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FOSDEM PWA

Scaling up open-source batteries: what's worth pursuing?

AW1.126 | Day 1 | 12:30 - 12:55 | Speakers: Kirk Smith, Daniel Fernandez Pinto

Scaling up open-source batteries: what's worth pursuing?
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Notes

Abstract

Storing energy reversibly is useful. For clean energy, electrochemical batteries are one of the most attractive options. Most battery technology is proprietary, hard to recycle, and complicated to manufacture. What if that wasn't the case?

We will present our collective and individual efforts with the Flow Battery Research Collective (https://fbrc.dev/) to build open-source batteries for stationary storage applications. This includes our flow battery work, such as efforts to build a larger-format cell with simple manufacturing techniques like laser cutting and FDM printing, as well as our different experiments with flow battery electrolytes based on zinc, iodine, iron, and manganese.

We will also cover our individual efforts to build conventional, non-flow flooded batteries based on water and the above elements (including this work by the speaker Daniel: https://chemisting.com/2025/05/23/a-low-cost-open-source-cu-mn-rechargeable-static-battery/). We will discuss the economic hurdles facing practical implementations of these systems.

Speakers

Kirk Smith

Scientist with background in mechanical and electrochemical engineering of energy conversion and storage devices. Passionate about open-source, especially hardware. Personal blog at https://dualpower.supply/.

Daniel Fernandez Pinto

Daniel Fernandez Pinto is a chemist with a PhD in nanotechnology who works independently on energy storage research and open source hardware. As cofounder of the Flow Battery Research Collective, he develops and documents reproducible flow battery systems for practical experimentation and larger scale prototypes. He releases his designs, methods, and results openly so others can build on them, reflecting a clear preference for transparent, community driven scientific work.

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