DailyDirt: Storing Up Energy For A Rainy Day...
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
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]
Filed Under: batteries, flywheel, ice, mit, moore's law, taiwan
Companies: beacon power, google
