Website support document: Batteries: Future energy stores 

 

Topic: STEM careers:  

Activity: Class lesson 15 – 30 minutes 

Web slide set: Setting up a giga watt factory 

Using the 3 interviews of setting up a giga factory with British Volt Chief Strategic Officer, Isobel Shelton OBE, there are suggested topics which can be mentioned to a class to help focus on the video material. 

Slide 6 is a Fermi Calculation set as a change of activity .. Could use this as some mental sums practice. 

Slide 3 has a nice description of Isobel’s career path which might inspire some students. 

Good resource for STEM widening participation. 

 

Topic: Energy Changes: KS4 and 5 

Web slide set: Energy Storage Systems the Microgrid 

Good homework exercise but quite involved ideas and some tricky maths but a good application for GCSE concepts. 

It starts with a 7.24 interview with Dr Denes Csala, a researcher with the Engineering Department, Lancaster University, who discusses the problem of how renewables will only become useful to us if we can store the energy for peak demands. The slides then develop a set of questions on how much energy is needed to be stored, then how many car batteries are needed and then calculations showing what this might look like with batteries in shipping containers on football pitches. The slide set ends with a calculation of how many Nissan Leafs are needed to store the charge and then reinforces the idea of a microgrid suggested by Denes in the interview. 

 

Topic Energy changes / definition of amp and Volt: Batteries 

Web slide set: Storage systems for net carbon zero: Battery development 

It starts with a 7.44 min video of an interview with Shahin Nikman, a researcher at Lancaster University Chemistry Department. There follow at a basic level questions which check the understanding of energy density, energy capacity and power density. Another basic question on using these terms for different battery usage.