by Katie Liu
Free in-person courses offered under Battery Academy
On a quiet Saturday morning at the SUNY Broome Community College’s campus, seven learners assemble in a single lab. With hot plates, glass beakers and bottles of bright blue solution sitting around, it resembles a high school chemistry classroom – except this one is also equipped with a glovebox that can assemble penny-sized coin cells, as well as a secure fume hood to get rid of toxic chemicals.
This is part of the free Battery Technician labs, an opportunity for people of any experience or background to come together in-person for one weekend and learn the basic skills and training needed to become a successful battery technician, from pack assembly to foundational chemistry laws. These in-person labs are offered under New Energy New York’s Battery Academy, a free program that offers various online courses that can meet participants wherever they are, whether they’re looking to pivot into the battery sector or just curious.
“We’ve had community members that don’t have any experience with batteries that are trying to transition from one area of expertise to a different area,” said Joel Miller, professor and chairperson of chemistry at SUNY Broome. “And we’ve had people who are already working in the battery industry that only know a certain aspect, like the supply chain, and want to have a broader view — which I think our labs provide.”
Siva Rajendran was one of the seven participants who arrived for the lab taking place this past weekend from November 14-16, making the three-hour commute from New York City. As a consultant for commercializing research and development, he said he wanted to get his hands dirty and learn about the resources available in the region.
And get his hands dirty, he did. Rajendran and the rest of his cohort spent the morning learning the principles of stoichiometry and molecular calculations, remarking, “The last time I did this, I had spiky hair!”
The group also had the chance to conduct experiments to create galvanic, self-discharging cells — which, according to Miller, was the simplest and most fundamental experiment done to discover how batteries could even be made in the first place.
While Battery Academy offers courses geared for differing levels of expertise online, being able to conduct actual hands-on experiments in-person has been beneficial for participants.
“You can actually see the cells working, and you can apply the knowledge to something that’s right in front of you,” Miller said. “Another thing is there tends to be a lot of collaboration. We end up with industry partners sending their employees here, and they work with the other participants and at least enjoy talking to each other.”
Rajendran had a similar sentiment, adding that he came looking for “people that I can tap for my next project.”
Having previously worked in regions like California, well-known for its Silicon Valley, Rajendran said making change can often feel like it’s happening inside an echo chamber. “I want different stuff in the mix. This is not baby stuff: I can make companies here, so that’s what I want,” he said. “I don’t want it on a theoretical level, I want to message people and say, ‘We met here and this is what I’m working on. What do you think?’”
For Leyder Manuel Ordaz, co-founder of the energy storage company Enerdaz, he found the labs similarly beneficial in reviewing basic knowledge and figuring out where he could push things further.
“What we want is to translate what we knew from the past and see what we can accomplish with all this knowledge that we can get,” he said. “When you just start in a basic manner, you can always jump into next steps, while you’re doing this kind of lab. I think it gives you the push to continue to research and try that kind of thing.”
Ordaz, whose company is based in the U.S., is also looking for potential clients particularly in the battery and energy storage area.
“Personally, I think it’s a great accomplishment being here, and these kinds of labs and programs — not only in New York, but also everywhere in the world — help us have a more settled idea on what we can do to accomplish more battery storage into the grid,” he said. Company leaders who run enterprises like his own, he added, could benefit greatly from the curriculum.
“If you really care about certain energy-related issues, just see if you’re interested,” Miller added. “The other thing is we need jobs that aren’t just technical jobs. We need people that work in sales, for example, that know how batteries work. There’s all kinds of different jobs — not just technical jobs — that you can get involved with in this effort.”
When Rajendran first moved to New York in 2017, after many different stints and jobs abroad, he said there were few opportunities in the battery sector. Now, the ecosystem is growing, in part thanks to multiple federally funded battery initiatives, led by Binghamton University. What excites Rajendran most about being involved with this young yet blooming industry, he said, is the different perspectives and ideas everybody can bring to the field.
“In my family, we have six nationalities. I’m Indian, my wife is German, my brother grew up in Spain, and his fiance is Italian. Even when we sit at the same table, we don’t speak the same language. When we work, we bring all our own pieces to the table,” he said. “I want to see that happen here. It’s not just Tesla or Panasonic — they know what they know from where they sit. We sit here.”
Miller, who was born and grew up in the area, has seen the changes it has undergone over the years, as industries rose and fell and companies moved out of their buildings.
“I saw this as an opportunity to maybe turn things around for Broome County,” he said. “I feel obligated to the county: I feel like I don’t just live here. I’m a community member, and I really care about the community. I’m hoping that this continues to grow into something that can really bring a lot of jobs to the area.”
NENY’s Battery Technician labs are offered once a semester and are all free to attend at the moment. Miller encourages anybody who is interested in learning more about batteries to take advantage of their access and attend — not only because of the changes it might bring to the community, but also because, he added, it’s just fun.
“It’s a lot of fun to meet so many different people from different companies in the area, and they’re all very motivated and care about energy. When I talk to them, it’s very clear that they don’t just want to make a lot of money. They really care about the problems that they’re trying to solve,” he said. “I hope I can support them and have them be successful.”
The Saturday lab closed with a daring experiment to light up a tiny LED bulb with only half a plastic pipette, a fourth of a cotton ball, a stick of pencil lead and a screw, along with black powder and solution. If assembled correctly, this makeshift battery should in theory be able to amass enough volts to power an LED.
One wasn’t enough to turn on the bulb, so one became two, then three. The experiment ultimately was not successful, as is often the case with science, but still elicited laughter and collaboration.
The urge to solve problems as a community seems to be instinctual, even in this small classroom and microcosm of New York’s battery ecosystem, as seven people — including Rajendran and Ordaz — put together their pipette batteries and brains to try and figure out a unifying problem. And in that moment, the future of energy storage wasn’t the biggest conundrum in the room, though solutions are already on their way: It was how to light that single, tiny LED bulb, together.