DailyDirt: Storing Lots Of Energy
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The obvious challenge with renewable energy sources like solar and wind is: what do you do when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing? Solar and wind generators don't tend to produce electricity in convenient amounts whenever we want, leading to wasted resources and further reliance on fossil fuel generators to keep up with electricity demand cycles. Storing lots of energy in an efficient way that can be readily recovered isn't easy, but there are some solutions that could work.- It sounds like a made-up high school physics problem, but there's a startup called ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) that wants to store energy by pushing heavy trains up a hill. When the energy is needed, the trains would roll back down the hill and generate electricity doing so. The rail system takes up a bit of space, but its backers compare it to a hydroelectric dam -- but without the water and with less environmental impact. [url]
- The Llyn Peris reservoir has a hydroelectric generator with a peak output of 1.728 GW (great, Scott!). This storage station supplements Britain's national grid, but it could power
the city ofWales on its own for about 5.5 hours. [url] - Storing energy in chemical batteries doesn't sound quite as simple, but batteries take up a lot less space. Big cheap batteries for grid storage could use molten metal salts, but the technology still needs a bit more work before scaling up. [url]
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Filed Under: advanced rail energy storage, ares, battery, energy, energy storage, generators, llyn peris reservoir, solar power
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Chemical Energy
I am surprised that nobody has planned a biodiesel processing plan powered by renewables. The output product could then be fed into diesel generators to provide supplemental power. The output of the diesels heat/gas can also be captured and fed back into the bio-diesel production process.
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Carbon Nanotube Batteries
http://news.mit.edu/2016/mit-develops-nontoxic-way-generating-portable-power
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Move the Electricity
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Angular momentum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Imagine flywheels as big as hydro-electric generators storing energy.
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Re: Angular momentum
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Salt water batteries
Although they're in production and available now, they're still too expensive for me, but all they're made out of is carbon, magnesium dioxide and salt water so I'm hoping the price quickly comes down to less than equivalent capacity lead-acid batteries.
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Re:
That said, it's legally a country.
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Re: Re:
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Re: Re:
Wales does contains 6 cities - Bangor, Cardiff, Newport, St Davids, St Asaph and Swansea - three of which are admittedly very small.
And it's not exactly legally a country I guess, being one of the "Home Nations" part of the United Kingdon of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but yep it's a country :D
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Mining Skips, to Anonymous Coward, #6
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Re: Re: Angular momentum
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Another method
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Re: Mining Skips, to Anonymous Coward, #6
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Re: Another method
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Re: Re: Re:
I would also accept "principality." :P
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Re: Chemical Energy
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