DailyDirt: Storing Up Energy For A Rainy Day...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Apr 17th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Battery technologies haven't quite achieved the same kind of Moore's Law progress as other kinds of electronics. Being able to store energy is still incredibly important, so there are plenty of projects trying to figure out better ways to store up electricity efficiently. No one has a complete solution, but here are some interesting attempts to manage energy-use fluctuations.

Google is saving on its power bills for a datacenter in Taiwan by storing up thermal energy in ice. Using a giant ice maker retro-fitted to the datacenter's AC systems, Google can store up energy at night and cool its operations during the day when electricity is more expensive. [url]
Beacon Power built a 20-megawatt energy storage system based on flywheels in 2011. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt that same year, but the firm's assets have been acquired by private equity firm Rockland Capital. [url]
MIT professor, Donald Sadoway, has invented a huge battery for electrical power grids that can handle the huge loads -- and is designed to be "dirt" cheap. Sadoway quips, "We choose to work on gridlevel storage not because it is easy but because it is hard." [url]
To discover more stuff on alternative energy, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

As always, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: batteries, flywheel, ice, mit, moore's law, taiwan
Companies: beacon power, google

6 Comments

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Atkray (profile), 17 Apr 2012 @ 10:20pm

IP will save the US
from the Beacon power article

"Government attorneys also are criticizing what they said were early estimates by the Massachusetts-based company that its New York plant was worth $68 million and its so-called �flywheel intellectual property� held a value of $28 million to $47 million."
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Apr 2012 @ 1:13am

There are some interesting liquid-sodium heat sink ideas floating around for high-energy solar, too. Works better in some climates than others, I gather.
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Hanno (profile), 18 Apr 2012 @ 1:44am

Hydrogen and Methane
What's currently gaining a lot of attention in Germany is the technology to transform electricity into hydrogen or methane.

The advantage: It can be put into the natural gas grid which is already there with lots of storage facilities. It can take up to 5 percent hydrogen (and there are discussions if it could be much more with slight technology changes). Methane can be put into the grid in an unlimited amount.

The disadvantage: It's relatively expensive and inefficient.

Enertrag, one of the companies engaged in it, has some english info:
https://www.enertrag.com/en/project-development/hybrid-power-plant.html
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- Michael Ho (profile), 18 Apr 2012 @ 12:58pm
  
  Re: Hydrogen and Methane
  The electrolysis of water to get hydrogen doesn't seem like a great way to store surplus energy.... and storing hydrogen isn't exactly a fun task either.
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Call me Al, 18 Apr 2012 @ 2:49am

I read about another one recently. Essentially they use any excess energy from wind turbines to pump water behind a dam. Then on those occasions when the wind is insufficient they release the water through turbines and so generate power that way.

I'm sure its inefficient but it seems a sensible solution to the problem of how to make batteries big enough.
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- A Guy (profile), 18 Apr 2012 @ 4:35am
  
  Re:
  Actually, those are some of the most efficient energy storage schemes available today. The only problem is that not many sites has suitable resources to handle a large volume of stored water and viable renewable energy sources close enough to each other.
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