an electric vehicle still involves quite a few inconveniences, and it is often not easy to find an outlet. But when you sit in an electric vehicle and look at other cars, they seem like outdated technology. As for our HE3DA batteries, we are starting with energy applications, but electric mobility naturally appeals to us for the future as well.

Cooperation with the Academy of Sciences

When did you actually leave for America?

In 1987.

Did you emigrate?

Yes, I was a bona fide émigré…

When you later worked for the aforementioned Altairnano company in Nevada and conducted that earlier research into a fast-charging battery, you established cooperation with the Czech Academy of Sciences. How did that cooperation come about?

We began cooperating with the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1999. At Altairnano, we were researching various nanomaterials. Our management discovered at the time that there were experts in the Czech Republic working on titanium dioxide. I went to Prague and called Professor Ladislav Kavan of the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences. He was very helpful. We began jointly studying the composition of lithium titanate, which, according to the professor, appeared interesting because of its particular properties. We prepared materials that Professor Kavan measured. When he called me to say that the tested material charged in 14 seconds, I did not sleep for three nights. We knew it was a revolution. I also worked with the Academy of Sciences after returning to Czechia, specifically on research connected with the development of the HE3DA battery.

The author of the article, who also asked the questions, is a consultant and energy projects specialist at HATcom agency.